Endless Thread - Episodes we love: Sandwiches of History

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

In honor of the day-after-Thanksgiving leftover sandwich, we're revisiting our conversation with Barry Enderwick, the man behind the beloved and wildly popular "Sandwiches of History" social media accounts. Barry joined Ben and Amory to make a triple-decker sandwich from 1958, and to talk about his first cookbook, "Sandwiches of History the Cookbook: All the Best (and Most Surprising) Things People Have Put Between Slices of Bread." To quote Barry's signature phrase, we think you should give this episode "a GO!" If you're hungry for more, check out Sandwiches of History on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit.  

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? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Happy National Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich Day. You know, I gotta say, it's my favorite, I like it better than Thanksgiving dinner. That does not surprise me in the, in the slightest. I mean, Thanksgiving dinner is kind of, yeah, it's, you know, it's, it's a lot. It's a lot. But the sandwich, the leftover sandwich, while you're watching some kind of reruns, run movie on TBS at your in-laws house, sign me up.

Yeah. Just stack those beige foods on top of each other and put them between more beige foods. That's the way to do it. Plus some cranberry sauce for, you know, a little pop of color. A little pop of color. A little tartness. Anyway, we hope you're having a warm, cozy holiday weekend with the people you love, plus the uncle that you put up with.

and to get you extra psyched for that leftover sandwich, we thought we'd bring you an episode from earlier this year with a guy who knows, he knows a lot about sandwiches. I went to his favorite sandwich shop in New Orleans. And you know what? As we're saying, he knows his sandwiches. He knows what that.

I trust him with my sandwich life. All right. So here's that episode coming up. And please, please know how tremendously thankful we are for you for listening to the show. And bon appetit. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

So we've got our toasted bread, right? Yes, we've got our toasted bread. So we're going to butter up all four slices. I think we're buttered. Are you buttered? I'm buttered, baby. Let's go. Ben and I are in the WBUR studios

with cutting boards, plates. We're chopping. We're plating. And nearly a dozen ingredients in front of us, about to do one of Ben's absolute favorite things. We're sandwiching. But this is no ordinary sandwich. It is called The Sophisticated Club.

It's from Good Housekeeping's Book of Breads and Sandwiches in 1958. When I first read this, I'm like, what three martini lunch spawn this recipe? That is our guide on this sandwich-making adventure, Barry Enderwick. I make sandwiches from old recipe books and plus them up for the modern palette if they have potential. And this is an adventure because this club sandwich recipe from 1958 is a triple decker, an insane triple decker. One slice of toast, we want to put on, I believe, our ham. Next, we put on our slice of pineapple. Spread our peanut butter on top of that.

Sprinkle the unsweetened coconut on that. Now we add our bacon, slice of tomato, put on our avocado. Whoa. This is a tall boy. Long before we were making a giant sandwich with Barry Enderwick from kitchens on opposite sides of the country, I was hearing his voice every night in my home kitchen, where my husband, usually right after dinner, fires up one of his favorite Instagram channels. Oh, hello. Welcome to Sandwiches of History. Today, from the all-new purity cookbook of 1967, we're doing making the salmon and peanut sandwich.

Sandwiches of history. History, history, history, history. Okay, to drain boneless and skinless salmon, we add grated onion, parsley chopped, chopped green bell pepper, and of course, chopped peanuts. Every day. Yep, seven days a week. At noon Pacific time, Barry posts a video of himself making a sandwich in his home kitchen in the Bay Area, a different sandwich recipe every day taken from the pages of an old cookbook. Today, from conservation recipes of 1918, today from the chafing dish of 1912,

Today from a cook's own cookbook of 1832. Some of these sandwiches of yesteryear are pretty out there. The jellied chicken sandwich, number one. The yeast sandwich. We're going to be making the sardine loaf sandwich. Others are surprisingly simple. It's a plain peanut butter sandwich, watered down with milk. We're going to be making the cheese sandwich.

We're going to be making the lemon sandwich. Berry makes and tries all of them. And does he have a catchphrase? You know he does. Okay, let's give the tomato a go. Let's give this sandwich for travelers. Okay, let's give this hot honey sandwich. A go.

Go, go, go, go. Go. The concept behind sandwiches of history is as clean cut as sliced bread. I was just curious about these old recipes and like, what were people eating back then that they thought were the bees' knees and would be something that would be good for us to bring back? But the meat of the matter, Barry's execution and his devotion to daily sandwich making, has gotten him a following.

A big one. Hundreds of thousands of people on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, all tuning in to find out which sandwiches of history Barry thinks are the bees' knees. You look at the ingredients and it's like, it's kind of bonkers. And then you taste it and you're like, how is this working? How is this working? and leading to a sandwich recipe renaissance of sorts that's brought strangers from all around the world together

in the name of sandwiches and could only have happened on the internet. I'm Ben Bonn Me, Broccoli Johnson. I'm Amory Sliced Avocato Sievertson and you're listening to Endless Bread. Oh, coming to you from the meat, the meaty insides of WBUR, Austin's NPR sandwich meat.

Or meat alternative. Mmm. Whichever which is your jam or jelly. And peanut butter. And Joe. What do you say, Emma? Let's give today's Sandwiches of History episode. A go.

Hello, Barry. Barry. Hello. Barry Enderwick showed up to our video called just like he shows up on social media. Glasses, a button-down shirt, the small amount of non-beard hair he has left. left a little fluffed up in the back, an unpretentious, little goofy, good, clean, funkel type. He really is. He's like, perfect because a sandwich is not pretentious.

You know what I mean? A sandwich is just like, what's up? I'm here. This is me. This is what I am. And I'm delicious. And I feel like that's Barry's vibe too, you know? Mm-hmm.

Behind him, there's a recognizable backdrop, his actual kitchen, again, non-pretentious. He's got some beige walls, white. cupboards and a painting of a chili pepper hanging just over his left shoulder. When I first saw you on the screen, I thought that maybe I had left my Instagram page open and that there was just one of your videos stills up, but then it was you. And I was starstruck. So I was excited, as a fan by marriage, we'll say, but what do you get when you put my good old friend, Ben, the person I previously thought was the world's greatest sandwich enthusiast Together with Barry Enderwick, the internet sandwich expert, historian, modern day godfather, all of the above?

I feel like I literally just teared up. I love it so much. I'm so happy. This is my happy place. You get some budding tears of joy, but also a lot of questions. Do you have a favorite bread? What's your favorite, like, classic chip and sandwich combo? Why do people put so much freaking meat in sandwiches? Who is a famous person that you would like to have a sandwich with? And what sandwich would you make for them or with them? All good questions.

That's what I'm saying. And we'll get to some of them. But we're going to start. Was a sandwich involved in you getting kicked out of college? Right here. No. Unfortunately, it was just me not attending classes and getting good grades. Fair.

It was funny. I went to San Francisco. to go stay for two and a half years and I was undeclared. And I finally decided, you know what, I want to be a graphic designer. And I did that for exactly one semester and was asked to leave. But Barry did become a graphic designer. He was, in fact, the first graphic designer hired by a little startup that was just getting going in the early 2000s.

You might have heard of it. I worked at Netflix from 2001 to 2012 in the marketing department, helping to scale it from a small startup to an international streaming brand. And eventually, Barry and a colleague at Netflix. Netflix started their own marketing and business consulting company, which he still runs today, and which means he can afford to tune out the usual social media best practices when it comes to the brand he's now best known for, sandwiches of history. I decided I did not want to follow the advice of posting three to four times a day, doing dances,

jumping on trends. I was just going to make a sandwich, posted at noon Pacific time every day. We'll just see how it goes, and that way I don't burn out on this. But how it's going for Barry is not. how it started. It was 2018, and Barry, a known foodie and sandwich lover, was cleaning up some files on his computer when he came across a PDF. A PDF of a book a friend had sent him called The Up to Date Sandwich Book. Up to which date?

It was published in 1909. You know, the second you publish something that says the up to date, it's already out of me, which is hilarious to me. It has a life. As soon as you publish something, like that is a guarantee that it's got a half-life. Exactly. So, but I started looking through them.

Like, some of these sandwiches sound okay. Some of them are weird. But Barry's not afraid of a weird sandwich. So he decided he was going to make them for an audience. I just thought it would be fun to do on social media to try these sandwiches from 1909, see what they thought was so wonderful. And, you know, is it something that we could, we would enjoy today? Big beautiful oysters.

All right. And in this cookbook, there's absolutely no real measurements. So I'm just sort of winging it. This is the first sandwich berry made from the up-to-date sandwich book of 1909. And the first one he posted to Instagram, the oyster sandwich. Olive oil, lemon juice, tabasco-like substance. We just sort of, boy, that looks on appetizing. And I love raw oysters, but boy, howdy.

The review? Boy, howdy. Textural nightmare. It was awful. That sounds pretty griss. That sounds pretty griss. Highly unrecognend that. Much like Barry's first actual sandwich of history, his sandwiches of history account wasn't a hit at first either. Back then, Instagram videos had to be square. They couldn't be more than a minute.

Or you could put them in stories, but then you'd have to move them to highlights, to preserve them. It was a whole thing. Boy, howdy. So Barry let his early video. videos just sort of linger on the vine until TikTok came along and he gave him another shot. And it took off. It was crazy how much it took off. And then I thought, well, okay, there is a there. Maybe I'll start making new ones. Welcome to sandwiches of history. Welcome to sandwiches of history. Welcome to sandwiches of history. Today, we're doing a sandwich from 1908 or 1918, depending on who

you ask. Today, Barry has upwards of 300,000 followers on TikTok and Instagram. What's his secret sauce? Is it his avuncular turns a phrase? Yes, it is. I'm well aware like Delaware. There was a couple hitches in the giddy. I bust out my trusty slice of sliced. Is it a morbid fascination with what combos people used to put between sliced bread? The cream cheese and the pineapple? Sure. But the mustard was really strong, really pronounced. Little a column A, little a column B. But it's probably also just the undeniable, unwavering, universal love for sandwiches. A love that like, likely goes back way before John Montague, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, supposedly invented them in the mid-1700s.

The story goes that one day Montague didn't want to pause his card game to eat. He asked for someone to bring him roast beef between two slices of bread so he could eat one-handed. Clever, if true, but is this really the origin story for the sandwich? Let's ask the former Netflix marketing guy. He did a great job of branding, got his name to be the name of the category. But, you know, people have been putting stuff between bread for longer than that, I'm sure. I did a Roja Mo, which I hope I'm pronouncing correctly. It's Chinese. It's from 200 BC.

And it's basically a crumpet. And right now they make it with pork belly more often than not. But it was made with beef and all these spices because it was developed along the spice route. And they just slot that into this crumpet-like bun, if you will, but it's cut. People also call me basically a crumpet, Amory. Ben Brock Crumpet Johnson. How could I forget? But even if you give Earl of Sandwich a croma credit,

he probably couldn't have foreseen just how imaginative people would get with sandwiches. You could mash up cuisines, you can mash up textures, you can change out the bread. You can change how the bread is it soft, is it toasted? Is it dipped in egg and milk and fried? Or is the whole sandwich just bread? Like the toast sandwich from Mrs. Beaton's book of household management from 1965. It is, in fact, a piece of toast between two untoasted pieces of bread. What's the story there?

It is, but it also has butter and salt and pepper. And this is one of those recipes that you find in a section of a cookbook that would be recipes for invalids. That's what they would say. And it's basically for people who have upset systems or were sick. It was something that they could eat and hold down. I thought it sounded ridiculous until I tasted it and actually was not bad. Not bad, but not great. Barry gives each sandwich he makes a score out of 10.

The official Sandwiches of History score for the toast sandwich? Interesting texture. Okay, I'm going to give it a three and a half. Plus up with the thin slice of beef. I'll give that a five. Barry loves to plus up sandwiches, as in he'll add an example. ingredient to an old sandwich recipe, some flavor or texture that he thinks is missing. It was better. It wasn't spectacular.

But Barry always starts by executing each historical recipe as faithfully and precisely as possible. And I mentioned there were no amounts given in this recipe. Yeah, good fact. Which means sometimes you got to wing it. There's also recipes where, like, you know, take two tablespoons of grated cheese. Great, what kind? What kind of cheese should I use? And then I have to be cognizant of like American cheese, you know, before a certain date, like 1916 or 1912, just meant cheese from America, not American cheese like we know it now.

Yeah. The people in the past are like, what are you, some kind of salt in or something? You have different kinds of cheese? We got cheese and no cheese. You had sliced bread? Yeah, exactly. Before 1928, that would have been a mind-blowing experience for them. You know what they seemingly had in slathers, though?

Butter. Almost all the American sandwich recipes berries encountered from before World War II made liberal use of it. Every single slice of bread had butter on it. And then it started to go, starting to decline because of the war and the rationing and using use of margin. And by the 60s, it seems to have gone away entirely. Whereas in the UK, it's still done almost everywhere. Wow. The other thing is that sandwiches weren't necessarily a lunch food.

They might be like part of a multi-course meal. They might be a tea sandwich. So they were lighter fare. But lighter fare isn't exactly what Barry is looking for in a sandwich. Yeah, I want it to be a meal. Okay. You know, every once in a while I'll make a dill pickle and peanut butter sandwich because I grew up eating them. Ooh.

And it's, I think it's quite good. But it's, that's not really a full. sandwich sandwich. I'd hate to give them up, but if I had to, because I requested the full sandwich, then so it'll be it. Okay. I've never even heard of that. That sounds great. Oh, you never heard of that? No, I grew up on, I grew up on cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. I could never do that. That didn't work for me. Okay. My parents went into it. To each their own. Yeah. What's interesting is the milk pickle peanut butter sandwich, I thought my brother maybe invented it or whatever. No, it's in, it's in these books from like 1916, 1909. Like pickle peanut butter sandwich

Sandwiches have been around for a long time. Listen here, Bob. You give me the morning paper and a pickle and... Peanut butter sandwich. Yeah. You also review chips. Welcome to eating the chips. My name's Barry.

Let's get in the chips. What's your favorite, like, classic chip and sandwich combo? I told you we'd come back to some of Ben's burning sandwich questions. Burning. I think a tuna salad sandwich and a salt and vinegar potato chip are a fantastic combo. Love that. Because then you get a little sharpness, you get the crunch, and then it offsets the richness of the mayonnaise and the tuna salad.

Why do people put so much freaking meat in sandwiches? Like, one thing that consistently bothers me about the sandwich assembly of America is that we love to stuff so much meat into a sandwich. And I'm like, no, it should be equal. Like, your watery crunch should be. equal to your meat content. Like, does that make any sense to you? I totally know what you mean, and I totally agree with you, actually.

Yes. It seems to me like we've, every once in a while I'll see a sandwich, and it's just stunt food. You just put way too much meat in there, so someone will take a picture of it and put it on Instagram. For me, it's about balance. I want to balance between textures. I want to balance between flavors. I want balance in a sandwich when I go get a sandwich.

I don't want more. Thank God for you. Thank God for you. You can't see his face up post. He's just looking at you with such admiration. I love you, man. I already love you. Coming up, Ben and I make our own sandwich of history.

You can put anything between two slices of bread, three slices of bread, or in our case today, four slices of bread. And the philosophical sandwich questions get deeper. Any other hot debates around sandwiches that you would like to come out on the record with? Hot dog 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.

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whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR. dot org slash creative studio. All right, we know a couple of parameters are sandwiches of history influencer Barry Enderwick upholds. A sandwich should be a meal, ideally, and it's got to have a balance of textures and

flavors. Other than that? I don't have a lot of purity tests when it comes to sandwiches. Like, I'll do open-faced sandwiches. I'll do just the Halifax Donair, which is, you know, kind of like a swarma where it's wrapped in a pita, just because I don't want to not eat. delicious food. And as Barry pointed out, sandwiches come in all

forms, in part because they come from all countries. Every cuisine has a take on the sandwich. Which Barry celebrates weekly on something he calls. Today is international sandwich Sunday, and today we're going to be doing an alutiki burger. Are there any other essential

truths about sandwiches that you firmly and fervently believe? I believe a hot dog is a sandwich. Thank you. you, keep going. What about tacos? No. How come? All right. So I'm going to give you two reasons why the hot dog is a sandwich in my book. One of them is deeply, deeply unsatisfying. And the second one is more based on logic. The first one, reason why a hot dog is a sandwich is because everything is made up.

The entire part of the sandwiches is made up. Hot dog, the fact that we call it a hot dog, that's all made up. So not very satisfying. The logic one is that if you look at a hot dog bun, the two sides are pretty close in thickness. The hinge is very thin. So to me, the hinge is an accommodation for the tubular meat. And it's kind of like if you go to a sandwich shop and they cut the loaf of bread but they don't cut all the way through, that's still a sandwich, correct? Yeah. And sometimes that's what you want. Like if you got a sloppy meatball going in there, you might actually benefit from that bread not getting sliced all the way through. Right. Now, don't get me wrong. If someone says, hey, you want a sandwich and they hand me a hot dog, it's going to be weird. But I do think it

qualifies as a sandwich. Whereas a taco, to me, the tortilla is pretty uniform in thickness, and it acts more like a sling than it does a sandwich. Are there any non-bred sandwiches? Sure. From the up-to-date sandwich book of 1909, we had the dairy sandwich. The dairy sandwich was a slice of Swiss cheese, butter, and another slice of Swiss cheese. That's it. Done. Okay, let's give this dairy sandwich a go. You can really taste the Swiss cheese. And the butter. Wow.

That was a surprise to me that that would be a recipe in a book, but there it is. You know what Barry did with this surprising recipe? He put it in another book, his own cookbook, which is hot off the Panini press. It's a compilation of recipes from Barry's collection of old sandwich cookbooks. Such as? Salad, sandwiches, and chafing dish dish, Dainties from 1909. 5 o'clock tea from 1896.

Remember 5 o'clock tea, Amory? Nope. Me neither. 101 sandwiches from 1901. 1,0001 sandwiches from 1936. Barry's OG up-to-date sandwich cookbook from 1909, of course. And the very out-of-date beverages and sandwiches for your husband's friends from 1893. Your husband's friends.

Hmm. Okay. What's great about that is the office. author of that is One Who Knows. One Who Knows? I got to talk to this One Who Knows. We approve of the name of Barry's book, though. Sandwiches of History, The Cookbook.

All the best and most surprising things people have put between slices of bread. In it, you'll find things like the nasturtium leave sandwich from 1896. Mmm, the waffled cheese which from 1974. The chocolate. sandwich number three from 1908. The hot doggy sloppy Joe from 1970. And many, many others that Barry thinks are interesting, fun to make, sloppy, and worth giving a goo. And I also included one original sandwich recipe in there.

The dusty nuttergoose? Is that right? That's correct, yeah. Okay. It's basically frozen waffle, peanut butter, smoked duck breast, and cherry pop rocks. And then you talk with another peanut butter waffle. Wow. That's a big swing to come. come out with for your first original sandwich.

For me, the big thing is to get folks into trying combinations that they don't necessarily think of or would not think would work. And also to think in terms of how can they add stuff to what they eat to make it more enjoyable, right? So it's more about flavor exploration, combination, textures. That kind of thing to me is more important than bring. back a specific sandwich per se. And sandwiches of history

does seem to be having that effect. You can see it in the comments on Barry's videos. Never thought of adding peanuts or chili crisp to a salmon sandwich. Banana, cheese, and pickle. This is either a pregnant or drunk sandwich, but

I can't say, I'm not curious. Corned beef Cuban wasn't on my bingo card for the day, but I'm here for it. I never knew a tomato sandwich could be so decadent. Damn, now I have to make the sardine maple syrup sandwich. And just the kind of community that's kind of grown around sandwiches of history makes it a lot of fun because everyone's passionately engaged about the flavors in the sandwich.

Part of that engagement includes fans suggesting plus ups of their own. Hear me out. Unsweetened, dried tart cherries. Toast the bread in a dark sesame seed oil. Should have added nutmeg to the walnut side. Ah, shouldn't we all have added nutmeg? Meg to the walnut side. It's not too late, Ben. Not too late.

Barry also says he gets DMs from folks telling him that he's opened their minds pallets and changed the way they approach cooking. I've gotten a note where a mother would thank me because their kid was really, really picky, and then he started seeing meat plus up sandwiches, and now he's not. He's wanting to try all different things.

So it's deeply gratifying to hear those messages and have people, you know, expand what they think of when they think flavors and textures when it comes to not just sandwiches, any food. And so, in the name of broadening our own palettes and possibilities, it was time for us to make a sandwich of history. This sandwich seems insane to me, but I'm excited.

Yeah, believe me. This is my fault. Emery's fault because she wanted to make the triple decker sandwich on the cover of Barry's book, The Sophisticated Club from 1958, a recipe even Barry was where. of initially. I looked at it. I thought there's no way that's going to work. It works. It works really well. And it's got an interesting combination of flavors and textures in it. Interesting indeed. We started with bread, lightly toasted.

Four pieces, buttered. One slice toast. We want to put your cheese. American cheese for Ben. Vegan cheddar for me. Followed by plant meat for me. Ham for Ben. This is an interestingly shaped ham. You're kind of an interestingly shaped ham. Yeah. Interesting is definitely a word. They won my ears. Yeah.

Ben is a ham. The Spirit of the Ham. You're the Spirit of the Ham. That'll be your first book. After conjuring up the spirit of the ham, we summoned the spirit of a slice of canned pineapple. I connect with that spirit, canned pineapple. Yeah? Yeah, because, you know, I'm kind of fun and tangy, but I'm very practical.

I feel like you're fresher than that. You're more fresh and tangy than canned and tangy. You know what I mean? I'll take it. Then take another piece of your buttered bread and put it buttered side down on top of that. Okay.

Butterside down on top of the pineapple. Understood. And then we're going to spread our peanut butter on top of that. Ooh, okay. Then came the unsweetened coconut flakes. I'm spreading it around with my finger. I hope that is very approved. Then the next slice of bread,

butter side up. Now we add our bacon. Or bacon, a slice of tomato. Or tomato. We're going to season that with salt and pepper. The original recipe did not call off to season the tomato. This was one of the things I decided you just, you need to do that. Yeah.

I think my husband started salt and peppering all the tomatoes in our house because of you. So thank you. I have you to thank you. You're welcome. At this point, our sandwich just looked like a bunch of sandwiches on top of each other, but we pressed on with some sliced on. avocado, even though I think avocado on a sandwich should be mashed. Now you just place your last piece of bread butter inside down.

Okay. Okay. Wait, what about your plus up? Well, what we like to do is taste the sandwich first and then plus it up. Okay. So now I cut it diagonally. I recommend that. Okay.

You can do that. I brought a big knife if you want a big knife, Ben. I think this is a plus up pre-taste that I think you'll approve of, Barry. You tell me. Oh, well. I got plastic sword cocktail picks, like toothpicks. And I just wanted to make my sophisticated club even more sophisticated. Is that allowed?

I say to thine own self-knockout. And they're also rainbow, which we also have been like. They're rainbow colored. Ben, would you like a sword? Yeah. On guard. All right. Let's give this sophisticated club sandwich.

A go. Mm. All right. We'll spare you our. chewing noises, mostly, especially because this Sammy was a tall order. That's a mysterious sandwich. Yes. Because you basically taste all of the ingredients.

Yep. And yet somehow they're not interfering with each other. Right? Or not, like, combining somehow. Like, you can taste everything, but it doesn't taste bad. Right. And, yeah, now you can see why I wanted to include this in the cookbook, because this really on paper doesn't look like it should work.

No, but I love it. Well, that makes one of us, Amory. So a little plus-up couldn't hurt, right? Yeah, so what's one more ingredient? So the plus-up that I recommend in the book is Chipotle powder. But really, what we're looking for

is some sort of smoky heat. It works with the avocado, works with a bacon, tomato. Works really well with peanut butter and with pineapple. You know what, Amo? I'm going to plus up. your spirit and say that you're the spirit of fresh pineapple plus chipotle powder. Oh, I like that. That works.

Cool. And you know, I'm going to say the internet got a plus up when sandwiches of history got on the scene because it just feels like this, it's like a sneaky way of revisiting our past and celebrating our cultural and preferential differences while keeping an open mind and actually trying new things like a lot of us say. going to do someday, you know? So, an online community that fosters a sandwich renaissance feels hopeful to me. Yeah. In a small, strange, but wonderful way. And in a time when it feels like humans can't agree on much of anything, damn it, it just feels good to get

behind the sandwich, you know? Yeah, yeah. Get behind it, get on top of it, get around it, and get over it and plus it up and yeah. And give it a go. And give it a go. Viva-less sandwiches of the present, the future, and... Of history. History. History. History. History. Barry, thank you so much.

Yeah, Barry, it's been a real pleasure talking to you, and I hope you never run out of sandwiches. Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. But, no, I had a lot of fun hanging out with you guys making a sandwich. Thank you so much for having me on. Mary Underwicks Sandwiches of History Cookbook is available where books are sold and sandwiches are eaten. Wait, one more sandwich question. Is a book a sandwich?

Is a book a sandwich? Oh my God. My brain just exploded. Is a book a sandwich? The pages are between two even surfaces. The pages are sandwiched, but I would not call a book a sandwich. Okay. I'm sorry for.

derailing us, please continue. The cover is just a sling, Ben, for the page. That's fair. That's fair. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston, and if you're in the Boston area, Barry Enderwick will be at WBUR's event space, city space, on January 21st. And we might be there, too. More info at WBUR.org.

slash endless thread. We will definitely be there. We agreed to be there. We'll be introducing the show. Oh, yeah, we will be there. there. Put it on your calendar, Ben. This episode was written and produced.

It's written and produced by me, Amory Severson, and co-hosted by me and... The Spirit of the Ham, Ben Brock Johnson, Mix and Sound Design for this episode by not at all a slap of happy, sweet pineapple,

but rather a dash of zippy pineapple and... Chipotle powder. Emily Jankowski. Who also, lent her voice as one of our sandwich commenters, along with our colleagues Daryl C. Murphy, Mike Mesketto, and Rob Lane, Steph Brown, Marquis, Neil, and Yasmin Ammer from the Radio Boston team. Radio Boston for life! The rest of our team is managing producer Sumitajoshi, production manager

Paul Vicus, Grace Tatter, and Dean Russell. The rest of Barry's team, for this interview, at least, was his fiancé, who he learned at the very end was just off-camera. the whole time? Just hanging out. How's your fiancé feel about sandwiches? Christine, how do you feel about sandwiches? They're okay. They're okay.

If you have an untold history and unsolved mystery, a photo of your sandwich or a wild old sandwich recipe that you want us to share with Barry, how about you give emailing endless thread at WBUR.org. A go.