Human Vs. Algorithm: October 13, 2022

·50 min·5 clips

Jen and Vanessa pit human intuition against book recommendation algorithms to answer listener questions.

The experiment is still getting its balance. Jen frames Human vs. Algorithm as a Get Booked tweak: take listener requests, put one human recommendation beside one algorithm researched pick, and see what shakes loose. Vanessa is honest about the hard part. Matching a book to a request can look tidy until the actual taste signals start fighting each other. That friction gives the episode its spark, because Jen and Vanessa leave the machinery out in the open while they talk. One request leads them into gender nonfiction. Vanessa praises a short illustrated pick because it makes big ideas feel clear, direct, and finishable in one sitting. The praise stays practical, with a nudge toward talks, interviews, and other public resources for listeners who want more from the same speaker. Then Jamie asks for deep weirdness, using The Hike as the touchstone for a mix of horror, mystery, adventure, fantasy, and strange forward motion. Vanessa does not pretend that is an easy target. Her human pick is Gideon the Ninth, the first Locked Tomb book, pitched with the familiar shorthand: lesbian necromancer space opera. It almost feels too obvious to her, but it fits the weirdness, genre pileup, and adventure charge Jamie is after. Jen keeps the pace quick. The episode feels less like a contest than a look at recommendation logic while it is happening.

As heard by us

A lively human-versus-algorithm recommendation test, with Gideon the Ninth as its strange, energetic centerpiece.

Get Booked frames its recommendation desk as a human-taste test against book-algorithm matching, pairing a personal pick with what an algorithm returns for the same listener request.

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Why you'd press play

You get human instinct, algorithmic curiosity, and a lesbian necromancer space opera inside one lively Book Riot recommendation experiment.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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