How to Reboot Your Burnt-Out Brain

This week, we round up tips for staying organized, energized, and mostly sane as we all ride out the rest of the pandemic.
a Black woman typing on her laptop at her desk
Photograph: Delmaine Donson/Getty Images

Look, last year wasn't great. And just because it's 2021 now, that doesn't mean things are magically better. If you feel burned out, stressed, or just plain exhausted, you're not alone. But there's good news on the horizon. Vaccine rollouts may be slow, but they're happening. Not long from now, life should return to some kind of normal, and we'll be able to safely engage with the world again. The only trouble is lasting that long without completely losing it.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED service editor Alan Henry joins us to talk about the ways we can manage our time and mental energy. Whether it's for focusing at work or just finding ways to relax, we have some suggestions that can help keep you on track.

Show Notes

Get more great advice for improving your life at home with WIRED’s tips and how-tos. Read our roundup of the best note-taking apps. See our list of ways to relax and unwind during lockdown. Also see our home office gear guide and start working from home like a pro.

Recommendations

Alan recommends the YouTube series Taskmaster. Lauren recommends the documentary series The Last Dance on Netflix. Mike recommends the show Dark/Web, which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Alan Henry can be found on Twitter @halophoenix. 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.

If you have feedback about the show, or just want to enter to win a $50 gift card, take our brief listener survey here.

How to Listen

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Transcript

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Mike.

MC: Lauren, how are your new year's resolutions panning out?

LG: Honestly, not so bad. It's a really tough time to keep your commitments around anything, but so far we're three weeks in, I'm doing OK. How about you?

MC: Well, it sounds like you're doing better than I am. But that's OK because on this week's show, we're going to pass along some advice for sticking to those resolutions. And maybe I can pick up some tips.

LG: We could always use the extra help.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music]

MC: Hi everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore, a senior editor at WIRED and I am joined remotely by my cohost, WIRED senior writer, Lauren Goode. Hello Lauren.

LG: Hello, hello.

MC: And we're also joined by WIRED service editor, Alan Henry. Alan, welcome back to the show.

Alan Henry: Thanks for having me.

MC: Well, it's 2021, but chances are that you are in the same boat as you were in 2020, still stuck at your house, still waiting for the current pandemic to slow down as it's devastating communities around the country. At least now there's a glimmer of hope as vaccine rollouts move forward. We've given advice in the show before about how to work, sweat, play, and just exist at home during a lockdown without going insane. But this episode will be more holistic. We're going to be sharing advice and tips about how to maintain your sanity, stay productive and stay healthy while we all stick this out.

Maybe you even have some new year's resolutions along these lines that we can help you actualize. Later in the show, we're going to have some recommendations for specific gear that can help you find some peace of mind. But first, let's talk about some practical lifestyle tweaks that can get you there. So, Alan, you have this interesting title of service editor and here at WIRED, that means that you edit all of our coverage that we tag as reader service, which is usually like stories that you help people navigate their lives in the digital era. So you are our expert in this topic. So please tell us, what are some of the ways that you found, that you can pass along, to help people focus?

AH: So you're in trouble if I am your expert. But that said, one of the best tips, one of the first tips that I give to anybody when they're trying to get things done is to find the best time of day for you to be productive, find your best working hours. So there are a lot of people who get up early by nature of their job and they're really not a morning person. They're more productive in the afternoon. So they're just kind of muddling along and struggling in the morning. Don't force yourself to do that. Give it a good try, right, to try and get up early and get stuff done. But I work best in the middle of the night when the sun is down, that's when I just power through work. So in the morning I will just work on emails and I'll drink a lot of coffee and I'll just struggle through until the sun starts to wane closer to the horizon.

And then suddenly I get a burst of energy and I start getting things done. So if you're one of those kinds of people, definitely try to find a way to make the time of day that's best for you the time that you do the most work. I would also tell people to set little rituals for yourself, little things that get your brain in the Headspace that OK now is the time that I'm going to transition from doing nothing or something else to getting stuff done. I have a book that I am supposed to be writing and it's going, it's not necessarily going well, but it's going, and I like to brew a hot cup of tea before my writing sessions, because there's just something about the steam rising from the cup and it's all pretty and it's floating through the air and everything. It just chills me out and puts me in the head space of, OK, now it's time to write. Now it's time to be creative. Now it's time to float like steam off of the water. It's time to get busy. So those little rituals help out a lot.

LG: Alan, before we go onto your next tips, tell us what your book is about.

AH: The book is a productivity book.

LG: There you go.

AH: It is a book about productivity. It's a book of productivity advice for people, for whom traditional productivity advice doesn't always work. So yeah, the story I like to tell is there are a lot of people for whom, I used to work with a guy who would block off every Tuesday as no meeting Tuesdays. And if somebody, including his boss or our boss's boss would try to schedule him for a meeting on Tuesdays, he'd reply and say, "No, no. Tuesdays is my no meeting day. I'm focusing on work." He could get away with that. I don't think I could've gotten away with that, and I think there are a lot of people, they would hear that tip and be like, "I can't do that. My boss would have my head if I did that." If that's you, then hopefully this book will help you. I'm not going to tell you how to get away with a no meeting day, I'm just going to tell you how to work around it so you can still get stuff done.

LG: Right, right. That's a great point. A lot of the tips we hear make the assumption that you have ultimate control over your schedule. When in reality, in a lot of workplaces, you don't have as much control over things. You have to sort of go with the flow and respond to your boss's needs. OK. So what are some of your other, I was going to say breaks, what are some of your other tips, Alan?

AH: Breaks. Take breaks. It seems counterintuitive, right? I gave a seminar about this at The Times where I used to work and people were like, "What do you mean taking breaks makes you more productive?" And I'm like, listen, if you have ever struggled to work for hours upon hours upon hours straight, you'll understand that at the start, when you really find your flow and you're really into it, you're really productive. But by the end of that work session, you are tired, you're dragging, you're barely progressing. If you had taken a break to recharge earlier, before you feel like you would rather do anything but what you're doing now, you could come back recharged and ready to go back to that high point. So by all means, take breaks, it actually does help you be more productive in the long run.

And also, I just tell people take naps. I'm a huge advocate of the work day nap. If I vanished on Slack, you guys probably should assume I'm napping.

MC: Nice.

AH: But then the thing is I'll go take a nap, I'll just doze off for like an hour or something and then I'll come back and I'll power through and people will be like, "Oh wow, Alan, you're working really late." And that's exactly what I want you to think. But really I just took a nap for two hours and now I'm working late. And that's going to also be in my book by the way.

MC: I wish I had that super power and the ability to just fall asleep in the middle of the day. I can't do it.

AH: Yeah. It's tough. It is tough. It is tough.

MC: So Lauren, I know that you have a pretty good tip that relates to a calendaring and sleep hours. Why don't you tell us about it?

LG: OK. So I really I hate to be this person and every so often, you'll see a cacophony of voices on Twitter who are actively fighting against this tip saying you don't need to wake up early to be productive. But my thing is I like to wake up early. Early in the morning has been a great time for me to take care of personal, administrative stuff or talk to people I need to talk to in different time zones or try to get exercise out of the way, or even maybe to journal a little bit or just write down some stuff that I've been thinking about that's not related to being a technology journalist. And I like that because then it's not hanging over my head the rest of the day as I have to focus on other work tasks. I was going to say more onerous work tasks, working for WIRED is not onerous.

The caveat to that, to Alan's point, is that just may not work for some people. So for example, if you have small kids, you may have childcare responsibilities in the mornings that make this impossible. But then my advice would be just to carve out that time at night, right? Carve out an hour for yourself to do this. Something that just gets you sort of out of the flow in such a way that when you do have to be in the workflow, you can focus more fully on that. And then another tip I have is just find your note taking app. Everybody needs a good note taking app. I happen to use Apple Notes because it's just on my iPhone and on my Mac, but people tend to have very strong opinions on note apps. In fact, WIRED has done roundups of these before. So we'll link to that in the show notes. But I actually tend to think that the way that you use your note taking app matters more than the actual application that you're using.

So I tend to have my to-do list organized into personal administrative work, like shipping things that need to ship, work stuff that needs to be done this week so it's immediate, it's high priority, long-term work projects that I need to address that I have seedlings of ideas for, or I'd like to explore more. Then there's personal stuff, like paying bills and tending to doctor's appointments and remembering people's birthdays and that sort of thing.

And then what I do is week by week, I take those categories of things and I move them up or down the pile, depending on what kind of week it is. And then I just sort of adjust it and yeah, just using a note app, it's the best thing in the world. I also do the thing, maybe this is annoying, but when you talk to people now and people say, "What are you watching?" Or "What are you reading these days?" I immediately take out my Notes app and I go, "Oh, let me write that down" because I have a whole separate note that's called things to watch and read, and then I just get great ideas from people. So then when I have a free hour or so I'm not like spending that hour browsing through thumbnails on Netflix instead of actually watching the thing.

MC: I do the same thing and that's what drove me to it is like, why do I always spend 45 minutes looking for something to watch? I should just make a list on my phone.

LG: Yes.

MC: Alan, what's your note taking app, Alan?

AH: My note taking app is a Google Keep.

MC: Same. Same here.

AH: And I actually kind of hesitate to say this because I have a very bad habit of every app that I fall in love with dies. It was a running joke at Lifehacker that every time I wrote about an app that I really, really enjoyed it would die. So anybody remember Astrid, the to-do app?

MC: Nope.

AH: Yep, exactly, no. Exactly. Got bought by Yahoo and then vanished. Wunderlist. Anybody remember Wunderlist?

LG: I remember Wunderlist.

AH: Yeah. Yeah.

LG: That was acquired, right?

AH: It was, also by Microsoft. I never really got into Evernote, but there used to be an Evernote competitor that was Square or something and it died and it took all of my recipes with it.

LG: Oh no. We know that Google has a habit of killing things that people love, Google Reader. So Sundar, this is for you, do not kill Google Keep.

AH: Please do not kill Google Keep.

LG: Yes.

MC: I always recommend it to people because it has really good sharing functions. So if you live with a group of people and you want to share a grocery list or a list of things that need to be done around the house, it's really good for that. But also, it's so freeform because you can make a list, you can make a note, you can save recordings, you can save photos, all kinds of stuff in there.

AH: Exactly. That's exactly what I use it for. It has our household to-dos, it has our shopping lists. It's perfect for that stuff.

LG: Mike, what are your tips?

MC: You guys have already covered the big ones. There's one other thing I want to talk about, which is maintaining your productivity after hours. So a lot of us feel like all we do is we wake up and then we work and then we maybe eat and then go to sleep and start working again. I firmly believe that the reason that we feel that way is because we spend so much time on our phones when we're not working. So my big thing that I learned in 2020 was to set timers on the apps where I spend the most amount of time. So every phone and Android phone iOS is going to have good screen time tools and digital wellbeing tools. Everybody put these on their phones a couple of years ago.

And you can go into those, you can figure out which apps are the biggest time sucks for you. I guarantee you they're the most embarrassing ones that you're already self-conscious about. So this is good hygiene. Set timers on those and be really strict. If you always spend over an hour on Twitter, set a 15 minute timer, or if you're always scrolling through Instagram, set a 10 minute timer so that you can open it and see it and get a little taste, but then it shuts it down before you waste too much time. I found that to be really helpful because as soon as I did that, I started doing other things with my hands, like reading a Kindle or picking up a book off the bookshelf and spending half an hour flipping through that, or playing with the cat, cooking, doing something that I would not have otherwise done because I just would have been scrolling through Twitter. And now that the election is over and we're moving into a new era politically, it's easier than ever to do this. So this is my recommendation.

LG: That's a good one. I have found the screen time limits to be too easy to ignore, frankly. But like any habit, probably just takes a little bit of effort. So when you get the notification that your time limit is up, you should probably just start paying attention to that and pick up, as you put it, use your hands to pick up something else.

AH: Your cat will thank you.

LG: Yes, very much so.

MC: All right. So we're going to take a break right now and when we come back we're going to talk about some specific gear and products that you can get to make your life easier while you're stuck at home.

[Break]

MC: Welcome back. At this point in the pandemic, chances are you've realized that buying a thing won't necessarily solve all of your problems, but still there's some gadgets and gear that can make it easier to manage things around the house. And since this is a show called Gadget Lab, we would be remiss not to mention them. Alan, excluding alcohol, what is the thing that has helped you get through this dark timeline?

AH: Excluding alcohol? That's a tall order.

MC: I'm sorry.

AH: It's OK.

MC: We talk about alcohol so often on the show, I feel like it's like we should get sponsorships from, I don't know, Jack Daniels or something.

AH: Fair enough. So I've actually had this for a little bit, but it has meant a world of difference for me. I bought a popcorn maker and not just any popcorn maker, it is The Original Whirley Pop. It is a big old pot. It's like an aluminum pot and it has a top and a handle, and you turn the crank and obviously it's a podcast, so no one can see that the hand motion I'm making. But you turn this crank and it continually agitates the popcorn kernels at the bottom of the pot that's on the stove. You put the pot on the stove, obviously. And in about two or three minutes, you have freshly popped popcorn, just a half cup of popcorn kernels, and a little bit of oil or butter or whatever, and you just keep turning the thing until you can't turn the handle anymore because the bowl is full of popcorn.

It's freshly popped, it's ready to salt, it's fantastic. And also, it's not the healthiest, depending on the oil you use. I use peanut oil because peanut oil is delicious. But you could use a normal oil and you don't have to salt it. I do salt it. I put spices and seasonings on it. It's delicious. I make my own homemade popcorn all the time and it's great, and I'm addicted to popcorn.

MC: That's awesome. I have the Salbree microwave popcorn maker.

AH: Yeah, the one like the plastic one?

MC: Yeah. It's like really soft silicone.

AH: Yeah.

MC: Yeah.

AH: I have that too. And you just put the popcorn in it and put it in the microwave and it goes.

MC: It literally cannot be easier. I love it.

AH: That's that's what I use when I want healthy popcorn, because it's completely air popped.

LG: How much do these things cost?

AH: The Whirley Pop is a little pricey. I think it's close to $100. The Salbree is like $18, $19 if that.

MC: Yeah. It's pretty affordable. Under 20 bucks on Amazon.com.

AH: Yeah.

LG: But homemade popcorn? Priceless.

MC: Absolutely.

AH: Exactly.

MC: Lauren. What's a good pick for our people?

LG: All right. Well, I'm going to stick with the kitchen theme. I would say invest in a giant water bottle. One of my friends got me the Stanley Adventure Quencher Travel Tumbler with straw as a Christmas present. It was very nice of her. This is a 40 ounce tumbler. And in fact I have it right here. Once again, our podcast audience cannot see this right now, but I'm holding it up in front of the Zoom. It's massive guys. Look at it.

MC: Wow. That's actually really large.

LG: Yeah. It's probably like the size of my laptop screen, not the width of it, but yeah, I'm holding it diagonally against the display right now and that's about right.

MC: I now realize that the Stanley brand name is like the power tool company.

LG: Yes, yes.

MC: That's like a construction worker's water bottle.

LG: Can you hear this thing? Yeah. This is serious. And what I like about it is that the bottom of it is tapered. The top of it's thicker and then it tapers so that if you do want to travel with it, it should fit in most cup holders, not all though, because it still is rather wide. But I really like this because I just keep it on my desk all day now, and I am drinking lots of water, whether I mean to or not. If you have a smaller cup or glass, you may just get lazy and not refill it as frequently as you should to stay well hydrated. And as long as I'm drinking this, I'm pretty good. So I fill it up in the morning after I've had my coffee, or who am I kidding? I'm still drinking coffee alongside of this. And I'm just sipping it through the straw throughout the day. And I'm a huge fan. So I recommend it.

MC: Very nice. Alan, what else is keeping you going these days?

AH: Well, I wouldn't be a good games editor if I didn't mention my Nintendo Switch. I got a Nintendo Switch a while ago and I didn't set it up because I'm lazy. But I eventually got around to it and I upgraded the storage and all that good stuff. I have a lovely Animal Crossing island right now. I'm very pleased with it. But it has definitely been the thing. I don't want to say Animal Crossing has been the game that's calmed, soothed my soul because Animal Crossing is very definitely game chores. And I'm never a big fan of game chores, but there is really something lovely about being able to sit on the couch, maybe turn on a movie or watch something on TV and then just pick up my Switch and play something that I can duck in for 20 minutes and play around of and duck back out.

And one thing about those of us at WIRED Games, like all of us are big fans of games you can jump in, play a little bit and jump back out because no one has time to sink eight plus hours into a video game anymore. And even if we did, none of us have the attention span for it. So Switch is perfect for that.

LG: Right.

MC: Absolutely.

LG: So when I first joined WIRED, this is almost a few years ago at this point, and I was asking for a Switch, just asking around the office if anybody had to Switch, Mike told me that the previous senior writer, David Pierce still had the Switch, which was on loan and that he needed to send it back. And then the joke was I think he finally did send it back, Mike, right? We had to send him multiple text messages and be like, "You need to return this Switch." But he did and we were like, we should probably disinfect this because this is the kind of gadget that you just sit on the toilet with.

AH: Yeah. It's true. Keep your gear clean, microfiber cloths in every room.

LG: Right. And this was pre-pandemic, by the way. We were like disinfect the switch. Mike, what gadget or tool do you recommend for people to stay healthy? I always want to say stay productive, but let's move away from productivity as a trend to just healthy and well.

MC: Well, this is sort of inspired by some of the stuff we were talking about in the last segment, but I recently got a meditation pillow. It's about 14 inches wide and maybe about six inches tall, and it's filled with buckwheat. You can get them at yoga stores or meditation supply warehouse, I don't know. But basically, it's a small circular pillow that you sit on and you can cross your legs comfortably and straighten your spine and meditate. I don't always use it for meditation, but we were talking earlier about the importance of taking breaks.

And for me, this is my favorite way to take a break now, is I walk away from the dedicated area in my home where I work so I can get away from the screen. And I sit down in a different seat and I do something else. Again, maybe I play with the cat. Maybe I open up insight timer on my phone and set a 10 minute meditation timer or something like that. But it's really just a nice way to change my posture and change my mindset. And it's very strange that something so simple would do this for you. But if you want to sit down cross-legged, it's the most comfortable way to sit down cross-legged. So for me, it's been really helpful and I really like it.

LG: That sounds awesome. I always admire when you get a glimpse of someone's apartment and you see a meditation pillow in the background, or if you happen to be browsing on Zillow, like a lot of us are these days and you see that there's a meditation pillow in a corner, a little meditation corner with a pillow in it, I'm always like, "Oh, that person's got it together." Who knows if they ever use it, but it just looks like they've got it together.

MC: Yeah. Sometimes I sit there and I write too. I'll prop up my laptop on a nearby table and I'll write there just because I can't stand my chair. I made it all the way through 2020 without getting a new chair somehow, and I have this crappy old chair that I've had for years and I really need a new one. So please start flowing me some chair recommendations, everybody.

LG: On that note, it's not exactly a chair, but it could go with your chair. I really recommend folks invest in a good indoor outdoor blanket. So L.L.Bean makes a waterproof outdoor blanket for just $59. And it was totally sold out around the holidays, or I shouldn't say sold out, but it's back-ordered for quite a while during the holiday. So I think it was a popular gift. But it's a great waterproof blanket, and it's not super heavy duty. So if you're in really cold climates, you'll want to look for a blanket that has a little bit more heft.

But this is just great for taking a break and sitting outside, or if you're in a city environment, hanging out on your rooftop, eating lunch on the grass if you have a little more green space, keeping it in your car so that when you're going out for walks or hike with friends and you decide you just want to sit for a while, you have a blanket. Anything that's basically going to facilitate you getting outdoors and spending a little more time outdoors and away from your computer screen. I feel like I've used this blanket in my car more than anything else this year.

MC: I'm a big fan of the Rumpl.

LG: What's that?

MC: It's R-U-M-P-L. It's a brand of blanket. And it feels like sleeping bag material. So it feels like you're wearing a sleeping bag as a blanket, but it's made to be a blanket and it's reversible and it's washable. They make some with down, they make some with synthetic filling. Pet hair does not stick to it. So it's been awesome. We have a couple of them around the house and we just use them all the time.

LG: That's great.

MC: All right. Well, thanks everybody for sharing your tips. We're going to take a break right now and we're going to come back with recommendations that have nothing to do with staying sane and staying productive in the pandemic. It's just things that we like that we think you should check out. So we'll be right back.

[Break]

MC: All right. Here's the end of the show where we tell you about awesome things that you should watch, listen to, read, consume, et cetera. Alan, you are our guest. Why don't you go first?

AH: Thank you. So my recommendation is a little show on YouTube called Taskmaster. Our colleague, Kim, recommended it to me. Anybody who's a fan of British comedy might know about it already, but essentially, so that the taskmaster has a panel of comedians. They all bring something that they kind of ante. They throw into the pool that if they lose, they lose the thing. One guy lost a car and the same guy lost his wedding ring. But essentially it's Stupid Human Tricks the TV show, except it's actually kind of tasteful and British.

So instead of like, I don't know, something that you'd see on Jackass, the challenges are more like here's a giant foam boulder, you have one hour to get this boulder as far away from here as possible. And whoever has the longest distance wins. And however you do it is fine. So one guy put it in a wheelbarrow and just tried running really far. And then another guy essentially called an Uber and put it in the trunk and said, "Drive for an hour away from here." And another guy tried to tie balloons to it and send it into the sky. It's fantastic, and it's hilarious. And all the shows are on YouTube, like all the full episodes are on YouTube. They're like 45 minutes each. My first night watching, I spent four hours on the couch, just laughing, just laughing. My neighbors must have thought I was crazy.

LG: It sounds like the comedy version of a Google job interview.

AH: Oh my goodness. And I have been to a Google job interview and it was definitely Stupid Human Tricks, the six hours.

MC: Amazing. Lauren what's your recommendation?

LG: My recommendation is The Last Dance. I'm a little late to this. The Last Dance was released last year by ESPN and Netflix. It's a 10 part documentary series about Michael Jordan and the 1997, 1998 championship Bulls basketball team. I was talking to Mike about this the other day, and I was like, "Mike, do you like basketball?" And he said, "No." And I said, "But you really need to watch this docuseries." And he said, "Why would I watch this docuseries? I don't like basketball." And I said, "Because it is interesting to watch any documentary about someone who is literally the greatest at the thing they're doing in our lifetimes, and probably works harder at it than a lot of other people too." And that of course is Michael Jordan. He's the goat. And it's really incredible to see. It's not just Michael Jordan either, it's really this entire amazing team, Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant and Steve Kerr and Ron Harper.

It's just had a pretty deep bench. And of course, the coaching of Phil Jackson, who is one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time, although some Knicks fans might disagree. But certainly he had an amazing track record with the Bulls and the Lakers. He's also known as the Zen master in basketball coaching. And I would like Phil Jackson to come on the Gadget Lab one of these times and perhaps lead us through his productivity tips or maybe a meditation or two, I'd be super open to that. But anyway, whether you like basketball or not, you have to check out this documentary series. I grew up playing basketball and watching basketball in the nineties, And I absolutely loved it. It was a great trip down memory lane. There have been some criticisms of it because apparently the footage that's shown wasn't approved, the whole documentary series wasn't approved for release until Michael Jordan approved it. And he doesn't come across as the most likable person all the time. It's still remarkable and worth watching.

MC: Nice.

LG: Mike, what's your recommendation?

MC: My recommendation is the VHS cassettes that show Michael Jordan's career in Major League Baseball, just so we can understand that he's not the greatest at everything.

AH: That's fantastic.

MC: I'm just kidding.

LG: The whole thing in the documentary series where there's like, OK, I'm not going to, you know what? You got to watch it, just watch it. OK continue.

MC: I promise you I will think about it.

LG: Thank you.

MC: I'll put it on my list in Google Keep. How about that?

LG: Thanks.

MC: So my recommendation is also an old television program. It's been out about a year and you can watch it on Amazon. It's called Dark/Web, and it's Dark/Web is the way that the title is stylized. It's a fiction show and it's about eight episodes, they're all under an hour. Some of them are really short, some of them are 20 minutes. It's a science fiction show, so think like Black Mirror, except with not as good writing or acting. But it has a structural conceit that really elevates it and makes it better than the sum of its parts. Basically, there's a person who has disappeared and they're reaching out to people who used to be in their lives by sending them short stories that she has written.

So the person opens the short story, and then you see the short story as an episode of a television program. And then it zooms back out into the world where the person is reading the story and then they try to solve the mystery of where this person disappeared too. So there are a bunch of characters that are spread around the world and they each read a story and you sort of get sucked into it with them.

The stories of course are all like, techno-dystopian science fiction. So it's really kind of fun. Like I said, it's not as good as Black Mirror and it can feel sort of derivative of Black Mirror at times. But once you start watching it and you get into the groove of the show, you kind of forget about all that and you just sort of appreciate it for what it is. So I can recommend this to anybody who has Amazon Prime Video, it's called Dark/Web. And it's, as far as I know, just one season and then they're not doing anything else. So it's a pretty short investment and I quite liked it.

LG: That sounds great.

MC: Have either of you seen this or have either of you gotten into the show at all?

AH: I have not seen it, but it sounds like something extremely up my alley, including the fact that it's derivative.

LG: Yeah, it sounds like I'll maybe think of adding to one of the categories of my Apple Notes to-do list sometime.

MC: Touché, touché. All right. Well that is our show for this week, Alan, thank you for joining us once again.

AH: It's an honor just to be here.

MC: And thank you all for listening. If you have feedback about the show, you can find all of us on Twitter, just check the show notes. This show is produced by Boone Ashworth. Goodbye. We will be back next week.

[Gadget Lab outro theme music]


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