Today morning I woke up to the news that my favorite podcast reply all is ending after 7 long years. I wasn’t a listener from the beginning but as soon as I found out about the podcast I got hooked. So I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about the podcast.
I first got to know about the podcast from MKBHD. In one of his videos or podcast episodes, he talked about reply all being his favorite podcast. As soon as he said that I had to check it out. I love the content made by MKBHD and I thought if he likes it I might like it. I immediately opened their spotify page and I saw that they had 140 episodes at that time. Thus my journey started and I kept on listening to their episodes.
I listened to the first 40 episodes really fast. I couldn’t stop listening. The episodes were so well made. The chemistry between the two hosts at that time, Alex and PJ, was amazing. They both made the show come to light along with the help of other producers. They had a way of finding stories and telling them in the best way possible.
After binging a ton of the episodes I started to take things slow. I didn’t want the episodes to end. If I binge too fast I might not have any to listen to. Slowly I started listening to the latest episodes while catching up on the previous ones.
I loved a lot of things about the show. Firstly the different formats they had. The two I enjoyed the most were Super Tech Support and Yes Yes No No. I am pretty sure these names make zero sense to you but for a reply all fans they mean a lot. In the super tech support, the hosts took questions from their audience. They found the most unique tech problems and tried to help them. These problems lead to great investigative journalism which leads to great episodes. The most recent one was about how people hack Spotify’s algorithm. The story would start somewhere completely unexplainable but then the hosts would figure it out. Well, at least the majority of the time they did. That’s why these episodes took the longest. The other format Yes Yes No No was quite different. In these episodes their CEO Alex Blumberg used to come on the show and bring tweets that he had no idea about. He was that twitter savvy and the job of Alex and PJ was to explain these tweets to him. These episodes were a lot of fun to listen to.
Other than these two formats they had episodes where producers would come in with their own story that had some internet element to it. That was it. A show about the internet. I learned about some of the most fascinating internet stories thanks to this podcast.
I haven’t probably explained well what I love about the podcast. It’s really late at night and I am pretty sad about the podcast ending. The controversy last year didn’t help the show and although Alex and the new host Emmanuel were doing a great job, it’s ending. They are also going separate ways. The show might go on or might die out. Most probably it will die out.
But I will still have the 180+ episodes to go back and listen to. I am a person who refuses to rewatch anything. I also don’t relisten to podcasts that much. But reply all episodes are something I am always up for a listen. I also have a dream of starting something similar to reply all 20 years later. They had some of the best formats and it would be a waste to not make use of it. So if you are reading this in 2042 and if I am alive, please ask me about my podcast.