Related Articles
Hey, did you see the ad for that Bluetooth-enabled shiatsu foot massager? How about the one for the organic mushroom supplement powder? They’re probably not even the most interesting things you can buy on TikTok or Instagram. Just as the apps have thrived on a steady stream of feel-good content, they have also inundated their users with cheap, bright, and shiny stuff they can swipe through and buy with just a few taps. It’s a trend that’s spread out to every social site and has taken a unique shape on TikTok through the platform’s new, experimental TikTok Shop. Now, it’s hard to get through a couple of videos without being accosted by virility pills, fast fashion, and hangover cures.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover joins us to talk about the weird world of TikTok Shop, how its fee structure is evolving, and why it feels like every single social media service is pivoting to zany products.
Show Notes
Read Amanda’s story about TikTok Shop raising its seller fees. Listen to our recent episode (#636) about the possibility of a TikTok ban.
Recommendations
Amanda recommends the HungovrAF cap. Mike recommends the documentary Anselm, directed by Wim Winders. Lauren recommends Leuchtturm 1917 notebooks.
Amanda Hoover can be found on social media @byamandahoover. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. 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
You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how:
If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts, and search for Gadget Lab. If you use Android, you can find us in the Google Podcasts app just by tapping here. We’re on Spotify too. And in case you really need it, here's the RSS feed.
Transcript
Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Lauren Goode: Mike.
Michael Calore: Lauren.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: How often do you see videos for OMGYES when you're scrolling Instagram?
Michael Calore: All the time. At least a couple of times a day.
Lauren Goode: Tell the people what OMGYES is.
Michael Calore: It's a tutorial website that teaches men and women how to provide pleasure in the bedroom.
Lauren Goode: Are these ads that you’re seeing or are they video influencers who are shilling for products?
Michael Calore: They're targeted ads, but I mean, so are video influence ads, right? I can't really tell the difference.
Lauren Goode: Right. I guess it depends on whether you are talking about TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, because the type of content you see is slightly different. But it seems like social video is now just shopping video.
Michael Calore: So much shopping, everywhere. Way too much.
Lauren Goode: We should talk about it.
Michael Calore: Let's do it.
Lauren Goode: Let's do it.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]
Lauren Goode: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Michael Calore: And I'm Michael Calore. I'm director of consumer tech and culture at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And we're joined this week by WIRED staff writer Amanda Hoover. Amanda, thanks so much for being on the show.
Amanda Hoover: Thanks for having me.
Lauren Goode: So a few weeks ago, those of you who tuned into the pod might've heard our episode about a potential TikTok ban here in the United States. We're talking about TikTok again this week. That's a lot of talk talking about TikTok, but this time it's something totally different, which is the absolute glut of shopping videos that have filled the feed on TikTok since September. You've probably seen them if you're on TikTok. At first, they look just like other videos. It's real people speaking earnestly to camera, positioning themselves in front of good lighting, a little window lighting, a bit scripted, but also off the cuff, and also selling products at crazy steep discounts. What gives? Why has shopping completely infiltrated, not just TikTok, but a lot of our video feeds?
So, Amanda, we wanted to ask you on to discuss this as well as some of the changes that are going to be happening on TikTok very soon because you wrote a story about this for wired.com this week. So maybe first we should talk about what happened last year that helped create this phenomenon on TikTok?
Amanda Hoover: Yeah, TikTok Shop launched in the US in September and they were very eager to onboard sellers, so that meant offering very good deals and they got a lot of people signed up. They're sort of outpaced in terms of onboarding sellers. They've outpaced Amazon and Shopify recently because there's just been a lot of excitement around this platform and its ability to connect to shoppers. What you've had was a mix of sellers for sure. There were some kind of like mom and pop shops, D2C brands that might be selling a specific product they've been making. You had big brands join the platform like some big makeup brands or clothing, but you had a lot of random third-party sellers selling very odd things that were incredibly, incredibly cheap.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: And what were the seller fees?
Amanda Hoover: They started out at 2 percent. So that's very good compared to competitors. As of April 1st, they've jumped up to 6 percent and that's ramping up to 8 percent come July.
Michael Calore: So what sorts of things are being sold right now? You mentioned cheap products. But what are we talking about? We're talking about home goods, apparel?
Amanda Hoover: It's almost anything you could think of. Beauty does really well in TikTok. Anything about skincare. When TikTok Shop first started, there was snail mucin, which is snail slime for your face. This is a popular Korean skincare product. I think a lot of people hadn't heard of it before, but there were all these videos different influencers were making, or maybe not even influencers, just customers at that point saying they didn't know if the products were counterfeit or not Comparing them to ones they had bought at Ulta from the same brand.
So that's a product that did very well. There were other makeup products. There's sort of hairstyling products, but there's also almost anything you could think of. I just did a sweep as I was writing this story last week, and there was a giant head covering of the Duolingo Owl. There were stuffed capybara animals. There's a lot of stuff that could be considered a little viral item that makes your life easier. Maybe something that makes cleaning your kitchen or organizing your kitchen a bit simpler. So there's really almost anything that you could think of or that you've never thought of.
Lauren Goode: Mike, I've already decided that I want the Duolingo Owl mask for my birthday.
Michael Calore: OK. Noted.
Lauren Goode: Amanda, you write in your story, it's not just the seller fees that were appealing to sellers. TikTok was also offering subsidies for some of these products?
Amanda Hoover: Yeah. That's not necessarily fully going away right now. There's still a spring sale if you go over to the shopping tab where you can see certain items that are available on the spring sale, and those discounts might come from a combination of the seller discounting and TikTok subsidizing some of those costs. So there were a lot of sales like this, like a Black Friday sale, a new customer sale, things like this throughout the time that TikTok Shop has been a platform in the US for about six months.
Lauren Goode: Have either of you bought any products on TikTok?
Michael Calore: I have not.
Lauren Goode: Amanda have you?
Amanda Hoover: I bought one and it was a product that I was being bombarded with videos about. It was the Wavytalk hair styling tool. It's kind of a heated brush. So it makes it look like you had a salon ready hair blowout. I have tried it a few times. I don't know that I'm getting the same results as the women in the videos, but I got it for much cheaper than what it was selling for on Amazon.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: How much cheaper? Like 30 percent?
Amanda Hoover: Probably. Probably at least 30 percent cheaper.
Lauren Goode: Pretty significant.
Amanda Hoover: It's really, though, if you look now, because I'm still seeing it sometimes. Once I bought it, I got way fewer videos. They're definitely paying attention to once you finally go through their platform and finish the transaction, they want to start hitting you with new products. But I've noticed it's more expensive than it was two or three weeks ago when I bought it. So there's a lot of fluctuation in some of these prices.
Michael Calore: So with the fees going up this month and then again later on in the summer, is this going to affect the frequency of the videos, the shopping videos that we see in our feeds or the types of shopping videos that we see in our feeds?
Amanda Hoover: I don't know if it'll affect the frequency. The thing with the fees is these sellers will now have to be able to absorb those additional costs. That might mean raising prices. That might mean that some of these very, very cheap items, there are places selling things for less than a dollar. It might not be worth it for third-party sellers like that that are selling 10 pairs of socks for less than a dollar. If these fees go up, they might not be able to absorb those. So we'll see.
I think we see less videos for that type of item though, and more for things that are a little bit more expensive. And maybe things like the Stanley water cups. Those were a big item, those are a bit more expensive and some of these really wanted viral items.
Lauren Goode: Let's say a seller does decide to leave TikTok because of the changing fee structure, do you have a sense of how easily they can just migrate from Instagram to YouTube? Is the audience different enough that their product might sell differently? Does that mean they have to create all new kinds of content or can they just port it over? How does that work?
Amanda Hoover: It might really depend. They will be without the TikTok algorithm, which I think has been really, really helpful to certain brands. For the story, I talked to just this makeup brush company. They sell a couple of their cosmetic items. Just founded by a husband and wife. The wife actually had done a lot of work with makeup online, had a little bit of a presence, but they've told me that their sales with TikTok Shop have just skyrocketed and it's just been such a useful platform for them.
They're selling an item that they really believe in, they really, really care about. They're not just selling random third party stuff. So they're an example of a small business that has really benefited from this and probably doesn't want to leave, but will have to evaluate long-term, how different fees affect their ability to sell here and their ability to price things.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: All right. We have to take a quick break, but when we come back we're going to talk more about … Well, we're going to talk shop and do a little bit of confession time.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: OK. It's confession time. Bless us Father Capitalism for we have fallen prey to lusting after products we've seen in our feeds and reels. Amanda, I'm going to start with you. You already told us about the brush that you bought from TikTok. Have you ever bought anything from Instagram or YouTube?
Amanda Hoover: I have not bought anything from YouTube and I don't believe I've really bought things directly from Instagram. I've definitely been influenced. I was on a big zero waste kick a couple of years ago, so then I would just see so many products on Instagram, ways you can replace your toothpaste tube and really just feel horrible about all the plastic that we use. So I definitely went down an influenced rabbit hole on that and was buying lots of things, weather direct off Instagram or just finding them elsewhere.
Lauren Goode: That seems like of all the things to potentially fall down the rabbit hole on, a pretty virtuous one. It's not like you were like, "Oh yeah, I ended up buying a ton of fast fashion and quite certain the people working at the factories making the fast fashion were being underpaid," or something horrible like that.
Amanda Hoover: It's kind of funny. I have done some reporting on this separate of zero waste influencers and some of it is funny that a lot of these products end up being quite expensive and sometimes it's hard to trace how ethically they were really made and whether they were greenwashed in their advertising. So it kind of comes down to the best thing to be zero waste, to buy less things and reuse things. So it's a very interesting influencer cycle.
Michael Calore: Shocking. The shocking revelation.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Do they offer 24-hour shipping as well when you buy the zero waste products?
Amanda Hoover: When you buy them on Amazon, they do.
Lauren Goode: It's about the carbon emissions.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: Mike, what about you? Have you bought anything on any of the platforms we're talking about?
Michael Calore: I think I've bought a couple of T-shirts from Instagram, but they're not T-shirts that were served to me in ads. It's mostly I see a T-shirt design, like a cool design, and I follow the designer or I follow the small silk screen company that's putting out these shirts. And then after a couple of weeks of seeing their stuff in my feed, I go to the website and I pick something out and I buy it.
So I haven't completed a purchase through the Instagram app and pressed on the buttons before. But I do find things like creators or small businesses or things that I like. Also, a lot of musicians. I find musicians, I guess are creators. They're posting videos of them playing music and then I check out their music and eventually I buy a ticket or I buy an album or something like that. That's about it.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: That's such a Gen X experience with creators.
Michael Calore: I just got Gen X again.
Lauren Goode: It's true though. Instagram is really good for discovery. I may not be the target audience for TikTok Shopping, but I don't find that TikTok is as good for hashtag inspo, but Instagram is.
Michael Calore: TikTok feels to me more like just entertainment here is a bunch of fun things that you can watch. Whereas Instagram is more like, here are some interesting things in the world that you can discover plus some fun things to watch. Plus …
Lauren Goode: You can buy directly if you want to.
Michael Calore: Yeah.
Lauren Goode: You can shop now.
Michael Calore: Buy these scented candles. Buy these sunglasses, buy these shoes.
Lauren Goode: I ended up buying one thing from Instagram.
Michael Calore: What was it?
Lauren Goode: It was a bra.
Michael Calore: Oh, yeah?
Lauren Goode: Yeah. I returned it immediately. It just wasn't the right thing. I had been I mean just completely pummeled with ads and eventually it got me. It worked. We're describing this right now over a podcast, so maybe for some of you, it's hard to envision, but you'll see an ad on Instagram and there's now a shoppable button below it or a bar that you can just click on and then immediately buy it. And that's the point of all these. The social feeds, they become actionable in that way.
So anyway, our editor bought two sweaters on Instagram that had been haunting her and they took so long to arrive that she filed a fraud claim with her bank. And then almost immediately after doing that, the sweaters arrived and then she tried writing to the seller to say, "Hey, I just want to make this right." She was trying to do a nice thing. I want to pay you for these two sweaters, which I said were like a fraud claim or whatever, and she just … They're like, "Huh?" And the whole thing just ended up being less than ideal because the seller didn't ship very quickly.
Amanda, do you have a sense of how well YouTube is doing with shopping? Because my personal observation with YouTube is there's a lot of shorts and a lot of shop now happening on YouTube.
Amanda Hoover: Yeah, I didn't look at YouTube in terms of this story. I think TikTok Shop is a bit more comparable to places kind of like Temu and Shein just because of the ways that things have been really cheap. Maybe not necessities, but cute little things you might want are on there a lot. There's some necessities too, but a lot of the experts on social shopping really liking it more too. Things like that than some of the other big shopping e-commerce giants.
Lauren Goode: Right. My YouTube ads for shopping, they're pretty high end, I would say.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Michael Calore: Do you watch a lot of YouTube on your phone?
Lauren Goode: On mobile.
Michael Calore: On mobile?
Lauren Goode: On iPad too. Mostly I would say iPad. So this is going to sound like a shameless plug for Conde Nast, our parent company, which also owns a bunch of other magazines, but I really enjoy the AD, Architectural Digest home tour videos. They get millions and millions of views and it's total house porn. I also like the Vogue get ready with me in the morning videos. Here's my skincare routine. Here's some person putting foaming cleanser on their face, which is strangely soothing and reminds me of the Noxzema ads we used to get served as kids.
But now I find that when I'm on mobile and I go to look for something like that, there'll be one video at the top of the results page and then there's definitely an ad for product, 100 percent. Here's a ruggable rug or some ridiculously overpriced magic potion skincare. And then below that there will be just a row of shorts. I don't like it, honestly. This is going to sound like, "Oh, shakes fist. I want the old internet back." But I really don't. When I go to YouTube, I'm still expecting that it's going to be a seven to 10 minute video and it's going to be some creator, some expert, going deep on a topic.
And YouTube appears to be trying really desperately to adapt to the TikTokification of our social feeds and make all these shorts. The shorts themselves aren't shoppable, but the ads around them are. And there is a shop sow button.
Michael Calore: Right.
Lauren Goode: Do you see that too?
Michael Calore: Well, curiously, almost all of my YouTube viewing is on my television. I have the YouTube app on my Apple TV and I watch YouTube on my TV, so I don't really get a lot of shoppable anything in my feed.
Lauren Goode: Oh, that's interesting. But you see ads?
Michael Calore: I do see ads. I see pre-roll ads a lot and mid-roll ads a lot. And I feel like I'm both very easy to target and very difficult to target.
Lauren Goode: How so?
Michael Calore: So I am a man in my late 40s. So I am a particular demographic. I live demographically in an area that is majority Hispanic and I watch a ton of music and a lot of that music is in … I watch live performance videos a lot on YouTube. It's probably two thirds of what I watch. And a lot of that is performers who are singing in a language that is not English. So I get a ton of ads in Spanish language for erectile dysfunction medication.
Lauren Goode: OMGYES.
Michael Calore: That's different. I get a lot of travel ads and I get a lot of mortgage and banking ads. Not all of them in Spanish, but a noticeable number of them in Spanish, but most of them in English. So it's difficult for me to say. These aren't things that I'm ever going to buy, they're just like, this is what's getting served to me. This is what I mean by … I think they have a pretty good idea of what I'm into and who I am, but also they have no idea what I'm into.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Amanda, do you feel targeted with the ads that you're seeing in social shopping?
Amanda Hoover: Definitely on TikTok. I think that they have figured out that I am a 30-year-old woman and I bought one kind of cosmetic product. Now they're like, "Do you want all of these other things?" So I would say it's been more accurate there than a lot of other places. But on Instagram it's been fairly accurate there as well. I think a lot of apparel ads there have tracked me down.
Lauren Goode: Right. Yeah. This is unrelated, but related, I think Threads, which is owned by Meta and Instagram and Instagram share APIs. So I'm pretty sure what you're doing on Threads is informing Instagram and vice versa.
Michael Calore: Oh, absolutely.
Lauren Goode: So my Threads are just a mess because I do consider Instagram like entertainment, the way you described TikTok and some discovery and that kind of thing. And so my threads where I go because I think I mostly want to see news which Threads has deprioritized. So instead I'm seeing these updates that feel like some version of Reddit's famous subreddit, AmItheAsshole. For those who don't know AITA, like it's this forum where people go to post some personal situation where people have made questionable decisions and they're asking, is that person the asshole or am I the asshole? And then it just gets thousands of responses, people who just love to give life advice, very entertaining. My Threads has become a version of that. It's wild. I'm like, "I just want to hear about what's going on in tech, National Security trends."
Michael Calore: That's not what Threads is for.
Lauren Goode: The election. Instead it's like, "Ladies, how do you know whether or not to get divorced?" I'm like, "What is happening to my Threads?"
Michael Calore: So this is a business opportunity for Meta because if they can figure out a way to make that content shoppable.
Lauren Goode: Right, find your divorce lawyer here.
Michael Calore: Then they've got you.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. All right. Last question for Amanda. Do you have a sense of between YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, which one is "winning" social shopping?
Amanda Hoover: I'm not sure. I think it's pretty early to say for TikTok Shop, but I think that they really have done quite well and they're kind of in a space now where there is … As they have to raise their seller fees, it's a bit of a test for them to see what their longevity is and how sustainable this is as a business model. Of course, all of this with talk of a TikTok ban I think can scare away some brands, particularly larger brands from joining. So it feels like it's a little early to rank them when they're so new on the scene.
Lauren Goode: We'll have to have back on at some point, maybe six months from now to talk about this again. Hopefully before then though.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Michael Calore: I'm going to go watch a bunch of shorts and see what I get served and I'll report back.
Lauren Goode: Hims and Hers?
Michael Calore: Yeah, Hims and Hers.
Lauren Goode: All right, let's take another quick break and then we're going to come back with our recommendations.
[Break]
Lauren Goode: Amanda, what's your rec?
Amanda Hoover: So another product I first saw on TikTok Shop, while we're on themes, all got me thinking. It's like this cap that you pull down over your face. You keep it in the freezer. So it's advertised as being for hangovers. It's also great for headaches, and it just immediately cools down your head, helps with any pressure, tension, whatever. And it's called—HungovrAF is one of the main brands of it, but I think there are a couple of others, but that was the one that I first saw.
Lauren Goode: What a great brand name.
Michael Calore: So do you keep it in the freezer?
Amanda Hoover: Yeah. You got to keep it in the freezer. If you wake up hungover, it's not going to be ready in time. You got to do some prep.
Lauren Goode: Does it actually cover your face?
Amanda Hoover: Yes. Covers your eyes. It's like a soft cap.
Lauren Goode: Wow. I could see how that would be great for migraines.
Michael Calore: Amanda, have you considered not drinking?
Amanda Hoover: I actually had a friend who loved this too. Always was talking about having headaches, and I'd had this cold roller thing, like a skin roller, and I let her borrow that once and she had a really bad hangover. And then I saw this and I was like, “This is going to totally change the game.”
Lauren Goode: Don't be a scold, Michael. She's 30 years old living in New York City. I mean, come on.
Amanda Hoover: Thirty is where you start to get the hangover sooner than you expected to.
Michael Calore: Just wait, just wait. A bottle opens across the room and immediately I start to feel terrible.
Lauren Goode: Every time Mike goes to CES, it’s like, “Oh, good luck.” You're going for five days, six days, and he is like, the first five: bitters and soda.
Michael Calore: That's right. I do not drink at CES until the last night. That's my move.
Lauren Goode: That's a good method.
Michael Calore: People ask me for Las Vegas recommendations. I'm like, "Don't drink until you're going home."
Lauren Goode: Right. You could sleep on a plane home. Thank you for that, Amanda. I look forward to linking to that in the show notes because we're going to become our own little shopping platform. Did you also know you can buy WIRED merch?
Michael Calore: We're going to be recommending this thing.
Lauren Goode: We have to hype the merch.
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Michael Calore: We're going to start seeing ads for this thing now.
Lauren Goode: We totally are. They're listening. Mike, what's your recommendation?
Michael Calore: Mine is a movie. It's a new film from the director Wim Wenders. That's Wim Wenders with two W's. He's a German film director, a very famous art movie guy, and he has made a movie called Anselm. It's a documentary about the German artist Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer has been active since the late '60s, and he's still active today. He is a very political artist. He pulls a lot of historical stuff out of the collective consciousness of Germany and of America, and of the world, and puts it on canvases and large-scale sculptures.
He builds small towns that you can walk through. A really incredible artist and a lot of fun to watch work. And that's the neat thing about this movie is it uses re-creations of his life with actors, historical footage, and contemporary documentary footage to stitch together his life story, his career arc, his philosophy, his way of looking at the world without using any voiceover.
Because the movie uses all of these old historical films and has contemporary interviews, it's just like a portrait. It's not like an educational documentary. So it's a little bit abstract. It's in theaters now, and if you go see it in the theater, it's a 3D movie. But you can also rent it at home in 2D, which I did just because I don't like 3D. I'm one of those anti-3D people. So you can watch it at home; you can rent it if you have Criterion. It's streaming on Criterion.
If you want to go to the theater and put on little glasses, I'm sure it's amazing and beautiful. But I can highly recommend it if you're a fan of art or if you're a fan of Wim Wenders or if you're just a fan of weirdo documentaries about Germans who make beautiful art.
Lauren Goode: Very cool. I can't say I'm going to watch it, but I appreciate that you appreciate it.
Michael Calore: I look forward to you seeing it so that we can talk about it.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: What's your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation is wake up, face east, stare into the sun for 20 minutes, jump rope, and then do a cold plunge. Just kidding.
Michael Calore: I was going to say, are you Huberman now? What's going on?
Lauren Goode: Oh god, that was … Apparently those podcasts are very popular. Not quite sure I understand it. My recommendation: So at the start of the year, everyone tries something new. You're trying to break a bad habit, initiate a new one, and then you fall off after a couple months. This one happens to have lasted throughout the first quarter of the year for me, so I figured why not?
I think this is a new routine that I'm going to stick with. I'm now using a paper planner or notebook. I used to keep a running list of everything I needed to get done, everything I needed to get done. It was like work immediate, work longer term, personal administrative stuff, book work, podcast work, birthday gifts I need to buy for baby—gifts I need to buy for people. It was in my Apple notes and it was endless and it was dynamic. It was constantly changing. It was so overwhelming. So I had gotten one of those, how do you say this, Leuchtturm. You're the German aficionado, what is it? Leuchtturm?
Most PopularGearThe Top New Features Coming to Apple’s iOS 18 and iPadOS 18By Julian ChokkattuGearHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?By Carlton ReidGearThe Best Hearing Aids We’ve Personally Tested and Vetted With an ExpertBy Christopher NullGearEverything Apple Announced TodayBy Boone Ashworth
Michael Calore: I don't what word are you referring to?
Lauren Goode: Leuchtturm? We'll put it in the show notes, but it's a Leuchtturm.
Michael Calore: Oh, it's like a brand of notebook.
Lauren Goode: 1917 brand of notebook. They're expensive. Boone, our excellent producer, is holding his up right now. I got this at a conference last year and I took it out and I was like, "I'm going to start using this." I keep a daily to-do list, and I don't look that far ahead, and it's been great.
Michael Calore: That's nice.
Lauren Goode: And sometimes I use it for jotting down notes. I'm going to a meeting and I just need to pull out something quickly to jot. But for the most part, it's not a reporting notebook, it is just things I need to do in the next three days. And I find it so much more manageable and helps me focus and I really like doing it. So if you too keep a completely overwhelming digital to-do list and you find that it's just too much, you're not getting the things done that you want to or you're just putting too much pressure on yourself, I recommend switching to paper and then just toning it down a bit like keeping tasks … the things in front of you that are more immediate and not worrying about some of the other stuff.
Michael Calore: That's a great recommendation. I used a freeform notebook—just like no lines, no dates, no nothing—last year, and this year I switched to Hobonichi, which is a very rigidly defined day-to-day planner and it has a to-do list at the top and notes and inspirational quotes at the bottom. It's excellent. I love it.
Lauren Goode: That's great. And how far ahead are you looking?
Michael Calore: Twenty-four hours.
Lauren Goode: Sorry. That's a dumb question. You just said it was day-to-day.
Michael Calore: I don't flip the pages forward. Just 24 hours.
Lauren Goode: Cool.
Michael Calore: I think it's very important for my sanity to just look 24 hours ahead. I have so many calendar events that I can worry about them.
Lauren Goode: And that's what a calendar is for.
Michael Calore: Exactly.
Lauren Goode: That's what G Cal is for. We just all have so much to do. It's just too much. It's too much. I'd like to check out now and become a shopping influencer. I'm going to sell Leuchtturm notebooks.
Michael Calore: The German aficionado?
Lauren Goode: All right. This podcast has sufficiently gone off the rails, which is what I always like. Also, I just want to give our listeners a reminder. We love your reviews. We really do. We read them. Mike and I were just doing a little celebratory Easter thing with friends this weekend and three people there at the brunch. They were like, “We love your guys’ podcast. We listened to it every week now.” And I was like, ‘That's amazing. Could you please leave us a review?” I felt very thirsty, but really, we love your reviews, so please leave them. And thank you so much for listening to our loyal fans.
If you have feedback, you can find all of us on the socials. Just check the show notes. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure.
Amanda Hoover: Thanks.
Lauren Goode: And thank you to Boone Ashworth, our very excellent producer. Goodbye for now. We'll be back next week.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
