Search Engine
Named a best podcast of 2023 by Vulture, Time, The Economist, & Vogue. No question too big, no question too small. On Search Engine, host PJ Vogt answers the kinds of questions you might ask the internet when you can't sleep. If you find the world bewildering, but also sometimes enjoy being bewildered by it, we're here for you. Edited by Sruthi Pinnamaneni.
Episodes
July 26, 2024 • 41 mins
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 episodes from our previous series, Crypto Island.)
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July 19, 2024 • 68 mins
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 our favorite episodes from our previous series, Crypto Island.)
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July 12, 2024 • 51 mins
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.
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June 26, 2024 • 73 mins
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 takes us all the way to the gates of Berghain.
Music Credits: Original composition in this episode by Armen Bazarian. Additional Tracks: Game One - Infiniti, Dead Man Watches The Clock - Marcel Dettmann & Ben Klock, The Call - Marcel De...
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June 21, 2024 • 55 mins
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 bouncers are merciless in their judgments. The club does not explain how it makes its decisions about who can enter, but one foolish podcaster will try to explain anyway.
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June 14, 2024 • 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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May 31, 2024 • 45 mins
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 instance, that glue was an appropriate ingredient for homemade pizza. We talk to reporter Katie Notopolous, who baked and ate her own homemade glue pizza.
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May 22, 2024 • 64 mins
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 summaries to you, instead of favoring human-written articles. We talk to Platformer’s Casey Newton about why this is happening, why publishers are nervous, and about a secret new internet you may not have heard of, a paradise to which w...
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May 10, 2024 • 60 mins
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 the story of the very first one, the mysterious person who made it, and the copycats it helped spawn.
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May 3, 2024 • 59 mins
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 we do because we think we’re supposed to?
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April 19, 2024 • 55 mins
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 actual, working flying cars in America. Plus, what it's like to actually fly in a modern flying car.
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April 12, 2024 • 37 mins
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 make everyone like each other less?
An experiment that definitively answers this question.
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April 5, 2024 • 68 mins
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 complications. The whole time, cameras roll, broadcasting the meetings on YouTube.
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March 29, 2024 • 52 mins
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 every formerly empty store in the city now sells weed. How'd that happen? In part one, the history of prohibition and how it helps explain the mess we're in now.
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March 22, 2024 • 13 mins
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 very candid, high-level drug dealer about adulterants in the illicit drug supply. Sign up now, at searchengine.show or go there to learn more.
(More thoughts about why we're doing this and the future of our show).
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March 15, 2024 • 62 mins
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 good information on the internet, what are you supposed to do? We’re joined this week again by Ezra Klein, who has an explanation for why this is happening, a prediction about where it’s going, and a prescription for what we all can ...
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March 8, 2024 • 71 mins
"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, you'll never look at these messages the same way again.
You can grab a copy of Zeke's book, Number Go Up, here.
If you want to support Search Engine, and access our premium feed, head over to searchengine.show.
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March 1, 2024 • 53 mins
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 secret ideas hiding in games as simple as rock-papers-scissors.
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February 23, 2024 • 42 mins
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? Sure. But for cockroaches: the world's grimmest true crime story.
This story is a collaboration with our friends over at Radio Atlantic.
If you want to support Search Engine, you can do that over at pjvogt.com.
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February 9, 2024 • 53 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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