Search Engine with PJ Vogt

September 21, 2023·33 min·3 clips

Why would drug dealers sneak lethal fentanyl into other drugs, potentially killing their own customers?

PJ starts with the pitch. He says Search Engine out loud again and again, half sincere and half aware that the plug is a little funny. The promise is clean enough. The show follows questions that get under your skin, from office buildings to zoo monkeys to airplane coffee. Then the harder question lands. Why would dealers sneak fentanyl into drugs their customers were not trying to buy? The reporting moves into supply chains that stay mostly out of sight. Ben gets welcomed into conversations with Chinese labs that sound caught between normal business and underground drug sales. Fentanyl is not listed plainly on the website, but the deal can still happen once the chat moves somewhere else. The route gets bigger fast. The tape runs from labs in China to Mexican cartels, border seizures, hidden compartments, drones, tunnels, and surfboards near San Diego. One image is hard to shake. At the coast, the border wall does not reach very far into the water. That strange detail opens the larger question. The fentanyl pipeline reaches American users who, according to the story, did not want fentanyl at first but later came to demand it. Then the explanation turns again. The host points to a missing piece of the opioid story, then names the dealers, the Sacklers, and an older human problem. By the end, the fear feels personal. Lewis talks about avoiding even a loose cigarette, because once trust is gone, almost anything can look like another hustle. The episode does not give the whole answer yet. For Lewis's story and the final turn, it sends the listener to Part 2 of Search Engine's fentanyl question.

As heard by us

A patient investigation that makes a deadly market feel clear without flattening it.

Search Engine takes a grim question and treats it with real care, following the logic of the opioid supply chain instead of rushing to a verdict.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the fentanyl question traced past headlines and into the machinery.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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