There's a new emoji for sadness :(

What does the thumbs-up emoji mean to you? Or the wilted rose? The meanings of emojis are limitless and can differ across social groups or generations. On this episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory discuss two stories about how certain emojis have taken on surprising meanings. Show notes: * Here’s why the Aerial Tramway Emoji is suddenly in every YouTube comment section https://www.dailydot.com/culture/aerial-tramway-emoji-youtube-tiktok/ (daily dot) *Alright guys.. What is does this emoji mean and why is it used so much? https://www.reddit.com/r/teenagers/comments/1kgvomx/alrught_guys_what_is_does_this_emoji_mean_and_why/ (Reddit)

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice. Try one. Mmm.

• 1:09Speaker 04

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.

• 1:18Speaker 05

  WBUR Podcast, Boston.

• 1:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, y'all. Before the show starts, we just want to remind you that we set up secure lines for you to communicate with us. If there's anything you need to share anonymously or very carefully in this time that we are living.

• 1:40Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, we have a Proton Mail account. That is [email protected]. Or you can text or call us on Signal. That number is 646-456-9095.

• 1:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  We should also mention that WBUR is an NPR member station and that the CEO of NPR, Catherine Marr, chairs the board of the Signal Foundation, the nonprofit that supports the messaging app. Anyway, if there's anything you need to be in touch with us about and you want to be careful with how you share that information and protected, that's how you get in touch. [email protected] or call us or text Signal 646-456-9095.

• 2:32Amory Sivertson?

  Ben Brock Johnson, we are gathered here today to discuss emojis. Moji.

• 2:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dear beloved Emery Sivertson, my co-host on Endless Thread, yes, we are.

• 2:46Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, no, the bots got you.

• 2:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  They got me? Yeah, they got me.

• 2:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  The bots be getting everybody.

• 2:54Amory Sivertson?

  All right, before we talk about emojis or emoji, we need to discuss the elephant emoji in the room, which is?

• 3:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  What's that?

• 3:03Amory Sivertson?

  Is it emoji or emojis?

• 3:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ah, I know. And I feel very gif versus Jif about this, which is like, it was always Jif and I tried to do the right thing for a long time.

• 3:16Amory Sivertson?

  No, no.

• 3:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then I just, I was like, wow, nobody's going with this. Even the guy who created it said it was Jif, but nope, that's not what it is. It's gif.

• 3:26Amory Sivertson?

  Did he really?

• 3:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes. He went to his grave saying Jif.

• 3:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm not even kidding. I'm dead serious.

• 3:35Amory Sivertson?

  But the Jif is a peanut butter people won out like myself and gif is now standard? Okay.

• 3:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Gif is standard. Yeah.

• 3:42Amory Sivertson?

  We, we did an episode in years past where we referred to emojis plural as emoji. And some people were not happy about it. So that makes discussing emojis in this episode a little uncomfortable, but we're going to work past it. Cause we have some little stories for you.

• 4:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, we do. The story that I have to bring to you today, which is just a little, it's just a little, little one.

• 4:07Amory Sivertson?

  Much like an emoji?

• 4:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is about the meaning of emojis. And like how it's different for different people. So one of the things that really rocked my world when I learned it, which I mean to most of our listeners is like, yeah, okay. Obviously grandpa, the thumb emoji could be flippant. Like it could be like, kind of like a middle finger emoji, but it's a thumb emoji. You know what I mean? Like people give you the thumbs up. That's not like, all right, or like, cool. It's like, okay, buddy. You know what I mean? Has an edge to it.

• 4:45Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, I used that on the road behind the wheel.

• 4:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mmm, yep.

• 4:50Amory Sivertson?

  When you're tempted to give the other finger, instead, you're just like, cool bud, cool.

• 4:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, that kind of broke my brain because I was like, oh, my God, like, are all these people that are giving me thumbs up emoji, are they mad at me actually? Like, it's one of those things where it's like, it totally changes how you understand the way you've been communicating with people, right? And I will say that I described this recently to a friend who was like, who's probably like an older generation than me, and they were like, are you serious? Like, they were like, also very concerned to have learned this. They were like, oh, my God, really? It means that? And I was like, well, I think it kind of depends on like, who you're talking to and what the conversation is, but like, we think of emoji as having like, kind of like a single meaning, right?

• 5:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a sort of simple, almost like, binary thing where it's like, this is what it means, or it doesn't mean that. But emoji maybe contains some small multitudes as well. So I would like to ask you, what emoji do you use when you are sad? What's your I'm sad, or that's sad, or sad reaction emoji?

• 6:01Amory Sivertson?

  Describe, describe the sad situation you're looking for in particular, because it really varies. I feel like when something's actually deeply sad or tragic, you like, can't really use an emoji. But if it's like, no, the, this thing we were gonna go to is gonna get rained out, you can just use the like, the crying emoji.

• 6:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, crying for me is usually like, an I'm sad, but it's not like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry.

• 6:32Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm.

• 6:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you have like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry?

• 6:35Amory Sivertson?

  Probably just like a heart, maybe like a, you know, if it's just like a friend or something, you might send a yellow heart, which I think means care, or I interpret it as care.

• 6:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so, you're getting close. I think a lot of people have used the broken heart.

• 6:54Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  To say like, okay, that makes my heart break, or that's heartbreaking, or that's sad, like, that's been a common emoji that has been used to denote, oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry, that's so sad, or whatever, right?

• 7:09Amory Sivertson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  So, this has been common for a long time, but I think one of the weird things that is happening now is There's this delineation between generations where younger generations like they're like, oh no, I mean, this has always happened, right? But they sort of like reject the thing that's like over and they create a new version. Right? So like that happens with slang. It happens with all different ways of being in the world.

• 7:38Amory Sivertson?

  Sure.

• 7:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  But the broken heart has fallen out of favor as a sadness emoji. And it has been, I think, over time, replaced. And my question to you is, do you know what it's been replaced with?

• 7:58Amory Sivertson?

  Maybe like the thumbs down, something kind of flippant.

• 8:06Amory Sivertson?

  The like heart hands, the heart made by hands emoji.

• 8:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 8:11Amory Sivertson?

  No. Is it something ridiculous?

• 8:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, let me, let me walk you through it.

• 8:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 8:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  So as near as I can tell, heart wasn't actually the first one. There's at least one tweet from a long time ago suggesting that it started with the laughing crying emoji.

• 8:35Amory Sivertson?

  Yep.

• 8:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Then it was the actual crying tears streaming down the face emoji. Then it was the skull emoji. Then it was the broken heart emoji. More recently, it has become the wilted flower. Do you know this one?

• 8:53Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, like the rose that's died. Yeah.

• 8:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  So that, as near as I can tell, that became for a while, the wilted flower emoji or the dead rose emoji, the dead flower emoji was really the chosen emoji to convey sadness, replacing the broken heart. But now we've kind of like gone even past that. And now it is.

• 9:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is the almost dead battery or low battery emoji.

• 9:30Amory Sivertson?

  Low battery. I gotta look this up.

• 9:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, do you know that one?

• 9:35Amory Sivertson?

  I do now. Little battery with red on the bottom.

• 9:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 9:41Amory Sivertson?

  Huh. And that means like sadness, heartbreak?

• 9:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 9:49Amory Sivertson?

  I can't keep up.

• 9:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  I know. It's crazy, right? So like, I, I just think that this is an interesting way in which we all like communicate with each other, but also like certain generations communicate with each other. And it's this way in which, again, we're, we're like less and less able to always kind of communicate the same things to each other with the same language, if that makes sense.

• 10:11Amory Sivertson?

  I'm still, this is like Endless Threat Ancient History, but I'm still using the like, the red faced sweaty person to convey cleaning out the garage.

• 10:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not like horny or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta catch up, man. You might be sending some real mixed messages. Be careful.

• 10:30Amory Sivertson?

  I'm still using eggplants to mean my garden's doing well.

• 10:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, no, no. You're still sending peaches to people.

• 10:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Saying, would you like to pick some peaches with me?

• 10:45Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, all those times I do that.

• 10:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy. Um, well, I just, you know, Emery, I just wanted to catch you up.

• 10:52Amory Sivertson?

  Thank you.

• 10:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hopefully now you're caught up. So dying rose and a low battery emoji, which I think is like something about that like speaks to this sort of like technological ennui that we all are now experiencing. You know what I mean? Where it's like, I'm a robot that is sad because my battery is low. Like, I feel like we're now like fully.

• 11:16Amory Sivertson?

  The singularity is near.

• 11:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, the singularity is near, in which sadness is represented by a low battery. But I just wanted to catch you up and make sure that you understood where we're at and, and, you know, I don't know if you want to say that that makes you sad enough to send the low battery emoji to me, but I just wanted you to, to, you know, to be caught up with, with, with the youths and how they're communicating.

• 11:42Amory Sivertson?

  Phew. Thank you. So grateful.

• 11:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  You're so welcome.

• 11:46Amory Sivertson?

  Well, in a minute, I too will catch you up on something you need to know that the youths are doing with emojis.

• 11:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, boy.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken? A podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 12:30Speaker 08

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 13:26Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 13:28Speaker 09

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 13:41Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice. Try one. Mmm.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.

• 14:00Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so similarly to your story, Ben.

• 14:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 14:06Amory Sivertson?

  Mine has to do with how, we'll say, the youths, specifically people who are regulars of YouTube shorts, who watch a bunch of YouTube shorts, are using a particular emoji. Are you a YouTube short person?

• 14:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know, I have to say, like, I, huh, I only really use YouTube for food. And I've started slipping into the YouTube shorts for food things, but I still don't feel like it gives me quite enough information to actually make food. So I would say no, I'm not a big YouTube shorts person.

• 14:44Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so this started for me with a Reddit post, an out of the loop post, which I love out of the loop, that subreddit, because usually I too am out of the loop.

• 14:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right, right.

• 14:57Amory Sivertson?

  And someone posted, uh, this was about a month ago at the time that we're recording this. They said, "What's going on with a particular emoji on a lot of YouTube shorts?" They said they've been seeing this particular emoji on a lot of YouTube shorts. So I'm gonna text you the emoji that this person was asking about.

• 15:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh dude, so this is...

• 15:21Amory Sivertson?

  You're beside yourself.

• 15:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm beside myself because, no, so this, I was gonna talk to you about this. So this is the tram, the trout, the...

• 15:30Amory Sivertson?

  The aerial tramway.

• 15:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  The aerial tramway emoji.

• 15:33Amory Sivertson?

  Describe it for the people, will ya?

• 15:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a cable, and hanging off the cable is a little cute little car with little windows and a little door on it. And you could get into the aerial tramway emoji and zip on down to some exotic location that you're on your way to, or up the mountain to go skiing or snowboarding or whatever it may be. Yeah, that's what it looks like.

• 15:56Amory Sivertson?

  Yep, okay, and you were gonna say something about it?

• 15:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, what I was going to say, and again, this connects to what we were talking about before, is that... Younger generations, like, they are very purposefully, basically, as near as I can tell. And again, I don't think that this is like anything new necessarily, but it plays out in new ways on the internet. They're basically like, all these other emojis are over. They're like played out. This new emoji, like, nobody's using this one enough. We gotta start using this one.

• 16:27Amory Sivertson?

  Right.

• 16:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  And so I believe that this, is this not the least used emoji? Or was it?

• 16:33Amory Sivertson?

  Yes and no. Okay.

• 16:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, okay, go on.

• 16:37Amory Sivertson?

  So I'm gonna send you, I'm gonna send you the YouTube short that ends up being the answer to this person's question.

• 16:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 16:44Amory Sivertson?

  What is with everybody using this emoji on YouTube Shorts?

• 16:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 16:48Amory Sivertson?

  So the origin, which Redditors chimed in and eventually got to the answer here, is it stems from a particular YouTuber named John Castorline.

• 16:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:57Amory Sivertson?

  Posts this video. It's very short.

• 17:01Speaker 10

  This is the least used emoji in the world. We're gonna change that, and I need your help. I came up with a plan where we can make this emoji one of the most used emojis, at least on YouTube. And it's pretty simple. Instead of using laughing emojis from now on, replace it with this. And if someone doesn't know why you're doing it, don't tell them. Let's just confuse every person who hasn't seen this video.

• 17:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay. This is, he's, it's John's fault. This emoji is everywhere, but also unexplained.

• 17:27Amory Sivertson?

  Yes. So this YouTuber is believed to be the origin of when people started swapping out the crying laughing emoji with the aerial tramway. And as he said, he does not want people to explain themselves. Just post it and make everyone feel a little nuts. So.

• 17:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 17:44Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. But going back to the thesis here at the top, that this is the least used emoji. The reason why I say that that is partially true is that I suspect that he got that information from a Twitter account that is now defunct called Least Used Emoji Bot.

• 18:06Amory Sivertson?

  I was not aware of this Twitter account when it was active.

• 18:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 18:10Amory Sivertson?

  So this, this Twitter account tweeted out multiple times a day what the least used emoji was. However, it was the least used emoji on Twitter. That's the only way that it was able to measure what the least used emoji was. It wasn't across all platforms, all social media sites, all the whole internet.

• 18:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is old too. It's from 2018, like.

• 18:34Amory Sivertson?

  Exactly. It is old. Yeah. And the least used emoji, as of when this account went, you know, defunct, stopped posting, which was in August of 2020, it looks like. The least used emoji was actually something else. It was this.

• 18:56Amory Sivertson?

  Do you recognize this?

• 18:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 19:00Amory Sivertson?

  Do you know what this thing is called? I guess describe it first.

• 19:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so it looks like, uh, it's sort of confusing. Like it, it's, it has a musical, like what looks like maybe it's an eighth note.

• 19:13Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 19:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Musical note.

• 19:15Amory Sivertson?

  Yep, in the upper right corner.

• 19:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  It has, yeah, it's like sort of a four, it's a grid of four. So it has a musical note in the upper right and below that musical note is a percentage sign. Then to the left of that percentage sign is an ampersand. And then above that is the weird one that I don't, I don't know if I've ever seen this before. I don't understand it. It looks like an equals sign, but the bottom equals sign line has a thing sticking out of it that makes that looks, look like a T.

• 19:45Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  So it's like a T with a top.

• 19:48Amory Sivertson?

  T with a top, sure. So according to Emojipedia, that is the Japanese postal mark?

• 19:57Amory Sivertson?

  I don't know. I'm not sure, but that's, that's what Emojipedia refers to it as. And this whole emoji is referred to as the input symbol for symbols.

• 20:09Speaker 11

  Okay.

• 20:11Amory Sivertson?

  Which I have to admit, I only partially understand. I think it's like, maybe this is a a key command shortcut thing that you would hit if you wanted to type a symbol as opposed to typing a number or a letter.

• 20:27Speaker 11

  Oh, okay.

• 20:30Amory Sivertson?

  Emojipedia says, intended to be used on a software keyboard or other input screen to enable symbol input, as opposed to alphabetical or numeric input. But what we can agree on is that understandably, this is, it makes sense that this would not be a popular emoji.

• 20:48Speaker 11

  Mm hmm.

• 20:48Amory Sivertson?

  But before that, there was a period in time where the tramway, the aerial tramway, was the least used emoji for quite a while. And this got some transportation enthusiasts in a tizzy because they, they wanted to sort of save the tramway emoji from being the least used emoji. There was a spinoff Twitter account called Aerial Tramway Enthusiast.

• 21:20Amory Sivertson?

  And it says, you know, tramway hate will not be tolerated here. Some fans of other emoji have taken notice of this account. Just know this is a tramway only zone.

• 21:29Speaker 11

  Wow.

• 21:30Amory Sivertson?

  Yep. There was a, a group that took off called the New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens. They called themselves Numtots and they, which stands for New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens.

• 21:46Speaker 11

  Obviously.

• 21:47Amory Sivertson?

  They, they took to Twitter in support of the aerial tramway. So there was a sort of, um, Effort to give the aerial tramway emoji a new prominence on social media back in 2018.

• 22:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh.

• 22:02Amory Sivertson?

  But it's not until this, this second attempt now on YouTube Shorts, or I'm sure this guy posts on, you know, TikTok and other mediums as well, but

• 22:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure, sure.

• 22:14Amory Sivertson?

  It's this newer 2025, seven years later, attempt after the aerial tramway is, was likely no longer the least popular emoji by a couple of years, according to the Twitter account.

• 22:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 22:31Amory Sivertson?

  But what is actually the least popular emoji? I don't think anyone can say that because even this least popular emoji Twitter account was only measuring on Twitter. And we're not in a post Twitter. I mean, we are in a post Twitter, but we're not in a post X world. But it does feel like, you know, social media is a, it's a whole different ballgame these days.

• 22:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, it's interesting to think about. Number one, love a, love a tramway. Big fan. Do you like a tramway?

• 23:08Amory Sivertson?

  I do and I don't. I'm afraid of heights. I'm afraid of heights.

• 23:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, fair, fair, fair.

• 23:14Amory Sivertson?

  So I'm not anti tramway.

• 23:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  But can't you just imagine yourself in Switzerland sipping a vegan hot chocolate and going up the mountain?

• 23:23Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, I've, I've been on, I like a funicular, which I know is not a tramway, but I, I will go on these things, even though they make me nervous because I know that they give you a, an experience and a, a literal perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise.

• 23:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wait, a funicular?

• 23:40Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. You don't know a funicular?

• 23:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  All I know is that when you said that, I just thought of that song that's like, funiculee, funicula, funiculee, funicula.

• 23:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  And is that connected to funicular?

• 23:55Amory Sivertson?

  Is that what they actually say in that song?

• 23:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think so.

• 24:05Amory Sivertson?

  Well, a funicular is like, it's like a picture, a single little train car, like a little train nugget going up a rail, up a mountain. That's a funicular.

• 24:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Train nugget. I think we should rename it Train Nugget. I mean, funicular is pretty good.

• 24:35Amory Sivertson?

  I'll also say that while looking into this, I happened upon the deadline for the Unicode Consortium's new emoji submissions. So I think we touched on this in a previous episode that

• 24:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, we did.

• 24:49Amory Sivertson?

  in order to have a new emoji, you have to submit an application to the Unicode Consortium, this nonprofit that oversees all of the emojis. And their deadline is July 31st, everyone.

• 25:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, dude.

• 25:03Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an emoji idea, you gotta, you gotta submit that idea before July 31st.

• 25:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Get that train nugget emoji in there now. Whatever you do.

• 25:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  I kind of want listeners to send us their favorite, just hit us over email or comment on our subreddit with just like the single or maybe a couple of your favorite underutilized emoji.

• 25:35Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 25:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know what I mean?

• 25:37Amory Sivertson?

  What's your campaign? What would your campaign for an emoji be about?

• 25:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Amory Sivertson?

  What emoji do you think?

• 25:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is underutilized.

• 25:44Amory Sivertson?

  Right.

• 25:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 25:45Amory Sivertson?

  Right. Deserves the aerial tramway treatment.

• 25:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm. I'm into it.

• 25:51Amory Sivertson?

  Send us your emojis.

• 25:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Send us your emojis.

• 25:53Amory Sivertson?

  Your emojis.

• 26:03Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 26:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was co-hosted by myself, Ben Jiff Johnson.

• 26:12Amory Sivertson?

  And me, Amory Giff Sivertson.

• 26:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was produced by a train nugget pushing up that mountain, Franny Monahan.

• 26:23Amory Sivertson?

  Our editor is Meg Kramer. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

• 26:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, Grace Tatter, our managing producer, Sumit Tajoshi, and our production manager, Paul Vikas.

• 26:36Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, some other wild story from the internet that you want us to tell, and of course, an emoji that you want to create, that you want to promote, that you want to platform, hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR.org.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, executive director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 27:32Speaker 12

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 27:39Speaker 12

  Oh, my gosh. Individualized support, right? Personalization, and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in, because it is very different, depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 28:10Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken?, wherever you get your podcasts. And learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 28:28Speaker 13

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new Fall Arrivals in-store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 29:00Speaker 09

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Swirl Bite?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice.

• 29:15Speaker 09

  Try one.

• 29:16Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites. There's nothing like it.