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Intelligence Squared
What Do We Ask Google, and What Does It Tell Us About Human Nature? With Simon Rogers
00:38:06
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- [00:00]
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- [02:19]
Mia Sorrenti
welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. What do our Google searches reveal about who we really are for a new book, what We Ask Google data analyst Simon Rogers explores the world's biggest data set. Billions of searches carried out over two decades to provide a revealing portrait of our collective brain. If social media is where we perform, Rogers says our search data is a more honest reflection of our interests, offering a window into humanity's endless gift for curiosity. In this episode, he speaks to Carl Miller about what the data reveals, from how we process grief and loneliness to how we seek to understand our health, to nowcasting and how our search data can anticipate future trends. Let's join our host, Carl Miller, now with more.
- [03:04]
Carl Miller
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, everyone. I'm Carl Miller, and our guest today is Simon Rogers. I think I first came across Simon's work when he was data editor at the Guardian. He was doing all of these amazing visualizations and then he wrote a book, which I think is Steve on my coffee table, called Facts Are sacred back in 2013. He's a CO host of the data Journalism podcast. But what we're here talking about today is his new book, what We Ask Google Insights. I think you say Simon, from the world's largest data set. Billions and billions of Google searches, where he is now also data editor. Simon, very warm welcome.
- [03:42]
Simon Rogers
Oh, thank you so much for having me, Carl.
- [03:45]
Carl Miller
Simon, I know that this is a book about questions rather than answers. I'm going to resist the temptation of actually asking you about the answers to all these questions you talk about, but. But I do have to begin with one. Is it okay to call your child Lucifer?
- [04:01]
Simon Rogers
This is just for anybody listening or watching. This is because one of the we looked at the names that people were searching for, and one of the names that people search for is, is it okay to call your child Lucifer? And this actually apparently is not totally legal all around the world to do, but it's the kind of trend that is, I guess the book is full of these because really what I was looking at were the questions that people asked about everyday things, you know, from parenting to pets to food to health. And we ask weird stuff. We all do. And it's kind of, it's one of the lovely things about the data for me is that it just really shines a light into this kind of collective humanity that shows through the way that we search and through this incredible kind of very public data set.
- [04:58]
Carl Miller
And we're going to go on a bit of a journey and take some stops off within the human psyche with Simon to work out what all these searches say about us. But I Think let's start with one of the early stops in the book, Simon. The biggies, you know, the most searched for questions worldwide, all time in English. The top one. Was it at all. Deflating to learn that the most searched for question is what is my ip? Would you like a slightly more interesting top question?
- [05:27]
Simon Rogers
I mean, the data is the data. Firstly, I can't tell you what to say. And the great thing about that list to me is how varied it is. Yeah, you've got. That is a very informational. It's a mixture of the kind of informational and the curious. So that's an incredibly informational question. People don't know what their IP is. But there's also like how to know if I'm in love or how to kiss or how to make pancakes or even like, where is Chuck Norris? Like, there's a weird. Yeah, we're eclectic and ephemeral as humans. You know, we care about one thing one second and something completely different the next. And that list to me really kind of illustrates the wide variety of things that we care about from one moment to the next. Also because it's like from the whole history of Google Trends data, which goes back to 2004, some of it is like older things that you don't remember, big things like how to make slime. There was a craze for making slime a few years ago. There's a concurrent trend which is not on this, which is how to get slime out of the carpet, which spiked around the same time. And it just shows kind of like the kind of wide nature of things that matter to us from moment to moment.
- [06:41]
Carl Miller
And it's a surprisingly intimate sort of data set, isn't it? I mean, it's kind of tempting, I guess, to kind of almost see it as just another form like social media, but it's in fact actually profoundly different, isn't it? Because these are the questions that we do not see to be public, you know, and that kind of causes us to behave, I think in often it seems like in the book a much more honest way with Google than we would ever be if we were presenting ourselves on Instagram.
- [07:07]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things that we love about the data. I would just say for everybody, Google Trends is what this book's based on. It's a website anybody can look at and explore. And it's basically a sample of searches. They're all kind of anonymized and aggregated and they're aggregated to city level. Like it's Lowest than you can go. And there's also all these kind of privacy restrictions. So it can't show, you know, data unless there's like a reasonable amount of searches around it. But I would say the thing about it as well is that when you are posting on social media, it's like a presentation, you're kind of presenting yourself. And yeah, I used to work at Twitter when it was called Twitter, and I've worked with social media data. The thing about search data is it's much more honest. It's also much more genuine, I think, because it shows the stuff we really care about. You're not presenting yourself. You're just genuinely looking for something that interests you. And that is the big difference. And I think they're not equivalent data sets in that way, because one is incredibly honest and is more powerful for that and one is just literally people presenting themselves in a certain way.
- [08:21]
Carl Miller
And I suppose one of the kind of tensions or themes in the book are those searches which are elemental versus those searches which somehow kind of expose a kind of big change or a kind of. Or a movement or a direction that people are heading in. And let's talk about sleep, because that seemed to be one of the great themes where both those two things are evident. But, Simon, tell us a bit about why you think sleep is now being more searched for than at any other point in Google Trends history. It seems to be that people are finding it harder to sleep now than they have been in the past, especially in Azerbaijan.
- [08:59]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, I would say. I mean, you know, a lot of these. The trends are in the book. And there's part of the reason why I don't often get into the answers because actually it's so personal to people. Like the reason that, you know, one person might have trouble sleeping might be different to somebody else's. But I know there is like, this is one of those areas where there is like a national conversation going on around sleep right now, an international conversation, I think, and about the number of hours that's appropriate and so on. And there is a wide variety of responses. And a lot of the data kind of shows you how similar we are, like globally. But this is also one of the things where there's a lot of variety. National, I think Azerbaijan, I think I said, was the top place looking for sleep, which is. I did a bit of research and it seems that there is. People have famously long lines there, but definitely it's something that people. That really matters to people. There's also a ton of research going on right now about what is the right amount of sleep? Apparently if you have six hours every night, that's bad for you, but seven hours kind of tips over the limit. It's something that I care about a lot as well. And I'd also looked at searches around dreams. We did a big project around this too. And you can see there's a kind of a wide variety of. Of dreams that the people search for the meanings of in different countries where it's different. And you know, things around dreams, around snakes or eagles are quite common. And even I get into one point, I get into. There's a chapter around grief and I get into that a little bit. And people dreaming around somebody who's passed away, which is something that I have done. A very good friend of mine died a few years ago and dream about him all the time. Often I'm asking for advice because his advice much better than mine would have been. And I thought I was unusual in that, but I'm really not. Half of Americans say they've dreamt of somebody who's passed away. And searches around people who died coming to people in their dreams are incredibly common. It's something you see a lot of people. So it's one of those areas where we all have to sleep. Right. And it's one of those areas where you kind of see such a wide variety in the way that people search both nationally and internationally. It says a lot about who we are as humans, I think, as does pancakes.
- [11:23]
Carl Miller
Yeah, I mean, so pancakes seem to be another great kind of meeting of this point you're making around both human beings being incredibly global and having so much in common, but yet also there being all this kind of local dialect and specificity around how we behave and what we search for. And what I loved about pancakes was both the idea that we will search for recipes in them, but then all the recipes can be really different from each other.
- [11:49]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? It's one of those foods that exists in so many different cultures. There is something with flour and eggs and milk or water everywhere. And it's like even something like, I'm British, I live in America, I've lived here for 13. And my idea of pancakes are thin things, kind of. I like savory pancakes, galette, you know, that sort of thing. We live in America and I remember the first time one of my kids friends was having a sleepover. Oh, shall I make pancakes for you guys? And I made European pancakes. He was terribly disappointed they weren't the thick stack of American pancakes. And it is one of those things which is searched in so many places. And it shows both the fact that we search a lot of things similarly in different places, but also the amount of variety that can, that can show up everywhere. And I love that food searches as a whole are incredibly resonant for people. And I think it's partly because food is not just about fuel. It's about memory and culture and all of these other things. So for me, food is something I associate very much with my grandmother, but who was a massive cook and loved cooking food. But for everybody has their own kind of personal story to tell. And there's some really interesting trends there around, say, food from countries where there are refugee crises going. Like Somalian food is not most searched in Somalia is searched in other countries, particularly where Somalian refugees are. Same with Ukrainian food is searched kind of across Europe in countries where Ukrainian refugees are. So seeing that is really interesting to me. And you kind of, you get this sense of food as much more of a kind of cultural phenomenon than just about diets and calories. Meanwhile, the great thing about data is you can also see how diets have changed over time. You can see which diets are trendy now compared to a few years ago, because that's obviously the stuff that people are looking for. So it really represents a lot about who we are as well as our
- [13:49]
Carl Miller
kind of secret heretical searches too. Such as. I mean, I was astonished to learn that in Paris, of all places, the most searched for food stuff is pizza. That's not something you'd see come up on social media very often.
- [14:03]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, I mean, I think the top search in England is less surprising, which is Indian food. But to see in Paris the top searched in the culinary capital world, it's Pisa. But then that's like, it's interesting because I thought, I wonder if this shows up in Italy and the top search, food in Italy is Italian food, which
- [14:24]
Carl Miller
kind of, you know, that would have been a lovely little kind of mirrored.
- [14:29]
Simon Rogers
Yeah.
- [14:30]
Carl Miller
Kind of circularity to it, wouldn't it?
- [14:31]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. No, I mean, as food searches are just a fascinating thing that really kind of. They defy kind of like our concepts of what national identities are, I think.
- [14:42]
Carl Miller
Are there any data sets in there, Simon, that you. I mean, I know the whole book is about you making meaning out of, out of this data, but there were any that you confronted with and you were just like, I just can't. I just can't make any sense of this. I mean, some of the translation data I have to Say, caused me to scratch my head. You know, the fact that in Polish, the most translated word is Tuesday. In Russian, it's Thursday, and in Japanese, it's confirmation. I mean, that, like, it's very difficult, obviously, as an author for you to be able to kind of make sense of that for people, because some of it just doesn't make sense, does it?
- [15:19]
Simon Rogers
Yeah. And I deliberately left these trends in the book partly because I want to. Obviously, I want to be true to the data, but also, if you look at the whole list, it includes things like words like beautiful or love, you know, and it's kind of. I think it represents the human experience in that way because it is this mixture of the. The everyday and the ephemeral with the kind of the things that matter. Matter in our hearts, I guess. Nice way to say it. So actually, the fact that beautiful is one of the top translated words across different languages is interesting to me. I think some of it might reflect just the kind of variances in language or how some words just don't really exist in the same way in different languages. Some of the data is, like, is perplexing or bewildering, I guess, and some of it is just really enlightening. I mean, the fact that, you know, I looked at searches for can you keep as a pet? And I thought, well, that's going to be things like, can I keep like, a snake or something as a pet? And like, there's panda in there. And I'm going to tell you people, you cannot keep a panda as a pet. I think we can all agree on that. But I love that that's in there. But I think it shows. It's like a lot of. There's a mixture with trend searches, I think, where some of it is what Hal Varian calls kind of nowcasting. You know, it's basically a database of intentions, as John Battelle called it, essentially that we made plans online for things we're going to do later, like whether it's buying a house or going on holiday. And some of it is just like, I wonder if this thing is true. And some of the trends, you see, I kind of went down a few rabbit holes. So, for instance, I was looking at searches for how to say different things in different languages. And I kind of got into a rabbit hole around how to say thank you, because thank you is just one of these things and people want to say thank you in different places. And there was a spike in searches for how to say thank you for an unexpected gift. And I kind of I started looking at, I think that's interesting. And it was spiking in Niger in Africa, which is not a country I know anything about, particularly apart from, you know, the stuff that I've read in the papers about the kind of unrest and so on. And so is this aid workers who are searching for it or what is it? And I kind of went down this whole thing where I contacted the Nigerian embassy in the US didn't get a response from them. I contacted the US Consulate in Niger, didn't get a response from them. And then I started looking for famous Nigerians or people I could contact. And I found a NASA hydrologist called Dr. Fajimayna who is like an incredibly impressive person, has just become one of the experts in the field. And I sent a very kind of like sheepish email to her saying, I know this is not about hydrology, but this is something that I saw spiking. Can you explain why that might be? And she came back to me with a whole story about how it's a, it's a thing in Niger that you can't turn up at somebody's house without some kind of gift. It's very important. Even if you have nothing, you would turn up with a gift even as like an egg or something. And so to me that was incredibly powerful because it showed this weird little trend that's like a kind of ghost in the machine. And one of the things about trends is they're always changing. It's a sample of the data. So these kind of things emerge. And then exploring it kind of taught me something about a place I knew nothing about and that was really powerful for me.
- [19:03]
Carl Miller
I just love the idea of you emailing Nigerians, Nigerians asking why everyone seems to be trying to deal with unwanted gifts or say thank you for unexpected gifts.
- [19:16]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, the great things about having worked in the newsroom is that you stop being embarrassed about asking people dumb questions.
- [19:28]
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- [22:58]
Carl Miller
Let's talk about health, because health is a big category is in it both in the book and in search. So what does search tell us about health. Are we all hypochondriacs? It seems that we are very interested in working out whether something's going to be poisonous to us or whether something is. Is bad news for us.
- [23:17]
Simon Rogers
I mean, I think. I mean, I would say, you know, health is one of those areas where I really thought hard about well too, because it's a big part, you know, 15% of. Of. Of I think search I put in the book around. Yeah, health is like a big deal for people. There's also something where, you know, it's really important that you get proper medical advice, obviously. And that's something I was really aware of. I don't, you know, I don't want to kind of spread conspiracy theories or anything like that. And I think. But the data is really interesting to me because a lot of it is. Is about. Is curiosity. Either the spike in search for green poo is a real thing. People's people says, why is my poo green? And some of it, I think, is about being empowered. Like, when I started the chapter, I talked about a medical episode I had where I had a retinal tear and suddenly started getting this kind of shower of floaters, I guess, on my eyes. And I didn't know where to start. And I was away from home. Do I need to go to hospital right now? Is it that important? Is it just like something that's going to go and that kind of like starting place of looking for that was incredibly important for me. So I think there's a bit of that. I'd say also it shows a lot of the data really is about how things are changing or changing in the way that we search and even from its things like there are searches around something called dead butt, which is also known as gluteal amnesia, which is basically, I guess because we have more sedentary lifestyles now, a lot of us, and. And you see those kind of things showing up. But also there is kind of like you can get a sense, I tried to get into this, of how we prioritize health. I mean, there are a lot of places which are more likely to search for how to get over a breakup than how to get over a cold. You know, there is a bit of that and there's also. I can't remember this was in the health chapter, but there was a spike in searches for why do my eyes hurt? Along the line of the solar eclipse that we had a couple of years across the U.S. even though we all know you should not look at the sun or a solar eclipse but the fact that this spike in searches showed, literally, it tracks the line of the eclipse was lovely to me. So I think that chapter for me is like, it's about people feeling empowered. I guess they want to understand what's happening to them or what's happening to friends. Also, I think I talk about things like the spike in search around anxiety and stuff on people wanting to help somebody who has anxiety. But it's also about just trying to kind of get a grip of understanding the world around us and our health and our bodies are kind of mysteries to us. We don't understand how things happen or where bugs come from, where viruses come from. And that's what we want to know. And often we kind of take to search for that.
- [26:21]
Carl Miller
You're going to have to tell everyone about the green poo, Simon. I don't think we can leave people hanging with that one.
- [26:27]
Simon Rogers
Green poo is like one of those things which shows up in search amazingly frequently. So often that there is actually a topic in Google search. So basically, when you're searching for something, Google's really trying to work out what you're searching for. You search for Lincoln, the movie Lincoln, the president Lincoln, the car. All of those things are topics in the knowledge graph, which is what powers Google search. And green poo is also is a topic in search. So it's a real thing. It's. And it's. I think the top, top place searching for it was Jamaica. And apparently it can be caused by excess kind of leafy green vegetables, which are also good for you. It's not a bad thing necessarily, but there you go. It's like one of those things that again, is incredibly honest. We're probably not going to post on social media about green poo, but you might search for it.
- [27:24]
Carl Miller
Well, green poo and dead butt. No one can say that this isn't a vivid episode of Intelligence Squared.
- [27:31]
Simon Rogers
I'm definitely bringing the level down for you. I can see that.
- [27:35]
Carl Miller
Well, let's bring it back all the way back to Hal Varian and nowcasting because. Or I think that that's. You mentioned it and I think it's worth dwelling on that just a little longer. So just to kind of catch everyone up now, casting a suggestion, isn't it, that essentially you can identify very recent activity before it crops up in statistical data. Is that right?
- [27:58]
Simon Rogers
Basically. Basically, yeah. I mean, this is based off of work by Hal Varian, who was Google's first chief economist, and he was actually one of the founders with Yossi Matthias of Google Trends. So Basically Hal's written papers about this but it's this idea that Google Trends can be a kind of, can be a predictor of the future. And I would say this is like this data is all new. We've only had like Google Trendsets data go back to 2004. It's only been real time data back to 2015. Which means you can see, you can see this on the website, you can go to it and you see data from a few minutes ago. But what Howell's papers were saying basically you could use trends to see things like if people search for jobless benefits it's probably ahead of joblessness showing up on official statistics because official statistics as we know are always delayed. And we've seen that with the OECD used Google Trends to predict GDP because obviously GDP comes out quarterly and they create an index using Google Trends to basically show weekly gdp. Look at a number of kind of indicators around shopping and purchasing and that sort of thing. And I think like, I mean this is the weird thing about the data. Often I feel like an archaeologist in real time because you're discovering stuff about us as humans that we just didn't know in the past and we're always learning really how to use the data. So I feel like even though there's been incredible work, Google has an amazing kind of economic that work with financial institutions to help them with Google Trends data. And just so seeing that data and what it can tell us is amazingly kind of powerful. But it's also a totally new science. We're just now getting to understand it. And what's interesting to me is a lot of the interesting research work around trend status happening outside. It's academics and people who are playing with the API and using it to try and create indicators around where we are as society and stuff. So it's interesting because it's like now casting is an economic theory around indicators that can predict things down the line. That comes back to the thing I mentioned earlier about it being a database of intentions. Like a lot of trends around action around doing something. You could see that during something like Covid where searches were wed from the informational around you know what is happening into the kind of empowering of like how do I, how do I make a face mask or how do I protect my family, that sort of thing. And you can see that around lots of ways that we search for the kind of big moments in life.
- [30:46]
Carl Miller
Which part of search, Simon, do you think kind of cut come deepest into the idea of like the zeitgeist or like you really being able to kind of interpret the kind of moment that we're living in. Because there are some very, very poignant parts of Search as well, isn't there? I mean, one of the bits that kind of really kind of struck me, struck my heartstrings, really, was to search how to not be lonely. I think that collection of searches around people feeling very isolated and very alone, that seems clear in the data as well.
- [31:21]
Simon Rogers
Yeah, no, definitely. And I think when I first had the idea of doing the book, the. The first chapter I wrote was the one about grief. And I did that. My mum had died a couple of months earlier. I thought, well, this will be the hardest one to write. And this will also show me if the book can be more than just lists, you know, if it can be something that says something about us. And, you know, you know, in that situation, this club that unfortunately a lot of us join, you know, you feel very lonely. You feel like you're the only person searching for this stuff, which is obviously not true. Obviously you're not. But seeing in the days how I wasn't the only person searching for these things was really empowering. And then also seeing how a lot of the searches were around how to help people in my situation. Whether it's finding the right thing to say or that line of poetry or whatever it is, those two things were really interesting to me. And they kind of. And I think they tie into this idea. I mean, the former surgeon general did a report in there about how there was a crisis epidemic of loneliness called it. And, you know, this definitely tracks with how people feel. And one of the things that occurred to me while I was doing the book is actually, we might feel lonely, but we're not necessarily alone in that moment, in the sense that we're all struggling with these things and going through them together. And it made me feel weirdly part of this kind of community. And then maybe it's an unintentional community of people, say, who are bereaved or who are suffering. And I think a lot of the book for me is about kind of uncovering that we're all part of these communities, whether it's those kind of communities or like, you know, people who can't boil an egg and looking for how to boil an egg. I think there are a lot of things that kind of pull us together much more than you might think. And that, to me, was one of the kind of standout findings are in the data, because I wasn't intending to write that book at all. It wasn't something that I was looking for in the data, but it just really showed up again and again how often we're going through these things. How not to be known, but also like how to know what a friend is or a friendship or how to know if you're in love. These are things that actually nobody tells you or teaches you really how to know those things, but they're really important to our lives. So seeing those show up again and again. And then there were other searches as well, that to me, kind of point to a humanity, one of which is around hurricanes. Obviously, in the US There are lots of hurricanes. And what you see again and again, whenever there's a hurricane, there is a spike in search for, like, how to calm a dog in a storm. And to me, you're in the situation where your house might not be there tomorrow, but you're looking for how to calm a dog in a storm. And that kind of points to an essential humanity there, I think. So the data is often like that. It's often kind of poignant or actually kind of like encouraging about who we are. I know there's a lot of feelings about humanity and where we are and how we feel about each other, but seeing again and again how people strive to be generous or strive to do the right thing or strive to help. I mean, we could talk about that spike in searches for how to help, you know, which is higher now than ever before.
- [34:39]
Carl Miller
Do you see there to be, like, important cultural differences in the whole way in which like search is used by different nations? Simon, you know, does someone from. Does search slot into someone's life in Japan differently to the uk, differently to someone in India?
- [34:56]
Simon Rogers
It's a bit of both, actually. I think there are certain things which are uniting that we all search for, like whether it's the weather or how to tell the time or. Or health questions or love and friendship, those sort of things. And those actually show up in lots of places. But they're also kind of big variations. Variations in places even in like, whatever phrase there is, will have, like, will have variations in different places. Like how searches for, you know, why is life so slow? You know, would show up, like in the Midwest somewhere, but why are things going so fast? Will show up in New York? You know, those. Those variations definitely kind of show us who we are and the kind of these. These differences by region. Even things like what people search to repair in their homes, like how to fix, you know, variations between, you know, the US searches for how to fix a broken door, France and South Korea might search for how to fix a broken window. I don't think that's a cultural thing that just reflects that different countries have different things going on. But there is that weird mix of unity and difference all show up in one data set or variation. And those variations are kind of what makes us who we are, I think definitely even in things like looking for kids classes. Classes for children, basically. So in the UK it's parkour. In Canada is boxing classes. Yeah. As in, you know, like jumping from thing to thing. In Canada is it's boxing and etiquette or crochet. In the US which none of which I would have expected, etiquette. So there you go. So it's like there are things there that are kind of mysterious. But even like one of the things I looked at was so Liverpool fc, they're the top place search for Liverpool FC is not Liverpool. Okay. It's like, it's Casangati, which is in Uganda. So seeing these kind of like variations around the globe, it just gives us a real picture of who we are, I would say.
- [37:11]
Carl Miller
And I hope that there are people listening to this that are inspired enough to actually go and get some trends data and start playing around with it. Because, I mean, it's amazing, isn't it Simon? Like how much data is being made available and how powerful that is. So let's, let's end with a practical question to anyone listening to this. Kind of inspired by your book, inspired by the work you do, looking at all of this, like, would you point them to a particular part of all of this data and say, look here, this might be under research, this might be kind of under leveraged. Is there a kind of project idea that you can give listeners as a place where they might start?
- [37:55]
Simon Rogers
So I would say it's the world's biggest publicly available data set. It's totally transparent. You can go on to trends.google.com and explore. You can search for anything, anything that's interesting to you. I would say even the most general of things are fascinating. Even searches around the weather or how to tell the time or why we search for, you know, why am I so tired in spring when the clocks change? You know, as a universal thing. I think there are also a ton of kind of social changes which are really interesting. So one of the things that I think I'm just like the same problem is I've worked with this day for 10 years. So it's kind of nothing is surprising to me. But there was a, there was a trend which I thought was really interesting because it's represented for real things. So we've heard this phrase sandwich generation, which is basically our generation, where you're kind of like looking after your parents and your kids. And you can see that there is a shift where take care of parents overtook take care of kids. There's like a real kind of social thing that's going on and you can see that in the data. I also think, I would say, like, there's a very kind of visceral thing about wanting to help, you know, wanting to help people. Sometimes it's wanting to help people, you know, and sometimes it's wanting to help people you don't know. There are others in the world who are going through something and I think I would love to see people exploring those trends around how to help because I think we're just at the cusp of that and it gives you such a sense of how we see ourselves as being part of like society as a whole. And it really gives us a sense of who we are.
- [39:35]
Carl Miller
Well, Simon, thank you. We covered green poo and dead butt and also grief and loneliness and the kind of endless, indefatigable kind of desire for human beings to help one another. So thank you. You know, that really was a journey as search seems to be across both the sublime and the mundane all in one go. So that was Simon Rogers, everyone, author of what We Ask Google, which is available now online and in stores. I've been carmila. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thank you as ever for joining us.
- [40:07]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Ginny Hooker and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. You can become a member@intelligencesquared.com membership. If you'd like to join us at in person for any live events, you can find our full events program and buy tickets over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [40:47]
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