Bootcamp for Men: from betas to alphas
Endless Thread8 Elo 2025

Bootcamp for Men: from betas to alphas

In the past few years, videos from a new kind of camp have begun circulating the internet. They feature men participating in a variety of bizarre activities: from aggressively digging holes under floodlights, to collectively wailing in a pool of water. These are man camps, where men can pay up to $18,000 to undergo extreme boot-camp-like conditioning in the name of reclaiming their masculinity.

This week on Endless Thread, host Ben Brock Johnson and senior producer Dean Russell, dive into the past, present and future of man camps.

Show notes:

*** Survey alert: Tell us what you love about the show, what you want more of; what you could stand a little less of. And if you complete the survey, we'll send you an extra episode (what Ben's calling a "dashboard confessional") in January.

Take the survey here: wbur.org/endlessthreadsurvey

Thank you!

Jaksot(434)

Best of Summer: Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap

Best of Summer: Goblins, Toenails, and Beach Rap

In times like these, you've got to take joy wherever and however you can get it. Amory and Ben swap unexpected sources of joy they've bumped into recently — from a goblin-themed Reddit post, to the sc...

26 Heinä 202325min

Best of Summer: The Loudest Sound

Best of Summer: The Loudest Sound

Imagine if an explosion in California was so loud that it could be heard in New York City. This is the story of a real event that was just as loud — the loudest sound ever recorded in human history. ...

24 Heinä 202339min

Best of Summer: The 100-million-year origin story of laughter and humor

Best of Summer: The 100-million-year origin story of laughter and humor

The first documented bar joke was copied onto a clay tablet 4,000 years ago in the ancient language of Sumerian. Scholars have translated it, but the meaning remains lost. After the Twitter account @D...

17 Heinä 202338min

Best of Summer: What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

Best of Summer: What makes the world’s first bar joke funny? No one knows.

What makes the world’s first documented bar joke funny? No one knows. In a tweet that garnered thousands of responses in March, the Twitter account @DepthsOfWiki posted about a 4,000-year-old prover...

14 Heinä 202334min

Best of Summer: Swimming Hole - The man, the myth, the leap

Best of Summer: Swimming Hole - The man, the myth, the leap

In this summer-y episode of Endless Thread, Ben and Amory take a leap of faith (or do they?) to the depths of an upstate New York swimming hole with a legend surrounding it that's almost as shadowy as...

7 Heinä 202344min

Pup Play

Pup Play

“Which one of you freaks hijacked the south Boston green space google maps for your furry photo shoot?” Earlier this year, a Redditor was trying to find the person who uploaded pictures of himself po...

30 Kesä 202323min

'Going Dark': Reddit's API Changes

'Going Dark': Reddit's API Changes

Reddit is restricting the use of third-party apps. More than 8,000 subreddit communities shut down in protest — including r/Blind, which says the change will drastically reduce accessibility. In this...

28 Kesä 202330min

Deepfake Law 101

Deepfake Law 101

Since the creation of deepfakes in 2017, the AI-powered technology that swaps faces into videos has become commonplace, particularly in pornography. Using someone's image without their consent to cre...

23 Kesä 202333min