Nuclear energy was a taboo for decades, but it’s coming back, it’ll power AI data centers for Google and Microsoft. What does new nuclear technology look like, and why do the nuclear optimists believe this new tech is superior? Meltdowns, reactors that can fit in your backyard, and one podcaster’s heroic attempt to describe nuclear fission.

Rachel Slaybaugh

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow (check out her book Atomic Dreams)

Adam Stein

Search Engine’s episodes on data centers: Colossus 1 & Colossus 2

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We're supposed to be buried there forever, right? Right?? Answers this week from writer David Sloane, who grew up in a cemetery and spent his adult life studying them. The surprising history of the place we go where we die and an answer to what happens when it runs out of money.

Is the Cemetery Dead? by David Charles Sloane 

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An enterprising reporter goes on a quest to find the restaurant serving the absolute best free bread in this country, and finds it. She returns to Search Engine with her results. 

Read Caity Weaver’s story.

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The United States has begun a conflict with Iran that two thirds of the American public does not understand. One question we can try to answer: how much is this conflict costing us? The surprising story of how the government learned to hide the costs of war, and how someone learned to get to the bottom of those costs anyway.

Check out Professor Bilmes’ work.

Additional listening: our episode on ballooning national debt and why it's a big deal

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Search Engine is breaking its cowardly three-year silence on GLP-1s. We have been curious about them. We have been afraid of getting in trouble. We are no longer afraid. A conversation with Dr. Rachael Bedard about the many mistakes in how the media covered these drugs and what the research shows about their surprising effects. 

Dr. Bedard’s story on the rise of Ozempic

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In blue cities throughout the country, unions and politicians are fighting to ban driverless cars. We travel to Boston, where the fight has reached a fever pitch, and where the cars themselves will create some very unusual political alliances.

(This is part two of a two part series, listen to the beginning here.)

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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? 

Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car , Alex Davies

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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.

You can find more episodes from Odd Lots here.

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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. 

Read Gideon's story here

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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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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.

Check out Jasmine Sun's work (and her piece on peptides)

Check out Ezra Marcus' work (and his piece on peptides)

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