Endless Thread - Snacktime: Harry Potter, Billie Eilish, And 'Soup Tubes'

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Ben, Amory, and Josh share some of the most memorable Reddit posts of late, from a "magical" parenting decision to a very bizarre business idea.

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 Merotra 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.

Produced by the I-Lap at WBUR, Boston. It's snack time, baby. Are you guys ready to snack? Always ready to snack. Snack time. I've been delaying my actual snack until after we record this so that I don't have like popcorn particles all up in my biz when I'm just snack.

Do you remember that band from the 90s? Snack math? The 90s in 2000s. Classic. So snack time, you know this. This is when we jump through some of our favorite posts that we've seen on Reddit recently. And they just feel a little more snack-sized than our usual meal-sized episodes. This is a rare three-fer.

Josh. Here I am. And let's thread producer Josh. Yeah. I like snacks. Welcome. Thank you. I feel like in that.

spirit, Josh should kick it off. What do you think? Love it. I think you guys are going to really like the snack. I'm just going to say that up top. Okay. Let's go. A little cocky. All right. Yeah. You're setting yourself up for failure. I'm going to start with a question for you guys. When you were growing up, did you ever believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or anything like that? No. I did in fact believe in Santa Claus, Josh and I believed for a really long time because my parents had an unfair advantage on me. They got their neighbor to come over when I was like three years old and dress up as Santa Claus in the middle of the night and they all woke me up. My parents and my brother woke me up and like brought me into the living room to spy on Santa Claus while he's putting toys out. And I

basically believed in Santa Claus for as long as possible because of that. I'd seen him with my own eyes. That's perfect because this story will really resonate with you, I think. Nice. Nice. All right. I'm going to save the headline for the end and I'm just going to start in on the post. Since our daughter was five, and my wife and I first started reading her the Harry Potter books, we have told her that she is a witch and that the wizarding world is real. She is almost eight, and as her questions have gotten deeper, we've kept building the illusion with more details about our family genealogy and its connection to book characters, stories about times we used magic,

and the life and moral lessons we learned about it. She has processed many difficult subjects like racism, climate change, and even the coronavirus through this lens. Wow. Before other parents judge or lecture, we know it's gaslighting and that eventually she'll have to be disappointed and have trust issues with us when she learns the truth. We justify it by saying that we are adding magic to her childhood and giving her motivation to reach her full magical potential. We've asked serious questions of her teachers, and they think it's more awesome and creative than damaging. At the very worst case, my take is that it's analogous to children being raised to believe that traditional religious stories are true, and that when the truth hits, it will teach her to ask critical questions and not accept everything she hears or reads at face value.

The headline of the post is raised our seven-year-old to believe she is a witch, and the wizarding world is real, need ideas to help keep the magic alive. I'm going to say that these people are just like putting themselves into a world of hurt. It's like you, like I like I like the spirit of what they're doing, but I just think, do you say like it's not a big deal that I embezzled all that money because I stopped? Do you know what I mean? I'm trying to think back to what my own parents did growing up with just in terms of things that You, you know, are not real, but you want to keep the magic alive for the kids a little bit. And I think my parents always kind of, they didn't outright say that there is no Santa Claus or there is no Easter Bunny.

But they definitely, there's definitely like a wink and a nod when talking about. Yeah, the Easter Bunny came, wink, wink, you know. And then they knew where all the eggs were, had been hidden. So I think ambiguity is probably the approach that I would take, not having any children of my own and not being qualified. to really speak to what the right answer is here. Well, I don't mean to expose you both to the world, but don't you think part of your skepticism is coming from the fact that you both hate Harry Potter? Hate is a strong word.

I am indifferent. Like wizards, the truth arrives exactly when it means to, and all of my true Lord of the Rings stands will know just what I'm talking about. Nerd. I didn't, yeah, I just, I don't know, man. They're entering a world of hurt. Well, I have a snack that has to do with a world of hurt. Perfect.

Great transition. It's just what we need. All right, let's hear it. Okay, so my snack starts with a quick personal anecdote, which is that my freshman year of college, one of my roommates at the time was going through a breakup. And one of the ways she coped with this breakup, breakup was to listen to a specific song on repeat pretty loudly. And it was that Timbalin

One Republic song that's like, it's too late to apologize. It's too late. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, that reminds me of that snack mouth song. Oh, never mind. That was good, Ben. Thanks. So in a similar vein, my snack comes from the unsent letters community. which is a new favorite of mine, and we learned about it from The Yellow Rose, who we featured in our Black Lives Matter episode, because she's one of the moderators of this community. And it is what it sounds like.

People post letters that they don't intend to send to their recipient, but that are important for them to put down in writing for one reason or another. So a Redditor who goes by a Fluffy souffle, which is great, made a part. made a post titled, Dear Neighbor who listens to Billy Elish on repeat every evening, and the post says, I don't know what a person has to be going through

to listen to Billy Eilish's when the party's over seven to 15 times every day at 6 p.m. But you seem to be going through it. Thanks to you, I know every lyric. I sing along with you sometimes, but you'll never know. We're connected, man. I worry about you.

And they go on to write, if you want, you can get YouTube premium free for one month and then maybe we can listen to bad guy. Or if you're more into sad songs, I've got a breakup playlist that we can listen to. Heck, bro, when they get this vaccine done, I'll even give you a hug. I'll do anything, anything for you if you could just play any other song. Yours truly, you're now sad neighbor. So, first of all, I had never heard this Billy Eilish song before. Have you guys heard this when the party's over? I don't think so.

No, I've only heard bad guy. But that's because I listen to it 16 times a day. No time for any other songs. But I just listened to it for the first time right before this. And yep, that'll do the job if you've just broken up. It's haunting and it's lovely, although I don't. recommend the music video if you're squeamish about I things like I am. So I'll just put that disclaimer in here. And I wanted to mention this post because a lot of the posts on unsent letters

are letters that really might be better left unsent, you know, like a letter to an old X that you really probably shouldn't get back in touch with. But this is a letter that I think this person should send. Yeah. And I think, I think this person should make a mixtape for their neighbor. if that's still a thing, or like a Spotify playlist, or maybe they could gift their neighbor that YouTube premium account so he could listen to something else. Just play some competing music. Yeah, I mean, I just, there's never a good time to feel emotionally alone in the world, but this definitely isn't it.

And I think the gesture of reaching out in some way and, like, actually saying we're connected, man, could mean a lot to this neighbor. So a fluke. Yeah, I agree. A floofy souffle. If you're listening to this, just give that some thought. And if anyone else needs, like, a breakup mixtape,

I'll make one. I'll make a playlist. I'll put one on our subreddit or wherever. It's very, it's an empathetic post. Yeah. Which I think is sort of rare in some ways on the internet that you're, like, simultaneously talking about something

that is incredibly aggravating, but also, like, understanding the person who is aggravating you. And I think, you know, that's something we should all try to live up to. Yeah. And for my former college roommate, also right before this, I listened to that song, apologize and just poured one out for her. I hear you, broken hearts. I got to say, before I knew how sad that particular Billy Eilish song is, I could have sworn that the neighbor that the person was describing the post was my dad,

who I recently learned is a huge Billy Eilish fan. and the thought of this middle-aged man just listening to this teenager's music is just made my day. Check in on your dad. Papa Swartz is going through something. He's okay. He's okay.

It's like that snack mouth song says, you just keep doing that. Hey now, you're an all-star. Get your snack on. Get your snack on. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience,

chemistry. But, 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. You ready for number three? Hell yeah. This is from the relationship advice subreddit, which, as we all know, is a veritable platinum mine of train wrecks. I'm just going to start with the post. I've been living with my boyfriend for about seven months. Two weeks ago, he sat me down and presented a PowerPoint presentation with his business idea.

I knew he'd been working on an idea, but he didn't want to tell me about it until it was finished. Based on his enthusiasm and his prior seemingly intelligent nature, I thought maybe it'd be a pretty cool idea. You guys ready? I cannot wait. I cannot wait. Instead, he presented to me an idea about soup tubes. What?

The idea, if you can call it that, is to construct a series of tubes throughout our city that leads to centralized soup kitchens. For a monthly subscription, a customer can, quote, subscribe to a tube of soup. And the tube extension would be built off the nearest mainline tube and directly into the customer apartment or home. What? Oh, my God. This is a time when, you know, you have to, like, think twice before ordering takeout from a restaurant.

Yeah, you're just going to drink soup out of a tube. It's coming into your house? Soup out of a communal tube. You have your own. little mouthpiece, I'm guessing, but it's a communal vat of soup. Also, like, we're all in New England, and so you know that the communal soup would be clam chowder, which just makes it extra gross. Chowda. Gotta keep that chowda hot coming through the tubes.

So the person, the woman, who is apparently a 25-year-old female, sort of asks the boyfriend, 25-year-old male if he's, like, pulling her leg. And he's apparently completely completely, completely sincere. He then asked me how much I wanted to invest, and I told him nothing. And he looked absolutely heartbroken. Since then, almost every day, he has asked again for me to invest and keeps trying to sell me on the idea. He is also doing the same thing to a lot of his friends. It is starting to drive me up the wall.

First, I'm at a loss as to how he can believe such a stupid idea is worthwhile. Second, it really is goddamn annoying to be asked on a daily basis to invest in a system of soup tubes. And third, I'm also concerned for his sanity. Other than his apparent obsession with this, though, he has shown no other signs. I would like some advice as to how I can reason with him or whether I should even continue this relationship. It's honestly so hard to believe that he showed no other signs. Like, it's got to be a trail. Yeah.

I mean, if it's all soup-based, maybe he's just got a genius idea that nobody can get on board with because he's a genius and nobody else is. I mean, Mr. Soup Tube, you're so young. Yeah. You have so many good ideas ahead of you in the years to come. And Miss Soup Tube, maybe just suggest that he look for other investors and see, like, well, of course, I'm your part. Like, of course I'm on board, but let's see who else we can get on board. Because my support doesn't matter. But if we can get some actual investors on board, that's when you know you have something. Also, just get a meeting with Larry David, I feel like, just he's your demo, I feel.

Or, yeah, and if it doesn't turn into, if Soup Tube doesn't become a reality, I feel like it's a great, plot for a sitcom. Or like a YouTube channel. Like a YouTube channel just called Soup Tube. Oh, Soup Tube. I love it. That's great. Let's bank that. Keep this out of the episode so we can start that channel right now. All right, guys, that is this week's snack time. Hope you enjoyed.

Snack time, soup time. Snack mouth. We'll be back in your feed next week with a regular episode, a full meal-sized episode for you. Until then, bye Bye.