Every other week on NHPR's Morning Edition, the Outside/In team answers a listener question about the natural world.This week’s question comes from Maureen in Concord. For the past few years, Maureen’s been growing vegetables in a backyard garden. Sometimes, she finds chunks of coal in the soil when she’s digging.“I’m growing [vegetables] in the same soil as all of this coal… am I poisoning myself and my family?”
Since the dawn of the internet, cyberwitches have traded in their broomsticks and cauldrons for floppy disks and smartphones. This week on Endless Thread, we go into the history of cyberwitches, attend a Zoom ritual, and talk to members of a cyber coven.
In this episode, Endless Thread dives into The Herman Cain Award subreddit, which ironically awards those who die from COVID after publicly expressing anti-vaxx sentiments or pandemic-denying memes online. We meet a moderator and a Herman Cain Award nominee, who may have more in common than they realize.
During the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship, tens of thousands of people were forcibly disappeared. For decades, few people knew this and no one talked about it. Then, one man started to dig into his past to find his missing grandfather. What he discovered allowed him to break his own silence, and the silence of an entire country.
Anybody old enough to remember infomercials has probably seen the work of TV pitchman Billy Mays. But younger people still know his face and squeaky OxiClean personality. While Mays died years ago, he’s lived on in meme form. We ask his son Billy Mays III, his biggest frenemy, and others to explain why he continues to appear online.