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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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Since not long after the car was invented, we have wanted to stick wings on them and fly them through the sky. This week, we interview writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus about the surprisingly long history of...
· 55 min 40 sec
It’s an election year and so Search Engine’s campaign desk is answering the questions you really want answers to: all the political yard signs in your neighbors’ yards … do they do anything besides ma...
· 37 min 9 sec
In part two of our story, we watch the state of New York try to pull off something we rarely see in America: a kind of reparations. A very ambitious dream encounters a thicket of details and complicat...
· 1 hr 8 min 42 sec
In 2021, New York legalized cannabis for adults. It was supposed to be the start of a legal market, led by people arrested during prohibition. Instead, a strange new market has flourished, seemingly e...
· 52 min 19 sec
We've launched a new premium feed called Incognito Mode. It includes bonus episodes of Search Engine and some other very special features. We're including a preview episode here: an interview with a v...
· 13 min 51 sec
Something strange, new, and unsettling is happening in media right now. Huge institutions, both newspapers and online outlets, are being severely transformed by layoffs.As a person just trying to find...
· 1 hr 2 min 37 sec
"Hi David, I’m Vicky Ho. Don’t you remember me?"An investigative reporter travels halfway around the world to find out who is sending him random wrong number texts and why. After you hear this story,...
· 1 hr 11 min 52 sec
This episode will change how you look at games. We talk to Ben Brode, the designer behind Hearthstone and Marvel Snap, about how a creative person learns to make the things they love, and about the se...
· 53 min 43 sec
Cockroaches were a scourge that scuttled through the cracks and crevices of homes all throughout America. And then one day, large numbers of them mysteriously disappeared. A miracle for humankind? Sur...
· 42 min 7 sec
A question that has launched a battle between bird-loving ecologists and ardent, cat-defending activists. What should we do about an invasive species beloved by many Americans -- cats? We hear from pe...
· 53 min 39 sec
Actor Molly Ringwald joins us to talk about a time in her life when her job was to pretend to be a normal American teenager, a job which made it impossible to actually be a normal American teenager.Ho...
· 1 hr 12 min 50 sec
This week, the shocking finale of our investigation into who -- or what -- has been leaving chicken bones strewn across the sidewalks of American cities. Our team of investigators returns with surveil...
· 35 min 23 sec
A team of investigators with an unusual set of skills joins us this week to solve a mystery that haunts dog owners across modern American cities. On our journey, we'll have video surveillance, thousan...
· 40 min 51 sec
This week, a question a podcast has no business trying to answer. We talk to writer A.J. Daulerio about his own story of recovery, and the story of how he found himself opening a very unusual communit...
· 1 hr 44 sec
We bring you the shattering conclusion to our investigation into whether a New York City sushi restaurant is swapping their tuna rolls for “the ex-lax fish.” The DNA test is in.Can we trust anyone? Ar...
· 42 min 24 sec
We investigate unsettling rumors that fish purveyors may be mislabeling fish to save a buck. Our path leads us deep into the shadowy world of blackmarket fish sales, and sends us hot on the trail of t...
· 45 min 1 sec
This week, the story of a very brief, very absurd revolution at the world’s leading artificial intelligence company, OpenAI. And we try to answer the quite real question that might be animating all of...
· 56 min 45 sec
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.Suppor...
· 1 hr 1 min 13 sec
Every day in Manhattan, about 1,000 people will stand outside in a long line waiting for their chance to take a picture with a bronze bull. On many of those days, PJ Vogt stares at the scene trying to...
· 51 min 27 sec
In part two of our story about ADHD medications, we approach the question from a different angle.We meet a doctor who spent two decades convinced that her brain does not work correctly, and who strugg...
· 48 min 50 sec