Michael Calore: Scoop on Netflix.
Lauren Goode: Scoop on Netflix.
Michael Calore: Nice.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. What’s your recommendation, Mike?
Michael Calore: So, I’m going to recommend that everybody check out WIRED’s new podcast. And this is not self-dealing or anything like that. I mean, it is, yes, technically, but I listened to it. It’s called WIRED Politics Lab. I listened to it because I introduced it on our feed last week, and it is excellent. It’s very good. It’s a brand new podcast. We just launched it. We have a politics team. They’re covering the 2024 election here in the United States where we will be selecting a president and we’ll be determining who controls Congress, and we’ll be passing all kinds of laws at the state and local level.
And of course, it’s an extremely online election, and there’s a bunch of shenanigans. There is disinformation, there’s voter disenfranchisement, there are ads made by AI that might be deep fakes and might not. So it’s very juicy and it’s extremely fun. Most of the time I just can’t listen to politics stuff because it just drives me batty, but this is not one of those kinds of shows. It’s about the technology and the data scraping and the bad actors out there who are doing the work to try to influence the election, and it’s also about the election itself. So, I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you have room in your brain for another politics podcast, this is the one to add, WIRED Politics Lab. And I love that they went with Lab with the name.
Lauren Goode: That’s right. We’re keeping it consistent here. And tell us what the first episode is about.
Michael Calore: The first episode is about voter rights issues and how companies are using technology to try to get people off voter rolls and to make tools that make it easy for local political organizations to challenge people’s right to vote. The second episode is about RFK Jr. and his platform and all of the conspiracies that he believes in. So it was, yeah, it’s good stuff.
Lauren Goode: Yeah, I really enjoyed the first one with Leah, Leah Fieger, and David Gilbert and Tori Elliott and Makena Kelly is a part of that team as well.
Michael Calore: Yep. So if you’ve listened to the show for a while, you will recognize some of the people who are on Politics Lab. And if you listened to our feed last week, you heard the first episode when I introduced it, so definitely go subscribe. It’s a great time. All right, well, that is our show for this week. Alan, thanks for joining us again.
Alan Henry: Always. Thanks for having me. I will happily come back anytime.
Michael Calore: Great.
Lauren Goode: And can I just give a quick shout out, by the way, to our excellent producer, Boone Ashworth, who we thank every week, but I want to give him a special thank you because we’re currently in a new studio. We just moved offices at WIRED. We had to basically rebuild the podcast studio from scratch. And when I say we, I really mean Arthur, our amazing colleague, but Boone and you, Mike, who just put this podcast studio together in about a day. So, thanks to you guys. And right now we’re in the library actually, so we’re staring at this amazing assortment of old WIRED spines. And those of you who are longtime subscribers know the spines are a trademark feature of WIRED. It’s super cool.
Michael Calore: Yep, it’s very colorful.
Lauren Goode: It’s a great room.
Michael Calore: Thanks.
Lauren Goode: So thanks guys.
Michael Calore: Of course. We do it for the pod. Do it all for the pod. All right, well, thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can bark at all of us on Airchat. Just check the show notes. No DMs, we have to talk in public. Our producer, as Lauren just mentioned, is the excellent Boone Ashworth. We will be back next week with a new show. And until then, goodbye.
[Gadget Lab outro theme music plays]
Michael Calore: I LOL-ed.
Lauren Goode: Look, no judging, OK?
Michael Calore: I LOL-ed—
Alan Henry: And LOL-ed. You LOL-ed IRL.
Michael Calore: I did.
Alan Henry: But did you LMAO?
Michael Calore: I didn’t LMAO. I went, “Ha!” OK, let’s record some content.
Lauren Goode: OK.
Michael Calore: OK. Here’s the—
[He stops suddenly, sighs heavily, and everyone laughs.]