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Search Engine
Search Engine is the podcast that tries to answer the questions that keep you up at night. A podcast made by humans that provides the answers that neither artificial intelligence nor actual search engines really can. Named one of the best podcasts of 2023 by Vulture, Time, The Economist, and Vogue.
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A rogue IRS contractor leaks the private tax returns of the country’s wealthiest citizens to a reporter. That reporter, ProPublica’s Jesse Eisinger, learns that some of our billionaires are paying as...
· 52 min 24 sec
This week, we're sharing an episode of a show we love, Death, Sex & Money. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do. We'll be back with two new episodes of our own next Friday. To learn more about l...
· 51 min 29 sec
This week we have for you ... not a whodunnit, but a what did I do? A listener tries a substance he doesn’t know much about and not long after, his life begins to change. Afterwards, he wonders — what...
· 1 hr 7 min 1 sec
The single issue that might decide the upcoming presidential election also happens to be: very confusing. Political economist Mark Blyth helps us understand: how inflation starts, how inflation is sto...
· 56 min 9 sec
25 years ago, The Sopranos, the best television show ever created, premiered. This week, a new documentary called Wise Guy asks the question: how did a show considered so risky & uncommercial even...
· 59 min 27 sec
If you care about animals, but don't want to stop eating them... what's the least you could do while doing the most good? That question, posed to The Atlantic's Annie Lowrey, leads us to a pair of tru...
· 57 min 25 sec
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 s...
· 1 hr 4 min 55 sec
We are in an eighty-eight day sprint to the Presidential election. How would you follow this story if you wanted to actually understand something, instead of, like me, just feeling very anxious severa...
· 1 hr 4 min 5 sec
A trip to Greenland, a chance encounter with Coolio, and the end of the world. (This summer we’re publishing some of our favorite episodes from our previous series, Crypto Island.)Support the show ove...
· 56 min 6 sec
An art heist in the crypto world plunges us headfirst into another mystery — why did so many celebrities suddenly start selling us on NFTs last year? (This summer we’re publishing some of our favorite...
· 41 min 9 sec
This week: Bitcoin. We trace it from its humble origins in a .PDF to the movement it has spawned, all over three days at an enormous Bitcoin conference in Miami. (This summer we’re publishing some of...
· 1 hr 8 min 50 sec
A story about a strange auction for perhaps the most valuable piece of paper in America. This summer we’re publishing some of our favorite episodes from our previous series, Crypto Island.Support the...
· 51 min 18 sec
We travel to Germany to trace techno's history from Detroit to Berlin. The story of how, after the Wall fell, Berlin exorcised its brutal past with a very strange, decade-long party. A mission that ta...
· 1 hr 13 min 34 sec
Two Americans embark on a quest: fly across an ocean to try to get into the most exclusive nightclub in the world – Berghain. A German techno palace where the line outside can last 8 hours, and the bo...
· 55 min 18 sec
This week, we try to understand an experience that 74% of Americans routinely report having. The first of many conversations (perhaps?). This one, an interview with Zvika Krieger.Support the show: sea...
· 1 hr 7 min 6 sec
An internet breaking news story. As we told you last week, Google has begun offering AI-generated answers to search questions. But some answers, it turns out, are strange. Users were told, for instanc...
· 45 min 44 sec
Last week, Google announced a fundamental change to how the site will work, which will likely have dire effects for the news industry. When you use Google now, the site will often offer AI-generated s...
· 1 hr 4 min 22 sec
After stumbling on a new kind of search engine for faces, we called privacy journalist Kashmir Hill. She’s been reporting on the very sudden and unregulated rise of these facial search engines. Here’s...
· 1 hr 56 sec
A listener’s brother dies by suicide, and afterwards, she finds herself angered by trigger warnings about suicide. She wants to know — are these actually helping other people? Or is it just something...
· 59 min 29 sec