Answer All'south Brilliant Roman Mars Episode Messes With the Podcasting Manufacture

It can be pretty hard to depict Reply All, inarguably the all-time podcast on Gimlet Media's roster. To phone call it a "podcast well-nigh the internet" is far too limited, but calling it "a podcast that tells rich and fascinating stories about people using the internet" doesn't quite cutting it either, in part because that phrasing isn't able to account for the distinct weirdness of last week'south episode — itself difficult to describe. However you lot'd want to describe it, though, yous should definitely cheque the episode out. It's meridian, pure Reply All: incredibly fun, wildly inventive, absolutely ludicrous.

Titled "The Roman Mars Mazda Virus," the episode also embodies, I think, what I promise will survive in an industry environment where $500 million worth of podcast companies, including Reply All'south publisher Gimlet Media, has been ingested past Spotify. Specifically: podcasting as driven past a sense of chaos and the sheer possibility that simply anything can happen. "The Roman Mars Mazda Virus" carries these qualities wholeheartedly … though the fact that it does might itself exist a potent scrap of meta-absurdity, given Respond All's unambiguously corporate context. What, exactly, are nosotros looking at here?

The episode's hook comes from a Houston-area admirer named Ben. Ben is the kind of person who listens to hundreds of hours of podcasts, and who has a podcast of his own. But Ben has a problem: He bought a new car recently, a 2016 Mazda 6, and he finds that its entertainment system can play all the podcasts of his choosing except for 1 in item: 99% Invisible, the dearest podcast well-nigh design hosted past Roman Mars. Every time Ben tries to play an episode over the car radio, it simply refuses to comply and automatically shuts downwardly. Rude.

This Roman Mars–rejecting Mazda becomes the latest subject of Answer All'due south recurring "Super Tech Support" segment. For the unfamiliar, the segment follows co-host Alex Goldman and the rest of the squad as they attempt to solve a strange applied science trouble for a listener. And things can become quite foreign indeed, whether it'southward tracking down a Snapchat hacker, figuring out the origins of strange phone calls that seem to offer glimpses into the lives of others, or finding a mysterious warehouse in New Jersey that sucks in hijacked online purchases like a void.

Often, the internet being what it is, these adventures touch the surface of something much darker, possibly even dangerous. Not and then with the case of Ben'southward malfunctioning Mazda, which instead leads Goldman & Co. into a journey of pure whimsy. In their bid to figure out why the automobile and then vehemently rejects 99% Invisible — is it Mars's voice? Is it a virus? — they call upward the famed podcaster, leading to an unexpectedly pleasant piece of Avengers-esque crossover activeness. Mars offers up that this isn't the beginning time he's heard of this problem, but is stumped and bummed that it happens however. Goldman eventually lands on the theory that the shutdowns might take something to do with the pct symbol in the podcast'southward title, and how that could mess up machine computing systems.

Here's where the episode gets actually out there: To examination the theory, Goldman wrangles the residue of the team to brand a collection of fake podcasts that characteristic symbol-filled titles to challenge the limits of Ben's automobile radio. Those test podcasts include: ^infinite^, which mostly consists of Blade Runner–esque synth music; 100% Related?, in which Goldman'due south father, a gauge, helps adjudicate whether he and Alex are, indeed, 100 per centum related; (Less Than, Approximately, Greater Than), in which food writer Samin Nosrat teaches Goldman how to bake a berry clafouti; and 88% Parentheticals, which features, preposterously, Sarah Koenig telling a story that, well, more often than not trails off in parentheticals.

Again, these shows aren't existent — no matter how much I wish they were — but you tin can absolutely find them as actual podcasts out in the earth that y'all tin can rate, review, and subscribe to. Many of them are floating around the Apple Podcast charts, which themselves are erroneously considered past many in the podcast biz to exist valuable existent estate, where placement confers audience accomplishment. (Information technology's a hotness meter in a higher place anything else, and has more than in mutual with the eminently game-able music streaming charts than Nielsen ratings.)

Much like Answer All, podcasting itself tin can exist pretty hard to draw. It's a newish technology, it'southward an emerging civilisation, it'due south a formal oddity, it's a nascent manufacture, and information technology's notwithstanding some other artifact of a culture that's on the verge of corporatization and losing its absurd (if indeed information technology was ever cool at all). And and then the meta-joke of seeing those fake podcasts floating around the Apple tree Podcast charts is amusing, but as well a callback: It's a testament to the medium's famously low barriers to publishing, and a reminder that, despite the money flowing in, it all the same tin be everyone's game.

Answer All'southward hijinks actually emphasize the surreality of podcasting's past few capitalistic months. Despite being a baby industry that'south increasingly capable of bringing in hundreds of millions of advertising dollars — so much and then that it has prompted corporations like Spotify to spend gobs of money gobbling upwardly podcast firms, including Gimlet Media — podcasting remains the kind of business where stunts similar this can easily take upward valuable real estate, at to the lowest degree for a moment. That 88% Parenthetical happens to be made by a squad whose company now belongs to Spotify the corporation (and that'southward currently going through a union battle) simply adds to the absurdity of the whole scene. I'yard sure there's some element of irony to be identified and unpacked here, just there'southward too a high probability that I don't really know who the joke is really on.

Is whatsoever of this real? Is podcasting, and its supposedly booming business that we've been hearing and so much nearly, actually real? How real can it go when information technology's still so hard to tell what'southward actually big and what isn't, when a joke one-off podcast can give so much more than joy than and so many other podcasts with bodily budgets? Maybe those are the wrong questions; perhaps I'm not supposed to be able to answer them.

Anyway, I won't spoil the conclusion to the mystery of Ben'southward malfunctioning Mazda, other than to say it gets resolved in a way that yous'd call back it would: simply, but not without some trouble.

Reply All'south Latest Episode Messes With the Podcast Industry