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New York Times
30-04-2025
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- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 38: 'Detox' Your Kitchen
CHRISTINE: That all just sounds too complicated for a cooking spoon. KATIE: 100%. You know. Like let's not do more math than we need to, use wood! CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: I'm Rosie Guerin, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show . CHRISTINE: This episode is called: 'Detox' Your Kitchen CHRISTINE: Hey Rosie. ROSIE: Hey. Hey. CHRISTINE: It's just us today. Caira is out. We miss her very much. But today we are going to talk about something that often comes up in questions from Wirecutter readers. We get a lot of questions from people who are wondering about the products in their home and the sort of health implications of those products, and it kind of runs the gamut. We get questions about all types of products, but a lot of times we get questions about the kitchen. People have a lot of concerns about what they have in their kitchen. They're trying to maybe reduce their exposure to certain types of materials. Maybe it's plastic, maybe it's nonstick coatings. And we thought this would be a great opportunity to dig into that a little bit. Because we actually have a lot of information on the site and we have some experts who can speak really clearly to this issue. So Rosie, I thought it'd be interesting to bring two of our Wirecutter colleagues on the show to discuss how to approach detoxing your kitchen. And I'm saying detoxing with huge air quotes. ROSIE: I can see those quotes, yeah. Why air quotes? CHRISTINE: Because your kitchen is not a toxic waste dump. And we really want to emphasize that the risks that you face in your kitchen are, it's not like a toxic river or something like that. ROSIE: Right. But by the same token, it's the place where you are keeping the things you use for eating, drinking- CHRISTINE: Right. ROSIE: . . .cooking food. CHRISTINE: It's a place that you can control a lot of what goes into your body. ROSIE: Right. CHRISTINE: And the truth is there are places in your kitchen where you may want to reduce your exposure to certain types of materials. And so we're going to have Katie Okamoto, she's our sustainability editor, and Marilyn Ong, who is our senior kitchen editor. They are both a wealth of knowledge about this topic. And Katie's really going to speak to what people need to know about the science and the sort of health risks of certain materials. And Marilyn is going to be able to speak really clearly to what Wirecutter kitchen experts have tested. The sort of swaps that you can make. We're going to run through sort of a list of different types of products that you may want to swap out. ROSIE: Love it. So after the break, our first kind of round table conversation, we're going to talk about where to focus our energy in "detoxing" your kitchen. We will be back after a quick break. CHRISTINE: Welcome back. Katie, Marilyn, welcome. You've both been on the show before. Katie, you edit all of our coverage around environmental issues for the site. KATIE: Yes CHRISTINE: And Marilyn, you head our kitchen team, and so you know a ton about the kitchen equipment that we recommend, and great swaps that people might want to make in their kitchen. MARILYN: Yep. ROSIE: Very excited to have you both back. Katie, we did an episode with you last fall about microplastics. After that episode aired, my friends who are regular listeners of the show reached out to say that they win on a mini spree trying to reduce their plastic in their kitchen as much as they could manage. And replacing it with silicone and glass. I bring that up because it occurred to me when prepping for this episode that we should be clear at the top here what we mean when we talk about reducing toxins in the kitchen. So can you talk about it a little bit? KATIE: Sure. And I think that your friend really is demonstrating that we all have a different relationship to risk. And so when we talk about reducing toxins in the kitchen, we're talking about reducing the risk of exposure to an array of substances, chemicals, particles in some cases, metals that may potentially have health impacts. These are complex issues and areas of ongoing research. And we're still establishing in some cases what those exposures might mean for our health over a long period of time. Many times these exposures are cumulative. But there's a lot that we can't control. And many of the exposures that we're discussing today really require addressing at the root through system-wide change or regulation. But there are some things that we can control as individuals. CHRISTINE: Okay, so let's talk about what we can control. A term I've heard both of you use is "exposure budget". . .where you can basically choose what to focus on eliminating based on how important it is to you. And everyone's budget may look a little different. For instance, one person might really want to eliminate all plastic in the kitchen, whereas another person who has little kids or a disability might really need to use plastic in certain cases, because they can't risk breaking glass. MARILYN: Yeah, I mean It's kind of this idea that if you try to be all or nothing about it'll just stress you out, right? So you have to be kind of measured about what risk you are comfortable with and what you're not. And what convenience or time-saving factors, different products bring into your life that are worth spending a little bit of that exposure budget. KATIE: I think that's true of how we make recommendations and make choices when we shop. In general, we're always weighing the kind of costs and benefits. And yeah at Wirecutter we're always thinking about the tradeoffs really between price, usability, aesthetics, whether it works, durability, repairability, sustainability. And now we're also talking about potentially these other exposures that can come from using products over time. So yeah, just to say this budget concept is sort of true of all the choices that we make as consumers, nobody has the right answer. It's always a highly individual one. ROSIE: This conversation, like all of our conversations on this show, but I think also at Wirecutter in general is like this has to be rooted in lived experience and that's not monolithic. The advice that you're giving and the guidance needs to be applicable. It needs to be real. MARILYN: Yeah. the exposure budget idea can kind of help you focus on what you are doing, what you are controlling and feel good about that. And not worry about all the things that you can control. CHRISTINE: Exactly. Katie, I'm wondering, how much do you think eliminating things like plastic or nonstick finishes, how much does that really matter in the grand scheme of things? KATIE: Unfortunately we can't say for sure how much of a difference it will make. I will say there are some things that there is more robust evidence to support at least the exposures. Even if we don't know 100% how that will manifest in a health impact. Since we're talking about supporting long-term health, big picture, I do want to back up and say a lot of the experts that I've spoken to, when I've been reporting on plastics in particular, have said that, "Don't forget that there are evidence-based ways to support your health and your family's health and wellness over the long-term through certain behaviors. Things like getting enough sleep, balancing nutrition, going to get your annual physical." So just want to say that. If you walk away with anything after you listen to this episode, I think one hope I have is that you can really simplify your "kitchen detox" by prioritizing things that will last and repairing and maintaining what you have. That's because a lot of the items that might expose you to microplastics might expose you to forever chemicals. These are things that are less durable and less repairable. I think one thing that we're starting to see in plastic research in particular is that we're now able to measure microplastics and nanoplastics. And so people are starting to measure them everywhere they possibly can. And so we're learning a lot more, but it can also feel like a cascade of new information. We're finding plastics here. We're finding plastics there. And I think the takeaway of that is trying to orient around durability in our purchasing and really thinking about it from that scale rather than trying to get so hyper specific about how can I replace this particular item? And then finding another particular item to replace. Right? MARILYN: Absolutely agree. And I think that giving yourself time to do this, you don't have to in one month max out your credit card and replace everything in your kitchen. And you'll learn too what you can live without and what you can't. ROSIE: OK, so we know that plastics and forever chemicals are linked to some health issues – but the science is ongoing for what that means in terms of our exposure. So, before you spiral – focus on what you can control. Everyone's budget might look a little different, but you can make choices about what products you want to use and what you might want to phase out. CHRISTINE: Okay, so let's get into some kitchen swaps people might want to consider. Let's start with items that have nonstick coatings — like nonstick skillets, the inserts to rice cookers and air fryers, and some other appliances. These nonstick coatings are made with forever chemicals. Katie, what do we need to know about forever chemicals? KATIE: So forever chemicals is sort of a nickname for a class of chemicals that has thousands of different kinds of chemicals. They're called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS. P-F-A-S. CHRISTINE: Oh boy, that's such a mouthful. KATIE: Yes. They have been in the news quite a lot. They're added to many different things that we use all the time. They make things slick, nonstick, waterproof, oil-proof. And they're something that will build up in the environment and in our bodies over time. Hence the name Forever Chemicals. We pretty much all have PFAS exposure. It's one of those highly ubiquitous chemicals. And some of those chemicals have been more widely studied than others. Like PFOA and PFOS, P-F-O-S. They're actually no longer used in nonstick cookware that's being made new because they were so concerning. They've been replaced by other types of PFAS, and some of those go by names like Gen X and PFBS. Those are used in nonstick cookware. But just to back up, the research is ongoing, but the links that science is starting to find are at certain levels are reproductive impacts, high blood pressure, developmental impacts. Increased risk of some cancers, immune system function and endocrine disruption. That sounds really scary and it is very concerning. Experts don't think that using a single product once is going to expose you to dangerous levels. This is really an instance of accumulation over time, particularly because these chemicals do build up. When it comes to PFAS used on cookware, so like those non-stick pans, it seems that undamaged and unscratched pans are safe to cook with, if they're used correctly, which means that they're used at moderate to low temperatures below 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Above that heat, they can release fumes that are actually toxic enough to kill birds. And so you can start to see that this is a pretty unstable compound at certain temperatures and people really should consider replacing those pans or getting alternatives that Marilyn will discuss if they start to scratch and flake. ROSIE: Katie, we got a reader question. This is someone who asked about non-stick coating. So they said, "Non-stick coating breaks down over time. So doesn't this mean we're ingesting the coating over time?" What do you think about that? KATIE: I think that that's not an illogical conclusion to come to. And I think that is really why if you're taking a precautionary approach here, it's just cutting out non-stick pans is a wise informed choice. But once again, using them at low temperatures and taking care to use utensils on them that aren't going to scratch the surface can really mitigate that exposure. CHRISTINE: So Marilyn, if someone is looking for alternatives to non-stick cookware or other types of appliances that have these finishes, non-stick is super convenient. I mean, it's great. I have it in my rice cooker. I know a lot of people love their skillets. What are some of the best options that your team has tested? And give us kind of the pros and cons of those. MARILYN: Yeah. And I will also start by saying if you have a non-stick pan, if it's new, if it's still working really well, as Katie said, just use it when you absolutely need to, right? It doesn't always have to be completely all or nothing. If you really need it for an egg in the morning and that's the only reason you pull it out, that's a good place to start. And I will also say that if you non-stick pan is not acting non-stick anymore, that means it's definitely time to let it go. CHRISTINE: So if your eggs are sticking- MARILYN: If your eggs are sticking, if it's not just rolling straight off of it when you're cleaning it, your nonstick coating has worn off and is probably deteriorating and that's not a good look, so time to let that one go. But yeah, we do have other great options. Cast iron pans are one of my favorites. I keep mine on my stove. I use it all the time. They are not expensive. Our top pick is $40, but Lodge makes another one that's $30 12 inch pan. You can do everything on it. You can roast chicken, you can bake in it. I know it can be intimidating to take care of a seasoning on a pan. But I also promise that once you kind of get started and are okay with imperfection, because that's just life. It'll build up over time as you cook and can work out really great. CHRISTINE: I love cast iron, but it is really heavy. Beyond the- MARILYN: It is. CHRISTINE: . . .maintenance part of it. It can be quite a lot to take it up and down off of the stove. MARILYN: Absolutely. Yeah. Like our top pick cast iron pan is six and a half pounds, and that's a lot of weight. CHRISTINE: Right. MARILYN: So another option that we recommend sometimes is carbon steel pans. They're a little bit lighter. Our top pick 10-inch carbon steel pan, which is a little bit smaller than 12 inch, but still can do a lot. That one is less than three pounds. So it's still not quite as light as an aluminum nonstick coated pan, but it's much more maneuverable than a cast iron pan. CHRISTINE: And does it have the same feature as a cast iron, where it becomes kind of seasoned- MARILYN: Yes. CHRISTINE: . . .and it becomes more nonstick over time? MARILYN: Our top pick is pre-seasoned. So you can get pre-seasoned cast iron, you can get pre-seasoned carbon steel. In both of those cases, I mean during testing, we're taking out of the box and frying an egg right off the bat and it's working great. CHRISTINE: I have an enameled cast iron omelet pan. The advantage to it is that you don't have to season it. And so it is finicky in other ways, it's also heavy. You have to preheat it for quite a while, but it does have a nonstick surface once you get it to a certain temperature. MARILYN: Yeah. There's science going on about things adhering to a pan at certain temperatures and then releasing when certain proteins have coagulated and all of that. So yes, that is all true. And that reminds me another thing that we should talk about is a lot of times people buy nonstick cookware sets, and so it's not just like a skillet that you're dealing with. You have a stock pot with nonstick lining, you have saucepans. And in most cases you don't really need a nonstick coating on a stock pot. If you're boiling water for pasta or making a soup, there's so much liquid in there, like the nonstick coating isn't doing much for you. And in those cases, you absolutely should just swap those out for stainless steel tri-ply cookware, which is layers of stainless steel around a layer of aluminum. Which is a really great heat conductor. And we also recommend, like you said, enameled cast iron. And so when you see those beautiful Le Creuset, Dutch Ovens and pots on social media, that's what that is. It's enameled cast iron. And yes, that enamel can also be really great at releasing foods and not be terribly sticky. CHRISTINE: Right. MARILYN: Tri-ply stainless steel on the other hand can get a little sticky. I mean, that's why it's great for searing meat and searing proteins. There's a little bit of a learning curve, but it's totally doable. And I have even fried eggs in triply stainless steel and lived to tell the tale, so- CHRISTINE: Yes. You were able to eat them. It was fine. MARILYN: Yes. CHRISTINE: What about some of the appliances that have nonstick coatings, like air fryers, rice cookers, some of these other smaller appliances? MARILYN: So I would start with air fryers. Most pod-shaped air fryers, including our picks by and large, they use nonstick coatings on their baskets and in the surfaces inside the air fryer. And this is why most air fryers don't go above 400. Like if you're cooking in your oven, it's very common to want to roast something at say 425. And people will be confused why air fryers don't go above 400. And this is why because of the nonstick coating. As Katie said, above 400 temperatures, it starts to become more volatile. But here's the thing is the way heating elements and temperature probes work, it's not perfect. It's not like your air fryer gets to 390 and then stops exactly. The heating element is still going. The air in there is going to often heat above 400. And so that means that your nonstick coating in the air fryer is going to be getting heated to these pretty high temperatures, right on the borderline of what's recommended. So we've always maintained that toaster ovens are more versatile, longer lasting than air fryers. And at the end of the day can do a really good job with a lot of things that air fryers do. And if you're looking to limit your PFAS exposure, all of that, it just becomes all the more true, right? We have this small toaster oven that we recommend the Panasonic Flash Express. KATIE: I love mine. MARILYN: I love mine too. That's sitting on my counter at home and it just cooks beautifully. It's really even, it can handle frozen tater tots, frozen french fries. It does the job really well. And because it's small and compact, it also heats up really quickly and isn't going to be lacking in a ton of the things that you're looking for from an air fryer. CHRISTINE: What about rice cookers? My sister actually recently asked me this because she didn't want to have a rice cooker with a non-stick coating on the insert. And it seemed really hard to find one that didn't have non-stick. MARILYN: Yeah, rice cookers is a tough one. We have always maintained that of all the appliances with non-stick coatings, a rice cooker is one where it's actually pretty reasonable. And I say that because rice is sticky. They used to make glue from it in China in my grandmother's day. And so really what a rice cooker is doing is heating your water to boiling temperature. So that's 212 degrees. And then the keep warm setting is probably around 170-ish that range. And so the temperatures are not getting very high. They're well under that 400 point of volatility. And then you've got a much easier container to wash when your rice done cooking. And so we've always felt like that's one of the most reasonable uses of non-stick coating in any of the appliances that we recommend. But we also get that for some people, they're really, really trying to get to that almost no exposure of PFAS in their home. And so we are planning to focus on that for our next rewrite of the Rice Cooker Guide. We'd like to test, and we have tested some options in the past. We've tested clay, we've tested stainless steel and have found that the level of stickiness and everything. . .You get to a point where you may not even want to use the machine anymore. And so is that realistic? Is that helpful for someone who wants a rice cooker in their home? But we are going to focus on a few more options just to do more due diligence. I will say in the meantime, I have used my Instant Pot to cook rice and- CHRISTINE: Which just has a stainless interior, right? MARILYN: Yes. The Instant Pot uses a stainless interior and it gets the job done. It's not going to be magical levels of fluffy- CHRISTINE: Yeah, we've done side by side with the Zojirushi or something, and the rice wasn't quite as good, but it was fine. MARILYN: No, but yeah, it's fine. It works. CHRISTINE: I think there's one more category that sometimes people overlook, baking sheets. MARILYN: Yes. There's so many nonstick cookie sheets out there. So for baking sheets, we recommend Nordicware. They are aluminum pans and they are not nonstick. There is no nonstick coating on them. But they bake and wash beautifully. They're super durable. They will last you forever. CHRISTINE: And then if you're concerned about a nonstick coating, you can always put parchment paper down, right? MARILYN: Yes. CHRISTINE: Yeah. MARILYN: Absolutely. We have cake pans that we recommend too, and a lot of them are made by USA Pan. They do actually have a nonstick coating on them, but they are silicon-based. They don't use the same forever chemicals that say a nonstick cookware does. CHRISTINE: We're going to take a quick break, and when we're back, we'll talk through what you should know about the best swaps for plastic utensils and plastic food storage.. We'll be right back. CHRISTINE: Welcome back to the show. It's our first round table episode. Our guests are Wirecutter sustainability Editor Katie Okamoto and Senior kitchen Editor Marilyn Ong. ROSIE: That's right. And today we are unpacking the concept of detoxifying your kitchen. What that actually means, where to start, materials and products you can consider if you're looking to shift away from plastics. CHRISTINE: Katie, you came on the show to talk about microplastics a few months ago -- we'll link to that ep -- and you told us that the most important plastics to pay attention to in the kitchen are anything that might be getting heated, like food storage containers you might use in the microwave — and any plastics that get a lot of wear and tear, where they might become scratched or worn down —like cutting boards—-and then single use plastics, such as disposable water bottles. KATIE: Yeah. I would really start by thinking about eliminating plastic from food or drink uses where they'll be heated. Where it's single use plastic, and where you're routinely going to be scraping or scratching that plastic. And this is again about exposure over time. And so we're thinking about the big picture here, not perfection. ROSIE: Katie, can we talk about black plastic specifically? KATIE: Yeah. ROSIE: I'm curious about this. There was that report last October about flame retardants in black plastic utensils that gave me pause. I'm curious how you processed that and what you can say about them? KATIE: I actually reported on this as well and ended up updating that article because the study that galvanized all these headlines around black plastic had a significant math error in it by an order of magnitude. The study overall was looking for evidence that black plastic, which is often made from recycled electronics, can leach flame retardant chemicals that are in electronics into food. And so this was a study. There have been other areas of research into this question, but this was a study that did find that there was evidence of leaching some of those chemicals that have been linked to cancer in some cases, leaching that into food. And so the correction found that the highest level of one chemical, which was linked to cancer, was actually at a significant lower level than the reference dose that the EPA sets. The reference dose, just to explain that, it's the maximum allowable daily dose that the EPA has determined will not lead to serious health impacts over a lifetime. But not including cancer. And so the authors maintained after this correction that the conclusion stands that black plastic used for food is concerning due to the potential for leaching some of these chemicals. I would say clearly this is one of those instances where it's a question of your relationship to risk. And I understand that that can feel quite unhelpful. I would kind of back up and say experts say there is a risk that plastic of any color might leach potentially harmful chemicals and/or tiny plastic particles into food. And so that just goes back to the advice that we were talking about a little bit ago. Taking your relationship to risk into account since the research and regulations are works in progress. But in general, trying to scale back plastic specifically in these heating contexts in the kitchen. CHRISTINE: That all just sounds too complicated for a cooking spoon. Like why we have to think about that for a cooking spoon? We shouldn't have to be like- KATIE: 100%. Let's not do more math than we need to, use wood. CHRISTINE: Marilyn, if someone is looking at their kitchen, they see their food storage containers, they see the plastic cutting board, they see the plastic utensils. What are some good swaps here that people can make? MARILYN: If you are routinely storing your leftovers in a plastic container and then zapping into the microwave, I would suggest switching to glass food storage containers. So we have two top picks. The Pyrex Fresh lock and Snapware Total Solutions glass container sets. Those are actually identical sets because the companies have combined. But because those lids are plastic, I would recommend removing that lid if you're going to be microwaving your food. We also are making the Pyrex Ultimate set one of our picks. And that's a set that has glass lids with silicone kind of gaskets around it. And those are not airtight, they're not locking, but they don't leak super easily. And so for everyday use in your fridge, they should be fine. And that is a completely plastic-free option. CHRISTINE: What about cutting boards? MARILYN: There is evidence that plastic cutting boards can expose someone to up to like 50 grams of plastic annually. Also, one of the experts that Michael Sullivan, our cutting boards writer, spoke to during research for that guide. Was telling him again, the exposure is on the small side compared to everything kind of globally. And so again, you make your choice whether to use wood boards, which are heavier and more expensive. Or if you need the lightness and the convenience of a plastic cutting board, you just have to know the exposure budget that you're spending on that. But we do recommend quite a few wood boards that come in different sizes. The Jones Wooden Cutting Board is beautiful. It's a maple and grain cutting board. And again, the wood cutting boards will last you a long, long time. CHRISTINE: That's great. What about utensils? We talked about not cooking with plastic utensils. What are some good swaps that we recommend on the site for cooking utensils? MARILYN: So we have a full spatula guide, and I think every recommendation we have on there is either wood, metal, and we do have some silicone recommendations. If you stop using nonstick pans, you can use metal spatulas because cast iron and carbon steel pans are not afraid of a metal utensil. CHRISTINE: Right. KATIE: You'll be free. MARILYN: Yes, you'll be free. You'll be free of that worry. And one of my favorite tools of all time is the fish spatula. It is thin and bendy and you can do so much with it. CHRISTINE: Marilyn, what about electric kettles? I know sometimes these have plastic on the inside. Some of them. MARILYN: Yes. Yeah, I mean some of them have full bodies of plastic, so definitely don't recommend that. Our top pick, the Cuisinart Perfect Temp is a great kettle. There are a couple small parts of it that do touch the water. So if you want a completely non-plastic option, the Cuisinart Gooseneck kettle that we also recommend in our guide. That one, the entire body of the kettle is metal. CHRISTINE: I'm curious also about silicone because I see silicone products everywhere. Katie, I know you've written about silicone, the pros and cons of using silicone. But what are the plastic implications of silicone? Is it shedding just like single-use plastic or is it different? KATIE: It is a different material. Silicone is a synthetic silicon-based polymer, and it's considered safer for health at high temperatures than plastic. But there are some studies that show that it does shed. And we just don't know yet enough about the potential health impacts to say what that means. People usually are looking to silicone to replace single-use plastic bags, and it does obviously address the reduction of single-use plastic, which we do know can shed quite a bit. And so I think with silicone bags, it's kind of like thinking about the environmental big picture. When you're buying any kind of reusable replacement for a single-use disposable thing, make sure you're going to reuse it and keep reusing it. Otherwise, the environmental impact can be comparatively high. And also I would think about what's the problem we're trying to solve by going for something like a silicone bag? Sometimes we can find alternatives that aren't a one-to-one replacement. You could maybe use a glass jar or some other kind of container. So yeah, I think long story short, it does shed, but we don't really know exactly what that means yet. CHRISTINE: So I just wanna pause for a moment and recap what we've learned so far about plastic. Wherever possible, you wanna replace plastic in your kitchen that is exposed to heat or abrasion. Most of the time, the swaps are gonna be things like metal spatulas, wood cutting boards, or glass food storage containers. And big plus to these is that they are gonna last longer than the plastic versions. We'll link to some picks for those. You also wanna look out for appliances that might have plastic or nonstick elements and upgrade to models with maybe a stainless steel interior the next time you're in the market for one of these. Silicone in the kitchen is probably okay – but there might be some better things you can use and might actually last you longer that you already have in your kitchen. ROSIE: Before we wrap, we always ask our guests that final question. So Katie, you first, what's the last thing you bought that you really loved? KATIE: I'm trying to do a low-buy this year. CHRISTINE: Can you explain what that means? KATIE: Oh, sure. I'm just trying not to buy things that I don't need. But my Achilles heel is cookbooks, and the book that I recently purchased is Amrikan , which is by Khushbu Shah. It's all recipes from the Indian American diaspora, and it's so good. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I make Indian-inspired pizzas on sheet pans for friends and just me. It's just like an amazing cookbook. ROSIE: Living your best life. Marilyn, what was the last thing you bought that you loved? MARILYN: So I did not buy this. I volunteered to long-term test this Homedics Shiatsu massage pad thing. It's a cushion. I love those giant massage chairs. We've tested them in the office, but they're $3,000 and I can't fit one of those in my house. So I volunteered to test this cushion, and we just strapped it to the back of our IKEA pawing chair that we also got secondhand from a friend. And it is like the most ramshackle massage set, if you can imagine. But we love it. CHRISTINE: And it gives you a nice back massage? MARILYN: Yeah. ROSIE: Well, Katie Okamoto and Marilyn Ong, thank you guys so much for joining us. KATIE: Thank for having us. MARILYN: Thank you. ROSIE: Katie and Marilyn, now, veterans of the show. CHRISTINE: I love both of them so much. ROSIE: Between the three of you, I really got a good sense of some of the ways I can think about reducing maybe plastic use and toxicity in the kitchen if it exists. CHRISTINE: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the great thing about what both of them had to say is there's just, first of all, I don't think people need to be as scared as some people seem to be about- ROSIE: Right. CHRISTINE: . . .different materials in the kitchen. But if you are concerned, there are just so many good options. And I think a universal theme here is that if you are looking to reduce some of these things like plastic or nonstick coatings in your kitchen, the swaps are actually much more durable. They're the kind of thing that will last a lot longer. You'll probably be able to get many more years of use out of them, and they're probably healthier for you in general. ROSIE: So sustainability and also health, which I think- CHRISTINE: Yeah, absolutely. ROSIE: . . .is sort of a one two punch. What are your main takeaways? CHRISTINE: Well, one thing that I hadn't really thought too much about, but I really loved in this conversation is this idea around an exposure budget. Everyone is going to have a different exposure budget. Everyone will have sort of different factors that are more important to them than others. And for me, that really means personally reducing plastic when it comes into contact with my food. So I've pretty much gotten rid of all of my plastic food storage containers. I have glass containers. But for me, I'll continue using some plastic tools in the kitchen. And I will continue to use the nonstick insert in my rice cooker because as Marilyn mentioned in the episode, the rice cooker doesn't get so hot that you really have to worry about off-gassing or something. ROSIE: Right. CHRISTINE: So I think that's just a really good thing to keep in mind. You don't necessarily have to reduce everything. It doesn't have to go to zero. Just focus on where it's most important for you personally. ROSIE: I think that's perfect. And I also think that my takeaway is similar. My exposure budget is slightly different than yours. I have little kids, so I'm really trying to do those swaps where I see them. The reality is we have plastic containers in our home. They work for a myriad reasons, but I'm bearing in mind we're not going to heat them up. We're going to throw them out or recycle them if they have a abrasions, if they have cuts. And then we also have nonstick pans that work really well for us. But I think a thing I learned from this is that 400-degree mark, so bearing in mind that we have to use these pans correctly. Keep the heat below 400 degrees so that we're not worried about those fumes releasing from Teflon. CHRISTINE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, a lot of these products like the nonstick cookware, the plastic Bento box or like Kids Snack container, these really useful. And they can be the right thing at the right time, so you shouldn't feel guilty or you're poisoning your family or anything. It's just about sort of choosing the right tool for the right time. ROSIE: Love it. We should also mention before we go that this is a huge topic, we covered a lot, but we did not cover exhaustively. We'll talk in the show another time about water filtration and when to think about doing that. And also air pollution in your kitchen when it comes to your gas stove. One solve there is induction – which is a big category that Wirecutter has done a lot of testing around. So look out for those conversations later! If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage, Marilyn Ong's reporting, Katie Okamoto's reporting. If you want to check out any of the products we recommend today, check out the website, or you can find a link in our show notes. Thank you so much for listening. Christine, we got Caira back next week. CHRISTINE: That's right. I'm looking forward to it. ROSIE: Off we go. CHRISTINE: See you. ROSIE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson. 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. CHRISTINE: I'm Christine Cyr Clisset. ROSIE: And I'm Rosie Guerin. Thank you for listening. MARILYN: No joke, I left a gas stove on low with a cast iron pan on it for a week. CHRISTINE: What? MARILYN: Because we went away and we came back and found our cast iron pan still seasoning on the stove for a week. Don't do that.
New York Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 37: Level Up Your Sound System
BRENT: Tracy Chapman Fast Car is generally regarded by audio scientists who have proven this in testing as the best song for evaluating audio equipment. 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 Level Up Your Sound System. ROSIE: Hey, team. CHRISTINE: Hi. ROSIE: I've been shopping. CAIRA: For? CHRISTINE: Shocking. ROSIE: No, it is shocking. I have to say since starting to work here, I think I have shopped less, but I've been shopping recently for a new speaker setup in my apartment. CHRISTINE: Tell us more. ROSIE: I'm a big, I'm indoctrinating my children in the sense that we dance as often as possible. We dance through the decades, if not evening dance parties, certainly weekly. Their vibes are great. However, we only have one main speaker in our living space, and so I've been thinking about maybe Sonos or maybe some kind of connected system system. CHRISTINE: Don't do it, don't do the Sonos. CAIRA: Christine is scared. CHRISTINE: I have the Sonos and. ROSIE: Don't be suckered into it? CHRISTINE: I just find it problematic. ROSIE: Well, that's the thing. I'm like, I don't quite know what my options are and I know that Wirecutter has done a lot of coverage on speakers and I would like something great, something that is going to sound great in our space, but I also really don't want to spend that much money. CHRISTINE: But you don't have to. ROSIE: No. CHRISTINE: Actually we bought some speakers this year and we got some for under 200. It was really great, a paired set. But yeah, we had gone through this similar situation, Rosie, where we had something in our living room, something in our kitchen, nothing connected, and it was annoying. You want to be able to turn on the music and have it pumping. ROSIE: Right. I cobbled together or I've collected, maybe, is a better way to put it, these little Bluetooth speakers that I can put around the house, but it's time for an upgrade. CHRISTINE: Yeah, there's just so many options and sometimes you need a guide, and we do have a guide here at Wirecutter, not just a written guide with recommendations, but a physical person who can actually walk us through this. ROSIE: A human being. CHRISTINE: In our little journey through speaker world. So we're going to have Brent Butterworth on the show today. He is our senior writer who covers audio devices and he has literally decades of experience testing speakers specifically in all kinds of audio equipment. And he's also a musician, so he has a very high bar for good audio. And I think what's lovely about this episode today is he has some really great advice about how to find great speakers that won't cost you a lot. CAIRA: Or almost free things that you can do to upgrade the speaker system that you already have. CHRISTINE: That's right. So if you've got a couple Bluetooth speakers hanging out in your house, he can give you some hot tips for how to make them better. CAIRA: Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to Brent. CHRISTINE: So after the break we will chat with Brent. We'll be right back. CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Brent Butterworth, who's a senior staff writer covering audio devices, musical instruments, and recording gear for Wirecutter. Brent has been reviewing audio gear since the nineties and he worked as a testing consultant for some of the world's largest audio companies. He's a huge music fan who plays upright bass, ukulele, guitar, and records his own music. Brent, welcome. BRENT: Thank you. It's so nice to be here. CHRISTINE: Brent, before we jump in, I want you to tell us a little bit about how you test speakers. Paint us a picture of how you do this. BRENT: As much as possible. I think the standard procedure that we do that me and Lauren Dragon, who's our headphone editor, do is we get in as many products as we can. We give them a listen and weed out the ones that we know people aren't going to like, because going to be some. CHRISTINE: Duds. There's always duds. BRENT: Some poor products that just aren't going to make it, and then we narrow it down and then we bring in listeners and get second opinions. Because people have different opinions about audio. CAIRA: It's very subjective. CHRISTINE: Yeah. BRENT: One of the really key things is it's good if it's not people that are really super hardcore audio people, if you have what they call in scientific testing, a low anchor, and that's one that can I say sucks? CHRISTINE: Yeah, I know I say that. BRENT: Where people can go, oh, okay, that one's bad, so at least I know that one's bad. And then they relax and they can judge the rest of them. ROSIE: So what are you asking your listening panel to look for, Brent? BRENT: The key thing, I think, for most people that's the easiest to evaluate is voice quality because we listen to voices all day long every day. Does the singer sound natural or do they sound excessively boomy or do they sound excessively sibilant or whatever? That's what gets people comfortable is if they can listen to the voice, then they can start listening to the instruments. And then if they're more into audio, if they're musicians, I can start to ask them about distortion, and sometimes they'll bring that up, and distortion is when things start to sound unnatural. We've all heard that if you hear really cheap little speakers and things like that. The classic example is the drive-through speaker at Taco Bell or wherever. ROSIE: Which sounds like it's underwater. BRENT: I'm not picking on Taco Bell. They're pretty much all bad. ROSIE: Are you often going to get distortion at louder volume? BRENT: Almost always, yeah. ROSIE: So are you cranking these speakers up when you're testing? BRENT: I do both. I actually, I crank them all up. There's a ZZ Top track that was produced by Rick Rubin who was notorious for really loud recordings that I play and I measure them with a sound level meter and I crank them up as loud as they'll go, and I measure that sound level. And then for my listening test though, I usually bring it down to a normal level. Yesterday we were just testing record players at Wirecutter, turntables with built-in speakers, and we started with everything at matched levels and normal, moderate listening levels and we did all that, but then we turned everything up full blast to see what it would do, and that changed some people's minds because some of these things would play really loud and some of them wouldn't. CAIRA: I got to sit in on your record player testing yesterday, which was really fun. I didn't know that you were doing that and I was just in the office, which is great. And you played Beyonce, you played Led Zeppelin, and who was the last? It was a country singer. BRENT: It was Steve Earle. CAIRA: Steve Earle, and it was all amazing. You really could hear the difference in the sound qualities, especially based on the genre of music. We were wondering if you have a favorite song to play when you're testing speakers. BRENT: Tracy Chapman Fast Car is generally regarded by audio scientists who have proven this in testing as the best song for evaluating audio equipment. CAIRA: So I went to go buy my stereo system that I have now. He only played Bohemian Rhapsody because he said the same thing. He was like, this is the best song to listen to if you're testing the quality of speakers. BRENT: It's not. Great song. Not so great for testing speakers. CHRISTINE: Well, what is it about this Tracy Chapman song that makes it so awesome? BRENT: The more the song fills up the frequency band, the better it is. So it has some bass in it, some bass guitar, and then it has acoustic guitar, which is real, a lot of high frequency and delicate and you can hear if the acoustic guitar sounds bad, it'll sound muffled or it'll sound grating or somewhere in between. And then you can hear her voice, and the way her voice is recorded on that is really clear, but a lot of speakers start to make it sound distant or a little bit like she's singing in a cardboard box or something like that. So I put that on with a speaker and it's just like, nope. Or maybe I get a $30 speaker, I'm like, oh, that was a good speaker. You can tell so much and once you get used to doing this, you can tell so much in about 30 seconds. ROSIE: All right. So Brent, I'm guessing the majority of people in your professional life are deep into the topic of audio. This episode is not necessarily going to be for them. Today is for the curious novice, so those of us kind of looking to take our indoor or outdoor audio setup to the next level, ideally without breaking the bank. If I come to you for advice, what questions are you going to ask me in order to lead me in the right direction before I make a purchase? BRENT: I usually ask how much money they want to spend. Then I can, some people are like no more than $30. Okay, I know where I'm at with that. A lot of people are just like, whatever I have to get good sound. And I start to ask them what kind of music they'd listen to because some kind of music, if they're jazz and classical fans, they don't need deep bass. They can get by with some fairly small speakers. If they're listening to a lot of hip hop or EDM or something, they need something with more bass, otherwise, some of the music is just going to disappear completely. And then where are they going to put the speakers? Are they going to put it in a bedroom? Are they going to put it in a big giant living room? Do they want to have dinner parties? Do they want to have, people sometimes have, I can't conceive of this, but sometimes people have dance parties in their homes. ROSIE: Oh, hell yeah. CHRISTINE: Come on. CAIRA: Why is it so inconceivable? ROSIE: Weekly. BRENT: We sit at home and close our eyes and listen very intently, seriously. But it depends on do they want to use it outside. A lot of people want to use their stuff outside, in which case it probably needs to be waterproof to some degree. I usually just start talking to them about what they're going to do with the speaker. ROSIE: If you're thinking about sound systems then, what are the categories that are available? BRENT: Okay. The big one I think for most people nowadays is a wireless speaker, and that can be a Bluetooth speaker, it can be anything from the little things you buy for $20 up to about $1,500. But usually they're small and they're portable and they're waterproof to some degree, and you hook them up to your phone and you play whatever, and some of them sound great, some of them don't. The next step up from there is going to be probably a pair of stereo speakers, which could be what we call computer speakers that you put on your desktop or maybe on a bookshelf or something. And they're pretty small, but a lot of them sound really, really good. Then you go up to what we call bookshelf speakers, which is a bigger, probably want to put them on a stand or something because a lot of them are big, and that's when you start to really get into serious high quality sound, and a lot of the bookshelf speakers for, we have a pair in there for 400 bucks. It's been a top pick for probably five years and oh, they sound so good. They're just really, really, you'd have to really spend a lot of money to beat them. CHRISTINE: And these bookcase speakers and the computer speakers, these are generally ones that are wired, right? You're going to plug them in, they'll have a wire coming out of them, or are there ones like that that are also portable and you can move them around without being plugged in? BRENT: Yeah, there were usually wired. You plug them into the wall, you Bluetooth into them, you WiFi into them. Some of them you can hook up a record player, some of them you can hook your TV to them, all sorts of stuff. CAIRA:: What is the difference, in your opinion, between a great Bluetooth speaker and a bad one? BRENT: The fundamental thing is you put it on with Tracy Chapman Fast car and it sounds good. So it's the voice clarity, and a lot of them, they don't have that. Between you and the speaker is a lot of plastic grills sometimes, and sometimes that rattles and there's a lot of electronics. All of these have digital sound processing inside them and they can make bad decisions when tuning that, they can make good decisions. And so it's just how natural it sounds. But then as you get into a lot of the really tiny ones, you've probably heard, they don't have any bass. So there's a tune by Audrey Nuna called Damned Right, that starts with bo bo bo bo, bo bo bo bo, and you play that on those little Bluetooth speakers and it's like the tune hasn't started. You're like, what happened to the tune? Because you cannot hear that bass. It just filters it out because it knows it can't do it. CAIRA: Right. So when you're playing a song and you're like, I feel like the song started five seconds ago, but I'm not hearing anything, it's probably your speaker. BRENT: Yes. So with a lot of these things, they just can't do it. And there's one of our top picks called the JBL Go4, it's maybe 40 or $50. It's the size of, if anybody remembers cigarette packs, it's a thick cigarette pack, but they come in cute colors. You could probably throw it across the room and it wouldn't break and you could dunk it in a meter of water and it won't break. And it actually sounds - classical jazz, I put on my jazz stuff in the morning and it sounds good. I listen to it all the time, and a lot of Wirecutter staffers have bought that same speaker and love it. But then you get into the bigger ones and I think we have $100 pick. It's got the Fender logo on it, the people that make the guitars and the guitar amps. It's actually made by a German company called Teufel, and it sounds really good. It's actually got some bass. You can play hip hop stuff on it or something and it's not going to shake your floor, but you won't feel like you're missing the music and it sounds really clean. CHRISTINE: I think that most people just use one Bluetooth speaker at a time. But you told us something when we were preparing for this episode that surprised and delighted me that you can actually pair Bluetooth speakers, which I later that day told my husband. And we did it. We did it with our budget pick from Tribit and it was great. Tell us more, how do you know if you can pair Bluetooth speakers? BRENT: Almost all of the ones made in the last four or five years can be paired. That's if you have the same speaker from the same company, there's usually a button on it that allows you to pair it and you have to look in the manual. They all pair a little differently. Some of them you have to go into an app to pair it. You compare them for stereo, so you get a bigger sound. Some of them, you compare them in mono, so they both have the same sound, so you can put one in another room. I like to have sound on my back patio and sound in my kitchen, which is right next to my back patio. CHRISTINE: And for stereo sound, what would be the difference in what I would hear if I paired these speakers in stereo versus mono? BRENT: So stereos came out in the late fifties, and you have a separate left speaker and a right speaker, and so the music producers will pan some of the sounds to the left and some of the sounds to the right. Usually the vocals will be in the middle and you might put the guitar a little to the left, and if you have a drum kit, you might spread it from left to right so it sounds more like a drum, a full set of drums in front of you rather than just a bunch of drums crammed into one little tiny space. So it sounds more like an actual band on stage. And mono, everything comes out of one speaker, and so it's the same, even if you have two speakers paired, it's the same in mono, it's the same sound coming out of both speakers and it's not like you're going to suddenly hate whatever band you like because they're in mono. But if you want a big, more exciting, more spacious sounds, you're going to want stereo. And that's one thing that one Bluetooth speaker can't give you. So you pair the two in stereo and you put them six feet apart and you put yourself in between the two so you're getting an equal balance of the two, and then you get this big enveloping sound. If you're in the right place, it sounds like there's a band in the room. CAIRA: We've covered a solid Bluetooth speaker situation. What happens if you want to graduate beyond that? What do you suggest is the next step up? BRENT: The computer speakers that we have, they range from little things that you might just plug into your laptop to get louder sound out of your laptop, to things that you would actually use first low-end music production. So a little bit more serious of a speaker, but usually those will have amplifiers, well, I think they all have amplifiers built in, all the ones that we pick now. And so you plug them into your computer, Bluetooth into them from your phone. Some of them you can hook up a record player. Those will have usually a separate woofer for the bass and then a tweeter for the high frequencies. So they'll sound clearer in the cymbals and acoustic guitars and voices will sound clearer, but then those low frequency boom, boom, boom, things will start to sound a lot fuller and more satisfying. And those of us who do brand concealed audio tests have a saying, "bass wins". If your product has more bass, it's probably going to win. If your product's bass-deficient, it's probably going to lose. ROSIE: Why is that? BRENT: People like bass. CAIRA: It's fun. BRENT: To a point, I don't like it when I'm hearing a lot of bass from my neighbors or when I hear one car going down the road with loud bass. But people like bass because it's visceral, gets you moving a little bit. Nobody dances to a violin, I guess you could, technically. The bass is what gives you the pulse and the rhythm of the tune. So if you don't have any bass, you are missing a big giant chunk of the tune. CAIRA: So we've talked about the basic Bluetooth and now we've talked about a little bit more complicated speakers. Are wired speakers the next step up, the classic two speaker system, and if so, why would somebody choose to do that to themselves? BRENT: It will sound better. As they say, you will hear what the artist intended because every record that you've heard was mixed on two stereo speakers like that. And they can be wireless in terms of Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. They all plug into the wall. In most cases, you'll have a wire connecting the two speakers. You may have an amplifier for them. There's all sorts of different configurations, but generally speaking, that is going to be the best sound and it's going to be what the artist intended for average use. You can buy our bookshelf speaker picks. So we have a Polk in there, I think it's 230 a pair. They sound really, really, really good. CAIRA: I want to talk about the amps a little bit more because it's a word that just keeps popping up and a lot of people may not really know what an amp is or what it does. Can you just explain what stereo amps are, what they do, and why people will probably need one for a two speaker system? BRENT: Basically what an amplifier does is the signal that comes out of your Bluetooth from your phone or maybe your record player or maybe you have a CD player, those are coming back, any of those signals, it's really low voltage. It's a volt or something. It's not much. It's really weak and it's enough maybe to drive a set of headphones, but it's not enough to push speakers back and forth. You got a big cone, you got to move back and forth, and you got to move a lot of air, as they say. So the amplifier just basically boosts that signal that comes out of whatever your source is, your record player or your phone or whatever. And so it boosts it to the point where it can drive a set of speakers. But with normal speakers, like those Polks I talked about, any amp will drive those. You can buy a 20 $30 amp off of Amazon and it will drive those and actually sound okay. CHRISTINE: Okay. Brent, I just want to pause for a moment because we've talked about a lot of different types of speakers and it would just help me, personally, to be able to run through the options. So if you are wanting to just dip your toes into getting a basic sound system, the most affordable and accessible option would be to start at a Bluetooth speaker. You could get one, you could get two if you want to pair them and do stereo sound. Next go for two speakers. BRENT: Right. CHRISTINE: And you have a couple of options there. You could go with small computer speakers, which have a built-in amp, so you don't have to buy an extra amp. They're pretty affordable. They sound pretty good. If you want to go up from there, you would get bigger bookshelf speakers and some of those have an amp built in and some you have to buy a separate amp, right? BRENT: Yeah, if you're more of a serious music listener, I would definitely go with the two speakers, absolutely positively. But any of the two speaker options is going to be good for you. CAIRA: We are going to take a quick break and then when we come back we'll talk about the most common mistakes people make with their audio equipment. Be right back. CHRISTINE: Welcome back. This episode we're talking all about speakers and the things you can do to upgrade the audio equipment in your home. So Brent, you mentioned earlier we were talking about how you can really jump up in quality of sound when you get to speakers, especially if you're getting these wired speakers, maybe they're either computer speakers or bookshelf speakers, these larger ones. I am personally intimidated by shopping for speakers. My brain shuts off a little bit, but I am curious, we talked a little bit about price before, but what do you think people should expect to pay to get something good in the category of wired speakers? BRENT: Okay, those Polk ones. CHRISTINE: The Polk ones you mentioned earlier, BRENT: Those are 230 a pair and then you'll need an amp, but almost any amp will work. We have a budget pick though, from a company called Micca, I think those are about a hundred a pair. And I was just using them the other day with the Wim amplifier and I'm just like, oh, these things sound really good. I was listening to one of my own recordings, too, so I know what it's supposed to sound like and they're shockingly good. So you can do that if you want. I think the Polks are a better place to start. They're going to have more bass, but I would recommend going up to 2 or 300 for your amp and then you're up to 500 bucks. CHRISTINE: That seems reasonable. CHRISTINE: Brent, where does something like Sonos fit into this world of speakers? Is it a computer speaker? Is it something else entirely? BRENT: It's something else entirely. They have the whole category of Wi-Fi speakers to themselves. Lots of other speakers can do that, but they are the ones who really pioneered it. What the Wi-Fi does for you is you can stream music into lots of different rooms of a house. You could put different Sono speakers in different parts of your house and they all synchronize, so they all sound good, and the Sono speakers themselves are actually, by and large, really good speakers. CHRISTINE: Everyone I know who has a Sonos in the last couple of years has done nothing but complain about their Sonos. They like the sound of it, but the app seems to be pretty glitchy. There seems to have been some quality control issues over the last year or so. What are some other options in this category? Do you have to go with Sonos or if you want this wireless experience where you can have the speakers all over the house, they're all connected, maybe you have one that you can take outside. Is there another option out there besides Sonos? BRENT: Absolutely. There's Apple Airplay 2, which lets you do more or less the same thing. There's Google Chromecast, which lets you do more or less the same thing. Apple Airplay 2 and Google Chromecast are available in a wide variety of speakers from different brands, which Sonos is not. The Amazon Alexa speakers can do the multi-room thing, too. You can go buy those things for 40 bucks a pop or something like that, 50 bucks a pop, and you can sprinkle six of them around your house for almost nothing, and they'll all talk to each other and their app is pretty easy to use. ROSIE: And so for these streamers, Sonos, even Alexa, I apologize for anyone listening on a speaker. BRENT: Oh no. ROSIE: Are you going to get the option of listening to music in mono and in stereo for all of those? BRENT: Yes. So you can pair those so you can say, okay, I want one in my bedroom and one in my kitchen or whatever. Or you can say, I want two in my bedroom so I can sit in my bed and listen to stereo and just one in the kitchen. And you can actually configure them all within the apps. Apple has their own thing and different companies like say JBL or a Bowers and Wilkins or somebody will have their own app that lets you configure everything. ROSIE: So Brent, these two terms, Bluetooth speakers and wireless speakers, talk about the differences and what do we actually mean? BRENT: So Bluetooth is a wireless technology. I think we've all Bluetoothed our phone into our earbuds or into our car or something, and you don't have a wire connecting them. There are other wireless technologies like Wi-Fi based technologies, like Sonos, where the audio device is streaming wirelessly from your home network or maybe from your phone or your iPad or your whatever. People also sometimes talk about wireless speakers as speakers that don't have any wires attached to them at all. A stereo pair of speakers probably has a wire connecting them so they can talk to each other. And then they have probably a wire somewhere that plugs them into the wall for power. So the only thing that's purely wireless is a portable Bluetooth speaker. There are no wires. And then once you go beyond that, you're going to be running into wires. Sorry. ROSIE: All Bluetooth is wireless, but not all wireless is referring to Bluetooth. Fair? BRENT: Correct. ROSIE: What are the functional differences between connectivity via Bluetooth versus connectivity via Wi-Fi? BRENT: Wi-Fi requires an app, Bluetooth does not. So Wi-Fi is going to be more complicated, although usually it's not that bad. ROSIE: But more finicky. CHRISTINE: And if your network goes down, you can't use it. BRENT: Yeah. ROSIE: I'm curious, what is the most common mistake you see people making with their audio equipment, in general? BRENT: They don't pay attention to where they put the speakers. There's two things you got to worry about with speakers. The first thing is the closer the speaker is to a wall or a desk or a floor, or especially in a corner, the more it's going to reinforce all of the sound, especially the bass. So when you push speakers up against the wall, there's going to be a lot more bass, and that might be good. It might be bad. Big speaker, if you go up against the wall, it's probably going to sound really boomy. With the little speaker, these little Bluetooth speakers, these little portables, they probably will sound better up against the wall. So you have that variable right there. So the more bass you want, move it closer to the wall. Also, with stereo, you need to have left and right to get it to work, and your head needs to be about the same distance from both speakers for it to work right. And I've seen a lot of people have stereos where they put the left speaker on top of the right speaker. Oh, ROSIE: Because it just looks so damned cool. BRENT: You really need to put the stereo speakers equidistant from your ears. And also a lot of people will put the stereo speakers, put one in the right place and they'll put one on a different wall, and that's going to sound not good. What we look for is what we call a center image. So if your head is the same distance between those two speakers, it's going to sound like there's a singer coming from between the speakers. We call that imaging. It's actually awesome once you hear it, but if you don't have your speakers placed right, you will not hear it. ROSIE: The bass and the treble knobs on, what am I meant to be doing with these? Because I noodle around with them based on the song and what I'm trying to get out of it, but I really don't think that, that is what I'm meant to be doing. BRENT: Okay. ROSIE: Help me. BRENT: Oh, boy. This is such a good, I mean, there's the classic example of you get in a rental car and you turn on the stereo and you find the bass and treble are both turned all the way up. That's a common mistake people make. Generally, you should start with the bass and treble controls centered, and that's usually going to be what we call flat response. In other words, you're not boosting anything, you're not cutting anything. It should sound the most natural. So I normally recommend that people just leave those centered all the time. However, if you have speakers that maybe don't have quite enough bass, you can boost the bass a little bit. If you boost the bass too much, it's probably going to distort, but you can boost the bass a little bit. Or maybe your speakers sound too boomy, you turn the bass down a little bit, or maybe they sound dull, as if someone's got a singing through a blanket. You can boost the treble a little bit. CHRISTINE: And that'll just make it sound almost sharper or something? BRENT: Something. Yeah, sharper. That's a good word. CAIRA: So my question is how do you turn the treble and the bass down on your neighbor's speakers when they're too loud? ROSIE: Is there any technology you're excited about? Any emerging stuff that you're intrigued by? BRENT: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. There's a new thing coming out called Oracast, and it's a subset of Bluetooth. So what Oracast lets you do is you can stream, normally with your phone, you can stream to one or maybe two Bluetooth speakers. With this, you can stream to an unlimited number as long as they're within range of what we call the host speaker. So you stream from your phone to the host speaker, then you can put 10, 50, 100. Theoretically, they can be of all different brands, so you don't have to match them, and also it works with headphones. CHRISTINE: So you could have, for my kids, for instance, I am always annoyed because they each have Bluetooth headphones and I want them to be able to listen to the same music. We have to connect a separate phone to each headphone, and that's annoying. CAIRA: So you want to pair their headphones. CHRISTINE: I'd love to be able to have them listen to the same songs on both of their headphones. BRENT: It's happening, and I have experimented with it some, but it's still going to be at a primitive stage for I think another year. But then more people will have it, and I think it's going to be in every hearing aid in another probably two years. All the wireless earbuds, it'll probably be in those in two years, three years. It's going to be in every Bluet ooth speaker in another probably two, three years. CHRISTINE: Okay, Brent. So sometimes we like to do a really quick paced lightning round at the end of our episodes to just get in those last questions. So I don't want you to overthink any of these, just say what comes to your mind. Indoor concert or outdoor music festival. BRENT: So hard, but I'm a jazz guy, so indoor. CHRISTINE: Subwoofer essential or overhyped? BRENT: Essential. If you are watching movies or you're into hip-hop, maybe heavy rock, EDM, stuff like that. CHRISTINE: Which sounds better. CD or vinyl? BRENT: Oh, you got to get me in so much trouble here. CD. I don't listen. I listen to vinyl sometimes because it's fun. But I listen to digital. I listen to MP3s a lot. CHRISTINE: Oh, I think this was a very controversial answer, but we'll take it. All right. The one speaker brand you wish more people knew about? BRENT: Micca, the one I talked about. I can't say they're all great, but that one that we have, oh God, it's so good. It's so cheap. CHRISTINE: Your desert island album? BRENT: The Yes album by the seventies progressive rock group, Yes. CAIRA: Before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question. What's the last thing you bought that you've really loved? BRENT: The Wirecutter top pick for screwdrivers. It is really fabulous. It has a whole bunch of bits built into it, so every weird screw that you might want to access, you can pull the bit out and it's really well-built, you can get a lot of torque and really get the screw in tight. And I'm building a new deck on my home right now, and this screwdriver is coming in very, very, very handy. ROSIE: Brent, thank you so much for joining us. This was really, really fun. BRENT: Well, thanks for having me on. CHRISTINE: Thanks, Brent. BRENT: It's been great. CHRISTINE: Speakers, Brent. So much information. CAIRA: He's so good. ROSIE: We love Brent. Wow. CHRISTINE: Wow. I feel like I was the one lagging in this conversation. ROSIE: No. CHRISTINE: You two were ahead with Brent and I was behind trying to pick up the pieces and figure out all the details because I'm not an audiophile. CAIRA: No, but you enjoy good music, good sound, and you got there. CHRISTINE: I do. I just want someone else to think about it for me. ROSIE: Well, I think Brent is that person. What did you take away? CHRISTINE: So I really love his tip about pairing Bluetooth speakers. That really blew my mind. So that was very cool, and I will continue to pair my Bluetooth speakers at home to create stereo sound, which now I understand what that means. CAIRA: That's so good. ROSIE: They go deep, I love that. For me, I am very grateful for the final explanation of the differences between connectivity via Bluetooth and via Wi-Fi, and why you might opt for a speaker system that could connect via Bluetooth, maybe over Wi-Fi, because Wi-Fi, as we know, can be a little fiddly, and so Bluetooth, at least right now, is more reliable in that sense. So I loved that. I also loved that Brent had the final word on the song to listen to, to check whether your speakers are great. Tracy Chapman, Fast Car. CAIRA: Love it. ROSIE: That song truly can do anything. CAIRA: Yeah, I think my takeaway is that honestly, I got into stereo systems and speakers because of my dad. He really taught me what good sound can be, but I think that I relied a little bit too much on him to tell me what these things do. So I'm going to go back and I'm going to actually read the manuals for all of the devices that I have and see what I've been missing out on. CHRISTINE: Yeah, the whole world will open up probably. CAIRA: Yeah. ROSIE: Also good if you are looking to cure insomnia. CAIRA: Sure. Yeah. ROSIE: Well, if you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage, any of Brent's reporting, or if you want to check out the products we recommended today, check out our website or you can find a link in the show notes. That is it for us, Christine, Caira, my friends. See you next week. CHRISTINE: Bye. CAIRA: Bye. ROSIE: Peace. CHRISTINE: The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Episodes are mixed by Catherine Anderson. 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. Hosted by Caira Blackwell and Christine Cyr Clisset. Thanks for listening. BRENT: Nobody dances to a violin. I guess you could. Technically. I guess they did on the Titanic? In that movie? But that's all they had to work with. And look what happened to them.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- General
- New York Times
The Wirecutter Show Episode 36: Stop Killing Your Houseplants
DARRYL: If the plants could tell you and scream at you like, "What do I actually need?" Light is the first thing. Of course you still have to water, but none of those things can work unless the plant is working. 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 Stop Killing Your Houseplants. ROSIE: Caira, Christine, so obviously we're talking about houseplants. CHRISTINE: Yes. ROSIE: I get the sense that Christine, you have a little bit of a green thumb. CHRISTINE: I do. ROSIE: A light green thumb? CHRISTINE: It's a light green thumb. It's like I have a lot of houseplants, but I neglect them. But they somehow, I think, have enough going on that they can stay alive. CAIRA: That sounds like a green thumb to me. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I mean it's not like I'm doing a lot to them. It's just like they... I water them every once in a while and they're fine. CAIRA: I can never say that. ROSIE: What's your situation? CAIRA: I used to have plants. Guess where they are? ROSIE: I feel like they're six feet under. CAIRA: Yeah, and they're not growing back. ROSIE: They're compost. CHRISTINE: What about you, Rosie? ROSIE: I have actually moved away from having houseplants, because I've gotten so bummed out over the years after killing so many. I want to do better. CHRISTINE: I absolutely think this is a problem a lot of people have. ROSIE: I do too, yeah. CHRISTINE: A lot of people in my life have told me this. I just can't keep this thing alive, or it's just not thriving. Why do they not look like the beautiful things I'm seeing on Instagram? And this time of year is a really great time to be thinking about your indoor plants. You might be seeing some flowers budding outside, but the indoor plants, they need some care in the spring, too. And so this is a great time if you're trying to figure out how to make your current plants look nicer. Or if you're plant curious, you don't really have plants but you want to bring some home, this can be a great time to do that. CAIRA: Yeah. So our first guest today isn't a Wirecutter journalist, but he definitely fits right into the Wirecutter ethos. His name is Darryl Cheng, and he runs the website and Instagram handle House Plant Journal. He's a trained engineer who takes a very specific approach to growing houseplants. It's very left brain. So he's going to be sharing some tips for making your houseplants, you know, survive. CHRISTINE: And a little later, we'll talk with Wirecutter senior staff writer Rose Lorre about great ways to get new houseplants on the cheap which I'm very excited about. We'll take a quick break, and then we'll be back with Darryl Cheng of House Plant Journal. CAIRA: Welcome back. This episode, we're talking all about houseplants, and ways to make yours thrive. Our first guest today is Darryl Cheng, and you might know him from his very popular Instagram account Houseplant Journal. His latest book is the New Plant Collector, the Next Adventure in Your Houseplant Journey. And he's just a wealth of knowledge on how to give plants what they need and how to diagnose problems your plants might be having. And the tips we're covering today apply to all plants by the way, really universal guidance for helping plants thrive. CHRISTINE: Darryl, welcome to the show. DARRYL: Hello, thanks for having me. CHRISTINE: I'm really pumped to have you here. I have followed your Instagram account for years, so I'm like very into all the plant inspo. I've been looking at your new book, and trying to diagnose plants in my living room with what's going on with them. So I'm very excited for this conversation. Something I think is super interesting about you is you have an engineering background, you're an engineer by training. How does that impact your approach to plant care? DARRYL: I think it actually falls back to the story of how this all started, which is many years ago when I was still living at home with my mom, she said to me, "Hey Darryl, can you decorate the house with some houseplants?" And I said, "Sure." But she added, "You need to figure out how to take care of them because I'm quote unquote bad with plants." Well yes, we hear that a lot and we laugh about it. But I thought, wait a minute, mom, you taught me how to do outdoor gardening and you're pretty good at it. What's so different about indoor plants? But she went back to the narrative of oh, I have a black thumb, I kill everything. So I did like any good millennial wood and bought a bunch of plants, and tried to Google the care tips and stuff. And what I found was a lot of vague, hand wavy type of things. If you try and google houseplant care advice, you'll find a lot of just dos and don'ts. But as an engineer, I want to know how things work so that I can choose what action to take rather than be told. So that's really how it began. And engineers love to measure things, and so I realized that a lot of the very important growth factors for plants are never really measured. In the houseplant realm, we don't often talk about any measurements, and instead we go to very vague things like bright indirect light or oh, it likes medium light. My engineering mind just said, "You know what? This kind of way of talking about plants doesn't really work for me, and so I'm going to try and decipher it for myself and even come up with my own framework, if you will." ROSIE: So I think I probably am aligned with your mom, although I don't even have the outdoor gardening skill. But I've historically considered myself to have a black thumb. I have a black thumb, but I also have a black thumb, and I've just had a really tough time keeping plants alive. But every time I've had to say farewell, I'm like, "I'm going to do this again. I can do it better. I know I can get this." I'm curious for myself, but also for the folks who have had trouble in the past, what does it mean to get back to basics? If you really strip this all down starting at square one, what does that look like? DARRYL: If we're going to talk really, really right down to before you even buy a plant, what's the mentality of owning a houseplant? And I think a majority of people believe that if I am able to quote unquote care for this plant correctly, then I should never ever lose a leaf and the plant should look perfect all the time. And right then and there, I will say that's completely wrong, and let's shift it towards the fact that every individual leaf has a limited lifespan. It doesn't last forever if only you care for it correctly. But rather the goal of owning a houseplant in the long term is that your growth outpaces the decaying of the older leaves. And the last point is that your plants will change. They'll grow and they'll keep changing, and there will be a point where you don't like the structure of it anymore, and then you have to know what to do in order to reset that structure. And all of that should be an expectation of owning a plant for the long term. CHRISTINE: That really resonates with me. I've had some monsteras that have gotten too big for their britches and I don't actually like the way they look anymore. But I actually have more frequently had the opposite problem where it's a failure to thrive. The plant isn't getting big, and beautiful and lush, and I'm like, "Oh no, I don't like the shape." It's like, "Oh no, the leaves are yellowing, or I'm losing you, you're half the size of when I got you." What do you think are the most important things that people miss in terms of when their plants are just not thriving? DARRYL: At least when I first realized this, there's another hit of reality, which is that the shape of the plant that you buy is what's the result of growing in a nursery. And if you were to objectively measure the light in there, let's just throw the numbers right out. It's between 1,000 to 5,000 foot-candles of light hitting it for most of the day. You take that same plant and you bring it home. Let's say you follow some Google advice that says, "Oh, it's okay in low light," and so you decide to put it far from your window. You measure the light far from your window, and it's 50 foot-candles. CHRISTINE: And the foot-candles, that's a way of measuring light. Just to be clear, that's how you measure the light that's coming through the window? DARRYL: Yes, that's right. Ignoring the unit, just think of the number. At a nursery, you take out your light meter, it's 1,000. In your house far from the window, you take out your light meter and it's 50. So we're dealing with even less than 10 times difference here. So what's the result of that? Your plant is now having one-tenth the productivity. What is photosynthesis? It's just the plant making its own food, which is a really amazing feat if you really think about it. Now its little engine is running at one-tenth the speed, and therefore pumping out carbohydrates at one-tenth the speed. It would show. CAIRA: It sounds like you suggest that people really should have a light meter, and take it to the plant store where they're buying the plant and use it in their own homes. Do you have any suggestions for people who don't have a light meter? I imagine that most people who just want to buy a couple of plants for their house don't really want to spend the money on that. So what can you do to gauge the light in your own home or when you're going shopping? DARRYL: Yeah, I'm not suggesting that everyone has a light meter. I'm saying if you have more than 10 plants or if you're starting to spend in the range of several hundreds of dollars, I would hate for you to spend that much money only to be disappointed with what your plant looks like because you didn't know the light levels in your home. So let's say, yeah, you just want to get a few plants to decorate your space, you don't want to use the light meter? Then my advice is the plants have to be right in front of the window. Not 10 feet away, right in front. CAIRA: Got it. CHRISTINE: Yeah, I feel like I see that in New York City. You'll walk by people's apartments, and you'll just see the windows are full of plants. And I fight with that in my own apartment, because I want the light to come in and hit the humans in the apartment, not just the plants. But like you're saying, it is really just that you got to get them as much light as possible. DARRYL: Yeah. And the second part is, don't expect your plants to grow as nicely as somebody who has simply larger windows. ROSIE: Right, so it's really expectation setting. It's understanding that wherever your plants came from was likely more of a conducive environment for growth than where you're taking them. Unless you're really setting up the conditions in which your plant can thrive, by which we mean placing them somewhere in front of a lot of light. DARRYL: I have a funny saying, where I say anybody who you think has a green thumb probably just has exceptionally large and unobstructed windows. ROSIE: Okay, so I love that. Let's talk about that though. Explain it to me like I'm in preschool, the difference between direct sunlight, indirect sunlight. How do I know that what I'm being told is true in terms of someone selling me a plant that needs indirect sunlight, and I go home and I put it where? DARRYL: In my mind, telling someone bright indirect light, telling someone high, medium and low. I actually think that whole system should be just put to the trash. ROSIE: It seems very subjective. DARRYL: It is completely subjective. And another often stated system is saying, "Oh, it's an east window, it's a north window, south window." That doesn't make any sense. Nobody's windows are exactly the same size. Nobody's windows have the same obstructions outside. The way that we talk about temperature outside is to tell you what you should wear outside, obviously so you know if you need a parka or if you can just go with a windbreaker. But if we were to say high, medium and low temperature, that doesn't make any sense. We all need to have the actual degrees Celsius or degrees Fahrenheit in order for us to make a judgment about how to go outside. With light, saying bright indirect light and high, medium and low is actually completely useless. It's either you use the numbers, or you just have to put it right in front of the window and hope for the best. CHRISTINE: Okay, we've talked about how important light is. It's get those plants right up to the window if you can. What if you are dealing with a situation where you really love houseplants, you want to have this lush, beautiful houseplant garden in your home, but you don't have optimal light. What are some options for people who just don't have great light? DARRYL: Well, the great news is nowadays, we have white LED lighting, so you can use that type of light to grow most houseplants. Pothos, ZZ plants, snake plant, monstera. These kinds of plants have much more modest light requirements. And I'm so sorry, going back to measuring again, because I've seen thousands of people's questions who show me hey, why is my monstera doing so badly even though I use a grow light? And then I say to them, "Show me a picture of how you've actually set this up." And the grow light is pointing at the monstera five feet away. If you measured it, you would see the number is a 100 foot-candles or whatever. Every inch that you move a grow light closer will change the number dramatically on a light meter. So my saying about grow lights is this. If you're using a grow light without measuring it, it's like you're using an oven without knowing what temperature you've set it at. Sure, you could just turn it on and hope for the best. But what I'm saying is I've seen enough examples of it failing that it's not worth the failure. ROSIE: What is the percentage do you think of times you're answering people's questions with get a light meter? DARRYL: I would say it's 50 and 49 of two different issues. One is the light, poor lighting, and they're not aware that it's poor lighting. And the other 49% is the expectations. Like, "Oh no, this leaf is yellow, what am I doing wrong?" Your plant is fine. It's always supposed to lose that lowest leaf. CAIRA: This is so interesting. I don't have any plants right now because... Well, I always thought that I had a black thumb. But I've also historically always lived in apartments with pretty terrible lighting, including right now. I basically live in a basement. So what are some good species for people to consider if they have this issue? Well, what do you think is pretty dummy proof? DARRYL: I actually don't like calling it that, because then it implies that you are incapable of taking care of a plant. Whereas really it's just am I going to be happy with how this plant looks in one year's time? And that's more of a subjective thing that you could adjust in some ways and not make it totally based on just your own skills, so to speak. The ones that you will notice the least change is snake plant, ZZ plant, pothos. You should buy one of each type of those plants, and two of them keep them right in front of your windows and one of them put them wherever you want. And then two months later, switch it out. Switch out the one that's in the decorative position, and then put that other one back to the window so that it doesn't starve. CHRISTINE: So that would work even in like a windowless room. DARRYL: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. CHRISTINE: So I have a question around pets and plants. DARRYL: Yes. CHRISTINE: I have a geriatric cat who loves to go munch on my plants, and it's a constant struggle. What's your advice for people who have pets? DARRYL: I don't have any pets right now, but I took care of my friend's two cats for about two weeks. And one of them was quite munchy, and I've learned that with cats, if you say no to them, you have to give them a yes right after that. CHRISTINE: Yeah, they're like children in that way. DARRYL: Yes. So what I did was I quickly grew some cat grass, which is the actual grass that they should eat a little bit of, moved the plants out of the way so that they're not so inviting. But then right where I had those plants before I put the cat grass, so that that way when the cat came up to it, it was allowed to eat it and it was fine. And really, all it was is what it just wanted to munch on something leafy. CHRISTINE: Right. Okay, I love that. CAIRA: Well I had a question about... Earlier, you talked about how a lot of people don't think of indoor plants as having seasons like an outdoor plant would. DARRYL: Yes. CAIRA: But it is spring now, and to that end, what should a plant parent really be doing differently now versus other times of the year? And does that even depend on where you live, like the outside climate? DARRYL: So in an indoor setting, the temperature change is not nearly as dramatic as for outdoors. So interestingly enough, there's a misinterpretation that, for example, winter has "Less light." Yes, if you're outdoors in the middle of an open field, there is less light. But the sun's angle is much lower in the sky. Plus, there are no leaves to block the sun. So in fact in the winter, the sun peers into my living room longer than it would in the summer. People say, "Oh, water less in winter." Well, not necessarily. If you're getting more sun, plus the air is drier in the winter, then everything is actually evaporating faster and being used up faster. So you could be watering more frequently in the winter, which is why I say if you're observing your soil dryness as your cue to water and not just the rote schedule, then you won't be affected by the changes, and rather just observe how the soil dries. CHRISTINE: I really love that, because it really brings the thing that outdoor gardeners do in their gardens but it's this real attunement with nature. I think the thing with plants for a lot of people is they see these beautiful pictures on Instagram. They see these beautiful lush spreads in magazines, and plants for a lot of people are this part of decor. In your most recent book especially, you talk about some reasons you should think beyond that for being a plant parent. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Why do you think that someone who is approaching taking care of indoor plants should think about these plants as more than just decor? DARRYL: I call it the ABC of houseplant appreciation. A is for the aesthetic. So that's the main part, which is like... Okay, yes, the first thing people think of is it looks nice, the plant looks nice and makes my space look nice. Which I'm not saying it doesn't, it definitely does. But then beyond that there's B, which is for biology. And that's when you can appreciate how the plant grows, and even how... It's very different than how humans live, because we can't chop off a piece of our arm and have it grow another person. But the plant can do that. And then the last part is C, which is companionship. When I have my monstera for a long enough time that you couldn't simply replace it with another monstera, it wouldn't be the one that I grew. So there's actual companionship with this as a living thing. CHRISTINE: Okay, Darryl, sometimes we like to do a rapid fire lightning round of questions at the end of an episode, so we thought that would be fun to do with you. We want to ask you for your plant recs for different spaces. Are you game? DARRYL: Yes, let's do it. CHRISTINE: All right, answer the quickest thing that comes to your mind. Basement apartment with just a few tiny half windows, what would you recommend? DARRYL: A ZZ plant. CHRISTINE: I want plants in my windowless interior rooms. This is for me. DARRYL: Fake plants. Oh, okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. Actually, you buy three plants, two of them in the window, one of them in the space, and rotate. CHRISTINE: Okay. I live in the desert with barely any humidity. DARRYL: Cactus. CHRISTINE: Tiny apartment with big plant aspirations. DARRYL: I think a pothos would be good. It'll grow fast, you'll have too much to handle in one year. CHRISTINE: Sunroom with drafty windows, with freezing temperatures outside. DARRYL: A freezing temperature. Okay, you got to start venturing into outdoor gardening. Hibiscus, for example. You keep it outside in the summer right in the sun, it can so-call overwinter. Even in a garage, it can still tolerate a cold room that's bright. It'll just defoliate for most of the time until springtime, and then it grows new leaves. CHRISTINE: Lives alone and travels a lot. DARRYL: I would also say cactus. CHRISTINE: Okay. ROSIE: Okay, so I just want to recap because I think the most important thing I'm taking away from this conversation is a reminder of how photosynthesis works from biology. You're talking about light, light, light. If all else fails, understand that light is how your plants get fed. DARRYL: Yes. If the plants could tell you and scream at you like, "What do I actually need?" Light is the first thing. Of course you still have to water. Of course I do all those things. But none of those things can work unless the plant is working. ROSIE: And I think the other thing that is jumping out from what you talked about is setting expectations, understanding that these are living things, and that I'm not always thriving, let's be honest. So why would my plants always be thriving? DARRYL: So you do your best with the care, and you try to set up the environment as best you can. But nature is still going to happen, decay is still going to happen. If you wanted it to look the same or always perfect all the time, then that's where the fake plant comes in. ROSIE: Darryl Cheng is the author of the books: The New Plant Parent and The New Plant Collector . Darryl, thank you so, so much for joining us. Appreciate it. DARRYL: Thank you very much. CHRISTINE: Thanks Darryl, thank you. We're going to take a quick break and when we're back we'll have Wirecutter senior staff writer Rose Lorre on to talk about the best hacks for getting houseplants on the cheap. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Before the break, we chatted with Darryl Cheng about how to keep your houseplants happy this spring. Hint hint, it's all about light. And now we're going to talk about how to get great houseplants on the cheap. I don't know about you, but I find houseplants incredibly expensive. They really are plant shops, so I'm excited to hear about this. CAIRA: Yeah, that's right. I am so ashamed about all the money that I've put into houseplants that I killed immediately, but that's why we're going to talk with Rose Lorre, who is a Wirecutter senior staff writer. She's written about how to find plants for a fraction of what you'd pay at a fancy plant shop, and she really does know how to find a bargain. She's going to share strategies for where and how to shop, and even how to propagate plants yourself so you can just get it for free. Rose, welcome to the show. ROSE: Thank you, it's so great to be here. How are you all? CHRISTINE: Good. ROSIE: Good. CHRISTINE: And we're excited to talk to you about plants. ROSE: I'm always excited to talk about plants. ROSIE: All right, rose plants, pots, all the stuff involved. Let's set aside for a minute. You don't have a good track record of keeping them alive, even aspirationally, this stuff gets expensive. You have something like 57 houseplants in your home? ROSE: Last I counted, yes. ROSIE: That's incredible. You got them for all about $50, total? ROSE: From the best of my recollection, I think it cost me in the ballpark of $50. ROSIE: Where are you finding these plants? ROSE: Honestly, most of them I'm finding through some sort of local buy nothing or buy nothing like group. There's a few that I belong to. Some are specific to plants, some are not. And I do a lot of buy-sell-swap trade of plants just from there. People, they want to trim their pothos plant. Those trimmings become new pothos plants, they give them away. A lot of people, myself included, their plants get too big for their space. And unfortunately you have to know that it's time to say goodbye to that plant, because you just can't care for it the way it needs to or should be cared for. So yeah, it's not a strict one-to-one trade, but like it's a community of folks that you know are up for helping each other out. ROSIE: What are some other reasons you would want to swap or re-home a plant? ROSE: Sometimes a plant just doesn't thrive in your air, in your environment, and it can be tricky sometimes to pinpoint why. And then you just... It's the same thing where it's like, "Well I just have to see if someone else wants to try and take this on. I can't figure out if it's a light issue, or a humidity issue or whatever the case may be." So I think that's the reason a lot of people... Or it's just like, "I have too many plants." I have to admit that I've done that too. I've downsized from time to time. CHRISTINE: It's time to purge. Can I ask, when you're looking for a buy, sell or buy nothing group in your area, what are you doing? Are you Googling Facebook Marketplace plants? If somebody's just curious, they want to find- ROSIE: It's a keyword search. CHRISTINE: Yeah, what is the keyword search? ROSE: I think you hit... If I were starting from scratch, I would search on Facebook, I would look plant, buy, sell, swap, trade, local. I would put my town name in. Gardening, that's another thing that I've noticed that even if you find it hard to find plant communities, meaning houseplant communities locally, try gardening next. And there are people who garden who will also like have indoor houseplants, and so you can find people that way too. CAIRA: I've also seen it all over Reddit. It's very easy to find your local subreddits for plants. CHRISTINE: Ooh, a little subreddit community. ROSE: I didn't even think about that. That's a great idea too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. CHRISTINE: What about, I've sometimes seen the botanic garden close to me doing plant sales. Did you ever hit up local plant communities in that way? ROSE: I do, I do. In fact, you just reminded me that I forgot a prop I was going to bring because I thought you guys would get a laugh out of it. So the town next to mine in New Jersey has a garden club, and every spring they do a huge three or four day sale. The prop I was going to bring was they send me a postcard every year to remind me, and the postcard is good for $1 off a purchase of $10 or more. And I just think, but like I will take that dollar, thank you very much. That's how cheap I am. So I do find that gardening clubs, botanic clubs, botanic gardens, definitely check those out. ROSIE: To be fair Rose, you did bring a couple of props including your shirt. What does your shirt read for folks that- ROSE: My shirt says easily distracted by plants. ROSIE: Love it. ROSE: Which is true. ROSIE: And then also there's a prop on the desk here. What do you have? ROSE: Rosie, this is not a prop, this is a gift.. Y'all can have some snake plants to take home. ROSIE: Oh, I love this. CAIRA: Oh my god. So this is a cutting, it's not a whole plant, right? ROSE: Correct. Well, more or less, yes. This is most snake plants that you would see potted, there'd be more stalks than what I have here. But it could be. CHRISTINE: Rose, I'm very curious about how you go about finding good, healthy plants. When you're kind of looking on Facebook marketplace or other places online, how do you kind of gauge whether something is healthy and worth your time? Have you run into any issues with unhealthy plants when you get them off of Facebook marketplace? ROSE: I did once get a plant years ago that slowly looked like it was flagging, dying. And I did ultimately investigate, meaning I de-potted it, and there were ants in the soil. That's the only time I've ever had that problem. But also, I got that plant for free. That's one of the reasons that I... I'm a natural cheapskate. But one of the reasons that I like doing plants for free is some plants die. You're not going to have 100% success. And if I didn't pay anything or next to nothing for the plant, then it stings less. That's all. CAIRA: Don't you run the risk of bringing basically a sick plant into your environment though, and then it can affect the others? ROSE: The way that it can affect the others is if it has some sort of an infestation. Something like fungus, gnats, mealy bugs, spider mites. Very small bugs that live either on the leaf, often the underside of the leaf, sometimes where the leaf meets the stem, sometimes in the soil. Now it would have to be a very severe infestation to actually kill a plant, but it's certainly not ideal and it's not always pretty to look at. And yeah, you definitely want to avoid it. So yes, when you get a new plant, look at it real close. You want to look for spider mites. Honestly, you should have a magnifying glass or an app on your phone that works as a magnifying glass. If you look at the guide to buying plants online, you can see a couple examples of this. Sometimes you can't really see the spider mites, but you can see their strings. They just look like very thin white threads. So you should definitely inspect your plants when they get home. One of the things that I try and do as much as possible, and you do need to have the space for this in your home. You should quarantine any new plant that comes in, no matter where you get it from. If you can quarantine it in a room where it's the only plant in the room, great. If you need to just make it a corner of a room. The most you can do, you should do for about a week. CHRISTINE: Okay, so let's just do a quick recap so far. You don't need to spend a lot (if anything) on new plants. Try to find local buy-nothing groups and garden clubs, make plant friends who can give you cuttings, and dial-in your plant keyword search on Facebook Marketplace. And when you do bring home a new plant, it's a good idea to quarantine it for about a week to make sure it's healthy and won't spread anything to your other plants. CAIRA: We wanted to ask you, because you did test how to shop for plants online last year, and I have a two part question for this. First of all, why are people shopping for plants online? Because it just seems like there's a wealth of options in most local areas. And then if you do want to do that, is it worth it? ROSE: That's a great question. So the first part, I honestly would say that an online plant purveyor should be your last option. It's good if you want to send a gift long distance. I live by snake plants and pothos plants. I like my bread and butter plants. But I also like plants that have pink in the leaves, I'm a real sucker for that. I just got a cloche, a glass dome. I got it from a garage sale, of course. I've always wanted to grow a plant under a cloche, because you can create a little micro high humid environment. And so I'm thinking for that, since there are specific plants I would want to grow in that, I might splurge on a dot com type plant purchase. But yeah, for the most part that to me is like your last option. I would look for neighbors, I would look for garden sales, I would look for local plant shops. Everyone's probably got a big box store near them. Home Depot has a section, and Lowe's usually has a section. They're not expensive, but they're usually not in the greatest shape. They just don't get the attention that they need. But you can probably rescue from there if that's your best option. Online plant purveyors to me are for gifts, or special plants that you're... I want this plant, I'm willing to splurge over my usual. CAIRA: And you think that they travel well? I just imagine plants coming in a box and I'm like, "Wouldn't that kill it?" ROSE: Right. A good plant purveyor will either include for free when necessary or they'll ask you to spend like another five bucks on a heat pack, which is just the ones that you break and put on your sore leg or what the case may be. And we found that those can work pretty well. And they should be packed very, very well. We actually timed how long it took us to open each package, because between the dirt, and leaves getting bruised, or bent, or damaged or snapped off, there's a lot of reasons why this thing really needs to be packed well. It should have a lot of signage on the outside. We counted up how many, like this side up live plants inside all those sorts of stickers. So for the most part, the delivery was not as bad as you might fear. There was one snake plant that did meet the worst possible fate it could have met. It did not have a heat pack, and it arrived. The leaves were soggy and spongy, and flopped over. It was dying. It took all of what, two, three days in transit to basically kill this thing in a cold snap. But for the most part, the plant will survive those two or three days. CHRISTINE: But by and large, just go local. ROSE: Oh, yes. CHRISTINE: Just go local if you can, and skip them. ROSIE: Unless you're trying to buy a rose that you can put under a cloche like in- CAIRA: Beauty and the Beast? CHRISTINE: Like in Beauty and the Beast. CAIRA: Okay, Rose. Well before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question. What's the last thing you've bought that you've really loved? ROSE: First of all, I have been trying to buy less in 2025, just in general. But there are things that you have to buy like toilet paper, and I have been trying to find ways to bring less plastic into my home and into my life. So I- ROSIE: I'm terrified of whatever this is going to be. CAIRA: This is a real setup. ROSE: It is? All right, well the punchline is I bought Who Gives A Crap toilet paper. That's the punchline. CAIRA: I love Who Gives A Crap. ROSE: I bought the Who Gives A Crap. CHRISTINE: And this is toilet paper we recommend, right? CAIRA: Yes. ROSE: Yes, it is. And that's- CAIRA: And it comes wrapped in this pretty paper. It's almost like a gift. ROSE: Very pretty paper. Okay, so you've used it? CAIRA: Yeah, I love it. ROSE: There's one roll in the box that has a little label on it that says, "Open this one last," and I haven't opened it. I'm really curious to see what happens. CAIRA: I'm not going to ruin the surprise. ROSE: If anyone can make toilet paper fun, they've found a way. But yeah, the packaging, which is paper, is very appealing. It's just fun, and there have been no complaints. CHRISTINE: Is it really soft? CAIRA: Yes. CHRISTINE: What's so great about it? Yeah. ROSE: I think it is soft. ROSIE: Thank you so much for joining us, Rose. ROSE: You're welcome, thank you. CHRISTINE: Thanks, Rose. CHRISTINE: All right. That was a lot of plant info. CAIRA: It really was. CHRISTINE: What do y'all think? ROSIE: I loved it. CHRISTINE: Yeah. ROSIE: I feel empowered actually after that. I think the combination of Rose suggesting you can get plants very, very cheaply if not free, and Darryl reminding me about photosynthesis- CHRISTINE: Yes, science. ROSIE: ... and how essentially light is how you feed plants. CHRISTINE: I knew that, but I forgot that I kept thinking, oh, if I just give my plants more fertilizer, maybe they'll perk up a little bit. ROSIE: Totally. CAIRA: Or water. ROSIE: Water, yeah. CHRISTINE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. CAIRA: Just over-watering, I think that was my problem before. And also I've always lived in apartments that just didn't have much light at all. But I think if I really wanted to take care of another plant baby anytime soon, I think I would just get a pothos and hang it directly in the one window I do have and let it do its thing. CHRISTINE: Let it do its thing, yeah. CAIRA: And not expect it to grow into a big, huge flowing plant, it's just going to be a little one. CHRISTINE: Set your expectations, yeah. I also think I might want to get a light meter, because I think that I'm ready. I have maybe 20 plants in my apartment. CAIRA: Oh, that's definitely enough. CHRISTINE: Yeah, maybe I'm ready to actually get a little scientific. And I would like to welcome some more plant babies into my home, so I think I'm going to keep an eye out this spring and summer for plant sales. Rose's great advice around look for plant sales at garden clubs or locally. I don't think that I have the patience for Facebook Marketplace for finding plants, but I would dip into a little plant sale. CAIRA: Find your community. CHRISTINE: That's right. ROSIE: As ever, if you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage, head over to our website or you can find a link in the show notes. CHRISTINE: And Rosie, if you would like to learn more about fake plants, we also have a fake plant guide to the least terrible fake plants. ROSIE: I love that. I prefer faux because it makes me feel- CHRISTINE: Because it's classier. ROSIE: Yeah, it makes me feel a little bit better, but I'm going to check that out. Darryl Cheng's two books, the New Plant Parent and the New Plant Collector are available now. And you can check him out @HouseplantJournal on Instagram. That's it for us. CHRISTINE: See you. ROSIE: Bye. Bye-bye. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by me, Rosie Guerin, and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman. Today's episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Alicia Byetu 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. [BLOOPER] CHRISTINE: Botanic, botanic. ROSIE: Botanic. CHRISTINE: Botanic. CAIRA: Rose, sometimes I see the local botanic garden close to me has no- ROSIE: Still no. CAIRA: I'm not saying it right, I'm sorry.
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?
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
RIBER reports solid growth in sales and earnings in 2024
RIBER reports solid growth in sales and earnings in 2024 Revenues: €41.2m (+5%) Income from ordinary operations: €4.5m, representing 11% of revenues Net income: €4.1m (+21%) Proposed payout of €0.08 per share for 2024 (+14%)(€m - at December 31) 2024 2023 Change Revenues 41.2 39.3 +4.8% MBE systems revenues 31.0 29.0 +7.0% Services and accessories revenues 10.2 10.3 -1.2% Gross margin% of revenues 14.836.1% 13.233.7% +12.1% Income from ordinary operations% of revenues 4.510.9% 3.910.0% +14.4% Operating income% of revenues 4.410.6% 3.910.0% +11.3% Pre-tax income% of revenues 4.410.6% 3.69.1% +22.5% Net income% of revenues 4.110.0% 3.48.7% +21.4% Key developments In 2024, RIBER achieved its revenues targets, driven by solid growth in MBE system sales. This momentum reflects the strengthening of its positions in the MBE market, for both research and industrial production, as evidenced by the strong order intake during the year, with 13 new MBE systems. In this context, the company's earnings show a clear improvement compared with the previous year. Alongside this, RIBER moved forward with its innovation efforts with the development of ROSIE (RIBER Oxide on SIlicon Epitaxy), a new system dedicated to the silicon photonics sector. Designed to meet the growing demands of optical transmission and reception applications, its commercial launch, scheduled for 2026, opens up new prospects in a fast-growing market. This dynamism is supported by the demand for advanced semiconductor materials dedicated to data transmission and Artificial Intelligence. The technology developed by RIBER will help reduce energy consumption, particularly in data centers. Revenues Full-year revenues for 2024 increased to €41.2m, up +5% from 2023. Revenues for MBE systems were up +7% to €31.0m for 12 machines delivered, compared with 13 in 2023. Revenues for services and accessories amounted to 10.2 million euros, representing 24.8% of 2024 revenues, and were broadly stable year-on-year. Earnings The gross margin was €14.8m, up +12.1%, driven by growth in system business. Income from ordinary operations was €4.5m, up +14.4% compared with the previous year, thanks to effective control of operating costs. It represents 11% of revenues, compared with 10% in 2023. Net income totaled €4.1m, compared with €3.4m in 2023, an increase of +21.4%.Cash flow and balance sheet The cash position at end-2023 was positive at €8.6m, compared to €9.7m at end-2023. Shareholders' equity totaled €23.6m, up +€2.3m compared with end-2023. This change is driven by the earnings for the year 2024 and the distribution of amounts drawn against the issue premium for 2023 to book The order book at December 31, 2024 represented €21.7m, down 17% year-on-year, including 7 MBE systems (€16.7m), of which 5 for production, as well as orders for services and accessories (€5.0m). The order book is up after factoring the two new orders announced in January 2025 for a production system in Europe and a research system in the United States, both scheduled for delivery in 2025. Outlook In view of the uncertainties linked to the application of US customs duties and the economic environment, RIBER is reserving its position on issuing guidance for fiscal year 2025. RIBER remains committed to its medium-term objectives. In this context, RIBER is moving forward with its growth strategy by strengthening its technological leadership and expanding its solutions into new high value-added markets, particularly silicon photonics and materials for quantum technologies. These developments will be presented at the next Annual General Meeting on June 18, 2025. Distribution of amounts drawn against the 'issue premium' account The Board of Directors will propose to the June 18, 2025 General Meeting a cash distribution of €0.08 per share, through a partial reimbursement of the issue premium. It will be released for payment on June 25, 2025. Next dates April 18, 2025 - 6:00pm: 2024 annual financial report June 18, 2025 - 10:00am: General Meeting in Paris The annual financial statements were approved by the Board of Directors on April 8, 2025. The statutory auditors have completed the audit procedures on the corporate and consolidated accounts. The certification report will be issued once the necessary procedures have been finalized for publishing the full-year financial report. In compliance with AMF regulations and the operating rules of Euronext Growth Paris, RIBER will henceforth publish its sales figures on a half-yearly basis, except in the event of significant developments. About RIBER Founded in 1964, RIBER is the global market leader for MBE - molecular beam epitaxy - equipment. It designs and produces equipment for the semiconductor industry and provides scientific and technical support for its clients (hardware and software), maintaining their equipment and optimizing their performance and output levels. Accelerating the performance of electronics, RIBER's equipment performs an essential role in the development of advanced semiconductor systems that are used in numerous applications, from information technologies to photonics (lasers, sensors, etc.), 5G telecommunications networks and research, including quantum computing. RIBER is a BPI France-approved innovative company and is listed on the Euronext Growth Paris market (ISIN: FR0000075954). Contacts RIBER : Annie Geoffroy| tel: +33 (0)1 39 96 65 00 | invest@ ACTUS FINANCE & COMMUNICATION : Cyril Combe | tel: +33 (0)1 53 65 68 68 | ccombe@ Attachment CP_Riber_Résultats 2024_EN_DEFSign in to access your portfolio
