Encore: The Internet's Most Hated Bird
Endless Thread
WBUR
4.1 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 September 2025
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As summer fades away, we bring you an encore episode about you shoreline companions and occasional bullies — gulls.
Gulls are not beloved creatures. Consult social media, where they are deemed relentless, dirty pests who steal our food and crowd our beaches. As one TikTok user puts it, "Seagulls are the worst animals to ever exist."
Such hatred overlooks truths about this intelligent, charismatic animal, and it is masking a big problem: While gulls may seem like they are everywhere, many species are dying.
Endless Thread goes on a journey to reconsider the seagull.
You can learn more and see photos of the gulls of Appledore here.
Credits: This episode was written and produced by Dean Russell. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski. The hosts are Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson. It was edited by managing producer, Samata Joshi.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software for technical computing and model-based design. |
| 0:09.1 | MathWorks, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. |
| 0:16.8 | Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at |
| 0:22.9 | B.U Questrum School of Business. A recent episode explores the high stakes of the AI economy. Stick |
| 0:29.9 | around until the end of this podcast for a preview. Emma. Bo Bo Benjo. Last week, we gave our listeners a reason to be afraid to go to the beach by sharing the first |
| 0:42.3 | episode of our limited podcast series from WBWR, Jaws Island. |
| 0:47.0 | Yes, I hope you enjoyed that. |
| 0:48.9 | I hope you listened to episodes two and three out now. |
| 0:52.6 | This week, though, we're giving you a reason to be excited to go to the beach because you |
| 0:58.1 | might see something there with a new sense of appreciation. |
| 1:02.7 | Yes, we are revisiting a summary episode because we are in denial about the end of summer. |
| 1:09.7 | Please, I, it's too cold. It's already too cold. I don't like it. |
| 1:14.4 | Yeah. I'm having a hard time this year, I got to say. Yeah. But also, um, we're giving you this episode |
| 1:21.2 | right now because we are cooking up something new that we are going to be telling you about |
| 1:26.2 | very soon. |
| 1:28.5 | Yes. |
| 1:29.4 | But until then, what better way, Ben, to live in denial than to take a little field trip |
| 1:35.0 | to vacation land. |
| 1:37.8 | Yeah, it ain't over yet. |
| 1:39.2 | It ain't no. |
| 1:39.6 | Summer ain't over. |
| 1:40.6 | No. |
... |
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