War and Pizza

In the hours leading up to Israel commencing its June missile strikes on Iran, X users were posting about pizza. Specifically, how pizza places around the United States Pentagon were experiencing an unusual spike in business. The Pentagon Pizza Index refers to a theory that dates back to the Cold War, suggesting that increased pizza orders around the Pentagon could be a harbinger of imminent military action by the U. S. or its close allies. In this special episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory dig into the Pizza Index, its history and make some calls to Pentagon-area pizza places for a hot slice of reality pie. Show notes: Pentagon Pizza Report https://x.com/PenPizzaReport/status/1933298907116654897?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1933298907116654897%7Ctwgr%5E077c7646e651f35b7f12b446f0cc432290661e4a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.fastcompany.com%2F91352935%2Fpentagon-pizza-index-the-theory-that-surging-pizza-orders-signal-global-crises (X) Happening Right Now: Dominos Nearest the Pentagon is "Busier than usual" https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1lddbzu/happening_right_now_dominos_nearest_the_pentagon/(Reddit) Pentagon Pizza Monitor Appeared To Predict Israel Attack https://www.newsweek.com/pentagon-pizza-monitor-appeared-predict-israel-attack-2085501 (Newsweek) What is the Pentagon Pizza theory eating away at the internet? https://www.euronews.com/culture/2025/06/06/what-is-the-pentagon-pizza-theory-eating-away-at-the-internet (Euro News) Pentagon Pizza Index: The theory that surging pizza orders signal global crises https://www.fastcompany.com/91352935/pentagon-pizza-index-the-theory-that-surging-pizza-orders-signal-global-crises (Fast Company)

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

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• 1:17Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory Sivertson, Endless Thread co-host.

• 1:29Amory Sivertson?

  Ben Brock Johnson, my co-host in showmaking, pizza eating.

• 1:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Friendship.

• 1:38Amory Sivertson?

  Friendship.

• 1:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  War.

• 1:40Amory Sivertson?

  What else do we do together?

• 1:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Road trips.

• 1:44Amory Sivertson?

  Road tripping, yep.

• 1:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  So I have to say, I hate to be right on this stuff. I really do. I really do.

• 1:55Amory Sivertson?

  What a nuisance being right. What a burden to bear.

• 1:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think about 10 months ago, we were in like an endless thread meeting and I raised the idea of the pizza index and that we should do an episode about the pizza index. Or maybe it's the Washington pizza index, or maybe it's like the Domino's index. I'm not sure what it's called. Would you correct me?

• 2:18Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, I've seen it referred to a number of different ways. There's a Twitter, the X, X, account called Pentagon Pizza Report. I have seen this called the Pentagon Pizza Index, but also the Pentagon Pizza Theory, Pentagon Pizza Meter. I think we've mostly commonly been saying the pizza index.

• 2:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I think index is a good word because like, at least in theory, it acts like an index. An index is a statistical measure that represents the performance of a group of assets. And the idea behind the Pentagon Pizza Index is that if there is a statistical jump in pizza orders at pizza joints near the Pentagon, America or a close ally like Israel, for instance, could be about to go to war or about to get into a military conflict.

• 3:12Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, some geopolitical stuff is gonna go down.

• 3:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so as we have been talking about this, when we first sat down to record this conversation about the pizza index, at the time, Israel and Iran had just entered full military conflict. Since then, of course, the US has entered the fray with attacks on Iranian nuclear manufacturing sites. And then there was briefly a ceasefire, maybe announced by Donald Trump, but it was in question. Look, we are not a breaking news show, but we are an internet mystery show and the Pentagon Pizza Index is a bit mysterious.

• 3:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so about two weeks ago, in the hours leading up to Israel dropping its first missiles, the Pentagon pizza index began circulating on X. Pizza and war, dystopian and terrible in a way, and weirdly American. Missiles as American as pizza pie, I guess. So the first post that I saw on X came from a new media investigative newsroom called Hunter Brook, which put a post on X saying simply Pentagon pizza index is spiking. So that post was from June 11th, and the attached image showed area pizzerias around the Pentagon

• 4:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  in DC, like a Google Maps image. And you know that like little graph on businesses when you look at them in Google Maps or in Google, and it shows you the busiest times. It has that little sort of graph per hour.

• 4:50Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  And all of those were like way busier than usual. And that was happening in the afternoon on June 11th in Washington DC.

• 5:01Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 5:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which is really the day before the attacks in America time really started happening.

• 5:09Amory Sivertson?

  Yep.

• 5:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  So on the one hand, we should say very clearly, Israel is not the United States. But on the other hand, you know, many people would say that as a close ally militarily in the Middle East, if Israel was about to attack Iran, presumably people at the Pentagon would know about this and would be talking about it.

• 5:29Amory Sivertson?

  Right.

• 5:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm just gonna say pizza, I think you and I maybe both share this belief that pizza is one of the greatest things ever.

• 5:37Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 5:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  And war is perhaps the worst thing ever. It's up there.

• 5:42Amory Sivertson?

  For sure. Yeah.

• 5:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  So tying these things together is not what we like to do necessarily. And I want to say I'm not here today to talk about like what is happening and how wrong and terrible I think it is. But what I am here to do is to talk to our listeners about this very strange correlation between pizza places having an explosion in business and America and America's allies getting involved, very involved in military conflict.

• 6:12Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 6:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  I should say that in the last week, some of the most popular posts on Reddit. Have been about the pizza index. And I'm talking about posts with like tens of thousands of upvotes and comments.

• 6:27Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  But many of these posts, I should say, have been since been deleted or removed because moderators don't want politics on certain subs, or there are rules about not posting politics on subs. And while pizza ordering Washington DC is not necessarily inherently political, the threads of discussion on said posts are definitely going to be inherently political. So I was looking at Interesting Is [BLEEP]. That's one that we look at a fair bit, I feel like.

• 6:59Amory Sivertson?

  That's, that is interesting as [BLEEP]. And interesting as [BLEEP] is like no politics.

• 7:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Isn't it?

• 7:05Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 7:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is from four days ago. Happening right now, Domino's nearest the Pentagon is busier than usual. That was the title of the post, and it did hit r slash all and r slash popular. And the post has been removed by the moderators of r slash Interesting Is [BLEEP]. The top comment with almost 7,000 upvotes is, "We really can't go a decade without going to the desert, can we?"

• 7:33Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm.

• 7:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  And then somebody says, "The soldiers, they yearn for the sands." It's like this cynical, jokey vibe that also feels very Reddit and is part of why I love Reddit, right? But like-

• 7:49Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, we joke so that we don't scream.

• 7:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah. So that's everything I have to offer in this moment. I feel like I saw it months ago. I was like, we should do something about this. And I'm kicking myself that now we're doing something about it after it happened, but that's okay.

• 8:05Amory Sivertson?

  It is because there are so many people who probably have never heard of this. And I have a little history that I can, that I can offer.

• 8:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm so ready because that's basically all I've got. I saw it, I clocked it, I clocked a bunch of the posts that got deleted. But I don't know the reality and history of this thing. So what, what can you tell me?

• 8:25Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, off I go. So it's interesting that you mention a tweet from Hunter Brook. The, the first tweet that I found in trying to learn more about the history of this was from an account called Pentagon Pizza Report.

• 8:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Of course.

• 8:44Amory Sivertson?

  Um, they shot out a tweet. A little couple of minutes after 7:00 PM on June 12th, 2025, uh, DC time presumably, since they're watching the Pentagon. Says as of 6:59 PM ET, nearly all pizza establishments nearby the Pentagon have experienced a huge surge in activity. So they're showing screenshots of that Google time heat map that you're talking about. They're doing this for four different pizza places. One called We The Pizza. Another is a Domino's location close to the Pentagon. District Pizza Palace? Sounds fun.

• 9:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 9:24Amory Sivertson?

  And Extreme Pizza. They're all showing a lot of activity between that six and seven o'clock hour, which, you know, on the one hand, my spidey senses started, you know, going up when I saw that because I'm like, guys, that's dinnertime. That's like pizza o'clock, you know? But, but if, if this is much, much busier than usual for these places, okay, I hear you.

• 9:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  In theory, Google's looking at historical data and.

• 9:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, I love that we're digging into this. It also only probably offered more questions for me than, than answers in some cases like.

• 10:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think that's the world we're living in, man. I'm with you.

• 10:03Amory Sivertson?

  The world we're living in, yeah. So in terms of where the data comes from, Google knows that these pizza places are busier than usual, maybe because people are going to Google to find the phone number to call in the pizza order? Or they're getting to the pizza place's website to place an online order via Google?

• 10:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  You can also order things on Google, right? So like it's, it's possible that that's, they're actually seeing real order data.

• 10:32Amory Sivertson?

  Okay. I have more skepticism to, to offer about this, but, but I'll get there.

• 10:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 10:38Amory Sivertson?

  This particular account. Since this tweet went out, this account has doubled its number of followers. So this account is not the start of it. And this account was probably created after this food and culture website called The Takeout.

• 10:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 10:56Amory Sivertson?

  I guess popularized this pizza index, not that it created it, but it sort of like memified it in the time that we're living in now so that you see these posts on the pizza index. And when you refer to the pizza index, people have a better sense of what you're talking about.

• 11:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 11:11Amory Sivertson?

  So apparently, Ben, this pizza theory correlation goes back to the Cold War.

• 11:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  What? Wow. Okay.

• 11:23Amory Sivertson?

  Now, this is, the sources that I've found for this, there's a, there's a Fast Company article on this that says, during the Cold War, Soviet operatives reportedly monitored pizza delivery activity in Washington.

• 11:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is fascinating because my, my, one of my immediate questions about this, and I was going to raise this later, is like, if this thing is real, then like, I would imagine that there are countries in the world who have people literally assigned to see if order numbers jump at pizza restaurants close to the Pentagon in order to get a sense that the US is maybe about to engage in military conflict. Like, I could see allies and non-allies looking at that data as well, especially if it's publicly available. So that's fascinating to me.

• 12:15Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, so apparently, as you said, Soviet operatives, they believed that this sudden uptick in late night orders signaled military personnel working overtime. On what? Who knows, but working overtime.

• 12:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 12:28Amory Sivertson?

  Fast Company says they even gave it a code name, PizzaInt, short for Pizza Intelligence.

• 12:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 12:35Amory Sivertson?

  But as you just said.

• 12:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  See, I have Pizza, I have Pizza Intelligence, but it's a totally different thing.

• 12:39Amory Sivertson?

  Totally different thing. But as you just said, the data, they need the data.

• 12:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 12:45Amory Sivertson?

  And, and during the time of the Cold War, what data, they're, they're not looking on Google for busiest times.

• 12:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, it's not that easy. They have to call from, from Soviet Russia.

• 12:56Amory Sivertson?

  Maybe so. Yeah, they've got to call from Soviet Russia and say, the line is busy. The line is still busy. The line is still busy.

• 13:07Amory Sivertson?

  The site Euro News also references this Soviet intelligence services.

• 13:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 13:14Amory Sivertson?

  During the Cold War, looking at this data, who knows what data.

• 13:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 13:20Amory Sivertson?

  A Newsweek piece cross referencing The Guardian says, "Deliveries of pizza to the Pentagon doubled immediately before the 1989 US invasion of Panama."

• 13:34Amory Sivertson?

  There was this latest viral surge of the pizza index this week led to Alex Selby Boothroyd, who is The Economist's-

• 13:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, yeah. Alex Selby Boothroyd. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:45Amory Sivertson?

  He's the head of data journalism for The Economist.

• 13:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 13:48Amory Sivertson?

  He wrote on LinkedIn, just within the last week as of the time that we're taping this.

• 13:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right now. Okay. Yeah.

• 13:54Amory Sivertson?

  Yep. He says, "The Pentagon Pizza Index has been a surprisingly reliable predictor of seismic global events, from coups to wars since the 1980s." Then he gives this example, "On the night of August 1, 1990, the CIA ordered 21 pizzas in a single night just before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait."

• 14:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:15Amory Sivertson?

  And he says that was a new record, 21 pizzas in a single night going to the Pentagon. And this invasion of Kuwait marks the beginning of the Gulf War, so that is obviously another big military conflict. I believe that intel about the 21 pizzas that night comes from a guy named Frank Meeks-

• 14:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 14:33Amory Sivertson?

  -who owned 43 Domino's in the Washington DC area. And this guy, this Domino's franchisee, also told the LA Times that a similar surge in pizza deliveries happened in December of 1998.

• 14:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 14:50Amory Sivertson?

  Do you know what was happening in December of 1998?

• 14:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, December of 1998.

• 14:56Amory Sivertson?

  It was the impeachment hearings of Bill Clinton.

• 15:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, okay. Interesting.

• 15:03Amory Sivertson?

  Apparently, apparently, a lot of pizza coming to maybe the Pentagon, maybe other, you know, the White House itself, who knows?

• 15:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Amory Sivertson?

  Apparently, in 1990, Wolf Blitzer, who was the Pentagon correspondent for CNN at the time.

• 15:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 15:20Amory Sivertson?

  There's a quote for him where he says, "Bottom line for journalists, always monitor the pizzas."

• 15:28Amory Sivertson?

  So we're talking about the pizza index now, but this quote, several sources have mentioned this quote.

• 15:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  This pizza thing goes deep. This is deep, this goes deep dish. You know what I'm saying?

• 15:40Amory Sivertson?

  Deep, deep dish. Yeah, deep dish all the way to the Cold War.

• 15:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  You went, you went beyond the thin crust of the top of this Amory and you found the deep dish.

• 15:48Amory Sivertson?

  That's right. I went Detroit style, deep dish with butter on the bottom. And then Euro News also points to April 13th of last year, 2024.

• 16:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 16:01Amory Sivertson?

  When there were, quote, unusually high pizza orders from not only the Pentagon, but also the White House and the Department of Defense.

• 16:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 16:09Amory Sivertson?

  And that date marked Iran launching drones into Israeli territory.

• 16:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 16:15Amory Sivertson?

  But that particular fact also sends my, you know, spidey senses a tingling.

• 16:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 16:21Amory Sivertson?

  Because to monitor calls, like the busyness of pizza establishments near the Pentagon is one thing.

• 16:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Amory Sivertson?

  But this could just be false, but why, but how would they know that the calls are coming from inside the Pentagon to these pizza establishments, from inside the White House?

• 16:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  So I think, yeah.

• 16:47Amory Sivertson?

  As far as I know, we don't know that, right? We just know that these are the pizza places that are closest to the Pentagon.

• 16:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, and I think, I think when you think about, I mean, look, I, I spent, I spent six months in, working in DC and interning on Capitol Hill. And I think the thing that you start to realize when you spend a lot of time in that place is that places like the Pentagon are massive in terms of like the number of people that they employ and the sort of like economies.

• 17:18Amory Sivertson?

  30,000 people work at the Pentagon.

• 17:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  There you go. So like if, if you have like 30,000 people and a good number of those people are getting busy all of a sudden, you're gonna like that, that business, let's call it a business, that business is going to impact the surrounding businesses very quickly. So that, that. Tracks for me and that's, that's how I think that's kind of how economists do their work. Right? Like you're not always able to double check that the call is coming from the secure line inside the Pentagon. But you sort of like, look at these indicators of like, how, you know, certain groups behaviors impact other certain groups behaviors.

• 17:57Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, I will just also mention that a Pentagon spokesperson told Newsweek that the timeline that was suggested by this tweet, this Pentagon pizza report tweet showing that these establishments were surging right around the time that Israel was actually launching attacks on Iran.

• 18:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 18:17Amory Sivertson?

  They say that that timeline did quote, not align with the actual offense that were happening at the time between Israel and Iran. So they have denied.

• 18:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, but I mean, like, what is that? That's like, okay, sure.

• 18:34Amory Sivertson?

  I'm just, I'm just saying, they also point out that because the Pentagon has 30,000 employees, there are a lot of food options within the Pentagon and pizza is one of them. So why would Pentagon employees need to order all of this outside pizza? They could also get sushi and sandwiches and all the other things that they have available there.

• 18:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I love these additional random facts that they're providing.

• 18:58Amory Sivertson?

  Right. And I will say like, it doesn't behoove the Pentagon to

• 19:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 19:03Amory Sivertson?

  confirm the pizza index.

• 19:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  No.

• 19:06Amory Sivertson?

  But if these pizza places all knew, like, oh, all of the Pentagon phone numbers start with 202, blah, blah, blah, you know?

• 19:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 19:16Amory Sivertson?

  Then they could say, these are all Pentagon numbers, the way that I know anytime, you know, someone from my doctor's office is calling, because it's always the same, like, beginning set of numbers there.

• 19:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep, yep.

• 19:27Amory Sivertson?

  So the real data that could connect these dots, if they're able to be connected, would have to come from the pizza places themselves, not from people just watching Google.

• 19:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, should we call some pizza places?

• 19:41Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah. Yeah, let's do it.

• 19:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amory and I order some pizza, or at least talk to some pizza guys in a minute.

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• 21:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, the Pentagon Pizza Index, is it a thing? These veggie lovers are not sure, so we're going to call up some of the people we think might know, the flour dusted dough flipping point of sale operating pizza joint people. And of course, we will identify ourselves as reporters and see what their answers are.

• 22:09Amory Sivertson?

  Hi there, can you hear me okay? Yes ma'am. Okay, I just had a, I have a strange question for you because I'm actually a journalist with The public radio station in Boston and we're, we're working on a story about something called the Pizza Index. Have you heard of this?

• 22:26Speaker 07

  Um, I have not.

• 22:29Amory Sivertson?

  Okay. Thank you so much.

• 22:30Speaker 07

  Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.

• 22:32Amory Sivertson?

  You too. Bye bye.

• 22:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  My name is Ben. I'm calling from WBUR, which is a national public radio station. We're doing a story on something called the Pizza Index or the Pentagon Pizza Index. Have you ever heard of that?

• 22:47Speaker 07

  No, I didn't hear that. So what do you want?

• 22:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think, I think I'm trying to figure out if this is a real thing. If, if, you know, economists have looked at this, different people around the country have said that the...

• 23:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not surprising. Not surprising.

• 23:13Amory Sivertson?

  Hi there. I work for the, the public radio station in Boston and I'm doing a story about something called the Pentagon Pizza Index. Have you heard of this?

• 23:23Speaker 07

  Yeah, I got a call about it recently. I'm the general manager. I haven't seen a decent amount of business for us. Like, we're doing really well for ourselves, but in terms of like deliveries to the Pentagon themselves, those haven't happened at all. I haven't seen anything for the Pentagon. Nighthawk Brewery, they do military events, things like that. So they may know a little more on that sense.

• 23:47Amory Sivertson?

  Okay. That's, that's really helpful to know.

• 23:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, how are you?

• 23:54Speaker 07

  I'm doing well. How are you today?

• 23:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  My name is Ben. I'm calling from a NPR station in Boston called WBUR. And I am reporting out a story about the Pizza Index or the Pentagon Pizza Index. Have you ever heard of this?

• 24:11Speaker 07

  Oh, when they order a lot, when they order 20 plus pizzas?

• 24:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, sir. That's the one.

• 24:17Speaker 07

  For their big old meetings?

• 24:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, sir.

• 24:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is that, yeah. So you have heard of it?

• 24:24Speaker 07

  I have heard of the concept. Um, we are located like a block from the Pentagon. I mean, we're probably one of the closest restaurants to the Pentagon.

• 24:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, sir.

• 24:32Speaker 07

  That's probably our biggest customer. We perfect.

• 24:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 24:36Speaker 07

  We get those ones from the Space Force guys that we have upstairs. They have a, they have an office upstairs and like we, they do host quite a few, uh... Events where they'll call us and say, hey, can you have like 15, 20 pizzas ready for us? We have seen those. Uh, last week, we had a couple of two different three stars in here. So we definitely see some higher ups that come in here.

• 24:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow, you have seen those. So you're the manager on duty right now is, um, have you seen this in like the last week or so? Would you say?

• 25:06Speaker 07

  Um, no, I haven't seen anything crazy in the last week. Um, surprisingly, you know, with our, um, political climate that we're currently in.

• 25:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, yes.

• 25:17Speaker 07

  But.

• 25:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure.

• 25:19Speaker 07

  I haven't had any giant orders, uh, actually in a couple of months, I'd say.

• 25:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Thank you, man. Hope you have a good rest of your day. Stay safe.

• 25:26Speaker 07

  All right.

• 25:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  So I feel like Emery, your team, the pizza guys don't think it's a thing and it's not a thing. Is that fair to say?

• 25:38Amory Sivertson?

  I'd say from those, uh, of the two pizza establishments, the people who would really talk to us. I don't think they think it's a thing. I think they're finding some delight in the fact that the internet seems to think it's a thing. I would have expected a bit, a hearty, hell, yeah. Yes, we get a ton of orders.

• 25:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  But it also sounds like it's hard to tell, right? We call it four places.

• 26:01Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right? So I'm team, yes, it's a thing. And I would say that like still our evidence is our evidence, this is helpful, but it's also fundamentally anecdotal.

• 26:14Amory Sivertson?

  This is, this is why the world is broken because we just heard two pizza people say, this is not really a thing. And you're like, I think it's a thing. And I'm like, it's not a thing.

• 26:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't feel like we have a definitive answer. As we all know, we're entering this, some people call it a post fax era, right? It's information overload powered by the internet and correlation and internet lore gets turned into a kind of like mysticism or something. Nobody seems to know anything anymore because the internet is a, you know, the, the internet as a quote unquote democratizing force has ultimately platformed lies and conspiracy and controversy.

• 26:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  More than like facts and shared truth, you know?

• 27:03Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, but it does make me glad that, extra glad, that we are here to, when the internet just wants to look at Google data and post and tweet and all the things, we're here to call the pizza places and hold their dough to the oven.

• 27:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  But I don't know, like, I'm still not sure. To me, I'm, I, to me, we're still just like, yes, that was, yes, I'm glad we called the pizza places. I would say at best, if you believe or want to believe that the pizza, Pentagon Pizza Index is a thing, we got very inconclusive responses. And at worst, we got responses from two managers who said, nah, it's not, I don't think so. In this like weird internet world, we're trying to interpret patterns instead of getting like final shared truth, scientific data.

• 28:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I don't, I, I feel like we don't quite have that yet when it comes to, you know?

• 28:13Amory Sivertson?

  That's true.

• 28:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  It seems like harder and harder sometimes to tell whether we can all agree on the truth.

• 28:20Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and it's because it is such an uncertain time, we're always kind of grasping at what will give clarity to a certain situation. How do we know? We don't know what's going to happen between Israel and Iran right now, and yet, maybe we can cling to, but if we look at the pizza index, the pizza index says, we're fine, or the pizza index says, we're screwed, you know?

• 28:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Amory Sivertson?

  It's like one more little data point that people are trying to hold on to in this time where everything feels out of our control and unpredictable.

• 28:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  There are like legitimate examples of this kind of thing in like, you know, economics and other areas of study, right? Where people basically have found that there is a one-to-one correlation, not necessarily suggesting causation, but you can basically guarantee that if X happens, Y is also going to happen, right? A very well, at least to me, was well-known, although I don't think you had heard of this one, which was M M U I, the Men's Underwear Index?

• 29:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  The suggestion is men buy new underwear when they feel like the economy is doing well or on a good trajectory. And when they don't, they do not buy underwear.

• 29:39Amory Sivertson?

  That is so ridiculous.

• 29:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because do they need it? Do they need new underwear if the economy is collapsing? No, they're just gonna wear the holy toe up underwear because nobody sees that underwear anyway, or most people don't see it. So it's fine.

• 29:56Amory Sivertson?

  Everyone should buy, treat yourself to some new underwear with some regularity.

• 30:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, once every three years, buy one new pair of underwear. It's fine. I learned about this, by the way, at my former employer Marketplace from Kai Rizdal.

• 30:11Speaker 06

  The MUI, the Men's Underwear Index. No, I am not making this up, although it is admittedly not officially measured by the government. It is, however, championed by Alan Greenspan, the former chair of the Federal Reserve.

• 30:24Amory Sivertson?

  Anecdotally, Ben, can you attest?

• 30:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, actually. Yeah, it's real. It's real. Do you have any key indicators in your life, Amory? Like correlative indicators that are important in your life?

• 30:42Amory Sivertson?

  If there's a big dark cloud in the sky, I bring an umbrella with me.

• 30:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do you know what the, do you know of the Farmer's Almanac?

• 30:50Amory Sivertson?

  Of course.

• 30:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  They have some weird ones that I very much enjoyed looking up, stepping far away from the military conflict and war conversation. Flies cling to window screens before rain.

• 31:03Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm, okay.

• 31:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  Thick hair on the nape of a cow's neck and an unusual abundance of acorns could mean a hard winter is coming.

• 31:17Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 31:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  But my biggest indicator is, you know, if Redditors are all posting the same random fact, it's almost a guarantee that I will claim to have suggested that we make an episode about it 10 months ago.

• 31:33Amory Sivertson?

  True. 100% of the time can confirm.

• 31:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, here's wishing everybody peace and pizza, because that is a world that I would like to live in.

• 31:48Amory Sivertson?

  Hear, hear.

• 31:56Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston.

• 32:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 32:03Amory Sivertson?

  And me, that's Amore Sivertson.

• 32:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Our episode was produced by Franny Monahan. It was sound designed by Emily Jankowski. Our production manager is Paul Vikes. Our managing producer is Sumit Tojoshi. Our episodes are edited by Meg Kramer.

• 32:18Amory Sivertson?

  Our production fellow is Sendi Charles.

• 32:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team is Dean Russell and Grace Tatter.

• 32:23Amory Sivertson?

  If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or some other wild conspiratorial-esque theory that you found on the internet that you want us to talk about, you know what to do. Hit us up, [email protected]. And if you want to send us a pizza, we wouldn't hate it.

• 32:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  We're here.

• 32:41Amory Sivertson?

  We're here.

• 32:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Vegan for Amory.

• 32:43Amory Sivertson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'll eat vegan pizza, too. A good vegan pizza, please.

• 32:47Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and throw in one for yourself, obviously.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Queston 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.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context. And just to explain why you're excited about it. 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.

• 34:08Speaker 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.

• 34:27Speaker 01

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• 34:55Speaker 03

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