Internationally bestselling author Daniel Pinkwater (The Big Orange Splot) brings his zany wit and wisdom to the magical adventures of a clever girl and her brave dog. Told with warmth and wit, this is a delightful exploration of growing up, the power of family, and how sometimes the best things in life happen when you least expect them. “Now what could be more fun than that?,’ they ask in Jules, Penny & The Rooster , and the only possible answer is the entirety of Pinkwater’s book itself―girl adepts, telepathic dogs, largehearted aunts, dancing fauns, magic museums, characters named Hamantaschen, and all.” ― Mark London Williams, author of the Danger Boy series and Max Random and the Zombie 500 Jules McShultz was promised a dog. Supposedly, she’d get one once her family moved from the city to the suburbs. But then her parents decided it still wasn’t the right time. So, Jules does what any intelligent girl would do. Instead of sulking, she enters an essay contest and wins first prize: A purebred Collie. And no one―not even Jules’ parents―can resist Penny, who is clearly Jules’s perfect new canine pal. Jules and Penny are ready to spend the summer exploring the woods by the house. But the woods are not at all what they seem to be. Magic and adventure await them just on the other side of an old stone wall.

Recommended on 1 episode:

Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It

Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago. What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better? Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.” In this conversation, we discuss their different frameworks, and how they connect to all kinds of issues that plague the modern internet: the feeling that we’re being manipulated; the deranging of our politics; the squeezing of small businesses and creators; the deluge of spam and fraud; the constant surveillance and privacy risks; the quiet rise of algorithmic pricing; and the dehumanization of work. And they lay out the policies that they think would go furthest in making all these different aspects of our digital lives better.

Books recommended:

• 📕  The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 by Paul Kennedy
• 📘  Small Is Beautiful [Paperback] [Jan 01, 1993] E F Schumacher by E.F. Schumacher
• 📗  Manipulation: What It Is, Why It's Bad, What to Do About It by Cass R. Sunstein
• 📙  Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams
• 📕  Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America by Bridget Read
• 📘  Jules, Penny & The Rooster by Daniel Pinkwater, Elizabeth Story

Cory Doctorow , Tim Wu Feb. 6, 2026 6 books recommended

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