Michael Calore: Yes.
Lauren Goode: Yes.
Lily Hay Newman: I usually … I’ll eat a protein bar, and I’m like, “Yeah. Oh, OK. Great. This is good,” and then I go to eat it again, and I’m like, “No, I’m sick of it. I don’t want another one.”
Michael Calore: Yeah. Or you eat one and you just think like, “OK, that was sustenance. Now, I can live for another hour.”
Lily Hay Newman: Even the Wicked maple protein bars, that’s pretty much all we’re getting to. I wouldn’t say it’s a favorite food, but I can eat them multiple times in whatever, a month or a week or whatever it is, and get through it and not be just like, I don’t know, throwing it out or so fed up with myself for placing myself in the situation. But similar to the last time I was on the show, when I recommended a type of N95 mask and provided the disclosure that the masks are very unattractive, I do feel the need to provide a disclosure this time that other people who have tried the protein bars did not like them. So when I’ve given them to friends or been like, “Oh yeah, these protein bars are so good.” They said they thought the flavor was gross and they don’t understand … because it’s not sweet, that’s the thing. I don’t like when protein bars are super sweet so—
Michael Calore: Neither do I.
Lily Hay Newman: This is what you get when you have me on the show. My recommendations are a real mixed bag, but for my palate, Wicked Protein Bars in maple, 15 grams of protein, 2 grams of sugar, and I’m seeing here, it says, “Certified clean.”
Michael Calore: Well, that’s something I always look for in foods that I’m eating.
Lily Hay Newman: Yeah.
Michael Calore: Certified clean? What? Like it’s PG? I don’t know.
Lily Hay Newman: Right, exactly. I need a G rating for my protein bars. Anyway, that’s my recommendation.
Lauren Goode: That’s a pretty good one.
Michael Calore: That sounds both delicious and nutritious. Thank you for the recommendation. Lauren, what is your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: I just have to say, while Lily was giving her excellent recommendation, I was going through my Twitter inbox and I went all the way back to my very first DM on Twitter. My very first DMs were in 2009, June 2009, and it was just a series of people saying, “Hey, thanks for the follow,” like there’s a—
Michael Calore: Old school.
Lauren Goode: It’s what people did then. Yeah.
Michael Calore: Old school.
Lauren Goode: There’s someone with the handle @citizenfreepress and it’s, “Thanks for the follow.” And then, @runnersworld, which I followed, “Thanks for the follow.” That’s it. That’s it, that’s the excitement.
Michael Calore: OK, Lauren. What is your recommendation?
Lauren Goode: My recommendation this week is Andy Greenberg’s new book, Tracers in the Dark. Andy is a colleague of ours. He works closely with Lily on our security desk, and I have to admit, I have not yet read Andy’s book. It just came out, and I’m hoping that we will have the opportunity to have Andy on the show at some point to talk about it because he’s doing the press circuit for it now. But his book, Tracers in the Dark, is about the investigators chasing criminals through the very dark crypto underworld. He interviews prosecutors, industry analysts, even some criminals themselves. He writes about how there are these clues in the pseudo-anonymous, decentralized blockchain that are tipping off investigators to these crimes, and it has a lot of bigger implications, I think, for our concepts of privacy and anonymity on the web. Andy is just a really powerful, masterful writer and excellent reporter. And so I look forward to reading it, but I recommend it for everyone else right now, Tracers in the Dark.
