Endless Thread WBUR

In the aftermath of the Civil War's Battle of Shiloh in 1862, something strange happened. Some soldiers' wounds started to glow.  Stranger still, those with glowing wounds seemed to have better rates of survival. In 2001, a teenage Civil War buff embarked on a science project to explain this so-called "Angel's Glow."

Can you have an orgasm from listening to music? Can you legally own more than six dildos in Texas? Endless Thread digs into several sexy questions that have taken over the internet.

Note: This episode may not be suitable for children.

Credits: This episode was produced and hosted by Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson. Additional production by Dean Russell. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

Once upon a time, in a magical land of Oklahoma, fairy Jasmine LaFleur wanted to create a hashtag to unite Black fairies all across the land. And she did.

Since 2021, on the second Saturday of May, Black fairy enthusiasts have united around #BlackFaeDay to show the world that Black fairies are real, and that there's space for them online and off.

In this episode of Endless Thread, we look into #BlackFaeDay, and how important it is to those who celebrate. And what we find isn't a hashtags to riches story, but a fairytale about how the internet can be a place where dreams bigger than your follower count can come true. Producer Quincy Walters also examines what it takes to become a Black fairy.

This week, we have two stories about etymology. What can words teach us about culture, trade, memory, and the world around us? First up, which “orange” came about first: the fruit or the color? We also discuss the history of the term “bucket list” — a saying that is so embedded in our culture, we forget that it was only formally coined 16 years ago.

Do you ever listen to birds singing catchy little melodies and wonder - wait a second, do they know music theory? Can they sing in thirds and fifths? Half steps and whole steps? Do they have perfect pitch?

Amory and Ben fly into r/AskScience to explore the question of whether or not our feathered friends are, indeed, musical in the way we human animals think about the term.

And Ben turns to the subreddit for theories on why our windshields are no longer splattered with bugs.

What if the internet was only available most of the time? This week, Endless Thread presents an episode of Outside/In — a podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio — about a man in Barcelona who is trying to make the material infrastructure behind the internet as visible and low tech as possible, by building a solar-powered website.