Endless Thread - What Is That?!

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Have you ever heard an odd sound that sounds oddly musical? A spatula that rings like a toy piano? A storage container with a satisfying pop? Endless Thread's Ben Brock Johnson brings co-host Amory Sivertson the subreddit r/SoundsLikeMusic, where everyday sounds are turned into music. He then turns to r/whatismycookiecutter, a subreddit of bewildering yet delightful shapes. Credits: This episode was produced by Ben Brock Johnson with Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the co-hosts. (Photo Credit: 4cloverstorm)

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, have you completed the assignment that I gave you 10 minutes ago? Which is... I have. Which is to bring a thing from life that makes a sound that to you is musical. Oh, to me is musical. I thought it was just like satisfying. Okay, I'll take that. That's fine. Yeah.

Yeah. What do you got? Ooh. That is nice. What is that? I'll do it again. Wow, that's really good. That's just really good. Yeah. It's rubber, for sure. There's rubber involved.

Rubber is involved. Yep. Don't want to tell you? Yeah. This is like a vacuum seal coffee canister. And, or I use it to store my coffee beans. So you push the lid down and then it seals it. And then when you pull it up. That's beautiful. Yeah.

All right. You ready for mine? Yep. Are you on a hint? Yeah. It's got this morning scrambled eggs on it. Oh. It's just like a good old pan in your house.

It's just like a chef's spatula. And like when my. My wife got me this for Christmas. I was, I gratefully accepted it, but I was like, what's a, okay, we have like four spatulas, but it is the greatest spatula. Now it's like I will never use another spatula. And one of the things about it that I love so much is, you know, you can just bang it on stuff while you're cooking. Does it look like a, like a fish spatula, like one of those long boys, or is it, it's a little flippy? It's a flat happy.

A flat happy. It's a flat and happy. That's what it is. Wow. I'm really, I'm glad you have that in your life now. Thanks, man. Me too. We should, you want to start a band?

Yeah. Yeah, ready? Three, two, one. That's pretty good. I'll take it. Okay. All right. Well, we've done a great job, but we are not.

nearly the best at this. And that is because I have discovered my new favorite subreddit. This is going to be a classic endless thread snacky episode. It's just going to be subreddit love from top to bottom, baby. You ready? Yep. All right. R slash sounds like music.

It's a new favorite. The first video I want to play you is best to find by the first comment on the video in the which is to say, fucking classic. So this is not a brand new video. It is a repost. And in truth, a lot of this subreddit's posts are reposts from other subs.

But this one, it really is a classic. It takes a girl bumping into like a table or a bedpost or some piece of furniture. And the fast and short sound she makes gets turned into a single note in many performances. Okay. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay, so the original sound is just the ah.

Yeah. Yeah. Of her hitting her back. Keep going. Keep going. Oh, listen, baby, ain't no mountain. Ain't no valley, though. All right, we do it.

No matter what I do. All I think. It's pretty good, right? very good. This is way up my alley. That's what I thought. I thought it would be. Like, I was like, as soon as I saw this subreddit, I was like, Amory must know about this. Like, she has to be involved in this somehow. Oh, man. I used to. Before I was like really on social media or, or browsing the webs in this way. I used to just say to my husband before bed, like, read. me funny tweets show me something funny on the internet.

I feel like he'd pull up stuff like this or he knows that this is the kind of content. This is it right in your wheelhouse. Yeah. All right. So here's another one which comes, I think, from the well-established genre of just guys being dudes who are probably a little stoned and playing ping pong. Mm-hmm. Okay. You ready for this one?

Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It's pretty good, right? It is good, yeah. It's not bad. Not bad, just guys being dudes. Here is another popular genre of crossposts on the sub, which is basically machines making crazy sounds or tool gifts.

And this is a mashup. So this was a popular video or set of videos that has now been edited. Okay. Okay, this is a machine of some sort that's spitting out. Hot rods. Red, fiery, hot. Rods of some sort. And there's like a guy with protective eyewear on dancing to techno with this machine as the beat.

And there are robots dancing. Whoa. That was a party. But what I like is the interspersed edited in techno guy, like dorky techno guy. Like dancing to the machines. It loves it. Making these pieces of metal, whatever. is happening there. Okay. All right. So,

Emery, I think, you know, what's important here is that as a journalist, I am looking for trends. I'm looking for patterns. I'm looking for the bigger picture in this musical non-music things subreddit. And my deep, deep investigation has discovered that this sub

has two particular musical themes. Okay. One is a song by Usher demonstrated by this woman and her apparently suffering teenage daughter who discovers something

while opening an oven door. It's pretty good, right? It's pretty good. It's excellent. I'll give you a second. I'll give you the pattern here. Here's the proof that it's a pattern. It's a drawer closing.

Play yeah by Usher? Yeah, by Usher. Sure. Playing on Spotify. I mean, it's not perfect. It's not great, but it's solid. It is. It is definitely solid.

Yeah. I mean, I just find so much joy in the fact that I feel like this is the stuff that I do at home. Yes. Yeah. This sub has more than 150,000 members. Yes. So to know, and that's just the people who know about it and are on Reddit. And the fact that we're all in our homes.

Doing this stuff. Appreciating the music of life. That just makes me happy. So I got another pattern for you. Are you a fast and furious fan? No. Are you too fast, too furious? I'm too fast and too furious for that.

All right. Well, have you ever seen Tokyo Drift? I guess not then, right? Nope. So Tokyo Drift is the other pattern here. Okay. So it's a guy using a little multi-tool or an Allen wrench. Is that what it's called?

Yeah, it's an Allen wrench. It's an Allen wrench to hit drill bits. That's good. And, I mean, do you know that song? Because I didn't know the song. I just kept seeing these posts on the sub that just said Tokyo Drift. And I was like, what is happening? It sounds familiar, but I don't know.

Here's the original, if you want to listen to that. Here's another one with wrenches. And I just love, you know, the joy that this is creating in the world. And we need a lot of joy right now. So here's some joy. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. All right, I got one more for you, but not until after this message. 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 looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the end. 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 podcasts. 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. Okay, so Amory, I have one more shorty, shorty subreddit to talk to you about. Okay.

I just kind of love it. I don't know why it's just like one of those communities that springs up and you just have to love the specificity of it. And at the same time, the universal relatability of it, which I think is similar to what you were saying about, sounds like music. Right? Like it's like a thing that you're like, oh my God, I do this all the time. But I didn't know that there were 225,000 people on Reddit also doing this. So do you make cookies? I know you make cookies because I've eaten your cookies. I do make cookies occasionally. Do you have any like cookie cutters that have been handed down to you? I have an apple shaped one and a Christmas tree shaped one. And I've never used either. I don't make those kind of cookies. Wow. What are, like just a simple yet somehow insulting statement. I don't make those. I'll make those kind of cookies.

I make blobs. All right. Well, take a look at this subreddit. It is, what is my cookie cutter? Wow. Reddit's cozy nook for finding what your cookie cutter might be. And it is incredible how frequently people are absolutely. completely confused by their cookie cutters. Oh, my God. What is that? It looks like a maple leaf combined.

Like if a maple leaf and a cowboy boot. Yeah. Had a baby. Yeah. And it's got some Yoda ears to it, too, in the middle. So it's like if baby Yoda and a maple leaf and a cowboy boot got together. Okay, the next one I see, that's a saw. I mean, that's not a great shape for a cookie, but that's a saw.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God, this is a wild one. It looks like, it looks like a vacuum cleaner. You're talking about the one that's like got a bloop on the top and a little arm on the side. Yes. Yeah. So now look in the comments. Look in the comments.

Okay. Look at the top comment. The top comment. Whoa. Is that, I mean, it's not just a rotary phone. It's like, antique phone with the little mouthpiece and the little. earpiece. Yes, the earpiece. Oh, God. What? I mean, maybe, but I just find this subreddit amazing because it's like, it, again, it's just sort of like this, it inspires people's

creativity in the top comment where it's like people will bring out, you know, they'll bring out a cookie cutter and they'll be like, I don't know what this is. Do you know what this is? And then people in the comments, either they will like immediately identify what seems very likely for the cookie cutter to be, or they will make something up that is hilarious and better than probably what the original thing was. It also just goes to show, like, the outlines of things are not always very clear. Yeah, like, you're leaving a lot of work to the cookie decorator in this case. You really are. You know, you've got to be a good decorator. Like, this one, it looks like it could be, I mean, actually, you could interpret it many ways. So there's one that's pretty just,

generic, but it kind of looks like either an ice cream cone with ice cream on top or honestly, the first thing that I thought was it's a gnome. And so what would be the ice cream flipped upside down is now like a gnome beard with a hat on top. But then you'd have this nice little like multi-use cookie cutter for either summer cookies for ice cream or winter cookies for gnomes. For gnomes. Or I guess a garden gnome is a year-round treasure. It's a year-round treasure. If you leave your garden gnome out in the snow. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I love this. So, you know. I mean, that looks like a uterus and ovaries, this next one that I'm seeing. You know what? You could make. Maybe it's a little strange to eat an ovary cookie, but at the same time, I love recognition of female reproductive organs in popular culture, which are often far out number. by male organs, I feel.

That is true. Well, I hope you don't need me to get anything else done today because I'm scrolling. All right. That's all I had for you. A couple subredits that, you know, I just think we all, when we need some joy, these are some good spots to go. Oh, boy, need that joy. Oh, boy, need that joy. So make yourself some cookies.

Yeah, but they can be blobs, you know. All right, folks. Go make some cookies and some music. Talk to you next week. Bye.