
Searches
Selfhood in the Digital Age
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Narrated by:
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Vauhini Vara
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Anastasia Davidson
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By:
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Vauhini Vara
About this listen
From the author of The Immortal King Rao, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a personal exploration of how technology companies have both fulfilled and exploited the human desire for understanding and connection • A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK: Esquire, Foreign Policy, Lit Hub, Electric Literature
When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
Vauhini Vara, an award-winning tech journalist and editor, had long been grappling with these questions. In 2021, she asked a predecessor of ChatGPT to write about her sister’s death, resulting in an essay that was both more moving and more disturbing than she could have imagined. It quickly went viral.
The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies have influenced her understanding of her self and the world around her, from discovering online chat rooms as a preteen, to using social media as the Wall Street Journal’s first Facebook reporter, to asking ChatGPT for writing advice—while compelling her to add to the trove of human-created material exploited for corporations’ financial gain. Interspersed throughout this investigation are her own Google searches, Amazon reviews, and the other raw material of internet life—including the viral AI experiment that started it all. Searches illuminates how technological capitalism is both shaping and exploiting human existence, while proposing that by harnessing the collective creativity that makes humans unique, we might imagine a freer, more empowered relationship with our machines and, ultimately, with one another.
*Includes a downloadable PDF of images from the book
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2025 Vauhini Vara (P)2025 Random House AudioCritic reviews
One of the New York Times’ Nonfiction Books to Read This Spring
One of Esquire’s 20 Most Anticipated Books of 2025
One of Foreign Policy's Most Anticipated Books of 2025
One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2025
One of Electric Literature’s 48 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2025
“Readers will be profoundly moved by this remarkable meditation.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Tragic, funny, and relatable, [SEARCHES] is by turns absurd and insightful, engaging with the ethics of algorithms, surveillance, and privacy in a meaningful way. . . . A must read.”—Library Journal, starred review
“Vara’s essays are beautifully written and profoundly researched, but what sets them apart is their profound vulnerability. Her use of experimental forms . . . pushes the limits of the genre without ever compromising her circumspective, confessional approach. An original essay collection about loss, technology, morality, and identity.”—Kirkus, starred review
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Story
Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.
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I had to return
- By Andrew Alvarez on 05-19-20
By: Paul Ortiz
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Medicine River
- A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools
- By: Mary Annette Pember
- Narrated by: Erin Tripp
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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A sweeping and trenchant exploration of the history of Native American boarding schools in the U.S., and the legacy of abuse wrought by systemic attempts to use education as a tool through which to destroy Native culture.
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Mark Twain
- By: Ron Chernow
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 48 hrs
- Unabridged
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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.
By: Ron Chernow
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These Strange New Minds
- How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means
- By: Christopher Summerfield
- Narrated by: Rufus Wright
- Length: 12 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In this accessible, up-to-date, and authoritative examination of the world’s most radical technology, neuroscientist and AI researcher Christopher Summerfield explores what it really takes to build a brain from scratch. We have entered a world in which disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us—and are beginning to transform everything we do. But can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?
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Excellent Perspective to AI
- By roger m pena on 03-21-25
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The Next Day
- Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward
- By: Melinda French Gates
- Narrated by: Melinda French Gates
- Length: 3 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In a rare window into some of her life’s pivotal moments, Melinda French Gates draws from previously untold stories to offer a new perspective on encountering transitions. Melinda will reflect on some of the most significant transitions in her own life, including becoming a parent, the death of a dear friend, and her departure from the Gates Foundation. The stories she tells illuminate universal lessons about loosening the bonds of perfectionism, helping friends navigate times of crisis, embracing uncertainty, and more.