Endless Thread - We Want Plates!

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

A Redditor stumbles upon a huge pile of plates in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Reddit sleuths across the globe try to figure out where the plates are located and how they got there. Endless Thread embarks on an epic journey to Pennsylvania to get to the bottom of this mystery, once and for all. See the plates here: http://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2019/06/28/we-want-plates

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 health care so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. Okay, so I'm walking past the gate that was across the road to try and see what I can see of this. Oh my God, that just scared the crap out of me. I came across a white-tailed deer that just ran went tearing across the road in front of me. I need to stay alert because it is a little creepy

what's happening here. So Ben has gone down the road past a metal gate. It's definitely clearly like a do not go back here. And I'm just nervous about this whole thing. Okay, so what's up ahead? Is it technically a trailer? Like a trailer that someone would live in. It's just out in the middle of the woods here.

Which also makes me a bit nervous because someone's living here and I'm coming this way. That's super scary. I thought he was just going to go down there, see what he could see, turn around. Here there's like a bunch of pathways kind of carved into the woods here which is kind of bizarre. Old tracks, old rats.

Okay, this is so creepy. This is a long way to go without Josh and Amory. We're trying to find Ben. He left the car and went to cross this fence to see if he could find the plates. Record scratch, freeze frame. Yep, that's us. The endless thread team split up in the middle of the woods. You're probably wondering how, how.

we ended up in this situation? It all started some weeks back when Amory and I were looking at a very strange post I had found on Reddit, a post that would hit the site's front page with tens of thousands of upvotes and thousands of responses. So let's rewind a bit. What is this? What are we, what are we looking at? Okay. It's posted to the WTF community. The text reads, I was driving through the backwoods of Pennsylvania on the way to a camping spot and found a mountain of ceramic dishes and teacups in the middle of the woods, question mark, exclamation point. Okay. And the photo is of this pretty, I would say, goofy-looking dude.

Yeah. He's got a weird, one of those little... Like Adventure Dad hat. Yeah, like an Indiana Jones, if Indiana Jones wasn't that cool kind of hat. Yep. And then he's wearing some dorky gym shorts and he's wearing socks. High socks. He's got a beard.

And he's like, whoa? I'm pointing at this massive mountain of dishware. What do the plates look like, Amory? We've got a variety in here, actually. Oh, here we go. You've got the big, wide, circular dinner plate. You got your big plates? You got your big plates.

You got your square plates. Oh, my God. I'm seeing some wide, shallow bowls, some saucers. Some saucers. Some saucies in there. Some saucy. And a couple saucies. They're all white.

I think these may all be the same brand of dishware. There's something about this photo of plates. It calls to you. It does. And it is kind of hard to encapsulate with words just how absurd this is. Even the guy in the photo with this mountain of dishware is incredulous. His arms are out. He's like, what?

And every time we show it to people we work with, which we've been doing for weeks, It gets a reaction. Holy moly, it's crazy. It's awesome. What am I looking at? I think it's a mountain of trash plates. I think, yeah, there's some square ones. It looks like a pile of junk, but holy God, it's teacups?

Dishes? It kind of looks like if the dining room from the Titanic washed up on shore, this is what you would find. Huge. It doesn't even fit in the frame of the picture. It's got to be like at least 10 feet, 12 feet high. Easily like a 15 foot, maybe a 20 foot mountain of plates? Could be a million plates, a billion plates? I've never seen anything like this in my life.

It's curious. I would like to know more. I don't know what this is for. Oh, it's for the Plate Association of America. You got it. It's perfect. It's for tonic plates. According to the original poster and the title of this post on Reddit,

this mysterious, enigmatic, giant pile of dishware is in the woods of Pennsylvania. And everyone, including Redditors, want to know everything about it, not just where, but why, how, who? There's almost 2,000 comments on this. And top comment. Okay. Was there a mountain of Tupperware lids or mountains of left socks any of? Anywhere near there? Is that a joke I'm supposed to get?

Amory. Come on. I'm sorry. It's like things that this universe sucks out of your life. Oh, TV remote. Yeah, exactly. I totally buy that. There is a dimension where all that stuff is.

Yeah, that's the Renan Stimpy joke. These are all left socks. This is where all the missing left socks in the universe go. So my question to you is, why are we doing this story? Because we don't know what the heck those plates are doing out there. It's an unsolved mystery on Reddit, which is actually really good at solving mysteries. There is some good news.

There's this one guy who knows where it is. It seemed like a strange sort of thing to stumble across in the middle of nowhere. In this, the year of our Lord 2019, the internet has a lot of conspiracy theories, strange stories, oddities, but not a lot of mysteries that the internet itself cannot. solve. This might be one of them. This mountain of plates. Amory, we have a title for this episode. Mm-hmm. And it is based on a subreddit that is about bad plating techniques at restaurants. Like a sandwich served on a mini shovel or something. And so that's up Reddit. And this episode is called

We Want Plates! I'm Ben Brock Johnson. I'm Amory Severson and this is Endless Thread. The show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR station. So, we've got this plates mystery. And whatever the full story is, we have to start with the question of where the plates are. There is an obvious way to answer this question. Talk to the guy in the photo, the guy who posted the photo on Reddit. So we reached out and we reached out again.

And we followed up and we followed up again. We chatted him. We personal messaged him. And he eventually got back. He was like, sure, yeah, totally, I'll talk to you guys. And then he fell off the map again. Totally unresponsive. All we knew is that his name is Matt, and Matt was not around. So we went with the next best thing, another Redditor who had come up with a very popular theory. That man is named James. And on Reddit, my username is Agent 641. And James is proof of how this mysterious pile of plates has become internationally famous. James lives in Australia. Where in Australia? Pretty much wherever.

I don't think we've done an interview with someone who's in a van. Nope, you're a very first one. It's a real privilege. Same here. Got a kitchen sink over here. running water. James was one of the thousands of people fascinated by this plates post. And it sort of made me wonder where they had all come from, like, why they might dispose of

them all at once, and why they dumped them all in a big pile out in the middle of nowhere. And we should say here that there are a lot of theories in the comments of this Reddit post, illegal dumping of some kind, by a trucking company or by a casino. And this one makes sense in a way. Big business might need to get rid of some old plates. Lots of them. Somebody at a casino might know a guy with a truck. I mean, we've all seen the Sopranos, right?

Hey, Tony, we got to change out all of our dated plates and cups. And then Tony says, but what are we going to do with the old ones? And Frankie says, hey, have the service dispose of them. And Tony says, right. That's not a great impression. But I love this theory. I love this theory that there's some mafia illegal dumping going on. Whatever the conspiracy theories are, James was focused on location first.

It seemed like something that was easily visible from satellite imagery. Just a big white. Splatch. Yeah. So the poster mentioned that he'd been going camping and he'd taken a picture on a back road. So I thought I would start at campsites. in Pennsylvania. So here's what James did.

He Googled Campgrounds in Pennsylvania because there was mention of a camping spot in the original post. About 40 popped up immediately. And he just started to go down the list. He'd pick a campground, look at it on satellite imagery, looking around a radius of about two miles, arbitrary. But if you're looking for a needle in a Pennsylvania woods haystack,

it makes sense. James also looked at the photo. And the plates seemed to be in a pretty large, clearing. So he picked a number, 60 feet wide or so at a minimum, and included that in his ad hoc satellite imagery search. And I also thought about the logistics of actually dumping the plates in that spot. Whoever did that would need to use quite large trucks. So you're discounting the possibility that either a teleporter or an alien spaceship brought them there. Yeah, I mean, that was a plan B. I was going to go with that.

And there it was. Just down the road from the Tanglewood Campground in a huge swath of forest in North Central PA, a big, splotchy, amorphous, reflective blob. You can see it too on Google Maps, near the intersection of Tanglewood Road and Sunset Lane. It's been labeled huge pile of plates. Also, pile of crockery. It's at the edge of a clearing, just off a road, near what looks like a big gravel pit. half full of water. Someone labeled the plates on Google Maps as, quote, pile of crockery. Yes, I saw that.

Was that you? No, that wasn't me. That was someone else. I did leave a review. Oh, which review was yours? I don't remember. It was something like it's an interesting new restaurant concept. You go fetch a plate from the pile

and then you just chase down whatever food you can find. And pay what you want. basically there's no style. Well, James, I have good news for you and potentially bad news for us, which is we're going. That's amazing. I would love to hear the outcome of that. And I do hope you stay safe. We will.

God, I hope. I haven't been genuinely concerned, but now I am. It's starting to get scary, here. So we hopped in the car and drove four hours straight west from Bob. And then we put our final destination into the GPS. The three hour 30 minute drive to huge pile of plates. Are you sure you want to navigate there? Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure. Okay, huge pile of plates. And we're off. And we're off. It's a huge pile of plates. I should say here that at this stage in the game, there are a few things Amory doesn't know yet. I've kept them from her because,

because I'm excited to surprise her with the information and blow her mind. One of the surprises is I know who the landowner is. I've done my research on the location that James found. I used something called the GIS, Geographic Information System. It is a kind of data and mapping technology used around the world to organize information of all kinds for map-related stuff. Urban planning, land rights, ownership. The landowner is Clifford Cross,

Junior. He apparently owns some sort of trucking company, and he lives nearby the plates. But I haven't called him yet, because I have this fear that if we call him, he is going to tell us to keep out. And that request is going to end our adventure real fast. And considering the number of theories that involve some sort of illegal activity as the explanation for the pile of crockery, my plan is to get us to the property first. See if we can see if we can see. see this mountain of plates from the road. And then, if Clifford Cross says, I don't know what you're talking about,

we can at least say, hey man, we're looking right at it. So I'm waiting for the right time to do all of this. Meanwhile, we're road-tripping. We just saw a guy on a three-wheeler. He was going somewhere fast. He looked like fun.

Would you get on the back of that three-wheeler with that dude? Nope. No? Nope. Would you? I'd wrap my arms around that burly man and just go wherever he wanted to go. I'm ready.

Before we left, we sent some listeners the plates post and asked them what their theories were. Erica said it reminded her of the Golden State Killer and how he would stack dishes on the backs of his victims so he would know if they tried to escape. Thanks for the nightmares, Erica. And Thomas thinks it's the work of a hoarding grandma. Corey thinks it's a factory that closed down and just dump the dishes hoping no one would find them. But my personal favorite theory came from Reddit. Okay, the theory that I am digging right now is someone noticed that this pile of plates is, I think, about 45 minutes south of Corning, New York. Have you heard of Corningware, Ben?

It was a line of dishware. From a dish company in New York. Yeah, I don't remember if they had a headquarters in Corning, but I want to say that they did. They had some sort of facility in Corning. I wonder if we're going to drive past Corning. Oh, maybe. Are we coming from that direction? Yeah.

Okay. I mean, if we are, we should stop. Oh, oh, oh. What? Corning. Holy shit. There it is. Is this Corning?

Are we in Corning? We just passed a giant. white factory looking building that says corning in huge letters across the top. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Yes. Let's check them out.

Okay. Ready? Yeah. How are you? Oh, I'll tell you what you can get for us. You can get us proof that the plates are from your company. So is this where corning dishware is made? I can't answer really any questions in terms of the media, but just let me find a shift supervisor for you.

Okay. That'd be cool. So we waited for a shift supervisor to respond to the call over the intercom. Hey. How are you? Good. How are you? Good.

Are you from Mark Gravelin? No. We don't know. Maybe. Yes. Man, Mark Gravelin's got us flustered. Once we calm down a little, we give him our spiel, and Mark delivers some news. At all.

We make all biomedical. It's all plastic here. All plastic here. All plastic. Biomedical flask. Petri dishes. Wow. storage bottles. So there's no dishware connection.

No, sir. This is all polystyrene. Corningware? Is that different? That's not us. That's not you. Different company. We're in the wrong place. Okay. Rejected. So rejected. All right. Let's get back on the road.

All right. We got a pile of dishes to find. The Corning Dishware Theory on hold for now. One more thing we should mention quickly. The only town close to this spot where we, we were headed to is called Covington Township. Now, I looked it up, just doing some light reading on it, and I was reading through the Wikipedia page for it, to get the basics. At the bottom of the entry for this little town is a section of the wiki page headlined

controversy. The entry is short, but it says the town has been embroiled in a bunch of accusations against the town's board of supervisors, especially the chairman, Thomas Yerke. It says, among the allegations of miscompetions, Conduct against Supervisor Yerk are accusations of knowingly allowing the illegal discharge of raw sewage, illegally dumping hazardous waste on his property and other environmental law violations. After hours of driving, we were getting close, and signs of human civilization were getting further away. Oh, shit!

Oh, God. We're into the, we're onto a dirt road. Under the gravel. We're onto the gravel. Even the gravel road was getting pretty nice. and steep, going up into a kind of low, ancient, ground-down mountain. But then, the closer we got, the more the forest started to close in around us. The more of the road became just a smaller and smaller track through the woods.

We're one minute away. Dude, this is not even a thing. Like, we might have to walk from here. Yeah, because how... We started going down, into a hollow. into deep woods. Nothing was out there. We're now officially driving through a creek bed.

No, no, no, no. We're driving through a creek bed. I don't like this. I'm getting sweaty. Oh, we are, we're at a real impasse now because there's a metal fence up and we cannot drive further. I don't want to get stuck in here.

Okay, this is how a horror moment. everybody starts. I think we should walk up to the fence. Are we cool with doing that? Across this totally not road, in the middle of a mosquito convention, was a cattle gate, with some old posts covered with those menacing signs that say posted, aka private property, aka keep out. I mean, we are so close.

I could walk down there right now and just see what I can see. and see what the scenario is and then walk back. Why don't we do that? All right, I'm going to pause the recording. Okay. We'll be back, I think, in a minute. 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. 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 CitySpace 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. So Amory and our producer Josh are waiting back behind the posted sign. And I am wandering through a seemingly endless parcel of land that is so deep in the woods that the roads we thought bordered the property are not roads. As I walk through the tall grass into a kind of maze of grassy pathways and meadows cut through the forest.

I am going back and forth between being positive. We are about to find the plates and being positive. We are making a huge mistake. This is super creepy because there's just a trailer that's out here, just sitting out here in the middle of the woods. Oh, okay. I think I might be getting close to it. Your destination is on the right.

Except it wasn't. I hightailed it back. Freaking finally. I did not see a pile of plates, but I didn't fully explore. I decided I should come back. Really, I just came back to convince you guys to go deeper into the woods with me, and I needed to tell you more,

Emery, of what I've been keeping to myself about Clifford Cross. Clifford Cross Jr., who's listed as owning this property, runs a trucking company. There are a lot of competing theories about the reason behind the pile of plates, but everyone seems to agree that they must have been dumped somewhere using a big truck. And the guy whose property we are currently exploring runs a trucking company, single license. And we were trying to get in touch with him. Hello, my name is Ben Johnson.

I'm calling looking for Mr. Kron. So we kept wading through the tall grass. There was an old earth mover parked on the crest of a hill that looked like it hadn't moved any earth in a decade. There was a man-made pond surrounded by dirt, the creepy, empty, overgrown trailer. A duck blind for hunting, you know, with guns? Good times. I mean, I have like a rule that I live by. And it's, does this feel stupid? And if it does, you don't do it.

And the reason you don't do it? The reason you don't go into the woods to an unfamiliar location where no one actually knows you've gone, private property where there have been allegations of illegal activity and evidence of hunting, is that you might end up like someone on the Sopranos, whose storyline has just ended. It's going to be okay, Emma.

I hate this. I hate being the one who's afraid. No, no, no, no, I'm afraid. Yeah, I am too. Seriously, I'm afraid. I don't know if that makes you feel better. Yeah, I am too, I am too. Your phone's ringing. Should I answer it?

Yeah. Hello? Yeah, this is. My name's Clifford Cross. Oh, Clifford. Thank you so much for calling me back. What do you know about this point situation? Oh, shocked me here when the E.D guy called me

I just wondering where the bites were, and I said, well, I'm wondering where they are, too, because I have no certain idea what you're talking about. Cliff says this was a whole big misunderstanding a few months back. He heard from a very persistent investigator. The investigator was from the Department of Environmental Protection, and he was following up on a tip. It had something to do with the Internet. And Cliff says he used to have a pile of lime on the property.

lime like the beige-colored mineral that is used in agriculture for a bunch of different things. So that must have been what the DEP was talking about. The only catch is the pile of lime is not there anymore. And now there's no real sign of plates or lime. He doesn't seem too worried about us being on his property, but he says he wants to meet us down the road and explain things. We say, okay. This part almost felt like a movie.

You know, when you meet the street. the guy at the spot, that remote place. We're standing in front of our car. He pulls up in his car, which is bigger. It's nice to meet you. I'm Ben. Yeah, Ben, yeah. Yeah. This is Amory. And this is Josh. Josh. Nice to meet you. Yeah. And you've been here how long? Wow. I've been here in your car. We can drive right over to where the... That'd be amazing. Sure, we'll follow you. Pond first. I'm buying it. I'm buying it. from Clifford Cross. Yeah.

Hookland and sinker. I'm sold. Yeah, but you're also... You like people. You know? I mean, you are... What's not to like? He shows up in a...

In a Cadillac escalate. I know. He's got a... He's got a hunter. He's got a... He's all in... He's all in... What's that called?

He's just all tree camo. Real tree is called. Real tree is called. Yep. To hat to shorts. Okay, I didn't look to see. I didn't see below his shirt. Can peek into his thickers.

But he's, uh, his story seems legit to me because like if he's wealthy. He's not trying to freaking let somebody illegal dump on his land or illegal dumps some plates. That's, that's the. Unless he's involved. That's the province. It is hard not to notice that our beautiful, but somewhat scary day in the woods has been transformed by a very

menacing storm. As we follow Cliff back onto his land, to the exact spot we were just anxiously traversing, the sky has gone dark. And then it splits open. Is this it? Yeah, this was a,

where them plates were showing, this was a file. And I don't know how they, I'm not a computer job, but somehow, somebody. You think it was a doctor? You think someone doctor? Do you know the photo?

I... Definitely. Wow. Definitely. Is like dumping an issue around these parts? Do you know if illegal dumping... We don't have a problem here. Because the landfill is only three miles right over to...

Landfills right there? Yeah. Why would I dump plates on my property? Sure. The landfill is only three miles right over there. No place, never has been. Well, we came a long way for... You came a long way for enough.

Talk to you. I'm telling you. I'm hoping you knew more. than I did. But I would say somebody has doctored that photograph. The DEP guy was parked clear out there and treading through a mile and a half as 12-inch deep dressed in snow. He earned a bad jet day, okay?

Wow. But when he got out here and saw it, Cliff says that the official from Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection was pretty aggressive, but that he couldn't find any plates on his property, so the DEP guy backed off. Do you remember his name? I have his card down to the house. Oh, yeah? Yeah, I have it.

Do you think you could give us his name so we could call him? Now we're trying to find where the place is, you know? If it's not here, we've got to figure it out. Where are they? Yeah, I don't have a clue. And he couldn't figure it out either. Right. Because he wanted to throw my butt in jail.

And then, well, hey, bring it out. He's got nothing to hide. That's amazing. So, our adventure continues to Cliff's house. Come on in. Won't be scared. Wow. Okay.

This is a foyer of death. Does Cliff Cross have a personal taxidermist the way someone might have a personal chef? I mean, maybe. Are these all yours? Oh, yeah. Whoa. You know that scene from the second Ace Ventura movie

where the poacher takes Ace into his trophy room? Something wrong, Mr. Venture? Of course not. This is a lovely room of death. Take care now. Bye-bye then. Everything from a full-size, massive moose and several bucks to a jackalope. Black bear.

Black bear. And turkey with a beard. That is very rare. A buzzard. Emery, how did you feel about traipsing around this guy's property, a guy who appears to be a pretty good shot with like half a of these animals having the arrow that killed them on the same mounting as the head. You know, I was not psyched to be standing in Cliff's foyer, but I was psyched that he welcomed us into his home,

and he showed us all the images the DEP guy showed him, and we showed Cliff the stuff that we had, and a lot of it was the same. And he gave us the DEP guy's name, after we helped him look through an extensive business card collection to get it. Here we go. Keith Rule, Department of Environmental Protection Solid Waste Specialist. Yep, that's it.

That's him. So we bid Cliff farewell. He didn't seem to be our guy. We called the DEP guy, Keith, no answer. Also, we continued to desperately message the person who got us into this mess, Matt, the original poster, who had responded a few times,

but had gone silent on us for weeks. We did have one glimmer of hope. So remember how Matt had said in the post that he found the plates near a campground, Cliff had mentioned another campground that wasn't too far away. Okay, so hear me out on something right now. You ready? Yeah.

I know that this may be a fool's errand, but we did come all the way here and we haven't found the plates. Nope. So my last ditch pitch was, let's go to the campground that's close by. And this was the beginning of us heading to several campgrounds, some on the way home, some not,

all of them full of confused but kind campground managers. We are trying to solve an internet mystery about a huge pile of plates. Near a campground in Pennsylvania. A pile of plates? Do you see that? I know, I know. Isn't it crazy?

Do you see this? Pire of plates? Yeah, like dishware. I don't know what you're looking for, but I know we have never found any kind of plates around here that I know anything of. Well, thank you very much, Debbie. Fair enough. Yeah, thank you for your time.

We appreciate it. Nope, the call failed. Bye, Debbie. Bye, Debbie. This Hail Mary effort was really the first stage of our team going through what I like to call the five stages of plate mountain grief. First stage, denial. James is so great.

Yeah. But we don't have the plates! Clearly, stage two is anger. I know, but, dude. We want plates. I agree. I want plates, you want plates, we all want plates. If I have to eat every fucking pizza and Pudgy's pizza right now to get to the plates, I'll do it.

Pudgies. A regional pizza chain we've seen a lot of down here, where the dress code may require more than just a rain-soaked undershirt. Where are you going? I'm putting my shirt on it. Stage three, my specialty, bargaining. We have one more state park we can hit before it gets dark. Josh is like, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, no.

That's all I'm saying. And we move into plate-based depression, which really set in after false hope from our intern, Maggie, who is trying to help us from a desk back in Boston. I found it, you guys. What? I found it. But she had found the same pile of plates that James had, the one that doesn't exist.

Oh, no. Is it titled Huge Pile of Plates? It is. I knew it too as soon as she said it. Some great moment of false hope. And finally, acceptance. After visiting five campgrounds, we were done. I would just like to say that after this incredibly, incredibly long day, Google gave me a notification that says,

how was huge pile of plates? Question mark. Your opinion matters. Help other visitors. Should we leave a review? Yeah. I think we probably should, right? Yeah.

Came for plates. Was disappointed. If anyone... Give him more email address. If anyone has recommendations for a real huge pile of plates, please email endless thread at wbUR.org. You happy with that? Yep, that's about right.

I guess the silver lining is that there's like a, almost a literal silver lining. I was meant to say. Through the clouds, and it's beautiful out here. The birdsong is legit. We're looking out at the mountains. A lot of sunny, warm. summer-ish night.

No plates. But we have pie in the trunk. Pie in the trunk right now is good. If only we had a plate to put it on. We were headed back home, dejected, total failures. What were we doing anyway?

We drove to the middle of Pennsylvania from Boston because of some internet comments. Were we idiots? We might have been idiots. But then, when all was lost, just as we were finally leaving Pennsylvania, something happened, something that had been months in the making. Hey, is this Matt? Yes, it is.

Matt, a.k.a. the guy who found the plates in the first place and posted the picture on Reddit, the guy we have been trying to get a hold of for three freaking months. Matt! Yeah, finally I'm able to talk to you guys. Sorry about the long, long week there. Sorry? Matt, apologize to the listeners, because this story isn't over. On the next endless thread, an ending.

I have some news. I just talked to Matt for a very long time. Is he just the biggest troll? Are you sure you're ready for this? What? It sounds like you're saying this pile of plates, it does exist. and you know where it exists.

I can't confirm word or none. Oh, no. We scour the final plate-based frontier. We talk to the Department of Environmental Protection. We talk to Matt. We talk to the owners of a mysterious business. And again, for some reason, we talk to more people on the internet to get their theories. And we solve this thing once and for all.

That was amazing. Endless Thread is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR station, in partnership with Reddit. Josh Swartz is our producer, and he says driving back from Pennsylvania overnight is a good way to get no sleep. Iris Adler is our executive producer, and when she heard that companies might be illegally dumping plates in the woods, she was like... Face palm. Mixed in sound design by Paul Vicus, and when we called them up to say we were in the woods and scared, he shouted, My people need me! Michael Pope is our advice.

at Reddite who thinks that mosquito conventions in the backwoods of PA are most definitely not. Animals being bros. Extra production assistance from James Lindberg. Our interns are Magdeaella Mata. Maggie's fine. And Noah Boston. It's like Austin with a bee. Special thanks to the Redditors whose comments, theories, and messages were especially helpful in making this episode.

Agent 641. Athermancer. Djengal lover. Shien Chian 1. Tenerbysus. Never Enough WTF and Linola Mick. You can see the image of the giant pile of plates on our homepage, and we have some more photos coming, by the way.

WBUR.org.org slash endless thread. Check it out. It is pretty wild. 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, hit us up there. My co-host and producer is Amory Siebertson. I'm senior producer and host Ben Brock Johnson.

and I'll let myself out. And now we're over the line into New York State, on our way back to Boston, six and a half hours to go this drive. We will be back in Boston at 2 a.m. You're eating pie out of the

pie plate, and I'm eating Subway, and I'm not happy about it. And now we get a message from Matt. What does he say? I'm very sorry. I haven't paid mine to read it in a bit. You're sorry? You're sorry, Matt?

I went to Pennsylvania today on a freaking dream and a feather. I don't know. What do they say? A wing in a prayer. A wing and a prayer, Matt. We went to Pennsylvania today to look for your stupid photo of the pile of plates. Let him finish. Here we go.