It’s the Oura Ring. It’s not new, but new to me. Have you guys heard of the Oura Ring?
Zoe Schiffer: Oh my God. You know this is a personal obsession with mine. I’ve been wanting one for months, and months, and months. I’m seething with jealousy. Tell us everything.
Lauren Goode: The sleep tracking. I’m not a good sleeper, and this has been giving me some really good insights into my sleep. And stress. I got a stressful email this morning, and I swear, about seven minutes later, the ring had logged that I was stressed.
Zoe Schiffer: It’s so obvious when you have a bad night of sleep. You wake up and you feel like trash. The idea that we need our phones to verify this. No, you know when it’s happening, and yet I so deeply want the validation. I love the quantified life, I want to be able to see it in numerical form. I’m all in.
Lauren Goode: Yeah. Zoe, I could totally see how as a parent of two babies, you would still want that validation. “Yes, I am very tired.”
It also gives you something called a Readiness Score, which supposedly signals how ready you are to tackle the day, based on sleep.
Zoe Schiffer: Yet again. though, I’m like, we have no choice. What, I have a low Readiness Score. Sorry, boss, I can’t come in. It all feels a little superfluous, and yet I have never wanted a gadget more.
Lauren Goode: And yet. We have to get you one. We have to get you one just so you can go to Katie Drummond, our global editorial director, the next time there is huge breaking news on any of the broligarchy. I need you to say, “Katie, my Readiness Score is suboptimal. I’m not sure I can do this right now.”
Michael Calore: Welcome to Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, the power, and influence of Silicon Valley. I’m Michael Calore, director of consumer tech and culture here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: I’m Lauren Goode, senior writer at WIRED.
Zoe Schiffer: And I’m Zoe Schiffer, WIRED’s director of business and industry.
Michael Calore: If you’ve been listening to Uncanny Valley for a while now, you may have noticed something new in your podcast feed. We have added an additional episode.
Lauren Goode: That’s right. We have two episodes a week now. There’s the one you’re listening to with me, Mike, and Zoe. Then each week, there’s a shorter, newsier episode with WIRED’s global editorial director, Katie Drummond. These episodes have been great. I don’t know if you guys have had the chance to listen to the past two, but they’re just so good.
Michael Calore: Oh, yeah.
Lauren Goode: Such clear information. Everyone should check them out.
Zoe Schiffer: Yeah. We’ve been super busy at WIRED, covering politics, science, culture, security, and gear, and we’d thought we’d share more of our reporting with you all.
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