episode pub. Oct 31, 2024
An NPR Life Kit episode on the science of finding lost objects, featuring a cognitive psychologist, a metal-detecting enthusiast, and a private investigator — techniques include relaxing to widen your attentional "spotlight," identifying an object's distinctive features, recreating how it was likely lost, scanning unexpected places and angles the way search-and-rescue teams do, and running a systematic grid search as a last resort.