The archive

The story of how a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads. And, an answer to the question: are the robots actually safer drivers than we are?

This week, we’re sharing an episode from Odd Lots. An interview with The Economist's Mike Bird about how Chinese real estate became the biggest bubble in history.

Anthropic hired philosophers to teach its AI to be good. In their tests, the AI blackmailed a human to keep itself alive. Writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus went inside the company to figure out what's going on with Claude, and whether anyone can actually control it.

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.

Two decades ago, bodybuilders on niche internet forums started injecting peptides. Now they're in the secret mini-fridges of some teenage boys. How did they get there? We track their crooked path from Silicon Valley to jaw-smashing influencers.

A simple question leads us on a journey from the bowels of New York City through the courtrooms of South Carolina to the disgusting truth.

The conclusion to our story about Venezuela. How a country goes from a prosperous democracy to a poverty-ravaged dictatorship.

For the past year, there's been a steady drumbeat of headlines about Venezuela. Now the US has invaded, arrested its president, and installed itself in charge. To understand how we got here, we talked to Venezuelan historian Alejandro Velasco, who grew up there and has spent years trying to understand why a country with so much promise has proven so difficult to govern.

Our present version of the internet is arguably the worst it’s ever been. Which means – any shot at changing things, even an unlikely one – is worth trying out. Three podcasters who’ve spent years critiquing social media companies try to build their own small alternative social media.

As a very special holiday treat, we are sharing a story from one of our favorite podcasts,  Heavyweight .

A man walks into an airport body scanner, and with eerie consistency, the machine flags the exact same part of his body. What could be going on? Search Engine investigates a Bermuda Triangle.

As a special, one-time holiday treat, we're sharing something we only usually offer on our premium feed, Incognito Mode . Our annual board meeting! We talk about what shopping a podcast has been like in this environment, our internal stats, and… Yes, Yes, No.

For years, the must-have phone for the discerning drug trafficker or hitman was a brand you may not have heard of: AN0M. Reporter Joseph Cox tells us the story of the AN0M phone, its sudden rise and shocking fall, and the shadowy group behind its invention.

This week, in honor of the holiday season — can you, should you change your family’s politics through holiday conversation. If so, how? A conversation with Ezra Klein.

In part two of our story about Elon Musk’s growing data center empire, we visit the battle between people in Memphis and xAI. And we try to understand a strange, untested assumption at the heart of the AI financing boom.

Tech billionaires have made an enormous bet on AI, the biggest bet that tech has made on anything in a very long time. Reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni goes on a journey – from Data Center Alley to the shadow of Colossus – to see what the money’s being spent on, and to learn what happens if things go wrong.

A reporter spends a year diving into a subculture of young men online who unite around their extreme commitment to constant, unadulterated porn consumption. Why are they doing this, what is it doing to them, and what does their existence tell us about the internet we’re all stuck on?

People review everything, but they almost never review what it’s like to live in another country. Until now.

Can you tickle your way to victory in an MMA fight? An investigation into a sports scandal with journalist Pablo Torre.

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?

This week, we’re sharing something we loved. An interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross about a life made out of conversation.

The makers of the medical drama The Pitt have been sued. The allegation: that the show is an unauthorized copy of ER.

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.

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.