The internet is a perpetual stew

This week on Endless Thread it's a producer takeover with Grace Tatter and Kalyani Saxena serving up some delicious online stories. First, Kalyani digs into why the internet is so hungry for perpetual stews (a stew that is simmered and added on to in perpetuity). Then, Grace dishes on a listener conundrum about whether salty Reddit posts are worse for us than sweet ones. Show notes: ZAQ_Makes' Stewtheus http://ZAQ_makes (TikTok) Want to try perpetual stew? Some tips for avoiding foodborne illness https://www.npr.org/2025/06/11/nx-s1-5422245/perpetual-stew-safety-tips (NPR) r/GirlDinnerDiaries https://www.reddit.com/r/GirlDinnerDiaries/?screen_view_count=1 (Reddit) Does Venting Your Feelings Actually Help? https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/does_venting_your_feelings_actually_help (Greater Good Magazine) Endless Thread Subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/EndlessThread/ This episode was produced by Frannie Monahan and co-hosted by Kalyani Saxena and Grace Tatter. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus.

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  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:15Speaker 04

  Producer Grace Tatter. Hello, fellow producer Koyani Saksana.

• 1:21Speaker 05

  It's a producer takeover.

• 1:23Speaker 04

  No parents, no rules.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Okay, Koyani, so I know we're here to talk about something that's been bubbling and brewing for a really long time.

• 1:35Speaker 05

  Exactly. We're here to talk about stew, which I, I love stew, I have to say. Like, I'm the kind of person who's making stew when it's 90 degrees outside. I just love a little bit of, like, hearty broth, a little bit of vegetables. Something about it puts me in the mindset of, like, being at an old-timey inn on a long journey and, like, a crusty piece of bread. That's how I feel about stew.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Love a crusty piece of bread. Yeah, I think I, I'm, I eat stew and soup all year round, too. And I'm not quite sure what the difference is when a stew becomes a soup or vice versa, but I'm here for both of them.

• 2:12Speaker 05

  I'm actually gonna be quite literal today. My story is about a stew, and it begins, like, many things on the internet, getting grossed out by a video that I saw online.

• 2:26Speaker 05

  And so I, you know, was scrolling on TikTok, wasting my life away, as one does, and I came across this video of a creator with a ladle, and he's serving himself, like, a big dollop of liquid. I'm gonna send you a video of what that looks like, so you can get a glimpse of what I saw.

• 2:43Speaker 06

  Let's go ahead and get our bowl for today and see how everything has turned out. And I'm pretty happy.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Okay, this is a very broth-y stew. Like, at first, I would say it's really looking like a soup, because it's pieces of corn. But now, he's got a big ol' hunk of meat in there. So I guess that's what's making this a stew.

• 3:02Speaker 06

  The tomato pairs very well with the lamb. I didn't have a lot of leftover

• 3:08Speaker 04

  The broth is dark. Like, you can't see what's at the bottom. It's like you're looking into, like, a polluted creek of stew, is the vibe that I'm getting.

• 3:18Speaker 05

  Mmm, delicious.

• 3:21Speaker 06

  With just the slight undercurrent of the green chilies, I would give today an eight out of 10.

• 3:32Speaker 05

  So when I saw this video, I was sort of like, ew, number one. And number two, what's going on? And as you mentioned, this creator has been making this stew for a very long time. It's a perpetual stew. So that's a stew that you basically keep, like, boiling for days and days and days, or like, for however long you like.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  And you just keep, like, adding new broth, adding new chicken, whatever.

• 4:00Speaker 05

  Exactly. And, and so this, this person, his username is @zak__makes, and he's been keeping this stew going for over a year. At the time of this recording, I think it was about over 400 days. And he calls himself an instuencer, which, there's gonna be a lot of fun wordplay. I kind of love that people are getting creative with this.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  Let's get punny.

• 4:23Speaker 05

  Let's get punny. And while we're on the subject of punniness, he actually calls his stew Stuthius, which I think may be a reference to Prometheus. That's what I suspect.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Playing with fire?

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Well.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  I don't know if those Bose want for the food safety of this stew.

• 4:38Speaker 05

  Is this, is this stew in the danger zone? Keep listening, we'll find out.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  Have you heard about perpetual stew before we started talking about it today?

• 4:51Speaker 04

  I have heard of perpetual stew before. I can't remember where from, but like, I'm familiar with the concept. And I even feel like, I mean, I've definitely never done 399 days, but like, you know, I, like I said, I like a soup, I like a stew, and like, particularly a lentil soup. And like, sometimes I'll add, like, okay, I've had it for a few days, I'll add some more broth in, I'll add some kale, whatever else I have in the fridge. So, again, I wouldn't go, I don't think I'd go beyond a week, but like, I'm familiar with, like, augmenting a pre-existing super stew.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Wait, so are you keeping your lentil stew on the stove?

• 5:34Speaker 04

  Oh, no. I do put it in the refrigerator in between. Yeah.

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Wait, are these people, like, so is it just constantly hot? Yes. The idea with this is that you're keeping the stew continuously boiling. You have to keep the stew at a safe temperature.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  Can you leave your apartment or your house, wherever you live, like, comfortably with, like, the stove still on? Or the crock pot? I don't know, that sounds dangerous to me.

• 6:01Speaker 05

  Well, so from what I can tell, most people aren't leaving it on the stove. They're putting it in a crock pot. And if you're wondering what a safe temperature is for the stew, I found an answer to this in my research. NPR actually talked to a food safety expert, and he said that the stew needs to be kept at 140 degrees Fahrenheit continuously, even overnight. So you gotta, you gotta keep it hot for a long time.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  Still a little skeptical personally, but okay.

• 6:29Speaker 05

  And you're not alone. I was also incredibly skeptical. So I tried to get in touch with @zak__makes about his perpetual stew, but I didn't hear back from him. And while I was twiddling my thumbs, I actually started thinking more about perpetual stew. And I remembered that this wasn't the first time I'd seen a perpetual stew go viral. So, one glorious summer long ago, not actually that long ago, it's 2023, there was another viral stew made by someone named Annie Roberta. And it was enjoyed in a park with a bunch of strangers in, can you hedge a guess of where in the country someone would do something like this?

• 7:14Speaker 04

  I live in Brooklyn, and I feel like we're the types of, as a culture, we're the types of people, you know, aren't wasting, are doing internet-y things. That's what I'm gonna guess.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Yep, it was in Bushwick. I reached out to Annie to talk to her about the Bushwick perpetual stew that she ran. And she got back to me, which was awesome. A quick note about Annie, she actually has, like, another internet-y tidbit shtick that she's known for. She runs Depths of Wikipedia.

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Yes, I love Depths of Wikipedia.

• 7:50Speaker 05

  Oh, my God, really?

• 7:51Speaker 04

  Yes. Oh, my gosh, celebrity.

• 7:54Speaker 05

  Multifaceted icon, right? So she does Depths of Wikipedia, which, for people who don't know about it, it highlights, like, strange, niche facts from Wikipedia. And it's actually Wikipedia where she first heard of perpetual stew. And

• 8:09Speaker 04

  Okay, and you know, I'm so sorry, Koyani.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  No, go ahead, go ahead.

• 8:11Speaker 04

  This is how I knew about perpetual stew, now that you mention it, because I do see her videos. So I'd seen her talking about the Wikipedia page for perpetual stew. I did not realize that she herself was doing it, though.

• 8:22Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. I'm loving, this is so full circle. She, she put it into practice. And the idea actually came up when she was chatting with a friend.

• 8:30Speaker 07

  She had just moved back to the States, and she was living above me. And I think that we both kind of have a student council energy when we're together. And when the idea came up, both of us kind of, I don't know, egged each other on until it really happened.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Was it something that you'd seen? Online before, something that she saw while she was abroad, like where? I had never heard of perpetual stew before the internet. So I'm just curious where it came from.

• 8:55Speaker 07

  I only saw it from a Wikipedia article in summer 2020. That was the first time I had heard of it. Oh, and it looks like the article about perpetual stew has existed since 2004.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Vintage, yeah.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  Vintage.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  2004, a long time ago in terms of the internet.

• 9:10Speaker 05

  But the actual history of perpetual stew is much more vintage. It's probably way more vintage. So it's also called forever stew by some people. And the history is a little murky. Some food historians say that it dates back to the Middle Ages when ins would like, keep a vat of stew just like continuously boiling to feed guests. Like, they wouldn't empty it, they'd just keep adding stuff to it. I found that in some reporting from Food and Wine. Last year, I found some really interesting story reported by the Wall Street Journal about a Thai restaurant that had kept a beef broth simmering since 1974. And they use it in their restaurant every day. Isn't that cool?

• 9:49Speaker 04

  Wow. Yeah, I'm wondering, like, how much do you think from the original, like, at this point, how much of, like, the 1974 stock is still in there? Like, probably not none, right? And I don't know how we would ever test this.

• 10:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of amazing to think about the idea of people keeping something going for that long. And I think that's kind of what Annie was thinking about when her stew went viral. She spent a lot of time working on it and in particular, making sure that it was safe for consumption. She put it in a crock pot. And there's actually something interesting I learned. Annie's stew had no meat and no animal products, so it was a vegan stew.

• 10:34Speaker 04

  Amory's gonna love that.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  If she'd been in Bushwick at the time, she could have partaken.

• 10:40Speaker 05

  And what I found really interesting about Annie's perpetual stew that made it different from @zak__makesstew is that this wasn't something that she was just boiling for herself. She actually turned her stew into a community event.

• 10:55Speaker 07

  I had a website for it, but then I was, I made a TikTok about how I was making a stew and how I had this website. And a lot of people wanted to try it because they were interested in how it tasted. And at a certain point, you, there are only so many strangers on the internet that you can give your actual address to until it's like, okay, no, this has to be in a public place. To me, it seemed obvious, I have to bring this to a park and serve it to people.

• 11:17Speaker 04

  Well, how much of this stew was she giving to people? Like, how big is this crock pot? Is it just like, you just get a little taste?

• 11:24Speaker 05

  So she would just like bring what was in the crock pot and then she would like add a lot of broth, add a lot of vegetables day of. So it would become like probably quite diluted. So that kind of goes back to what you were saying, right? Like, how much is originally left? It's, it still started as that stew, but like, it wasn't, whatever was in the crock pot was not enough for everybody.

• 11:43Speaker 04

  Right. And that also means it would taste very different from day to day. Like, if she's like, kind of changing the composition according to how many people need to be served, diluting it. Okay.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  Yep. And Annie told me that, like, people, that was like one of the things that people asked all the time was what did it taste like? And then the other thing that people asked about was, of course, food safety.

• 12:07Speaker 07

  I just was really careful about keeping it boiling all the time. A lot of the time, I just had really a thin broth without a lot of ingredients. And that's what was the perpetual part. People online joked a lot about how that was, about how the Bushwick perpetual stew was where the next COVID variant would start. But as far as I know, nobody had food poisoning from my Bushwick perpetual stew. I also, another thing-

• 12:32Speaker 04

  No food poisoning or viruses spread. Because they weren't all using the same spoon, right? They're not like spitting in the stew.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  It's perpetual stew, not perpetual spoon.

• 12:44Speaker 05

  And eventually, you know, putting in all of this work into the perpetual stew started to catch up with Annie.

• 12:50Speaker 07

  I was consuming this stew, but really it's the stew that consumed me. It was so much work, the logistics. There were news cameras, like, my life just kind of got really crazy. And also, I, I never got in trouble with the health department, but they did have one person that said, like, hey, they were really nice about it, actually. It was an amazing experience. But they were basically just like, you know, we can tell that you're not like a business or anything, but you have definitely entered a food establishment territory in terms of how we would have to regulate you. So just be careful.

• 13:31Speaker 04

  New York City government, polite but getting the job done. Love to see it.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  And just like the concept of your perpetual stew becoming a community event that enters food establishment territory. Like, that's the power of the internet. People saw this and were like, actually, we're making this a whole thing.

• 13:50Speaker 04

  So how long did Annie do this stew for?

• 13:55Speaker 05

  This is a great question. So her stew did not last as long as @zak__makes's stew did or is currently lasting. She told me that it, it made it to just over two months, so about 60 days. And that was, that was the end of the Bushwick perpetual stew.

• 14:14Speaker 04

  That's still very respectable. I think Annie should be proud.

• 14:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:18Speaker 04

  And she's served so many people, it sounds like.

• 14:20Speaker 05

  She served, literally and figuratively.

• 14:25Speaker 05

  But even though the Bushwick perpetual stew, even though its road ended, I wasn't done thinking about this and why people are fascinated with the concept of like a perpetual stew online. I mean, it seems to be part of, sort of like an internet phenomenon of like, when you see the same kind of question or stunt or concept going viral with some frequency. I saw other perpetual stews online that we haven't talked about. And I, I mean, I just, I was like, why does this particular dish keep coming up again and again? And I have a theory, but I want to have you give yours first.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  Okay. Well, you've been stewing over the stew for a long time. I'm a little newer to it, but I do think that there's something about the concept of continuity. And again, it feels to me, I mentioned earlier, like, when you're like, where is this? Like, it feels like you're not wasting anything, right? Because you're making sure that every last drop of that original broth gets used and incorporated into the original stew. Like, that is compelling to me. But yeah, I don't know. What's your theory?

• 15:34Speaker 05

  My theory was a lot more cynical. One, I think people get invested in the journey, like, what's going in this stew today? Like, what's it gonna taste like today? So I think that's one part of it, that like, people like sequential things on the internet. They like feeling a part of something. But my main theory really had something to do with the ick factor. I think we're kind of fascinated by the idea of eating food that's like been around for days and days, even if it's perfectly safe to eat, right? Like, just something about that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It's like a curiosity motivated by a sense of horror, like, how can it possibly be safe to eat this? But Annie, like you, kind of had a far less cynical and honestly, beautiful take.

• 16:16Speaker 07

  Perpetuity, infinity as a concept is just so beautiful and enticing. And nothing lasts forever, but it's fun to pretend that this stew can.

• 16:35Speaker 05

  One more thing before we wrap our story. Annie told me that she's still got a little bit of her 2023 perpetual stew frozen in her freezer. So while nothing does last forever, that's true, this stew might still live again.

• 16:54Speaker 04

  Wow, I love that. Maybe I'll go over, I'll, I'll knock on her door, my neighbor, and see if I can get a bite.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Grace, after the break, please tell me there's another course.

• 17:05Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, Kolyani. We're gonna be eating some more girl dinner.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  Let's go.

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• 19:10Speaker 04

  Okay, Kolyani, so we're back for our second course and we, in the spirit of the perpetual stew, are going to be reheating a meme that we at Endless Thread first discussed way back, as you said, long ago in 2023. And this meme has bubbled up again. So, Kolyani, I'm going to send you a post that someone actually shared on the Endless Thread subreddit, which is a great place for all of our listeners to go to.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Subtle plug.

• 19:42Speaker 04

  Yes. Give us episode ideas. We're always looking. But would you just read this post from our listener Adorable Ninja Cat?

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Yes, I will. Hi, Endless Thread. I was a part of the r/girldinnerdiaries girls thread, but started noticing it became a "my man did me wrong" with food pictures sub. I made a comment as such. I got banned for that. I would love to hear your take on the matter of slash girl dinner versus slash girl dinner diaries. Am I crazy for thinking adding another platform to bitch about men with food pics is unhealthy and not helpful?

• 20:20Speaker 04

  So I reached out to Adorable Ninja Cat after I saw this post on the Endless Thread subreddit, but we didn't have a chance to connect for a full conversation before recording. However, she did send me a voicemail to explain her conundrum.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  Instead of like going to Reddit and asking for advice, now we're going to grill dinner diaries and we're sharing all this drama and it's just not like, I can't tell if it's fake or real or whatever. And then she's kind of sad because I thought it was my community, but maybe it's not my community anymore. That's tough.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  It is because we're all searching for community. Okay, but let's back up a little. So first things first, we're reheating this meme, girl dinner. Do you remember girl dinner?

• 21:06Speaker 05

  I do. I do remember girl dinner and I, it's hard for me to believe that that was three years ago, because I feel like it was one second ago. But from what I remember, it started on TikTok, maybe? And people were posting, girls specifically, were posting about their like random things that they would eat for dinner. So like mine would be like a spoon of lactaid cottage cheese, a chicken nugget, and like some edamame is what I would describe as my girl dinner. And then I think someone even made a song that was like, girl dinner. This is my meal. I call this girl dinner.

• 21:46Speaker 05

  Girl dinner, girl dinner, girl dinner. Yes. Girl dinner.

• 21:55Speaker 04

  Yes, that would often play with these videos on TikTok. Exactly. It was this idea that when left alone, women will have these kind of low effort snacky dinners. And it's funny because as you said, it sounds like it resonates with you. It resonates with me. But the reason it probably feels like no time has passed is because this meme is still everywhere. And at this point, I would say it's like fully been commodified. You can-

• 22:18Speaker 05

  Oh, totally.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  Brands are probably using that lingo all the time now.

• 22:23Speaker 04

  Yes, like girl dinner menus at restaurants, there's cookbooks, et cetera, et cetera.

• 22:30Speaker 04

  Maybe you can guess from the name of the sub, Girl Dinner Diaries, what the subreddit is. What would you think just from the name?

• 22:37Speaker 05

  I mean, I would, I would think it was people posting pictures of their girl dinners and then like, this is what I ate today. And not in like a what I ate in a day, but just like, look at my fun quirky meal. That's what I'm thinking.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  That makes sense. And I think maybe that's what Adorable Ninja Cat was thinking too. Like that'd be more food focused. But the rules do say posts should relate to food, snack plates, cozy meals, or quote unquote, girl dinner. But it also continues that those posts can be paired with journal style moments connected to meals, mood, or everyday life. So that's pretty broad, right? And one of the rules is also no gatekeeping diary. So as long as you're posting a picture of food, you can basically talk about whatever you want. So Adorable Ninja Cat said that this had become a quote unquote, my man did me wrong sub. So I wanted to just look at the top posts today to get, to get a sense of

• 23:32Speaker 04

  what's going on there with you. So I'm gonna send you the link.

• 23:36Speaker 05

  Okay. The first one I'm seeing says, my husband noticed something I didn't even ask for. It's got like, it's a plate with some like rice, chicken. Oh, that looks good.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  And you'll notice the flair for that one is happy girl dinner.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  A happy girl dinner.

• 23:49Speaker 04

  I think we're celebrating a man there, not-

• 23:52Speaker 05

  But it's true, there is still sort of a man present in the title. My therapist had to remind me we're not friends is the next one. It's like two slices of pizza. That one, ouch. Best friend, in quotes, didn't invite me to her wedding. Yikes. It's like broccoli and potatoes and a little bit of yogurt on the side of that one. There's a ton of posts here, so I could keep going forever. But here's, here's one more, just one more I'll read. It says, the lump in my boob is not cancer, with a little party emoji. And they spelt boob as B-E-W-B, which is great.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  And it's happy. Enjoy it. So it's not, that's definitely not bitching about men.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  No, no, that's a big yippee right there.

• 24:33Speaker 04

  So happy for that user. So yes, as you can see, the menu is very diverse on r/girldinnerdiaries. We've got all sorts of cuisines.

• 24:49Speaker 04

  The reason I wanted to do this is because like, I'd say there's a mix of posts here, right? Like maybe we saw some that were about men or complaining about men. I would say at least today, most of the posts that we're seeing aren't necessarily falling into that genre, right?

• 25:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, it seems like it was a pretty wide variety of things from what I looked at.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Yeah. Okay, so now we've kind of established what's on the menu in Girl Dinner Diaries. But Adorable Ninja's question was, is it healthy? And she was specifically asking about this kind of dish complaining about men. But I'm going to broaden that to whether venting online is helpful and healthy, like whether, because a lot of these are sad or angry posts, even if they're not about men, like whether coming to the internet and unburdening your soul is that healthy or helpful.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I'll wait for dessert to share them.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  I can't wait. Okay, so I did some research into this because actually there is actual scholarly research on this.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  Of course, there always is.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  And there is a case to Adorable Ninja Cat's point that like, no, this is not healthy. This is the junk food of the internet. A 2020 paper called Investigating Reddit's Self-Disclosure in Confessions in Relation to Connectedness, Social Support, and Life Satisfaction was published in the Journal of Social Media and Society. And it was written by a professor in the Communication Department at UMass Boston. His name is Brandon Miller. He surveyed about 600 Reddit users about sharing personal information on Reddit that they wouldn't necessarily share or hadn't shared with their offline friends and families. So again, these diary-like posts that normally you might save for like a literal diary.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  And what he found was that people who made these types of confessional posts reported being lonelier and having less social support and connection. And the more that they posted these types of posts, the lonelier they reported being.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  That doesn't surprise me. All of us crave intimacy, emotional intimacy. And in an era where people feel isolated from one another, I think the immediate catharsis of posting online makes you feel good. But ultimately, if you don't know the other people who are responding in a meaningful way, does it really fill that void? Probably not.

• 27:13Speaker 04

  Right. And even if you do know whoever you're venting to, other studies have shown that venting, like just like, again, unburdening, being like, this is what I'm angry about, or sad about, doesn't necessarily make you happier. In fact, it often prolongs your negative feelings that you're trying to vent off and get rid of because you're reliving them rather than relieving them.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I find that even just like in real life, when I'm talking to people about the thing that's upset me, if I talk about it too many times, I'm like, damn, I'm still angry. Why am I still angry?

• 27:51Speaker 04

  Right. You like, your body starts to feel it all over again.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  It makes a ton of sense to me that engaging with negative content online prolongs those feelings of negativity that you might have or makes you feel sad reading something else. At the same time, like with the, the original concern about the Girl Dinner Diaries turning into conversations about men.

• 28:15Speaker 05

  I have a little bit more of a nuanced feeling about that, which is like, I remember when I was in high school, I was talking to my, still my best friend to this day, but I was talking to her about all the guys that I was thinking about. And eventually, she just kind of started pulling away from me. And she told me that she felt like we were talking about boys all the time. And I thought we were just connecting. And I think that that's maybe what the people who might have responded to her original comment was like, well, I just feel like I'm, I'm connecting with people. Like, even if it is centering men in the conversation, I don't necessarily want to erase spaces for people to do that.

• 28:55Speaker 04

  Absolutely. Because it's not inherently wrong to share your experiences, or even to rehash your experiences. So I do want to also make the case for these kind of posts actually can be perhaps nutritious and delicious. So here's the case for yes, this can be actually totally fine. The author of that 2020 paper that I mentioned about Reddit posts in the Journal of Social Media and Society specifically mentioned that it's possible that the people who are posting these type of posts might be more likely to be lonely, but it's not causing them to be lonely. They just already are more lonely. That's why they're turning here. And so it's giving support to the people who need it most. That's a quote from the paper as a possibility.

• 29:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Kind of makes sense, right?

• 29:43Speaker 05

  It does. It does make sense.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  There is some good news for Adorable Ninja Cat. There are a few Girl Dinner subs that are focused on food. So r/girldinner, if you are not here for diaries, not just Adorable Ninja Cat, but others as well, your title has to be about food, although posts can have a diary component. And then r/realgirldinner is just about food. So if you don't want to hear, which it didn't sound like Adorable Ninja Cat was totally opposed to these diaries. She just was tired about hearing specifically about men woes. But if you want just the food, real girl dinner, that's, that's where you go.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think sometimes the challenge with the internet is like, you just got to find the right niche and like, the right community for what it is you're trying to talk about.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Yes. And maybe even make that community yourself. I thought that this was some good advice from a user named Renugar, R-E-N-U-G-A-R, who responded to Adorable Ninja Cat in our sub. And they wrote, so make posts like that.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  Be the change you want to see in the world, girl.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  Exactly. I think that's a good place to end. You know, whether you're trying to change a subreddit, your community, a stew, be the change you want to.

• 31:01Speaker 05

  Ask not what your stew can do for you, but what you can do for your stew.

• 31:09Speaker 04

  I don't know if that made any sense.

• 31:10Speaker 05

  I think.

• 31:18Speaker 05

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Frannie Monahan and hosted by me, Kalyani Saxena.

• 31:26Speaker 04

  And me, Grace Tatter, and not Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson, who I hope are enjoying their vacations. It was edited by Dave Shaw. Mix and sound design by Paul Vikas.

• 31:37Speaker 05

  The rest of our team is Amory Sivertson, Ben Brock Johnson, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producer, Samantha Joshi.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and being regulated by the health department.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  Have an online mystery, untold history, or other wild story from the internet? Email us at [email protected].

• 32:15Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Brandeis University Professor David Weil on a question at the heart of the gig economy. When an app controls how you work, is it really just a platform, or is it your employer?

• 32:41Speaker 05

  It is very true that the platforms allow, let's say, drivers to find riders much more easily in a way that would be impossible absent the Uber or Lyft technology. Yes, the technology is connecting people, but the technology is also doing all the kinds of things that we usually associate with management. Setting the rate of pay, setting the pace of work, deciding on who gets the job and who doesn't, monitoring the performance of that party. There's a lot that these technologies do that are all about what we would call management.

• 33:23Speaker 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.

• 33:41Speaker 03

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• 34:08Speaker 01

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