Endless Thread - Message In A Laptop

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

What is your relationship with the trash heap of digital history? Can you still connect your old hard drives? Still sifting through your old photos in the cloud? Do you ever low key snoop in the old electronics of other people, searching for treasure? That's what Noah Simmons was doing a while back when he discovered something compelling in its simplicity: a homework assignment document, on an old laptop picked up at an estate sale. The title of the essay? "My Secret Place." From there, the mystery of the author, and the meaning it had for so many people who got hit right in the feels by a nostalgic description of childhood, played out on TikTok. Like hundreds of thousands of people online, Team Endless Thread had to know more. Credits: Co-hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, produced by Frannie Monahan, Edited by Meg Cramer, and sound designed by Emily Jankowski. The rest of our team is Managing Producer Paul Vaitkus, Dean Russell, and Grace Tatter.

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 this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution, a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. This show tells climate stories like a stubborn optimist, because hope, innovation, and nature itself are key. to solving the challenges ahead. Follow on your favorite podcast app. WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

On a cold day back in January, Noah Simmons, a curious 20-something, was browsing at an estate sale in a small town of Bristol, Virginia. Noah was looking for things to resell because he kind of needed the money. He had just quit his customer service job at Verizon after getting burnt out.

I was kind of getting tired of, you know, just dealing with the general public. And I felt like I was kind of growing to hate people, and that's not who I want to be. I've been trying to make ends meet on my own by going to estate sales and buying things to flip online. What about estate sales speaks to you? Well, I'm a total treasure hunter at heart, and it's like the most easily accessible treasure hunt. you can have. Noah's idea of treasure might be a little different than yours. He's not looking for vintage furniture, antique wares, or mildly creepy trinkets. Yeah, Noah's treasure of choice is much nerderier, our kind of nerdier. I love old electronics, honestly. Some of it makes me feel

nostalgic. Some of it's just built a lot better than things are now, and I just kind of like to appreciate them. Earlier in the day, Noah had found a crypto miner, some graphics. processing units attached to two-by-fours, with a USB stick plugged into the back. The Ethereum crypto on the USB stick could net him $800. Not too shabby. Cash money. But Noah's day of under-employed estate sale hunting was about to net him something else. Something you can't really put a price tag on.

Our treasure hunting, burnt out ex-Verizon customer service representative was about to stumble on treasure that would warm his damn heart. I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Sewardson. And this is Endless Threat from WBUR in Boston. Today's episode, message. A thing about a state sale treasure hunting. You got to hit them early and hit them quick,

especially if you're trying to do multiple. You know, early treasure hunters get the vintage electronic worms. That's what they say, right? Okay, nobody says that. Well, that's what Noah was doing. He had already scored the USB drive with Ethereum. The next estate sale promised more vintage electronics. I'd looked at some pictures posted by the estate sale company.

And there was a few things that I was really interested in. There was like an old Nintendo gaming system, old PSP. But remember, this was January. So it was cold. So cold that the estate sale company had opened the doors earlier than expected. So they weren't leaving people out to freeze. By the time, on time Noah got to the house, he was actually late. The gaming consoles and stuff, they were already taken. They weren't there anymore. But sometimes the treasure isn't what you think you're looking for. It's hidden in the

leftovers. I found this old laptop sitting on a desk. And it had been a long time since I'd seen one like it, and I just thought they were, you know, cool looking. It looks like a modern-day, like, military laptop. It's about, I would say, two inches thick. It's a Toshiba satellite. Specifically, a Toshiba Satellite 225 CDS, originally released in 1996. This model features a maximum of 2.1 gigabytes of memory, and it is a brick of a machine. Weighing in, ding, ding, ding. at around 10 pounds. It's got the old, you know, rubber mouse built into the keyboard. I'm not sure what you call them.

Is it a pad or is it a ball? It's a ball. Yeah, those are so cool. It's just like a floating ball. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I used to love those, man. Yeah, it's not there anymore. Someone must shoot it off or something.

They never are. Yep, I can see that happening too. That's probably why the balls don't get used anymore. Yeah. Too tasty. It was $20, so I thought, you know, why not I'll pick it up. That seems like a lot. Can I just say that for an old laptop?

A lot of people have said that. Yeah. Yeah. Why? Did that not seem like a lot to you? Or did you just have a feeling that there was cool stuff that might be on it? Honestly, this was less of a purchase to resell and more of a purchase just because I liked it. And I also looked up prices online.

and then they were going for like 60 bucks. So, I mean, it was, there's a small bit of profit if I wanted to make it on this. Huh. But, you know, for me personally, I just thought it was cool. I was taking a risk because it didn't have a charger with it. I'd have to order one of those online. It would take a few weeks to come in. Which might cost 60 bucks.

Yeah. Without a charger, there was no way to know if the laptop would even work. And there was certainly no way to know if there might be untold treasures on its hard drive. But Noah managed to track one down online. When it finally arrived, he plugged that ancient Toshiba artifact in. I didn't expect it to turn on, but it sure enough did, and there wasn't a password on it from the previous user. So I just started doing a little snooping. And the first file that I clicked on was this file called My Secret Place. And, you know, nosey old me, wanted to see what it was.

And it turned out to be the story. So I just found the coolest thing at an estate sale, and I just really wanted to share it. I found this old computer. It looks like it could literally launch missiles from it. Noah had an inkling that he struck gold. So he did what any digital native would do in this situation. He whipped out his phone and started filming.

This is from his TikTok. I came across this word document that is really special. It's called My Secret Place. And I assume it was like a school assignment or something. But I just want to read this to you because it's a nostalgia trip. My secret place is at my cousin's house. It is a tree house. To get up to the tree house, you have to climb a ladder. And when you get to the top, you have to pull yourself up. And if you fall, it hurts bad. Up in the tree house, you can smell the flowers outside. And it will And when it rains, you can smell the rain there. Sometimes you can feel the rain because the leaves are our roof.

We can look up into the sky and watch airplanes. It is, of course, immediately clear that a kid is writing this. And this person describes what feels like an iconic 90s or 2000s' childhood movie montage. Hang in with the neighborhood kids, games of tag, watching various wild and farm animals from a treehouse observatory. We play our Game Boys for hours when up in the treehouse. We swap tips and help each other reach different levels on our Pokemon games. When I am in my secret place, I feel happy because I am with my friends. It is a place where I go when I am mad and it will cheer me up.

It makes me sad when all the leaves fall and we have no roof. When I finished it, that last line is so impactful to me when it says, I am sad when the leaves fall and we have no roof. And it feels so symbolic of growing into an adult and losing that safety net of being a child. Noah uploaded the video to TikTok because it just seemed like something other people might like to hear. Which in a way was a little weird because Noah had no idea who the author was and no easy way of finding out.

So we also included a call-out to the young author, who would be a grown adult by now. All he had to go on was a name. Drew, if somehow this gets to you, hit me up. I would love to get a copy of this and all the other things on here to you. Anyway, that's all. Thanks for listening. Noah didn't know if the video would get many views, but it still felt important to get these memories back to Drew, wherever Drew was. So Noah didn't give up on looking for clues. He went back into that 10-pound Toshiba laptop to see if he could find anything else.

And he did. In the same folder as the My Secret Place essay, there was another file containing another clue to Drew's identity. It was an invitation to Drew's 11th birthday at the local pool. And it had an invitation list of everybody. That was how I figured out his age, at least. Other than his name and age, Noah had no leads. The estate sale was being held on behalf of someone else who wasn't a family member. So how did Drew's laptop end up in a pile of that person's stuff?

Then, there seemed to be a break in the case of the author for My Secret Place. Noah's TikTok blew up. People loved Drew's writing. Thousands of viewers began commenting on how nostalgic and familiar the story fell to them. They reminisced about similar school assignments they had. And like Noah, they wondered about Drew. Where is he? What's he up to? Some people claimed to know firsthand. There is a lot of Drew impersonators messaging me pretending to be Drew. Whoa. Yeah. What? I mean, I say a lot. There was two.

Two more than there should be. Yeah, exactly. Weirdos. So the virality of the TikTok wasn't actually a break. But thanks to the contents of the laptop, Noah had a pretty good way of identifying the fake Drews. He knew something they didn't. The first one that reached out to me, and the way that I vetted him was by asking him where he had his 11th birthday party. Genius.

And he said the bowling alley, and then I said, Yeah, I know it's not you, bud. And so anyway. Wow. Yeah, I reached out. Villany. Yeah, very villainy. Noah was tenacious, especially when it came to going through the Toshiba.

And in the depths of that Toshiba, he'd find another clue and another guy who might be the guy. I saw the message pop up. I don't really use Facebook very often, so I clicked on it. Coming up. The guy. Maybe. 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're, We think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University. On the show, host Kurt Nickish asks the thorny questions necessary for this moment about the role business plays in society.

Questions like, why are executives paid so much? Why is innovation in health care so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? And of course, is business broken? Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts. 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.org slash creative studio. My name's Drew Smallwood. I live in Nashville, Tennessee.

Around the time that Drew impersonators were writing in, about five and a half hours away from where Toshiba delving Noah lived, a 33-year-old Drew Smallwood was going about his normal daily life. You know, working. When he got a mysterious Facebook. message request from some guy named Noah. Hey, I made this TikTok about this laptop and it's kind of blowing up. Is this you?

On his search through the Toshiba, Noah had found another clue. He found other files on the laptop with Drew's last name, which is how Noah found Drew Smallwood on Facebook and reached out, sending him a link to his now viral TikTok video. Which almost does sound like one of those, is this you? Facebook scams, but to Drew, Noah seemed legit, enough. So Drew decided to click the link and...

I immediately recognized the laptop. That Toshiba satellite was staring back at him. But not much else was familiar. Even when Noah started reading the story, up in the tree house, you can smell... It wasn't ringing any bells for Drew. Until he

named off my cousin's horse. Like his horse buck. And it immediately clicked. So it was time to give them a call. You know he had to call him. What does that make you think about reading it again? I mean, it just takes me back specifically to that place. Just a nostalgic time, much simpler.

The funniest part about it, too, is, you know, reading back through it, like, it's so, like, touching and thoughtful. But I know at the time, like, I was just trying to run. through a school assignment just so I could get back to, you know, playing as a kid. A lot of the comments specifically saying he better be a writer. You know, he has to have grown up to be a writer, which is so far from the truth. Drew is not a writer. He's a banker, by which we mean he works at a bank. Do you even journal anything?

No, not at all. Do you want to now? No. Was there any part of it for either of you that, as touching as it was, that felt a little weird, like, is this okay? Am I supposed to be reading this? And also, like, is this weird or is it beautiful that a stranger is reading my words for millions of other people? No, I'll let you go first on that one. Oh, yeah.

I'll rebuttal with you. It's so uncomfortable and weird. I second guess posting it a hundred times before I did. I wouldn't want anybody reading mild stuff off of my computer, you know, so it's a total contradiction. I think it was the innocence of the piece that made it okay for me to share it. Drew. It doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel like embarrassing or anything like that.

I thought it was, you know, I thought it was really, really, uh, fun. It's very much a small world type of thing, and it's been great getting to speak with and befriend Noah. It's funny. Noah grew up and lives in a subdivision that my school bus went through every day on the way to my high school. So it's, you know, probably drove by his house hundreds of times. Never knew who he was until this happened. Even after the essay brought Drew, and Noah together. There was still one piece of this mystery that wasn't solved. How did Drew's childhood laptop end up at this estate sale in the first place? Unfortunately, my grandparents both passed away. They passed away back in 2016, both of them. All of that went to my mother, their estate,

and then my mother passed away from a heart attack unexpectedly. So all of the estates went to me. I had gotten everything that I considered meaningful out of my parents and grandparents' homes and then put them up for sale. And then I'm assuming the owner who bought the house because I just sold it as is and just had an estate sale to clear the home out for themselves. Well, there's something kind of beautiful about you being in this place where understandably you just kind of need to offload stuff. and here comes Noah finding this little piece of your childhood that otherwise would have just been lost. And it's like, I don't know, there's something about that that feels like people help us pick up the pieces in unexpected ways. That's for sure. I mean, there's a high possibility that that laptop never got sold and then just got

thrown in the trash. No one would have ever seen anything on that laptop ever again. How do you think this particular experience will stay with you or maybe inform choices you make as you sort of figure out your life from here? It definitely made me proud to see where I've grown from the kid that, you know, was playing in a treehouse to, you know, the things that I've achieved in my life. Any time I've honestly felt a little, you know, sad or anything like that, I've went back and looked at the comments and they definitely will cheer you up. I mean, how could you not be cheered up by people reminiscing about their own childhood hideouts, right?

There was one comment, too, that stuck out. There was a, I think, a third or fourth grade teacher who played the video for her class as an example of writing and like to show what a writer of their age could do. And she said they all loved it and we're all talking about it. And I just, I thought that was really neat, Drew, that your writing touched other kids that are currently that age. Yeah, decades later, that's amazing.

Yeah, I had no idea about that. That's, that's just so, like, it just puts a smile on my face. But where does this journey leave? knowa, our burnt-out Verizon worker turned antique tech treasure hunter. I guess this whole experience has taught me that even more so that you might not appreciate something now, but you might appreciate it later. Not to be a hoarder, you know, don't hold on to everything, but don't erase your past because you might appreciate it at a later day. If you can find more meaning in the mundane, then you can find more treasure.

I love this idea of finding meaning in the mundane. Like how many more essays on old laptops, Amory, are out there that no one will see again. That kind of makes me sad in a way, you know? How much treasure are we unknowingly throwing into the trash heap of digital history? Is there an old file from your book? past that you wish you still had? I have the saddest answer to this. My grandfather lived to 103.

And the last time I saw him, I brought my kit, my radio kit. And I recorded like two and a half hours with him, just like him talking about his life. Like he was like playing pool while he did it. So we were like playing, they were knocking pool balls around sounds. And he told me about getting. hired to literally drive an early automobile around town to advertise a local business, like in 1913. Like, he told me all these, like, amazing stories about his life, you know.

And I took that file and I put it on a hard drive and I lost it. I don't know where it is. So if you are out there, And you find a story of a guy driving early automobile in 1913 to advertise a local business. And you hear some pool sounds. I'm looking for that file. Oh, man, I'm so sorry. That's brutal.

That is brutal. Well, you have to carry that story forward in the meantime, which you just did. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, it is not the same and it cannot replace the audio you lost. But I'm glad you shared it. The same as Grandi, but what are you going to do? All right, what about you?

Do you have, like, a file that you lost that you'd like to get back? Nah. I don't have a file. I have my mom sold my seventh grade science fair project on eBay when I went to college. It was a trebouche. I built a trebouche with my dad. And my mom was like, she's never going to use this again. And she sold it on eBay for $50.

without telling me. Oh, my God. I know. If you have Amory's Trebouchet, please get in touch. I hope you're flinging water balloons or something with it in the neighborhood. Flinging and cream puffs. Throw some cream puffs around. Cream puff.

Don't waste a cream puff. I mean, just throw a water balloon. Well, if you get the settings on that Trebusier dialed in, you can throw a cream puff right in my mouth. If you're good at it, I'm ready. Things to aspire to. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Brock Johnson. And me, Amory Sewardson.

It was produced by Frannie Monaghan on a Toshiba satellite that weighed 10 pounds. Our editor is Meg Kramer, Mix and Sound Design for this episode by Emily Jankowski. The rest of our team who are all in their secret place is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, managing producer Sumitajoshi and production manager Paul Vycus. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, get in touch. Endless thread at wb u.bure. Yeah, and if you have the Trebusier or my grandfather's two-hour-long interview, also please get in touch. And if you have both, that's really weird.

Yeah, if you have both, we should talk. We gotta talk. Or maybe we should not talk. Yeah, if you have both, I'm scared.