One surefire way to go viral on Threads—the Meta-owned Instagram-spinoff social network with more than 200 million users—is to ask a ridiculous question that enrages your followers so much, they just have to chime in to answer you, mock you, or berate you. When it first launched last summer, Threads was seen as a blatant Twitter clone. At the time, that was an appealing attribute, as users fleeing the chaos and toxicity of the platform now known as X were looking for a new place to gather. Threads turned out to be a safe haven from the trolling and engagement bait on X, Reddit, and Facebook, but only for a while. Threads, like any for-profit social media site, was not able to keep those jokers and bad actors at bay. In its effort to boost engagement on the platform, Threads began prioritizing posts with the most replies and comments—which also happen to be the posts that stirred up the most drama and pissed everyone off.

This week on Gadget Lab, we chat with Business Insider senior correspondent Katie Notopoulos about her personal experiment with rage-bait immersion on Threads. We also ask whether social media sites are making the right decision by catering to their most furious users.

Show Notes

Read Katie’s story about rage bait on Threads. Read Lauren’s story about the new app SocialAI, where the only human is you, and everyone else is a bot.

Recommendations

Katie recommends the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu. Mike recommends the HBO show Industry. Lauren recommends the Apple TV+ show Slow Horses.

Katie Notopoulos can be found on Threads @katienotopoulos. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @[email protected]. 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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Transcript

Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.

[Gadget Lab intro theme music plays]

Lauren Goode: Mike.

Michael Calore: Lauren.

Lauren Goode: Has Threads been scratching that Twitter itch for you?

Michael Calore: You mean Meta Threads? Facebook Threads?

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Meta Threads, correct.

Michael Calore: No. No, I don’t use Threads.

Lauren Goode: Not at all?

Michael Calore: Not at all.

Lauren Goode: I was wondering about that. Because when I go to tag you on Threads, sometimes it just defaults to your Instagram handle, which I guess is also your Threads handle. But why aren’t you on Threads?

Michael Calore: I really don’t feel the need to be on there. My social media needs are not as large as they used to be. And ever since Twitter went away, or I should say became X and then went away, I have really just stepped back. And if I’m spending any time on social media, I’m hanging out on Mastodon.

Lauren Goode: And Instagram.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: I see you. I send you memes on Instagram and you respond

Michael Calore: Sure, yes.

Lauren Goode: Sometimes.

Michael Calore: Sometimes, yes.

Lauren Goode: OK. Well, you’re really missing some wonky, algorithmic shit and some next-level trolling on Threads, I have to say.

Michael Calore: I used to get that on Twitter, which is part of the reason why I left.

Lauren Goode: OK. Well, there is someone who we know, at least we know her on the internet, who has taken trolling on Threads to the next level. Aren’t you the least bit curious?

Michael Calore: Of course, I am.

Lauren Goode: You want to hear more, don’t you?

Michael Calore: Yes, tag me in.

Lauren Goode: You won’t believe what happened next.

Michael Calore: Tag me into the convo.

Lauren Goode: We should talk to her.

Michael Calore: Let’s do it.

Lauren Goode: Let’s do it. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Gadget Lab. I’m Lauren Goode. I’m a senior writer at WIRED.

Michael Calore: And I’m Michael Calore. I am WIRED’s director of consumer tech and culture.

Lauren Goode: And we’re joined this week by special guest Katie Notopoulos, a senior correspondent at Business Insider. Katie, welcome to the show. It’s your first time on Gadget Lab, and we’re very excited to have you on.

Katie Notopoulos: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very excited to be a guest here.

Lauren Goode: I have to admit, this idea came from someone on Threads. I shared your recent story and someone replied to me and said, “Have her on the show.” And I said, “I’m going to steal that idea.” OK. Katie, you’re here to piss us off, I think. We brought you on because you recently did an experiment on Threads, where you deliberately posted things that you knew would make people mad. We call this rage bait. And people were getting really, really off. Some of us immediately saw what you were doing, but other people said, “I’m unfollowing Katie. What is she doing? This is crazy.”

But this was all in service of journalism with a capital J, because you were trying to compare how those rage-bait posts performed compared to other non-infuriating things on Threads. You had some guesses as to how exactly the Threads algorithm is working, or maybe you just wrote that story because you wanted to cover for all the insane posts that you had during that week. But let’s start from the beginning. What made you want to do this Threads experiment? What made you want to go to the dark side?

Katie Notopoulos: I guess, well, firstly, I had noticed that the Threads algorithm seemed weird. And I was curious a little bit about how it worked and some of the stuff that I was seeing, which felt very strange to me. Why was I seeing this stuff? And the kind of stuff I was seeing that seemed to get a lot of comments was often people asking for advice in describing domestic problems, like family problems, parenting problems, relationships, and asking for advice. And they would get tons and tons of comments.

It was often, I feel like, people talking about medical trauma and bad things. It’s just not what I had ever seen on Twitter or anything. I was so fascinated by this, and I wanted to play around a little bit, I guess. And so I experimented with posting these social etiquette kinds of questions, asking for advice, but in the persona of an incredibly stupid person. And it got a lot of responses from people who were very mad because they thought I was an incredibly stupid person—which they’re not wrong, just not in the way they thought.

Michael Calore: Give us some examples. What types of questions were you putting out there?

Katie Notopoulos: So, some of them were inspired by things I had already seen on there. I think one of the early ones I did was, and this was similar to something I had seen a couple months ago on Threads, not verbatim, but I just remembered it being funny. Something along the lines of, “My niece is planning a trip to New York City soon. I’m really worried because I’ve heard there’s a lot of crime. Does anyone know what neighborhoods are safe to go in? What neighborhoods should she avoid? I’m so scared.”

Of course, anyone who lives in New York City is going to be like, “That’s ridiculous. New York City is a very safe city. It has much lower crime statistics than many other places. Your niece will have a great time.” I got a lot of responses to that, and a lot of it was people giving genuine advice. Like, “Just don’t ride the subways late at night. Always be aware of your surroundings,” which is not necessarily anything that I do. I’m not aware of my surroundings when I’m walking around or sitting around.

Lauren Goode: You’re on your phone, posting to Threads.

Katie Notopoulos: I’m busy posting.

Lauren Goode: So, did you notice that you got more engagement on Threads posting that versus “Read my Business Insider story?” How did the traffic compare?

Katie Notopoulos: Oh, it’s similar.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, OK.

Katie Notopoulos: Absolutely. I got hundreds of responses to that. And it validated a theory that I had, which is that Threads seems really to weigh comments and replies in terms of what is going to show up in people’s For You feed. That seems to be the strongest signal is lots of replies, lots of comments. And I think part of it is, it travels in a purely viral way where, if you follow someone and they’re replying to somebody else’s Threads, both things are going to show up in your feed. It’s going to show you all your friends’ responses.

So, if you have a couple people responding, it’s going to show to their friends and their friends, da-da-da-da, much more so than a repost or a like. Those are other signals that might affect how something shows up on the For You page. But yeah, it seems to really care a lot about replies. So, things that get a lot of replies, like asking a question, especially an advice question, especially the kind of advice question that you can’t help but answer because it’s so stupid. Like, is New York City safe? It gets a lot of responses.

Lauren Goode: I have to ask you to take us through one of your posts that went completely viral, which you borrowed maybe from Twitter, but also was a news article at some point. It was like a social media Ouroboros, eating itself, about feeding your kids’ friends when they’re over. Talk about this one.

Katie Notopoulos: So, is—

Lauren Goode: That is batshit. OK, go ahead.

Katie Notopoulos: So, in, I think, 2022, there was this minor, little Twitter thing, where someone had posted something along the lines of, “When I was a kid growing up in Sweden, it was really normal that if your friends were having dinner, they would just have you wait in the living room while their family ate dinner. They won’t invite you to come and eat with them.” And for the record, I have a very good friend who grew up in Sweden. He was like, “Yeah, that’s totally true. I spent a lot of time waiting in the other room while my friends ate dinner with their families. That’s just how it was done.”

And obviously, that’s pretty strange, unusual, different than most cultures across the world. And people were really shocked by this. They were like, “We can’t believe that Swedes won’t offer their guests food,” or whatever. And I was like, “Oh, I know that this was a hot topic. It caused a big stir on Twitter. Let me try a version of it here, but I’m going to make it even stupider.” So, I said something along the lines of, “I have a question for people in Europe. In my culture (in America), it is totally not customary to ever feed another kid who comes over at dinner time. You would ask them to wait in the living room. Everybody does it here. Is that true in your culture?”

And so, it instantly got a ton of replies from both people who live in the US who said, “Where do you live? That’s not how we do it here. Are you crazy? Across this great nation, there are families inviting children to eat dinner at their house all the time.” And then, people outside the US, too, also saying, “Here in the Philippines, here in Spain,” here in wherever they were, “that’s not how we do it. What’s wrong with you Americans?” Because I think literally, it is globally, universally like being a good host is a pretty standard thing. I guess, apparently, except for Sweden. So, that got a lot of response.

Lauren Goode: The reasoning behind that, supposedly, just to defend the Swedes, as we do on Gadget Lab …

Michael Calore: Frequently.

Lauren Goode: … is that it’s supposed to be considerate in case that child’s parents were planning on feeding them dinner in a short while, that they don’t spoil their dinner. They don’t send them home full. I love how now we are down the Threads rabbit hole.

Michael Calore: We are.

Lauren Goode: Just IRL on this podcast.

Katie Notopoulos: When I do think about it, I remember when that controversy was happening, and I feel like it got turned into, “Of course you would feed your guests, you would offer your guests food,” or whatever. And that’s not quite the same as like, if it’s dinner time and a kid happens to be over. There is a kind of, “Are you supposed to eat with your family? They might be expecting you. They might not like it if you were eating here.” I can understand purely from a Stove Top Stuffing, double-play kind of situation that you’re not feeding someone else’s kid. I guess I can understand a logic behind it. That’s not purely like Swedes are mean. I guess it’s just a different custom. But claiming this was an American tradition, I think, really helped it a little bit. Because obviously, that’s just not true.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, incite the violence. Yeah.

Michael Calore: Well, people who know you and people who know that you’re a journalist, they know that you know better. And they know that you’re trolling. They know that this is some sort of weird experiment and that you’re having fun. But something that you noticed, which is in your story, is that there’s a crossover effect.

Because Threads incentivizes these type of posts, you would show up in people’s For You page, people who probably don’t know what you do, probably don’t know how smart you actually are. And you would also see your Threads posts in Instagram feeds. When I’m scrolling Instagram, I see a little carousel of popular Threads posts that might be relevant to my interests. And I don’t know who these people are because I’m not on Threads. And it’s incentivizing me to go to Threads.

So, you ended up basically broadcasting to these audiences, who just had no context to what you were saying. They didn’t know it was a joke. All they saw was something that enraged them.

Katie Notopoulos: Right. And the idea that there’s people out there on the internet who have totally terrible opinions and are stupid and rude, that’s 100 percent true.

Michael Calore: No, no.

Katie Notopoulos: There’s no reason for anyone to not know that if you see someone acting like a jerk online, why would you ever think that’s not real? We know that’s real. And people on Instagram may see this, too, whether or not they have signed up for Threads. But you see, occasionally, a little carousel of posts from other people you follow.

So, if you follow a celebrity who’s also posting on Threads or something like that, you’ll start to see a little carousel of their Threads posts when you’re scrolling through Instagram. So, I think a lot of people ended up coming to it that way too. So, they might even barely have been Threads users.

I did notice that I think this is a good indicator of how much these people were actively using Threads. A lot of them didn’t have profile pictures. I think they had barely set up an account on Threads. They were just like—

Michael Calore: They set up an account just to yell at you.

Katie Notopoulos: Well, I think they probably created an account just because they were curious, and occasionally it gets bumped into their Instagram, but they’re not active Threads users. They might just casually, occasionally click through as this little text addendum to Instagram. That’s my sense of how a casual user might use it.

Lauren Goode: Katie, we are going to continue this conversation, but we have to take a quick break. So, hang tight and we’ll be right back.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: So, Katie, I want to know what Meta had to say about all of this. Presumably, as a very diligent journalist, you reached out to them. You said, “I’ve been doing this experiment. Here’s what I found.” What was their response?

Katie Notopoulos: I did reach out to them, and I asked them what to make of this. And I said my theory was that, “Comments were more heavily weighed than other signals. Is this true?” And they said that there’s a variety of signals that lead to what show up in your For You page, that the stronger signals would be something like who you’re following, or what accounts or content you’ve already interacted with, which makes sense. Me following you is a pretty strong signal. I want to see your content. But also, you replying to something is a pretty strong signal that I want to see the comment that you replied to.

So, I would say they neither confirmed nor denied that specifically, that comments are really what’s driving it. Because I think what people were noticing was that doing these things, where you’re asking a question like, “I don’t feed children who come into my house, is this normal?” or I did something about, “I refuse to buy the school supplies for my child at school, what should I do?” that obviously makes people really mad. That kind of stuff, it was just question stuff, was all over my For You page.

And these really basic kinds of engagement bait, too, like, “What’s your favorite movie to put on when you’re feeling sad?” that kind of thing, that just generates a lot of replies. Really generic engagement bait too. And I have to imagine that Meta noticed this, that that kind of classic engagement bait really was happening all over Threads, and that seemed to be what was driving a lot of people’s experience.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. That happened for me recently because I posted about a desk chair, and it was very real and earnest. I was looking for desk chair recommendations, and I was surprised by the amount of engagement that it got versus sharing a news story, which is really for me, what brings up these existential questions about Threads. Because as journalists, a lot of us, all of us here in this room, flocked to Twitter for breaking news for years. We were live-tweeting events. We were looking for links to actual news stories. I used to wake up every morning and check Twitter because it was literally what was going on in the world outside of my world.

Now, I open Threads and I’m shown Threads about marital discord and menopause. And one, I’m not in a marriage, and two, I’m not in menopause, which for the record, I know those super tests, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m really not. And yet, it’s all I see on Threads. And I want to see what is going on in the world outside of my bubble, and I’m not getting that from Threads.

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Katie Notopoulos: One thing that it made me think a lot about was how on Threads, if, which is my theory that replies are really the driving force towards what’s going to go viral in terms of getting shown on a lot of For You pages, it seems to be replies rather than the repost button. Which, over on Twitter, repost is how things would go viral on classic Twitter, not the version of X that it is now, where it is an algorithmic feed. But a pre-algorithmic feed, retweeting things was the mechanism in which they would spread. And there’s just very different incentives as a user to retweet something versus reply. I might retweet something because it’s really funny, like a hilarious joke, or I think this is—

Lauren Goode: Or smart or—

Katie Notopoulos: Or smart or interesting, or I want my followers to be aware of this, or something like that. And a reply is like, you maybe don’t even want other people to know that you’re replying. Your thing about a desk chair recommendation, I don’t really want everyone to know my response to what kind of desk chair I would recommend to you. That’s not big, exciting. It’s not a joke or something that I would want to share with my friends. So, it’s very different behavior, and it leads to very different kinds of content spreading, I think.

Michael Calore: And is Threads offering any kind of financial incentive for people who have posts that have a lot of comments and a lot of replies?

Katie Notopoulos: That’s a great question, and the answer is yes, but with a giant asterisk next to it. Because I’m not sure who’s getting it and what kinds of posts they’re getting it for. So, a while ago, maybe even a year ago, there was some rewarding, I think, in the information that Meta was rolling out a Threads bonus program. And it was initially offering this to … It still is only their handpicked group of creators. At first, it was reality stars they were really trying to get to post on Threads, which—

Michael Calore: Sure, that’s who I want to hear from.

Katie Notopoulos: It seems like an odd fit to be perfectly honest, because I don’t think of reality stars as being a hugely text-heavy social group. You know what I mean? But clearly, they have a vision that is very different than let’s just recreate Twitter. So, OK, that’s fine. It’s expanded beyond the reality stars. I’m aware of at least one person who’s an influencer type who has posted. She’s earned thousands of dollars from posting to Threads. And the interesting thing is, the stuff she posts is basically just cross-posts of what she might’ve posted on Instagram.

Lauren Goode: Is she posting about menopause? Because I’ve probably seen it.

Katie Notopoulos: No, it’s usually just pictures of herself. And when I look at her account, they often have very little engagement. She has a lot of followers because she has a lot of followers on Instagram, but I think that Threads just isn’t really a place where posting a selfie is the most exciting thing for people. It’s not Instagram. So, I think that the rule with the Threads bonus program is, it can’t be an ad and it has to be a post, and it has to get over 2,500 views, which, to be honest, is pretty low. It’s pretty easy to get 2,500 views, but I don’t know.

So, people are making money. I think there’s maybe a cap of $5,000 or something they can make. People aren’t making millions doing this, but they’re making a small, little bonus. So, you can’t tell if someone’s being incentivized to do engagement bait because they know that’s going to … They’re part of the bonus program and maybe they’re going to earn money from this, or maybe they just have a diseased soul, like me. It’s hard to tell—

Lauren Goode: Why do you say—

Katie Notopoulos: … but there are definitely people making money.

Lauren Goode: Why do you say you have a diseased soul?

Katie Notopoulos: Because it’s like I was having a lot of fun doing this, and I was having fun and people were mad at me. And I was like, “I love it.” And that’s wrong. My incentives are out of whack. I really need to think long and hard about what’s going on there with me that I’m like, “Yes, all these people who are saying I’m an incredibly rude, entitled person, I love it.”

Michael Calore: That makes you feel good.

Katie Notopoulos: I would feel bad if people were yelling at me for something that I actually believed, but these were all jokes I was posting. I don’t believe that you shouldn’t buy school supplies or whatever, or that New York City isn’t safe. So, it’s funny to me that they’re yelling at this version. I don’t know. Sorry.

Michael Calore: I want to know if you feel like there are any good places left on social media. It seems like even the brand-new spaces, the well has already been poisoned. So, are there any good places left?

Katie Notopoulos: Here’s the thing, I actually really like Threads. Yes, it has a problem of, at the moment, the For You page is over-indexing this engagement-bait stuff. And it was fun to play around with that. But I think the mechanisms behind that are actually generally good. It’s encouraging conversations, and I actually like that. I find it’s a pretty useful, interesting conversational space that’s very different from Twitter. Even how Twitter used to be, it wasn’t really like a conversation. So, I like Threads. I don’t know. It’s not perfect, but they’re working on it.

Lauren Goode: They’ve managed to get an incredible number of users in a short amount of time. It launched last summer, and now Adam Mosseri has said they have 200 million users. And part of that is because they’ve just pulled people from Instagram, pulled people into Threads. But that’s an incredibly fast-growing social network. People are clearly getting something out of it.

Michael Calore: I should join it, just so I can ask some enraging questions.

Lauren Goode: You should, I think, yes, or be enraged while you’re on it. I had this experience recently, where my mother did give me permission to post about this. So, my mother’s been having some health issues, and she was in the hospital for a little while. And she was finally feeling up to being on her iPad again and starting to dive a little bit into texting and getting in touch with folks again. And she had had a tracheostomy, so she had a trach tube in and couldn’t really speak yet.

So, she was mouthing something to me as she was scrolling on her iPad. I leaned over and I said, “What are you saying, Mom?” And she, I’m not kidding, I’m not making this up, she said she thinks Threads is garbage. That is what she said from her hospital room on her iPad when she got back onto social media. And I did post this, and a very nice person in PR for Meta reached out and sent a thoughtful note.

Michael Calore: Oh, no.

Lauren Goode: She took it in stride.

Michael Calore: Oh, no.

Lauren Goode: She did. I have to say, she really did. She was like, “I hope your mom’s feeling better.” And I said, “I take no responsibility for whatever content was shared from my mom’s account during that time.”

Michael Calore: “I’m just a reporter. I’m just a reporter.”

Lauren Goode: Yes, but yes. Yeah. And even as I’m saying, well, I feel like the content it’s showing me isn’t really relevant to me, I must be lingering on it somewhere. I must be engaging with it in some way, even if I’m not replying. So, it is taking these in.

This is what all these social networks do, and we’re fooling ourselves at this point if we don’t think about the fact that they are all algorithmically driven, using AI to sell ads. Except in the case of Threads, which doesn’t have ads, as Katie pointed out. This is our social media experience now. To go into that like a sweet summer child, thinking it’s going to be something different, I think is on us at this point.

Michael Calore: You should come to Mastodon.

Lauren Goode: I am somewhat on Mastodon.

Michael Calore: It’s great. There’s no people. It’s awesome.

Lauren Goode: Katie, are you in the Fediverse?

Katie Notopoulos: I apologize to the Mastodon community, the Mastodonies. What do they call themselves?

Michael Calore: Mastodonians.

Katie Notopoulos: Mastodonians.

Michael Calore: Nerds.

Katie Notopoulos: I am on Mastodon. I used to check it more often, but not so much lately. I have not found it the lively place that I am looking for. I do federate my Threads to get sent to Mastodon, although now you can see when people from Mastodon reply to you on Threads, but you can’t reply to them. So, then, it’s this awkward one-way thing.

I’m on Bluesky and I know a lot of people really like Bluesky. I find Bluesky also it’s very chaotic in a way that I think some people like, but I don’t know. I think we can all be honest, right? Nothing really feels like it is replacing 2019 Twitter, right?

Michael Calore: Yeah. Yeah.

Lauren Goode: We’ll, Twitter’s the one that got away.

Michael Calore: Yep. Bye-bye.

Lauren Goode: Yep. Well, Threads, we’ll all keep using you, whether we want to or not, because we’re all on the Gram. Mike, in a way, you’re still using Threads. You might as well just hop aboard.

Michael Calore: Nah.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. And Katie, for now, absolutely brilliant stunt on Threads. And not just a stunt, something that I think was really revelatory about the way the algorithm works. And we appreciate you and your reporting and your commitment to being weird on the internet.

Katie Notopoulos: Thank you. It’s probably not good to encourage me, because I like positive feedback, and I will continue to be a jerk on the internet if you tell me it’s a good idea. But thank you.

Lauren Goode: Well, stick around again because we’re going to take another quick break, and then we’re going to do our recommendations.

[Break]

Lauren Goode: Katie Notopoulos, as our guest of honor this week, what’s your recommendation?

Katie Notopoulos: I am recommending a show on Hulu that I have been really enjoying. It is The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, and it’s a reality show. The premise is that it’s following this group of women, who I was previously aware of because they had gone through this incredible scandal about two years ago, where there were a group of moms on TikTok who would do dances. And they all lived in Utah and they were Mormon. They were these beautiful women and it was charming. And then, it came out that not the entire group, but some of them were “soft swinging.”

So, it was this whole Mormon swinging mom TikTokker scandal. And it came out because one of them was getting divorced because the swinging went too far. Fascinating scandal to see unfold. And now, the show picks up a year or so later, where they’re all trying to navigate the fallout of this scandal. And there’s some in-fighting. What I like about it is, like any reality show, there’s drama, there’s interesting characters. But it’s also such a world that I don’t understand. It’s what it would be like to be someone whose main job is dancing on TikTok, but also being bad about being a swinger, and you’re Mormon. There’s just a lot of interesting things going on. I really recommend it. Fun show.

Lauren Goode: Yeah, that’s a pretty wild Venn diagram. Actually sounds like the kind of thing that you would post about on Threads purporting to be one if you wanted to get a lot of clicks.

Katie Notopoulos: I need some advice. I’ve been a TikTok dancer, but I’ve been swinging with these other Mormon moms. What should I do?

Lauren Goode: My church is mad at me. And that’s on Hulu, you said?

Katie Notopoulos: It’s on Hulu, yes.

Lauren Goode: OK, excellent. Thank you for that, Katie. That’s extremely on-brand. I was like, “This could go …” I didn’t know what to expect from your recommendation this week, but that was perfection.

Katie Notopoulos: I’m a little ashamed. I feel like it’s very a basic recommendation because it’s a wildly popular show. I think it’s the most popular reality show that Hulu’s done, even more so than The Kardashians.

Lauren Goode: Oh, wow. OK.

Katie Notopoulos: I don’t think the season’s finished. It’s only been a handful of episodes, so get in early.

Lauren Goode: And Mike, what’s your recommendation?

Michael Calore: Well, I’m not getting in early by saying this at all, but I would like to recommend the show Industry, which is on HBO/Max/Max+. Industry came out in 2020, 2019, something like that. When it came out, Succession and Billions were both shows that I was watching, so I was not particularly interested in a show that, from the trailers, looked like it was a combination of those two shows. It’s like rich people behaving badly, people in a high-pressure environment making bad decisions and has to do with the finance industry. I was like, yeah, whatever.

Now that I have some distance from those things in my life and Industry has been getting a lot of buzz for the new season, I was like, “Time to check it out.” And we went back and started watching it from the beginning, season 1, and now we’re at the end of season 2. It is a very good show. It has its own personality, it has its own vibe. It’s, I think, a coproduction of the BBC and HBO, so, it’s like it takes place in London. There are a lot of British actors on it, there’s a lot of American actors on it. And it’s about banking, but really, it’s about the people. So, it’s softly about banking.

Lauren Goode: The people as in the nonbankers, or the people like the characters?

Michael Calore: The characters.

Lauren Goode: The characters?

Michael Calore: The characters.

Lauren Goode: It’s not like you’re like, “Oh, it’s really about the plebes?” It’s not that?

Michael Calore: No, no.

Lauren Goode: No, it’s about the bankers?

Michael Calore: Yeah, it’s about people who are mercenaries and make way more money than you can even imagine. I really like it because it’s scandalous. There’s a lot of drug use, and there’s a lot of partying, and there’s a lot of nudity and stuff, which can often feel exploitative. But the way that they do it on the show is like, these are people who you’re kind of rooting for, but they keep making these bad decisions.

So, it’s interesting because you really just can’t look away. You want to see what happens next. And it’s very interesting. So, very well written, very well acted, and well done, except for the … Every single episode goes to this crazy, intense cliffhanger. So, it’s hard to watch multiple episodes of Industry in a row. But if you’re interested in one of those high drama shows, then it’s very good.

Lauren Goode: It’s almost like they pose a click-baity question at the end of it, every episode.

Michael Calore: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like minute 40.

Lauren Goode: You’re in it.

Michael Calore: You need to stop and smoke a cigarette because it’s just so intense. But not that I would advocate smoking cigarettes, I’m just saying.

Lauren Goode: No, just saying.

Michael Calore: Anyway, yeah, Industry, HBO.

Lauren Goode: Only when you’re drinking.

Michael Calore: Alone with friends. What is your recommendation?

Lauren Goode: I’m also going to recommend a TV show.

Michael Calore: OK.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Everyone listening to this episode will have lots of good recs for TV in the coming weeks. Slow Horses.

Michael Calore: Ah, yes.

Lauren Goode: Season 4 just came out, Apple TV+. Jackson Lamb and River Cart—

Katie Notopoulos: Season 2, right?

Lauren Goode: Season 4.

Michael Calore: Oh, yeah.

Lauren Goode: Four? I’m pretty sure it’s season 4.

Katie Notopoulos: I thought it was season 2. Is it season 4?

Lauren Goode: No, I think I’ve—

Michael Calore: We’re deep in at this point.

Lauren Goode: Do not deny me my River Cartwright. Hold on. Yes, it is. In fact, it is season 4. Yes.

Katie Notopoulos: Oh, well, then I’m very happy, because I had just finished season 1, and I thought there was only two seasons.

Lauren Goode: No.

Katie Notopoulos: And I had just started season 2, episode 1. I was like, “Ugh, there’s only going to be like eight episodes. I’m going to need more.” Now, I have so much more to watch.

Lauren Goode: So much more to go.

Katie Notopoulos: You have made my day.

Lauren Goode: I know.

Katie Notopoulos: I’m so happy.

Lauren Goode: I just watched the most recent episode last night, and now I have to wait a whole other week because Apple TV is trickling out the episodes. It is pure violence.

Michael Calore: Why do people still do that?

Lauren Goode: Ugh.

Michael Calore: Don’t they know?

Lauren Goode: You can’t watch them all at once. I just want to binge it. But then, I would get no work done. So, it’s OK. But this show is so good. It’s a spy series, but it’s the spy rejects. They’re agents who didn’t make it in the big leagues and basically, they got banished to the slough house. Well, they’re called Slow Horses. And it’s this rundown, ramshackle safe house where all these spies operate from.

But Gary Oldman’s character, who is running the slough house, he’s just this fantastic character. And despite appearances, is quite competent, and as are all of his agents. And you just really get invested in the characters and what’s going on. And it’s a really, really good show. I think it’s one of Apple TV+’s best shows.

Michael Calore: Which is, that’s a small crowd.

Lauren Goode: Apple TV+?

Michael Calore: Yeah.

Lauren Goode: Wait, what? Is it, really? Why do you say that?

Michael Calore: I think most of their shows are really bad.

Lauren Goode: Oh.

Michael Calore: And there’s like three or four good ones.

Lauren Goode: I don’t think that’s true.

Michael Calore: I think it’s like Slow Horses, Severance, and Dark Matter.

Lauren Goode: Severance is fantastic. Yeah, I did watch all of The Morning Show.

Michael Calore: Bad. Straight bad.

Lauren Goode: Character development is good.

Michael Calore: OK.

Lauren Goode: Yeah.

Michael Calore: If you say so.

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Slow Horses, though. We’re not talking about The Morning Show, we’re talking about Slow Horses. Check it out.

Michael Calore: It is one of the reasons to get Apple TV+.

Lauren Goode: Anything spy related, just shoot it into my veins.

Michael Calore: Sure.

Lauren Goode: So, yeah. Also, just Mr. Saoirse Ronan, Jack Lowden, who plays River Cartwright.

Michael Calore: He’s married to Saoirse Ronan?

Lauren Goode: Yeah. Yeah, he’s great.

Michael Calore: OK, I’m learning so much.

Lauren Goode: Just saying. All right. Well, those are our recommendations for this week, and that’s our show for this week as well. Katie, thank you again for joining us. This was really fun. You’re going to have to do more weird shit, so we can have you back on.

Katie Notopoulos: Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.

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

Michael Calore: Of course.

Lauren Goode: Thanks to all of you for listening. If you have feedback, you can find all of us on social media. Probably not Twitter, womp, womp. Just check the show notes. We’ll put our handles in there. We’re going to get Mike on Threads, too, so you can find him on Threads too. Our producer is the excellent Boone Ashworth. Goodbye for now, and we’ll be back next week.

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