Even if you spend a lot of time on the internet, you may not give much thought to your browser. Once you find one you like (probably Google Chrome, if you're anything like the other 3 billion people who use it), chances are it just fades into the background while you do your scrolling. But behind the scenes, browsers handle a lot of information, especially when it comes to collecting all of your sweet, sweet data.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Matt Burgess joins us to talk about the dark side of browsers, and how to go about blocking ads and controlling your data online.

Read Matt’s story about DuckDuckGo’s desktop browser. Listen to the WIRED podcast here. Here’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere browser extension. For ad-blocking, check out Ghostery. Read Lauren’s story about how websites tracked her after she called off her wedding.

Matt recommends the memoir A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter, and also pomegranate seeds. Mike recommends giving cash at weddings instead of buying something from the registry. Lauren recommends Apple TV+, particularly for shows like Severance, WeCrashed, and The Morning Show.

Matt Burgess can be found on Twitter @mattburgess1. 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.

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.

Lauren Goode: Mike.

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Mike, if you had to choose just one browser to use for the rest of your days—and this is your choice; this is not a tech company sort of forcing a browser upon you—which browser would you choose?

Michael Calore: Part of me wants to say Lynx because I would love to just enjoy the web with text only. But I think the practical side of me is going to have to say Chrome.

Lauren Goode: Wow.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: I mean, you went for the obvious choice.

Michael Calore: Yeah. I mean, it's the default on the web right now.

Lauren Goode: What if I told you that you should maybe reconsider DuckDuckGo?

Michael Calore: I would say DuckDuck ... Maybe?

Lauren Goode: All right. Well, we're going to talk about that today. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

Michael Calore: And I am Michael Calore. I'm a senior editor at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: And we're also joined today by WIRED senior writer Matt Burgess, who's joining us from the UK. Hey, Matt.

Matt Burgess: Hi, good to be here.

Lauren Goode: Is this your debut on the Gadget Lab? I think it is, right?

Matt Burgess: It is. Yeah, it is.

Lauren Goode: It's very exciting. Well, if Matt's voice sounds a little bit familiar to all of you, it's probably because you've heard it on The WIRED Podcast, which is hosted by our colleagues in the UK. And Matt is joining us via Zoom here on the dark side. I guess I should say the rainy side. It's very rainy in San Francisco today.

Michael Calore: Yeah, it's a little wet.

Lauren Goode: It's a little wet. But today we're not talking about the weather. We're talking about browsers. Browsers, you say. Boring. OK. But before you tune out or decide to listen to another podcast, this is really important. I mean, a lot of you may just fire up your laptop, or tap on your phone, and you go search for something without really thinking about which browser you're using, which honestly is probably what some of the tech companies want, for you just to default to their browser on your device. But browsers are hugely important in tech land, both historically and now. While of course there were browsers before it, the launch of Netscape back in the '90s really changed the way people use this relatively new thing called the World Wide Web. And then in the following years Microsoft underwent a lengthy legal battle over accusations that it was abusing its market power because of the way it handled its web browser on computers.

OK, but today we're in a whole new era. There are a few more browsers than that. And still it's a fierce competition for all of them to become better and faster and more secure, and less of a battery hog. So in the second half of the show, we're going to go over some tips for making the most of your browser. But first, Matt, you just wrote a story for WIRED about a new alternative browser developed by DuckDuckGo. And DuckDuckGo is a company that says it focuses on privacy, which means it offers search and browsing tools that don't just siphon up every last scrap of your data. Matt, what is DuckDuckGo's new pitch here? And could this really put a dent in Mike's beloved Chrome?

Matt Burgess: So yeah, people may know DuckDuckGo best as a privacy-focused search engine. It's been around for more than a decade or so and has had a few mobile browsers and apps for years. But this week, it launches, as you said, its first desktop browser. And some people would say that is very long overdue. DuckDuckGo's pitch essentially is the company doesn't track you, and it wants to make privacy simple. It doesn't think that people should talk about privacy in terms of understanding all the settings. It should just be one click, DuckDuckGo says. And essentially, it doesn't collect user data, and it makes money through contextual ads. And now it's got this browser, which is used on desktops for the first time and very much is part of a trend of browsers that are trying to protect people's privacy a little bit more.

Lauren Goode: So how does it make money through contextual ads? Contextual, I guess, meaning it's based on your activity on the web without collecting your user data.

Matt Burgess: Yeah. So DuckDuckGo's search engine is the vast majority of where its money comes from. And these contextual ads very much come from the types of searches you're doing. So if you search for cars, you'll see a bunch of adverts that are based around cars, essentially. And it isn't based on your very specific interest, which Google's business model does a lot more targeted ads. And since DuckDuckGo has been around for more than a decade, it's been making a profit from this and says that this is a better approach.

And it's trying to bring that sort of level of not knowing about specific users into its browser as well. So the browser that it just put out is coming with a bunch of features that basically block ad trackers that follow you around on the web. It also shows you how many of these trackers it's blocking at each time. And it includes a bunch of features that we're probably pretty used to in web browsers now, such as built-in features for saving passwords and other aspects like that really.

Michael Calore: So if it has the ad-tracking transparency and the ad-blocking and the password manager, what does it not have? What are the things in your experience using it that you thought that it still needs in order to be a true competitive player in the browser space?

Matt Burgess: So this browser that we've got at the moment is actually still a beta. So it's just hit Macs. There's still a Windows version that's later to come. And then there'll obviously be a sort of full public rollout. And while the browser does seem actually pretty fast to me in the sort of testing that I've been doing, there are also just a bunch of things that feel like they're missing at this stage. The biggest one of those is probably extensions. So DuckDuckGo says that it is working on adding extensions into the browser, but at the second there aren't any.

And for me during the testing that I've been doing around this, one of the big things that I've missed is a separate password manager that I use, either in Chrome or Brave or other browsers. You can just install the extension and then basically just click straight onto that to do the password manager, pasting your details into a website. And there's also—one of the big features for that side of things for me is translating stuff. So I've been doing a lot of reporting around Ukraine and Russia at the moment. And that's obviously meant looking at materials that aren't in English, and having a browser extension that can essentially just translate that for you straight away is something that is super useful that DuckDuckGo doesn't have at this second.

Lauren Goode: So Matt, a lot of these browsers actually use underlying technology that's built by other tech companies. So talk about things like Chromium, and WebKit, and how that works. And what it means when a company comes out with a new browser but it's still using someone else's tech.

Matt Burgess: One of the really interesting things in this space is actually, because Chrome is so widespread, a lot of people don't necessarily think about the browser that they're using. But even if they are using one of the alternative rivals that exist out there, there is a good chance they'll be using part of Google's product. So a lot of browsers in this space, including Microsoft's Edge browser, and also the Brave browser and a few of the other ones that are very popular, use Chromium or WebKit. Chromium is Google's open source codebase for its browsers. So a lot of the browser tech that exists in this space is very much, it was off of that, which means that it has—even though it's open source, it's primarily maintained by Google. And Google is the company that has its fingerprints over how a lot of this browser code works.

That's super useful for building out this technology because it's hard tech to build. And if you're using Chromium, for instance, you can import other extensions that have been built using that standard. It does mean that it decreases the competition in the market really. So DuckDuckGo isn't using Chromium. It says that Google's values don't really align with its values around data collection and tracking users. So it has built its browser on top of WebKit, which is Apple's browser technology. So it's one of the only companies that's not using Chromium. Firefox is another one that is in this space that has built its own browser engine over the years. But really the sort of competition in this space is very much nonexistent.

Michael Calore: So in your story, you spoke to a source at DuckDuckGo who referred to Google's browser, that it is not only not aligning with their company's values, but also just with a lot of code that they don't need, and it's sort of a bloated rendering engine. Chromium is sort of a bloated rendering engine. And it's funny to think about that because we don't necessarily think of Chrome as being bloated, right? When Chrome came on the scene some 14 years ago, 15 years ago, it was very fast and very light on its feet. But now, as most browsers do over the years, it gains features. It becomes more bloated. And it starts to be a memory hog. And it starts to be a real resource hog on the computer. So it's just interesting to think about that; every browser that starts out being a slim, svelte browser ends up being a fat and bloated and slow browser.

Matt Burgess: Yeah. It's one of those interesting things where over time they develop—they're just adding more and more features. But I think the thing with Chrome is, it's still obviously the world's most popular browser. Most people use it online, whether it's on their desktop or on their mobiles. But because of that, as well, just adding extra features means that the company has managed to sort of keep it popular in people's views. People obviously don't really think a lot about their browser they're using either. But you've also got this element that Chrome sort of dictates a little bit the standards in web browsers. So this is sort of really into the weeds of some of the technical side of this.

But when companies are talking about how we're displaying content online and how we're seeing articles and how browsers are working—all of those standards committees exist that talk about how these things should operate. Because Google Chrome is so dominant across the whole market, it's got this overall sort of dominance in these discussions as well. And lots of other companies and organizations do take part in these discussions too. But at the end of the day, when you've got Chrome being used by so many people around the world, actually the dominance that it has in this space means that it's going to have a sort of outsized voice in a lot of these discussions.

Lauren Goode: I don't want to keep going back to the same point, but it really does strike me whenever we do a report on browsers or I'm reading about browsers, that this is not a very strictly verticalized competition. It's not just like, oh, should I use Firefox or Safari or Chrome or now DuckDuckGo? It's like, they're all kind of using each other's tech, right? Or in some cases, they may have deals with Google to get paid for using Google's search engine as the fundamental tech that's in its browser. And then of course we've talked about Chromium and WebKit, and how that is the underlying codebase for a lot of these. Yeah, the tentacles are really deep. They reach really far and deep when it comes to the browser world. And so still, ultimately, a lot of it is just going back to Google.

Matt Burgess: It is. And you've got this, I think, in recent years we have seen this bigger push from rivals, both in the browser space, but also sort of in the search space as well, to be competing with Google and trying to offer something that is slightly different to what it's doing. And that's how we get to a situation where you've got DuckDuckGo that launched a decade or so ago. And it launches a search engine. And now it's offering a search engine and a browser. And that's the same with one of the other rivals in this space, Brave, which launched a few years ago. But initially, that started with a browser and now has launched a search engine. So I think that companies are trying to focus on privacy and sort of decrease the amount of tracking by default that is happening as we browse the web every day. They're sort of trying to differentiate themselves by really trying to stand out and do something different from Google.

But they're also just trying to offer the full package of what they're doing as well. So you're seeing with these companies, they're offering more and more services. And essentially, they're going to become more rounded-out companies over time if they can keep making profits. And it wouldn't surprise me if we saw some of these competitors in this space actually move way beyond browsers and search engines in the future, and possibly move into things such as email, and all of those types of other features that sort of also come packaged with the browser a little bit. So if you're thinking about Chrome, for instance, when you're using it as a browser and the search engine, there's the Maps feature, and all of these other services that come as part it that complement each other. So I think that over time, we're going to see more and more of these sort of privacy-focused services spreading their wings.

Lauren Goode: And that sounds like a good thing, until Elon Musk comes in and says he wants to buy one. That's a whole other podcast. OK, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to ask Matt for his browser tips and share some of our own.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: So chances are you're probably using Google Chrome, like my friend Mike here. Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of people on the web are browsing the web with Chrome, which works out to something like 3 billion people. But in addition to being the most popular browser, it's also a massive resource hog on your computer, and it's Google, so it sure does love collecting your data. But luckily, there are some ways to control how Chrome and other browsers work on your computer and your phone. Also, it's not just about Chrome, as we've talked about. There are other options. So let's go through some of our tips for best browser practices. Matt, let's start with you. What are your go-tos?

Matt Burgess: So I'm somebody that actually uses a bunch of different browsers. And it's partly, I guess, because of the job, but also just in that way that I am far too, sort of like in detail about the services that I'm trying to use. So I'll be using sometimes Chrome on my computer, sometimes Brave, sometimes Safari on iPhone. Definitely, always Safari at this stage. And they all have a few different settings. But the thing that irks me the most about browsers, and particularly on desktop, is when websites have setups so they can offer to try and send you notifications.

So you might arrive on a site, and it'll be like, this site wants to send you a notification about its latest news stories or other deals or things that are going on. And for me, that's just one of those things that is super irritating. So I think pretty much always one of the first things that I do on any browser where this is an option is go to the settings and turn that off entirely.

Michael Calore: Yeah. You are not alone.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Matt Burgess: Yeah. And linked to that actually is the other—the biggest scourge that has been plaguing the internet for the last few years is the cookie pop-ups.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Matt Burgess: Which are just the most frustrating thing. I write about privacy a lot. And the way that these pop-ups are just there all the time and asking you, "Do you want to accept or change the other settings?" It's very rarely “accept” or “deny.” They just are very infuriating. So a bunch of the things that I do to change this is there are extensions that you can have to actually just sort of automatically handle these settings and try to take those pop-ups away and select the minimum settings possible.

But also, one of the new things with the DuckDuckGo browser ... And I think this is the only browser that is actually doing this is, it's got that feature in-built as well. So if you give it consent when you start using the browser for the first time, then it will actually just wipe these cookies before you ever see them. So it will automatically in the background just select the minimum possible options. And you'll just never see any of these pop-ups again on the sites that it's working on.

Lauren Goode: I love that idea.

Michael Calore: Yeah. So I'm sure every website has sort of a different user flow for accepting or rejecting cookies or setting cookie settings. So in your experience, when you've used both this new feature in DuckDuckGo and the extensions in the other browsers that you mentioned, what's the success rate? How often do you actually have to go and manually set cookies? And how often does it happen automatically?

Matt Burgess: So with DuckDuckGo's new feature, it says that it's doing about 50 percent of sites at the moment. And from my testing of its browser, that seems about right so far. But on other browsers where I've been using extensions, it's probably been a little bit higher than that as well. And one of the beauties of these types of systems that can eliminate these pop-ups from happening is the way that the pop-ups are designed, they all work on the sort of same frameworks, where they can ask the same questions and be based on the same underlying system, pretty much provided by third parties. So now that we're seeing a few more options to disable these cookie pop-ups in general, I reckon that we're probably going to see a bit more of a wider rollout from other browsers in this space, and probably a little bit more of just people actually being able to get around them, and not see them as much.

Lauren Goode: It's kind of remarkable to think about how much time and thought went into GDPR. And now we're already at the stage where we're like, “Please, let's just automate this process.” Pop-ups are so awful. Mike, what are your tips for making the most out of your browser?

Michael Calore: Well, I always encourage people to use a password manager, of course. We've written many stories about it. And we talk about it on the show a lot. Password managers are a great step toward increasing your privacy on the web. But I have been using Chrome's built-in password manager, which I know is not ideal, because browser makers have a lot of different things that they need to pay attention to. And they may not put as much attention into their password manager as a software company that is just doing password management. However, I was using one password for a while. I had problems getting the auto field to work in apps on my phone. I use an Android phone. So it just sort of is built in, and the convenience can't be beat.

And I know that there's probably a lot of people who are groaning and who are yelling at me right now, but that's just the reality of my life. I tried to use an outside password manager, but I have just defaulted to using Chrome's password manager. So I would say that my advice to people is that if you are not using a password manager and you keep getting prompted to allow Chrome to save your passwords for you, and for some reason you are not doing it, I think it's OK to just start doing that. Just let Chrome manage your passwords for you. It will recommend new passwords to you that are very strong and that are good. And it will alert you whenever a password of yours may have been compromised somewhere on the web so that you can go and change it, and then it will help you get a new stronger password for that website.

Lauren Goode: So if you're ever using a device where you're not using Chrome, and you need to log in, can you easily access the Chrome password manager to then copy and paste and bring it over to wherever you need to authenticate?

Michael Calore: “Easily” is not a word that I would use.

Lauren Goode: OK.

Michael Calore: But if you take that word out, then my answer to your question is yes.

Lauren Goode: You can do it.

Michael Calore: I can do it.

Lauren Goode: You can technically do it. OK.

Michael Calore: On the Android phone, if you go into settings, there's a few steps that you can do to unlock your passwords and see them, and then manually input them. Yes.

Lauren Goode: OK. That's a good one. What are some of your other tips?

Michael Calore: I use HTTPS Everywhere, which is an extension that forces a website to load over a secure HTTP connection if there is one available. If there's not, it tells you that the website does not offer that and gives you the option of not going there or just going there anyway, which I like. Another one that I use, which I honestly just can't live without is Minimal Twitter. I've used it as a recommendation on this show before. It's an extension. It's available for the major browsers. It's by a gentleman named Thomas Wang. And it's a browser extension that basically redraws Twitter however you want it. So you can choose how wide the content well is.

You can deselect all of the features, like trending topics and suggested users that you follow, ads, all kinds of things. You can even make the search function appear and disappear. You can basically set up Twitter to be as minimal as you like it, which is like, that's candy for me. I think that these big social platforms have way too much going on, decisions that the designers have made just to drive engagement that really have nothing to do with how I like to use the application. So any extension that allows me to make a website as simple and as minimal as possible is something that I love. So I would definitely recommend that extension. What about you?

Lauren Goode: All right. I'm going to sound like an Apple sheep. But for the most part, I'm using Safari these days. And it does have its downsides. It's slow. That's just one. And another downside is how much it forces you to try to use Safari passwords. So you're describing your experience with just defaulting to Chrome, storing your passwords. Safari constantly tries to do this. And I use a third-party password manager. And I feel as though I have to tell Safari so many times that, no, I do not want to use its suggested strong password. And it's primarily because I don't want that thing to happen in the future where I'm on Chrome or I'm on another device without Safari, and I have to go try to retrieve those passwords, and I don't really know how to get to them or how to find them. So I prefer to use a third-party password manager.

And then more recently, Safari has also made it easy to see who or what is tracking you. So in the past, I used Ghostery when I wrote a feature for WIRED that ran last year about all the ways in which I was being just tracked across the web, after I was planning a wedding, which I canceled, which you should read the story. But I had been using Ghostery to try to figure out what was happening during that process. And now Safari actually has a lot of those features built in. I mean, Safari's not the only one. We've talked about this. But in general, these browsers are getting better about telling you “here's how you're being tracked; here are the most offensive versions of this.” Yeah, I don't know. I guess I should probably do what Matt is doing and use different browsers more often. But for me, it's mostly Safari and Chrome.

And then I would say my biggest tip for safe and better browsing in general is just to be careful with extensions. People love their browser extensions. They do make life easier. I was using Instapapers for a while, which is great for when you see an article that you know you want to read, but you don't have the time—store it for later. Like I said, I used Ghostery's browser extension for a while, but their permissions can be really, really aggressive. I recently went to go use, I think it was MetaMask. It might have been Trust Wallet. It was one of the—

Michael Calore: Crypto wallets.

Lauren Goode: Cryptocurrency wallets. And I went to go install it. And the permissions were just incredible. It was like, once you install this on your browser, we have permission to read, write, change, alter, do what I think we want with your data as you're browsing. And I was like, “Nope, absolutely not.” And so, yeah. And permissions are kind of a pet peeve of mine, in terms of just their overreach. So yeah, be careful with browser extensions. And if their permissions are a little bit too aggressive, just don't use the browser extension, as much as you think it's going to make life easier.

Michael Calore: Speaking of extensions. Matt, just to go back to DuckDuckGo for a second. It's in beta now, but do we know when the browser is going to get extensions?

Matt Burgess: So they said at the moment they're looking into building in ways for extensions to work without compromising people's privacy or any of those types of settings or permissions that we were just talking about. So it's not one that has got a date on it yet, but it's something they're looking at, and it's going to be potentially at some point in the future. As somebody who's been trialing this out for a few days, I would hope that it comes when they get to the first actual launch. And this goes out of beta, but it is still undetermined, I'm afraid.

Lauren Goode: All right, let's take another quick break. And then when we come back, we're going to do our recommendations.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: All right, Matt, as our guest of honor this week, what is your recommendation?

Matt Burgess: When coming on the show, this was the bit that gave me the most anxiety, actually coming up with something that may not be super weird. So I've gone with the easy option of a book. And the book is A Woman in the Polar Night, which is a book about an Austrian painter called Christiane Ritter, who traveled to a remote Arctic island in 1934. And this is basically her memoir of when she was living in a little hut with a husband and another researcher, and it is quite gripping in terms of being one of the only people at that time to live in this really remote Arctic space, and sort of hunting down polar bears, and all of that, that comes with living totally off-grid.

Lauren Goode: Wow. I want to read this. I want to do it. I just want to live it. Go off Twitter forever.

Michael Calore: These days, I bet you could probably still get Twitter on a remote polar Arctic island.

Matt Burgess: So the other choice that I was going to bring on is something that, as it's turned to spring, like the last couple of weeks, I have completely loved, and it's pomegranate seeds, just like in so many salads and all of that, just sprinkling a handful of pomegranate seeds in there, just for a bit of extra health and sort of springtime feeling.

Lauren Goode: Oh, that's a delightful recommendation.

Michael Calore: What is your method for harvesting the seeds? Is it a knife or is it a spoon or is it something else?

Matt Burgess: It's mostly just getting them in a prepackaged pot. So a total cop-out basically.

Michael Calore: Best answer.

Lauren Goode: Good call. Thank you, Matt, for those excellent recommendations. What's your recommendation, Mike?

Michael Calore: OK. So we have wedding season coming up, right? This is the spring.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Michael Calore: People are getting married.

Lauren Goode: We're having weddings again.

Michael Calore: We are having weddings again. So you are probably going to get invited to a wedding or two, or seven, this summer. So my recommendation is to give cash. This is something that not a lot of people do. I should say, not enough people do. There's always a wedding registry. And I can almost guarantee you that the person whose wedding you are attending does not actually need or want that fancy cutting board, or the kitchen set, or the crystal decanter. In fact, the thing that would bring them the most joy and the most utility is a $50 bill or a $100 bill. I think either one of those amounts is acceptable to give as a wedding guest.

If you're invited to a wedding and you show up with a gift, you get a money card or you go to Chinatown in your town and you get those little red envelopes that you can use to give money, and you put a large denomination bill in that envelope. And you just give that as your gift, instead of the thing. It's also helpful if you're flying to the wedding. You don't need to worry about carrying a gift. You don't need to worry about shipping a gift. Some people would say that it's tacky to give cash. I completely disagree. I think it is classier to give cash than it is to give a gift.

Lauren Goode: I totally agree with you. We've talked about this before. I think this is a very East Coast thing. And we both grew up on the East Coast.

Michael Calore: Oh, I don't know.

Lauren Goode: I don't know. I feel like it was fairly standard when I was going to weddings.

Michael Calore: To give cash?

Lauren Goode: Well, that people would give cash.

Michael Calore: Oh.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Yeah, it's fallen out of favor for some reason.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: I think it's just because ordering things on the internet is so easy, and there's always wedding registries, and everybody puts a lot of thought into their wedding registry. And not to disparage anybody who puts a lot of thought into their wedding registry—

Lauren Goode: Of course.

Michael Calore: But I'm going to give you cash if you invite me.

Lauren Goode: Right. Especially if the couple is a little bit older.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Like when I was getting married, we already each had our own sort of kitchen gear.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: And we had combined them already and all the things that ... And so it was like, I mean, I guess you could use it as an opportunity to upgrade on the registry. But yeah, cash is always welcome.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: I miss weddings. It's been two years since I've been to one. I really have to get invited to weddings again.

Michael Calore: Is that your recommendation this week? Go to more weddings.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. I should be a wedding crasher. That'd be so fun. Wow. Yeah. I think I did not appreciate them as much in the before times. And now I'm like, “That sounds really fun.”

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: I'm available for weddings.

Michael Calore: Just think of all the lobster bisque.

Lauren Goode: Oh.

Michael Calore: What's your recommendation?

Lauren Goode: OK. I really am going to sound like an Apple fan on this podcast this week. But this week, my recommendation is Apple TV+. Here's this non sequitur. I got Covid recently. And fortunately, I was very lucky and I was OK. But I did sit in a room for a bit and nap, and I watched a lot of streaming TV. And I ended up watching ... I'm still not totally done with WeCrashed because the season has not ended, but I ended up watching more WeCrashed. I ended up watching all of Severance, which is completely fantastic, directed by Ben Stiller. It's really weird. It's a slow build. But it's got a lot of really important themes about work and our relationships to work. And then I figured I was already in the Apple TV+ universe, let me just keep going. And I started watching The Morning Show season 2, which is also good. It's personal for me because I actually worked in morning television.

Michael Calore: Right, right.

Lauren Goode: And there's so much about that show and the characters that they get right. They just nail it. There are a couple of storylines that seem implausible to me as I'm watching it this season.

Michael Calore: Yeah, it's TV.

Lauren Goode: But it's TV. And it's like this meta thing, where it's like you're watching TV about TV, and you're thinking, the whole thing's ridiculous, but that is TV. And I'm enjoying that so far.

Michael Calore: So what you're saying is that the streaming service suddenly has a lot of good stuff on it.

Lauren Goode: Oh, a lot of good stuff. And there's another one. Gosh, I can't think of the other one right now that people are talking about.

Michael Calore: They had the Beastie Boys movie, which you haven't seen, and you should watch.

Lauren Goode: I haven't seen that yet, but I promise just for you, Mike, I will watch it. Well, you told me I need to watch Pam and Tommy, which I also will watch. That's on a different service. But yeah, so if you are not an Apple TV+ subscriber, I would recommend checking it out. And I would also recommend, I mean, if you are in the Apple universe, just look into one of their bundles because they have these cloud bundles now where you pay a certain amount of money per month. I think there are three different bundles. And you could also get access to things like iCloud and photo storage and music and fitness, which I don't love … not fitness itself as a category, but—

Michael Calore: Apple Fitness+.

Lauren Goode: Fitness App, yeah. So yeah, check out Apple TV+ if you have not done so. That's my recommendation.

Michael Calore: Sweet.

Lauren Goode: All right. That's our show for this week. Matt, thank you for joining us for the first time. And we hope that you come back sometime soon.

Matt Burgess: Thank you for having me.

Lauren Goode: And thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter, which is not yet owned by Elon Musk, thankfully. Just check the show notes. We'll put our handles in there. This show is produced by the excellent Boone Ashworth, our very own Chip. And those who watch The Morning Show will get it. Goodbye for now. We'll be back next week.

[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]

• 📩 The latest on tech, science, and more: Get our newsletters!
• Is Russia's largest tech company too big to fail?
• This is how the global energy crisis ends
• We explain Matter, the new smart home standard
• The future of NFTs lie with the courts
• Chernobyl was a wildlife haven. Then Russia invaded
• 👁️ Explore AI like never before with our new database
• 💻 Upgrade your work game with our Gear team’s favorite laptops, keyboards, typing alternatives, and noise-canceling headphones