Endless Thread - The internet is a perpetual stew

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

This week on Endless Thread it's a producer takeover with Grace Tatter and Kalyani Saxena serving up some delicious online stories. First, Kalyani digs into why the internet is so hungry for perpetual stews (a stew that is simmered and added on to in perpetuity). Then, Grace dishes on a listener conundrum about whether salty Reddit posts are worse for us than sweet ones. Show notes: ZAQ_Makes' Stewtheus (TikTok) Want to try perpetual stew? Some tips for avoiding foodborne illness (NPR) r/GirlDinnerDiaries (Reddit) Does Venting Your Feelings Actually Help? (Greater Good Magazine) Endless Thread Subreddit  This episode was produced by Frannie Monahan and co-hosted by Kalyani Saxena and Grace Tatter. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Producer Grace Tatter. Hello, fellow producer, Koyani, Susquehanna. It's a producer takeover. No parents, no rules. Okay, Koyani, so I know we're here to talk about something that's been bubbling and brewing for a really long time. Exactly. We're here to talk about stew, which I, I love.

I have to say, like, I'm the kind of person who's making stew when it's 90 degrees outside. I just love a little bit of, like, hearty broth, a little bit of vegetables. Something about it puts me in the, like, mindset of, like, being at an old timey in on a long journey and, like, a crusty piece of bread. That's how I feel about stew. Love a crusty piece of bread. Yeah, I think I'm, I eat stew and soup all year round, too. And I'm not quite sure what the difference is when a stew becomes a soup or vice versa. but I'm here for both of them.

I'm actually going to be quite literal today. My story is about a stew, and it begins, like many things on the internet, getting grossed out by a video. That I saw online. Uh-oh. And so I was scrolling on TikTok, wasting my life away as one does.

And I came across this video of a creator with a ladle, and he's serving himself like a big dollop of liquid. I'm going to send you a video of what that looks like. so you can get a glimpse of what I saw. Let's go ahead and get our bowl for today and see how everything has turned out. Okay, this is a very brothy stew. Like, at first, I would say it's really looking like a soup

because it's pieces of corn. But now he's got a big old hunk of meat in there. So I guess that's what's making this a stew. The tomato pairs very well with the lamb. I didn't have a lot of leftover. The broth is dark. Like, you can. can't see what's at the bottom. It's like you're looking into like a polluted creek of stew

is the vibes that I'm getting. Mmm, delicious. With just the slight undercurrent of the green chilies, I would give today an eight out of ten. So when I saw this video, I was sort of like, ew, number one. And number two, what's going on? And as you mentioned, this creator has been making this stew for a very long time. It's a perpetual stew. So that's a stew that you basically keep, like, boiling for days and days and days, or, like, for however long you like. And he just keep, like, adding new broth, adding new chicken, whatever. Exactly. And so this, this person, his username is at Zach underscore makes, and he's been keeping this stew going for over a year. At the time of this recording, I think it was about

over 400 days. And he calls himself an instuencer. There's going to be a lot of fun wordplay. I kind of love that people are getting creative with this. Let's get punny. Let's get punny. And while we're on the subject of punniness, he actually calls his stew stuthias,

which I think may be a reference to Prometheus. That's what I suspect. Playing with fire. I don't know if those boatswashed for the food safety of the zoo. Is this stew in the danger zone? Keep listening. out. Have you heard about perpetual stew before we started talking about it today? I have heard of perpetual stew before. I can't remember where from, but like I'm familiar with the concept.

And I even feel like, I mean, I've definitely never done 399 days. But like, you know, like I said, I like a soup. I like a stew and like particularly a lentil soup. And like sometimes I'll add like, okay, I've had it for a few days. I'll add some more broth in. I'll add. add some kale, whatever else I have in the fridge. So, again, I wouldn't go, I don't think I'd go beyond a week, but like I'm familiar with like augmenting a pre-existing super stew. Wait, so are you keeping your lentil stew on the stove? Oh, no. I do put it in the refrigerator in between. Yeah. Wait, are these people like, so is it just constantly hot? Yes. The idea with this is that you're keeping the stew continuously boiling. You have to keep the stew at a safe temperature. Can you leave

your apartment or your house wherever you live, like comfortably with like the stove still on or the crock pot? I don't know. That sounds dangerous to me. Well, so from what I can tell most people aren't leaving it on the stove, they're putting it in a crock pot. And if you're wondering what a safe temperature is for the stew, I found an answer to this in my research. and PR actually talked to a food safety expert, and he said that the stew needs to be kept at 140 degrees Fahrenheit continuously, even overnight. So you got to keep it hot for a long time. Still a little skeptical personally, but... And you're not alone. I was also incredibly skeptical. So I tried to get in touch with at Zach underscore makes about his perpetual stew, but I didn't hear back from him. And while I was twiddling my thumbs, I actually. I actually started thinking more about perpetual stew. And I remembered that this wasn't the first time I'd seen a perpetual stew go viral.

So one glorious summer long ago, not actually that long ago, is 2023. There was another viral stew made by someone named Annie Roberta. And it was enjoyed in a park with a bunch of strangers in, can you hedge a guess of where in the country? someone would do something like this. I live in Brooklyn, and I feel like we're the types of... As a culture, where the types of people, you know, aren't wasting, are doing internet-y things. That's what I'm going to guess. Yep, it was in Bushwick.

I reached out to Annie to talk to her about the Bushwick perpetual stew that she ran, and she got back to me, which was awesome. A quick note about Annie, she actually has like another internet-y tidbit-stick that she's known for. She runs Deps of Wikipedia. Yes. I love depths of Wikipedia. Oh, my God. Really?

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Celebrity. Multi-faceted icon, right? So she does depths of Wikipedia, which for people who don't know about it, it highlights, like, strange niche facts from Wikipedia. And it's actually Wikipedia where she first heard of perpetual stew. Okay. And you know, I'm so sorry, Kloyang, this is how I knew about perpetual stew now that you mention it because I do see her video. So I'd seen her talking about the Wikipedia page for perpetual stew. I did not realize that she herself was doing it, though. Oh, yeah. I'm loving. This is so full circle. She put it into practice. And the idea actually came up when she was chatting with a friend. She had just moved back to the States and she was living above me. And I think that we both kind of have a student council energy when we're together. And, like,

When the idea came up, both of us kind of, I don't know, egg each other on until it really happened. Was it something that you'd seen online before, something that she saw while she was abroad? Like where, I had never heard of perpetual stew before the internet. So I'm just curious where it came from. I only saw it from a Wikipedia article in summer 2020. That was the first time I had heard of it. Oh, and it looks like the article about perpetual stew has existed since 2004. Vintage, yeah.

Vintage. 2004, a long time ago. in terms of the internet. But the actual history of perpetual stew is much more vintage. It's probably way more vintage. So it's also called Forever Stew by some people. And the history is a little murky. Some food historians say that it dates back to the Middle Ages when Inns would like keep a vat of stew just like continuously boiling to feed guests.

Like they wouldn't empty it. They just keep adding stuff to it. I found that in some reporting from food and wine. Last year I found some really interesting story. reported by the Wall Street Journal about a Thai restaurant that had kept a beef broth simmering since 1974. And they use it in their restaurant every day. Isn't that cool? Yeah, I'm wondering, like, how much do you think from the original, like at this point,

how much of like the 1974 stock is still in there? Like, probably not none, right? And I don't know how we would ever test this. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of amazing to think about the idea of people keeping something going for that long. And I think that's kind of what Annie was thinking about when her stew went viral. She spent a lot of time working on it and in particular making sure that it was safe for consumption. She put it in a crock pot. And there's actually something interesting I learned. Annie's stew had no meat and no animal products. So it was a vegan stew.

Amory's going to love that. If she'd been a Bushwick at the time, she could have partaken. And what I found really interesting about Annie's perpetual stew that made it different from at Zach underscore makes stew is that this wasn't something that she was just boiling for herself. She actually turned her stew into a community event. I had a website for it, but then I made a TikTok about how I was making a stew and how I had this website. And a lot of people wanted to try it because they were interested how it tasted. And at a certain point, there are only so many strangers on the internet that you can. can give your actual address to until it's like, okay, no, this has to be in a public place. To me, it seemed obvious. I have to bring this to a park and serve it to people.

How much of the stew was she giving to people? Like, how big is this crock pot? Is it just like, you just get a little taste? So she would just like bring what was in the crock pot and then she would like add a lot of broth, add a lot of vegetables day up. So it would become like probably quite diluted. So that kind of goes back to what you were saying, right? Like how much is originally left? it still started as that stew, but like it wasn't, whatever was in the crockpot was not enough for everybody. Right. And that also means it would taste very different from day to day. Like if she's like kind of changing the composition according to how many people need to be served, diluting it. Okay. Yep. And Annie told me that like people, that was like one of the things that people asked all the time was what did it taste like? And then the other thing that people asked about was, of course, food safety. I just was really careful about keeping it boiling all the time. A lot of the time, I just had really thin broth without a lot of ingredients. And that's what was the perpetual part.

People online joked a lot about how that was about how the Bushwick Propetual Stew was where the next COVID variant would start. But as far as I know, nobody had food poisoning from my Bushwick Perpetual stew. I also, another thing... No food poisoning or viruses spread. Because they weren't all using the same spoon, right? They're not like spinning in the stew. It's perpetual stew, not perpetual spoon. And eventually, you know, putting in all of this work into the perpetual stew started to catch up with Annie. I was consuming the stew, but really it's the stew that consumed me. It was so much work. The logistics. There were news cameras. Like my life just kind of got really crazy. And also, I never got a, trouble with the health department, but they did have one person that said, like, hey, they were

really nice about it, actually. It was an amazing experience. But they were basically just like, you know, we can tell that you're not like a business or anything. But you have definitely entered a food establishment territory in terms of how we would have to regulate you. So just be careful. New York City government. Polite but getting the job done. Love to see it. I'm just like the concept of your perpetual stew becoming a community event that enters food establishment territory. Like that's the power of the internet. People saw this and were like, actually, we're making this a whole thing. So how long did Annie do this stew for?

This is a great question. So her stew did not last as long as atzac underscore makes his stew did or is currently lasting. She told me that it made it to just over two months, so about 60 days. And that was the end of the Bushwick Perpetual Stew. That's still very respectable. I think Annie should be proud. And she served so many people, it sounds like. She served literally and figuratively.

But even though the Bushwick Perpetual Stew, even though its road ended, I wasn't done thinking about this. and why people are fascinated with the concept of like a perpetual stew online. I mean, it seems to be part of sort of like an internet phenomenon of like when you see the same kind of question or stunt or concept going viral with some frequency. I saw other perpetual stews online that we haven't talked about. And I mean, I just, I was like, why does this particular dish keep coming up again and again? And I have a theory, but I want to have you give yours first. Okay. Well, you've been stewing over the stew for a long time. I'm a little newer to it. But I do think that there's something about the concept of continuity. And again, it feels to me, I mentioned earlier, like when you're like, where is this? Like, it feels like you're not wasting anything, right? Because you're making sure that every last drop of that original broth gets used and incorporated into the original stew. Like, that is compelling to me. But, yeah. I don't know. What's your theory? My theory was a lot more cynical. One, I think people get invested in the journey. Like, what's going in this do today? Like, what's it going to taste like today? So I think that's one part of it that, like, people like sequential things on the internet. They like feeling a part of something. But my main theory really had something to do with the ache factor. I think we're kind of fascinated by the idea of eating food that's, like, been around for days and days. Even if it's perfectly safe to eat, right? Like, just something about that makes the hair on the back of my

next stand-up. It's like a curiosity motivated by a sense of horror. Like, how can it possibly be safe to eat this? But Annie, like you, kind of had a far less cynical and honestly, beautiful take. Perpetuity, infinity as a concept is just so beautiful and enticing. And nothing lasts forever, but it's fun to pretend that this stew can. One more thing before we wrap our story, Annie told me that she still got a little bit of her 2023 perpetual stew frozen in her freezer. So, while nothing does last forever, that's true, this stew might still live again. Wow, I love that. Maybe I'll go over, I'll knock on her door, my neighbor, and see if I can get a bite.

Grace, after the break, please tell me there's another course. Oh, yeah, Koyani. we're going to be eating some more girl dinner. Let's go. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced deli-meat products for always 375. And get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more.

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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. Okay, Koliani. So we're back for our second course, and we in the spirit of the perpetual stew are going to be reheating a meme that we at Endless Thread first discussed way back, as you said, long ago in 2023. And this meme has bubbled up again. So, Koliani, I'm going to

send you a post that someone actually shared on the Endless Thread separate it, which is a great place for all of our listeners to go to. Subtle plug. Yes. Give us episode ideas. We're always looking. But would you just read this post from our listener,

adorable ninja cat? Yes, I will. Hi, endless thread. I was a part of the R-Sash Girl Dinner Diaries Girls thread, but started noticing it became a my man did me wrong with food picture sub.

I made a comment as such, I got banned for that. I would love to hear your take on the matter of slash girl dinner versus slash girl dinner diaries. Am I crazy for thinking adding another platform to bitch about men with food picks is unhealthy and not helpful? So I reached out to adorable ninja cat after I saw this post on the endless thread subreddit. But we didn't have a chance to connect for a full conversation before recording. However, she did send me a voicemail to explain her conundrum. Instead of like going to Reddit and asking for advice, now we're going to grill dinner diaries and we're sharing all this drama.

And it's just not like I can't tell if it's fake or real or whatever. And it's just kind of sad because I thought it was my community. But maybe it's not my community anymore. That's tough. It is because we're all searching for community. Okay. But let's back up a little. So first things first, we're reheating this meme, girl dinner.

Do you remember girl dinner? I do. I do remember girl dinner. And it's hard for me to believe that that was three years ago because I feel like it was one second ago. But from what I remember, it started on TikTok maybe. And people were posts, girls specifically were posting about their like random things that they would eat for dinner. So like mine would be like a spoon of lactate cottage cheese, a chicken nugget. and like some edamame is what I would describe as my girl dinner.

And then I think someone even made a song that was like, girl dinner. This is my meal. I call this girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner. Girl dinner. Yes. Girl dinner. Yes, that would often play with these videos on TikTok.

Exactly. It was this idea that when left alone, women will have these kind of low effort snacky dinner. And it's funny because as you said, it sounds like it resonates with you. It resonates with me. But the reason it probably feels like no time has passed is because this meme is still everywhere. And at this point, I would say it's like fully been commodified. You can. Oh, totally. Yeah. Brands are probably using that lingo all the time now. Yes. Like girl dinner menus at restaurants, there's cookbooks, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe you can guess from the name of the sub, Girl Dinner Diaries, what the subreddit is. What would you think just for? from the name. I mean, I would think it was people posting pictures of their girl dinners and then like, this is what I ate today. And not in like a what I ate in a day, but just like, look at my fun, quirky meal. That's what I'm thinking. That makes sense. And I think maybe that's what Endorable Ninja Cat was thinking too. Like that would be more food focus. But the rules do say post should

relate to food, snack plates, cozy meals or quote unquote girl dinner. But it also continues that those posts can be paired with journal-style moments connected to meals, mood, or everyday life. Okay. So that's pretty broad, right? And one of the rules is also no gatekeeping diary. So as long as you're posting a picture of food, you can basically talk about whatever you want. So adorable ninja cat said that this had become a quote unquote, my man did me wrong sub. So I wanted to just look at the top post today to get to get a sense of what's going on there with you.

so I'm going to send you the link. Okay. The first one I'm seeing says my husband noticed something I didn't even ask for. It's got like it's a plate with some like rice chicken. Oh, that looks good. And you'll notice the flare for that one is Happy Girl Dinner. A Happy Girl Dinner. I think we're celebrating a man there.

But it's true. There is still sort of a man present in the title. My therapist had to remind me we're not friends is the next one. It's like two slices of pizza. That one. Ouch. Best friend, in quote. didn't invite me to her wedding.

Yikes. It's like broccoli and potatoes and a little bit of yogurt on the side of that one. There's a ton of pose here, so I could keep going forever. But here's one more. Just one more I'll read. It says, the lump in my boob is not cancer with a little party emoji. And they spell boop as B-E-W-B, which is great. And that's happy.

Enjoy it. So it's not, that's definitely not bitching about men. No, no, that's a big yippie right there. So happy. for that user. Yes. So yes, as you can see, the menu is very diverse on our Suss Girl Dinner Diaries. We've got all sorts of cuisines.

The reason I wanted to do this is because, like, I'd say there's a mix of posts here, right? Like, maybe we saw some that were about men or complaining about men. I would say at least today, most of the posts that we're seeing aren't necessarily falling into that genre, right? Yeah, it seems like it was a pretty wide variety of things. from what I looked at. Yeah. Okay. So now we've kind of established

what's on the menu and Girl Dinner Diaries. But Adorable Ninja's question was, is it healthy? And she was specifically asking about this kind of dish complaining about men. But I'm going to broaden that

to whether venting online is helpful and healthy. Like whether, because a lot of these are sad or angry posts, even if they're not about men, like whether coming to the internet and unburdening your soul

is that healthy or helpful. I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I'll wait for dessert to share them. I can't wait. Okay, so I did some research into this because actually there is actual scholarly research on this. Of course, there always is. And there is a case to adorable Ninja Cat's point that, like, no, this is not healthy. This is the junk food of the internet. A 2020 paper called investigating Reddit self-disclosure in confessions in relation to connectedness, social support,

and life satisfaction, was published in the journal of social media and society, and it was written by a professor in the communication department at UMass Boston. His name is Brandon Miller. He surveyed about 600 Reddit users about sharing personal information on Reddit that they wouldn't necessarily share or hadn't shared with their offline friends and families. So again, these diary-like posts that normally you might save for like a literal diary. Yeah. And what he found was that people who made. these types of confessional posts reported being lonelier and having less social support and

connection. And the more that they posted these types of posts, the lonelier they reported being. That doesn't surprise me. All of us crave intimacy, emotional intimacy, and in an era where people feel isolated from one another, I think the immediate catharsis of posting online makes you feel good. But ultimately, if you don't know the other people who are responding in a meaningful way, does it really fill that void? Probably not. Right. And even if you do know whoever you're venting to, other studies have shown that venting, like just like, again, unburdening being like, this is what I'm angry about or sad about, doesn't necessarily make you happier. In fact, it often prolongs your negative feelings that you're trying to vent.

off and get rid of because you're reliving them rather than relieving them. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I find that even just like in real life when I'm talking to people about the thing that's upset me, if I talk about it too many times, I'm like, damn, I'm still angry. Why am I still angry? Right. You like, your body starts to feel it all over again. It makes a ton of sense to me that engaging with negative content online prolongs those feelings of negativity that you might have or makes you feel sad reading something else. At the same time, like, with the, the, an original concern about the Girl Dinner Diaries turning into conversations about men, I have a little bit more of a, like, nuanced feeling about that, which is like,

I remember when I was in high school, I was talking to my, still my best friend to this day, but I was talking to her about all the guys that I was thinking about. And eventually she just kind of started pulling away from me. And she told me that she felt like we were talking about boys all the time and I thought we were just connecting. And I think that that's maybe what the people who might have responded to her original comment was like, well, I just feel like I'm connecting with people. Like, even if it is centering men in the conversation, I don't necessarily want to erase spaces for people to do that. Absolutely. Because it's not inherently wrong to share your experiences or even to rehash. your experiences. So I do want to also make the case for these kind of posts actually can be perhaps

nutritious and delicious. So here's the case for yes. This can be actually totally fine. The author of that 2020 paper that I mentioned about Reddit posts in the Journal of Social Media and Society specifically mentioned that it's possible that the people who are posting these type of posts might be more likely to be lonely, but it's not causing them to be lonely. But it's not causing them to be lonely. They just already are more lonely. That's why they're turning here. And so it's giving support to the people who need it most. That's a quote from the paper as a possibility. Which kind of makes sense, right? It does. It does make sense. There is some good news for adorable ninja cat. There are a few girl dinner subs that are focused on food. So R slash girl dinner, if you are not here for

diaries, not just adorable ninja cat, but others as well. Your title has to be about food, although Post can have a diary component. And then R-slash real-girl dinner is just about food. So if you don't want to hear, which it didn't sound like adorable, Ninja Cat was totally opposed to these diaries. She just was tired about hearing specifically about men woes. But if you want just the food, real girl dinner, that's where you go. Yeah, I think sometimes the challenge with the internet is like, you just got to find the right

niche in like the right community for what it is you're trying to talk about. Yes. And maybe even make that community yourself. I thought that this was some good advice from a user named Renegar, R-E-N-U-G-A-R, who responded to adorable Ninja Cat in our sub. And they wrote, so make posts like that. Be the change you want to see in the world, girl. Exactly.

I think that's a good place to end, you know, whether you're trying to change a subreddit, your community, a stew, be the change you want to. Ask not what you. Your stew can do for you, but what you can do for your stew. I don't know if that made any sense. I think. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Frannie Monaghan and hosted by me, Kalyani Saxena.

And me, Grace Tatter, and not Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sieverts, who I hope are enjoying their vacations. It was edited by Dave Shaw, mix and sound design by Paul Vicus. The rest of our team is Amory Siebertson, Ben Brock Johnson, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producer, Samata Joshi. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and being regulated by the health department. Have an online mystery, untold history, or other wild story from the internet. Email us at Endless Thread at WBUR.org.org.