Story of the Week with Joel Stein

How did the Guinness World Records company come to be? And how, in the age of the internet, does the company make money? Imogen West-Knights spent a year investigating. She learned how to be a record adjudicator (it’s riskier than it sounds), met a man who has broken more than 700 records, and tried to break a record herself. You can read Imogen West-Knight’s Guardian story, “The Strange Survival of Guinness World Records,” here: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/may/25/guinness-world-records-norris-mcwhirter-ashrita-furman See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2010, an art collector named Forrest Fenn published a memoir called “The Thrill of the Chase,” in which he described hiding a treasure chest somewhere in the United States. His memoir inspired hundreds of thousands of treasure hunters to scour the country for it. Now, over a decade later, much about this chest still remains a mystery. You can read Svati Kirsten Narula’s story “America’s Greatest Hidden Treasure Was Found—So Why Are People Still Looking?” here: https://www.popularmechanics.com/adventure/a43061508/forrest-fenn-treasure-hunt/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Comedian Dave Chappelle has been buying up properties in the tiny town of Yellow Springs, Ohio. The residents have mixed feelings about their powerful neighbor’s real estate decisions and it’s been splitting the town in two. Reporter Tyler J. Kelley paid a visit to Yellow Springs to see if it’s really becoming Chappelleville. You can read Tyler J. Kelley’s Bloomberg story “What Happens When Dave Chappelle Buys Up Your Town” here:https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-dave-chappelle-yellow-springs/#xj4y7vzkgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When a benign urban planning concept is co-opted by conspiracy theorists, an unsuspecting professor becomes the target of right-wing death threats. Tiffany Hsu covered the story of the 15 minute city conspiracy for The New York Times. You can read the full story here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/28/technology/carlos-moreno-15-minute-cities-conspiracy-theories.html See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nearly all of the high-end microchips in the world - the ones we depend on for our phones and cars – are manufactured in an unassuming factory in Taiwan. Virginia Heffernan is one of the few reporters to go inside. She wrote about what she saw for Wired. You can read Virginia Heffernan's story, "I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory" here: https://www.wired.com/story/i-saw-the-face-of-god-in-a-tsmc-factory/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the Replica app, you can create an AI-powered chatbot to talk to, befriend, sext and even virtually marry. The service has millions of users. Some of them are now discovering that having a friend or spouse that’s owned by a private company comes with downsides. Pranshu Verma wrote "They fell in love with AI bots. A software update broke their hearts" for The Washington Post. You can read the full story here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/03/30/replika-ai-chatbot-update/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.