The archive

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.

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?

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.

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.

In part two of our story about ADHD medications, we approach the question from a different angle.

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.)

A journalist finds out that many of his vaunted mentors are seeing a psychic. The same psychic. He decides to pay her a visit.

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.

A woman gets a disquieting piece of information about her pregnancy, and turns to technology to try to control her future.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A re-air from August 2023:

A group of teenagers agrees to allow a filmmaker to record the things they do on their phones for a year-long experiment. To see the world they see through their phones, to encounter their algorithms. The results are honest, at times pretty upsetting, and tell us a lot about the internet that Gen-Z finds itself on. In the middle of our big, confusing, national argument about teenagers and their phones, a few answers.

A beloved American rock band’s Spotify page appears to have been taken over by Russian rappers. Is this a scam? A mistake? A strange third act from some beloved alt-rockers? Kelefa Sanneh investigates.

Reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi has the story of an unusual website you’ve likely never heard of. A website that has been responsible for rapidly making the world of Dogecoin and other memecoins become even more unhinged, all while generating small fortunes for foul-mouthed children.

In the 1930s, two scientists made a very important discovery, but their breakthrough idea failed to spread. In large part because the two were considered so deeply annoying. Reporter Carl Zimmer brings us a story of the scientific process and its very human constraints.

Why it’s so difficult to manufacture something entirely in America, and what happens if you try anyway.

There’s a new president of America, and he’s doing a lot of things. How do you decide what to pay attention to? A story about reporters focusing on one mysterious line item during the DOGE headline storm, and where that led.

... Or, am I being lied to by a Brooklyn-based musician? At twenty-five, I had a question for The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn. This week, I finally got to ask it.

An adult picky eater, ostracized by his friends, castigated by society, asks the most human question of all: can I change? Our friends Manny, Noah, and Devan, the chicken bone squad, return to answer their own question.

A teenager explains why he shouldn’t have to write homework essays anymore. Is there some way for adults to force teens to still do homework? Or to convince them they should want to?