Endless Thread - War and Pizza

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

In the hours leading up to Israel commencing its June missile strikes on Iran, X users were posting about pizza. Specifically, how pizza places around the United States Pentagon were experiencing an unusual spike in business.  The Pentagon Pizza Index refers to a theory that dates back to the Cold War, suggesting that increased pizza orders around the Pentagon could be a harbinger of imminent military action by the U.S. or its close allies. In this special episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory dig into the Pizza Index, its history and make some calls to Pentagon-area pizza places for a hot slice of reality pie. Show notes: Pentagon Pizza Report (X) Happening Right Now: Dominos Nearest the Pentagon is "Busier than usual"(Reddit) Pentagon Pizza Monitor Appeared To Predict Israel Attack (Newsweek) What is the Pentagon Pizza theory eating away at the internet? (Euro News) Pentagon Pizza Index: The theory that surging pizza orders signal global crises (Fast Company)

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. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Amory Seavertson, endless thread co-host. Ben Brock Johnson. My co-host in showmaking, pizza eating. Friendship. Friendship. War. What else do we do together? Road trips. Road tripping. Yep. So I have to say I hate to be right on this stuff. I really do.

I really do. What a nuisance being right. What a burden to bear. I think about 10 months ago, we were in like an endless thread meeting and I raised the idea of the pizza index and that we should do an episode about the pizza index or maybe it's the Washington Pizza Index or maybe it's like the Domino's Index. I'm not sure what it's called. Would you correct me?

Yes. I've seen it referred to a number of different ways. There's a Twitter, the X, X account called Pentagon Pizza Report. I have seen this called the Pentagon Pizza Index, but also the Pentagon Pizza Theory, Pentagon Pizza Meter. I think we've mostly commonly been saying the pizza index.

Yeah, I think index is a good word because, at least in theory, it acts like an index. An index is a statistical measure that represents the performance of a group of assets. And the idea behind the Pentagon Pizza Index is that if there is a statistical jump in pizza orders at pizza joints near the Pentagon, America or a close ally like Israel, for instance, could be about to go to war or about to get into a military conflict. Yeah. Some geopolitical stuff is going to go down.

Okay, so as we have been talking about this, when we first set down to record this conversation about the pizza index at the time Israel and Iran had just entered full military conflict. Since then, of course, the U.S. has entered the fray with attacks on Iranian nuclear manufacturing sites. And then there was briefly a ceasefire, maybe announced by Donald Trump, but it was in question. Look, we are not a breaking news show, but we are an Internet mystery show. and the Pentagon Pizza Index is a bit mysterious. Okay, so about two weeks ago, in the hours leading up to Israel dropping its first missiles, the Pentagon Pizza Index began circulating on X.

Pizza and war, dystopian and terrible in a way and weirdly American missiles as American as Pizza Pie, I guess. So the first post that I saw on X came from a new means, media investigative newsroom called Hunterbrook, which put a post on X saying simply Pentagon Pizza Index is spiking. So that post was from June 11th, and the attached image showed area pizzerias around the Pentagon in D.C., like a Google Maps image. And you know that little graph on businesses when you look at them in Google Maps or in Google,

and it shows you the busiest times. It has that little sort of graph per hour. And all of those were like way busier than usual. And that was happening in the afternoon on June 11th in Washington, D.C., which is really the day before the attacks in America time really started happening. So on the one hand, we should say very clearly, Israel is not the, United States. But on the other hand, you know, many people would say that as a close ally militarily in the Middle East, if Israel was about to attack Iran, presumably people at the Pentagon

would know about this and would be talking about it. Right. I'm just going to say pizza, I think you and I maybe both share this belief that pizza is one of the greatest things ever. Yeah, for sure. And war is perhaps the worst thing ever. It's up there. For sure. Yeah. So tying these things together is not what we like to do necessarily. And I want to say I'm not here today to talk about like what is happening and how wrong and terrible I think it is. But what I am here to do is to talk to our listeners about this very strange correlation between pizza places having an explosion in business and America and America's allies getting involved, very involved in military conflict.

Yeah. I should say that in the last week, some of the most popular posts on Reddit have been about the pizza index. And I'm talking about posts with like tens of thousands of upboats and comments. Yeah. But many of these posts, I should say, have been since been deleted or removed because moderators don't want politics on certain subs or there are rules about not posting politics on subs. And while pizza ordering Washington, D.C. is not necessarily inherently political. The threads of discussion on said posts are definitely going to be inherently political. So I was looking at interesting as f***. That's one that we look at a fair bit, I feel like.

Oh, that is interesting as f*** that interesting as f*** is like no politics. Isn't it? Yeah. This is from four days ago, happening right now, Domino's nearest, the Pentagon is busier than usual. That was the title of the post, and it did hit R-slash-all and R-slash-popular. And the post has been removed by the moderators of R-slash-interesting as the top comment with almost 7,000 upvotes is we really can't go a decade without going to the desert, can we? And then somebody says, the soldiers, they yearn for the sands.

It's like this cynical, jokey vibe that also feels very Reddit, and it's part of why I love Reddit, right? Yeah, we joke so that we don't scream. Yeah. So that's everything I have to offer in this moment. I feel like I saw it months ago. I was like, we should do something about this, and I'm kicking myself that now we're doing something about it after it happened, but that's okay.

It is because there are so many people who probably have. have never heard of this. And I have a little history that I can, that I can offer. I'm so ready. Because that's basically all I've got. I saw it. I clocked it. I clocked a bunch of the posts that got deleted. But I don't know the reality and history of this thing. So what, what can you tell me? Okay. Off I go. So it's interesting that you mention a tweet from Hunterbrook. The first tweet that I found in trying to learn more about the history of this was from an account called Pentagon Pizza Report. Of course. They shot out a tweet a little, a couple minutes after 7 p.m. on June 12th, 2025, D.C. time, presumably, since they're watching the Pentagon.

It says, as of 6.59 p.m. ET, nearly all pizza establishes. Nearby the Pentagon have experienced a huge surge in activity. So they're showing screenshots of that Google time heat map that you're talking about. They're doing this for four different pizza places, one called We the Pizza. Another is a domino's location close to the Pentagon. District Pizza Palace, sounds fun. And extreme pizza. They're all showing a lot of activity between that 6 and 7 o'clock hour, which, you know, on the one hand,

My spidey senses started, you know, going up when I saw that because I'm like, guys, that's dinner time. That's like pizza o'clock, you know? But if this is much busier than usual for these places, okay, I hear you. In theory, Google's looking at historical data. Yes, I love that we're digging into this. It also only probably offered more questions for me than answers in some cases. I think that's the world.

We're living in, man. I'm with you. That's the world. We're living in. Yeah. So in terms of where the data comes from, Google knows that these pizza places are busier than usual. Maybe because people are going to Google to find the phone number to call in the pizza order.

Or they're getting to the pizza place a website to place an online order via Google. You can also order things on Google, right? So, like, it's possible that they're actually seeing real order data. Okay. I have more skepticism to offer about this, but I'll get there. Okay. This particular account, since this tweet went out, this account has doubled its number of followers. So this account is not the start of it, and this account was probably created after this food and culture website called The Takeout. Okay.

I guess popularized this pizza index, not that it created it, but it sort of like memeified it. in the time that we're living in now so that you see these posts on the pizza index. And when you refer to the pizza index, people have a better sense of what you're talking about. Okay. So apparently, Ben, this pizza theory correlation goes back to the Cold War. What? Wow. Okay. Now, this is the sources that I've found for this, there's a fast company article on this that says, during the Cold War, Soviet operatives reportedly monitored pizza delivery activity in Washington.

This is fascinating because one of my immediate questions about this, and I was going to raise this later, is like, if this thing is real, then, like, I would imagine that there are countries in the world who have people literally assigned to see if order numbers jump at pizza restaurants close to the Pentagon. in order to get a sense that the U.S. is maybe about to engage in military conflict. Like, I could see allies and non-allies looking at that data as well, especially if it's publicly available. So that's fascinating to me. Yes. So apparently, as you said, Soviet operatives, they believed that this sudden uptick in late-night orders signaled military personnel working overtime on what, who knows, but working overtime. Okay.

Fast Company says they even gave it a code name, Pizint, short for Pizza Intelligence. Wow. But as you just said... I have pizza. I have pizza intelligence, but it's a totally different thing. Totally different thing. But as you just said, the data, they need the data. Right. And during the time of the Cold War, what date...

They're not looking on Google for busiest times. No, it's not that easy. They have to call from Soviet Russia. Maybe so. Yeah, they've got a call from Soviet Russia and say, the line is busy. The line is still busy. The line is still busy. The site Euro News also references this Soviet intelligence services during the Cold War looking at this data, who knows what data.

Okay. A Newsweek piece cross-referencing The Guardian says, Deliveries of Pizza to the Pentagon doubled immediately before the night. 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. There was this latest viral surge of the Pizza Index this week led to Alex Selby Boothroyd, who is the economist's. Oh yeah, Alex Selby Boothrood. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's the head of data journalism for the economist. Okay. He wrote on LinkedIn just within the last week as of the time that we're taping this. Right now. Okay. Yeah. Yep. He says the Pentagon Pizza Index has been a surprisingly reliable predictor of

seismic global events from coups to wars since the 1980s. Then he gives this example. On the night of August 1st, 1990, the CIA ordered 21 pizzas in a single night just before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Oh my God. He says that was a new record, 21 pizzas in a single night going to the Pentagon. And this invasion of Kuwait marks the beginning of the Gulf War. So that is obviously another big military conflict. I believe that intel about the 21 pizzas that night comes from a guy named Frank Meeks, who owned 43 dominoes in the Washington, D.C. area. And this guy, this domino's franchisee also told the LA Times that a similar surge in pizza deliveries happened in December of 1998. Okay. Do you know what was happening in

December of 1998? Oh, December of 1998. It was the impeachment hearings. of Bill Clinton. Oh, okay. Interesting. Apparently a lot of pizza coming to maybe the Pentagon, maybe other, you know, the White House itself, who knows.

Apparently in 1990, Wolf Blitzer, who was the Pentagon correspondent for CNN at the time. Yes. There's a quote for him where he says, bottom line for journalists, always monitor the pizzas.

So we're talking about the pizza index now, but this quote, several sources have mentioned this quote from 1990. This is deep, this goes deep dish. You know what I'm saying? Deep, deep dish. Yeah, deep dish all the way to the Cold War. You went beyond the thin crust of the top of this amory and you found the deep dish. That's right. I went Detroit style deep dish with butter on the bottom.

And then Euro News also points. to April 13th of last year, 2024, when there were, quote, unusually high pizza orders from not only the Pentagon, but also the White House and the Department of Defense. And that date marked

Iran launching drones into Israeli territory. Yep. But that particular fact also sends my, you know, spidey senses, a tinglin. Okay. Because to monitor

calls, like, the big, busyness of pizza establishments near the Pentagon is one thing. Yeah. But this could just be false. But why, but how would they know that the calls are coming from inside the Pentagon to these pizza establishments from inside the White House? So I think, yeah.

As far as I know, we don't know that, right? We just know that these are the pizza places that are closest to the Pentagon. Yeah, and I think, I think when you think about, I mean, look, I spent six months in working in D.C. and interning on Capitol Hill. And I think the thing that you start to realize when you spend a lot of time in that place is that places like the Pentagon are massive in terms of like the number of people that they employ and the sort of like economies. 30,000 people work at the Pentagon. There you go. So like if you have like 30,000 people and a good number of those people are getting busy all.

of a sudden, you're going to, like, that business, let's call it a business, that business is going to impact the surrounding businesses very quickly. So that tracks for me. And that's how, I think that's kind of how economists do their work, right? Like, you're not always able to double check that the call is coming from the secure line inside the Pentagon. But you sort of like, look at these indicators of like how, you know, certain groups, behaviors impact other certain group's behaviors. Yeah. I will just also mention that a Pentagon spokesperson told Newsweek that the timeline that was suggested by this tweet, this Pentagon Pizza Report tweet, showing that these establishments were surging right around the time that Israel was actually

launching attacks on Iran. Yeah. They say that that timeline did, quote, not align with the actual offense that were happening at the time between. Israel and Iran. So they have denied. Yeah, but I mean like what is that? That's like, okay, sure. I'm just, I'm just saying they also point out that because the Pentagon has 30,000 employees, there are a lot of food options within the Pentagon and pizza is one of them. So why would Pentagon employees need to order all of this outside pizza? They could also get sushi and sandwiches and all the other things that they have available there. Yeah, I love these additional random facts that they're providing. Right. And I will say like it doesn't behoove the Pentagon to confirm the pizza index. No. But if these pizza places all new like, oh, all of the Pentagon phone numbers start with 202, blah, blah, blah, you know. Yep.

Then they could say these are all Pentagon numbers, the way that I know anytime, you know, someone from my doctor's office is calling because it's all. is the same, like, beginning set of numbers there. Yeah, yep. So the real data that could connect these dots, if they're able to be connected, would have to come from the pizza places themselves, not from people just watching Google. Well, should we call some pizza places?

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it. Amory and I order some pizza, or at least talk to some pizza guys in a minute. Support for this podcast comes from Nature is the Solution. a podcast from the Nature Conservancy. When it comes to the environment, it's easy to focus on doom and gloom, but that's not the whole story, especially when there are so many projects

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And, of course, we will identify ourselves as reporters and see what their answers are. Hi there. Can you hear me okay? Yes, ma'am. Okay. I just had a, I have a strange question for you because I'm actually a journalist with the public radio station in Boston, and we're, We're working on a story about something called the Pizza Index. Have you heard of this? I have not. Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. You too. Bye-bye. My name is Ben. I'm calling from WBUR, which is a national public radio station. We're doing a story on something called the Pizza Index or the Pentagon Pizza Index.

Have you ever heard of that? No, I didn't heard that. So what do you want? I think I'm trying to figure out if this is a real thing. If, you know, economists have looked at this, different people around the country have said that the... Not surprising. Not surprising. Hi there.

I work for the public radio station in Boston. And I'm doing a story about something called the Pentagon Pizza Index. Have you heard of this? Yeah, I got calls about it recently. I'm the general manager manager. Did you really? I've seen a decent amount of business for us. Like, we're doing really well for ourselves.

But in terms of, like, deliveries to the Pentagon themselves, those haven't happened at all. I haven't seen anything to the Pentagon. Nighthawk breweries, they do military events, things like that. So they may know a little more on that sense. Okay. That's really helpful to know. Hey, how are you? I'm doing well.

I'm doing for you today. My name is Ben. I'm calling from a. NPR station in Boston called WBUR, and I am reporting out a story about the pizza index or the Pentagon Pizza Index. Have you ever heard of this? Oh, when they order a lot, when they order 20 plus pizzas. Yes, sir, that's the one. For their big old meetings. Yes, sir. Is that, yeah, so you have heard of it. I have heard of the Concept, we are located like a block from the Pentagon.

I mean, we're probably one of the closest restaurants to the Pentagon. Yes, sir. That's probably our biggest customer to be perfect. Wow. We get those ones from the Space Force guys that we have upstairs, because they have an office upstairs. And they do host quite a few events where they'll call us and say, hey, can you have like 15, 20 pizzas ready for us?

We have seen those. Last week, we had a couple of two different three stars in here. So we definitely see some higher ups that come in here. Wow, you have seen those. So you're the manager on duty right now. Have you seen this in like the last week or so, would you say? No, I haven't seen anything crazy in the last week. Surprisingly, you know, with our political climate that we're currently in.

Yes, yes. Sure. I haven't had any giant orders. Actually, I mean, in a couple months, I'd say. Thank you, man. Hope you have a good rest of your day. Stay safe. All right, you do. So I feel like, Amory, your team, the pizza guys, don't think it's a thing and it's not a thing.

Is that fair to say? I'd say from those of the two pizza establishments, the people who would really talk to us, I don't think they think it's a thing. I think they're finding some delight in the fact that the Internet seems to think it's a thing. I would have expected a bit a hearty, hell yeah. Yes, we get a ton of orders. But it also sounds like it's hard to tell, right? We call it four places.

Yeah. Right? So I'm team, yes, it's a thing. And I would say that, like, still our evidence is, our evidence, this is helpful, but it's also fundamentally anecdotal. This is why the world is broken, because we just heard two pizza people say, this is not really a thing. And you're like, I think it's a thing.

And I'm like, it's not a thing. I don't feel like we have a definitive answer. As we all know, we're entering this, some people call it a post-fax era, right? It's information overload, powered by the Internet, and correlation and Internet lore gets turned into a kind of like mysticism or something. Nobody seems to know anything anymore because the Internet is a, you know, the Internet as a, quote-unquote, democratizing force has ultimately platformed lies and conspiracies. and controversy more than like facts and shared truth, you know?

Yeah, but it does make me glad that extra glad that we are here to when the internet just wants to look at Google data and post and tweet and all the things. We're here to call the pizza places and hold their dough to the oven. But I don't know, like I'm still not sure. To me, we're still just like, yes, that was, yes, I'm glad we called the pizza places. I would say at best, if you believe or want to believe that the Pizza Pentagon Pizza Index is a thing, we got very inconclusive responses. And at worst, we got responses from two managers who said,

nah, it's not, I don't think so. in this like weird internet world, we're trying to interpret patterns instead of getting like final shared truth, scientific data. And I feel like we don't quite have that yet when it comes to, you know... That's true.

It seems like harder and harder sometimes to tell whether we can all agree on the truth. Yeah, and it's because, it is such an uncertain time, we're always kind of grasping at what will give clarity to a certain situation. How do we know, we don't know what's going to happen between Israel and Iran right now, and yet maybe we can cling to, but if we look at the pizza index, the pizza index says, we're fine, or the pizza index says, we're screwed. Yeah, yeah. It's like one more little data point that people are trying to hold on to in this time where everything feels.

out of our control and unpredictable. There are like legitimate examples of this kind of thing in like, you know, economics and other areas of study, right, where people basically have found that there is a one-to-one correlation, not necessarily suggesting causation, but you can basically guarantee that if X happens, Y is also going to happen, right? A very well, at least to me, was well known, although I don't think you had heard of this one, which was MUI, the men's underwear index. The suggestion is men buy new underwear when they feel like the economy is doing well or

on a good trajectory. And when they don't, they do not buy underwear. That is so ridiculous. Because do they need it? Do they need new underwear if the economy is collapsing? No, they're just going to wear the holy toe-up underwear because, nobody sees that underwear anyway or most people don't see it. So it's fine. Everyone should buy, treat yourself to some new underwear with some regularity.

Yeah, once every three years, buy one new pair of underwear. It's fine. I learned about this, by the way, at my former employer Marketplace from Kyris Dahl. The MUI, the men's underwear index. No, I am not making this up, although it is admittedly not officially measured by the government. It is, however, championed by Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Federal Reserve. Anecdotally, Ben, can you attest? Yeah, actually. Yeah. It's real. It's real. Do you have any key indicators in your life, Amory, like correlative indicators that are important in your life? If there's a big dark cloud in the sky, I bring an umbrella with me. Do you know what the, do you know of the farmer's almanac?

Of course. They have some weird ones that I very much enjoyed looking up, stepping far away from the military conflict and war conversation. Flies cling to window screens before rain. Hmm. Okay. Thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck and an unusual abundance of acorns could mean a hard winter is common. Oh. Mm-hmm.

Okay. But my biggest indicator is, you know, if Redditors are all posting the same random fact, it's almost a guarantee that I will claim to have suggested that we make an episode about it 10 months ago. True. 100% of the time can confirm. Well, here's wishing everybody peace and pizza because that is a world that I would like to live. in. Here, hear. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson.

And me? That's a more, A. Cbertson. Our episode was produced by Frannie Monaghan. It was sound designed by Emily Jenkowski. Our production manager is Paul Vycus. Our managing producer is Samata Joshi. Our episodes are edited by Meg Kramer. Our production fellow is Cindy Charles. The rest of our team is Dean Russell and Grace Tatter. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild conspiratorial-esque theory that you found on the internet that you want us to talk about, you know what to do. Hit us up, endless thread at wbUR.org.

And if you want to send us a pizza, we wouldn't hate it. We're here. We're here. Vegan for Amory. Mm-hmm. I'll eat vegan pizza too. A good vegan pizza? Please.

Yeah. And throw in one for yourself, obviously.