Silicon Valley loves its disruption. If any industry was prepared to handle the monumental changes brought on by the coronavirus, it’s Big Tech. Companies like Twitter and Facebook were some of the first to require their employees to work from home, even before official shelter-in-place orders went into effect. Now, they and others have extended their remote work policies to allow their employees to telecommute from home forever, even after the pandemic ends.
This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior writer Arielle Pardes joins us to talk about the workplace goings-on in Silicon Valley. In the second half of the show, we discuss Clubhouse, the hot new social network keeping tech bigwigs connected.
Read Arielle’s stories about Clubhouse and how Silicon Valley is rethinking the home office. Read Sarah Frier’s story in Bloomberg about tech workers wanting to escape Silicon Valley’s high rents here. Read more about automatic espresso machines from WIRED reviews editor Jeffrey Van Camp here.
Arielle recommends the Gravity Blanket and Allbirds’ Dasher running shoes. Lauren recommends the Nespresso Creatista Plus. Mike recommends the online cookbook catalog Eat Your Books.
Arielle Pardes can be found on Twitter @pardesoteric. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our executive producer is Alex Kapelman (@alexkapelman). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Lauren Goode: [Laughs] This is DJ Jazzy Mike! OK, sorry. Continue.
Michael Calore: Don't make fun of my swagger.
LG: I like it.
MC: It's all of I've got.
[Intro theme music]
MC: Hi, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore, a senior editor at WIRED. I am joined remotely by my co-host, WIRED senior writer, Lauren Goode.
LG: Hey, Mike. You know how on the past few weeks in the podcast we've been talking about how something's really... they feel like the before times?
MC: Yes. As in like March?
LG: Yeah, as in pre-March. Today's show is really going to feel like the before times.
MC: Why is that?
LG: That's because we are bringing WIRED senior writer, Arielle Pardes, an original friend of the pod and co-host of the Gadget Lab podcast back on the show.
Arielle Pardes: Hey, all, it's good to be back.
MC: It's great to have you. Today, we're going to be talking about how Silicon Valley often leads the way on certain trends. Sometimes, it thinks it's ahead of the curve, but maybe it's giving itself a little bit too much credit. Later, we're going to be talking about Clubhouse, the hot, new social platform thing, that sort of a gabfest for the Silicon Valley elite. But first, we're going to revisit a topic that we're all intimately familiar with at this point, working from home. During the coronavirus pandemic, Silicon Valley tech companies are not only some of the very first to tell employees to work from home, but they were also giving some very conservative estimates for when people might be able to go back to the office.
In some cases, offices won't reopen until 2021 at the earliest. Last week, Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, told employees that if their job allows for it, they would be able to switch to working from home full-time, even after offices reopen. Jack's other company, Square, also announced the same policy this week. Other companies are similarly relaxing the rules about working from home, and overall, these kinds of changes could lead to a lot more flexibility in how and where people do their jobs, even after the pandemic is over. Arielle, let's start with Twitter because you wrote a story about this new policy that ran on WIRED recently. So if you could, please bring us up to speed on the company's plan.
AP: Right. So as you said, Twitter was among the first to close its offices back in March. The tech industry in general was way ahead of the curve in terms of asking people to work remotely. But Twitter is now the first to say that it's workers never have to come back. So that's radical for the tech industry actually. For a group of companies that makes products that are geared toward helping people do all kinds of things on their laptops and phones, the industry at large actually hasn't been very friendly to remote work. So Twitter's plan is very simple. It's just saying that employees who don't want to return to the office and are comfortable working either at their homes or remotely somewhere else are welcome to do so and employees who want to come back will eventually be able to return to offices.
LG: Arielle, what are some of the other companies that are also hopping aboard this trend?
AP: It seems like in general, the industry is trending toward more of remote work. So Shopify, for example, has just announced that it is going to be digital by default. Some of the other big companies in the tech industry are saying that workers can at least stay from home through the end of the year, potentially longer. Facebook is another great example of a company that has said very publicly that it intends to make more of its workforce remote going forward. So just this week, Mark Zuckerberg said that he intended to make tens of thousands of jobs permanently remote. There are some exceptions to this, of course.
Apple, which has notoriously asked its employees to come into the office every day no matter what, it has a very meeting-dominant culture, has not made any overtures toward remote work. In fact, Apple is one of the companies that is encouraging workers to come back sooner rather than later. So it remains to be seen what the net effect of this is. But it's a radical work-from-home experiment for everyone right now. I think companies that previously were quite reticent to let their employees work from home over fears of lost productivity or lost connection with the team, they're now seeing that actually this works better if not just differently than they expected. So I think a lot of companies will be forced to change their thinking much like Twitter has.
LG: That was what I was wondering. So there's obviously a very real safety concern here for the health of people who work in these companies and these closed offices all day long, side-by-side, shoulder to shoulder, cubicle to cubicle in many cases, since we're talking about a lot of desk workers. So that's what started all of this. We are in the middle of a pandemic. But I'm wondering if in a relatively short period of time, of two to three months now, if some of these companies also started to realize that they can effectively operate like this, and that is what is actually making them say, "OK, you know what? Maybe we just won't consider the office until 2021 or beyond."
AP: Yeah. I spoke to Aaron Levie, who's the CEO of Box. He had some really interesting insight on this. Box is one of these companies that literally makes a product to help people who are working in distributed teams. But like many other companies in that vein, Slack is another good example. There are many fewer remote workers than you would expect. Which isn't to say Box has been against remote work, but it's just not totally embraced it completely. But now obviously, the entire company is working from home. One of the interesting impacts of this is that, according to Aaron at least, the engineering teams are actually pushing out updates faster and the sales team is actually making deals faster.
So something that would previously a lot of coordination or maybe air travel or a lot of complicated meetings is now just done much more efficiently. So one of the takeaways from that, at least for Box, is that they're going to be much more interested in a hybrid workforce in the future. A hybrid workforce meaning not everyone has work from home, but certainly many more people are and there's some creative way to merge teams that are working remotely with those that are still working in a headquarters.
MC: It makes a lot of sense on the surface that the companies in Silicon Valley would have an easy time moving to a remote work situation, or an easier time than most, simply because if you're working in a company that puts out technology, you probably have some familiarity with a lot of the tools that you would need in order to work from home that most of us are using; things like Zoom and things like Slack, and of course things like box. I'm curious what it's going to look like for the companies that maybe are not part of the technology industry, companies that make more traditional products, companies that have logistical stuff going on that makes it harder for them to have remote workers. Will there be a larger shift in the American workforce, even outside of the technology industry do you think?
AP: This will be pure speculation, but I think yes. To me, it seems like it would be really crazy to ask an employee who's been working from home for many weeks, if not many months, to come back to the office for an arbitrary reason. In other words, if we've already discovered through this radical work-from-home experiment that you can do your job at your house, then it seems unreasonable to me that your company would require you to come back unless there was a really good reason for you to be there. I think there are definitely arguments about things like a company culture or access to certain items that are in the office.
I don't know. It depends on a case-by-case basis. But this rhetoric around remote work up until now has largely been that companies just don't think it works as well. Now that there's a lot of evidence about how it actually does work, I think companies are going to be hard pressed to provide some very detailed reason as to why they won't let people work from home if that's something they want to pursue in the future. I actually have a question for you guys, which is, how are you feeling about the prospect of working remotely for the foreseeable future? I personally am not in a rush to get back to the office. This has been an amazing time for me to discover what my work habits really are and how I can optimize my time and my productivity when I don't have any distractions. But I'm curious how this is panning out for you. Are you clamoring to get back into our office or happy to be at home for a while?
LG: I think that if you had asked me that a decade ago, I would have had a very different answer. A lot can change of course, and my situation has changed. So, I mean, I've been lucky enough to work in some really great newsrooms and in really interesting parts of the country. Back when I was living in New York City and working as a video producer, I was in a newsroom pretty much every single day. I can't imagine having lived in that city and that kind of city, that kind of environment without the social interaction. That is so vital to the energy of just being there.
But since being in the Bay Area, which is a different area, and there are a lot of great things about living here, aside from the fact that it is incredibly expensive, which I wanted to ask you about. But there's a lot of natural beauty, and the public transit system isn't quite the same as it is in New York, so getting to places sometimes feels a little bit more difficult. There are lots of stories we hear of people who live two to three hours out and were commuting into the center of San Francisco for their jobs and how unsustainable that is. So I think in this particular area, I have really felt like it's good to work from home, and I've really embraced it.
We've had some technical difficulties such as getting this podcast started today. We're still having some technical difficulties, things like video production have been altered. There are lots of things in our worlds that I think have been affected by everybody working from home. But personally, I've enjoyed it, as much as one can enjoy working from home during a pandemic. Mike, what do you think?
MC: I mean, for me, it really depends on the day. The days where I'm doing a lot of writing and editing, I love being at home, because it's really, it's like I can pace myself a lot better. I can put myself in a zone a lot more easily when I don't have all the distraction of being in an office. The days when I'm doing a lot of managerial stuff, like going to a lot of meetings or doing a lot of one-on-ones over zoom, I really do miss being in the office and I miss having that face-to-face interaction with the people who I work with, as in like the people who I'm speaking to right now on this show. We all sit within 10 feet of one another. So I miss out a lot.
But also the other thing I would say is that my habits are healthier. It's easier for me to make good choices about what I have for dinner. It's easier for me to make good choices about taking a break. Also, getting the physical exercise that I need is easier when I'm just here at my house and I can do those on a lot more of a fluid schedule.
LG: I think that makes a lot of sense. There is something to be said about being able to take a step back for some people and being able to reassess just how you're spending your time throughout the day; If you're spending enough time with your family or your kids or pets, if you're taking enough time to go take a walk or breathe, things that you can sometimes lose sight of when you're in an office that... Sometimes you don't even know what time of day it is when you're in an office for a really long period of time. Then you have to commute for an hour or two. It's been a really interesting experiment.
So Arielle, when Mark Zuckerberg earlier today said on interview, and we're taping this on Thursday, that he doesn't anticipate a certain portion of the Facebook workforce will ever go back to work, in the office meaning. There's also been discussion about what will happen to salaries. A lot of this has sparked conversation about what happens in a place like the Bay Area, where the rental market is really a hellscape and there isn't a lot of housing inventory. We have a very serious homelessness problem and people who can't afford homes. The prices are exorbitant. So are we going to see an exodus? If so, what happens to these really expensive metropolitan areas that have normally sucked in a lot of talent and people who are willing to pay high rents?
AP: Yeah, I think that's the question. As far as I know, there isn't a definitive answer on this, but there are a couple of different ways to look at it. So one way to look at it is that the housing market in the Bay Area specifically has become really, really strained by the tech industry. So there are lots of engineers who move here specifically to work at these flashy tech jobs and then they drive up the price of rentals and then they're spending something like three or $4,000 a month on a one bedroom, just so that they can commute into the office in Cupertino or Mountain View. I think a lot of those people are now starting to question whether or not they want to stay in the Bay Area.
Sarah Friar had this incredible story in Bloomberg recently about lots of tech workers who are reconsidering their future in the Bay Area. If they no longer have to come into Facebook's office, well, then why are they paying $4,000 a month on rent when they could live somewhere else and perhaps be much more comfortable and happy and have the same job? Another way to look at it though is that there are people who want to live here for reasons that go beyond work. Certainly, urban centers provide a lot more than just economies or jobs. So I don't think that the urban density in places like San Francisco or New York is really going to be threatened by the shift toward remote work. But I do think that it will change the calculus for some people who are paying really, really a lot of money just to live near the office if the office is no longer a part of their lives.
MC: Well, Arielle, when you moved to the ranch in Wyoming, I look forward to camping out on your land and having a socially distant hang on your gigantic porch.
AP: You're welcome, Mike.
MC: Let's take a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to talk about the new hot app in Silicon Valley, and it's called Clubhouse.
[Break]
MC: All right, welcome back. If you are a Silicon Valley big wig or a celebrity, then you probably already know about Clubhouse. It is a new audio-based social network where log-ins are by invitation only. That exclusivity means that it's populated almost entirely by venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs, and other Valley insiders. For the small group of people who can get in, Clubhouse is all the rage. Users describe it as incredibly addictive. Some say they spend hours a day listening to conversations and just hanging out. It's also been valued at a hundred million dollars recently. So Arielle, you have been reporting on Clubhouse, can you tell us what is the deal?
AP: Well, if you have to ask about Clubhouse, then... No, I'm just kidding. Clubhouse is a very, very new app. In fact, it's so new that it's still in closed beta, which means that you can't download it in the app store, you can't find it very easily on the internet. You have to be invited to join. Basically, what it is is an audio-based social network. So imagine a cross between Twitter and your favorite radio station and all your friends who happen to be celebrities or venture capitalists. I've been thinking about it like being at a really cool house party, except everyone is wearing blindfolds.
LG: Arielle, what makes this worth a hundred million dollars?
AP: Well, whether or not anything is worth anything is a question we could debate. In venture capital, these valuations are entirely based on what a firm is willing to invest. So we should clarify here that when we say something is worth a hundred million dollars, what that actually means is that Andreessen Horowitz, a very large VC firm which has given a $10 million investment to this app, has just said that's what it thinks it could be worth. But it's sort of arbitrary. However, a very high valuation for an app that's so new and is still in beta and only has a couple thousand users says something about how VC or Silicon Valley is thinking about the future of social. So putting a lot of investment into something like this shows that Andreessen Horowitz is at least is betting that this will go pretty big and that audio first social is going to be something that's here to stay.
MC: Yeah, it's the audio first part that really perplexes me, because it seems limiting when you first think about it. All of the social apps that you know are based on video or at least based on sharing photos or text-based posts with each other, things like Twitter and Instagram and Houseparty, whatever. But with this, it actually feels like it's sort of an extension of the podcast boom, like you can put in your AirPods Pro and do the dishes or go for a walk while hanging out in an app that there's a live conversation happening with people that you know.
AP: Yeah. A lot of people on Clubhouse have been using it when they're doing laundry or going on a walk or doing the dishes. I also think about audio first as something that's a response to the deluge of video and scrolling and screen-based social networking that we've seen over the past many years. So I think everyone has reached a point of fatigue with scrolling through their Instagram feed or scrolling through their Twitter feed or having back to back to back Zoom social hours. People want to get away from screens. I also think that people want to get away from this cacophony of content, right?
Going on Twitter is not a relaxing experience and it's not a very authentic experience because it's just so many tweets that are basically just dropped into a void. What clubhouse is trying to do is say, "Okay, there are different rooms where different people are talking, but in any individual room, only one person can be talking at a time." Right? If you think of a house party, you can't all be shouting over each other in one small circle of a conversation. So what it does is really focus people's attention around one topic or one speaker or one mode of conversation, where you can do it passively, but it's a different way of giving your attention to something than just the mindless scroll.
LG: CNBC did a story on this. One VC who was quoted in the CNBC article said exactly that, that it was the only audio app that had grabbed his interest because it doesn't involve looking at screens. So I could see that being an appeal. Of course, that makes me wonder too, since we're doing a podcast right now, that if this app really blows up for some reason and everybody starts using it, what that means for podcasts listening, what it means for produced audio versus more ad hoc or conversational audio. But Arielle, we've seen a lot of attempts at social apps that come and go in the time since Facebook launched 15 years ago and really grabbed the social attention spans.
A lot of these apps fizzle, or they're still around, but they don't really have impact. I think if things like Peach or Yo or Mastodon or Ello, or... It seems like the network effect for some of these so called social apps is still a very real thing. So I wonder, one, what the social element of something like Clubhouse is? And two, if there is the potential for that kind of network effect that sucks more and more of your friend network in?
AP: That's a very good question. One source in the course of my reporting pointed out that there's never been a social network that took off because the VC community really liked it, which is certainly the case for this app. I don't think that means that Clubhouse won't be successful. One thing they have going for them right now, at least, is that they've generated an incredible amount of hype before even launching. So there's this exclusivity element to it, that there's a scarcity element to it that has already made people really, really excited about Clubhouse and really, really wanting to get on with their friends. I don't think you could say that about Peach or Ello or Mastodon even.
So the hype is certainly working in its favor here. But I think the other thing that's cool about Clubhouse that you couldn't really say for these other social networks is that to be on it, you have to be present. So what do I mean by that? On Ello, you could sort of type something, drop it into the void, and then your friends maybe see it or interact with it whenever they happen to log onto the app. But with Clubhouse, you're only interacting with the people who are also on Clubhouse at the exact same time. You can't go back and listen to conversations that already happened in the past. You can't have a conversation when there's no one else in the room. It's really just for people to say like, "Hi, I'm here, I'm available. I'm looking to interact. What are we talking about today?"
So, in that sense, it's actually much closer to something like a Zoom happy hour, where you're logging on with your friends and maybe people drop in and drop out, the conversation changes quite fluidly. But it's really about being in the moment with other people, versus a lot of these other social experiments are sort of copycats of Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, where it's about posting something to a curated feed and then letting people interact with that as they please. I think that immediacy is incredibly different. If they can manage to outlast the hype and the FOMO cycle that they're in right now, then I think it certainly has a chance of it creating that large network effect that could lead to real success.
MC: I would like to ask you about that FOMO cycle, because, I mean, right now, the only reason we're talking about it is because we're not on it and the people who are on it are important people, right? It's the kind of thing where it's a very exclusive club right now. There's a big velvet rope around it and we're on the other side. What happens when anybody can join? Everybody on the internet wants to get on it because it's supposedly the hot new app. I mean, is it going to immediately change and become something else? Is it going to be dumb? The people who are on it now, who are the power users, will they still use it or will they abandon it?
AP: These are all great questions, Mike. I don't know the answer to them. But I think a lot of people who are Clubhouse obsessives already are thinking about this. Part of the magic of being on clubhouse right now is that there are only a few thousand people there and so the chance of you bumping into Marc Andreessen or E-40 or MC Hammer is statistically quite high. In the future, if everyone is on Clubhouse, I don't know if that can persist. On the other hand, people who haven't liked Clubhouse so far are mostly people who complain that every conversation they find themselves in is about venture capital or it's about Clubhouse. That can be pretty boring.
So I think there are people who right now have access to the app but aren't being served by the community that's formed so far. So there's a real potential, I think, once it gets bigger to have more interesting and wider ranging conversations. But this question of scale is a really important one. So the other thing about getting a large valuation so early and getting venture backing so early in its life means that Clubhouse is now in a position where it has to scale. It can't just be an app that exists and is skewed and fizzles out at some point. It has to make back that investment from a big VC firm.
So that means that the future of Clubhouse, it could be quite pressured by this need to grow and to scale or to perhaps look toward getting acquired for a larger amount of money. Depending on which of those paths the co-founders decide to pursue, that could largely change how exclusive it is in the future, if it's subscription-based, if it is open to anyone. I mean, those are all big questions that I think only the co-founders can answer.
LG: Arielle, It sounds like we have a good excuse to bring you back on the podcast in short order so you can tell us how this app is either succeeding wildly or how it has crashed and burned like other social apps.
AP: Maybe next time we hang out, it can be on Clubhouse.
LG: That would be fun. I would really like to try it.
MC: Can you get us in?
AP: I cannot. I couldn't even get myself in. It's tough out there.
MC: Dammit.
LG: I imagine that it's a journalist's dream to just go hang out and listen to people, just talk about stuff for a while, see if they say anything interesting. It's exactly probably why they don't want journalists on it.
AP: That's exactly right. Journalists never get invited to the cool parties, and this one, a virtual cool party, is no different.
MC: I would love to be on it just so I can hang out with E-40 - The Ballatician. Props to my man. All right, well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we are going to finish the show with our recommendations. So stick around.
[Break]
MC: All right. Welcome back. Arielle, you are our guest, so you get to go first. Tell us what is your recommendation?
AP: Ooh. Okay. I have two for you. One is a new product and one is an old product. Is that okay?
MC: Oh yeah, of course, please.
AP: Okay. So in these times of quarantine and isolation, I have been relating to my things very differently. One of the things that I've found myself returning to again and again is something that is old and that I've definitely talked to all of you about before. It is the gravity blanket. The gravity blanket, for those who are not familiar, is a blanket which is filled with something like 20 pounds of little beads. You put it on top of you and it feels like you're being, I don't know, like suffocated by an avalanche of beanie babies. But it's very, very soothing. Lately, when I've found myself having a stressful day or I need to relax at the end of the day, I find it really comforting to just sit underneath the gravity blanket and then I just feel grounded again.
It's really nice. The new product that I've been enjoying is another quarantine activity, which is that I've been going on a lot of runs. I recently had the opportunity to try out the new Allbirds running shoe, they're called the Dasher, and they are nice. I was pretty skeptical about these because they're not... I mean, Allbirds isn't a technical brand and running shoes are something that I think should be made by people who know what they're doing. But they're really, really comfortable. I haven't taken them on any super long runs, but for a three or four-mile run, they're just super lightweight and cushy and cute.
MC: Oh, that's awesome. I am so glad that you did too.
LG: I love Arielle's recommendations by the way. I'm so glad to have you back on the show. Thank you for coming back on the show. We need to do this more often.
AP: I agree.
MC: All right. Lauren, what is your recommendation?
LG: My recommendation is the Nespresso Creatista Plus, little espresso maker. I say little espresso maker because while it is not cheap, you can usually find it for somewhere between 500 and $600. It is not as expensive as full-blown espresso machines that you might buy for your countertop, including other ones made by Nespresso, which is owned by Breville. But I have found that this little gadget on my countertop has been one of my favorite appliances during this shelter-in-place, because I drink a lot of coffee and I like making myself an espresso or a latte once in a while, and which is to say like every day, sometimes twice a day. This means that I don't have to go out and get one. I can just make it myself.
You buy little Nespresso pods, so they really kind of hook you into their system. It's like once you buy a printer, you have to get their cartridges. Well, it's the same for espresso machines these days. They're aluminum pods, which is good, so they're not plastic. But you are still using a lot of... there's a lot of waste associated with this, unfortunately. But I will say that I am just a really big fan of this. I highly recommend it. We've also done roundups before of the best at-home espresso makers with just a range of options and a range of prices I believe. I think it was Jeff Van Camp, our colleague, who did this for WIRED.com. But go to WIRED.com, we'll link to it in the show notes. There are other options there if you're not as interested in the Nespresso Creatista Plus, but I can highly recommend it.
AP: Lauren, how many espressos are you averaging each day?
LG: Probably two to three. Yeah. I usually make a double shot-
AP: Three!
LG: Well, here I do a double shot in the morning, but usually, I will make one of those... a decaf shot. So I'll do a decaf and then a regular caffeinated one and then sometimes in the afternoon if I hit the wall or I get hit with the tired stick, I will have a second.
MC: When this first started, I was doing like three cups of coffee a day and I'm down to one. But mostly, I'll just do ice tea in the afternoon. I can't imagine if I had a machine that was as easy to make coffee as one of those pod-based machines that I would probably be drinking like eight.
LG: Yeah. When I first started working from home in this more full-time situation, I was drinking a lot of drip coffee. It ruined my stomach, it's very acidic. So that's when I switched to shop-based espresso-based drinks again, and dug up the machine and started using this again. I had received it as a gift a while ago. I'm really happy I have it. Anyway. Yeah, I prefer this. So that's my recommendation this week.
MC: Very nice. So mine is a service. It is called Eat Your Books. If you go to eatyourbooks.com, you can browse the site and sign up. Basically, if you have a lot of cookbooks that you often pick up and flip through when you're looking to make something for dinner, this is a site for you because it catalogs all of the recipes in most of the cookbooks that are out there and gives you a way to search all of your cookbooks at once. So if you have like 30 cookbooks and you have a pound of zucchini, you can type zucchini into Eat Your Books, and it will show you all of the recipes that you have at your disposal on your bookshelf. And it'll tell you the page number.
It doesn't give you the actual recipe, it just gives you the page number so that you can go to the book and flip to that page and then read the recipe there. It also catalogs pantry ingredients that you'll need. So things like anchovies or cannellini beans. So you can do searches for multiple ingredients and find out recipes that include some or all of those things, or just one of those things. It's really nice if you're in a rut, and if you're like me, you have been cooking for yourself or cooking for your partner or your family for a couple of months now and maybe you're tired of the same eight things that you always make.
So this is a great way to expand your creativity and expand your options using something that you already have, which is another thing that I like about it. It's not asking you to go out and buy more things. It's just giving you a tool to get more out of what you already own. That said, it does cost money. There's a free tier. You can plug in, I think, three or five books on the free tier just to see if it's something that you're interested in. But then if you want to add all of your cookbooks and have all of the features, it's $30 a year. I just bit the bullet and did it a few weeks ago and I've been using it almost every day to find something new and interesting to cook.
So that's my recommendation, eatyourbooks.com. Check it out. There is also a review of the service if you're interested in reading more about it written on our website by our smart kitchen reporter, Joe Ray. So I'd recommend that you check that out as well. That's my recommendation.
LG: Thanks, snackfight.
MC: You're welcome. I'm here to serve. All right, well, that's the show for this week. Thank you, Arielle, for coming on the show. It was a delight to have you.
AP: Oh, it's so good to be back.
MC: It was good to see you on the little postage stamp on my screen for an hour. Thank you all for listening of course. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on Twitter, just check the show notes. This show is produced by Boone Ashworth. Our executive producer is Alex Kapelman. Lauren and I will be back next week, and until then, goodbye.
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