Lauren Goode: Leon, do you have a sense of how future-proof it is? Like if you buy one now, will your daughter be able to use it five years from now?
Leon Neyfakh: It seems like it. The cards that they produce go with the device, so it seems like pretty self-contained. It doesn’t seem to require you to connect to something that will no longer exist. It’s just like a boombox, but for podcast cards, how cool is that?
Lauren Goode: That’s very cool.
Michael Calore: It’s pretty cool.
Leon Neyfakh: We got to release Backfired as a Yoto card, a children’s edition.
Arielle Pardes: Yes. Stay away from—
Lauren Goode: It’ll be, yes. It’ll stay away from the nicotine kids.
Michael Calore: Lauren, what is your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation is not as cool as either of those, but I have to give a shout-out to our WIRED colleagues, Kate Knibbs and Brian Barrett, because on separate episodes of this podcast within the past year, they have joined us and recommended a book by Paul Murray called The Bee Sting. Now, I’m going to hop on Leon’s recommendation a little bit and say I haven’t actually finished the book yet. I’m about a hundred pages in.
And it’s a long book, so that means I’m about one-seventh of the way into it. But it’s great. I picked it up because I’m traveling to Ireland soon and it’s based in Ireland. It’s about an Irish family in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and its fiction. I’m totally engrossed in it.
I know it’s a big, hefty book, but I’m going to take it on the plane, provided that the plane takes off, because there’s a strike happening. But go pilots, I support you, and I plan to finish it while I’m in Ireland. So, yeah, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: If you don’t trust me, at least, trust Kate and Brian who recommended it for me.
Michael Calore: On separate episodes?
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Michael Calore: I look forward to me reading it in about five years and then recommending it on this show.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, if you’re done with your … what’s his name? Karl Snarsgard or whatever. What’s his name?
Michael Calore: Karl Ove Knausgard.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. That guy, yeah. Whenever you’re done with his books.
Michael Calore: Yes.
Arielle Pardes: That’s a lifetime of reading.
Michael Calore: He really is.
Lauren Goode: Mike is super into him.
Michael Calore: Lauren Goode: Yes, I hear about him all the time.
Michael Calore: I’m working my way through it.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, Mike is struggling to get through it.
Leon Neyfakh: He should take up vaping, for sure. We should get him to write about vaping for the New York Times Magazine. That would be great.
