Endless Thread - Encore: The Great Glitter Mystery

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Much like rewatching a favorite TV show in its entirety, it can be comforting to listen back to something from "the beforetimes." So this week, we're doing just that. We're revisiting an episode from 2019 that solved one of the internet’s most compelling mysteries. Inspired by a 2018 New York Times feature about glitter, people obsessed over identifying the mysterious industry buying huge amounts of glitter – information which glitter-makers have refused to divulge. No one had been able to find any answers … until the ET team took the case and dropped a glitter bomb on the whole mystery.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And, of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Endless threadheads. Here's a question for you. During the pandemic, have you re-watched a favorite show of yours? And was it great? Was it a trip down memory lane to a simpler time that comforted and transported you far from the troubles of the last 16-ish months? Well, today, we are hoping to do the same. We're listening back to a favorite. mystery episode from the Endless Thread Archives that hopefully will add a little sparkle to your life. Okay, here's the show. Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. Emery, you know why we're here, right?

Yes. Okay, but can we let Frank Ocean sing it for us? Glitter. Did you catch it? Did you catch the topic of today's episode? Glitter. Glitter. Glitter.

Glitter. Glitter. You also notice that comedian Dmitri Martin has something on this same topic. The thing about glitter is, if you get it on you, be prepared to have it on you forever. Because glitter doesn't go away. Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. The herpes of craft supplies is the topic of an insanely popular Reddit post from almost a year ago about a mystery that hasn't been solved. I mean, it might get solved.

Today. Don't get ahead of yourself, Glitter Boy. I will accept this new moniker as a compliment. For today's episode, I'll only answer to Glitter Boy. Oh, boy. Oh, Glitter Boy. Today's episode, The Great Glitter Mystery. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severs. And you're listening to Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. Okay. I want to show. shout out former endless thread intern Noah Boston who found this Reddit post and the resulting comment thread. Which went deep on glitter.

Yes. And the person behind that post? My name is Zach Brooke. I am an independent writer. I currently live in Toledo, Ohio. One of my favorite subreddits is the Unresolved Mysteries subreddit. I will say that, you know, the constant murders, disappearances get a little grisly and a little, like, demoralizing. I am on the lookout for unusual mysteries, which I think this glitter one definitely fits in that cold.

Zach had found this article that a lot of people read in the New York Times magazine that was all about glitter. What is it? How is it? Where is it? The answer to the last question is apparently everywhere, which we will talk more about. The answer of what is it, which we will also discuss further, is briefly very thin plastic coated in very thin metal. But the biggest question that pops up, who buys it? This article was written by a reporter named Katie Weaver and well done Katie because there's this one intriguing moment in her piece that launched this whole discussion on Reddit with thousands and thousands of comments. Katie Weaver is describing getting a tour of a glitter making company in New Jersey called GlitterX, which people at the company were really hesitant to give in the first place. They don't want to let her see the machines or even be on the manufacturing floor, really, let alone describe how the machines work, which is odd.

But the real mystery moment comes when the company rep won't tell Katie what industry is the biggest customer of GlitterX. This is how it plays out in the piece. Can you tell me which industry serves as GlitterX's biggest market? No, I absolutely know that I can't. But you know what it is? Oh, God, yes. And you would never guess it. Let's just leave it at that.

Can you tell me why you can't tell me? Because they don't want anyone to know that it's glitter. She never gets an answer. For some people, that kind of mysterious no comment is like, whatever. But for us, it's catnip. I was like, oh, man, it's something unusual. It's something bizarre, you know? My first thought was that, yes, this was something that if people found out,

it was glitter. There'd be a little mini freak out, and the industry would have to do damage control. Kind of like, I'm not calling glitter pink slime, but remember when pink slime happened? Something like that. People would freak out if they knew that, you know, something that they thought was valuable

or definitely that they paid a lot of money for or something that they consume in their bodies was in part like this metallic or plastic glitter. Not going to lie, Before this story, I never thought glitter was a thing worth thinking about. And neither did Zach, really. I will always think of glitter as something that you use, you know, in daycare or early education when you're making like little homemade birthday cards for mom, you know.

But this New York Times story, it raised a lot of questions, especially who this mystery buyer was. The comments on Zach's Reddit post start rolling in with tons of theories. Makeup, for instance. Sure. Greeting cards. Sure. But we are talking about an industry where the final product isn't obviously made with glitter, an industry that, according to a company at GlitterX, doesn't really want people to know they are using glitter. So people on the thread really dig in. Maybe it's part of a cloaking paint used for vehicles used in the U.S. military, or a food product. Or maybe someone was dumping it into beach sand to make

their resort beach sparkle more, all of which were theories floated in the thread. And that seems to be as far as anyone has gotten on this story. Theories. Which means, I see that old endless thread bat signal on the sky. Don't worry, guys, there's a couple of dorks with a microphone, a recorder, and a knack for diving down rabbit holes and searching out dead ends at your service. A couple of dorks with a lot of hope. Hope and friends in low places, like the muckrake-

business. So let's call one of those muckrakers up. Hello. David Boeri. Good morning. That's a voice that's becoming very recognized. David Boerre is probably known best for spending many years as WBUR's senior investigative reporter. He's covered Whitey Bulger's Gangster Rain of Terror, the federal trial of the Boston Marathon bomber, but his muckrake was recently traded in for tree trimmers.

I have peaches, pears, and apples. I'm having record seasons in all of them. He tries to get out. We pull him back in. David, I know that, like, you're a very, very serious investigative journalist, but we need you to help us investigate the origins and largest buyers of glitter. Do you think you're up for it? Polyethylene, aluminum.

Yep. Yeah, it brings me back to my chemistry class and to disco ball. in the 1970s. Okay, so you're intimately acquainted with glitter, it sounds like. Yeah, the one thing I know is it's a very closed industry. So that's interesting. Closed industry doesn't sound good. And it matches what we've learned about glitter so far.

But our buddy David Boeri, he gives good pep talk. If you're an investigative driven by the certainty that almost all things are knowable. You know, one of the great answers I once asked was, I don't know the answer to that question, but I think I know someone who does. To find someone who does, David made a pretty pointed suggestion, something we had already been talking about. I'd start in the basic gumshoe arena. Tell me again where the factory is and where the headquarters are. You're a man after my own heart. Yeah. You're a man after my own heart.

This particular factory, GlitterEx, is located in Cranford, New Jersey. If you have a little time on your hands, I want you to figure out what the closest bars are. Because a lot of times, employees go out to drink on their way home. When I started out and I wanted information, I started hanging out with cops, state cops. found out what their watering holes were. And so I started hanging out in the watering holes. And that's how I got into the state police bulger task force. This is one of about a million ideas David had. All of them seemed like good, if dicey, ideas. One is you've got to go into the court system, into the civil court system. Where did you go to school?

Where do you go to graduate school? What clubs did he belong to? Think about this. If you're You work there and you're in a company uniform. They have laundry services. But then there's the more subtle approach of stealing the garbage, of doing dumpster dives, and then opening the bags when you get home to find out what you might see in there. Again, all of these ideas are dicey, but going to the source of the mystery seems like the fastest, most direct solution. If we get into some kind of trouble, will you pick up the phone if we call? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. And if you call from jail, I can put you on to any number of criminal defense attorneys of my friends. Yes. Yeah, but, you know, if you turn over enough rocks, you'll find the slugs, the worms, and the glitter. Meanwhile, we set out to turn over some rocks in New Jersey, some New Jersey rocks. God, this is suburbia. Jers suburbs. the Jersey is suburbanists.

What are we doing? Why am I listening to you? I have GPS telling me where to go. Why am I listening to you? You're just like, yeah, it's that building. Go that way. What do you do? What's happening?

It looks like the building. Commerce Drive. Glitter X is in this little office park in the middle of a high density but sleepy feeling suburb. And even with all of our prep from David Bowery, Amory and I kind of come in. hot and make a couple of rookie mistakes right off the bat.

We go there on a Monday. Maybe not the best day for catching people after work at the bar, unless they really hate their jobs. But we also get there in the middle of a sunny afternoon, which is not a great time to be casing the joint or rifling through trash or whatever. So we're not playing it super cool, like muckraker reporters who are playing the long game. We're just kind of bumbling in the front door. Yeah, but we got to try.

Yeah. That's what we're here for, right? We're here to be rejected. Are we here to be rejected? Or they will welcome us with open arms and tell us all their secrets. Should we just go in the front door? Maybe. We're hoping to talk to the woman who was interviewed in that New York Times story,

or the owner of the company, a guy named Babu or his son, Jeet. The woman on our list has left for the day. Strike one. Yeah. Are Bobbo or Jit still here? Yeah, what do you guys do? We actually, so I sent an email but did not hear back. We are from a public radio station in Boston.

We were hoping to talk to one of them. We're doing... We're doing a story about glitter. We're doing a story about the glitter industry. Okay, hold on one moment. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. some other things. So maybe the company's biggest customer isn't really such a big mystery after all.

Somebody comes to the door of the waiting area. Hi, how are you? Hi, Jeet. I'm Amory. Ben. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I'm sorry, we're not interested in doing any interviews or anything like that. Okay. Yeah, thanks for stopping by. And sorry, when you get back to your email.

That's okay. Yeah, we were... Jeet seems like a kind of nice guy, and he is a Redditor. So if you're a Reddit fan, you should listen to the... the show anyway. Yeah. I'll definitely with the unresolved

mystery subreddit? Yes. I've also read that thread on the okay. Essentially, that's what we're doing. We're trying to

answer this question for thousands and thousands of Reddlers. I can't give you the answer to that. Fair. Can you offer us any advice on

how to solve the mystery without your help? No. We tried. We really tried. Jeet wouldn't budge. He politely sent us on our way. It was a long drive back to Boston.

The next day, we continued to search through the thread of comments on Reddit for clues, and we started calling people, trying to knock a few of the crazy theories out, or maybe catch a lucky break. And then, Ben caught a lucky break. Oh, shit, I just talked to the guy who had the answers about glitz. Here's why I was so excited. While we were looking through theories and failing to get GlitterX to talk to us, I found another Reddit thread, an older one.

This was an Ask Me Anything thread, and it was titled, I'm a glitter manufacturer, AMA. This is the guy behind that post. So my name is Joe Coburn. I live in Queens, New York. And currently, I own a casting company with my wife. but previously there was a family glitter business that my father started in Germany. And as it turns out, the Coburn family business

has a pretty strange and winding story, a story that is intertwined with the history of glitter and the history of secrecy surrounding the glitter industry. Glitter was invented by a New Jersey cattle rancher in 1934. He was doing some machining work and found that grinding up trash, made some particular kinds of trash sparkle. This guy was really secretive,

which might be part of the reason that there are a really limited number of companies making glitter, even today. Joe's family is rooted in the Northeast with connections to the garden state, or shall we say, the glitter state. Obviously, New Jersey is where the hotbed of glitter is. She didn't know, now you know.

His grandfather and his father were both in the business of manufacturing various reflective materials, but not glitter. That is, not until his dad was sent to clean up a failed business they attempted to launch in Germany, where he made a fateful discovery. At this location, were two old glitter machines. This was around 1999. Joe's dad didn't know where these machines came from, but there they were in this part of Germany, which is out in the boondocks, but, like, translated into German.

Molsdorf, Teich Wolframsdorf. in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it goes right off the town. Yeah. And it's kind of like West Virginia. We're talking about single lane road. In many cases, the villages that are nearby, there's more livestock than people.

Even though Joe's dad was way out in Mollsdorf, Taish Wulframsdorf, as soon as he put out the word that he had some glitter-making machines, people were knocking down his door. My father quickly discovered that when he inquired about how much he could sell these machines for,

people were offering large sums of money, mainly to break the machine down and clone it. How much money are we talking? We're talking like 120 to 140,000 euros. Somewhere in there was a price that he asked for and could get. Almost sight unseen. Almost sight unseen. Joe's dad let prospective buyers view the machines in an old

barn through a window. But he wouldn't let them get close enough to understand how the machines worked. This is how secret of people are about glitter machines. Wild. Joe's dad sells one inscrutable glitter-cutting machine for a hefty sum. He disassembles the other one to figure out how it works. And he builds a glitter company in Germany with a fleet of new machines. Of the handful of companies making glitter, Joe describes his own family business as almost

the black sheep of the group, because it is a secret of industry, and selling those secrets pisses people off. But Joe says it was worth it, because even though most people might not think a lot about glitter, it is a widely used product. And even though the industry is more competitive now, you can still make good money. You used to be able to make bank. My father compared the margins to cocaine. He just said that it's something that you're selling buy the gram for a lot of money. And the price has gone down with competition, something that we sell now. We were selling for three or four times the amount per kilogram. Wow.

And customers are not buying one kilogram. Customers are buying tons of glitter over the course of years. And so we're talking about lots and lots of weight and lots of money. In 2011, Joe's dad died, and he and his brother stepped up to run the company. Since then, Joe's gone back to working in the entertainment industry. He says he just wasn't into spending time in the boondocks of Germany. But he knows a lot about the business. And when we asked him about the Glitter X mystery, he had an answer.

How sure are you, would you say? Yeah, so I put it, I'm like 99.9% sure. 99.9.9. I'm confident. Confident Joe in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science. Neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories. Stories about policing.

Or politics. Country music. Hockey. Sex. Of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the. answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice.

Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's business partnerships team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal. we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. We're talking to Joe Coburn, who used to work at his family's glitter company. He understands the industry. Glitter is in his DNA. And he is very confident about which industry is GlitterX's biggest client. In my mind, it's automotive paint. Has your family's company ever sold glitter to the automotive paint industry? Yes

Oh, mysterious one-word answer Yes, okay All right Okay It's, you know This could be vehicle paint for planes or boats or whatever But in my mind it has to be Glitter that sits in a liquid medium

Requires a lot more glitter These glitter particles are so thin And the desired effect Is not to have particles spread out where you see just paint and then just glitter. The idea is that you see nothing but glitter. If there's space in between, then the effect is not as brilliant. There's a reason that cars in the sun look really nice.

This. This we can work with. Time to call some car paint companies. We're pretty big. We are like to consider ourselves the best with color. This is John Thomas. No relation to Robbins. Thomas. And I manage a automotive OEM, which is original equipment manufacturing, a color styling

lab in Cleveland, Ohio for PPG industries. Basically, all sorts of car companies, from Audi to Volkswagen, hire paint companies like PPG to make paint for their cars. It's a long process, and John is responsible for choosing color options, sometimes five or six years in advance of a new car coming out. You're like an oracle. Yeah. We could just like ask you what, like, you know, we want before we do. Wow, I have never, never been called an or even like an oracle.

Are you going to tell us that, like, blue velvet is going to be out, but ocean spray is going to be in in 2025 or something like that? No, because that might be revealing too much. Ooh, a little secrecy from the automotive paint industry. Seems like we're headed in the right direction. But John says they don't use glitter in their paint, per se. They use something called effect pigments. Yeah, effect pigments, that is definitely, that's what we're talking about here. In the industry, these are all effect pigments.

Effect pigments, glitter, turns out it's mostly semantics. Effect pigments are basically highly engineered glitter in powder or flake form that add depth and complexity to whatever paint they're in. John is pretty excited about a new pigment made from glass. Super interesting, super clean. It's a great flake. It's a great flake. It's a great flake.

Then there's very, very, very expensive flakes. They're engineered to duplicate how color comes off of like butterfly wings or insects. John, I think they should start a new Netflix show called the Great American Flaking Show or something. I'm always willing to flake out. Great American flake off. John, I'm wondering, though, like the pigments and the, you know, the more fine, powdery mica and the other types of things that you're talking about, do you source those materials from a glitter company? No, I don't believe that glitter would be a primary offering from those companies. I don't know of us ever using Glitter X.

Foiled again. So we got to tick through some other theories. Lightning round on industries that use glitter but are not the top customer of Glitter X. Makeups a no. Greeting cards a no. Strip clubs, also mentioned by glitter conspiracy theorists. There's just not enough complicated societal sexual feelings in the world to make it rain for glitter. Dumping glitter into resort beach sand to make your Instagram posts sparkle. Humanity is pretty good at dumping trash into the ocean in terrible ways, but we are not doing this with glitter, at least not on purpose. A lot of glitter ends up in the ocean accidentally.

Food stuff? Nope. Currency? Eh, passports, nah. Pepper spray to help identify people who've been pepper sprayed? We checked. Nope. One of the more popular shadowy theories is that glitter is used by the military as a cloaking agent or paint for vehicles. Sounds a little odd to me. The me in this case is Richard Abu Lafia. He works in Washington at the Teal Group doing aviation technology analysis.

Richard says that glitter would reflect light, which is not a great way of cloaking yourself. It would attract attention, not avoid it. And in fact, he says this is why some planes have used reflective materials as decoys for evasive maneuvering. That stuff is called chaff, and it's refurb. But even chaff is not really glitter. So you're not convinced that your daughter's packet of glitter is somehow involved in tens of millions of dollars of military equipment, maybe hundreds of millions? Yeah, not so much because I think the last rigorous science that's gone into its development, its production, and its upkeep. You know, it's a really closely held secret.

On the other hand, you know, right? Damn it, Richard. But also, thank you, Richard. And here is where we hit another dead end. Like, it's none of these wacky things. We think it's paint, but results from our paint experts are fundamentally inconclusive. We need another authority. Joe Coburn, from the Coburn family glitter business, RJA Plastics, did say he would put us in touch with the current business owner, his younger brother, Alex. It was hard to get Alex on the line from...

Moldstorf, Taishful Framsdorf. But we did. And we asked him about his mysterious fleet of glitter-making machines. We currently have 22 machines. Do you name any of them? We do have one machine that has a name. Really? Yeah, and that's the devil.

So it's one of our oldest machines, and it's been repurposed to cut one certain material that I can't say too much about, but it's the loudest machine and maybe the most robust machine we have. So much mystery you're creating here, Alex. So much mystery. The devil is the first machine. It cuts a material you can't tell us about. Is it cutting souls?

No, but it definitely hurts the souls of the operators. We asked Alex why he wouldn't tell us what the devil machine cuts. He said it was a single customer product, and he just couldn't say another mystery. But back to our mystery, did Alex know anyone at GlitterX? I don't know anyone personally at GlitterX. I feel that they may be the most secretive, only because I rarely hear anything about them. Even worse, Alex told us he was skeptical of the car paint theory, in part because the paint or pigment industry was getting better and better at making cheaper products. Glitter, too expensive.

And in fact, he sort of described glitter as an industry that was insular in part because it was in trouble, more and more competition from China and Taiwan, perhaps thanks to the machine that his dad sold decades ago. Other than the growing competition, we asked Alex about his industry greatest challenge. Yeah, I think the biggest is that it's made of plastic. People are recognizing that the glitter falls off either onto the ground or could end up into an ocean. Glitter stays around. Until from various industry pressures, it doesn't.

Which is why Alex's family company is getting into biodegradable glitter to get away from plastics. It still struck us as weird that glitter as, an industry is so secretive. Like, is that just how business works? Maybe there was another clue in the economics of glitter. My name is Greg Staller. I'm a senior lecturer at the Questrum School of Business at Boston University. First question, what's up with the secretive nature of the glitter industry?

Is there a term for a strategy like this? It's called good business. Greg also made a prediction that it's totally possible the answer. to our fundamental question is boring. Which, dude, we are in way too deep for this kind of gut punch. I don't want to cast dispersions at the glitter industry, but my guess is that it's nothing, it's not a state secret in terms of what they're doing. If they're repeatedly dodging a question, if they're now contacted by three or four more

people, or every company in the same industry is equally dodging the same question, that brings, that raises my radar to say something is not right here. Oh, ho. Maybe Greg's coming around to our conspiracy theorist point of view. One of us. One of us. One of us. One of us. Oh, I thought you were going to do three with me. No, sorry, just two. We were really screwed. A hundred experts had killed theories and given us a hundred more. The one company, at least the one we knew had the answer, wouldn't give it to us. And Glitterex's biggest customer, still a mystery.

Until our producer Josh got the goods. I'm sitting across from Josh yesterday. He's on the phone with someone. I don't know who it is. All of a sudden, his fists go up in the air triumphantly. And he's like, yes. And he's like pointing to the phone. Like he's talking to someone on the phone who is really good news. And they had very good news, Ben.

I have a few sources in the paint industry who have gotten as excited about answering this mystery as we have been. And so they've been kind of looking into it on our behalf. And so one of them said their company does buy glitter from Glitter X. Ooh, okay. Breakthrough. But it's not high volume.

They were like, there's no way we are their biggest client. But because they are a GlitterX client, this source had a colleague who went to GlitterX as for like a normal supplier meeting and they poked into it on our behalf. Oh my God, we got someone on the inside? Josh, well done. So my source says that their colleague did get confirmation from someone at GlitterX that the largest purchasers of GlitterX glitter are,

boat manufacturers. Boat manufacture? Of course. Boaty McBoatface. Booty McBoatface. For the same reason, right? For like glitter paint, basically. Glitter paint. You can imagine like fishing boats, jet skis, all that type of stuff. Very shiny.

Very shiny. Wait, we're great. But this brings up questions. Yep. Why does the boat industry care whether or not we know it's the boat industry? I don't know for sure, but my guess is it's less that the boat industry. boat industry cares and it's more that GlitterX just doesn't want to go revealing their clientele to any old person on the street, any old podcast on the street.

I think the next step is probably just to call up as many boat manufacturers as humanly possible. Bring it on. All right. I love this. Let's go find some boat people. And we did. Or rather, we tried. This call may be recorded or monitored for quality assurance purposes. Yes.

Her call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. Sorry. Matt Rayner. Is not available. Record your message at the tone when you are saying. You've reached the voicemail on Nathan Long. I'm unavailable to take your call. I will return your call as soon as possible.

Thank you. Eventually, we did find someone who picked up and would totally talk to us. My name is Brandon Pittman. I'm a technical director, a chemist for a company called HK Research Corporation, who makes polyester gel coats for the marine and fiberglass cast polymer industries. What is gel coat? Think of it like a paint almost. I was originally designed in the 50s for just protecting of the fiberglass from water and that sort of thing.

And is it both now? Is it sort of cosmetic and protective? Absolutely. Have you ever touched gel coat? Touched it? Yeah. Absolutely. I got some of my hands this morning.

What does it feel like? So in the liquid form, it's a viscous paint about the consistency, I don't know, of a ketchup, if you will. Okay. And the cured form, it's a hard shell-like covering on the outside of fiberglass. I mean, you can tap it and it's extremely hard. What does it look like? Is it sparkly? Anything that you want.

We make solid colors, and we also make clears, and the clears they mix different things into to give different effects, whether it's glitter or an automotive metallic. So boat manufacturers are buying this gel coat substance from Brandon's company, H.K. Research, and mixing it with glitter they've bought directly from glitter companies. And folks, these boat companies, they are using a lot of glitter. I know how much boat manufacturers use, especially the bass boat manufacturers and the essay. When I say I know how much they use, I don't know the exact volumes, but I've been in their plant and I've seen the drums of material. And compared to somebody, you know, other uses of glitter are like greeting cards and Christmas ornaments and cosmetic industry. The volume is way more that goes into a boat. I used to work for a bass boat manufacturer back in the 90s, and we bought it in 30-gallon drums, probably 10 of those drums a week.

Whoa. Okay. 10, 30-gallon drums of glitter per week. 300 gallons of glitter every week or 15,600 gallons every year is definitely buying in bulk. And that could just be for one boat company. Industry-wide, we're talking glitter paloosa. Even Brannon's company buys glitter for some of its gel coat products. There's two main manufacturers of glitter in the United States.

One is called GlitterX. The other one is Metabrook Inventions. Glitter X. Glitter X. And we buy from their distributors. Okay, and who's the distributor? I believe their name is Polycryl. They're outside of Memphis, Tennessee.

Brandon says almost all of the customers he deals with buy glitter from polycryl. And Polycryl gets its product from Glitter X. Glitter, glitter, glitter, glitter, glitter, glitter, glitter. Yes, that's a glitter bomb going off right now. Yes, yes. Not beach sand, not military technology, not street. trip clubs. You know, I was really hoping it was going to be something else. Like something more crazy? Me too. I was hoping it was going to be in our food maybe.

Oh, why? I don't know. It's just funny. But instead, it's something mundane. So, Amory, what have we learned? We've learned that yet again, sometimes the journey is just much more intriguing than the destination. I mean, boat paint? Boat paint. Boat paint. just trying it out, getting used to it, boat paint. Boat paint. Boat paint. The more you say, the weirder it gets.

It gets more satisfying of an answer, the more you say it. Boat paint. Boat paint. You're supposed to say paint. Paint. But we did solve it, right? You got to admit our email to Jeet, it's going to feel so good. Yeah.

And I think after all of our work, if he sits down atop a mountain of glitter with his dad, Babu, and listens to the episode, I'd like to hope they wouldn't even be mad at us. Oh, don't hold your breath on that one. One thing I did learn, though, glitter is not good. Not good for anybody. You can't spell glitter without litter.

So true, Grandma. Can you pass me some milk and cookies? Sure thing. By the way, we offered GlitterX the chance to confirm or deny our findings. They declined to comment. Shout out to endless threadless. Sean Bonnage, who pitched us this story idea after we had already started working on it. Great minds, Sean, great minds. Also, huge thanks to Dan Benton, Ed Jones, Vanessa Patrick, and Jerry

Manned for sharing their expertise and helping to shape this episode as we fell down the glitter rabbit hole. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR Boston's NPR station in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer who tried to pronounce the name of that remote German town but was murdered by words. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and when we told her that New Jersey is the hotbed of glitter, she said, of course that's a thing. Mix and sound design by Paul Vicus, who was convinced we would solve this glitter mystery if we only stooped to the depths below. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and he was convinced the military was buying glitter in bulk.

It was his favorite of all the fan theories. Extra production assistance from James Lindberg, Our intern is Magdeaella Mata. Maggie's fine. For reactions to this glitter bomb of an episode or ideas for future episodes, hit us up on Reddit. We are Endless underscore Thread or email us at Endlessthread at WBUR.org.org. Also, by the way, we have an official subreddit now. You can find that at endlessthread.red.org.com.

My co-host and producer is Amory Severson. I'm senior producer and co-host, Ben Brock Johnson. I'll let myself out. Thanks for listening back to that audio glist. litter bomb with us. And have heart. We are coming back with a whole new season of episodes that we simultaneously can't wait to share with you and that we are working really hard on to knock out of the park. So we will be back soon and take care of each other in the meantime.