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
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.
Read Gideon's article! Support the show!
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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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February 2, 2024 • 72 mins
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.
How did she learn to survive? In an era when the internet has turned many more people into public figures, what can everybody else learn from her?
Plus, Sruthi Pinnamaneni tries to learn more about a rare and enchanting song.
To learn...
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January 26, 2024 • 35 mins
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 surveillance footage, and a recording of a superintendent with a rat-hitting stick. Plus, an exclusive interview with a public servant with a vision for a revolution in American urban trash collection.
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January 19, 2024 • 40 mins
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, thousands of years of poultry history, and some hard truths about highway apples.
Check out Manny, Noah, and Devan online.
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January 12, 2024 • 60 mins
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 community on the internet.
You can find the Search Engine newsletter here.
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December 15, 2023 • 42 mins
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? Are our fish safe to eat? What’s the email address where you submit for the Pulitzers? We have answers.
Plus a bonus this week — the 5-second rule is put to a laboratory test.
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December 8, 2023 • 45 mins
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 the infamous ex-lax fish. Plus, we look back to antiquity for the first ever recorded emergency podcast.
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December 1, 2023 • 56 mins
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 the drama.
Check out Casey Newton's newsletter Platformer and our newsletter, too.
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November 17, 2023 • 61 mins
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.
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