Samsung's mobile phone design philosophy could best be described as “if it ain't broke, bend it.” The company—one of the top smartphone manufacturers in the world—announced some new foldable devices this week, and they don’t exactly break the mold. Even the Galaxy Z Fold, once Samsung’s flagship showcase of wacky innovation, looks and bends more or less the same as last year’s model. But while the designs may not be the most exciting, they do mean interesting things for Android, the mobile software that powers them.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu joins us to talk about everything Samsung announced this week, plus what it all means for the next versions of Android.

Here’s everything Samsung announced at its Unpacked event this week. Here’s Julian’s review of last year’s Galaxy Z Fold3 and Z Flip3.

Julian recommends the Ampere Shower Power Pro, a speaker for your shower. Lauren recommends oatmeal and not watching The Northman. Mike recommends the book The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman.

Julian Chokkattu can be found on Twitter @JulianChokkattu. 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.

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Lauren Goode: Mike.

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Mike, have you upgraded your phone to Android L yet?

Michael Calore: No, because I don’t have a folding phone. I only have a regular, old, nonfolding Pixel.

Lauren Goode: And you call yourself a tech editor.

Michael Calore: Yes, several people call me a tech editor.

Lauren Goode: I guess my question is, is anyone actually using folding phones?

Michael Calore: Sometimes, I see one in the wild and then it turns out that the person who’s holding it just works at Samsung.

Lauren Goode: Same. I think I’ve seen one three times in the wild and every time, they’re an employee at Samsung.

Michael Calore: Well, we should talk about the new Samsung devices.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Speaking of Samsung, let’s get to it.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

Lauren Goode: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

Michael Calore: I’m Michael Calore. I’m a senior editor at WIRED.

Lauren Goode: We’re joined this week by WIRED reviews editor, Julian Chokkattu, who’s joining us from New York City. Hey, Julian.

Julian Chokkattu: Hey, how are you?

Lauren Goode: Is Tobu the dog around as well?

Julian Chokkattu: No, I had to kick him out of the room because you never know when he’s going to start barking.

Lauren Goode: Well, he’s welcome anytime. Let’s just talk about cats and dogs this episode. What do we say?

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: All right. Well, it’s been a while since we’ve talked about Samsung and Android, but this week, Samsung hosted its annual Unpacked event, which is a smartphone launch event. These are usually loud, hyped-up events that are supposed to get everyone excited about the latest new thing. Since Samsung is one of the world’s biggest smartphone makers, we tend to pay close attention to this because its design decisions are often a leading indicator of what we might see in upcoming phones.

But in recent years, Samsung has really been hyping up foldable phones, which is something that really hasn’t been embraced by the mass market yet. And then, some of the other stuff that Samsung showed off this week, like your smart watches and earbuds, don’t exactly feel new. So, we asked Julian to join us and break down what is actually new, and then in the second half of the show, we’re going to talk about Android. But first, Julian, bend our ears, please. See what I did there?

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: Bending. Folding.

Michael Calore: Yes, I get that.

Lauren Goode: Great. Start with the foldables. What do we need to know?

Julian Chokkattu: They're not that different from last year's phones. The biggest changes here are actually that Samsung has made the hinge smaller and they've overall reduced the footprint. Just generally, they are bit more compact devices, which is important, and these are the iterations that we've been seeing year over year since 2019, since they started coming out with these foldables. There's the Flip 4, which is a traditional smartphone that you can fold in half like a compact mirror almost. Really nice if you hate large phones. And then there's the Fold 4, which is like a normal smartphone that you can then open up into a larger book, so you get a larger screen on the inside and gives you a bit more of a tablet experience.

From the brief hands-on times I had with them, it's pretty much almost exactly the same in terms of how they feel and look, just maybe a little more polished and refined. A lot of the updates here are like a new chip. They're a bit faster, upgraded cameras, so the cameras will be a little bit better. Some of the more important new features are basically in the software to make them a little easier to use. For the Flip 4, for example, there are more things now you can do on the cover screen, which is the tiny little screen that's on the front of the phone when it's folded up. You can send your messages right there. You can use Samsung Wallet. You can start a video basically, all without having to open the phone up, making it a little bit more useful there. And so with the Fold 4, there's improvements to the interface because this is the first device that's running Android 12L.

Michael Calore: People who are not really into folding phones, the thing that they point to as a reason that they don't want one is the crease that appears on the flexible screen when it's unfolded, and the hinge, which feels like it is the obvious point of failure, the thing that is going to break on the phone first. I know that over the last couple of years, Samsung has really been trying to fix those two things. So, where are they with the crease and the hinge?

Julian Chokkattu: The hinge is now smaller than ever before and they made it a point to mention that at the announcement today. I mean, I haven't used a foldable phone for more than a couple of months. So, it's hard to say. I know people that have used foldable phones going on a year or two and they haven't mentioned any issues with the hinge, and—

Lauren Goode: Do they work for Samsung?

Julian Chokkattu: They do not work for Samsung. Basically, Samsung has made it a point to show off the amount of testing that they do with opening and closing it and how many cycles that function can last. We have to take their word for it, but we haven't also heard too many failure points happening of late in the past two to three years about the hinge necessarily. With the crease, I don't know if we're ever really going to see, at least anytime soon, a huge difference in not having a crease anymore like a normal smartphone. I think that's just something that's going to always exist.

It definitely is less obvious if you are sitting in an environment without an overhead light, because that's not reflecting off of that crease. When you have full screen apps or split screen apps, it's going to be less obvious. But if you're just looking at something? I don't know. It's one of those things like the notch or the selfie cameras that are just sitting in the display. It's one of those things that over time, you just ignore it, you get used to it. I don't think it's as big of a deal, but I'm not discounting it as an issue.

Michael Calore: Right.

Lauren Goode: Right. I think the bigger deal is just carrying around something that is the size of a book—

Michael Calore: Yeah. When—

Lauren Goode: Folded up in your back pocket.

Michael Calore: When it's folded, it is twice as thick as a normal phone.

Lauren Goode: The original one felt like having a TV remote in your back pocket.

Michael Calore: Sheesh.

Lauren Goode: A fat one. Am I fat-shaming the TV remote?

Julian Chokkattu: No.

Lauren Goode: OK.

Michael Calore: The Logitech universal remote of old.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Yeah, OK.

Lauren Goode: I'm not judging. I don't even know what that looks like. Julian, how much do these cost?

Julian Chokkattu: The Flip 4 is a thousand dollars, which in traditional smartphone terms is average for a high-end Android phone, relatively affordable for a phone that folds in half. I think that's a pretty decent price, but in this market, that's still very expensive. The Fold 4 is $1,800, which is definitely not a phone for any random person. It's really aimed at business people or creatives that have a lot of money or creators that have a lot of money, or basically just anyone that has a lot of money.

Michael Calore: Even with those high prices, people are actually buying these things, right? Because we keep joking about the fact that we never see them in the wild, but how are they selling? How are they doing?

Julian Chokkattu: Anecdotally, I had a food delivery driver show up with a Galaxy Fold mounted on his bike, which I thought was amazing. I have seen some Flips in the wild, but yeah, it's not everyday sightings or anything like that. Samsung is consistently saying that the Flip 3 has been their most popular foldable by a large margin, which makes sense. I think people still want that normal phone experience, but being able to fold it in half and shove it in your pocket without having it take up too much space makes sense to me. There are all sorts of data from places like Counterpoint. They're saying that foldables are the fastest growing smartphone product category in 2022, with 73 percent year-over-year growth. And so they're all still sitting around in the 16 million units being shipped in 2022. IDC says they're expecting this market to grow to 27 million units in 2025. Samsung itself said that in 2021, their foldable shipments grew by 300 percent, hitting 10 million units compared to 2020 and 2019.

There is growth. I mean, those numbers, take that with a grain of salt. It's nothing near the hundred plus million shipments that they're selling for their normal phones, but it's still a sizable margin. I think the key thing here is that Samsung has this massive lead over anyone else that's entering this market. So it's hard to say whether foldables are really going to be the future of phones, but in any case, they're in a very strong position because they've reiterated to a point where their products are pretty much very polished. Anyone else that comes in, you're going to maybe be a little more worried about quality control and that kind of stuff, because Samsung has taken their time to make their products much better and much stronger, more durable, and we don't know how that's going to work for everyone else or maybe, everyone else will start off on a better path because of Samsung.

Lauren Goode: What about regular Samsung phones, the non-foldable ones? Did we hear anything new about these this week?

Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. This second Unpacked that happens annually, or biannually I should say, they usually save this for the Galaxy Note unveil. They have not done that now for the past two years. The last note was in I think 2020. And so, that feels like the Note is dead and we're just sticking with the S series Samsung phones and then now, this foldable category that's their second high-end for power users or Samsung lovers. I think, from what we can see with the earlier-in-the-year announcement of the Galaxy S22 series, it's clear that Samsung is focusing on driving innovation in the camera for those devices, because maybe it's just easier to fit larger cameras in the traditional smartphone and they're trying to do other stuff with their foldable phones. But we've seen things like the 10-times optical zoom on the S22 Ultra, which still is a feature that isn't really very common on other Android phones. So, I think they're having a bit more of a camera focus with their traditional phones and just innovating with other fun designs for the foldable one.

Lauren Goode: Samsung also sells a lot of budget phones around the world, particularly its less expensive A line of phones. Any updates there? When are those typically announced?

Julian Chokkattu: Yeah, they announced a couple already. We've tested them and you can check out those reviews on Wired.com. There's the Galaxy A13 5G, the Galaxy A53 5G. Those phones are actually really great for the money. I mean, the A53 5G is $450. The A13 is $280. Really great phones. Honestly, I think the key thing that is helping Samsung with these budget phones also is they're one of the only smartphone makers that's making cheap phones with really lengthy support windows. So, they're promising five years of security updates for all their Android phones and three to four years of version upgrades. You just can really see that, and when you're telling someone to spend even $280 on a phone, they're probably going to want to choose the one that's definitely going to get as long a support window as possible. It's easy to just usher them to go with the Samsung phone then.

Lauren Goode: So what you're saying, Julian, is that if you have the option between spending $1,800 on a brand new flippy, folding phone, or you can spend a couple hundred dollars and get a pretty decent Samsung A series phone, you should definitely go with the latter, right?

Julian Chokkattu: Yes. Definitely, the cheaper phone.

Siri: Yes, it is.

Lauren Goode: Whoa, even Siri agrees. Wow, Siri.

Julian Chokkattu: I'm sure Samsung will love that.

Michael Calore: Yeah!

Lauren Goode: I don't even know what that means. Yes! Apple will love that.

Michael Calore: We'll float in a Bixby voice in postproduction.

Lauren Goode: Who's Bixby?

Michael Calore: No.

Lauren Goode: Just kidding. All, let's take a quick break. We're going to come back with some updates to Android.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: All right. Some of us may be lukewarm on Samsung's new foldables, but there's still reason to pay attention to them and that's because these new form factors tend to bring in new software experiences too, like a new version of Android, which is the world's most used operating system. Back in March, Google started rolling out Android 12L to its Pixel phones, and other phones like Samsung phones were expected to get the update later this year. As expected, Samsung's new Z Fold 4 phone has it, and everyone is talking about it and talking about the task bar. Julian, you mentioned 12L earlier in the show. Tell us what the deal is.

Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. 12L is designed for large screen tablets or phones and it has a permanent task bar that sits at the bottom. It's very iPad-esque. The idea is that you can quickly launch all of your favorite apps right there and you can just click and drag an app to a particular part of the screen to launch it in either one side of the screen or multi-window split screen, whatever you want. Makes it very easy to do this in whatever you're doing. If you're already in an app, you can just quickly access that task bar. It just makes sense to me. They were playing around with designs of this in the previous version. They had it on the side of the screen instead of the bottom and you had to opt in to turn it on. So, this is now a permanent thing.

There are all sorts of other adjustments in 12L that make it easier to drag and drop between apps. There's just more optimizations for more apps to support the larger screen for example. Google is leading the charge on this because they themselves are finally updating 20 of their Google apps to make sure that they are optimized for larger screens. When Google finally gets on board to updating their own apps, I feel like it's a sign of, "OK, maybe they're finally a little serious," because traditionally, they've long had tablets on Android and they just haven't really done much with them and just let Apple take the lead. Maybe there are signs that Android tablets might finally get really useful and nice at the end of the year?

Michael Calore: Yeah, I appreciate the shrug at the end of that sentence. I mean, all three of us have been around long enough to have seen the first Android tablets, and they look and operate a lot like the Android tablets that we see today, right? It has not really evolved in the same way that phones have evolved or that iPads have evolved, but I think with 12L, Google is probably going to be pushing pretty hard on not only Samsung, but everybody else to make a good experience. We'll probably even see another Google branded tablet come out. Maybe we'll see other partner tablets debut later this year. Also, we should mention that there are other foldable devices out there that we've seen recently, right? There's one from Lenovo. There's one from Xiaomi. There's one from Oppo. I think there's also one from Huawei. Now, a lot of those you can't buy in the United States. That makes it difficult for Google to give an Android tablet experience a foothold in the United States. So it's all on Samsung and Google's shoulders right now, isn't it?

Julian Chokkattu: Yes. There's also Lenovo, that's been a part of the conversation in rolling out 12L, but 12L is also going to be baked into Android 13. So there's something that you'll just generally see going forward. I should also mention that Google did tease the Pixel tablet coming next year back in May. We know that Google's going to make their own tablet, and so that gives a bit more credence into them making sure their interface is well optimized. But also, there's a lot of rumors of a Pixel Fold picking up steam for later this year. If not, maybe next year. So if Google's working on a foldable phone, this also makes a little more sense that this is why they're making sure their interface is optimized just in time for their own hardware.

Lauren Goode: Mike, you'd have no excuse then not to have your phone updated to 12L because you have to get the folding Pixel.

Michael Calore: I absolutely do not have to get the folding Pixel.

Lauren Goode: Well, it'd be remarkable if Google did do that, because on the one hand, we know that Google makes the Pixel because it sees it as the ultimate expression of Google Android hardware. Once they control the full stack, the hardware and the software, they can just optimize it for everything. On the other hand, they sell, I don't know, two Pixels every ... They don't sell two. They sell single-digit millions of Pixels every year.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: Right?

Michael Calore: A small percentage of the smartphone market.

Lauren Goode: And even fewer people would buy the foldable presumably.

Michael Calore: Maybe. Honestly, the foldable that I am most excited to see is the Apple foldable.

Lauren Goode: Is there going to be an Apple foldable?

Michael Calore: No. Although, I do think that if there's any company in this space that could do it and actually have it be a hit, it would be Apple, because they have, first of all, patents on folding screen technology, which we have not seen materialize yet. Apple files bazillions of patents and only brings a few of them into the world, but they do have a patent on foldable screens. They have by far the most robust tablet app ecosystem out there and they have already a decade of proven success in tablet user experience and tablet pricing, tablet manufacturing. So they can make a big screen device that is elegant and nice that people will actually want to use because it runs all the apps that they already have on their iPads. They also have the best design shops in Silicon Valley as far as industrial design goes.

Lauren Goode: Right. But, well, we should caveat this from what's been reported by Bloomberg, that the latest version of iPad OS will be delayed until October that typically would come out in September of this year, well, partly because of this one feature called Stage Manager that involves the way that you multitask on a larger screen device. So yes, Apple has amazing design chops and their software is some of the most fluid and accessible on the market, but it's not perfect.

Michael Calore: No.

Lauren Goode: The iPad experience is not perfect by far.

Michael Calore: Certainly not. Also, I want to be clear that I'm not saying that I think Apple is going to be making a foldable device. However, if there is one company that could do it, that could convince people that it is a good experience that they want, I think that company is Apple.

Lauren Goode: How much would an Apple foldable cost?

Michael Calore: Oh gosh, I don't know, probably $1,500?

Lauren Goode: One million dollars.

Michael Calore: It will be more expensive than your iPad Pro, I think, because they would lead with the Pro device and then come out with the cheap one later.

Lauren Goode: Julian, your thoughts.

Julian Chokkattu: Well, wouldn't the Apple foldable be the Pro device, too? Wouldn't that be a Pro user thing?

Michael Calore: Yeah, totally.

Julian Chokkattu: One thing that's really cool with Stage Manager that I noticed is that it adapts to ... Stage Manager is just a new iPad feature that lets you have multiple windows of apps, very much like a desktop environment on your iPad. One thing that I have tried with it on the beta is when you shift the size of the app, it automatically learns that if you're making it smaller, it'll switch to the iPhone design of the app. If you make it a little larger, it'll switch to the iPad design of the app, and if you make it full screen, it usually switches to the desktop Mac-type version of the app, which is this really cool feature, really smart design, and maybe gives a bit more credence to the fact that Apple truly is in the best state to have some type of foldable, because honestly, that's pretty much perfect and what you'd want. So ...

Lauren Goode: What would it be called? An Apple foldable?

Julian Chokkattu: iFold.

Michael Calore: iFold. Yeah, it'd probably be called the iPad Fold or the iPad X. Do they already have an X? No, they would call it a 10.

Lauren Goode: They don't have an iPad X, no.

Michael Calore: We don't traffic in rumors on this show.

Lauren Goode: No, that's true.

Michael Calore: We only traffic in hard numbers.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, we only traffic in our own opinions.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: Let's bring it back to Android quickly. Julian, you mentioned that eventually, 12L is going to merge with Android 13. I would think that would mean that on devices that support larger screens, side-by-side displays, that sort of thing, 12L would just run on that but everything else would be running some phone-optimized version of Android 13. Is that correct, and when will that be released?

Julian Chokkattu: Yeah. 12L was in beta earlier this year and the only reason it exists as the separate entity is that Google wanted to have a faster rollout. Usually, what happens is when they launch Android 13, typically in the September, August timeframe of every year, that means every other third-party device usually gets Android 13 either in December, January, or sometime in 2023. But by fast-tracking Android 12L, they were able to make it so that some devices would actually get the final version of Android 12L out and ready, just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4. So basically, all the 12L features will be baked into Android 13. Going forward, everything will just have this same feature set and if you do have a larger screen, you'll just see some of those enhanced benefits with the optimized interface.

Lauren Goode: So, fall is when we can expect that to happen?

Julian Chokkattu: For 13 on Pixel devices and certain devices, pretty much September is usually when Google launches Android 13. If not, maybe late September. But as is the case with most Android devices, that means probably January for everything else, if not later.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: OK. All right, interesting. I look forward to seeing what other wacky things come out with Android 13.

Michael Calore: Like stable devices that work exactly how you want them to and have excellent battery life?

Lauren Goode: No, I'm not ... You're so defensive.

Michael Calore: No.

Lauren Goode: Oh my goodness.

Michael Calore: It's not me being defensive. It's just, I'm making a point, which is that a lot of us ... Safely, I could say the majority of phone owners just want something that works better than what we already have and love.

Lauren Goode: No. Google has to show off its AI chops. So in the fall, when Apple rolls out its new iOS software, it's generally like, "Look, our customer SAT is really high. We've reinvented the emoji and here are some Siri shortcuts that you're just never going to use." Google is like, "Our AI is so powerful that you never have to interact with another human being ever again. It's all bots. A bot's going to do everything for you. It's going to make your phone calls. It's going to take your phone calls. It's going to send your messages. It's going to complete your emails. If you're a parent, it's going to replace parenting." It's wild!

Michael Calore: I use my Pixel for all of those things you just mentioned.

Lauren Goode: You do?

Michael Calore: I really do.

Lauren Goode: Right. Does it parent your cats for you? I mean, practically?

Michael Calore: No. I wish it could.

Lauren Goode: It's almost there?

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. And then, Samsung does the thing where Samsung's like, "But have you seen our one UI? It's our skin. It's our interface over these existing things." Boy, does it make your life more complicated.

Michael Calore: The water drops are still very realistic.

Lauren Goode: Oh, OK. Yes. All right, Julian, this has been really insightful. Thank you. Let's take another quick break and then we're going to come back with our recommendations.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: All right, I have a sneak peek here of Julian's recommendations because he put it in a Google Doc. I'm really excited to hear about this. Julian, tell us about your recommendation this week.

Julian Chokkattu: OK, my recommendation is the Shower Power Pro from a company called Ampere. They usually make charging devices and things like that. They sent this to me a couple months ago and it's basically a device you install into your shower head. So, from the spigot that comes out of the wall. You put this device in there and then you attach your shower head to the other end. Basically, it's using hydropower to generate power for the speaker, so you never have to have a charged—you never have to charge your Bluetooth speaker, because I know a lot of people bring a Bluetooth speaker into the shower and listen to that. You never have to do that. You never have to plug anything in. It's just always generating a charge.

Good for the environment, I'd say, and it just plays music. You connect it to your phone or tablet or whatever and just choose different songs and it'll play it on there. There're some controls there as well. I will say that the music quality is obviously not quite ... It's not great, OK? It's not amazing. You're not going to get something from a proper, normal Bluetooth speaker, I'd say. But for the shower, I'd say it's good enough. For me, I think this has become really nice, because I feel like I don't really listen to music as much since I've been working from home, which happened right before the pandemic and basically through the pandemic. I used to listen to a lot of music when I commuted to my old job, and just generally when I was outside.

But now I feel like I can't really listen to music and work usually. Otherwise, I have to only listen to instrumental music because things with words distract me. And so this has become a way of rediscovering music in a way that's not quite just pressing the shuffle button. I actually choose an artist, and it's only a few minutes anyway. I try to listen to some songs that I hadn't heard in a while or new songs like that. It's just a nice little way of music curation and just getting that time that I used to have prepandemic back, in a way. It's very nice, and I like to think I'm helping the environment in some way. I will say that you have to be careful, because if you are—

Lauren Goode: Because it's not waterproof.

Julian Chokkattu: No.

Lauren Goode: Oh, OK. Thank goodness.

Julian Chokkattu: It is thankfully waterproof, but you have to be careful that if you keep singing too long, you're just going to waste water sitting in the shower. So maybe, don't do that. I usually keep it to the length of my usual showers and it still continues playing after the shower turns off, because it still maintains a bit of a charge. So as I'm brushing my teeth, it continues playing, adding just a little nice shower activity.

Michael Calore: Nice.

Lauren Goode: Julian, I see on their website that there is a version of it that has glowing LED lights. Do you have the LED light version?

Julian Chokkattu: Sadly, I do not have the glowing light.

Lauren Goode: Party in the shower. OK.

Julian Chokkattu: I wish. It does not seem like the LEDs are worth the $50 upcharge apparently, but yeah.

Lauren Goode: I really want this.

Michael Calore: Yeah, that's pretty dope.

Lauren Goode: Sweet. Julian, thanks for that. Mike, what's your recommendation this week?

Michael Calore: I'm going to recommend a book. It's a book that I'm just about done with. I'm on the last chapter. It's called The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman. Chuck Klosterman is a former Spin editor and longtime essay writer and cultural critic. You might remember his excellent book, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs or Killing Yourself to Live. He is a Midwestern guy, who is a Gen Xer, who lived through the '90s and now he's writing about it. It's really just fascinating to look back at a decade that seemingly everybody is obsessed with now through the lens of how much transformative stuff happened during that decade. It was a huge decade for music. It was a huge decade for politics. It was a huge decade for race relations in this country. There's a lot of big news events that happened in the 1990s, in the era when the internet was still young, that shaped a lot of the world.

Now that everybody knows everything all of the time, the world is very different than it was back then. That's the last gasp of the pre-internet era. So, I've really enjoyed reading this book as somebody who was a fully conscious adult for most of the '90s. I turned 15 in 1990. Is that right? Yeah. Did I turn 15? I had to think about that for a minute. I turned 15 in 1990 and I turned 25 in the year 2000. So, it was when I came of age and it is nice to read it as a person who is older now written by somebody who is a contemporary of mine. I really enjoyed it. I've also recommended this book to a couple of family members who are younger than me. They've also enjoyed it. Really, it's a book for everybody, especially if you like Chuck Klosterman and you like his very tongue-in-cheek, overly-scholarly-for-irony's-sake version of cultural criticism. It's a lot of fun. I really dig it.

Lauren Goode: That sounds great. I really want to add that to my reading list. I'll add it to my Goodreads.

Michael Calore: Do it.

Lauren Goode: I have a funny story about the '90s. My niece is turning 14 this month and I wrote to her yesterday, she's always on iMessage, and I said, "What would you like for your birthday?" She sent me a link to an Urban Outfitters Nirvana, smiley face, partially tie-dyed sweatshirt.

Michael Calore: Oh, yeah.

Lauren Goode: So my 14-year-old niece, who is around the age that I was when Kurt Cobain died, wants a Nirvana sweatshirt. I said, "Do you know who this is?" And I sent her a photo of Kurt Cobain and she replied, "No idea."

Michael Calore: Earnestly replied, "No idea."

Lauren Goode: Yeah. No, I could—

Michael Calore: She did not know.

Lauren Goode: Almost, it was scathing. It was just two words, but I could hear how scathing it was. I could practically see her rolling her eyes as she went, "Oh, no idea."

Michael Calore: Because she knew it was a Shibboleth, like a test, but she just didn't want to engage.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. I said, "Oh, he was the lead singer of Nirvana, Kurt Cobain. He died at age 27 and he's part of this club called the 27 Club." And then I was like, "No, now I'm old. I'm explaining to her about this." And then I was like, "This is why you should never do drugs." She was like, "I thought so, but I just wasn't sure. But anyway, thanks for the sweatshirt." She just likes the sweatshirt. I was like, "OK."

Michael Calore: There are a lot of teens who think that Nirvana is a clothing brand.

Lauren Goode: Oh, god.

Michael Calore: And we think that the Grateful Dead is a clothing brand, that are unaware that there are bands that had a logo that then just got licensed to oblivion.

Lauren Goode: Do we know why these band T-shirts and logos are such a thing these days?

Michael Calore: It's instant cool. You put it on, you're cool. Just like the old days, some things never change.

Lauren Goode: Oh, wow. This is just amazing.

Julian Chokkattu: I was going to mention the cover of The Nineties book is, of course brilliantly, a transparent phone.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Julian Chokkattu: Which is, you've come full circle. So ...

Michael Calore: Yes, the transparent phone.

Lauren Goode: Yes, I had one of those.

Michael Calore: And the subtitle of the book is “A Book.” The full title is The Nineties: A Book. Just because it seems so weird.

Lauren Goode: It's quaint.

Michael Calore: I liked it a lot. OK, enough about that. Lauren, what is your recommendation?

Lauren Goode: To start, I have a non-recommendation.

Michael Calore: OK.

Lauren Goode: Mike, not long ago, you recommended a movie to me.

Michael Calore: Oh ...

Lauren Goode: Which I finally watched and I'm never getting those two hours and 16 minutes of my life back. I watched The Northman.

Michael Calore: The Northman.

Lauren Goode: Yes. I was like, "Am I nuts for not liking this?"

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: So, I went and read a bunch of reviews and there were just as many reviews in support of the film as there were saying, "What is even happening here?"

Michael Calore: A sign of great art, yes.

Lauren Goode: I am in the latter camp. What is even happening in this movie?

Michael Calore: Lauren, you didn't like it?

Lauren Goode: No. Here's the thing, I love a Skarsgård.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: This is why you recommended it to me.

Michael Calore: He literally does not wear a shirt for the entire film.

Lauren Goode: I'm OK with that. That is not the part of the film that I dislike.

Michael Calore: You got Ethan Hawke as the cool dad.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, only briefly in the film.

Michael Calore: Nicole Kidman in full evil mode.

Lauren Goode: Completely underutilized in the film. Oh yeah, that's weird. There's incest stuff going on there.

Michael Calore: You got magic, valkyries.

Lauren Goode: What's the woman who's in The Queen's Gambit?

Michael Calore: Anya Taylor-Joy.

Lauren Goode: Yes. She was good. I don't know, I couldn't ... It was very spectacular, right?

Michael Calore: I agree.

Lauren Goode: Sweeping, and the music was really dramatic and even the settings were incredibly dramatic. There's this one scene where Alexander Skarsgård and Anya Taylor-Joy ... Is that her name? They're in a hot spring together and even just the way the horses are staged in the background is very curated. It's meant to be art clearly. But—

Michael Calore: This is a good recommendation. I like this.

Lauren Goode: The word spectacle is embedded in the word spectacular and this just felt like a spectacle. I don't know. Sometimes, it felt like the way these Viking characters spoke was practically nonverbal, and that threw me too. I don't know. I was very confused by it.

Michael Calore: I understand—

Lauren Goode: Don't watch it.

Michael Calore: And I appreciate your non-recommendation.

Lauren Goode: I'm never taking a recommendation from you again.

Michael Calore: Oh, come on.

Lauren Goode: I'm just kidding. I don't know. I really didn't like it.

Michael Calore: I'm batting nine for 10 over here.

Lauren Goode: If you have any other Skarsgård recommendations, I'll take them. OK, my actual recommendation this week. I couldn't come up with anything because I wasted—

Michael Calore: I can't believe you didn't like The Northman. Ah, it's so good.

Lauren Goode: I did not like The Northman.

Michael Calore: Julian, did you see it?

Lauren Goode: Julian, have you seen it?

Julian Chokkattu: I won't watch it now—

Lauren Goode: Oh, see!

Julian Chokkattu: Because it sounds bizarre.

Lauren Goode: Please let me know what you think. I want to hear your thoughts on this.

Michael Calore: Robert Eggers. He also did The Lighthouse and The Witch, which are two other fantastic, spectacular movies.

Julian Chokkattu: That's on my list too.

Lauren Goode: I do want to see The Lighthouse.

Michael Calore: Yes.

Lauren Goode: So because I wasted all of my cultural capital this week on that two hour plus film, I didn't really get around to reading. Well, I'm still reading the Anna Wintour book, which I'm enjoying, but it's 500 pages long. So, I'm not done with it. I haven't listened to other podcasts this week. I did listen to one Ezra Klein podcast I'm not going to recommend. What am I going to ... OK. So, the only thing I came up with this week to recommend is very Gilad, our buddy Gilad, who recommends random stuff. Oatmeal. I recommend oatmeal.

Michael Calore: Oatmeal?

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: Overnight oats? Steel cut oats?

Lauren Goode: I don't have time for overnight.

Michael Calore: Oh, it's the easiest.

Lauren Goode: I know, because you just make it and put it in the fridge, but I am running out the door—

Michael Calore: Instant.

Lauren Goode: Everything's on fire and I've got to just throw something in Tupperware, so I can go and heat it up later. I'm using one of those brands of oatmeal, that I don't remember now, but it looks very natural. You're buying it from the farm. But like everything in this world, it's probably owned by some private equity company. It's called Bob's Mill.

Michael Calore: Bob's Red Mill.

Lauren Goode: Yes.

Michael Calore: Oh, Bob's Red Mill.

Lauren Goode: I don't know if they're owned by ... Just everything is owned by private equity now.

Michael Calore: That is a—

Lauren Goode: Probably, oatmeal.

Michael Calore: A pillar of the natural foods community.

Lauren Goode: OK. So, I have Bob's Mill oatmeal.

Michael Calore: Legit, yeah.

Lauren Goode: I very much enjoy it. I put nuts in there, I put blueberries in there, I put a little bit of cinnamon in there. Some people make their oatmeal with milk. I do not. I just use hot water.

Michael Calore: Salt.

Lauren Goode: Mike is nodding vigorously because he's vegan. No extra salt.

Michael Calore: What's that have to do with it?

Lauren Goode: Because I'm using a vegan recipe. That's my recommendation: oatmeal.

Michael Calore: I'm sitting here smugly nodding—

Lauren Goode: Yes, he is.

Michael Calore: With my chin jutting out.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Do you know how you know people are vegan?

Michael Calore: Because they tell you?

Lauren Goode: Yes, or I will tell them that you're vegan.

Michael Calore: Wait, where'd you go to school?

Lauren Goode: Not Harvard. Some other school in Massachusetts that literally no one's ever heard of.

Michael Calore: Oh, boy.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, that's my recommendation this podcast. That's really—

Michael Calore: Tune in next week to find out what page in the Anna Wintour book Lauren is on.

Lauren Goode: All right. Now that this podcast has gone completely off the rails, thank you for listening. Julian, thank you for joining us for a lovely conversation about folding phones and Alexander Skarsgård and oatmeal.

Julian Chokkattu: Thank you for having me.

Lauren Goode: Mike, thanks for being a great cohost.

Michael Calore: Oh, you're welcome.

Lauren Goode: It's always fun. Thanks to all of you for listening, especially if you've listened this far. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter. We're all there, glued to it unfortunately. Just check the show notes, we'll put our handles in there. Our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth. We'll be back next week. Goodbye for now.

Michael Calore: Never drink coffee before a podcast.

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