Endless Thread - Snacktime

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

This week's episode is pretty short and sweet -- Amory and producer Josh Swartz talk about their favorite Reddit posts.

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 Marotra 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. Produced by the ILAP at WBUR, Boston. Hi, Amory. Hey, Ben. Hey, Josh. Hey, Ben. Hey, Paul. We can't hear Paul, but Paul said hey. Yeah. All right, Team Endless Thread is on break from making our usual in-depth deep dive episodes about stories on this vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. But because we at Boston's NPR Station WBUR and our friends at Reddit love to give you that sweet, sweet content, we're still dropping some stuff into the feed.

We're gluttons for fun, I guess. This week we're doing a little thing we're going to call snack time. We're telling some Reddit stories briefly, so you've got some snacks to tide you over till the next big meal. And on that note, I'm going to ask intern James to bring you guys in a present that James. James and I got for you. Oh, my God. Is this a slushy? James, thank you so much.

It's a slurpy. A blue slurpy. A blue slurpy. Oh, thank you. A vegan slurpy. A vegan slurpy. All slurpy is vegan. I'd be a little disturbed if they were not.

Oh, my God. Captain Crunch flavored. Is that? Oh, my gosh. Okay. What's that? What's your vegan drink? This is like a mango.

Shrimp crackers? Did you tell him to specifically get shrimp crackers or was this the intern's choice? Do you tell him to get some exotic? I told him to get the weirdest stuff he could find. I have chili lime wheat wheels in front of me. He got me potted meat. What is that? What is that even?

Is this like spam? Read the ingredients. All right, ingredients. Mechanically separated chicken. That sounds so brutal. Partially defatted cooked pork fatty tissue. This might be the grossest thing I've ever held in my hand. Oh man.

I'm going to be turning you guys vegan faster than I thought. All right, you guys, I have, even though we're not together right now, because I'm at home and recording from home, I also have snacks. What do you have? All right, you have to guess. Are you ready? Like a pretzel? Yeah, give me a few more bites here. It's such a classic crunch.

I'm mad at myself. I'm really getting pretzels right now. Really? I'm getting like those mini rice cakes, like the, whatever they're called. It's a pickle. Well, we've had some snack talk. But I think it's time for like snack time round one. Amory, you're our snack time round one server.

Okay. Serve it up. Okay. So I found my story on the Today I effed up subreddit. So you know it's going to be good. And here's the headline. Today I effed up by permanently burning myself

trying to connect with my recently deceased dad. Oh man. So just think about that for a second. Oh. So it actually has to do with this kind of quirky thing that this guy does. He says, for the last five years, I've had an ice cream tub full of sugar in my kitchen. Do you guys keep sugar in something other than like a sugar? Mine's in a bag.

Yeah, or a bowl. A bag. A bag. Okay. So this is a point of contention between this guy and his girlfriend. He says, my girlfriend thinks this is weird. and she thought it was weirder still when I packed the box to move with me when we decided to move in together. She's not wrong.

She's like, don't bring your weird five-year-old sugar tub. And he says, it's fine. Sugar doesn't go bad. I agree. So we've got to get back to the dad who has recently passed away. He says, fast forward to this past January, my dad dies suddenly and unexpectedly. So then just earlier this June of this year, he and his family are cleaning out. his dad's business, which was he had a storefront where he sold boat equipment and things to

fix boat engines. So they're going through his dad's stuff in the store. And he says, then at the back of a jammed drawer, under some oily rags and a grimy toothbrush, I find an ice cream tub. I open it up and it's half full of sugar. He's like, oh my God, my dad did this too. He put sugar in an ice cream tub, that must be why I do it. So he, like, licks his finger and dips it into the sugar. And he says, I put it in my mouth and know immediately that it's not sugar. It's bitter, it's bubbling, and my tongue is burning. Oh.

So he runs out of the store, and he's, like, swishing Coke around in his mouth. And one of his dad's friends. comes out to him and is like, whoa, are you okay? And he's like, I don't know. I just, I thought I was eating sugar from a tub, but it wasn't sugar. And the friend is like, why would your dad have had? And he's like, I don't know. I just thought it was sugar. So the friend finds out that it's not sugar. It's caustic soda or sodium hydroxide, which is lie. Yeah. So he's just put lie directly on his tongue and now he has a chemically burned tongue. And not as strong of a connection with his father as he thought.

Exactly. Exactly. So the comments, people are like quoting him in the comments like, at the back of a jammed drawer under some oily rags and a grimy toothbrush. Yeah. What made you think that this was sugar? We need to unpack this guy's sugar habit situation. It seems like a strong part of his identity. Yeah. So the conclusion that he reaches is that his girlfriend is right, he is wrong, you should not put sugar in an ice cream tub, that's not a normal thing to do. And this guy checked back in, he says his tongue hasn't really healed and he can't, there's some taste buds that don't appear to work anymore. But as far as we know, as of about mid-June of this year, his tongue is burned but intact. Brutal. Yeah.

But there was a nice comment at the end. Kind of summed up how I felt about this. Cryptos 19 says, this is a real solid today I effed up. Sorrow, smugness, sweetness, and then bitter sweetness and ass hattery. And I just think bitter sweetness and ass hattery kind of sums this up. Emery, that's going to be the name of our folk duo that you and me start. Bitter sweetness and ass hattery. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, it's perfect. I did find out, though, sugar does not go bad. I will say in defense of this guy, it is true that he and his dad both stored weird things in ice cream tubs. Right. Yeah, that's true. I guess it's not any more normal to store your sodium hydroxide in an ice cream tub. That's like, I feel like that's very relatable, though, because like I, like, I, as I grow older, I totally recognize that, like, my dad and I do the same weird stuff when we're, like, storing things and putting things. and putting things and, like, deciding to save things that are weird.

Like, I'm a big twist tie guy. Like, I love saving my twist ties. Yep, I do, too. Yeah. And, like, my rubber bands and, like, that's a whole thing. What do you do with a twist tie when you're done with it? If there's a twist tie on your bread or whatever. Yeah.

What do you do when the bread's gone, Josh? Throw it out. No. No, you save that, man. You never throw it out. Yeah, twist ties are amazing. They can do all sorts of things. Oh no, I never had the patience.

Even when the bread is still in the bag, I don't have time for it. I just take the twist tie off once. Whoa. And then just fold it under the bottom of it, and then it's fine. Here's a question. What does your dad do with his bread bag? I don't know. I'm going to ask him and see.

Yeah. Have you guys ever tasted something that you thought was like, like you licked a drop of something off of the counter because you thought it was one thing and it was something else? Licked a drop of something. off of the counter. Okay, Amory. Interesting.

No, just me. I don't have something like that off the top of my head, but I will say, and this is, I don't know, this is a little bit left field, but I will say that I consistently burn my mouth on pizza. Oh. It's like the opposite of learning. You want the pizza so badly. I know. You don't have time to wait for that.

If you took like 30 seconds, 10, three seconds to engage with your actual brain, you would realize that that's not what you should do. Put your mouth on a hot pizza. Well, you know. We've gotten a little far away from sugar, but we're learning some valuable things about each other, I think. Josh is like a barbarian with his bread. Yeah, a bread barbarian. I just lick things off of counters. He licks things off of counters and I will eat hot pizza until the day I die even if it will burn my mouth.

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Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Josh, you got a snack for us too, right? Some snack action, which I like to call snackion. I do. I did not call it that myself, but I've got that. All right. So I found this story on Ask Reddit, and the question is,

what's a crazy story you've been wanting to tell, but there's never been a thread specific enough for it. And this is from Reddeter Blahdi Blah. And I read this, and I have not been able to get this story out of my head since I read it. Okay. 20 years ago, there was this young couple who decided to adopt three children. They were three birth siblings, so they're all related, ages three, four, and six. This is 1998.

This post was three years ago. So what would that be? That would be 95. So you got these three siblings. They're three, four, and six years old. And the six-year-old is just learning how to read. And this is an important fact to remember. Okay.

And they live in kind of this residential neighborhood, and there's a family down the street, the Cook family, and they have kids around the same age, and the new mom decides, oh, like, it would be great to get the Cook kids over and get them to meet our new kids. Play dates. Play dates. Yeah, you know about that, Ben. I do.

So they set up a dinner date for the following week, and a few days later, the mom sees the six-year-old is about to walk out of the house, and he has this backpack on with all of his toys in it, and he has recruited his two younger sisters to follow him, and they also have all of their toys packed up. Like, they look like they're leaving.

They're just like up and leaving the house. You know, they were adopted not that long ago, so this is like a new situation. Right. And the mom approaches the six-year-old and it's like, child, like, why are you leaving the house? And the six-year-old looks at the mom and says, well, on your calendar, why does it say, cook kids for dinner Oh no, these poor kids. Oh no, these poor kids.

I will answer your question with a question. Evil stepmother. And what has stayed with me about this story is that this six-year-old really thought that his new parents were going to cook them for dinner. And instead of crying or making a big fuss about it, he strategize. Yep, you guys together a plan.

Yeah, I think that's, that's, uh, and all we need to survive our toys. Yeah, yeah, you get your toys, you get your toys, I got my toys, we'll get out of here. I don't know where he was planning on going, but, uh, I don't know, pretty resourceful for a six-year-old. I love this. This is good. It's like every kid's nightmare, though, too. I used to have nightmares that my parents were turning on me.

I used to have that, too. I still have a vivid memory of like a dream, a nightmare I had where like my mom just like dropped me off on the side of the highway somewhere. She just like kicked me out of the car and left me there. I guess it's better than being cooked. Better than being cooked, but also like scary to be like left on the highway as a little kid. Yeah.

So this was the mom that posted the story? So this was actually the cousin of the kids. So I guess the niece or nephew of the mom. The probably also delicious cousin of the kids. Exactly. I mean, if you guys were in this situation when you were six, what do you think you would do? Oh, man. I can't imagine I was a very brave six-year-old.

I think I also would have run away. I actually did try to run away about this same age. Really? Yeah, because I got in a fight with my dad or something or, like, wasn't a lot. allowed to do something, and I literally made, like, a bindle. What is a bindle? It's like a stick. It's like a handkerchief. Oh, it's like a stick. Oh, okay. It's like a handkerchief.

Paul, our engineer, is like, he just signed language bindle to me. Yeah, it's a stick with a little satchel tied to the end. I literally made that because that was like the thing that I had in my mind of like what, that's what you do when you run away. This is like a huck fin type of thing. Yeah, exactly. What about you, Josh, what would you have done? What were you like as a six-year-old? Were you proactive? Or would you have...

Well, I was a shy kid. I would have been terrified. I probably would have locked myself in my room and sat in the corner and thought about the awful things that were about to happen. So I would have consulted my sister first, who's older and wiser and would have just said, like, no, stupid. The cooks are coming over for dinner. You would have been like, yo, sis, I have some very important information about both of us. I have some intel. Can you please tell me what to do?

Yeah, and I quickly would have felt real stupid. But I don't know. There are some good comments that I should read real quick. Okay. One of them is, sounds like there may have been too many cooks. Oh. And then another one, a slightly more morbid. It takes a lot to make a stew, a pinch of salt, and some kids too.

Oh, man. That's like a Shell Silverstein poem. Or like a doctor suits. Yeah, you're right. It is more. It is more Silverstein than Seuss. I have a Silverstein poem memorized. Oh, please.

Do you guys want to hear it? Of course. Yeah. It's sort of related. There's too many kids in this tub. There's too many elbows to scrub. I just washed a behind that I'm sure wasn't mine. There's too many kids in this tub.

I remember that one. I have no poems to offer. I don't have poems either. That's okay. That's a good story. Thanks, Josh. No problem. Okay, snack time is over for now, but we'll be back next week.

During our break from regular episodes of Endless Thread, you're going to hear some reruns of our favorites, some episode updates, and of course, more snacks. If you're looking for new podcast to get into, check out ZigZag from Radiotopia. It's about women and tech, and also Bitcoin and blockchain and the wild world of cryptocurrency. You can find that wherever you get your podcasts.

Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Our show is a dream realized by Jessica Alpert, who, when we ask if she likes the episode we've put together, she sometimes says, WTF. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and she makes sure our stories meet the bar of

mildly interesting. Mix and sound design by Paul Vos. Like us and John Parati, who, when we're in the field, recording always say, nature is f***-lit. Our web producer is Megan Kelly, who looks at our attempts at writing web copy and goes, Aw. Michael Pope is our advisor at Reddit, and whenever we try to have a serious conversation, he's all... I'm a toddler.

Our interns are James Lindberg and Josh Luckins. Our theme music is by Squelcher. On Reddit, we are Endless underscore Thread, if you want to contribute art for an upcoming episode, or give us a juicy story tip so we can tell it like we did today or even just say, hey, you can hit us up there. Our show is produced by Josh Swartz, also my co-host and producer, Amory Sieverts. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson. That'll let myself out.