49 episodes
Search Engine PJ Vogt, Audacy, Jigsaw
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- Society & Culture
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4.9 • 478 Ratings
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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.
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How do we survive the media apocalypse? (Part 2)
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 we may all yet escape.
Support the show at searchengine.show!
Search Engine - How do we survive the media apocalypse? (Part 1)
Platformer - Google's broken link to the web
404 Media - Why Google is shit now
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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Should this creepy search engine exist?
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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To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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What do trigger warnings actually do?
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?
Support the show: searchengine.show
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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Where's my flying car?
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!
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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Do political yard signs actually do anything?
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.
Support the show!
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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Why are there so many illegal weed stores in New York City? (Part 2)
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.
Help support the show!
To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy
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Customer Reviews
Can’t get enough!
PJ has an incredible way of telling a story and showing different viewpoints. His voice is calming, and interesting at the same time. Each podcast is a fascinating deep dive into a question. Definitely worth a listen!
Off brand
I’ll admit that there are a handful of enjoyable episodes but it feel like most are under researched or just poorly so. Each episode feels like it has an ending it WANTS to tell and because of that, they only do enough research to get them to that point. Certain episodes also just feel like they are long branded content hidden in a poorly researched question. I’m not opposed to that but why not be honest about it. Was there really a question about fame or was Molly Ringwald doing a press tour? I like PJ and the team, I just hope they actually start to care about research and quality and less on advertising, guests, promos, pay walled content etc.
The best stories
PJ and the rest of the team at this show are just so good at poking into all the details of all these aspects of life, so we see that nothing is simple, everything is a patchwork of dynamic relationships and intricate and crucial overlooked details. And despite all the nuance there’s always a compelling story, a point or direction of some kind that you can take away and use. PJ particularly puts himself out in the world as a human, and in sharing the nuances, messes, progress and resilience in his own journey I feel like it’s easier to understand that we’re all navigating tricky and complex lives in this moment and to honour the effort of that. And somehow I usually end up laughing out loud which isn’t normal for me. This show is so important if in the time of AI, algorithmic streamlining of creative content and rampant social isolation, you need to hear human (and sometimes animal) stories valued right now.