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FEBRUARY 15, 2019

Welcome back to the Weekly Sound Off. We survived Valentine’s Day! Time to sit back and enjoy the new episode of Audicted, in which our editors dissect all the delightful things that make romance, the genre, so much more compelling than romance, the greeting card version. And here’s more of what held our interest this week...

This adaptation news is epic.

The news that one of our Audible Essentials will be a Hulu miniseries made by two absolute LEGENDS—Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese—has editor Kyle slightly freaking out. The Devil in the White City follows two men in late-1800s Chicago, one striving to build a beautiful World’s Fair and one striving to build, well…a murder house. Part of us is a little disappointed this isn’t coming to the silver screen, as was initially the aim, but then again, we are still in the golden age of television so we’ll simply lean into it and stalk IMDB until we have a release date.

From Russian with love—and listening recommendations!

Speaking of great TV, after devouring Netflix’s time-loop drama Russian Doll, editor Kat is now busy devouring the show’s literary sources. Namely Emily of New Moon, the first book in Anne of Green Gables author L.M. Montgomery’s *other* coming-of-age series. A bit like Anne’s cooler, lesser-known sister, orphan Emily is also a major key to Russian Doll. And though the show gets compared to Groundhog Day, it was actually more inspired by Life in Code, about a female coder, and Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Now, if only there were a book that showed us how to get Natasha Lyonne’s hair…

Just call us Phonographible.

Someone at Scribner’s Magazine in 1894 must have been practicing the dark arts, because they spookily predicted the invention of audiobooks long before they were a reality. In a scanned copy of the magazine that a journalist recently unearthed, an article hilariously describes “phonographic literature for the promenade” and how it will usurp the printed word. We’re just glad they got one thing wrong—they predicted we’d be listening with “a sort of portable organ, which may be slung over the shoulder, composed of an infinite number of small tubes.” We’ll listen on our phones, thanks!

No storming the house, guys.

It’s always a surprise to find out what riles people up. Take, for instance, author Neil Gaiman’s utter disdain for the end result of a Victorian house in San Francisco that had the charm and quirks renovated out of it. Celebs from Jane Lynch to Felicia Day to Elijah Wood and more voiced their displeasure. Maybe Gaiman, prolific writer that he is, could do his own version of Victorian Secrets—about the houses, not the historical period, that is.

Over and out.

NASA reported earlier this week that its mission to Mars with the Opportunity rover has officially ended. Dust storms prohibited engineers from contacting the rover since June of last year, and with no Mark Watney on hand to clean up, attempts at communication finally stopped after a glorious 15 years of discovery. Designed to last just 90 Sols (solar days on Mars), Opportunity continually made history, including discovering that the plain Meridiani Planum was once immersed in water, and taking the first-ever selfie in space to celebrate its 5,000th Sol.
So long and thanks for all the memories, Oppy.
—the audible editors