Episodes

An enterprising reporter goes on a quest to find the restaurant serving the absolute best free bread in this country, and finds it. She returns to Search Engine with her results. Read Caity Weaver’s story. Support the show! T...

The United States has begun a conflict with Iran that two thirds of the American public does not understand. One question we can try to answer: how much is this conflict costing us? The surprising story of how the government ...

Search Engine is breaking its cowardly three-year silence on GLP-1s. We have been curious about them. We have been afraid of getting in trouble. We are no longer afraid. A conversation with Dr. Rachel Bedard about the many mi...

In blue cities throughout the country, unions and politicians are fighting to ban driverless cars. We travel to Boston, where the fight has reached a fever pitch, and where the cars themselves will create some very unusual po...

The story of how a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads. And, an answer to the question: are the robots actually safer drivers than we are? Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car , Alex Dav...

This week, we’re sharing an episode from Odd Lots. An interview with The Economist's Mike Bird about how Chinese real estate became the biggest bubble in history. You can find more episodes from Odd Lots here . To learn more ...

Anthropic hired philosophers to teach its AI to be good. In their tests, the AI blackmailed a human to keep itself alive. Writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus went inside the company to figure out what's going on with Claude, and whethe...

A question from a four-year-old tips us into an investigation of one of our most fundamental taboos: cannibalism. With help from New Yorker food critic Hannah Goldfield and writer Kelefa Sanneh. To learn more about listener d...

Two decades ago, bodybuilders on niche internet forums started injecting peptides. Now they're in the secret mini-fridges of some teenage boys. How did they get there? We track their crooked path from Silicon Valley to jaw-sm...

A simple question leads us on a journey from the bowels of New York City through the courtrooms of South Carolina to the disgusting truth. Support Search Engine! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices vis...

The conclusion to our story about Venezuela. How a country goes from a prosperous democracy to a poverty-ravaged dictatorship. The End (our 2022 episode on Greenland): Either this Substack link or this Spotify link . The Many...

For the past year, there's been a steady drumbeat of headlines about Venezuela. Now the US has invaded, arrested its president, and installed itself in charge. To understand how we got here, we talked to Venezuelan historian ...

Our present version of the internet is arguably the worst it’s ever been. Which means – any shot at changing things, even an unlikely one – is worth trying out. Three podcasters who’ve spent years critiquing social media comp...

As a very special holiday treat, we are sharing a story from one of our favorite podcasts, Heavyweight . Gregor's parents are pushing 90. Gregor wants to move them our of their big Victorian home. But they refuse. So, he's co...

A man walks into an airport body scanner, and with eerie consistency, the machine flags the exact same part of his body. What could be going on? Search Engine investigates a Bermuda Triangle. Incognito Mode⁠ , our ad-free, no...

As a special, one-time holiday treat, we're sharing something we only usually offer on our premium feed, Incognito Mode . Our annual board meeting! We talk about what shopping a podcast has been like in this environment, our ...

For years, the must-have phone for the discerning drug trafficker or hitman was a brand you may not have heard of: AN0M. Reporter Joseph Cox tells us the story of the AN0M phone, its sudden rise and shocking fall, and the sha...

This week, in honor of the holiday season — can you, should you change your family’s politics through holiday conversation. If so, how? A conversation with Ezra Klein. ⁠Support Search Engine! To learn more about listener data...

In part two of our story about Elon Musk’s growing data center empire, we visit the battle between people in Memphis and xAI. And we try to understand a strange, untested assumption at the heart of the AI financing boom. Supp...

Tech billionaires have made an enormous bet on AI, the biggest bet that tech has made on anything in a very long time. Reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni goes on a journey – from Data Center Alley to the shadow of Colossus – to see ...

A reporter spends a year diving into a subculture of young men online who unite around their extreme commitment to constant, unadulterated porn consumption. Why are they doing this, what is it doing to them, and what does th...

People review everything, but they almost never review what it’s like to live in another country. Until now. We interview a writer who’s lived in China, covered China, and has had to choose between life here and there. What a...

Can you tickle your way to victory in an MMA fight? An investigation into a sports scandal with journalist Pablo Torre. Check out Pablo Torre Finds Out on Youtube or Spotify . Support Search Engine! To learn more about listen...

Last week, OpenAI released an app that quickly shot to the #1 spot in Apple's App Store. Sora is like TikTok, except all the videos are AI generated. Is this ... what we're doing now? What's the business case for a fake AI vi...