Hello Wonderful.
First time here? Welcome to our quiet corner of the web.
We’re Gina + Amy, dot-com OGs who continue to believe email is the killer app and human connection beats anything we can find online. Curation and authenticity get tossed around a lot these days, but it’s genuinely what we’ve been doing since our first newsletter in 1999. We try things, then tell it like it is. Our first tagline was We Like. You Like.
Here’s a sample platter:
👉From the NYT: Is Jerky Good for You?
👉From Prevention: Eat This Instead
👉From Stanford: 5 Things to Know About Protein
👉From Science Daily: Strength Test And How Long You Live
👉From The Times: 26 Women Over 50 Moved In Together
Do your conversations feel like a game show lately? Everyone fumbling for a book title or a celebrity name on the tip of their tongue, refusing to Google, until someone cracks it (’Kafka’s Metamorphosis!’) and the whole table cheers. All this to say, we forgot to upload an email list of people who signed up for it on our website since January (of last year!). Hence this surprise edition. Hope you like it.
Love, A+G
P.S. We don’t paywall because we believe that if you enjoy THE WHAT, you’ll help keep us going. We celebrate our paid subscribers in The Wall of Fame.
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THE WHAT LIST
by Gina Pell + Amy Parker
THE BINGE. If you’re mildly disappointed by the start of Hacks Season 5—still good but we miss Ava and Deborah’s ripping repartee from Season 4:
Ava: “Uh, I look well? You got nothing on my new haircut. You’re not going to say I look like a little page boy, or something?”
Deborah: “No, I just thought you put a child’s wig on backwards.”
Ava: “There we go! Thank you.”
Get to Episode 7. Hacks goes White Lotus when Leslie Bibb enters the scene as a lesbian trophy wife of the legendary Cherry Jones (then other steamy things ensue).
🤣 In a previous newsletter, we gave a shout out to Big Mistakes with Dan Levy (David from Schitt’s Creek). This show is one of the funniest we’ve seen in a while. It follows the absurd hijinx of a loud, dysfunctional family and their run-in with a drug cartel. A comedy version of Ozark, if you will, with LOL performances from Dan Levy, Taylor Ortega (sister), Laurie Metcalfe (mom), and Elizabeth Perkins (the town scion). Watch here.
🫣 If you’re looking for heart pounding intrigue and undercover suspense, stream The Testaments on Hulu. Chase Infiniti is luminous and it’s less violent than Handmaids, which after a few seasons felt too torturous (literally) to watch. Legendson Netflix is also good, based on a true story about a raggedy team of custom’s officers charged with stemming the flow of heroin in 90s Britain, starring Steve Coogan. Man on Fire is an action thriller set in Rio starring Yaya Abdul-Mateen II, an actor who, in our estimation, can do no wrong and who headlined Wonder Man, another show we loved earlier this year co-starring the sublime Sir Ben Kingsley.
THE BOOKS. We’re known for our Fiction Lists and the two buzziest books this year have been Strangers by Belle Burden (a descendent of the Vanderbilts who is betrayed by her husband and abandoned during Covid). And Yesteryearby Caro Claire Burke, another page turner about a tradwife influencer and the perils of performative social media. Both books are compelling reads you’ll tear through in a few days. But if you’re looking for something more pensive and philosophical, try On Calculation of Volume, a seven part series by Danish writer Solvej Balle, which took 30 years to write. Read about the creation of this existential sensation here.
THE CAKE. No cake, no entry. That’s the tagline for Cake Picnic, our dream come true, born out of the simple desire to eat a lot cake. It’s a global event involving hundreds of people, each with a home made cake to share, and it’s probably coming to a city near you!
THE PODCAST. Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. Here are their Greatest Hits.
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New Here?
AI may conquer the world but The What List relies on the dual processors of Amy + Gina, human friends who travel the web and the world to find WHAT matters and WHAT is worth your time and money.
We read, watch, listen to, and roadtest everything we recommend. TWL is a nostalgic nod to our early days on the Web, back when creators published freely (emphasis on free) in the true spirit of sharing. Welcome aboard!
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Thank you for reading, sharing and for your thoughtful feedback.
Love,
Amy + Gina