This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

The podcast Endless Thread is a great show at a W-B-U-R in Boston that examines the

blurred line between the online world and the real world.

And their recent series is all about memes.

Those little bits of culture that are easily passed around the internet and are meant to convey

a lot of information in a single

glance. Memes are changing everything from our politics to our senses of humor to how we

communicate online and in real life. I was recently taken with an episode of this series that was totally in my wheelhouse

as both a young comic book collector and a lover of effective logos.

It's all about the Punisher skull. Not to brag, but I had the very first Punisher limited series

comics as a kid, and I love them. The Punisher is a character that really appeals to a 12-year-old

who has a chip on a shoulder and wishes he was a badass.

But since his first appearance as a villain in Spider-Man, the Punisher's skull emblem has

escaped the pages of the comics and is now being painted on police vehicles adopted by

members of the military and dawned by white supremacist something the original

creator of the character finds troubling to say the least. Here is the story of the Punisher's

symbol as a meme, its origins, its use today, and whether its creator or Marvel or Disney,

for that matter, can take it back. This is endless thread, hosted by Amore Zeeverson and

Ben Brock Johnson.

Some origin stories kick off with radioactive spider bites or alien planets and some

some begin with good old-fashioned bloodshed. If society won't punish the guilty.

He will.

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