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Bluesky Scratches That Twitter Itch

This week, we discuss the still-in-beta social platform the internet elite are buzzing—and skeeting—about.

In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online where they can hang out instead.

Of all the Twitter-like social platforms to emerge as safe havens for the hordes—Mastodon, T2, Post, Notes—the one with the most buzz is Bluesky. It’s popular because ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is one of the people behind it, but also because sign-ups are invitation-only, and scarcity breeds demand. The cool people and internet insiders are already on Bluesky, and they are reporting that the new social network looks an awful lot like Twitter. Also, it’s actually … fun.

This week, we look at Bluesky’s rise and discuss its growing pains. We also ask whether any of these fledgeling social networks can ever hope to captivate us the way Twitter has.

Show Notes

Here’s Kate on why Bluesky is fun. The platform also has a nudes problem. Vittoria Elliott catalogs the current surge in hate speech and propaganda on Twitter. Relatedly, read about how Reddit has dealt with moderation of hate speech and misinformation.

Recommendations

Kate recommends Middlemarch, the novel by George Eliot. Lauren recommends Baby J, John Mulaney’s latest Netflix special. Mike recommends the album Under the Pink by Tori Amos.

Kate Knibbs can be found on Twitter @Knibbs and does not have any Bluesky invites. Neither does Lauren Goode, who is @LaurenGoode on Twitter. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

How to Listen

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Transcript

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Mike.

Michael Calore: Lauren, are you on Bluesky? Are you one of the cool people who got an invite?

Lauren Goode: Of course, I am. Of course, I am a person who's on Bluesky. I'm not saying of course I'm cool, because that would be a mistruth.

Michael Calore: But you are, you have powerful friends and you're connected.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, I have to say all these years of just goofing off on Twitter have paid off handsomely, because now the other day I was able to just tweet “Anyone have a Bluesky invite?” and someone from Bluesky gave me an invite and now I'm on it. I don't have any invites to give unfortunately, otherwise I'd hook you up, Mike. But yeah, I'm on it. I'm hanging out there now.

Michael Calore: So tell me, is it exactly like Twitter? Is it just a Molotov cocktail of shit posts and misogyny?

Lauren Goode: From a UI perspective, it looks and feels a lot like Twitter, so it gives you a warm feeling if you are a Twitter addict like me when you log on to Bluesky. I haven't spent enough time on there yet to say whether or not it's exactly like Twitter, and I don't have ... I'm not following as many people. I heard there's some content moderation issues, which we should probably talk about.

Michael Calore: I am eager to do so.

Lauren Goode: Let's do it.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

Michael Calore: Hi everyone, welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore, I'm a senior editor at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode, I'm a senior writer at WIRED and you can find me on Bluesky.

Michael Calore: We are also joined this week by WIRED senior writer Kate Knibbs. Kate, welcome back to the show.

Kate Knibbs: Thank you so much for having me again.

Lauren Goode: Yay, Kate's back.

Michael Calore: Always great to have you. In the months since Elon Musk took over Twitter and started making all kinds of unpopular changes, people have been looking for other places online where they can hang out. Because of this, a whole bunch of Twitter-like social platforms have popped up and now we have a slew of contenders. There is T2, there's Mastodon, there's Post, we know a Twitter clone is coming from Instagram at some point, even Substack has a chatty platform called Notes. But the social site that has generated the most buzz by far is called Bluesky. Most of that buzz is because ex-Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, is one of the people behind it, but really the reason that everyone is talking about Bluesky is because it's still in beta and you need an invitation to get in. So it's only cool people and insiders right now. I just assume that they're mocking us. That's all I can do whenever I'm on the outside. Well, we on the Gadget Lab are blessed to have a couple of those super cool insiders here on the show this week. Lauren, of course, is on there. And so is our guest, Kate Knibbs. Kate, you just wrote a story for WIRED about how Bluesky surprised you by actually being fun. Is that the right word to use?

Kate Knibbs: Yes, and I do say it somewhat begrudgingly because I've been holding out hope that Twitter will get it together because I don't want to start over on a social network at this point in my life. It sounds so exhausting. I got a Bluesky invite from a friend when people started talking about it and I got curious at whether it was actually as fun as people were saying. And yeah, it's a good vibe on there right now, I think. I haven't followed that many people, probably 70 or 80. So my feed is definitely not as busy as Twitters, but it seems like there's a real sense of community and there's a lot of in-jokes that have been established, the users decided that the posts would be called skeets, sort of a play on tweets and then some other slang that you can look up on Urban Dictionary if you're so inclined. But there's just sort of a mischievous vibe and it's fun and I guess I'm going to keep using it. And I truly did not think that I would feel this way because again, don't want to start a new social network, and I don't know, I don't have a ton of faith in Jack Dorsey ... as I don't have a ton of faith in Jack Dorsey period. So yes, anyways, this is my long-winded way of saying Bluesky is pretty fun right now.

Lauren Goode: Bluesky is also part of this crop of decentralized social networks. What does that actually mean?

Kate Knibbs: Oh man, you guys should have probably had someone from the security team on if you want to go into the nitty-gritty of how decentralization works, but what I can tell you—

Lauren Goode: OK, she was plugging our previous episodes. We did have WIRED security editor, Andrew Couts, on the show a few months ago to talk about Mastodon and decentralized platforms. So you can go back and listen to that after this. But Kate, I'm fully confident you're going to do a great job explaining what the hell decentralization means.

Kate Knibbs: Yes. OK, so in layman's terms, I could do it for sure. It's basically a social app that no one person controls. So instead of having one owner of the app, it's sort of ... it’s federated, I think they call it, or federalized. So it's basically, instead of being one social network, it's essentially an infinite amount of social networks under one umbrella. And this is similar to how Mastodon works. It's supposed to be more interoperable and have a protocol that runs it that basically encourages third-party users to create features and controls and be involved in its generation versus being a top-down, more traditional platform like Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any of the Meta products. And that's probably going to actually come back into our conversation about content moderation, because I think that's making content moderation a little trickier on Bluesky, because it is this decentralized product and it's not quite as simple as one person being like, "We can't have butts and I am going to come up with a moderation tool that ensures there's no butts." That's just not how it works. But yeah, so layman's terms definition is not one person controls it, many people can control it. It's more user generated than top down.

Michael Calore: In your story, you noted that the most impressive feat that Bluesky has managed isn't one that's technical but cultural. So there's only what, 50,000 people on it right now. What about it is culturally impressive? Who's on it?

Kate Knibbs: So they did a really good job of rounding up all of Twitter's greatest shit posters and weirdos and the power users who have really established themselves on Twitter. They got all of those people. The famous anonymous tweeter Dril has come over. The famous anonymous Twitter user Darth has come over. There's a lot of leftist activists and trans comedians and alt-comedy types, there's people who are really active in subcultural Twitters, basically, that they've gotten over there. And it's definitely a different strategy than something like Post is going for, where they're going for more of the news organizations and celebrities. There are some celebrities who have already jumped onto Bluesky like Chrissy Teigen and AOC, and I think Jake Tapper's on there. I don't know if he counts a celebrity, but they're starting to crop up, but that wasn't who they really went for at first. And I think it was a really smart strategy to make the feed seem lively and unique and voicey.

Lauren Goode: And the end result you write is that it has re-created an older, better era of the internet. One that is actually fun. And this is in your headline too, the word fun. Tell us about the kind of fun you're having on Bluesky.

Kate Knibbs: I feel like I'm eavesdropping on conversations between clever weirdos at a bar right now. I haven't been super active, I'm trying to participate more, but it does, it's just giving me the feeling of logging on to Twitter in like 2013 and seeing all of these people sort of developing their own lingo and just cracking jokes. It's like there's just a lot of jokes being cracked. It's hard for me to describe it without just saying people are posting funny things, but that is what is happening. People are posting funny things. There have been definitely some content moderation issues. I'm sure there's some people who have had a bad time, but it seems by and large, most people are having a good time, which is not what's happening on Twitter right now. So it's just kind of refreshing. Oh, there's no brand yet. Maybe a few have snuck in by the time that this will be published. Everything is evolving very fast, but it's still basically just actual humans versus random menswear accounts that are somehow constantly appearing on your For You page. You're seeing the people you want to follow and funny people who they're curating. It feels more organic. It feels, again, like an earlier area of the internet where you would log on to a social platform and you'd see posts by the people that you've actually chosen to follow versus slurry that the algorithms are serving you and Neurotech advertisements.

Lauren Goode: Slurry. So there was some early chatter about blocking on Bluesky or the lack of blocking. And the response was basically, "Well, it needs to be built by the people who are using the platform because this is the beta first," right? Jack Dorsey who has been very active on Bluesky said in reply to someone, "It's brand new. It's being built in public with a way for anyone to contribute and help. It will find a way." Talk about how that basically demonstrates why decentralized is different and then some of the other content moderation issues that are popping up around boobs and butts.

Kate Knibbs: Sure, yes. So one of the reasons why there was no block feature is because of the decentralized nature and the fact that one moderator can't just put that tool in and have it be dispersed to every nook and cranny of Bluesky. That doesn't mean that they ... It does seem like they're looking for workarounds and that there probably will be a block feature that they're able to implement, whether it's patched together. Again, I'm not the technical voice here, but it's just making it that much harder for them to make edicts that apply across the board. They are really looking for their own users to come up with moderation features tailored to their communities. I believe the CEO Jay Graber wrote a blog post last week sort of explaining this, calling it compostable moderation, which is a cute phrase that I don't really understand what it means, but the gist of it is that they are hoping that their users will come up with and implement moderation tools that make sense for their communities. Right now there are some butts and boobs and other parts of the body that you might see in adult content coming up on the What's Hot tab. So for people who haven't used this app, it looks a lot like Twitter. There's one feed that's who you're following and it's called the Following feed, and then there's one feed that's called What's Hot, and it's just skeets that are getting a lot of interactions. And I think they're actually going to implement some moderation tools to stop the porno, to stop the adult content from appearing on the What's Hot page just in case people don't necessarily want to see that. And it's like this is a good example because some people might be fine with seeing butts. I didn't really care. I don't mind a butt or two on my What's Hot page. If I was actually going to start using this app full-time and be pulling it up on the subway, maybe I would turn no-butts on because I wouldn't necessarily want to be seen looking at a feed that's primarily adult content in public, but there might be people who want that. And so I think that this is an example of why the decentralized moderation could actually make people more loyal to Bluesky because people who will come on the app and hope to see that content might be able to toggle yes for butts and people who come on the app and don't want to see that can toggle no, but that has been something that they basically ran into immediately is that people started posting nudes and the nudes got a lot of traction and so they were appearing on their equivalent of a trending topic.

Lauren Goode: And that's really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to content moderation on social because there are centralized platforms like Instagram that have come under fire for their content moderation policies around things like women breastfeeding. So who is to determine what is indecent and what is not? There tend to be these puritanical approaches to content moderation with certain things like that. At the same time, there is stuff that is truly problematic, indecent, and we haven't even talked about things like hate speech and racism that tend to crop up on social platforms. Mike, you had a really good question about open protocols versus closed.

Michael Calore: Yeah, so I was thinking about this, we've been talking about how Bluesky feels like the old days of Twitter or the old days of social networking because there are no brands and because it's just a lot of fun and because the money hasn't crept in and changed everything for the worse. The thing that really struck me is that it's built like the early social web was. The social web of 15 years ago was built on XML feeds and activity streams and all these things that allowed interoperability between all the networks and then of course the walls went up and everybody started siloing their technology and siloing their experiences and it became more difficult for people to communicate across networks. So the idea that because Twitter melted down and the thing that has cropped up around the internet that is generating a lot of interest is the decentralized model. It kind of gives me hope because even if Bluesky isn't the one that popularizes it, I have a feeling that whichever networks come up that become popular will probably end up being ones that involve a porous experience where your activities and your actions can leak out into other applications. This would be great for people who are maybe writing clients. You can write a client that you can use to log in to Bluesky and Mastodon. You can do all of these things that you really had a harder time doing in the old Twitter world and particularly the Facebook world.

Kate Knibbs: I agree that the decentralized element is going to be important moving forward, although I do think the reason why Bluesky is better to use than Mastodon, one of them is because it sort of hides the decentralized element from people who might not care about it. You don't have to care about it to use it, whereas Mastodon has this sort of learning curve where you are forced to think about the decentralization even if you don't want to. That was what sort of ... I joined the wrong federation on Mastodon and then I didn't understand where everyone was and I was like, "I can't deal with this," and never went back. And Bluesky, it's decentralized social networking for dummies in the nicest way I could say that possible.

Michael Calore: Perfect.

Kate Knibbs: Yeah.

Michael Calore: All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come right back.

[Break]

Michael Calore: In our careers covering this stuff, we've all gotten excited about the buzzy new social spaces like Clubhouse and BeReal only to see them fizzle out. Most of the companies vying to be the next Twitter will likely meet the same fate. Mastodon seemed like the logical successor five months ago and it had its moment in the sun, but it's not super user-friendly, so it's already being considered an also ran. And honestly, Twitter is still in a pretty strong position in the social world. Can anyone really unseat it at this point?

Kate Knibbs: OK, so here's the thing. If you had asked me this a month ago, I probably would've still been saying no because I really wanted Twitter to survive and thrive. I still do, honestly, I would love to see Twitter continue being the place where we go when a big news event happens and we want information about that event as quickly as possible. Because again, I'm tired, I don't want to do it all over, OK. Twitter has always been troubled, and I'm not saying that it was perfect before Elon Musk bought it because it was very far from perfect, but it did work as the place that you went to find out the stuff and it's breaking in that functionality right now. And I think something does have to unseat it. I know that there's been a lot of talk about how we're moving to the post platform era and we're moving to this more fractionalized and splintered and smaller communities and we might never have the big platforms in the way that we have for the past few years. I don't know if I buy that because I think that a lot of people and a lot of organizations and a lot of governments and multinational corporations find value in having a centralized hub for this sort of thing. I don't see that withering away entirely, even if there is a surge of smaller communities flourishing. And so whether it's Twitter or whether it's something else, I do think we're going to have Twitter in the future and I think Twitter could be unseated as Twitter, and I don't know if it's going to be Bluesky though. I want to couch my appreciation for Bluesky in a million caveats because while I think it's fun, it could easily just be another flash in the pan. I think I thought Ello was fun when that came out in 2015. I don't know if you remember, but—

Michael Calore: Oh yeah.

Kate Knibbs: Something having entertainment value doesn't necessarily correlate to it blowing up or scaling up. And so I wouldn't put money on Bluesky being it, but I will say, and this is a point that I made in my piece, the fact that Bluesky managed to recreate a central element of Twitter's appeal has sort of convinced me that it can be replaced, whether or not it's by Bluesky or whether or not it's by a new version of Twitter that's ran by someone who isn't crazy.

Lauren Goode: Do you think that's going to happen? I've had that thought too. I've had that thought of who could buy Twitter next or take over a CEO and make it usable again? And then I realize that that's probably unhealthy thinking to just turn to the next best billionaire and say, "Who actually has the means to take this over and run it and not keep it from dying?"

Michael Calore: The answer is private equity of course.

Lauren Goode: The answer is always private equity.

Kate Knibbs: We should nationalize Twitter.

Lauren Goode: There are a few people who I could think, I remember when Brett Taylor left Salesforce, I was like, "Maybe he's going to take over Twitter." I was very excited. I was like, what if ... I could think of a few CEOs who I'm like, "Ah, they're doing a pretty darn good job. Let's get them in here and have them run Twitter."

Michael Calore: I will say that as every day passes, I am more and more prepared to just let it go.

Lauren Goode: Really?

Kate Knibbs: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Gosh, it's so sad. I just don't think I'm ready to let go of that little piece of wood as we're all floating in the Atlantic Ocean after the Titanic has gone down.

Michael Calore: And I think this is why we can't stop talking about things like Mastodon and Bluesky because it's like we need something in our lives it feels like to fill that need in ourselves that social media has been providing. Whether we understand it or can point to exactly what it is or not. I think we all feel that people who like social media, not everybody likes it, but those of us who do, I think we all feel that. We're like, oh yeah, it's part of my life. It's something that I'm attached to. So it's like Twitter's deteriorating and we need something else to fill the hole.

Lauren Goode: I will also note that something you said earlier about Mastodon, I don't totally agree with. I don't think it's an also ran yet because of third party clients. I've been using this client called Ivory and it makes it inherently more usable and people have been recommending this for weeks and I've ignored them and just this week I was like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to download Ivory and it's pretty good.

Kate Knibbs: Is it an app? When you say a client, again, culture writer, technical ...

Lauren Goode: Yes, it's an app. It's an app that puts the Mastodon experience of a decentralized social network and whatever server is sort of like your home base. It puts it into a different container with a slightly different UI so that when you are scrolling, it feels and looks a little bit more familiar and cleaner and not as like nerd centric.

Michael Calore: Aka, it feels more like Twitter.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, it feels more like Twitter. Once again, it's that warm bath of the Twitter UI that us addicts are accustomed to. They have a desktop client that's available through test flight, which is means it's not actually available in the app store yet, but you can test an early version of it. You can go download Ivory. I'm paying $1.99 per month. That's $1.99, not $199 on that much of a social media addict. And so far I have found that to be the thing that makes Mastodon a little bit more usable. Kate, one of the social networks that I am not on yet is T2. What is T2? Do we need to sign up for this? Is this a contender?

Kate Knibbs: I mean, so it is another Twitter competitor. I believe the T2 is literally Twitter too. I actually went to sign up for it and I've been trying to keep my handle the same across platforms, and I tried to sign up with my handle and then it said that the handle was reserved and I needed to call customer service, and so then I gave up. And so I actually haven't signed up for it yet.

Michael Calore: Do we know this is the internet—

Lauren Goode: Who took Knibbs?

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Kate Knibbs: I don't know.

Lauren Goode: This is what I want to know.

Kate Knibbs: I think the company was reserving it, you know what I mean? I think they might have just reserved some handles for journalists, but it was a step in adoption that just sort of threw ... I was like, all right, I'll do this later, and then I never signed up for it. So the ones that I've signed up for, I've been trying Substack Notes because I have a lot of writers that I like with newsletters. And I have a newsletter that I haven't updated in two years, and so I'm familiar with the platform, but I honestly have found Substack Notes a little bit confusing to navigate. I've tried Mastodon. I'm going to try Mastodon Ivory on your recommendation because I think that will make it easier for me. And then I have tried Bluesky. I haven't tried Post yet. I know there's so many. There's also the whole right-wing sphere of Twitter competitors like Parlor and Gab and Truth Social and probably a bunch of other ones there too. I don't have my username on those, but I'm assuming right now you can wait. That's my recommendation.

Lauren Goode: Because we're running out of time in the day.

Kate Knibbs: Well, there's only so many places that you can go. There's only so many hours in a day. People are getting subscription fatigue because of the shift to all of these newsletters. And I think if any more Twitter competitors come out, they're going to get platform fatigue. I can't be signing, I can't have that many apps on my phone.

Michael Calore: To your point, this is exactly what it was like in 2009. Everybody was trying to latch onto the social media train, and we all had way too many profiles. And before we had Open ID and ways to log in with our Google accounts, it was like we had to remember all of our passwords and we had to re-find our friends every time we went somewhere new. It was totally exhausting. I remember writing and reading stories about platform fatigue and about log-in fatigue. It was the same story.

Kate Knibbs: Everything old is new.

Lauren Goode: Now I have to ask this question because we were once accused in one of our podcast reviews of being a bunch of English, what was it? Millennial English majors who don't know anything about tech?

Michael Calore: Something like that, yes.

Lauren Goode: Right, so let me put my business cap on here. What are the future business models for these platforms? Jack Dorsey responded to someone on Bluesky and said, "Some clients may do subscriptions, some may do ads, some may do commerce or transactions. What people want to use will decide." What people want to use will decide, I don't understand what that means. Kate, how do you think these platforms are going to be monetized?

Kate Knibbs: One of the reasons I was joking about nationalizing Twitter, which I don't think you should do, but I don't think these platforms lend themselves to the numbers go up hockey stick growth that VCs in Silicon Valley demands. I don't know how they will be able to monetize Bluesky to satisfy the market. I don't know that they should. Maybe one of the reasons why decentralization is good, apart from whatever philosophical reasons that one might have, is because it will keep it sort of a DIY home brood thing and not put a bunch of pressure on Bluesky to become the next Meta or Alphabet or so intent on growing in into a tech giant. Maybe it could be a GitHub situation. So this is a very English major millennial answer because my answer is I don't think that we should necessarily assume that that needs to happen for this to be sustainable. And this is maybe really, really pie in the sky of me to say, but maybe there's a way for this to be a little company with a big product or a little company with a bunch of big products that help people go online when they want to know what stuff is going on right now. But doesn't necessarily generate a ton of wealth for venture capitalist or private equity, or give Jack Dorsey another $20 million to go on an Ayahuasca retreat in the high desert for 10 years. So that was again, a very English major millennial answer and kind of a non-answer. But that is my answer.

Michael Calore: I appreciate it though because it is true that not every company needs to experience crazy growth and make a bunch of money in order to be useful and in order to be sustainable in this world. I just think that it's unlikely that the people with money are going to look at Bluesky and not see ways to make more money with it.

Lauren Goode: Right, even GitHub got acquired by Microsoft.

Michael Calore: Yeah, and God bless them. Well, we do need to take a break and then we'll come back with our recommendations.

[Break]

Michael Calore: All right, let's do our recommendations. Kate, what is yours?

Kate Knibbs: This is also the most millennial English major recommendation of all time.

Lauren Goode: You're welcome back anytime.

Kate Knibbs: Buckle up. One of my friends has a Substack newsletter called Fran Magazine. Her name's Fran Hopner. It's great. And she is running something called Middlemarch May, #MiddlemarchMay. And it is a book club where everyone reads Middlemarch in the month of May, which is now, which is this month, which means I just read 200 pages of Middlemarch in the past two days.

Michael Calore: Wow.

Kate Knibbs: And Middlemarch is good and I recommend that everyone reads George Elliot's classic novel about provincial life in jolly Old England. I'm really enjoying the ride. It's funny. It's like shockingly funny and yeah, hashtag #MiddlemarchMay. Let's get it going. Let's get it viral on Bluesky. Yeah, that's my rec.

Lauren Goode: Kate, can I tell you something hilarious?

Kate Knibbs: Of course.

Lauren Goode: Before Brian Barrett, our former executive editor of news, left WIRED, he joined us in the Gadget Lab. And do you know what his recommendation was? Middlemarch.

Kate Knibbs: Was it May—

Lauren Goode: By George Elliot. No, but no, it was, I don't think it was, but he definitely recommended Middlemarch.

Kate Knibbs: Wow.

Lauren Goode: Let's message him on the ... let's toot at him or skeet him right now.

Kate Knibbs: Shouldn't we post at him? Doesn't he work for Post now?

Lauren Goode: No, he works for the other social network that no one called Narwhal.

Kate Knibbs: Narwhal, sorry, Brian.

Lauren Goode: It's part of The Atlantic that no one knows anything about.

Michael Calore: Still waiting for that to drop.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. When's that coming, guys?

Michael Calore: I don't know. What are they going to call tweets? Is it going to be called like horns?

Lauren Goode: It's going to be called BWWWOOOOOOO like a whale sound like Dory in Finding Nemo when she does the whale sound.

Michael Calore: Never seen it.

Lauren Goode: Oh my goodness.

Michael Calore: Lauren, what is your recommendation?

Lauren Goode: No, but that was a good ... but I just wanted to say, Kate, this is really a theme here. We really are a bunch of broken millennial English majors.

Michael Calore: Not a millennial.

Lauren Goode: OK Mike, while you're the odd man out.

Michael Calore: I feel a need to defend and ask people to respect my—

Lauren Goode: Your age.

Michael Calore: ... age bracket.

Lauren Goode: Your experience. You're seasoned. OK. Thank you for that recommendation, Kate. I'm actually going to add that to my Goodreads because I would really like to read it. You're the second very smart person at WIRED who has recommended it. My recommendation, I have complicated feelings about this one.

Michael Calore: OK.

Lauren Goode: So, I recommend this, but I recommend it with some caveats there. I really enjoyed watching John Mulaney's new Netflix special Baby J. If someone asked me right now, what should I watch on Netflix? I would probably say, take an hour and 15 minutes and watch this. Because he is really, really sharp, super funny, and the program is intensely personal. It's about his celebrity studied intervention where a lot of his comedian friends got together and intervened because he was struggling with drug addiction in a very real way. And his experience in rehab and then a little bit of his life in the aftermath. And then during this time, there was other stuff going on in his personal life. He had a very public divorce. He ended up shacking up with another celebrity. They had a baby right away. And so his likability is sort of in question throughout this whole thing, but the point of the program, at least he says, is that he ... he's dive-bombing his own likability because that's what he was known for before. And this program will sort of disabuse you of any notion that he is this squeaky clean, good guy. And as I've recommended this to friends, I've asked them afterward, what do you think of it? Because I want to see what they now think of his persona and also get their take on what sounds like a pretty privileged rehabilitation experience. He had a lot of resources available to him. But I also, I really enjoyed listening to it and he's really funny and it's a good program. It's a good special. So yeah. Kate, have you had the chance to watch it yet?

Kate Knibbs: I did. I watched it last week and I thought it was really well done. I actually saw him do a much rougher version of it in person, right after he got out of rehab, which was fascinating. He didn't call it Baby J. I think it's really well done. I also get not liking him because of all the baby mama drama and his divorce, and I think I at least am able because it's just sort of stuff about his personal life and it's not like he did anything horrible. I don't have much trouble putting my feelings about his behavior to the side and enjoying the special. I think it's a really good special.

Michael Calore: Yeah, me too. I also watched it last week and I was pleasantly surprised.

Lauren Goode: Mike, what's your recommendation?

Michael Calore: So I'm going to recommend a piece of music. It is an album by the singer and songwriter and piano player, Tori Amos. It's called Under the Pink. It came out in 1994. It has some songs on it that you've probably heard, and particularly, which is the reason why I'm recommending it, songs that you may have heard recently. Something is in the air or in the water because I had been watching shows on major streaming platforms over the last two months. I think I've heard four different Tori Amos songs all from this album, particularly “Cornflake Girl,” which is one of her most well-known songs. And it was used in a prominent position in the new season of Yellowjackets. And then two episodes after that, they used “Bells for Her,” which is my personal favorite song off that record. And I'm one of those people who, I watch the show and then I go on Reddit to see what people thought of the show, and I lurk and I scroll and everybody was like, "What's this song? What's this song?" And there was this incredible amount of interest around that particular song because of the show and also just general interest in people who are discovering Tori Amos for the first time. So I'm telling you, if you're one of these people, or if you just haven't heard it in a while, you should listen to Under the Pink. It's her second album. It was a typical situation where she had a really popular debut and shot straight into the public consciousness back when that was possible in our monoculture of the early 1990s. And then everybody was holding their breath to see if her second album was going to be any good, right? Was she going to have a sophomore slump? But she did not. Second album really delivers, I think it's her best record. So go back and listen to it, maybe get a little cup of tea or some bujalae or some weed and wrap yourself in a blanket and sit by the fire or sit out on your freezing cold porch and listen to Under the Pink.

Kate Knibbs: I think with that recommendation, you officially have disabused anyone who even was confused for a second of the notion that you aren't Gen X.

Michael Calore: Is Tori a big Gen X tell? Is that a virtual signal of me?

Kate Knibbs: Oh yeah.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Really?

Kate Knibbs: Oh, for sure.

Lauren Goode: It was an era.

Kate Knibbs: Yeah, I'm trying to think of, yeah, because she hasn't really, like, this is the first time she's really resurged in popularity since the '90s.

Michael Calore: She was popular. I think so. She still tours and does extremely well on the road and she's still putting out new music, most of which is very good. But yeah, to hear something that is in my DNA on the television and then go online and see that there are people who've never heard it before, I'm just like, "Are you kidding me?" That's the very, very typical Gen X reaction to almost every cultural touchstone that gets resurfaced. But I'm really happy for her that this is happening. Not only is she making a little bit of money off the old songs, but people are checking her out. So yeah, check out Tori, maybe you've heard of Tori Amos.

Lauren Goode: It looks like the record was released in January of 1994, so yeah, if you were in high school, approximately 16 years old or so at the time that this was searing into your brain, then it makes sense that you would, yeah, you'd be like, you'd be on the cusp ... Was born '78, '79 or so. Not quite Elder millennial, definitely Gen X.

Michael Calore: Yeah, I think so. Well, I'm happy we all agree that Tori Amos is a genius.

Lauren Goode: She is. She really is.

Kate Knibbs: Yes, this is a pro Tori Amos space for sure.

Lauren Goode: Yes. If Tori Amos is ever available to come on the show, we're here for it.

Michael Calore: All right. Well that is our show for this week. Kate, as always, thank you for joining us.

Kate Knibbs: Thank you for having me.

Lauren Goode: I'll see you on the T2, Kate.

Michael Calore: And thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can still find all of us on Twitter, just check the show notes. We promise we're still there. Our producer is Boone Ashworth. We will be back next week and until then, goodbye.

[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]

Michael Calore: I take great offense to that comment because I am a Gen X English major who knows nothing about technology, not a millennial English major who knows nothing about technology.

Lauren Goode: There's your Easter egg.

Michael Calore: Please respect my age.