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Hosted by PJ Vogt

Episodes

144

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN

About the show

We try to make sense of the world, one question at a time. No question too big, no question too small.Hosted by PJ Vogt, edited by Sruthi Pinnamaneni. Named one of the best podcasts of all time by Time Magazine

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60 recent
October 16, 202657 min

One man could slow down AI. He won’t. Why?

Jensen Huang is CEO of the most valuable company in human history, NVIDIA. He is arguably the one person who could slow down the AI race. But he’s made a massive bet that AI is safe. Is that conviction, insulation, salesmanship, or something else? We find answers in his very unusual life story. The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt Sign up for Incognito Mode

October 9, 202650 min

Unreliable Narrator

An interview with a writer, Meghan O’Gieblyn, who started lying to herself about her relationship to alcohol and God. And afterwards wondered: when did it start? Why did it happen? How do you make peace with the part of yourself that wants something that could destroy you? Meghan O’Gieblyn, Will and Attention Sign up for Incognito Mode

October 2, 202637 min

Vladimir Putin's Forkiverse

Nine months ago, three podcasters attempted to build a better internet. Today -- they confront foreign adversaries on a digital battlefield. Watch the Machine Gods trailer . Instructions for moving your Forkiverse account to a different server. Become a premium member!

September 29, 202643 min

Search Engine x Better in Person

Search Engine has some exciting news about the moving image to announce, and we’re sharing an interview we loved with an unusual architect. Check out the video version on Freakonomics' YouTube page.

September 18, 20261 hr 5 min

Bollywood Dreams

An email hits our inbox with the subject line: “My Dad is making a Bollywood Movie… is he being scammed?” We investigate. Become a premium subscriber.

September 11, 202650 min

Why’s everybody going to Japan?

A Japanese listener gets so many houseguests she starts a spreadsheet to try to figure out what's going on. Why has American tourism to Japan gotten so out of control? The story of a government plot. Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S. by Roland Kelts Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style by W. David Marx Become a premium subscriber!

August 28, 202649 min

The Killing of the Gaza Chef

Mahmud Almadhoun ran a soup kitchen in the north of the Gaza Strip. In November 2024, he was killed. A reporter tries to answer a big question. Was Mahmud intentionally targeted? And if so, what does that mean about the future of war? Listen to The Gaza Chef . Become a premium member!

August 21, 202647 min

The Chosen One

A listener asks: whose penis gets the top spot on the Wikipedia page for penis? Our quest for an answer takes us on a surprisingly philosophical journey — where we learn about the cutthroat fight to be number one and the extremely overthink-y debate that precedes the coronation. Wikipedia page for Lane Rasberry . Wikipedia page for penis . Wikipedia page for human penis . Become a premium member!

August 11, 202639 min

A road trip through the data center debate

The midterms are approaching, and as the discourse heats up, one of the big new villains is: a kind of building. Data centers. Reporter Jasmine Sun took a road trip through two swing states to meet the people living at the center of these debates, and to understand where this all might be headed. no data centers in my backyard by Jasmine Sun

August 6, 202637 min

How the Hugging Face hack happened

For the first time, an AI model has autonomously hacked a company. This week, an evolving story, a postcard from a strange, frightening moment in the story of our technology. A big week for AI denialism by Casey Newton Its AI agent spent days hacking a company, but sources say OpenAI did not notice for a week by Deepa Seetharaman, Raphael Satter, and Kenrick Cai Cheating behaviour in frontier model evaluations by AI Security Institute More On An Internal OpenAI Model Hacking Into HuggingFace by Zvi Mowshowitz

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