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New York Times
5 days ago
- General
- New York Times
You Should Be Traveling with a VPN
CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin. And you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CHRISTINE: This episode is called You Should Be Traveling With a VPN. Hey there, it's Christine Summer is rolling in and lots of people are probably making big summer travel plans and some of you might be going abroad. Today we're going to do a special mini episode about something that might help keep you and your information's safe while you're gallivanting about the world VPNs, which stand for virtual private network. If you're like me, you might be like, what does this mean? I don't understand this, but we're going to get into it in this episode because a VPN can be really helpful for keeping your information secure while you are web browsing. In just a second, Caira is going to chat with Max Eddy, a staff writer who covers privacy and security here at Wirecutter. He's been featured on another bonus episode of ours, about 23 and Me a few months back, and this week he's going to talk with Caira about what you need to know about a VPN, why it might be helpful and why you should probably have one if you're traveling overseas, we'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. I'm here with Max Eddy, who is a staff writer who's covered privacy and security for over a decade, and now he's here to chat with me about VPNs. Max, welcome to the show. MAX: It's great to be here. CAIRA: I'm so excited to have you on, especially because I don't know much about VPNs. So could you tell us what exactly is a VPN? Explain it to me like I'm five. MAX: Sure, sure. So a VPN is a service, so you're going to need to buy a subscription. It's usually monthly, but you can find shorter term or longer term. And once you've purchased a subscription, you're going to want to install the application on your phone or laptop. The application is actually going to handle all the setup for you, so that's how you're going to interact with it. You open the app and from there you'll be able to turn the VPN connection on and off and select different locations to route your traffic. When you turn the VPN on, it does a few things to your web traffic, so all of the web traffic from your phone, from your browser, from applications, talking to the internet in the background, email, all that stuff is routed through an encrypted connection to a server that's operated by the VPN company. And that connection between your machine and the server is encrypted in such a way that your internet service provider, anyone who's trying to observe your traffic, cannot see what you're doing. And that protects your privacy on that end, and by routing it out through this server, that means it's harder for anyone watching your activities out on the web to connect that back to you. So let's say they, the omnipotent spying they is looking at a website and they see a little blip on it, that's your traffic, and they try to track it back. They're just going to see it coming from the VPN server and not from your computer. So it allows you to both change where your data appears to be coming from by selecting a different server in different location, but importantly, it protects your device. It sort of makes it seem that your traffic is somewhere else. We're trying to prevent observers from being able to correlate that information together. CAIRA: So why would you use a VPN? MAX: So a VPN can help improve your online privacy in a couple of different ways. Advertisers will have a harder time tracking you and your ISP, your internet service provider can't see what you're doing and when you're traveling, it means you can sometimes use streaming services or websites as if you were still at home. CAIRA: Right, right. I like using it if I'm in Canada and you usually can't use HBO Max somewhere than if you have a VPN located in New York. You can still use HBO Max, right? MAX: Sometimes. CAIRA: Sometimes it doesn't work all the time. So then why don't people just use VPNs all the time? MAX: Well, because most of your traffic is already encrypted and you have to pay for a VPN, so you really would end up paying for another subscription on top of your internet service provider subscription. The other reason is that it does slow down your internet connection and VPN companies have gotten better about this, but it is always going to have an impact on it, especially if you're connecting to a VPN server that's further away. So if you're in New York and you're pretending to be in California, it's going to be much slower than if you were connected to a VPN server in New York. CAIRA: So to make it a little bit more grounded in the real world, what are some examples of people who might want to use a VPN at home or abroad? MAX: So at home, someone might want to use a VPN if they really don't want their ISP to see what they're doing. Your internet service provider can see everything that you're doing, and legally they can sell that data. And I think also people who are just very concerned about trying to reduce their exposure to advertising trackers to pretty much anyone out there who is trying to observe your movements online. I think that's from the privacy perspective. From a usability perspective, there are people who might be trying to access streaming or some kind of online service that's only available in a particular region. You can do that with a VPN sometimes. But really when we look at VPNs, we look at them as a privacy product. This is what you're using it for. CAIRA: And then if you are abroad, what is a normal person going to use a VPN for abroad? MAX: So I think the most normal thing to use it while you're abroad is just a little bit more peace of mind when you're traveling in an area where you might not know what the privacy laws are like you might not know anything about the region, you might not ever be coming back either. So it's a little bit more peace of mind. It can make things a little bit easier while you're traveling. And most importantly though, I think the more practical thing that people are going to use a VPN for abroad is to access services that are only available at home. So if I am out in another country and I want to watch show on my favorite streaming platform, I might want to use a VPN so that I can appear to be in the US and doing that. Again, that doesn't always work, but there's lots of other services like you might want to be connecting to your bank or even just using the regular internet as if you were at home. That can be localized to your own language if you try to access Google somewhere else, it's not going to be in English probably. So there's a couple of reasons why you might want to do that. CAIRA: When I was in college, I studied abroad in Shanghai and they required us to have VPNs on our phones and our laptops because the government centers so much stuff. MAX: Anyone who's in a position where they feel like they might be targeted by a repressive government, a minoritized person, a journalist, an activist, that makes sense for them to use VPNs, and your example of being in Shanghai is a really great example because that's a situation where there's not only censorship where you need to use a VPN to connect to sites that would be unavailable where you are, but also because there's known to be a lot of surveillance and if you're trying to avoid or really mitigate that to some extent, that's an important thing to use a VPN for. CAIRA: Totally. So when people might be considering getting a VPN, what should they look for? What do you look for? MAX: So the most important thing I look at with VPNs is their commitment to transparency because a VPN, if it wanted to, could monitor its servers and see all the traffic that all of its users are accessing, and that's not good. So one thing we also look for is recent third-party audits. When I look at VPNs, I want to see that they're making some kind of commitment to security and privacy and that they're following their own policies. Obviously audits are not perfect, but they're a good tool to evaluate that. And you want to have a strong privacy policy. The company should be able to explain to you what data they're collecting and why and what they're doing to protect you and a transparency report if possible. That's a accounting of how many requests from law enforcement the company has received and how they responded to them. CAIRA: Oh. MAX: You want to see that as low as possible. And we also want to see companies that aren't leaning into fear, uncertainty and doubt in their marketing. Like I said earlier, VPNs are tricky because they do what they say they're going to do, but whether or not they make sense for you is going to depend on your particular situation and companies that try to convince you that you need this to survive. We don't think that's fair. CAIRA: Okay. So if it's really blasting, either you're being surveilled all the time, you definitely need this VPN because it's going to protect you, maybe don't trust that? MAX: Yeah. CAIRA: Okay. So that does sound like a lot of criteria. Did any of these VPNs that you tested actually cover all of that? MAX: Absolutely. And one of the things we do look at too is affordability and Mullvad VPN is a great choice for affordability. It's only $5 a month, a little over $5 a month, and they don't require you to reveal much personal information when you sign up. It's an interesting system, a little bit hard to get used to, but it's really convenient and it's a great way to protect your privacy. The only issue that we've ever had with Mullvad is that it only has servers in 50 countries. That should be fine for most people, but if you need to be in a specific country with your VPN server and it's not there, then that could be an issue. CAIRA: So do you have a recommendation just for people who only want a VPN when they're traveling abroad? MAX: Yeah, IVPN is cheap, easy to use. It does have some limitations, but it's great for traveling because they have very low cost, short-term subscriptions. So you can get a week subscription for just $2. So short trip, short VPN subscription. CAIRA: That's lovely. And do you have to put in a lot of information to sign up for IVPN? MAX: No, you don't. They have a pretty similar system. CAIRA: Oh, so it's quick, easy and cheap? MAX: Yeah. CAIRA: Amazing. Can you walk me through how I might go about picking a VPN? If I'm planning on traveling abroad, what does that decision tree look like? MAX: So first off, you're going to want to go and take a look at our guide at Wirecutter because we have not just our top picks, but a number of other ones that we think are good and situations where you might want to use them. First and foremost, people need to look at the cost. The average price of a VPN is about $10 a month. If it's more expensive than that, it needs to be offering you something extra in order to justify that cost. And like I said, you want to look at what assurances they're making you about their transparency, their security. You want to take a look at their privacy policy. They should be able to explain to you why they're safe to use. If you need to be in a particular region, you want to look on their website and see what servers they offer. Most VPNs will cover most major locations. That's pretty common. In terms of value. You want to make sure that you're getting it two to five devices depending on how much you're paying. So the low cost IVPN, week long subscription I mentioned that limits you to just two devices at the same time. Usually you can get up to five devices at the same time. So if you wanted to say, have one VPN account for two laptops, two phones, and then another device that'll have you all covered. CAIRA: Like a family plan? MAX: Yeah, exactly. You can actually get significantly more depending on how much you're willing to pay. Ideally, you should be able to select a server location manually, but especially if you're traveling, you're probably going to want to be routing your traffic to a specific location. So you want to look for a service that will let you do that. CAIRA: Can you briefly explain how you actually tested VPNs? MAX: Most of the time when I do VPN testing, I'm testing from where I live. And that's very limiting, right? Because your experience of using a VPN is going to be very dependent upon your internet connection, how far you are away from a VPN server and all these other variables. It gets really, really messy, really fast. So for this last round of VPN testing, I got some volunteers from the Wirecutter staff who tested VPNs on their homes at various locations across the country in various situations. So we had people in really rural areas, we had people in big cities, we had people in mid-sized cities and across the country, and we saw some strong trends. But it really underlined that where you are, your personal situation is going to have the biggest impact on whether or not that VPN is going to perform well for you. And it will be wildly different depending on where you are. So the reason we did this was to underline the advice that we give to people, which is, it's cheaper to buy a VPN at a year-long or longer subscription. It's much, much cheaper to do that, and they want you to do that, but you don't know how it's going to work in your home. So it's better to get the shortest possible subscription or use the free version of it if that's possible. Try it out at your home, see how it works, and if it even makes sense for the thing you're trying to accomplish. And if it does, then you can go ahead and sign up for that longer subscription. CAIRA: So let's say that you've traveled, you're back home. What do you do when you're done with a VPN? Does it just stay on your phone forever? MAX: If you no longer need a VPN, you should turn it off, uninstall it, and cancel your subscription. Because when you're connected to a VPN, it's always going to have an impact on your internet speeds. And that's because it's usually adding more distance to that. It's really easy to forget that it's on. So take a look in the application, see if you're still connected, disconnect, and then look in settings, make sure it's not automatically connecting. If you don't want it to be doing that, get rid of it. Live a great life. CAIRA: Do you think there's anything else that the curious novice might want to know about VPNs? MAX: There are some free VPNs out there that we actually do trust. Proton VPN does not limit your data for its free subscribers, but it does limit your locations. TunnelBear has a free subscription option that does limit your data, but not locations. So depending on what you're trying to do, one of those might be really good. Tor I should really mention it, is a much more robust privacy option that is free, but it is absolutely going to slow down your connection a lot more. Most people don't need to use VPNs all the time. It is a valuable tool that can solve a problem, but it only makes sense if it's one problem you're trying to solve. So if you don't want your ISP to see what you're doing, or you need to be in a specific location and a VPN is a really useful tool, but to make a really strong impact on your personal security, you should be using a password manager and enabling 2FA wherever you can. CAIRA: What is 2FA? MAX: Two-factor authentication. It makes it much harder for an attacker to take over your account even if they already have your password. CAIRA: So in a perfect world, you should have a password manager, a two-factor authentication, and a VPN when you're traveling abroad? MAX: I don't even think that's a perfect world. I think that's just the world we should live in. CAIRA: I like that answer. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Max, for coming and talking to me about VPNs. MAX: Thank you so much. CHRISTINE: If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage on VPNs or if you want to check out the specific VPNs we recommended today, go to our website or check out our show notes. Thanks so much for listening. See you. CAIRA: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel, engineering support from Maddie Massiello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Elishiba Itoop and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's Deputy Publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's Editor-in-Chief. I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. CAIRA: Thanks for listening.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 41: Grill, Baby, Grill!
CAIRA: What is the difference between a barbecue and a cookout? SAM: Well, that's a whole episode. CAIRA: Oh. SAM: I think at a barbecue, you're actually going to barbecue. You're going to cook meat for a long time and serve it to a large number of people. At a cookout, Chad's going to just do the hot dogs. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CAIRA: This episode is called Grill, Baby, Grill ROSIE: Hey, Caira. Hey, Christine. CAIRA: Hi. CHRISTINE: Hello. ROSIE: Another Wednesday, another Wirecutter Show. CHRISTINE: Again, this has become a regular thing for us. ROSIE: Today we're going to talk about grills and grilling. CHRISTINE: 'Tis the season. ROSIE: 'Tis the season. Are you grilling people? CAIRA: I want to be. ROSIE: Aspirational griller? CHRISTINE: Aspirational. I do not currently have an outdoor space that I can grill at, but when I am somewhere where I can grill, I do grill. And on the site, we do have recommendations for gas grills, for charcoal grills, and I have got to tell you all that it is kind of wild testing grills in New York City, I think we're going to get into that in this episode, but it is a massive task to figure out places that you can actually grill. We can't do it at our offices. There's no outdoor space to do it. Our landlord will not let us do it there, and so we've had to get very creative over the years. ROSIE: The kitchen team had to put together something wild. CHRISTINE: Yeah, they really did. And we're going to get into that in a little bit. CAIRA: I loved what they ended up doing and I want to do it again. First up today, we're talking with Lesley Stockton, who's a senior staff writer on the kitchen team to talk to us about all of the unexpected things that she uses to cook and keep her grill clean. And then later we're going to have Sam Sifton, assistant managing editor at NYT and co-founder of New York Times Cooking, talk to us about some of the recipes he's excited to cook on his grill this summer, and, of course, his famous hosting tips for a blowout barbeque. CHRISTINE: I am really looking forward to that. ROSIE: Sam is the best. CHRISTINE: Okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we're back we'll talk with Lesley Stockton about tips and tools for becoming a better grill cook. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Lesley Stockton, who is a senior kitchen writer at the kitchen team at Wirecutter, and she's worked as a professional chef for over 20 years. And one of her very first jobs was working as a sous chef at a restaurant that cooked over a wood burning grill, and she had to do the maintenance for all of that, which is so impressive. CHRISTINE: Lesley. I love that. Welcome back to the show. LESLEY: I love being here. CHRISTINE: Lesley, you've been testing grills and grill tools for Wirecutter for many years, and most recently you finished this really huge grill test where we rented an entire brownstone in Brooklyn to test a bunch of grills. Tell us a little bit about that. LESLEY: Okay, so first of all, I did start this coverage eight years ago in my backyard. So this time around, since I don't have that backyard anymore, because living in New York can be perilous, we rented a backyard in Clinton Hill. And you're covered in grease, you're sweating, you're swapping out propane tanks, there's meat. It's so much. CHRISTINE: And just to paint a picture, because I went to this house and checked it out, you had over a dozen grills in this backyard, right? LESLEY: Grills and griddles. CHRISTINE: Right. So you had gas grills, you had griddles. Were you doing any LESLEY: Charcoal? LESLEY: There was one charcoal grill in the backyard, which is our top pick, the Weber 22 inch kettle. I was using that because I was testing griddle inserts for Weber grills, which is just kind of like a flat piece of metal that you can cook pancakes on, and bacon, and shrimp, and things like that. CHRISTINE: And bacon, bacon and eggs, french toast. You can use it as a plancha. Of course. Wonderful. CAIRA: That's what the deli guys used at the bodegas, right? CHRISTINE: Yeah! And also just for listeners who might not be aware, I mean it is a really big deal to be able to test grills in a backyard. Like you mentioned earlier, the first time we did this was in your backyard in Brooklyn, took weeks, and this time it took weeks also. So we spent two weeks testing grills in this backyard, which is a huge, huge task. ROSIE: So when you're doing grilling testing, big picture. I know we're going to zoom into some of the specifics about tools and about setups, but big picture grill testing, what are some of the criteria you are using to judge grills? LESLEY: So for propane grills, what you're looking for is a cast aluminum firebox because that reflects heat the best, and aluminum is not corrosive the way steel is, so it won't succumb to the elements. You also want a grill that doesn't flare up a lot. Every grill is going to flare up a little bit, but you just don't want a bunch of flare-ups. You want it to heat relatively evenly. Now with every single gas grill, the very front of the grates, like the part that's closest to you, is always going to be the coldest. That's just what it is. We can't do anything about it. But how cold is it up there and how hot is in the back corners? Do the grates give you a good sear? Does it get hot enough to give you a good sear in good color or does it get too hot where everything just comes out with a layer of carbon? It has a lot to do with user-friendliness. So Weber has been our pick and we're not shills for Weber, but the thing is about Weber is that it heats evenly. It has the fewest amount of flare-ups and I think it's the most user-friendly grill for your average home cook. CAIRA: So why would people be upset about that? I feel like Weber- LESLEY: Because all our picks are Weber. CAIRA: But that's because I feel like I don't know anything about a grill, but I tried to use a Weber grill last week and it felt like I was using a stove, like a gas-burning stove. LESLEY: Yeah, and you still get a really good end result. You get great sear marks, you get great flavor, you get good searing. I've tested so many dang grills, trust me on this one. CAIRA: I like that. So Lesley, what I really want to know is what is the easiest, simplest way to really level up your current grilling experience? LESLEY: The best way to do that is to spend some time really focusing on cleaning and oiling your grates in the beginning. Let me expand on that. So, there are a couple of different schools of thought on this, but as someone who did work over a grill, what I do is, I turn on the grill, I let it get hot, and then I come back, and I scrape the grates with a wire brush. Now I know this is controversial because people are like, 'but you can get a wire stuck in your soft palate.' There are more steps to this. You scrape those grates clean, you get all the food debris from the last cook off, by the time the grill is hot, they have turned to carbon, so they're really easy to get off. Now next, you go over it with a damp rag and when you look at that rag, it's going to be sooty that would've been on your food, right? Use tongs. Don't wipe a hot grill with a damp rag- CHRISTINE: And your hands. LESLEY: And your hands. CHRISTINE: It's not going to feel good. LESLEY: Use tongs. And then, last step, with a paper towel with some vegetable oil on it, oil those grates, now it is ready to cook CHRISTINE: And that's what you should be doing every time before you grill. Right? LESLEY: Yes. CHRISTINE: Because I know some people will leave their grill on for a little while after they're done grilling to burn off any food. Great as a rodent deterrent. CAIRA: Oh, okay, good. ROSIE: Well that's always good. CHRISTINE: What about cleaning the rest of your grill? I was actually at a friend's house a couple summers ago and they hadn't cleaned their grill in a couple years. They have a propane grill. And they had a grease fire and they had to put it out with a fire extinguisher. LESLEY: Yeah. Mm-hmm, that happens. Uh-huh. CHRISTINE: How important is it to clean your grill and deeper clean and how often? LESLEY: Yeah, so let's say you're going to grill, and you turn it on to heat it up and you come back and you see some smoke coming out of the firebox. And what I mean by coming out of the firebox, is smoke is coming out from underneath the flame ports. That's when I get, I don't know what is it is a spackle knife or a paint scraper, like one of those big spatulas that people used to fill holes with walls with spackle? Spackle knife. CHRISTINE: Like a metal version of that. LESLEY: Yeah, a metal version of that. And, make note, after this grill cools down, I'm going to remove the grates, take the flame port protectors off, and I'm going to get in there with this metal spackle knife, and I'm going to just scrape all the grease and crud out from the bottom of the firebox, direct it toward the grease trap, and change out that grease trap, wash it, whatever. So I would say once in the middle of grilling season, and then definitely at the end. CHRISTINE: Because you don't want that grease just sitting there all winter, right? LESLEY: Yeah, getting rancid and rodents. CAIRA: How can you tell if there isn't a live rat just crawling around in your grill? LESLEY: Droppings. CAIRA: How do you know the difference between charred bits of food and droppings? LESLEY: I mean... Look, if you're that paranoid, just get in there with some simple green and a scrub. And let it burn off for a solid 20 to 30 minutes. CAIRA: Okay. ROSIE: So back to the grill brush. That is a hot topic. You mentioned the metal bristles can get into food, it can get stuck in your body. Is that what you actually recommend to clean the grill? LESLEY: We do. We also have a recommendation for, oh gosh, it's called the grill rescue brush, and it's kind of cool. It's like a plastic red handle, and it's made with this fire retardant fabric that firefighters use or something, and you get it wet and while the grill is hot, it just kind of steam cleans the grates. CHRISTINE: So you don't need the bristles. It acts like the bristles because it's got some kind of texture on it. LESLEY: And the wipe of the damp rag afterwards. It works pretty well. Does it give you a really good scrape, like a wire brush? No. ROSIE: Two follow up questions. Why are you not worried about the metal bristles? LESLEY: I am not worried about the metal bristles because I'm going over it with that damp rag that picks up soot and everything else off of the top of those grates, and then I'm going over it again with an oiled paper towel, and so that's two wipes. When you hear about those horror stories of like, 'my five-year-old got a wire bristle stuck in their soft palate,' they didn't wipe it afterwards and that's always my first question. Why did they wipe down the grates? They didn't wipe down the grates, because if they did, this would not be a story. ROSIE: Got it. And then my second question is, I admittedly know exactly nothing about grilling, but I have heard that some people opt to use like an onion. Is that a thing? Is that a myth? LESLEY: No, it's not a myth. I honestly just use a balled up foil ball. The onion has... One, it's a waste of an onion. CHRISTINE: Yeah, grill that onion, eat that onion. LESLEY: Exactly. Two, it's going to deposit sugar, so you're not really cleaning it. Does that make any sense? ROSIE: Yeah, yeah, it makes sense to me. LESLEY: Yeah, it just doesn't sit right with me. CHRISTINE: I want to talk a little bit about tools. And I know that there's a pretty wide span of quality for grill tools. I think most people probably have a grill kit that maybe they got it as a gift, or it came with their grill. It's got a set of tongs and a spatula. Is this what you would recommend for people, or are there other things or unexpected tools that you think people should really know about? LESLEY: I find those kits, well aesthetically pleasing are not great. They're heavy. The tongs are always difficult to use. CHRISTINE: Yeah, they never squeeze right, I don't know if you notice they don't spring back very well. LESLEY: They spring back to two and a half inches and it- ROSIE: It makes me feel like a child holding the tongs because they're so massive. CHRISTINE: They're so big. ROSIE: And you can't quite, you have to use two hands. LESLEY: Because they're man tongs. CHRISTINE: I think, yeah, they're supposed to be man tongs. For sure. LESLEY: Man tongs. And I always find those spatulas to be awkward to use. Again, they're absurdly long. What I like to use, if we're talking about tongs, WinCo, restaurant tongs 12 inch- CHRISTINE: Just those metal, they're cheap, they're just the metal kind, right? LESLEY: The metal kind. We're not even talking about any silicone grips. The metal tongs you get at the restaurant supply store or on Amazon, and they're very inexpensive, and they last a long time, and they're dishwasher safe. I recommend WinCo tongs in many sizes. If we're talking spatulas, there's a very large fish spatula made by Mercer, and it's called Hell's handle, so if you want something manly, there it is. CAIRA: What's a fish spatula? What's the difference? LESLEY: A fish spatula is it's long and it flares out towards it tapers towards the handle and it flares out as it goes out. It's angled at the end and it's slotted, so it's just kind of the perfect spatula for almost anything, any type of flipping. I say almost, because it's not great for a griddle, but it's great in the kitchen. It's great on the grill. I love a fish spatula. CHRISTINE: It's come up before. I think Marilyn, our kitchen senior editor also loves a fish spatula. Are there any other, beyond tongs and the spatula, what else would you recommend for a grill? LESLEY: Get yourself a basting brush. I know we recommend a silicon brush and the one we recommend I think is the only one I will tolerate. I think it's OXO. It's easy to clean. Again, you can throw it in the dishwasher. CHRISTINE: What about, my mom has a grill basket she swears by it. Do you like those? LESLEY: Oh, grill baskets. I was such a hater for a very long time, but I'm into it now. ROSIE: What is a grill basket? LESLEY: So a grill basket is a steel perforated square basket with handles, and you just put it on your grill and you can grill cut up vegetables, anything that's small, like shrimp, anything that you don't want to put on a skewer you can do in a grill basket. I don't know about y'all, but I think skewers are kind of a pain in the butt. CAIRA: What? CHRISTINE: 1000%. LESLEY: Thank you. ROSIE: I don't want to waste the time to shove something on a skewer CHRISTINE: And soak the skewers if you're using the wood ones. LESLEY: But also things don't cook at the same rate and so people put eggplant and squash, and what are other popular things to put on a vegetable skewer? CHRISTINE: Peppers. CAIRA: Bell peppers. ROSIE: Onions, yeah. LESLEY: And then, every single time that eggplant is spongy and undercooked. Look, I'm not subtweeting anyone here. That is just how it goes. CHRISTINE: And so you would recommend putting all the things you would put on a skewer into a grill basket instead? LESLEY: Yes. If you must skewer, if you must, put all the same thing on one skewer. CHRISTINE: All the chicken. LESLEY: Yeah. CHRISTINE: All the pineapple. ROSIE: Keep it homogenous. LESLEY: And then people can just get what they want off the skewer, and keep it pushing. ROSIE: Lesley, so much good information here about how to really level up your backyard grill. What I'm taking away most of all is clean it. Deep clean at the end of the season, and then really clean for maintenance, that process you mentioned, whereby you're scrubbing it down with the metal bristles, you're taking a wet cloth to it and then you're taking a lightly oiled paper towel to it, and that's going to really help level up the performance of your grill if you're using it on any kind of regular basis. LESLEY: You should not have any or very few problems with food sticking to your grates if you do that process. ROSIE: The other takeaway I think is, you can go for those prepackaged grill kits if you want your tools, or you can make your own and maybe get a fish spatula, maybe get a grill basket. Play around. LESLEY: I honestly think you'll save some money too. ROSIE: And save some money. …Why do people grill? LESLEY: Let me tell you why we grilled when I was a kid, and why I continued to grill as adult is because, I grew up in Houston, and it's hot. You're fighting for your life cooling down your house in July, August, September. Your AC unit is working overtime, and so when you can turn on the heat source outside, and then keep your kitchen cool, that's everything. ROSIE: So that's the practical reason. What's the romantic reason? LESLEY: Cooking over fire, I don't know. Cosplaying struggle? ROSIE: Yeah. Is it tapping into, is it tapping into the hunter gatherer? LESLEY: I think so. I just think it's like a different way of cooking. It's like, we don't braise everything, we don't fry everything, we don't bake everything. It's like sometimes you want to switch it up. CAIRA: So there seems to be this eternal debate around the grilling community about gas versus charcoal. After years of your experience, Lesley, what is your take? Are you team gas or team charcoal? LESLEY: Let me tell you something. These charcoal folks have no leg to stand on, because I cooked over mesquite wood for years in this restaurant, and that is a whole other thing. If you want flavor, start with wood. I find that, mostly men, are resistant to propane grills because to them that's kind of like the outdoor cooking version of getting a minivan, and it's not sexy, it's way too practical. But another thing I noticed is that, when men finally do get the minivan, they love the minivan. CHRISTINE: I'll attest to this, we rented a minivan this summer and my husband totally loved it. CAIRA: So, it's not sexy, but it works. LESLEY: It works and it just frees you up. I love charcoal grilling. I do. But do I just want to rely on a charcoal grill to fire it up in the middle of the week because it's too hot to cook in my kitchen, and yada yada yada? No, I don't want to start that chimney starter full of coals just so I can cook myself some dinner really quick. That's why the propane grill is awesome. CHRISTINE: Lesley, it is always a pleasure to have you on the show. We want to have you back soon. We are going to take a quick break, and when we're back we're going to talk with Sam Sifton, who is the founder of New York Times Cooking, and he's going to talk about how to dial in your grilling, what summer recipes you might want to do, and the burning question that I think all of us want to know. How much booze should you serve at your summer barbecue? CAIRA: Yeah, he had a hot take about Thanksgiving, so. CHRISTINE: Oh my gosh. CAIRA: We'll get into it. CHRISTINE: All right, we'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. We're here in the studio with New York Times' assistant managing editor, co-founder of NYT cooking, and grill-enthusiast Sam Sifton. CHRISTINE: Sam, welcome back to the show. SAM: Thanks. Thanks for having me. CHRISTINE: It's so great to have you. So you're basically an honorary Wirecutter staffer at this point. You have tested grills with us. I think the first time we tested grills almost eight years ago, you joined us in the backyard of our writer Lesley Stockton's backyard, and you helped us test a bunch of grills. So I got to know, are you team charcoal or Team Gas Grill? SAM: I'm Team Grill. CHRISTINE: You're just Team Grill. Basically what she said. SAM: I just want to be clear about something. I have a lot of grills. CHRISTINE: Oh really? ROSIE: What is a lot of grills? CAIRA: How many? SAM: Listen, I have a gas grill because I think a gas grill is an incredibly useful tool. It's my outdoor kitchen all summer long and I love it. I love it. I love it. I have a charcoal grill because sometimes you want that kind of heat, you want that kind of char, that kind of flavor. I have other grills that I don't want to get into. It just marks me as a lunatic. But I am not on team charcoal or team propane. I'm on Team Grill. CHRISTINE: Okay. ROSIE: I'm not a griller. Who is the person? Who is this person who grills? Is this like- SAM: The grill guy? ROSIE: Yeah. Is it primordial? What is it about grill? Is it meat and fire? Why are we doing it? SAM: This is my culture. ROSIE: Tell me, talk to me. Who are you? SAM: I mean look, there's big dad energy to it, for sure. There is something about being outside. For me, in particular, I like cooking outside. I like the inventiveness that comes along with it. The sort of experimentation that leads to big reveals, and I just enjoy it. I guess it is. It's big dad energy, man. ROSIE: Big dad energy. So not team gas, not team charcoal. Your team grill. What does that mean for you? I mean not everyone obviously is going to be able to have multiple grills, so if someone's trying to get into it, what are you guiding them toward? SAM: I think that the easiest way in as a gas grill, because it's essentially, it's just an outdoor stove. You're not going to get a great steak out of it, but there are a lot of things that you can do on a gas grill that'll give you the fundamentals that you can transfer to live fire. As for live fire, if you're charcoal curious, head to your local park where there's often grills there, you can cook on them and learn, 'is this for me? Do I like this? Do I want to do more with this?' If you are moved to purchase a charcoal grill first, and obviously Wirecutter recommends you get the Weber Kettle Grill, which we knew going into the testing was going to win it's a superior product. CHRISTINE: It's obvious. Yes. SAM: Yeah. It's just a superior product. Get the one we recommend, the big one. Don't get the little one that looks like a football helmet. That's not going to help you in any regard. CAIRA: Sam, I know that you've written about this in your newsletter, but I want to talk a little bit about understanding the zones on a grill. As somebody who also isn't really a griller, that seems pretty intimidating to me. Just knowing where to put things, and when to take it off. What exactly does it mean to have zones in your grill? SAM: Yeah, people freak out. I don't get it, man. Do you freak out when you have zones with an air conditioner? Nobody's like, this room is cool, this room is cooler, this room is cold, okay? Those are zones. Ooh, I'm freaked out. So let's start with a charcoal grill. That's where the zone issue becomes most complicated. When you're lighting the fire at the very beginning of the process, when you dump that charcoal out, if you put it right in the middle, and then kind of push it out and everything's equal at the bottom of the grill, you have no zones. It's all uniform. However, if you pour them off, I'm right-handed so I usually pour them off to the left side, and it's sort of mounded on the left side and there's nothing on the right side, now you have a hot zone, which is right above where the top of the mound is, a kind of medium zone where it's slightly farther away, and a cooler zone off to the right where there are no coals at all. And I could put a chicken in that so-called cool zone, put the top on the Weber and let convection heat do its work and I got a nice smoked roasted chicken in about an hour. Zones! CHRISTINE: There we go. The zones. The zones. CAIRA: Don't be scared. CHRISTINE: Well, if somebody just feels kind of intimidated and they haven't had a lot of wins on the grill, what do you suggest they do? Obviously practice makes perfect, but do you have any strategies for just becoming better at grilling in general? SAM: Yeah, grill. CHRISTINE: Yeah, practice. Practice. SAM: Honestly, the more you do it, the more you're going to figure it out. Commit to the grill. You bought a grill, you spent the money on the Wirecutter pick for the best grill. Now you have it. Now you got to use it. And are you going to have some losses? Yes you are. I remember once cooking for a dinner party on a grill that was not my own, and I thought that the burner on the left was off, and that's where I had the chickens and I was kind of smoking them, and I came back and that burner was actually on, and my chickens were incinerated. I threw them in the trash and grilled some more vegetables and we had a big vegetarian feast, and nobody missed the chicken because I never told them that they were getting chicken in the first place. CAIRA: Well, I got some advice, just as a novice, if I find myself fidgeting around too much with stuff on the grill, then I'm probably doing something wrong. What do you think? SAM: Yeah, definitely. Why are you touching that? Stop touching that. Yeah, let's say I have a boneless skinless, or no, I'll give it skin. Let's say we have a boneless, eh, why am I taking the bone out? We have a chicken thigh. Okay? I've salted it. There's a little oil on there. I don't want it to stick to the grate and I put it down on the medium zone, and I'm not going to touch it. I need enough fat to render that it's going to release from the grate. If you go in there too soon and pick it up, it's sticking to the grate, it's ripping and I'm losing this delicious skin that I want to render out and have be a crisp exterior. So don't touch too much. CAIRA: But what if it's charring too much in the medium? SAM: Then move it! For sure. CAIRA: Okay. SAM: You know what I mean? Touch for a reason. CAIRA: Okay. SAM: Don't touch for no reason, don't touch for nervous. Get a fidget spinner if that's what you need, but... CHRISTINE: Get a drink, help somebody else in the kitchen. SAM: Yeah, be careful on the drinks. ROSIE: We're we're going to get you the drink in just a second. Before that, what are some of the recipes that you think in terms of input versus outsized payoff? What are you thinking? SAM: I mentioned chicken thighs before. I think chicken thighs are a really, really good protein for the grill. There's a lot of fat on them, they don't dry out the way chicken breasts often do. For the big boy proteins, your hams, your pulled porks and stuff, your briskets, your beef ribs. You should feel pretty confident before you tackle those. CHRISTINE: These are advanced. SAM: Yeah. That's not for freshmen. CHRISTINE: Okay. Yeah. Is fish for freshmen? SAM: Oh, that's a great question. So, one of the extras that I have applied to my gas grill, and this is really easily done, is I have a piece of steel that can go over the grill and create this kind of... Create. It is a flat metal surface on which I can cook. The plancha is the perfect thing to cook fish on, because it's not going to stick to the grates, you can get plenty of oil on there or grease or fat or whatever you want for your flavor. You're going to get some taste of smoke. Because you could do this on a charcoal grill as well. That's the best way to cook fish the first few times until you kind of got it figured out. Like a whole fish say. But man, it's great with scallops, with shrimp, nothing's falling through the grates. ROSIE: Sam, what's your recommendation for someone who is trying to cook non-meat options, and maybe wants to impress a little bit? SAM: All the vegetables are available to you this summer, and they all do really well on the grill. Even tomatoes do well on the grill, but if you want fast track to success, get corn on there, let it get a little caramelized, put some cool toppings on it, you'll do great. Another great thing on the grill, I find, is tofu. If you press it for a while and get as much liquid as you can out of it, planks up pretty nicely and can kind of do well on the grill, especially if you don't move it too quickly, let it develop a sear, and then flip it over and then get it into a sauce. It just sucks up the sauce deliciously, you don't need meat to grill. CHRISTINE: That's right. SAM: But it helps. CAIRA: Sam, what are some recipes that you're excited to try this summer on the grill? SAM: Well, I am going to attack some of the kind of larger format proteins, a pork butt on the grill, slowly smoke roasted for hours and hours. If you take the Times recipe for the bossam that used to be served at Momofuku here in New York and do that in a charcoal grill or in a gas grill with a smoker tube attached. It's already outrageously good, and now it's like three x outrageously good. So I'll do that a bunch. I'll probably smoke a lot of bluefish. I fish a lot, so we pick up these little snapper bluefish, but darker and some would say oilier. I think that oil lends itself particularly well to smoking. On the gas grill, I use a smoke tube, this perforated tube filled with wood pellets. I love doing that. On the charcoal grill. I'm getting a moderate amount of smoke just from the charcoal briquettes, but when I'm being an advanced guy, I'm not using charcoal. I'm cooking over wood, so my Weber is now filled with wood, and I'm letting that cook down into coals, and you get some really good smoke flavor from that. CAIRA: How long does that take? SAM: Are you asking for a friend? Are you asking for my wife? ROSIE: We're hosting a barbecue this summer, let's say, we're going to bring out the grill or the grills. What are your best tips for hosting? SAM: I know I'm going to be serving some long roasted meat. We're going to have these ribs are coming or whatever, and so I want a lot of other things there that people can munch on while we're waiting for those ribs to come off. They don't need to be hot, but in contrast to what we do at Thanksgiving, where we kind of keep them hungry until the last minute, I really, really like to have some quickly cooked hot dogs, or brats, or sausages of some kind, that I can just get out there. Everybody can eat a couple hot dogs and still grind some ribs when they're ready. CHRISTINE: In November, when you joined us to talk about Thanksgiving, you shared your guidance about how much alcohol to have on hand at a Thanksgiving dinner, and I believe it was something like two bottles of wine per guest plus some spirits. I'm wondering what your guidance is for grilling? SAM: I want to dial that wave. The reason why I ask for so much alcohol at Thanksgiving is because you might need it. At a barbecue, I don't think you do seeing spirits at a barbecue before dark- CHRISTINE: It's trouble. SAM: There's trouble. There's trouble. So I think just you want a bunch of cold beer, and some seltzers or hard seltzers, or soda pop or whatever it is that you're interested in. I have to say my go-to beer at barbecues lately has been N.A. Beer from a company called Athletic. CHRISTINE: Oh yeah, SAM: Athletic, makes a really killer N.A. ROSIE: Sam Sifton, thank you so much. SAM: Thank you for having me as always. Thanks. ROSIE: Thanks. CHRISTINE: All right, you guys. Sam- ROSIE: Another All-Star episode. CHRISTINE: Another All-Star episode. CAIRA: So good. CHRISTINE: Lesley, Sam, I learned so much about grilling today. CAIRA: Me too. ROSIE: For something I've had almost next to zero interest in, I am intrigued. CHRISTINE: Are you intrigued enough to go down to Home Depot this weekend and get yourself a grill? ROSIE: Hard no, but I will say perhaps one time this summer I will ask to grill at someone's house if they'll let me. CAIRA: That's a big step forward. ROSIE: And well, one of my takeaways is what Sam talked about in terms of moving the food, don't move the food. CAIRA: Yeah. Mine is also kind of related to that. I think the reason that I was so fidgety over the grill previously, is because I didn't understand the zoning properly. I would just turn on all the burners, so the grill would just be way too hot. But now I know that you can turn on one side and then you have a hot medium and then cool, and then your food won't burn, and you won't be frantically moving it around. CHRISTINE: That's right. You've got options on that grill. CAIRA: Yeah. CHRISTINE: I think my little party trick for the summer when I'm at my mom's house where she has a grill, or at a friend's house with a grill is I'm going to go out and clean the grill. As long as it's not rude to the person that's grilling. Yeah, I'm going to scrub it down with the brush. I'm going to take the tongs and I'm going to wipe it down with the wet cloth, and then I'm going to oil that baby afterwards. And if I ever am in a situation again where I have a grill, personally, I'm going to make sure and keep it clean because I think that's something people oftentimes overlook. ROSIE: I love it. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage of grills, if you want to see footage of the team at the Grill House or if you want to check out the products we recommended today, check out our Instagram, check out our website. And of course, you can peruse any and all of the brilliant Sam Sifton's Grill recipes at NYT Cooking. That's it for us. Thanks so much for listening. Peace. CAIRA: Bye. ROSIE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keele, engineering support from Maddy Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Alicia by Etube, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher is Cliff Levy. Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's editor-in-chief. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening. ROSIE: Another grill tool in your proverbial basket. Huh? Christine, what do you think of that? CHRISTINE: Wait, sorry, what? I'm losing the thread. I'm sorry. Wait, what? ROSIE: It was a joke.
New York Times
09-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 35: Simple and Affordable Skin Care
DR. DHINGRA: One of my favorite guilty pleasures I go on the skincare subreddit- CHRISTINE: Oh, yeah. DR. DHINGRA: ...just to see what people are talking about. And it's funny because I'm actually nodding proudly at people when they use scientifically sound advice there. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CAIRA: This episode is called Simple and Affordable Skincare. ROSIE: Hi, guys. CAIRA: Hey there. CAIRA: I'm so excited about our topic today, it's is a new subject area for Wirecutter, right? CHRISTINE: Yeah, we've never had much on the site about this but now there's a complete new section. It's great. ROSIE: I mean, personally I've been a skincare minimalist, but if you go on social media... CAIRA: There's always something. ROSIE: There's always something. You're constantly marketed, this is the best face cream, this is the best vitamin C, this is the thing that's going to change your life and give you a chemical facelift or whatever." CHRISTINE: It's not even just Instagram, it's magazines. You never really know who to trust. It feels like everyone is getting paid under the table to promote different products and I never feel like I can quite trust what I'm reading. CAIRA: Yeah, somebody who is a minimalist in skincare like you, Rosie, I think that our coverage is exactly what you need because we really cut through all the noise and we try to figure out what are the basic things that you actually need that won't break your bank and it will actually work. CHRISTINE: We have a variety of guides that we just came out with. We came out with a guide to facial moisturizers, vitamin C serums, retinols, chemical exfoliants, and body lotions. I think like the overall theme of all of these guides is that we have a lot of really affordable picks in these pieces. There are some like splurge worthy things, but a lot of things that you can buy at a drugstore, at maybe a Sephora if you're getting fancy, but by and large it's stuff that is really, really accessible to most people. CAIRA: Yeah, I'm so happy that we're finally doing this. Skincare has kind of been a latent interest of mine. I've also done a lot of reporting on sunscreen, so this intersects with some of the things that I have been reporting on and that we get to talk about today. Our first guest is Dr. Nikhil Dhingra, who is a board certified dermatologist and one of my OG sources back in the day for our facial sunscreen guide. So he's going to tell us how to determine what kind of skin you have and the most important things to keep in mind before you go out and try anything new. And then we're going to speak with Rory Evans, a senior staff writer on our beauty team here at Wirecutter. And Rory is going to talk about her testing methods and how to build an inexpensive drugstore skincare routine your skin will love and your wallet too. CHRISTINE: After the break, Dr. Dhingra's expert advice for taking care of your skin. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Dr. Nikhil Dhingra, who's a board certified dermatologist at Spring Street Dermatology. So one quick disclosure, Dr. Dhingra is actually Rosie's really good friend, but before I even met Rosie, I've used him as a source for my research on facial sunscreens multiple times. Dr. Dhingra also used to read all the ingredients on skincare products as a little kid, so he's got a real love for dermatology and helping people figure out what's going on with their skin. CHRISTINE: Welcome. DR. DHINGRA: Thank you. Very excited to be here. CHRISTINE: I'm really excited to talk to you today because I feel like I'm going to get to get into all the nitty-gritty details that I'm always curious about. You know, skincare is a really hard topic to cover. It's very individual, everybody's skin is different. So I'd like to know from your perspective as a dermatologist, what is the single best thing that people can do for their skin? DR. DHINGRA: I think avoiding doing too much to it. I think the concept of like more is better both in terms of like the number of ingredients and how much they're spending, I think those are both counterproductive. I think a very stripped down routine where you're just doing some very basic things is actually going to yield you better results than doing too much all at the same time especially. CHRISTINE: So less is more basically. DR. DHINGRA: Less is more. CHRISTINE: And would you say that's true for all age groups? I'm in my 40s, I feel like that's different than Caira, who's in her 20s. CAIRA: I'm a baby. DR. DHINGRA: Yes, I think that is generally true for all age groups. You know, I think the panic of aging definitely kicks in as you get older, but your skin also can be more sensitive as you get older. It tends to start drying out, you start making less oil. So as a result, if you do too much to it's going to still work out counterproductively. I typically will tell people when you're picking things, be intentional. CAIRA: That's really good to know. But I think also like when it just comes to knowing your own skin, I feel like it's hard for people to really figure out what kind of skin they have. Is it dry? Is it combo? Is it oily? How can people figure out what kind of skin they have? DR. DHINGRA: It's funny, people come to the office all the time for medical appointments and they'll ask me, "Can you tell me what skin type I have?" But a lot of it is subjective observation. It's kind of getting a sense, especially from a young age of what your skin looks like, what it feels like, and also how it reacts to things in the environment and also to things that you're applying to the skin. I think getting a good sense of what your skin looks like and how it feels before you do a lot to it is kind of critical because once you start introducing one product after another, it kind of changes the dynamic also. CAIRA: Right. When we spoke last, you told me something really surprising, which is that dry skin is actually more prone to being sensitive vs oily skin. Oily skin is pretty hardy and you can try more out on it, right? DR. DHINGRA: Yeah, there's overlap. I think the skin type I actually struggle with the most in the office are oily skin types with sensitive skin because it's a very hard combo to deal with sometimes. A lot of times dry skin tends to be prone to aggravation, especially in the age of too many active ingredients, a lot of which actually disrupt skin barriers. Having a baseline sort of oily layer of skin tends to protect the skin a little bit. It's creating a little bit of a buffer, whereas people who are prone to dryness, they add other things that make them drier, it starts to irritate their skin and it causes them to flare up with things like eczema for example. CHRISTINE: Is there any difference when we talk about melanated skin or olive-toned skin in terms of the sensitivity or how you assess the skin? DR. DHINGRA: Yes and no. I think it changes how we approach things in terms of what ingredients to introduce because I think obviously issues of hyperpigmentation are a little more common with more melanin in the skin. So bigger emphasis on sunscreen for example, especially if there are other medical issues at play, things like rashes for example, or acne. CAIRA: Which is really interesting because I know a lot of black people in my life are like, "I don't need sunscreen." DR. DHINGRA: Right, but I think the thing is...I have melanin in my skin too. I have a bit of an olive complexion. You get a single pimple and it can leave a dark mark for six months or longer. You get a little bit of sunlight and that's going to prolong that. CAIRA: Preaching to the choir. DR. DHINGRA: Right? Our melanocytes are ready to shoot out extra layers of melanin and protection, but that also is a typical response to sun exposure no matter what. Beyond that, I don't think there's a change in sensitivity. I think things like rosacea, for example, are really under-diagnosed in skin of color. People with rosacea have very sensitive skin. They tend to be very reactive, prone to redness, and I think if you have some melanin, it's harder to assess that redness. And so I see people all the time, they go and they buy a couple of products and then all of a sudden they're just, it's not suiting them. Their skin's getting redder and it just doesn't totally work out. So there are some things to take into account. There are some exceptions to the rule. CHRISTINE: So once you've taken the step of assessing your skin, kind of understanding what your skin needs, what's the next step? Are there kind of foundational types of products you should be focused on? DR. DHINGRA: I think the key thing when you're trying to build a fundamental skincare routine is you have to start with the basics. A cleanser, a moisturizer and a sunscreen that you'll like the feel of. Cleansers, first of all, I emphasize it's very different than soap. I have people who still come to the office and they're using a bar soap on their face. Conceptually they're the same. They contain things called surfactants that sort of lift dirt and debris off the skin. But soaps have a lot more, they're harsher, they tend to be rougher on the skin and our body can handle it in some cases, but our faces not so much. So getting a good cleanser, usually starting with something really gentle and boring and basic is kind of a good starting point. You can always tweak things in the future. After you cleanse, you want to make sure that you're repairing that skin barrier using a moisturizer that's also suitable for your skin type. A couple of things that always drive me crazy, there are things like the use of oils and fragrances in skin moisturizers, I think those are both counterproductive. Oils are not great hydrators, they're there to trap water into the skin. But a lot of good skincare products already have ingredients that do that. So finding something that's not greasy, that's not going to break you out, that's not going to irritate your skin really helpful because it encourages you to stick to that product. I think the same thing goes for sunscreen too. I'm not saying go and buy like Coppertone for the beach to walk around New York City on a day-to-day basis, a good moisturizer again with the same principles that just has some SPF in it is a good start. CAIRA: So, our skincare team at Wirecutter hasn't tested cleansers yet. That is in the works, though. What are some good affordable ones that you'd recommend? DR. DHINGRA: I think I tend to stick with the basics, Cetaphil and CeraVe, and then my favorite personally, I like La Roche-Posay. I say if you want to go to the drugstore and feel a little bougie, that's kind of the best way to do it. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I do. I like to get La Roche-Posay for that reason. CAIRA: See? DR. DHINGRA: Specifically, they have a product line called the Toleriane, I tend to start a lot of my patients on. I like that line, one, because the ingredient list is really short. I'll switch patients off, they'll come in using an organic cleanser or something very clean beauty. Those clean beauty products have really long ingredient lists still, a lot of room for irritation, whereas the Toleriane line is really short. They have a hydrating option, they have a purifying one that's gel-based, and then they have a nice in-between creamy mousse too. So it kind of covers everyone's needs. CHRISTINE: All right. You've addressed like the holy trinity of skincare, right? It's the face wash, it's the moisturizer, it's the sunscreen, but we are all inundated constantly with so many products. Are there product categories that you think are actually worth it? Things that really work when you have somebody coming to you and asking like, "I want anti-aging," or, "I want my skin to look better," what are the products that you recommend? DR. DHINGRA: I think there are a couple of non-negotiables if you're trying to start with anti-aging. And I think the first is just a retinol. You have your moisturizer, your sunscreen, and your cleanser on board. And when I say on board, I mean do it for a few months, make sure you don't react to them. A retinol just has so much evidence behind it. In medicine, we tend to think about the evidence, right? Where is the data strong? And I tend to look for things that are tested in humans and actual patients and retinol just has a lot of science behind it. Originally it was derived for acne, but retinols are easily available over the counter. Every company has them now. You don't need to break the bank anymore if you're trying to start here. We know that it has lots of perks, it helps with acne, especially in prescription form. It helps with fine lines and wrinkles because it stimulates collagen production. It sort of inhibits the breakdown of your skin's supportive structure, something called the extracellular matrix. It helps with hyperpigmentation issues and melasma, it helps with sun damage. Also, there's some data to suggest that retinoids in particular, which are prescription strength, seem to combat some of the sort of damage done by sun, so potentially cancer protective effects too. So really there's such a body of evidence to suggest that that's helpful. I think it sort of drives me up the wall sometimes when someone tries to start other things that are not as driven as much by data and they end up irritating themselves and then they don't give themselves a chance with something like a retinol. So that's always step number one, especially when you're starting to think about anti-aging maybe in like your 20s, late 20s. CHRISTINE: Can you explain the difference between a retinol and a retinoid? DR. DHINGRA: Most retinoids tend to require a prescription, an exception being something like Adapalene or different over the counter. People will interchange the two terms all the time, but a retinol is much milder in terms of intensity. It's a great target for someone looking for fine lines and wrinkles, something that maybe won't aggravate their skin too much, but it's not going to do a lot when you're dealing with things like acne. On average, I'd say a retinoid is at least 20 times stronger than a retinol. If someone hasn't started with anything, start with a retinol first unless you're dealing with specific medical issues like acne, in which case you'd want to see a professional. CHRISTINE: So beyond a retinoid or a retinol, what are the other products that you'd recommend? DR. DHINGRA: Vitamin C probably second in line. I don't think it's a must-have. First of all, there's a lot of variation in quality. I think there's a lot of hype behind it. There's not a lot of data to support it in general. CHRISTINE: Interesting. DR. DHINGRA: We do know that there is some benefit to collagen production. We know that it has antioxidant benefits. Antioxidant benefits typically help people, especially when they have a lot of sun damage. And we know that vitamin C can help clear up things like melasma or marks from acne. But at the same time, vitamin C is an acid and acids and things like retinols don't always play well together. So I think prioritizing a vitamin C over a retinol still, not necessarily the order I would go. It's a nice-to-have once you're doing a retinoid consistently. One of my favorite sort of guilty pleasures, I go on the skincare subreddit. CAIRA: Oh, yeah. DR. DHINGRA: ...just to see what people are talking about. And it's funny because I'm actually kind of like nodding proudly at people when they like use scientifically sound advice there. And you see people reacting all the time in like very specific patterns. Some people get eczema-like reactions. Some people get rosacea flareups because of the potential irritation factor there. And then the other thing is a lot of vitamin C's are often oil-based. And I said earlier I don't like oil-based ingredients in general because it's hard to predict what it'll do to people's skin. CHRISTINE: What do you think about exfoliants? DR. DHINGRA: I think exfoliants can be done in moderation. A retinol is an exfoliant for example. Beyond that, I tend to prefer chemical exfoliants over physical exfoliants. Physical exfoliants are things like the St. Ives. CAIRA: Oh, my god. DR. DHINGRA: I think we all had a phase of using it some point. CAIRA: Middle school, we loved St. Ives. DR. DHINGRA: Yeah, but it turns out you're just making micro injuries to the skin. You're creating a lot of trauma. It really induces sort of a reactivity if your skin is very sensitive. But you know, certainly very abrasive, very harsh. And that abrasiveness then decreases your ability to tolerate anything else. The classic case is someone says, "Oh, I've been using this and now I put everything on, like a moisturizer, burns." I've had people say Aquaphor burns. It's pretty hard for something like Aquaphor to cause a skin irritation. So once you get to that point, your barrier is very disrupted and physically scrubbing the skin is a great shortcut to doing that. CAIRA: I have to fight myself whenever I have a minor breakout to not just try a bunch of different things. I just want something to fix it. But what would you recommend people do if they're trying a new product? Like how long should they realistically wait to see it actually working? DR. DHINGRA: Officially, they'll tell you a month, but I say three months, at least. One, you can react to things at any time. A lot of it is actually irritation, it's not an allergic reaction. I get people all the time who say, oh, "I tried that. I was allergic to it." That's only about one in five reactions, four out of five times, you're just irritated. Something just set a switch off whether it's maybe you're using a product and it was fine until it got really cold outside or maybe you went and added a second ingredient and it caused an issue. So start with a product every three months, see how you do first. There's no rush to any of this. And once you're starting to see the benefits, then you can start to introduce other things. And that's true whether it's over the counter product or if it's something prescription grade that your dermatologist prescribed. CHRISTINE: I find that there's a lot of ads for hyaluronic acid. What do you think about hyaluronic acid? DR. DHINGRA: Yeah, so hyaluronic acid inherently is what we call a humectant. It's designed to draw water to the skin, but it's a little bit over-hyped in terms of the science. There's not a lot of good data to suggest that they work the way that they claim they do. And I think beyond that, a good basic moisturizer. A lot of the drugstore companies, they already include hyaluronic acid in their ingredient list. So it almost just feels like an extraneous part of your routine, like a self-care routine to do that. But if you're doing a moisturizer with it's already unnecessary. The ingredient you're often looking for is something like sodium hyaluronate, which is on the ingredient list and a lot of these products. And if that already has it in there, and if you have like a ceramide, which is an occlusive, you already have multiple things in one. You don't need multiple products then. CHRISTINE: Which you mentioned earlier, CeraVe, their just regular moisturizer has all those things in it. DR. DHINGRA: It does, it does. DR. DHINGRA: I like cost efficacy. I think the other thing is these drugstore brands actually do a lot of R and D. They do a lot of testing and they don't necessarily have the need to add things like fragrances and other additives that I think we historically and psychologically associate with being luxurious, but those things cost money for a company to include, number one. Two, you're then also paying for the marketing behind these companies that maybe they're not selling in as much volume, but they're selling it in designer stores or at Sephora. But again, these things then work against us in terms of our skin quality. CHRISTINE: I can say from my child who watches YouTube skincare videos all the time, that very complicated skincare routines seem to be very popular. Like the 10 step, 12 step, 20 step, the fancy new trend. But you said earlier, keeping it simple is the important thing, right? DR. DHINGRA: Be intentional with what you're doing to your skin. Every ingredient you introduce, you introduce a layer of potential irritation. And it also takes away from your ability to tolerate things. So if you want to go and enjoy skincare, it's often counterproductive to do that much to your skin because you're actually working away from being able to handle it as you get older too. Like if you start at 10 years old and you're doing a 20 step skincare routine, what's going happen at 20 when you're sensitive to a lot of ingredients or maybe you developed an allergy to something? CHRISTINE: Oh, so it's like you've become sensitized to these ingredients and then you can't handle them anymore. DR. DHINGRA: Right. Actually, I say this all the time to patients. A lot of times patients will come in and they'll say, "I have sensitive skin." I actually don't think a lot of people have sensitive skin. I think a lot of people sensitize their skin. I think they get into sort of the fallacy of doing too much. And then what happens is they end up reacting to things. I think there are definitely a pool of people who have sensitive skin and you can kind of identify them. They turn red, they get breakouts, they get scaly rashes. But that's not a large percent of people. Most of us tend to have fairly neutral skin. It's just when we start to do too much to it that we start to run into issues. And kids in particular, their barriers are not fully formed yet. So those irritants and allergens are more likely to penetrate deeper into the skin. And not to knock kids doing a routine, getting them into the habit of washing their faces. Again, a cleanser, a moisturizer, and sunscreen. I can't knock them doing that at the age of even nine. Getting a teenage boy to wash their face even once a day is wonderful, right? It would be a major win right there if we got them to start cleaning the greasiness and the dirt because it'll help them down the line. Not to genderize skincare, but- CAIRA: No, I've dated many a man who'll still use like Dial. DR. DHINGRA: Dial. Dial or Irish Spring. I don't- CHRISTINE: Just get that bottle of CeraVe. CAIRA: Dial hand soap for their face. CAIRA: Above all else, keep it simple. You want a good cleanser, a good moisturizer, and a great sunscreen that you will use every single day. But if you want to spice things up a little bit, then you can add on a retinol, which you can get over the counter for fairly cheap. And that can do wonders for your skin, but you have to give it time. Same goes with vitamin C. Pretty good, but you're going to want to set your expectations a little bit lower. CHRISTINE: We're going to take a quick break and when we're back, we're going to talk about Wirecutter's skincare coverage with senior staff writer Rory Evans. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. Before the break we really dove deep with Dr. Nihkil Dhingra about how to build a simple skincare routine--and the products that work. Now we're going to get into the products Wirecutter has actually tested. We've finally taken the plunge into testing skincare, and it shouldn't be surprising that we've got some great picks---and many are really, really affordable Here to talk about those with us is Rory Evans. She's Wirecutter's skincare writer who's been covering this area for over 20 years. She also previously worked at Allure, Real Simple, and Martha Stewart. CHRISTINE: Rory, welcome to the show. RORY: Thank you. CHRISTINE: It's really nice to have you just came out with guides to facial moisturizers, exfoliants, retinols and vitamin C. RORY: Right. CHRISTINE: So as you approached the testing and kind of determining what would be the recommended products in our guides, how did you make sure that the things that we're recommending will be useful and applicable to as wide a group of people as possible? RORY: I start any guide by going to Sephora, Target, CVS, Walgreens, a local family owned pharmacy. And I'm just writing down names, snapping pictures and paying attention to like, "Oh, that's like a low shelf and it looks kind of dusty, but what's that brand?" Also, what's sold out at Target? Because clearly that's kind of a good clue. And then I also ask Wirecutter staffers, what do you use? What have you loved? What have you used and hated? What have you used and sort of outgrown or what have you brought into your skincare as you've gotten older? And then also talk to a couple of cosmetic chemists, three, sometimes four dermatologists get their what to look for. And then you go online and you read so many reviews. Again, approaching it like a shopper, but almost like a full-time shopper, like someone who really just digs into and goes to the 10th page of the reviews and all those things that I think all of us at Wirecutter kind of look at. CAIRA: I know when I'm testing sunscreens, I will do the same process. I will go through and I'll try out all these sunscreens myself and then when I finally eliminate enough to maybe a group of four, five, six sunscreens, then I will send it out to other Wirecutter staffers to test in what we call panel testing. So what number do you usually look to narrow it down to before you start group testing your picks? RORY: I test more than five. But I panel test more than five because we usually send to different skin types. I will maybe have a couple of different panels like dry skin, sensitive skin, oily skin, and then each of those panels gets four or five to test. CAIRA: And what do you usually ask them to look for when they're testing? RORY: Perceived benefits, like, "How do you feel this is working? How do you enjoy using it? Is it easy to use? What are the overall vibes? Do you hate the fragrance?" Sometimes fragrance-free products still have an aroma to them because they don't have masking agents. I also just ask them like, "What am I forgetting to ask you? When you have wet hands, is this cap too small to actually deal with?" CHRISTINE: And one thing that I can only imagine that some listeners might be wondering, because I think in the sort of cosmetic world, there's a lot of freebies that happen. Like I think even with dermatologists, they're sent things for free. How does that play into how we test? Are you ever taking a product that a company is pushing towards you or is it truly just looking, going out as a shopper and saying these are the things that we think shoppers will be most interested in? RORY: Yeah, it's that. And sometimes a publicist will say, "Oh, I'm going to send you such and such moisturizer, but I have three other brands and they have great moisturizers and I'm going to send those to you too." And I'm like, "No, please don't. I just can't accept it." ROSIE: I imagine Rory, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we hear from a lot of Wirecutter experts that the testing they do is brand concealed. Was that the case with you where you're doing this panel testing and you're removing the labels? RORY: I don' first interaction is with the labels. The products that I send to the panels are usually brand concealed. I tape over anything that says the brand name. CAIRA: Well, I love how you also split up your panel testers based off of their skin type. I wanted to ask too about people specifically with melanated skin because I feel like the skincare industry has historically just kind of overlooked that category of people. Do you take that into account when you are testing for different skincare products and have you found that melanated skin does react differently to some products? RORY: We definitely take it into account when I'm sending stuff to panel, I want panels to be age inclusive, skin type inclusive, and also like black women, white women, men, someone who has a beard, the various things. So we do take that into account a lot. We loved, there was a face cream that we tried and we loved it or two of us loved it. And then a third tester who has melanated skin, she loved the feel, she loved the vibe and she was like, "It made my skin look gray all day." And we were like, "Oh, that can't be a pick." CHRISTINE: Earlier in the show we talked with Dr. Dhingra, our expert dermatologist, about how there's basically like a holy trinity of face care products and those include face wash, moisturizer, and sunscreen. So let's talk a little bit about what you did with moisturizer. CHRISTINE: What was your team looking for when you were testing moisturizers and what should people know about them? RORY: Well, we were looking for very specific ingredients because the other thing is that there's hundreds of them out there and they're all like very close in experience or they all kind of look the same or they all feel the same. So we dug into the ingredients and looked at ingredient panels on that and we talked to dermatologists and they said, look for glycerin, squalane, niacinamide, ceramides. These are all sort of like very moisturizing ingredients that will keep water in your skin, attract moisture to your skin. Those are the ingredients we really looked for. And we kind of made sure that like everything that we recommend has at least- CHRISTINE: A good number of these ingredients. RORY: Yeah. CHRISTINE: How much did packaging play into it? One of my biggest pet peeves is I can feel there is more in the bottle, but I can't get to it. Like if I have a pump bottle. How did you assess packaging? ROSIE: I've done projects where I'm slicing open pump bottles with a bread knife and there's got to be a better way. RORY: We definitely considered packaging. I want to say for the moisturizers, a number of them are in tubes. Some of them are in tubs that have a pump. Obviously you just take the lid off and do the thing where you're kind of scraping and- CAIRA: That's nice. RORY: Yeah. CHRISTINE: In this episode, Rory, we are really making an argument that you don't need to overspend on skincare. In the guides you wrote, there are products with a range of I don't know about you but I really like doing a high/low and understanding what you get at different prices. So I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit, specifically for moisturizers, what is the least expensive and what is the most expensive and what are the differences between those? RORY: The most expensive is the Augustinus Bader. CHRISTINE: Which is recommended by all beautiful celebrities everywhere. It's in that beautiful blue bottle and it's like $300. RORY: Yeah, it's incredibly expensive. More than a few Wirecutter staffers recommended it, sort of said it's a holy grail. CHRISTINE: What was the low end that you recommend in that guide?
New York Times
04-03-2025
- Health
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Bonus Episode: How to Survive Daylight Saving Time
ROSIE: Hey, it's Rosie from The Wirecutter Show , and this is a special bonus episode called How to Survive Daylight Saving Time. This coming Sunday, March 9th, marks the start of Daylight Saving Time, or DST, the time of year we spring ahead and advance our clocks forward one hour. We spend the majority of our year in DST, and we'll be in DST all the way to November when we revert back to standard time. For most people, these biannual time changes are simply part of life. Minor inconveniences. But there's a bit more to it than that. Scientists and researchers have studied the effects of time change into DST and found it can negatively impact our health. Caira, the co-host of our show, has reported on sleep hygiene and in particular, the things you can do to prepare your body for the time shift and some tips on how best to adjust. I'm going to talk with her all about it after a quick break. We'll be right back. ROSIE: Hello, Caira. CAIRA: Hi. ROSIE: Caira, I understand we're about to head into your least favorite part of the year. CAIRA: Yeah. I really don't like this part of the year, which is when we start Daylight Saving Time, and it starts on March 9th at 2:00 AM local time this year. ROSIE: So the saying is "Spring forward, fall back." That means we're going to be losing an hour of sleep right when Daylight Savings starts, right? CAIRA: Right. But it's actually worse than that. Some people kind of look forward to this time because the evenings are brighter. And that's kind of fun in the summer especially, but it does come at a cost. Studies have shown that even something as slight as a one-hour time shift can disrupt our circadian rhythms, which is basically just our body's internal 24-hour clock that follows the sun. This can lead to jet lag-type symptoms, and that's just because your body clock isn't aligning with the social clock. So basically, your phone will say that it's 3:00 PM, but our bodies know it's actually 2:00 PM. And this mismatch can lead to a number of health issues. You might feel it when you have a hard time falling asleep or a hard time waking up in the morning. But after the spring shift specifically, according to the National Institutes of Health, car accidents, heart attacks, and certain kinds of strokes spike during this time. ROSIE: So the natural next question is why do we do this to ourselves? For all these years, I just do it, and assume that this is part of everybody's life. But why? CAIRA: It's not like we, the individuals, are doing it. But something that you might have heard is that farmers need it, but that's actually not true. Daylight Saving really benefits big corporations. It's about gas companies, golf clubs, and gardening tools being sold more because people are outside in the summertime spending money. ROSIE: Aha. CAIRA: Mm-hmm. So it's all about capitalism. But farmers actually notoriously hate Daylight Saving because it's completely opposed to their schedules, which follows the sun, as our body should be doing too. ROSIE: Right, right, right. CAIRA: So we actually get 4.5 months of Standard Time, which is the actual right time, and then almost eight months of Daylight Saving. So that's so much more time in DST. And most people think that this time shift twice a year is at worst, annoying and confusing. You figure you gain an hour of sleep in the fall, even though it gets dark in the evenings, but then you get longer days in the summer. But actually, Daylight Saving is pretty bad for us year-round. A 2024 study found that Standard Time, which is what we're leaving right now to enter Daylight Saving Time, is the optimal choice for health and for safety. ROSIE: Following the sun. CAIRA: Yes. ROSIE: Essentially. CAIRA: Mm-hmm. ROSIE: So it can feel like you're trying to pull yourself through severe jet lag. And it's so hard for me to fall asleep at a reasonable time around the shift. So as we are getting ready to prep for this time shift, what is your best advice to help people get to bed at a reasonable hour and sort of mitigate some of these effects? CAIRA: So let's say you usually go to bed by 10 PM. You want to start shifting your routine on Wednesday before the shift that happens that Sunday morning. So that would be tomorrow, in this case. You've got to get on it. And all you're going to do is just shift in 15-minute increments starting on Wednesday, so your body is ready to sleep by 9 PM that Saturday before the time switch happens. And you just do that in 15-minute increments every day. And the same goes for your eating schedule too. So if you're going to be going to sleep earlier, that means you need to eat a little bit earlier so your body isn't trying to digest that food as you're trying to wind down because that will keep you up. It also might seem like common sense, but don't do things like drink caffeine or alcohol before going to bed, especially caffeine. You want to give yourself at least six hours to fully digest that before you start your wind down routine. ROSIE: So a lot of this stuff is guidance for good sleep hygiene in general. CAIRA: Yeah. ROSIE: And also, it seems aligned with how you might try and shift to adjust to a new time zone if you're going on vacation or you're moving somewhere. CAIRA: Totally. And every expert that I've talked to about basically just how to have a healthy sleep routine, their biggest advice is just to get a good sleep routine, and then it's much easier to help modify or adjust it as needed. And then, if you're just having a really hard time falling asleep earlier in general, there are a couple of hacks that you can use to kind of trick your body into winding down for the night. ROSIE: What do you got? CAIRA: One that I use every single night that my partner hates is temperature regulation. So the optimal sleep temperature is between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit. ROSIE: No way. CAIRA: Yeah. It's cold. ROSIE: That seems really low. CAIRA: It's cold. I'm not even going to lie. But then, when you get into your bed and it's all warm and you have the right covers, it's kind of nice. I enjoy it now. But that temperature range has been proven to signal to your body that it's time to shut down, and it will start to do that. Another thing that you can do to jumpstart that is if you take a warm shower at night, when you get out of that shower, again your body temperature will drop, and that will also signal to your body that it's time to go to sleep. Something else that is really beneficial during this time is light regulation. So you want to kill as much light as possible in the early evenings so you're not staying awake later into the night. And then, when you wake up in the morning, because you know it's so dark in the beginning of Daylight Saving Time, you just want to get as much sunlight as possible as soon as possible. So blackout curtains are really helpful for keeping that light out. And then, when you wake up, just open them up, get some sun. ROSIE: Flood your place with sun. CAIRA: Mm-hmm. If you don't want to go out and buy blackout curtains, I get it. If you have an eye mask laying around or even a dark t-shirt would work. ROSIE: And we'll throw links to the eye mask and blackout curtain recommendations in our show notes. CAIRA: Mm-hmm. And then, everybody knows this at this point, even if we don't follow it, myself included. But try to limit devices at night, because the blue light, again, signals to your brain that it's wake up time, not go to sleep time. So that means your TV, your laptop, your cell phones, they all emit this blue light that is keeping your brain awake. So try to kill that as much as possible. ROSIE: What my kids call waking up time. "Is it waking up time?" CAIRA: Aw, that's cute. ROSIE: Or in the evenings, "Is it time for nap?" So again, a lot of this guidance really is general sleep hygiene guidance, but really becomes even more important when you're trying to adjust your body to experience this time shift away from the sun's clock. CAIRA: Yeah. ROSIE: So what about when you wake up, beyond getting the sun in there as boldly as possible? I'm worried it's going to feel impossible to get my kids out of bed in the morning when it's still dark, nevermind myself. CAIRA: No, it is really hard to fight that early morning grogginess because it's so dark. So I live in a basement apartment. My bedroom is in the basement. And something that I use year round is a sunrise alarm clock to basically just simulate warm sunlight in my room when I'm waking up in the morning. I like the Hatch, but our official pick is the Phillips alarm clock. And then also, this isn't the sun, but turn on the lights, get up out of bed, put your phone alarm somewhere far so you have to get out of bed to go turn it off. ROSIE: Anything to signal your brain that the lights are on, it's day. CAIRA: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ROSIE: It might not feel like day in your body, but it is day. CAIRA: Exactly. Anything to tell your body to go get it. This is a bit too far even for me, but if you can get out into the sun and do something active, that is the best thing you can do for your body during this time. Go for a run, do some yoga next to a window, just anything to really get your body moving and signaling again that it's time to start your day. ROSIE: Low-hanging fruit, maybe you could walk out if you have a balcony. If you have a front door, stepping out with your morning coffee just to sort of get yourself flooded with a little bit of sun is going to, again, help signal your brain and your body that it's morning, it's time to rock. CAIRA: Exactly. ROSIE: Okay, so Caira, if you could recommend one thing, just one thing that is going to help pull people through this shift, what is it going to be? CAIRA: I'm going to sound like a broken record, but it's light, light, light. Block it at night, get it in the morning. ROSIE: Love it. All right, Caira, thanks for the tips. CAIRA: Of course. ROSIE: Next time we meet, I think we're going to talk about vacuums. CAIRA: I'm excited. ROSIE: Stay tuned. If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage on Daylight Saving Time, or if you want to check out the products Caira recommended today, go to or you can find a link in the show notes. Wishing you a peaceful transition into Daylight Saving Time. Thanks so much for listening. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Sonia Herrero. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's Deputy Publisher and General Manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter's Editor in Chief. Thank you for listening.
New York Times
26-02-2025
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 29: Why Is Your Internet So Bad?
JOEL: Hook up an ethernet cord to your laptop, everything will be great, and I promise you that. CHRISTINE: That feels so 1990s. ROSIE: Yeah. Get in the Wayback Machine. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. CAIRA: I'm Caira Blackwell. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin. And you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CAIRA: This episode is called: Why Is Your Internet So Bad? ROSIE: Christine and Caira and my friends, this episode really is a 'public service. I'm thinking of it that way. We've secured an interview with the man who can answer the question I and so many of us have, why is my internet so bad? What are your setups at home? What's your drama? CHRISTINE: You know that my setup is terrible. You regularly are on video calls with me where I'm glitching out and it's a… ROSIE: Domo arigato, Christine Roboto. CAIRA: It's impossible to hear you sometimes. CHRISTINE: It's really, it's embarrassing. CAIRA: Don't be embarrassed. It's not your fault maybe. CHRISTINE: Well, I'm hoping this episode I'll learn how to fix it though. CAIRA: I'm proud to say that this is my first episode where I don't have this problem. CHRISTINE: Oh, so you have no problem with your internet? CAIRA: I have great internet. It's the one thing. ROSIE: Yeah, but she doesn't have oven mitts or- CAIRA: Fire extinguisher. ROSIE: …a fire extinguisher. CAIRA: I also live in a basement, but I have good internet, you guys. CHRISTINE: That's great. I love that. Internet, it's so central to everything most of us do every day. It's basically a utility at this point, and I think a lot of people have this problem or this complaint that their internet is terrible and they don't necessarily know why. If you're like me, you assume it's your internet provider…but honestly that's not always the problem. There can be lots of things that cause your internet to not be optimal. It could be the hardware in your home, how you are connected in your home, and it can also be kind of like the way you're getting your internet. So today on the show, we're going to tap into the mind of our colleague Joel Santo Domingo. Joel is a writer at Wirecutter, who covers Wi-Fi and home networks. Basically all of the tools that keep us connected to our digital life. CAIRA: Yeah. Joel is full of hacks and tips and tricks about how to better understand and improve your internet at home, and we're going to get into all of it right after the break. Be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. Our guest today is Joel Santo Domingo, and Joel is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, who covers consumer tech, which includes things like Wi-Fi routers and hard drives. Joel's fun fact, which I love, is that he kind of technically shared a stage with Aretha Franklin, but she was on stage and he was downstage left working the computer. CHRISTINE: Joel, I love that! Welcome to The Wirecutter Show . JOEL: Thanks for having me. CHRISTINE: It's really nice to have you here. Before we get started, we need to start this episode with two disclosures. One is that I have an in-law who works for the company Spectrum, and, Joel, your wife works for Verizon. We won't be giving preferential treatment today to any internet service provider, but we wanted to get that over with so that it's very clear to listeners. We're going to talk today about how to improve the internet in your home regardless of what service or company you use. ROSIE: That's right. So, Joel, simple question. I need and want to know if you have an incredibly high threshold for pain or the patience of a patron saint, because I don't know how you test internet connectivity every day and not want to pull all of your hair out, truly, what's your secret? What's your process? JOEL: It's a fun process, essentially taking my home, which is a regular two and a half story home with wood framing and adding another Wi-Fi network to it. Basically every Wi-Fi router we get in, I set it up as per the instructions and using the app or website as the case may be, just like a normal user would, setting it up, hooking up a desktop computer to it to act as a web server…simulating streaming 4K videos or surfing the web or taking Zoom calls, that sort of thing. ROSIE: So it's like the Sandra Bullock movie, The Net? JOEL: Pretty much, pretty much, but it's all self-contained. It doesn't actually go out to the internet because the internet always adds extra problems with traffic and your neighbor down the street, he's streaming something. So I isolate it from the internet and I'm just testing the radio signal going back and forth between the router and these laptops. ROSIE: Joel, how long have you been doing this? How long have you been testing? JOEL: I've been testing for Wirecutter for about six years now, but before that I tested PCs and other technology including Wi-Fi for almost 25 years. And prior to that I was an IT tech and tech manager, so I've been doing this for a while. CHRISTINE: Can I ask a really basic stupid question? JOEL: Sure. ROSIE: Do you want to know the plot of The Net? I love the movie. Go on. CHRISTINE: This is what I'm embarrassed to ask, but I honestly, I'm going to be a proxy for I think many listeners. A router is what gives you Wi-Fi, right? And then the modem is what's actually connecting you to the internet, right? JOEL: Right. They're both magical little boxes, basically! A modem connects you to your internet service provider--whatever company that is. And a router is the box that lets all your devices at home connect wirelessly to that internet. Sometimes they are combined into one box called a gateway. CAIRA: Joel, if people walk away with one thing after listening to this episode, what's the one trick to improve the Wi-Fi in their home? JOEL: Probably the easiest thing to do would be to stay close to your router. Sitting next to your router, if you're not connected to it with a cord is probably the best thing. The Wi-Fi signal from your router is best in the same room the router is in, strangely enough. CAIRA: Is the router the thing that usually has the Wi-Fi passcode on it? JOEL: It's usually the thing that has the Wi-Fi passcode on it. Sometimes it'll have antennas sticking out of it, but that's your router. It's usually a black plastic box sitting next to your cable modem. CHRISTINE: I'm realizing my router might be in the worst possible place. It's in the middle of my apartment, not in a room that I work in, not in a room I watch TV, but it's like positioned to try to access equally the places in my home where I am using internet. JOEL: Middle of your living space is actually the best place for it, that way the signal is spread out. It comes out in a sphere basically, or a circle. You want to be somewhere within the circle of coverage. CAIRA: And if your router is basically beyond your line of sight, that's going to be interfering with your Wi-Fi how? JOEL: It's kind of like trying to talk to someone. If you're in the same room, things are going to be great, but if you're trying to talk to them and there's a wall in between you, you're not going to be able to hear them or not hear them as well. And if there's more than two walls or three walls or a brick wall for example, it's going to block that signal. And just like if you're trying to talk to someone Wi-Fi doesn't like going through more than a couple of walls or a brick wall. ROSIE: Joel, I want to be greedy and ask for one more juicy hack, please. JOEL: Turning on and off your router and modem actually will cover a multitude of sins. CHRISTINE: What do you mean by sins? JOEL: Let's use the talking analogy again. If you are in a living space that is surrounded by other living spaces like an apartment building or a condo complex, you're going to have anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen to three dozen other Wi-Fi routers in the area, and all of those routers talking at the same time will basically stomp on each other. Even if you are not connected to their network, their network is affecting you. It's kind of like when you're in a, let's say, a quiet bar versus a jazz bar that is really, really hopping. You're going to have a lot of noise around you and that's going to interfere with your conversation, which is the Wi-Fi signal between you and your router. CAIRA: And so turning your router off and on again does what exactly? JOEL: When you turn your router off and then on again, it actually looks around and sees what other signals are in the area and finds the signal that works best in that room at that time, so it can get a strong connection between your laptop and your router or your phone and your router. CAIRA: So it's kind of to take it back to that restaurant analogy, it's like if you had moved to a private room that's quiet again. JOEL: Pretty much, if you'd moved to a private room and it's quiet again, or another way I like to describe it is, if you are thinking about the Wi-Fi network as you're speaking English to your router and the other routers on another channel, on another network name are speaking French for example, you don't speak French, so you are kind of ignoring it, but if that other router is strong enough or is close enough to you, even though they're speaking French and you don't understand it, their conversation will still impinge upon yours. So clearing the router, turning it off, turning it on again will get you to a place where you are speaking again, you're just checking with your friend, hey, can you hear me now? That's really what the router is doing. It's turning it off, turning it on again, and then your laptops and your smart cameras and your phone will check with your router again and say, hey, can you hear me now? Oh, I can hear you now. Let's keep going. CHRISTINE: I'm seeing like a little Pixar animated show- CAIRA: I know. CHRISTINE: …about this situation, but Joel, from what you're saying, it sounds like if you're in an apartment building say like I live in, this might be a bigger issue. You've got a lot of people around you at different apartments that have their own routers that are trying to speak to their owner's devices, and that can get really crowded. If you're in a house out in the country where you're not picking up anybody else's Wi-Fi signal, that's going to be less of an issue? JOEL: That is absolutely true. It's kind of like moving to a quieter room. When you're in a quiet room, you don't have to yell at each other. You can just speak in a normal voice. The person can be sitting across the room from you or the person can be sitting next to you, and you'll probably be able to hear them quite equally there. CAIRA: So if you have a more expensive router, will it work better? JOEL: Yes and no. An expensive router may have newer features like Wi-Fi 7, and Wi-Fi 7 has some features in it that will work better with crowded Wi-Fi. But if there's two brick walls for example, between your family room and your home office, and if your router's in your family room, there's still going to be a good chance you're going to drop Wi-Fi connections. You could install a mesh networking system, which is basically multiple routers connected together either by wires or wirelessly to improve your Wi-Fi in a larger home, but that, as they say, is a topic for another show. We do have a guide for that if you're interested. CAIRA: Always interested, Joel, always. But I do have a follow-up to that. I've never actually bought my own router. I've always just rented it from whatever company services my area. But would you recommend that people go ahead and buy their own router, so they're not doing that? JOEL: I get that question a lot. If you have a router that your cable company or a fiber company provides you and it works great, use it. If they are charging you 10, 15 bucks a month for using that router, or if the router isn't quite good enough for what you need in your home, then I would suggest purchasing a router. Over time it'll take maybe 10 to 12 months for that to pay off. ROSIE: In summary though, if I'm in my panic room, let's just say, and my $600,000 router is outside of it, it doesn't matter that it costs $600,000. It's not going to really necessarily be. JOEL: Now, if you're in a steel cage, essentially you're probably not going to get good Wi-Fi signal from outside that room. ROSIE: I think that's going to be really meaningful to a lot of people. CHRISTINE: Yeah. I think that is the one takeaway you take away from this episode. ROSIE: Good, good, good. CHRISTINE: Joel, you have written a lot about different ways to improve Wi-Fi. We've covered kind of the real basic ones here, and people can go read these pieces you've written. We're going to put them in the show notes, but I find a lot of these steps that you've written about like a little bit advanced for me personally. They're kind of like 2.0, 3.0. So I'm wondering if there is one more tip that you think would offer outsized rewards for doing one action somebody can take to significantly improve the internet in their home? JOEL: Absolutely. This really applies mainly to desktops, laptops, and things like gaming consoles, but wired is always better than wireless. If you take your laptop and hook it up to your router directly, there's going to be an ethernet port in the back. There should be a free one in the back of your router. Hook up an ethernet cord to your laptop, everything will be great. I promise you that. CHRISTINE: That feels so 1990s. ROSIE: Yeah. Get in the Wayback Machine. CHRISTINE: Yeah. I mean, I feel like I haven't used an ethernet cord in more than a decade. JOEL: It's the one tip that I give all of my coworkers, if they're having problems with the Zoom calls, if you clip in a ethernet cord onto your laptop, boom, you're on Zoom calls, it's going to be steady, it's going to be great. You're not going to look like a slideshow. ROSIE: But it's not sexy. CAIRA: Yeah, but you're on Zoom, nobody can see you, Rosie. CHRISTINE: I mean, I have terrible video quality. You all know this on my calls from home, so this is- ROSIE: We call you 'Beep-Borp Christine.' CHRISTINE: I actually have gotten an annual review, where the only negative part of the annual review is my Wi-Fi is spotty. CAIRA: That's so funny. They're like, "Get an ethernet cord, damn." CHRISTINE: "Get a better internet connection. You work at Wirecutter, what is your problem?" CAIRA: Oh my God. CHRISTINE: But I don't have an ethernet port on my computer. So how do I connect? JOEL: Type this into Amazon search or any search engine, USB to ethernet adapter, and that will get you a probably 10 to $20 dongle, for lack of better word, that will let you hook up ethernet to any laptop. I do have one easier solution. You can purchase something called a powerline adapter…which basically allows you to plug your router into your power lines in your house. And then connect those powerlines to your computer with an ethernet cable. Powerline adapters are pretty simple to use and we have a guide about them on the site CHRISTINE: My mind is exploding right now. That's a thing. You can just use the electrical wires in your home essentially as what the ethernet cord would've otherwise been doing? JOEL: Absolutely. You can do it. CHRISTINE: Does it work well? JOEL: It works reasonably well. It's not going to be as fast as actually taking a physical ethernet cable and stringing that through your house or having it put through your walls, but it'll get the job done. It's going to be good enough for a Zoom call. It's going to be good enough even for playing games strangely enough. My son uses a power line adapter in our home because it's faster than the Wi-Fi in playing games. CHRISTINE: Okay. So just to summarize, if you're having trouble with your internet connection in your home, it might be your Wi-Fi, and the first thing you should try is get close to your router because you'll be closer to a stronger signal. If that doesn't work, the next thing you should do is turn it off and on. Oh my gosh. CAIRA: We're never going to escape that advice. CHRISTINE: Yeah. Okay. So it's old school advice, but it's classic for a reason. Now, if you are still, like me, having lots of issues with your internet, the best next thing you can do is probably go wired. You should just go get yourself an ethernet cord and an adapter and plug it into your computer. Or you can try this fancier technique that Joel has explained, this power line extender, which uses the electrical wires in your home to connect you to your modem. CAIRA: Yeah, that's pretty cool actually. CHRISTINE: I think I want to try that. CAIRA: So now we're going to take a quick break, and then when we come back, Joel will give us some insight on how to decide on an internet package that's right for you. Be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back! This episode is all about how to improve your at-home internet. Our guest is Joel Santo Domingo. So we just talked about the hardware. Now let's talk about how you actually get the internet into your home. Joel, I want you to run us through the options of internet services in order of best to worst. What is the absolute best way to get connected to the internet at home? JOEL: Probably the best way right now is fiber, because it's actually a wired service that gets the fastest internet from whatever company you're using, whether it's Verizon, AT&T, Optimum, Spectrum, whomever to your home. CAIRA: What are you really looking for when you're looking for a good fast internet service to get internet into your home? JOEL: Well, fiber is wonderful because its upload speeds are as high as its download speeds. Download speeds are great for streaming videos and downloading updates to games on your PlayStation for example. And there are a really easy way to sell internet plans because faster is better, right? But upload speeds are important for things like sending photos and videos to share drive or Google Photos and to Zoom meetings. The most basic internet plans come with 20 to 30 megabits per second download speeds, but only about three or five megabits per second upload speeds. That's barely enough for one Zoom call. And if you have an upload speed of three to five megabits, that would come to a screeching halt if you have two work calls. CAIRA: So it sounds like the average person doesn't really need to be looking at the download speeds. What you really want to be paying attention to is upload speeds, right? So per person in a household, how fast do you want those upload speeds to be? JOEL: The average upload speed you want per person probably is somewhere between five and 10 megabits per second. 10 to 20 would be actually better, but five to 10 would be enough per person because each Zoom call takes about three to five megabits upload speeds, and if you have two Zoom work calls and your kids remote learning at the same time, three to five total is not going to cut it. And the most basic fiber plans that I've seen out there are somewhere between 150 to 300 megabits per second. CHRISTINE: Whoa. So that would be enough for 15 people to be on a video call at home, right? JOEL: Absolutely. You could have your entire family on their phones on a FaceTime call, all at the same time talking to another dozen people online. CHRISTINE: Sounds like kind of a personal nightmare, but yeah. JOEL: We did it during the pandemic. CHRISTINE: Which is why it sounds like a personal nightmare. ROSIE: So Joel, you said that not everyone is set up to access fiber. So how do I figure out if I can based on where I live? JOEL: There are like a dozen tools out there to find what you can get at your home. You could go to each individual site AT& for example, plug your address in and they'll tell you what they can give you. But there's one tool that I like to use, which is Enter your address, and it'll tell you all of the internet providers that are registered with the FCC that can give you service at your home. CHRISTINE: If, like me, you cannot access fiber, what's the next best option? JOEL: The next best option is cable. This is the cable internet that most people are used to. Back in the day it was an add-on to cable TV, but for the past 10 years or so, we've been seeing many cord-cutters switch to internet-only plans and leaving cable TV behind. Cord-cutters are those folks that instead of having a cable box hooked up to their TV, they're just doing it through streaming boxes like an Apple TV or a Fire Stick. CHRISTINE: Walk through the pros and cons of cable. JOEL: The pros of cable is it's really easy to find. A large portion of the country has been wired for a cable because cable TV really was where we got TV and if those cables are in your walls, you can get cable internet service. CAIRA: And what are some of the cons? JOEL: Some of the cons are, it can be slower, particularly on uploads. For the basic plans of cable, upload speeds are usually around 15 to 20 megabits per second. And while those are good enough for a smaller family, if you have an extended family living in your house for example, that may not be enough. CAIRA: Okay, Joel, so what is the last option that you might be presented with from an internet service or provider if you don't want or don't have access to fiber or cable? JOEL: If you don't have access to fiber or cable, there are two wireless internet services available. Those are satellite or 5G home internet. Let's talk about 5G home internet, because that's easier. 5G home internet uses wireless cell phone towers similar to the ones that connect your internet to your cell phone. Basically 5G home can access the internet where your phone has service though a 5G home router will get better reception because it's plugged in all the time, and it's in a stationary place. T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon, all have stakes in 5G home service, and they are pushing it right now. Satellite, on the other hand, uses clusters of satellites orbiting the earth to beam internet back and forth from the surface. So satellite's big benefit, it works most anywhere in the country and around the world, even at sea, and it's available in rural spots where 5G and fiber are hard to find. Starlink is the flashiest of the satellite providers, but there's others like Viasat and HughesNet, those are the other big names in satellite. And they'll basically come and install a satellite dish on the side of your house, just like satellite TV and drill a hole in your wall and hook that up to a router and then you'll be able to get Wi-Fi in your home that way. The benefits are, it reaches everywhere, but it's less responsive than fiber or cable for things like gaming, but they are fast enough for streaming services, so Netflix will be fine, Zoom will be fine, Teams will be fine. CAIRA: So when you have a Wi-Fi name and it automatically has like, I don't know if this happens to you guys, but you get two Wi-Fi names when you hook up to a new provider, it's like the regular name and then there's one that's a duplicate, but it says 5G next to it. What is that? JOEL: Yeah, that's one of the fun things or not so fun things actually about using Wi-Fi is that older routers and sometimes the routers that you get from a cable company or fiber company will have your network name usually like ATT5363. CAIRA: Or FreeBritney in my case. JOEL: FreeBritney, and it'll be FreeBritney and then FreeBritney-5G. And what that is is the five gigahertz channel or band on your router. They separate that so if you have older devices like smart cameras or a Ring doorbell, you can connect to the regular network on that and that's slower, it's got better range, then you would connect your phones and your laptops up to the FreeBritney-5G, and that's a little bit faster, but it's also short range, so that is the network that might have problems if you are 3, 4, 5 rooms away from the router. That 5G is not the 5G home that we've been talking about. 5G home is a totally different thing, it's 5G as it relates to cell phones. Dash 5G on your router's Wi-Fi is the similarly named but also confusing thing that Wi-Fi routers do. ROSIE: They came up with a specific name for dongle, but they didn't come up with a different term, both called 5G, but it's two different things. JOEL: Yes. They're both called 5G, but they are totally different things. ROSIE: Explain that one to me actually don't. CAIRA Excuse me for getting them confused.
