Lauren Goode: Right, even GitHub got acquired by Microsoft.
Michael Calore: Yeah, and God bless them. Well, we do need to take a break and then we’ll come back with our recommendations.
[Break]
Michael Calore: All right, let’s do our recommendations. Kate, what is yours?
Kate Knibbs: This is also the most millennial English major recommendation of all time.
Lauren Goode: You’re welcome back anytime.
Kate Knibbs: Buckle up. One of my friends has a Substack newsletter called Fran Magazine. Her name’s Fran Hopner. It’s great. And she is running something called Middlemarch May, #MiddlemarchMay. And it is a book club where everyone reads Middlemarch in the month of May, which is now, which is this month, which means I just read 200 pages of Middlemarch in the past two days.
Michael Calore: Wow.
Kate Knibbs: And Middlemarch is good and I recommend that everyone reads George Elliot’s classic novel about provincial life in jolly Old England. I’m really enjoying the ride. It’s funny. It’s like shockingly funny and yeah, hashtag #MiddlemarchMay. Let’s get it going. Let’s get it viral on Bluesky. Yeah, that’s my rec.
Lauren Goode: Kate, can I tell you something hilarious?
Kate Knibbs: Of course.
Lauren Goode: Before Brian Barrett, our former executive editor of news, left WIRED, he joined us in the Gadget Lab. And do you know what his recommendation was? Middlemarch.
Kate Knibbs: Was it May—
Lauren Goode: By George Elliot. No, but no, it was, I don’t think it was, but he definitely recommended Middlemarch.
Kate Knibbs: Wow.
Lauren Goode: Let’s message him on the … let’s toot at him or skeet him right now.
Kate Knibbs: Shouldn’t we post at him? Doesn’t he work for Post now?
Lauren Goode: No, he works for the other social network that no one called Narwhal.
Kate Knibbs: Narwhal, sorry, Brian.
Lauren Goode: It’s part of The Atlantic that no one knows anything about.
Michael Calore: Still waiting for that to drop.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. When’s that coming, guys?
Michael Calore: I don’t know. What are they going to call tweets? Is it going to be called like horns?
Lauren Goode: It’s going to be called BWWWOOOOOOO like a whale sound like Dory in Finding Nemo when she does the whale sound.
Michael Calore: Never seen it.
Lauren Goode: Oh my goodness.
Michael Calore: Lauren, what is your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: No, but that was a good … but I just wanted to say, Kate, this is really a theme here. We really are a bunch of broken millennial English majors.
Michael Calore: Not a millennial.
Lauren Goode: OK Mike, while you’re the odd man out.
Michael Calore: I feel a need to defend and ask people to respect my—