A story about a device that charts the world through smell — and only smell. TAL producer Nancy Updike visits Cyrano Sciences in Pasadena, California, where researchers are creating an electronic nose.

Host Ira Glass finds the men behind a bot, whose job was to generate random inspirational quotes and images. But the bot ended up making something more surprising.

Producer Miki Meek picks up the story of Lenny Pozner, whose son, Noah, was killed at Sandy Hook. In the years after Noah's death, Lenny and his family were harassed by people who believed the shooting at Sandy Hook never happened – that it was all a conspiracy.

One day, Joe Lipari had a frustrating encounter with a worker at the Apple Store. And then Joe did what a lot of us would do: He vented.

Sean Cole talks to reporter Garrett Graff, who read the 247 pages of interview summaries of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. Graff concludes that it’s not the scandal most people thought it was.

Host Ira Glass surveys the effects DNA has had on the criminal justice landscape. He talks with Huy Dao, at the Innocence Project, where they are waist-deep in 2,000 letters from prisoners claiming DNA can prove them innocent.

The first step for refugees trying to get out of limbo in Greece has been calling (and calling) the asylum office… on Skype.

One Switch.

Producer Alex Blumberg with people who listen in on the invisible world on the nether reaches of the radio spectrum, mostly illegally...and what they find there.

Lina Misitzis tells Ira Glass about this one video game character from the 90s who consistently brings men to tears.

There's a derogatory term in Silicon Valley for companies that amass huge troves of patents and make money by threatening lawsuits: "patent trolls." When Jeff Kelling's Internet company Fototime was sued - along with more than 130 other companies - for violating someone's patent, he wondered if it was a troll (which the company denies), and then settled out of court.

Host Ira Glass talks with science writer Paul Hoffman about a mathematician named Frank Nelson Cole, who demonstrated a groundbreaking idea at a conference in 1903. Paul explains that in addition to their celebrated breakthroughs, many of the greatest thinkers in history have entertained some very crazy ideas.

Three teenage boys—going under the pseudonyms "K-Rad", "Mr. Warez", and "Fred"—spill their guts about their forays into low-level credit card hacking and computer fraud.

Amy D'Addario had ferried her mother to the hospital dozens of times before.

In the 1990s, Eli was a member of MOD, one of the most infamous and accomplished computer hacking groups in history. He was eventually arrested and served time in a minimum-security prison and home confinement.

Amy McGuiness flies tourists to the North Pole who pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. When you get to the Pole, it looks exactly like all the other ice you've been staring at for hours.

Host Ira Glass talks with Andy Woolworth, an executive vice president in charge of new product development at the world's largest manufacturer of mousetraps, Woodstream Corporation, in Lititz, Pennsylvania. About once a month, Andy is contacted by someone who thinks he's invented a better mousetrap.

Host Ira Glass talks with Andy Woolworth, an executive vice president in charge of new product development at the world's largest manufacturer of mousetraps, Woodstrean Corporation, in Lititz, Pennsylvania. About once a month, Andy is contacted by someone who thinks he's invented a better mousetrap.

When to leave Twitter is a question lots of executives faced when Elon Musk took over the company — those who weren't immediately fired, anyway. We hear an insider’s account from the man who ran Trust & Safety at the company, until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

We’ve witnessed a revolution in A.I. since the public rollout of ChatGPT.  Our Senior Editor David Kestenbaum thinks that even though there’s been a ton of coverage, there’s one thing people haven’t talked much about: have these machines gotten to the point that they’re starting to have something like human intelligence? Where they actually understand language and concepts, and can reason? He talks with scientists at Microsoft who’ve been trying to figure that out.

Reporter Jack Hitt explains the alarming difference between theory and practice when it comes to computerized voting machines—specifically, those made by a company called Diebold.

Writer Simon Rich grapples with an A.I. chatbot that threatens to make him obsolete. (21 minutes)Excerpts from the audiobook edition of I am Code, written by code-davinci-002, edited by Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, and Simon Rich; read by Werner Herzog, Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, and Simon Rich, used with permission from Hachette Audio.I am Code © 2023 by Brent Katz, Josh Morgenthau, and Simon Rich; ℗ 2023 by Hachette Audio.