Frequently Asked Questions
Our Mission
Our mission is to make the knowledge and insights buried in hours of audio content easily discoverable for everyone. This project directs all views to the creators' originally published content. This tool is intended for research, journalistic, and educational purposes only.
How does it work?
We use AI to understand the meaning behind your search phrase, then retrieve the exact podcast snippets that most closely discuss that search.
How are you different from a typical internet search (e.g., Google)?
Plucky and Google actually use the same core technology of "semantic search" but Plucky allows you to search over audio-based content, as opposed to Google which only searches over text-based content. Thus, if you are interested in podcast episodes that discuss "AI taking over our jobs", for example, Google might be able to point you to a podcast episode (if that topic was a major theme of the episode), but you would still have to sift through hours of audio content to find what you are looking for. Plucky immediately retrieves the exact clips of these discussions, whether it was a passing comment in one episode or the main topic in another.
What is a good way to search with Plucky?
Think of your search like "What podcast clips discuss <your search phrase here>". Plucky will then return the podcast clips that most closely match your search. For example, if you search "advice for starting a company", Plucky will return all snippets that discuss startup advice. But if the episode(s) you are searching over just simply don't discuss startup advice, Plucky will return the next most relevant clips - possibly about businesses in general, or clips that give some advice.
How else can Plucky be used?
- Deepfake Detection: verify whether short video clips of podcasts were AI voice generated or misleadingly spliced together.
- Needle in a Haystack: find that one podcast snippet that only briefly mentioned that topic you were interested in.
- Comprehensive Reports: compile a comprehensive list of all instances a certain topic was discussed.
- Jump to Discussion: immediately find the timestamp where your podcast starts discussing your podcast - no more guessing.
- Discover New Podcasts: search other podcasts that discuss what you are interested in.
- A New Way to Engage: interact with your favorite podcast through active searches, not passive listening.
Can I search over multiple podcast episodes?
Yes. Within a podcast, you can search over all episodes or select episodes.
How often is the database updated?
We update our podcast database weekly to include the latest episodes from all the podcasts we track. This ensures you always have access to the most recent content.
How accurate are the search results?
Very. But accuracy also depends on factors outside our control, such as podcast audio quality and transcription quality. We're constantly improving our algorithms to provide the most accurate results possible.
The website automatically refreshes and clears my search results. Why?
You will most likely experience this issue on a mobile phone. Because this website uses a lot of RAM, mobile phones will automatically refresh the page to clear high memory usage. The exact amount of memory usage that triggers a page refresh depends on the device and browser. We are actively making this website lighter weight so this issue becomes less and less common, but for best performance, use a desktop.
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