The Lullaby
Endless Thread7 Huhti 2023

The Lullaby

Our intrepid sound designer, Matt Reed — musician/composer extraordinaire —recently became a dad. He picked up a Glo Worm for his baby son, Sam. It's a plush musical baby toy made by Hasbro that's been around for decades. It plays standard, well-known lullabies like "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "Frère Jacques," etc. "Straight hits," as host Ben Brock Johnson says in this episode. "Straight hits."

But there's one melody on the toy that was a complete unknown to Matt. It's in a minor key, it's slow. Is it creepy? "Yeah, it's definitely got that vibe," Matt says. "Funeral zone."

So, he brought this idea to Endless Thread's pitch meetings where we throw around episode ideas.

"I turn to the internet like most weirdos do, I guess, when they're obsessing over their child's toy to figure out what song it is," Matt says. "And there's other people on the Internet who are also... curious? Confused?"

There are two Reddit posts about this creepy music, a YouTube video, several unhelpful emails from Hasbro to concerned parents, and numerous guesses and theories.

"We were concerned by the addition of an unlisted song too," writes YouTuber deefrontier5798. "It's creepy and sad, and the fact that the creators withheld information puts up a red flag."

In this episode, we ask Hasbro directly and try alternate routes. Sometimes Endless Thread doesn't get to the complete bottom of Internet mysteries. But this isn't one of those times.

We hope you like nursery rhymes. :)

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(460)

How to Dim the Sun, from Marketplace's How We Survive

How to Dim the Sun, from Marketplace's How We Survive

The climate crisis is escalating. We have to decarbonize our economy, but we’re moving too slowly. So, what’s the backup plan? This season of How We Survive is about engineering nature: large-scale in...

17 Heinä 37min

Socials for Sale

Socials for Sale

Most of us know the internet isn't a particularly private place. Yet there's a certain feeling of anonymity that comes with sharing online — our words and stories mixed in with millions of others. It'...

10 Heinä 31min

Encore: Adrián and the Whale

Encore: Adrián and the Whale

This episode was originally published on March 21, 2025.  There are moments that define each of our lives. Some we can predict: graduations, marriages, births, deaths. Others? Not so much. And in th...

3 Heinä 24min

Comfort maxxing on the interwebs

Comfort maxxing on the interwebs

Sit back, relax and get cozy. As a matter of fact, why not put on your baggiest of clothes and burrow down in your snuggiest of blankets?  This week on Endless Thread, Ben and Amory are comfy-maxxing....

26 Kesä 25min

Back to the Backrooms!

Back to the Backrooms!

Once upon a dimly lit hallway, Ben and Amory stumbled onto a beloved brainchild of the internet: Backrooms. It began as a "creepypasta"— a horror story or concept that originates online and often beco...

19 Kesä 22min

Endless Thread on OnlyFans

Endless Thread on OnlyFans

Journalist Leon Neyfakh — known for the podcasts Slow Burn, Fiasco, and Backfired — wanted to know more about the massively popular and sprawling online ecosystem of OnlyFans. What are its nearly 400...

11 Kesä 36min

Leave a message after the beep

Leave a message after the beep

Jeremy Rellosa used to watch TV shows and movies from the '90s and revel in how the characters walked around untethered to a smartphone, with no expectations of constant connectivity. So he decided to...

4 Kesä 25min

The Church of Speedrun!

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 direc...

29 Touko 25min