Search Engine
We try to make sense of the world, one question at a time. No question too big, no question too small. Hosted by PJ Vogt, edited by Sruthi Pinnamaneni. ***Named one of the best podcasts by Vulture, Time, The Economist, & Vogue. (OK, in 2023, but still...)***
Episodes
October 10, 2025 • 50 mins
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 video platform?
Check out Casey Newton's newsletter (Platformer) and podcast (Hard Fork)
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October 3, 2025 • 101 mins
This week, we’re sharing something we loved. An interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about a life made out of conversation.
Check out Talk Easy
Check out Fresh Air
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September 26, 2025 • 50 mins
The makers of the medical drama The Pitt have been sued. The allegation: that the show is an unauthorized copy of ER.
This week, investigative reporter Nicholas Kulish walks us through the ensuing drama, reads us the possibly damning private emails, and finally helps us decide where inspiration ends and theft begins.
Is ‘The Pitt’ Really an ‘ER’ Spinoff? - Nicholas Kulish
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September 19, 2025 • 56 mins
Not long after Alex’s wife Whitney dies, he looks at her obituary and discovers something strange. A sect of people online has hijacked her story and turned it into a disturbing conspiracy theory.
Check out the place Whitney worked, Project: Onward, a non-profit studio for artists with disabilities. (They have very cool & reasonably priced art for sale).
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September 5, 2025 • 50 mins
A member of an unusual Bay Area community decides to try to have a baby in an unusual way – by putting out a very large prize for anyone who can help her find a mate. How the internet shaped one person’s decision-thinking.
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August 22, 2025 • 42 mins
Garbage Day's Ryan Broderick traces the rise of this goopy green chocolate, and explains how Chinese social media is beginning to tug on US culture in unexpected ways.
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August 15, 2025 • 49 mins
Our listener Louisa is very annoyed by her sister’s preoccupation with keeping her children away from microplastics. Louisa wonders: are people with microplastics anxiety kind of overdoing it?
Search Engine investigates.
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July 25, 2025 • 67 mins
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.
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July 18, 2025 • 54 mins
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 people on both sides of the war, and from one person who sits exactly in the middle.
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July 11, 2025 • 48 mins
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 struggled to find someone who believed her.
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July 4, 2025 • 58 mins
One of the millions of millennials given prescription stimulants to treat ADHD decides to quit. And afterwards wonders -- how did these drugs becomes so popular, so fast? This week, the story of amphetamine's birth, life, death, and rebirth in America. (Methylphenidates, too.)
Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? by Paul Tough
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June 30, 2025 • 53 mins
A journalist finds out that many of his vaunted mentors are seeing a psychic. The same psychic. He decides to pay her a visit.
Check out the 10% Happier podcast
See more of Dan's work at DanHarris.com
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June 20, 2025 • 52 mins
Queer Eye’s Antoni Porowski has heard a disgusting rumor — that the coffee on airplanes is unsafe to drink because the onboard water tanks are only cleaned once a year. We investigate and learn some disgusting lessons along the way. Go to our newsletter to comment on the episode and to see the images referenced in the story.
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June 13, 2025 • 47 mins
A woman gets a disquieting piece of information about her pregnancy, and turns to technology to try to control her future.
Second Life - Amanda Hess ( Bookshop )
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A playlist of Recommended Search Engine episodes
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June 6, 2025 • 61 mins
A high school teacher has a question, but he wants his skeptical teenage students to answer it. Reporter Garrott Graham rides along as they investigate the motives of an international yogurt brand.
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Best of Search Engine
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May 30, 2025 • 45 mins
This week, we're presenting an episode of a new show we like called What We Spend, one of Vulture's best podcasts of 2025.
Also, news for our Incognito Mode listeners. Today, we're having an online, live event with Heavyweight's Jonathan Goldstein at noon Eastern time.
Sign up for Incognito Mode at searchengine.show. Details about the event in the beginning of the episode!
Listeners' favorite Search Engine episodes
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May 16, 2025 • 48 mins
This week we ask a slightly absurd question – is there technology to stop you from using addictive technology – and get some surprising answers from The Verge's David Pierce. New developments in the anti-technology field, and a partial history of how our phones got so oppressive.
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May 9, 2025 • 46 mins
A small group of Americans becomes convinced they’ve discovered something strange about their iPhones: a forbidden phrase the phone will refuse to transmit. A crack podcasting team searches for answers, wherever they may lead.
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April 25, 2025 • 46 mins
In a moment of deep economic uncertainty created by our tariff-loving president, suddenly, our national debt has become much more important. Important enough that, this week, we have decided to teach ourselves everything about it – how America first created its national debt, and how it got out of control.
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Explore a colonial merchant ledger
Brendan Greeley
Noahpinion
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April 18, 2025 • 48 mins
A re-air from August 2023:
Our quest for the answer to this one sends us over a hundred years into the past. We learn about the invisible rules and fights that determine what our neighborhoods look like. We also learn about houses with backyard roller coasters, tiny apartments inside of shopping malls, and then we think a little bit about death. Happy Friday!
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