Endless Thread WBUR

The Vision Pro is Apple's new $3,500 virtual reality headset.

Since its debut in February, users have found new ways to use this latest iteration of a decades-old technology: scrolling TikTok at work, driving Tesla's Cybertruck, recording their kid's birth.

But can VR truly integrate into our daily lives? Or will it forever remain a niche technology for geeks and gamers?

Endless Thread dives into the history of VR and its potential for the future.

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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Cici Yongshi Yu. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

Imagine sitting in a hospital room for 24 consecutive hours in the most agonizing pain you can possibly imagine. You feel a sense of impending doom. You have a feeling this won’t end well. Then, the pain subsides and you walk away. Jamie Seymour has had that experience eleven different times. He’s a leading expert on one of the world’s most frightening creatures and he’s paid the price.

This episode originally aired on Oct 12, 2018.

Our interactions with nature are increasingly mediated by technology. We scroll through wildlife feeds on TikTok. We use Instagram to plan hikes. Even in the wilderness, we religiously bring our phones to document the experience. And then there are animal cams.

Since the 1990s, people have fawned over livestreams of cute pandas and colorful fish. One could argue that animal cams another example of how we’ve jammed a screen between ourselves and the wild. But the story of Jackie the bald eagle presents a different perspective: one in which technology might bring us closer to our fellow creatures.

Producer Dean Russell speaks with Endless Thread co-host Ben Brock Johnson about the potential upsides of technonaturalism.

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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.

In 2017, Rhett Barker and his friends needed a way to stay in touch after graduating college. They were ecology majors, and meme groups were in vogue, so they created Wild Green Memes for Ecological Fiends on Facebook.

It began as a place to share silly nature-centered memes. The jokes were comically esoteric: about, say, the scientific name of a rare wild feline or the bites of Brazilian wandering spiders. You needed to know the science to laugh.

In spite of this — or because of it — the group attracted hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world. Now the group is a sprawling ecosystem of memelords with a “relentlessly optimistic” take on the natural world. Rhett decided to put the group’s popularity to good use. The results were overwhelming.

Endless Thread examines the psychology of conservation online and how people are using hope, fear, and humor to repair the planet.

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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.

P.S. Thanks to Derek for the rad story rec!

In 2016, followers flocked to an Instagram user purporting to be Miquela Sousa, a 19-year-old Brazilian-American model, singer, and sometimes activist.

For years, no one was quite sure if Miquela was made-up, or to what degree. Was she a model rendered doll-like by filters? An actress? A totally fictional character?

Her ambiguous humanity helped Miquela land lucrative brand partnerships with the likes of BMW and Calvin Klein. But in recent years, interest in her has been slipping. Writer Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan joins Endless Thread to talk about Miquela's mysterious origin story, and what her declining relevance reveals about our current relationship with AI.

You can read Mercedes Gonzales-Bazan's essay, Death of the Artificial Influencer, here.

Credits: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The host is Ben Brock Johnson.

The halls of science, known for prim propriety and careful debate, are feuding. A new theory of gravity challenges Einstein's general relativity, our current understanding of that thing that keeps our feet on the ground. Physicists are upset.

"Cotton gravity"—named in honor of mathematician Émile Cotton, not fluffy flora—was first posited by Japanese researcher Junpei Harada in 2021. The idea, which modifies general relativity and discounts the theory of dark matter, spurred a surprisingly catty argument on arXiv.org, an open-access website for scientific preprints.

Things got nerdy. And hilarious. Endless Thread explains.

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Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell.