The Church of Speedrun!

Try reading this description as fast as you can: Ben and Amory zoom through two internet stories connected to speed running, including a look at a mysterious object on Reddit and an online trend directed at the Church of Scientology. Show notes: Found in my son’s room https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/1t0jizd/found_in_my_sons_room/ (Reddit) Storming Scientology Buildings: TikTok Trend or Hate Crime? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/12/style/scientology-speedruns-tiktok-teens-la-nyc.html(The New York Times) What is a ‘Scientology speedrun’ and why is social media suddenly obsessed with it? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/may/11/scientology-speedrun-run-tiktok-trend-social-media-explained (The Guardian)

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast. When Joe Missoula got the Celtics job, Steve Paliuka sat up until 1:00 in the morning typing him 25 things about leadership. Dr. Sharon Turbin asks what came first on the list. Listen closely wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 1:04Speaker 00

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Emery, have you ever done a speedrun? Sounds like some gaming shenanigans. It's definitely some gaming shenanigans. You're going through a level as fast as humanly possible, or sometimes the whole game as fast as humanly possible, AKA it is a speedrun. You're not like, you know, going through all the parts of the game. You are just getting from point A to point B in the fastest, fastest way possible.

• 1:39Speaker 04

  Today we're speedrunning Prison Escape Simulator.

• 1:42Speaker 05

  It is time for our first Donkey Kong Bonanza speedrun.

• 1:45Speaker 04

  I'm actually a top 100 speedrunner in the Oregon Trail game. I think we have like 15 seconds to get it. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. We're gonna do it, we're gonna do it. Yes!

• 1:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  So we all know what a speedrun is. That's the theme of this episode. And I guess my question is, who's gonna speedrun first? You want, you want to speedrun, or should I speedrun?

• 2:09Amory Sivertson?

  I think I should speedrun first.

• 2:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, let's go.

• 2:16Amory Sivertson?

  I decided to interpret this theme loosely.

• 2:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, speedrun through your loose interpretation of speedrun. I'm ready.

• 2:25Amory Sivertson?

  All right, so my story comes from the What Is It subreddit.

• 2:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm.

• 2:31Amory Sivertson?

  So my question to you, Ben, is what, what is it? What is that subreddit?

• 2:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  So r slash what is it is like one of the very broad subreddits in which someone can discover something they don't know what it is. They post a photo and a slight explanation sometimes. And hopefully, other reditors will help them figure out what it is. Everything from like, a weird, unexploded munition that somebody dug up in their backyard to like, an ancient tool that they found in their grandmother's hutch.

• 3:08Amory Sivertson?

  Uh huh. Those are already much cooler examples than what is probably most commonly posted, which is like, someone posting an object and asking the question, basically like, is this sex, drugs, or rock and roll related?

• 3:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm.

• 3:22Amory Sivertson?

  And a subgenre of that, which is like, I found this in my kid's stuff. Is my kid using this for sex, drugs, or rock and roll? So your, your kids-

• 3:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  The answer is always yes.

• 3:36Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, usually, yes. And that is-

• 3:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  If that kid's, if he's smart, then the answer is yes.

• 3:41Amory Sivertson?

  Are you speaking from personal experience? Is this something, did this happen to you as a child? Did anyone find something in your room and say-

• 3:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, God.

• 3:49Amory Sivertson?

  Ben? Benjamin?

• 3:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think my dad found a dime bag underneath the seat of our, our car once.

• 3:57Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 3:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  And he was like, is this grass? And I was like, yes, that's grass.

• 4:04Amory Sivertson?

  And you're old enough that he couldn't post on what is it and say, is this grass?

• 4:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  He couldn't. He got an immediate answer from me, which was yes, and we don't say that anymore.

• 4:15Amory Sivertson?

  Yep.

• 4:17Amory Sivertson?

  So I'm gonna send you a picture that I found in the what is it subreddit. And I just want you to really, I don't want any guesses yet. I just want you to take in the contours of this object.

• 4:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, I have seen this and I believe I know what it is, but I am so in.

• 4:35Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so refrain from saying anything.

• 4:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 4:38Amory Sivertson?

  Because this, this was a real, this was a real journey that the commenters took us on.

• 4:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, it very much is one of those things that you look at and you immediately go, is it drugs? Is it sex?

• 4:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 4:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is it rock and roll? I'm less leaning towards when I see this image, but, but it's, God, how would one describe it? It's a very clean, white structure, but it's also kind of swoopy and bumpy. And it has these two, it looks like, almost like dinosaur vertebrae or giant teeth kind of thing, like sticking up out of ribs.

• 5:17Amory Sivertson?

  Ribs is a good way to describe it. I was gonna say the little giraffe, the boops on top of the giraffe head.

• 5:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's like that too.

• 5:24Amory Sivertson?

  I should know what those are.

• 5:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  The boops. Yeah, the boops. The giraffe boops. Yes, but then also it has this bump, which I would argue is almost more, almost more like a giraffe poop.

• 5:36Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, nothing is completely flat on this. It's got like, the whole thing is like a smooth, curvy texture. That bigger bump looks like it would fit sort of like perfectly in a, in a cupped hand.

• 5:51Amory Sivertson?

  And also very, very suggestive in all directions.

• 5:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, it does. I was about to say, yes.

• 6:00Amory Sivertson?

  So the comments of this like really, really delighted me. The caption is, found in my son's room. So that's, this is important. This is a parent. Their username is accident with an X, which is kind of fun, accident. They've found this object in their son's room and they just say, what the hell is it? So. I found a wide variety of guesses. Some of them are more innocent. Someone said that they used like a, like an internet lens feature and said, it says it's a sculpture of some sort. That's a sculpture right there.

• 6:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  It looks sculpted, no question.

• 6:42Amory Sivertson?

  It does look sculpted.

• 6:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  And organic, yeah.

• 6:44Amory Sivertson?

  Someone else said, "Looks like packaging foam or plastic to keep some sort of item in a box still during transport." I thought that was a pretty genius guess because we've all opened something from a box that like is packaged with a very particular structure to hold the form.

• 7:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, especially these days. They're doing amazing things with cardboard these days.

• 7:07Amory Sivertson?

  Yep. Someone said, "It looks like a, like a psoas tool for back pain."

• 7:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was gonna say, yeah, it looks like a massager in a way, which a lot, many sex toys are also

• 7:18Amory Sivertson?

  Also massagers.

• 7:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Or literally massagers.

• 7:21Amory Sivertson?

  Yep. So then there were the guesses that I feel like started. These were what I would call the gateway guesses. Sort of got me, got me on the, the road to, oh, seeing it differently. A couple of people pointed out, "This is 3D printed." Like, maybe it's some sort of a 3D printed stand or mount for something. And

• 7:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Getting warmer.

• 7:44Amory Sivertson?

  That's getting warmer. And that ultimately led to the answer, which, Ben, drumroll.

• 7:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Um, it's something, something VR headset holder.

• 7:57Amory Sivertson?

  Yes. This is, this is a holder. So the, the winning comment here, someone says, "Does he," meaning this person's son, "does he have a VR headset? Could be a mount. I 3D printed one for my Meta Quest and it somewhat looks like that." And then OP posted a picture of the headset in this mount.

• 8:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Although OP, I'll say this, uh,

• 8:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  That sounds relatively innocuous, but depending on the age of your kid, you might want to check on what they're watching in the VR headset.

• 8:30Amory Sivertson?

  So other people commented that too, like this tool isn't a sex toy, but your kid's just watching porn on the VR headset.

• 8:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Could be, could be.

• 8:38Amory Sivertson?

  So someone responded to this and said, okay, but you still have to confront him, meaning your son, you still have to confront him with it and scream about drugs when he gets home.

• 8:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 8:46Amory Sivertson?

  And OP said, oh, absolutely. But I also saw an overwhelming wave of people saying something like this particular redditor saying, I never would have gone snooping in my children's rooms when they were kids. And I damn sure wouldn't have turned to the internet for information on what they might have been doing. Novel idea, ask your son what it is.

• 9:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, look, I don't, um, my kids are eight years old, so I'm mercifully currently not having to ask these questions. But I can, I don't disagree with that necessarily. You should have a relationship with your, you know, members of your family where you can have open, honest discussion. Also, I would say like, as a parent, you might just be picking up or cleaning up or putting something in their room and like bump into it. It's not like the OP is like tearing their room apart, looking for, looking for paraphernalia or something like that, but, and then it might be a little awkward. It might feel a little awkward. You might like really want to know what it is before you talk to your kid about it.

• 9:51Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, you don't know if you should be having the sex talk or the drugs talk or the rock and roll talk. You gotta know which talk.

• 9:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's the devil's music, son.

• 10:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Stay away from it. That is true, though, like it's, you want to be, you want to have these conversations with care.

• 10:07Amory Sivertson?

  And to your point, OP does say, I wasn't snooping. He's at his mom's and I was putting his laundry away. It was sitting in plain view on his desk.

• 10:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  I was doing some drugs in his room and I.

• 10:19Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, that's right. And someone said, you should, you should show this post to him when, when your son is, is older, maybe, and see if he'll get a kick out of it. And the OP was like, I'm gonna show him as soon as he gets home. Like, I think he'll, I think he'll think this is hilarious that I thought this was some sort of, uh, you know, something a little salacious. But also, a funny thing, that, that picture of the VR headset in the stand.

• 10:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Amory Sivertson?

  This led to some more informative comments. What do you, what do you notice about that picture? Like, what's just to the right of the, the VR headset?

• 10:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, there's a curtain.

• 10:56Amory Sivertson?

  Uh huh.

• 10:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Like a pleated curtain.

• 10:58Amory Sivertson?

  And behind every curtain is presumably a...

• 11:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Window.

• 11:02Amory Sivertson?

  And a window lets in.

• 11:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Light.

• 11:05Amory Sivertson?

  And it turns out, several Redditors chimed in, that light, even just a few seconds of light, apparently can damage the lenses of the VR headset.

• 11:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Huh. Didn't know that.

• 11:16Amory Sivertson?

  So those lenses are never supposed to be exposed to any kind of light.

• 11:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, well, today, they learned to store their headset in a better spot.

• 11:25Amory Sivertson?

  And this is why I say this is all very tangentially related, because I was like, you know what? This sounds like a gaming thing. I'm gonna go with a gaming thing. And hope that Ben doesn't know what this is.

• 11:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, it, like, in a way, what is it, the subreddit, is like, an attempt to speed run an answer to a question.

• 11:44Amory Sivertson?

  Ooh.

• 11:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 11:46Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so, there you go.

• 11:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right, well, I've got another speedrun story for you. Um, and it does involve the devil's music. Just kidding. It involves, um...

• 12:00Amory Sivertson?

  Drugs.

• 12:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Religion.

• 12:03Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 12:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  And, um, it's a, it's a mixed tale, a mixed tale, with mixed results.

• 12:10Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm.

• 12:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  About speedrunning. Um, and we will get right on that in a minute.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast. There's a part of high performance that drives you, shapes you, and pulls at you too. Rarely spoken, almost never examined, that's the quiet tension. Coming up, psychologist and executive coach Dr. Sharon Turbin with Steve Paliuka on what separates the leaders people follow from the ones they don't. Stay with us for a preview. Listen closely wherever you get your podcasts.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 13:29Speaker 07

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• 14:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Emery, are you a church lady? You going to church?

• 14:05Amory Sivertson?

  I feel like I just went to my church, which is I went on a little walk in the woods right before this.

• 14:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  You went to the Church of Mother Nature?

• 14:12Amory Sivertson?

  That's right.

• 14:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 14:14Amory Sivertson?

  But otherwise, no. I think I've been in an actual church. I could count it on... Not one hand, let's say two hands in my whole life. Yep.

• 14:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, so those more than five but less than 10, you can count them on your hand, visits to a church. Emery, were any of those visits to the Church of Scientology?

• 14:35Amory Sivertson?

  You know, they were not.

• 14:40Amory Sivertson?

  Don't think I'm breaking any news there about my own.

• 14:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 14:43Amory Sivertson?

  My own religious practices.

• 14:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  And are you familiar with the Church of Scientology? What's your familiarity with?

• 14:52Amory Sivertson?

  Well, we've, we've covered it a little bit on the show.

• 14:57Amory Sivertson?

  I know that it was founded by a sci-fi writer. I mostly, you know, what's interesting is that I mostly know, I don't know a Scientologist in my life. To me Scientology is a religion of celebrities. It's like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Elizabeth Moss, Leah Remini, who left the church.

• 15:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, so, so as you said, you know, this is a religion created in the 1950s by L. Ron Hubbard, a sci-fi writer. It has a very big presence in Los Angeles because, as you said, many famous actors are members of the church. But people who have left the church have really just kind of described an awful culture within the church, a culture of violence and abuse, cultism. And we could say that it is a very controversial church in the list of churches that exist around the world.

• 15:54Amory Sivertson?

  And before we did anything on the show about it back in the day, what was your familiarity with it? Or relationship to the church?

• 16:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, I had almost a non-existent relationship to the church, except I used to go to Austin, Texas, once a year to try to go to South by Southwest. And when I did that, I would spend some time at KUT, shout out our local NPR station in Austin, Texas. And near to KUT, there was a Scientology building.

• 16:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  It was a weird spot. It felt a lot like a semi abandoned department store front window.

• 16:37Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 16:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  You know, it doesn't look like a church. Definitely not church like, but whatever the case, this was a very odd spot. And I was curious about the Church of Scientology, just through looking in this window. I was like, man, this is very different from your average church that you might look into the window of, the front door of. That will become relevant in a second, so I want you to do me a favor.

• 17:01Amory Sivertson?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Go to reddit.com.

• 17:06Amory Sivertson?

  That's very formal of you. Reddit.com. Okay.

• 17:12Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, search Scientology speedruns.

• 17:16Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, my goodness. Okay.

• 17:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  Now, sort by new.

• 17:21Amory Sivertson?

  Oh.

• 17:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  What are you seeing? Tell me what you're seeing.

• 17:24Amory Sivertson?

  Well, the top one is from r slash cults. Any Scientology speedruns coming up in the Boston area? Not the Onion. Hundreds of youths descend on Vancouver Scientology building as part of speedrunning trend.

• 17:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 17:39Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 17:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  Now you're getting it.

• 17:42Amory Sivertson?

  What is a Scientology speedrun?

• 17:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Over the last month or so, I have been seeing on my feeds these so-called Scientology speedruns. And this apparently started as a TikTok trend. It may have started with a user whose username is at S W H I L E Y Y. S Wiley.

• 18:12Amory Sivertson?

  Okay.

• 18:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Posted a speedrun and started this trend. And it is really, really blown up over the last several weeks, as you can see with, with basically youths, mostly, mostly boys, teenage boys. And what will happen is they will essentially run into Scientology buildings and see how far they can get.

• 18:35Amory Sivertson?

  Wow, this is a very literal speedrun.

• 18:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, it is a literal. What are teenage boys if not literal beings?

• 18:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Take a look at that. Come on, dude. Let's go.

• 18:50Amory Sivertson?

  Come on.

• 18:52Amory Sivertson?

  Okay, so it's a guy running through a church of Scientology. He must have a camera on his head in addition to, he's filming on his phone.

• 19:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 19:04Amory Sivertson?

  And there are people, he's just like Scientology speedrun and he's just running through hallways of what looked like basically an office building, almost, a pretty generic looking building.

• 19:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Doesn't look like a church, right?

• 19:15Amory Sivertson?

  Doesn't look like a church. There's clearly like someone behind him, he says at one point, like, "Don't push me, sir." As if like someone is trying to get him out of there. And then as he's approaching the exit, there's at least one police officer, maybe more than that. And he's been caught and he's just trying to, he's just trying to boogie his way through the church.

• 19:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Boogie is a good description. So I've seen some other versions of this video where there's like 20 kids all at the same time, charging into the building and running pell mell through the building.

• 19:53Amory Sivertson?

  And why? Do we know why? Just because it's sort of a mysterious place and this is a, this is a fun challenge?

• 20:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think that's basically it.

• 20:02Amory Sivertson?

  I mean, fun is relative, but you know.

• 20:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's chaos. It's this sort of chaos thing.

• 20:07Amory Sivertson?

  Whatever happened to a good old flash mob?

• 20:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, that's kind of what this is, right? But it's like a little bit more aggressive in that it's like these kids are like running into this building.

• 20:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  The person who apparently started this trend told The Hollywood Reporter, "I do not condone what I did, even though I didn't break any laws." This is a person who started it via TikTok. Anyway, there's now been a number of reports about this. So there was an NBC report, Hollywood Reporter did one, The Guardian has done a few pieces, it's now in The New York Times. Like you said, it's, it's, it's been done in Vancouver. People are trying to do one in Boston now. It really has swept the country in the past few weeks in this really interesting way.

• 20:55Amory Sivertson?

  I think one of the posts I saw was from, it's the same Hamburg, from Hamburg, Germany.

• 20:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  What do you, what's your impression of how the people in these buildings might react to this kind of thing?

• 21:08Amory Sivertson?

  Well, I guess I have a question and a comment. My, my comment is from the little bit of reporting that we've done on Scientology in the past. The, the officials that we've spoken to or people we've reached out to, there is more of a defensive approach in their responses. Like they're expecting to have to defend how they run the church. And so it's not surprising to me that there would be, you know, to have seen the police in the video and to see a sort of like, get this person who's running through our church.

• 21:49Amory Sivertson?

  Because I can, I can appreciate that no matter what the religion is or the organization is, that would just feel kind of violating if someone is, you know, stampeding through your, your space.

• 22:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think churches in general, they're meant to be places of respite, places where anyone is welcome, right? Like, that's the idea. Scientology, as we've talked about, is, is pretty complicated as a version of this. People have called it a cult. It has, it displays lots of cult-like aspects in the way that people are asked to worship and contribute and be a part of the Church of Scientology. So it is definitely complicated and, and lots of other churches, you know, display problematic ways of existing as well, we should say. The Church of Scientology said in a statement, quote, "These are peaceful spaces designed to welcome parishioners, visitors, and members of the public. Turning them into targets for viral stunts is not journalism protest or civic activity.

• 22:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  It is trespass, harassment, and disruption of religious facilities." A spokesperson for the church also told the Associated Press that a staff person there was injured and required medical attention. In May, Sandy Springs Police in Georgia also arrested a man there as part of yet another Scientology speedrun attempt.

• 23:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is, you know, it's getting, it's getting, it's getting complicated. The Guardian article quotes Leah Remini. She says something that I think kind of speaks to my own non-church of Scientology. I'll run Hubbard soul, which is, she says, if someone is brainwashed for years into believing the outside world is filled with dangerous lunatics who wish to impede Scientology, a group of people running through a Scientology building is only going to confirm that belief and lead them to dedicate themselves even more to the cause they believe in, unquote. Hey, I love, in many ways, I'm still an adolescent boy and I, you know, I'm a pro

• 23:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  being ridiculous person and doing ridiculous things person in many ways. But I also think it's gotten crazy, guys. Let's, let's maybe back it off. I don't know.

• 24:01Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, and I think a question of our time. And this has sort of come up across different episodes, whether it's, you know, our Jeffrey episode, the, the gentleman in Hong Kong, or, you know, from Hong Kong originally, or, or this topic. I feel like the question of our time is, how do we demonstrate? What is, how do we show up and resist things that we want to resist and demonstrate our beliefs and basically like how to win friends and influence people? You know, like, like, I don't think that we're very good, broadly speaking, at that right now.

• 24:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 24:47Amory Sivertson?

  I think, like you're pointing out, it becomes clearer when you see an example of something like this, that you go, oh, that actually is not helping anyone. That's not making the world a better place in any way. And I just hope we all are looking for our own sort of forms of resistance or protest or whatever that actually helps bring someone to whatever light we want to bring them towards and not turn them off from whatever it is that we're doing.

• 25:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's tricky, though. These, these kids might be trying to turn people on to the church of speedrun. You know what I mean? That's tricky.

• 25:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is how they-

• 25:33Amory Sivertson?

  I had not thought of that. Thank you for introducing me to that perspective. My mind is open.

• 25:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  The Church of Speedrun.

• 25:42Amory Sivertson?

  The Church-

• 25:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Maybe that'll be the one that rounds out all the digits on your hands. You could go to the Church of Speedrun.

• 25:49Amory Sivertson?

  What?

• 25:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  You said you could count the number of churches you've visited.

• 25:57Amory Sivertson?

  All right, we can start that.

• 26:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  Can we speedrun solving the world's problems?

• 26:06Amory Sivertson?

  Yes, there we go.

• 26:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, before we go, Endless Threaders, we have a question for you. Do you use WhatsApp? We want to know about that. We are making an episode about WhatsApp. We've got some great stories from some listeners. We're looking for some more. We want to know if you use it not just to like chat individuals, but like maybe you have a huge, wild and crazy family chat group on WhatsApp. Maybe you get your news on WhatsApp somehow from another country. Maybe you're part of a yoga group on WhatsApp. What are your massive chat groups that you participate in WhatsApp? What are the interesting ways in which you use WhatsApp? We want to make an episode about that. We need your help. If you have interesting stories, please tell us.

• 26:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  We'd love to hear from you. You know what to do. Email us at [email protected]. You can send us a voice memo. You can send us an email. You can send us some screenshots. Whatever you want to do. Just get in touch with us. We'd love to collaborate with you on our upcoming WhatsApp episode. And now, we shall speedrun the credits.

• 27:18Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was produced by Coliani Sixena. It was co-hosted by me, Amory Sivertson.

• 27:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  And me, Ben Brock Johnson. We also reported and brought the stories.

• 27:27Amory Sivertson?

  It was edited by Dave Shaw. Bix and sound design by Marquis Neal and our production manager, Paul Vikes.

• 27:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Dean Russell, Emily Jankowski, and our senior managing producer, Sumit Ajush.

• 27:36Amory Sivertson?

  Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between Scientology and those things in our bedroom that we really don't want our parents to know about.

• 27:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Have an unsolved mystery, unsold history, or other wild story from the internet? You know what to do. You can email us at [email protected]. Speedrun over.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Support for WBUR comes from the Quiet Tension Podcast with Dr. Sharon Churbin, psychologist, executive coach, and a close listener to what lives beneath high performance. Here she is with Steve Paliuka, who built Bain Capital and helped bring a championship back to Boston, on the thing the best leaders do that most don't.

• 28:25Speaker 05

  The best leaders kind of give credit and take blame. When something goes wrong, they're the first ones to take responsibility for it. And they see the good in the other people on the team. They don't immediately try to deflect whatever problem there was, what went wrong. You miss the sales target, on the salesperson, they reflect on themselves and what they could do better. Same thing, you know, what Joe Mazzulla does in basketball. If you see his press conferences and the Celtics don't play well, the first thing he says is, you know, "I need to coach better. I made a mistake here. I made a mistake there." Not many coaches do that. But that's why the players love Joe, and that's why, another reason, he's a great coach. So there are things like that that you learn. There are

• 29:07Speaker 05

  many, many more things like that I learned from people like Red Auerbach and my classmates from business school and sports and all the rest. And really, what an array of leaders, because leadership is both the same and

• 29:21Speaker 00

  different depending on the environment that you're in.

• 29:26Speaker 00

  Listen for more of the Quiet Tension wherever you get your podcasts.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

• 30:00Speaker 07

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