Breaking Bread or Breaking Ties?

Back in the day, we didn't have access to our weird uncle's every political thought. In the age of social media, though, we all too often do, making avoiding politics at family gatherings all the more difficult. Endless Thread listeners share their stories of familial strife, and how they plan to navigate an especially politically divisive holiday season with integrity, humor, and love. Credits: This episode was written by Ben Brock Johnson and produced by Grace Tatter. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson.

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

• 0:00Amory Sivertson?

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. A recent episode explores the intersection between fashion and sustainability. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  WBUR Podcast, Boston.

• 0:29Amory Sivertson?

  Bonnie. Yeah, I said it like that because I hate her guts.

• 0:33Speaker 02

  I've since learned to lock my tweets.

• 0:35Speaker 03

  I really stopped engaging probably 15 years ago when it seemed like Facebook was getting really weird.

• 0:42Speaker 04

  He could have talked to me about it before deciding to just cut me out.

• 0:46Speaker 05

  I said, I don't hate you, but I don't see the 2020 election as politics. I see it as human rights.

• 0:54Speaker 06

  I feel like we can have differences of opinion in my family, but as long as they respect me as a person, I will show them the same respect.

• 1:02Amory Sivertson?

  Bonnie.

• 1:08Speaker 05

  Ama.

• 1:09Amory Sivertson?

  Benjo.

• 1:11Speaker 05

  Do you have a weird uncle and will you tell us about him and whether or not you or your family fights with him on Facebook about politics?

• 1:20Amory Sivertson?

  I cannot confirm or deny that I have a weird uncle. Well, you know, what's interesting about my extended family is that there are many an uncle and some of those uncles think that others of those uncles are the weird uncles and the other uncles think the other uncles are the weird uncles. You know what I'm saying?

• 1:43Speaker 05

  Oh, I know.

• 1:43Amory Sivertson?

  Which is to say, there is political division in my extended family. And so

• 1:49Speaker 05

  Amongst the uncles.

• 1:51Amory Sivertson?

  Amongst the uncles and depending upon.

• 1:55Amory Sivertson?

  Whose point of view you are more aligned with, you are bound to think the other side is the weird uncle.

• 2:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:02Amory Sivertson?

  What about you?

• 2:03Speaker 05

  So sadly, most of my uncles have passed away. I think maybe in some ways I am the weird uncle. Maybe not politically because my family's pretty monochromatic in a two-party system. But I do my best to carry on Johnson traditions of weirdness.

• 2:21Amory Sivertson?

  Such as? I say that like I don't know you as a person, but.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  I don't think I've ever awful waffled you, have I?

• 2:29Amory Sivertson?

  Awful waffled? No.

• 2:31Speaker 05

  This is, uh, this is when I show up at your house before the sun comes up with all the ingredients for waffles and then I make you waffles. I force myself into your house and then I make you waffles and I wake you up with waffles. You and Mike.

• 2:44Amory Sivertson?

  Nothing awful about that.

• 2:46Speaker 05

  That's what I would say, but it's kind of awful because like you're, you're breaking and entering and then you're.

• 2:52Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm not going to put my elbow through a window, but I might ring your doorbell a bunch of times. Anyway, that's the kind of weird uncle I am. I, you know, I do things like that, I feel like.

• 3:03Amory Sivertson?

  Okay. Well, this isn't really the kind of weirdness that we're talking about this week.

• 3:09Speaker 05

  No, no. If only it was, yeah.

• 3:11Amory Sivertson?

  We're talking about in reaction to this election, how some pretty loud views posted on the internet are going to play out around the holiday table, under the tree, next to the menorah.

• 3:24Speaker 05

  Beneath the turkey leg.

• 3:28Speaker 05

  The toe-furkey leg in your house.

• 3:31Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, because look, let's be real. It feels like this country is about to hit terminal velocity when it comes to our politics and maybe how those politics play out in presidencies.

• 3:43Amory Sivertson?

  So let's hear some real talk from you.

• 3:52Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Sivertson.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson and you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 3:56Amory Sivertson?

  We're coming to you from WBUR, Boston's family holiday dinner table.

• 4:01Speaker 05

  Today's episode, hey, pass the greens, Amory. Would you pass the greens?

• 4:06Speaker 05

  Today's episode.

• 4:07Amory Sivertson?

  Breaking bread or breaking ties?

• 4:30Speaker 05

  All right. So Emery, you came up with our approach for this episode. Why? I didn't really have to come up with anything. I was just seeing this in real time. I was reminded that in an election year, emotions are high, tensions become more visible on social media, people want to voice their opinions, and they also take other people's political opinions kind of personally when it has to do with who is allowed to be in our country, who is allowed access to healthcare, who is allowed this or that. So I was just witnessing some of those conversations play out between family

• 5:11Speaker 05

  members of mine on social media and remembered, oh yeah, we're all going to be gathering here shortly. And what will that look like in real life? And we have now asked a bunch of listeners to send us voice memos or emails on this topic. And kudos to y'all for following the assignment. Let us start with Piper. Emery, did you clock this listener, Piper, coming in with some, with some things to say? I did clock it. I haven't read it yet. So we're going to read it in real time, right? Yeah, let's do it.

• 5:52Speaker 05

  Okay, Piper says, I ruined Zoom Thanksgiving in 2020 because of a tweet. My cousin named her dog Trump. And Piper tweeted what she thought about that decision by her cousin. My point was simply that Trump is a stupid name for a dog, regardless of politics. My family and I obviously disagree on Trump, the candidate, but hand to my heart, my critique was purely aesthetic. Surely, sure, Piper. Sure it was. Purely. I would also mourn for a dog named Biden, or Kamala, or Sotomayor. It just doesn't have the je ne sais quoi I look for in a dog name. Tweeting this before the election caused

• 6:33Amory Sivertson?

  The biggest political fight we've had in years. Hopefully this year I will learn to shut my mouth. Unlikely, though. Oh, Piper, please never learn to shut your mouth because you are hilarious.

• 6:47Speaker 05

  Seriously. But also thoughtful. Producer Grace Tatter got Piper's digits, got her on the phone, got more of the story.

• 6:57Speaker 02

  I know that there are some family members where my respect for our familial ties kind of exceeds my willingness to change their mind or start something that's gonna go downhill. All of my family's already in Michigan, so we're just staying together. Usually it's just my nuclear family and our grandmother at Thanksgiving. And then we do kind of a leftovers thing with the rest of the family. So, yep, we'll probably be gathered the day after Thanksgiving.

• 7:24Amory Sivertson?

  And does she think politics will come up?

• 7:27Speaker 02

  I hope not. Usually we go in with a couple, my mom and I, will strategize and we'll have like, okay, here's how we're gonna get off the topic if it does arise. My dad, just, he takes the bait. I love him so much, but he does take the bait if someone brings up a disagreement. So we gotta have little distraction topics that we can bring up that are uncontroversial.

• 7:54Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, a good old subject change. I like that. I connect with this because we've had, for family gatherings in the past, discussed whether or not politics was allowed to come up at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

• 8:09Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 8:09Amory Sivertson?

  I don't know if that's, it sounds like that's probably not an issue for you, Ben. And I don't even remember where we landed because I know someone suggested it and then someone else said, no, we should be able to talk about these things and...

• 8:21Speaker 05

  My family is a no topic is off limits kind of family. And in fact, I think we kind of prefer extremely direct. We're not really a small talk family. Also, we're not a family with any political named pets. We name our pets after like musical composers. But the instinct to just steer clear of politics is something we heard from another listener. A, he just asked. Us to go by one initial A. At the same time, politics are also very personal for A. He is a trans man living in Utah. He grew up in a big Mormon family and he wants to be able to talk about the issues that are important to him with the people who are important to him. One person in particular.

• 9:04Speaker 06

  My dad is my hero and he's always struck me as a kind and very intelligent person. And for that reason, this election season has put me very at odds at him as well as the way that he raised me to be and value in other people. And I'm unsure how to reconcile it. I don't understand how he can be a loving father of four daughters, plus me, a transgender man, and yet also call Donald Trump a courageous figure. For me, it's not really about Republican versus Democrat. Even if Trump had the exact same political views that I did and supported the kind of policies that I thought would be valuable for the country, I wouldn't be able to support him knowing the things that he's done and his lack of moral character.

• 9:49Speaker 06

  Certainly, I wouldn't call him brave. To me, his actions are unconscionable and directly against the values that my dad taught me to raise. It feels like some kind of strange disconnect in his mind that I don't know how to broach or even talk about with him without creating further polarization and pushing him further away. The past eight years have been really shocking here in Utah, seeing people that are my family members and people I work with and people just generally in the community support such a vile man in favor of supporting their political party. I wouldn't be able to look people in the eyes doing that myself.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  I want to talk to my dad about this and tell him my feelings about how.

• 10:38Speaker 06

  The person that he's supporting seems against every other value that he seems to hold in his life, but I don't really know how. I don't want to lose my relationship with my dad, and so I have been unsure how to talk with him about that. I will see my dad around the holidays. We live really nearby, and I'd see him very regularly. So I don't imagine that changing, but I do want to talk to him, and so I'm trying to figure out how.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Oh, that's so hard when you disagree with someone who is as close to you as a parent, and when you feel like the person that your parent supports basically denies a fundamental part of who you are. And I sometimes think about these kinds of differences, Ben, like when we hear A say that Donald Trump is a vile person.

• 11:39Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  I try to think about someone who really supports Donald Trump thinking that Kamala Harris is a vile person. And you might not understand how they could say Kamala Harris is a vile person, and they might not understand how you could say Donald Trump is a vile person, and we just literally think that the opposite thing is true. And so you feel a little insane, because you're caught in a "how could you possibly think this?" loop, no matter what side you're on. You know what I mean?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  No, this is fine.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  No, absolutely. I think, I mean, that's the kind of weird moment that we're in, right? Like, it feels like people are living in at least two and maybe many different realities.

• 12:33Amory Sivertson?

  Dress debate, the, the blue and black versus white and gold, except we're talking about fundamental beliefs here.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, it's like the dress, but with racism and murder or something. Instead of, instead of saying that the dress is blue, you're saying you can't live here anymore, go back to the country you fled to save your life and your family's life. Or we're saying you, we're not saying the dress is gold, we're saying you, you don't have access to healthcare.

• 13:03Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and I think that this has been a debate of such big issues with a capital I, when also it's, it's always going to also be an election about people and people that are dear to us and that we know and love. And sometimes the larger issues feel like they become more important than the person that you've known your whole life.

• 13:32Amory Sivertson?

  And that's so sad.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  Okay, we're going to come back to A. And in the meantime, we're going to hear from Erica.

• 13:40Amory Sivertson?

  Erica reposted an Instagram story about how Jewish people were indigenous to Jerusalem. She posted this on Christmas Day of last year, just after she shared with her broader family that she was about to have a baby.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  About a month later, we have a family call on Zoom every month because the parents, the sister and her husband, myself and my husband, live all in different cities. And I get on the family Zoom and hear from my sister-in-law that her husband will no longer be participating in the family calls because he was offended by this post on Instagram. I never heard from him about it. And I let her know that I was available to talk about it if you wanted to.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  I guess I kind of felt like it wasn't fair that she was put in a place of having to deliver the news and certainly wouldn't be able to like work out the issues as some sort of mediator when he wasn't participating even. So kind of just let it sit. I was shocked.

• 15:00Speaker 04

  It seems like he could have talked to me about it before deciding to just cut me out, but it was like without a word.

• 15:09Speaker 05

  And I want to say something, Emery, about this story because two things I think are worth stating. Number one, clearly this story is about the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. So that's like going on in the background here. Another thing I should say is that listening to this story, our producer Grace and I did come away with a lot of questions about the other side of this story. And I think that's true for everyone we heard from. So just an acknowledgement that we're really hearing one side of the story from each of these people that we're hearing from. And some of them are, you know, thinking about that other side and presenting that other side differently than others. And yeah, we should just think

• 15:54Speaker 05

  about that as we go through this.

• 15:56Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, that's a great, a great reminder. Erica said that this estrangement continued through the birth of her baby. Her sister-in-law's husband refused to come visit. Around this time, there was also a conversation in the family about who was casting votes for whom. The husband of Erica's sister-in-law couldn't vote because he isn't a citizen. He's from Turkey. But the sister-in-law had a take on this. And just a heads up, there's a lot of train sound in the background wherever Erica was recording this. Here's what the sister-in-law said.

• 16:28Speaker 04

  She would not be voting for Kamala because of Kamala's support for Israel, or she, or something about unless Kamala came out against Israel. And my mother-in-law was...

• 16:53Speaker 04

  Encouraging my sister-in-law to vote. And somehow this turned into the brother-in-law, the husband screaming at my mother-in-law and saying to her, "I'm a communist. You should know this about me."

• 17:12Amory Sivertson?

  This division has continued. And according to Erica, it's resulted in the husband giving multiple members in the family the silent treatment and also encouraging his wife to do the same.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  To me, his behavior is just blatantly abusive. And it's really concerning the way he's, I think, trying to isolate her by creating this division and not supporting her relationships with her family.

• 17:44Amory Sivertson?

  Erica says that her sister-in-law still comes to regular family Zoom calls, even though the husband does not. And she feels good about that. She's written her sister letters about how she feels, but she's not sure where all of this will lead.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  And it all comes from this apparent issue of politics on the other side of the world when there's so much else happening. And our relationship really doesn't, in my opinion, need to be about our opinions about politics. But it seems that for at least him, it runs deeper. And it's hard for me to know, is it really about the politics? Or is it about control over his wife or control over me in a gendered sort of way? So thanks for asking. This was long, and have a great night.

• 18:50Amory Sivertson?

  As to whether or not Erica will see this portion of her family around the holidays this year, that is unclear. But maybe a good footnote, if you believe, like she might, that family connection should, ahem, trump politics. When Erica's baby came into

• 19:06Speaker 05

  This world, her sister-in-law and her sister-in-law's parents did come to meet the little one. We're going to hear some more family tea slash drama, some involving a wizard, right after this.

• 19:41Amory Sivertson?

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Is sustainability in fashion a selling point for consumers? I think the sustainability gets advertised as being a big driver of fashion, when in fact, I think it's way down on the list of purchase criteria for consumers. 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 whether consumers can be both fashionable and sustainable.

• 20:21Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Alison Aubrey, longtime health and science correspondent with NPR. And I've got a new podcast all about the science and wisdom of life after 50. It's called Your Turn with Alison Aubrey. We want to take you on a journey to help you explore all the opportunities to make change and feel good as you step into middle age and beyond from WBUR and NPR.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Your Turn with Alison Aubrey from NPR and WBUR. Supported by AARP. New episodes every Thursday.

• 20:55Speaker 01

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• 21:18Speaker 05

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• 21:29Speaker 05

  We are back with a family dispute about a wizard.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Hi. So my story for the family tension and conversations about the online world meeting our family world comes back a couple of years ago, back when it just started coming out that J.K. Rowling had more TERF-aligned ideology. I believe she identifies with that term now. But at that time, me, a young queer person with a lot of trans folk in my personal life, it meant a lot.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  TERF, as in trans-exclusionary radical feminist, as some people call them, and J.K.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Rowling, who has become a pretty loud anti-trans rights person in the discourse. Sage called us because, number one, Harry Potter fans are extremely online, and number two, what better way to connect with a loved one than through the complexities of a totally fantasy world and the person who created it? Right? Right? Wrong.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  When I brought that conversation casually up to my mother, I was kind of shocked with how much she kind of dug in and refused to give me leeway with it, to allow me to express something that mattered to me and then be sympathetic about it. In hindsight, it makes a lot of sense because that was the story that she fell in love with my father through. It's how she taught him to read, and it's kind of an important part of their history of my mom's identity. She's not like a huge Harry Potter nerd. She doesn't have tattoos or whatever, but it's still a cornerstone of her past to an extent. In fact, I still own the book that they used to make notes in. There's highlights, little scribbles on the side.

• 23:18Speaker 05

  Sage says that basically, they can't talk about the real stuff behind the books, and that is hard. But in order to be the kind of family that does still get together around the holidays, for instance... Sage has to let this ride for now.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  I realize what's more important is just preserving that relationship I have with my mother versus this ephemeral idea, especially in this internet world, of being right. Thank you.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Sage, a sage and a saint. Okay, so back from the fantasy world to the very real one. We got an email from Diana, who is not a listener but is a Republican. Maybe she's a future listener? She was actually Googling "family conflict," which is how she got to our show. And it sounds like recent weeks and the campaign before the election have been rough. Here's a little of Diana's email. "We've had the weirdest and worst family interactions during the election and the next day, and really still ongoing. My immediate family with husband and kids includes eight people. Three of the five are Democrats, five are Republican.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  I'm the mom, Republican, and my husband and one of my sons, Democrats, and I have been engaging in a text thread with our whole family that has played out a lot of this terrible conversation. My husband told me that he could never look at me and my Republican kids the same way. My son basically told me that the way I raised him with integrity and good character was a lie, and that he doesn't really know me like he thought he did if I could vote for Trump. He even said he needed to take off his rose-colored glasses regarding me. We will continue to have issues in our family, sounds like it, but my plan is to not ever

• 25:13Speaker 05

  talk about politics and keep the TV off anything that talks about Trump, which is very difficult. I've never seen anything like this, especially not from my tight-knit family. It's heartbreaking."

• 25:28Speaker 05

  Okay, here's something that I really find fascinating and deeply connected to everything we're all going through, Amory. Because we're experiencing an internet-fueled version of something that that really existed before the web, too. Generations before the internet used to have a commonly uttered rule: no politics at the dinner table. And without making a judgment on whether that is a good rule or a bad rule, it seems to be a rule in reaction to something.

• 25:58Amory Sivertson?

  Probably a reaction to fights. Big, messy, maybe ugly fights. And we're in this period right now where we're used to sharing so much of ourselves and our thoughts on social media that our political beliefs make their way onto the platforms as well. And then we realize, oh, my God, now we all know how our relatives are feeling in this especially divided time. And so we're creating an internet version of this no politics at the dinner table now as a reaction. And we are, we're muting people, we're sometimes getting off of social media altogether.

• 26:40Speaker 05

  Which is why we should get back to A, the trans man with a gaggle of sisters who sent us a voicemail about finding a way to still love his dad, even though the candidate his dad supported in the election stands against A's right to exist as a person. A reminder that A is in a small town in Utah and that there are a number of people in A's family who might fall under the weird Uncle Moniker. He's feeling this trend of giving up on social media interaction, the digital version of this no politics at the dinner table.

• 27:12Amory Sivertson?

  And he's part of this trend, too. When we asked him about whether he was engaging in debate on social media ahead of the holidays,

• 27:20Speaker 06

  I did when I was younger, like, you know, eighteen or nineteen, because like back then I was like, I could make a difference, you know, I'm gonna change my uncle's mind on this Facebook post. Like, what ends up happening is I realize that we just kind of like talk at each other, we're not really

• 27:36Speaker 06

  making any meaningful connection, if that makes sense, like, I'm not gonna change anyone's mind on a Facebook post. Then they're not gonna change my mind. If a political topic I don't agree with or want to like discuss in greater depth of that comes up in person, then I will. But like at this point in my life, you know, it's been a decade of trying to respond to to online posts and not really seeing a difference. I realize it just makes me angry and it doesn't do anything meaningful.

• 28:08Speaker 05

  Another listener we heard from Nate felt similar to A. Nate's stayed away from familial internet politics discussion for a while.

• 28:17Amory Sivertson?

  I purposefully wasn't on the same social media as my parents because I wasn't out to them. And when I was on social media, I wanted to be somewhere I could be out, so stayed away from them. My cool aunt, she is also on Facebook and like sometimes she tells me the things she sees.

• 28:33Speaker 05

  That's from our follow-up call with Nate, who was coming into his own as a queer person almost a decade ago. This is from the first voice memo Nate sent us. Politics isn't the sole reason I'm no longer in contact with a great many of my more conservative family members, but it is a contributing factor. In the years leading up to 2016, my mom's company laid off just about everyone in her department. Many of them people she'd been friends with for years.

• 28:59Amory Sivertson?

  Left her with a much reduced role and shipped all that labor overseas. I believe she was depressed for years because of this. One of the ways she handled this dilemma was by going to a Trump rally in 2016, probably believing in his rhetoric that he'd keep American jobs in America. Nate says he was horrified at what he felt was his family and most importantly, his mom, moving towards a political platform that includes- A lot of hatred. To me, politics wasn't an issue of how American companies should do business, but the morality of how queer people should be treated. I tried to bring this up to her at every opportunity while empathizing with her own trauma, but every time I did, I was met with a somewhat scared, "I don't want to talk about that." I remember seeing her on the morning of November 6th, looking at her phone with the same expression

• 29:44Amory Sivertson?

  one makes upon opening a birthday card and literally proclaiming, "Yay, it's a good thing that he won." That was the day I first lost respect for her. She had a similar trite reaction to watching the events of January 6th on her phone, and she didn't want to talk about any of it. The human rights violations taking place at the Mexican border? Nope. The manhandling of the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration and the blatant inadequacy of the American healthcare system? Nope. My transness? Nope. In the end, we had nothing left to talk about. Most of my family holds similar hateful views about transgender people, but I do have one cool aunt who lives out of state. Someday, I'll spend the holidays with her, though it isn't in the cards this year.

• 30:29Amory Sivertson?

  In the meantime, there's a handful of charities in my area that let you adopt a child or family to buy Christmas presents for. I pick one of them to do every year. If I can't spend time with my own family, I can at least make someone else's family a little happier.

• 30:45Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, I really love that.

• 30:48Amory Sivertson?

  I really love that because I guess this is making me emotional, but, you know, in times when you are feeling disconnected from the people that you most want to feel connected to, and you just feel hopeless in some ways, you want to find something good that you can actually do. And sometimes we think of that in too grand of a way, when really what we should be doing is like, just buy a present for someone. That is a good thing, you know?

• 31:21Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:24Amory Sivertson?

  So Nate may not be doing the holidays with his mom anytime soon, and that's a decision that is his and his alone.

• 31:34Amory Sivertson?

  We want to play you one more bit of feedback from Kristin.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  So I don't debate my family on politics on social media. Most of my family is on Facebook, which I don't use very much. I'm mostly on TikTok and I have a TikTok that is very political. I post videos about it all the time. My mom doesn't watch my TikTok. She doesn't really like TikTok. In person, however, we do talk politics and my mom is very clear that she doesn't like it when people resort to ad hominem attacks because I've been telling her the sorts of things people say to me online.

• 32:08Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so different filter bubbles here when it comes to social media, but what about when they get together?

• 32:14Speaker 02

  So as far as Thanksgiving goes, we generally try to keep politics off the table, not talk about them and talk about other things.

• 32:21Speaker 05

  Off the table. Solid dad joke, Kristin. Solid.

• 32:26Amory Sivertson?

  Nicely done. But what is not solid is Kristin's mom and stepdad when it comes to how they interact with and refer to Kristin's sister.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  My sister is trans and my mom is trying to make amends with her and not say things that piss my sister off, even though they disagree on politics. My sister has agreed to just not talk about them. My sister has a hard line about being misgendered or deadnamed, so my mom has been working on that. My stepdad doesn't seem to be as receptive as my mom does about using my sister's name, so he just avoids it. But I believe that really does bother my sister a lot.

• 33:08Speaker 05

  Kristin has a plan. Two-part plan. Part number one, bring her dog, a dog who needs things at the holidays to be chill.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  No yelling is allowed when he's around because that upsets him a lot.

• 33:23Amory Sivertson?

  Number two?

• 33:24Speaker 02

  I plan on bringing the game Overcooked. Overcooked 2 is a game where you make food and it's just pure chaos and super fun. And I'm thinking that maybe that will help die down tensions and we can have something else to fight about.

• 33:40Amory Sivertson?

  It's a solid move, bringing a board game.

• 33:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, agreed.

• 33:44Amory Sivertson?

  I'm assuming Overcooked 2 is a board Game, I don't really know, but a game in general. I think that's a smart move.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  I think so, too. I mean, it's either it's like either a really smart move. I think it is a smart move, but I suppose it could also result in.

• 33:58Amory Sivertson?

  More fights.

• 33:59Speaker 05

  More fights. It depends on how seriously your family takes competition on board games. But I think for our final farewell, we should hear from A again because we followed up with him the day after the election. A told us that the aunt who was hosting Thanksgiving had made some post-election posts that made the thought of seeing her in just a few weeks harder to stomach, even though this is also a person who has been kind to him his entire life. But he still thinks he's going to celebrate with his family, albeit for maybe a shorter visit, even if it's hard.

• 34:36Speaker 06

  I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan, and in the days since the election, I've been thinking about a scene from Return of the King where Sam is trying to find Frodo and Mordor, and he feels like all hope is lost. But he knows he has to keep going because that's really all he can do. And so he sings. And the last two lines of his song are, "I will not say the day is done nor bid the stars farewell." And then later, you know, when he's found Frodo and he's reflecting on why those specific words came to him, he describes it as not a hopeful song, but defiant. And that is just generally how I feel right now. I don't know if there's any reason to hope for things to get better, but I want to do something productive with all the anger I feel.

• 35:18Speaker 06

  So rather than, you know, social media arguing, I'm trying to channel it into helping the queer communities here in Utah. The past couple of days, that's been on a pretty small scale, just checking in on queer friends and cousins and relatives, as well as caring for my husband. In the long term, I'd like to figure out larger ways to support the queer community here. I don't know what that will look like because I'm still thinking about it, but I want to take the pain that I feel and channel it into something that's fighting back against the hate around me that I see in the country and protects the people who are most vulnerable to it because I feel like that's most important right now.

• 36:07Speaker 06

  You know, Ben.

• 36:08Amory Sivertson?

  I think I thought that by putting the call out to listeners about the conversations that they were witnessing or and or taking part in in their own families with regards to politics. I thought maybe I'd have a better sense of what to do in my own family and in my own situation. And I don't.

• 36:34Speaker 05

  I'm shocked.

• 36:35Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, it's just so tricky because people can talk one way on social media. And that sometimes can just feel really hurtful, sometimes hateful. And yet those people can still love you and you can still love them. And I don't know how to make sense of that right now. But I think I do want to keep trying to find common ground and keep trying to understand why we say the things we do, why we express the things that we express. And I don't want to give up on trying to find common ground.

• 37:17Amory Sivertson?

  And I don't want to give up on trying to preserve relationships that I know really do matter for reasons that have nothing to do with who is in the Oval Office. And in the meantime, I hope that this episode at least made people feel a little less alone in the situations that they find themselves in right now with their family members.

• 37:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, I guess the thing that I think about is for me and maybe for you too, as two people who, you know, we have different levels of privilege, but I think in comparison to some other people that we've heard from today, we are more privileged. I would say.

• 38:03Speaker 05

  To me, a big part of the answer is like, build a relationship with your weird uncle. Like, find a way to not just hang out on the holidays, but to have like more interaction. And like, that's part of the sacrifice that we can make, that people can make when they feel like they can make that sacrifice to try to talk to a person enough that we can understand each other and maybe we can change the way that we feel in the world in a positive direction. Because I think about QAnon casualties, like that subreddit, a lot. When we talk about this stuff and I think about how usually

• 38:44Speaker 05

  the way that people get removed from kind of stuck ways of thinking is there's someone in their life who refuses to give up on them and like demands to have a meaningful relationship with them despite all the nuttiness. And that's how that person climbs out. So I think like, people who feel like they can, and A is an inspiration in this regard. People who feel like they can, they have the capacity to demand a meaningful relationship with somebody who is on the opposite end of the spectrum, should do that.

• 39:28Speaker 05

  And that, to me, is the way out.

• 39:30Amory Sivertson?

  Thank you to everyone who, who shared thoughts and feelings. We feel your rage, we feel your pain, and, and they are valid.

• 39:41Speaker 05

  We feel your funk.

• 39:42Amory Sivertson?

  Feel your funk, too. They're valid, they matter, and we appreciate you.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  This episode was produced by Grace Tatter. It was co-hosted by myself, Amory Sivertson, and?

• 40:13Amory Sivertson?

  Bonnie.

• 40:14Speaker 05

  It was sound designed by Emily Jankowski.

• 40:17Amory Sivertson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell, managing producer Suma Tajoshi, and our production manager, Paul Vikes.

• 40:23Speaker 05

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and a dog that just will not tolerate loud noises.

• 40:31Amory Sivertson?

  No yelling. Huge thanks to all of our listeners who sent in voice memos and emails over the past several weeks. Even if you didn't hear yours, we really appreciate it, and it definitely shaped this episode. So, thank you. We're talking to Diana.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  A.

• 40:47Amory Sivertson?

  Madeline.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Erica.

• 40:48Amory Sivertson?

  Nicholas.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  Connie.

• 40:50Amory Sivertson?

  Ellen.

• 40:50Speaker 05

  Nate.

• 40:51Amory Sivertson?

  Eric.

• 40:51Speaker 05

  Sage.

• 40:52Amory Sivertson?

  Kristen.

• 40:52Speaker 05

  Cynical Contrarian.

• 40:54Amory Sivertson?

  Vicky.

• 40:55Speaker 05

  Piper. If you've got an unsolved mystery, an untold history, or a crazy story from the internets that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless Thread at WBUR.org. Bonnie.

• 41:07Amory Sivertson?

  Happy Thanksgiving, Bonnie.

• 41:29Amory Sivertson?

  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 fashion and culture journalist and author Dana Thomas on the origin of fast fashion. In the 1990s, during the early days of globalization, a small brand out of Spain called Zara was deciding to spread its wings beyond Spain and move throughout Europe and roll out its stores of not expensive, kind of fashionable clothes, middle market.

• 42:07Amory Sivertson?

  Market accessible fashion. And what they did for their business model was they would go to fashion shows and see what was the hip thing and then reinterpret it in less expensive fabrics, just like Gap was doing. But at the time, Zara was embracing this this business model called QR, Quick Response, which was in fact invented by the US apparel industry. Basically, you'd put in a few items of a collection in the store. And if it did really well, then you put more into production and you put them in the store. And if they didn't do so well, then you stopped it and you moved on to the next thing. It was like, almost like doing a focus group drop of clothes in the store and seeing what

• 42:52Amory Sivertson?

  what works, what doesn't, and what does. You play. So they started moving into this area of Quick Response and turning out more collections more quickly and getting them onto their store floor faster. And they saw that by doing this, by upping the number of times they did drops in the store to every two weeks as opposed to four times a year, that their numbers of visits from consumers went up dramatically. 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.