How did you get started in podcasting?
Well, I got a degree in journalism in college. And then I took an internship at WNYC, which is the big New York City Public radio station, the flagship public radio station in New York City. I was a producer on a show called “On the Media”. This was like 2010. It was right about the time that every show started also making their shows available as podcasts. And so, when we decided we wanted to do our own thing, and it felt a little too weird for broadcast radio, we naturally thought we could just find an audience in podcasting.
What gave you the idea for Reply-All?
Well, at the time we did it I would say that PJ and I were very online people. I'm 43 and I've been using the Internet since I was like 13. So that means I've been using it for 30 years, but I started using it before there were even web browsers. I'm pretty sure I would just take a modem and dial up to a local bulletin board. There was just a computer in some guy's house that was local, that I could just call.
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And we've always been part of these little communities online, you know. And in those communities there are stories, and those stories are interesting. And I think for a long time people treated the online community as a thing that was "not real”. We both thought it's as real as community anywhere else, and we feel like it's undercover. So we just decided to make a show where we would cover it.
Did you start the podcast alone, or did you already have a team?
PJ and I originally started a show that was sort of like “Reply All” at WNYC. It was called “TLDR”. We did about 38 episodes of it. Then Alex Bloomberg invited us to come work at Gimlet. When we started at Gimlet, it was the two of us and one producer. That was in late 2014. And then it was like 5 people by the end of the first year, and then we kind of stopped growing at about 8 or 9 people over the next couple of years. But initially it was just the 2 of us when we were doing “TLDR”, and then it was just us and one producer when we started “Reply All”.
Can you give me a summary of your first episode, and why you made it?
The first episode of “Reply All” was about this app that was developed by this artist named Miranda July, and the premise was basically that you would have people in the real world go do things on your behalf. And they could be as sort of pedestrian or serious as you can imagine. In this particular story a woman used this app to tell another person that they loved them. And I think the reason that we did it is we just thought it is such an intimate thing to invite another person, a stranger into telling someone that you're in love with them. We thought that it would be really interesting to hear the response to having that experience by everybody who is involved.
How many people would you say are ideal for a podcast team?
That's such a tough question. I feel like the smaller a team is, the more agile you can be. There's an old saying that's about trying to turn a ship around midstream or something like that. A ship is so big that it takes a long time for it to turn around. And when a show gets really big, it takes a long time for it to process information and to move in a speedy way. I mean, if you listen to the earlier episodes, we tried much weirder stuff because there were just fewer of us, and we just kind of moved fast and tried things.
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All that said, the pace that we were going for the first couple of years, you know, putting out almost an episode a week for the first 2 or 3 years, was totally unsustainable. We were just working way too hard, so we had to eventually stop that crazy schedule.
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So I didn't answer your question. I don't know the answer to that. I feel like we were sort of at our peak of of performance at about 6 or 7, and then I think we ended with 10 of us.
In your opinion, what is the best episode of Reply-All?
Oh, that's tough. I mean, I don't agree with a lot of the people who tend to listen to the show. A lot of people really like the ones where I went to India. But I'm a big fan of the “Snapchat Thief”. The thing is that, the ones that I like are not necessarily the ones that are the most fun to listen to. I think they're the ones that were the most fun to report. So, like “Zardulu”. I really liked reporting that. But there's one where I had to help this woman get her website back after it had been taken by domain squatters which are just people who look for expired domains, and then buy them and try and sell them back to people at an inflated price. So I just had a lot of fun reporting that when I learned a lot. It was really easy. I didn't hit too many dead ends. I look back very fondly on that. It was the episode called “Good job, Alex”.
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There is a very early one called “The Man in the FBI Hat” about a guy who ran a very successful early internet service provider in Indiana or Illinois. But he was also a notorious scammer, who was wanted for attempted murder of a policeman, and had to change his name and was on the run from the cops. I really like that one. But you know “The Case of the Missing Hit”, “Snapchat Thief” and “Long Distance” are kind of the ones that people remember the most. And I feel that in terms of sheer scope and impact, those are the ones that were really fun to make.
How does a podcast earn income?
The way we did it was by running ads. For every 1,000 downloads we get, we charge an amount, let's say, $40. So we go to an advertiser and we say, hey, we anticipate getting 75,000 downloads for this episode and we're going to charge you $40 per 1,000 downloads that we get. And advertisers either agree or don't agree to that. And that's how the advertising model works. There are a lot of podcasts now that do patron supported models where they'll do a public episode every week. And then they do an episode where, like, if you give them $5 a month, you get that one too. We never did that one just because our show was too high production to do two episodes a week. But that's definitely an option for people.
What was the hardest episode of Reply-All to make?
Hardest is an interesting term, right? Because I can definitely remember the ones that took the longest. I think hardest usually means like breaking a story or breaking information, or coming to some breakthrough after something has bothered us for a long time. I feel like “Negative Mount Pleasant” required a lot of very tough reporting. Oh, you know what it was? It was Sruthi’s four part episode about a guy who was in prison and started a blog about how he was innocent. And Sruthi spent 4 episodes working through re-reporting the crime, talking to him and talking to other people. That one was really tough, and involved a lot of really difficult reporting. I think that was the hardest one.
What are your thoughts on PJ leaving Reply-All?
It is sad, and it was not the way that I wanted the show to go. I think PJ is the best, but I also think he did some stuff that was really not great. I can't really speak to whether is was an appropriate or inappropriate response. But I think that it's really sad, because I think that he's an incredibly talented podcaster. I think he's a better writer for radio than anyone I've ever met. And he is still doing stuff. I know he's working with the Wall Street Journal, and I'm really glad that he's still making things. But yeah, it's sad.
What are your favourite podcasts to listen to?
You know it's funny. I don't really listen to that many narrative podcasts because I find myself listening to them in the way that I would listen to a “Reply All” episode and try to edit them. I'm like “Well, I don't like the way they wrote this part”, or “I wouldn't have included these interviews in this order”. And I find it really distracting. But there are narrative podcasts I really like such as “Blowback”, which is a podcast about American Imperialism. The first season was about America's history with the Middle East, and specifically the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The second season was about Cuba, and then the most recent season was about South Korea. I think that show is fantastic.
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I listen to “The Daily”. I’m also a big fan of a comedy podcast called “Hollywood Handbook”. That's just very silly. I like listening to that. I like “Maintenance Phase” a lot, which is a podcast about health fads. It's about people who promise miracle weight loss or ways to focus better if you pay them for it. And these people go through and debunk them piece by piece. I think that that's pretty much the stuff I find myself listening to the most.
Have you been working on anything since Reply-All ended?
Not podcast-wise, but I've been cooking some stuff up and talking to people about it. Podcasting is a very different place than it was when we started “Reply All”. There were a couple of huge podcasting deals, where podcast companies got sold for a lot of money, Gimlet being one of them. And I think a lot of people thought that there was a ton of money in podcasts. But now those people are kind of gone. The way that we were getting money for many years was by appealing to the same kind of venture capitalists that would invest in a tech company, and expect to see a 100 times return on their investment. And I think they've realized that's not going to happen with podcasts. So the money isn't quite there anymore to do big investigative stuff. So it's harder to make a show like “Reply All” now. I don't even know that a show like “Reply All” would ever get a green light now. But I do have some stuff that people seem interested in. I do plan on podcasting again. I can't say anything yet, because nothing is set in stone.
Do you have any advice for someone who wanted to get started in podcasting?
Do I have any advice? Whoo! That's a great question. My two pieces of advice are intern. Be an intern some place where you admire people's work. There is no better way to learn than to go shadow the people who do a good job and that you like. And the other thing I would say is that you can't be afraid to make bad stuff in public, because it will always happen. And sometimes you just have to start making things and they have to stink for a while before they get good. We were very lucky that we had “TLDR” at WNYC because it was like a show that flew under the radar, and not many people listen to, and we got to get all the bad stuff out first. And then we started “Reply All” and we could already hit the ground running. We already knew what worked for us, and what didn't work for us. It was an opportunity that I don't think anybody else really gets which is like a starter podcast. But you know we made a lot of bad stuff, and you just have to not be afraid to make bad stuff. So I think that that's my advice.