Skip to main content
Snow icon
33º

‘Reply All’ podcast says goodbye after 8 years, 189 episodes -- and a scandal

Podcast put on hiatus last year after host, senior reporter accused of contributing to toxic environment

FILE- This March 20, 2018, file photo shows the Spotify app on an iPad in Baltimore. Spotify-owned Gimlet's popular Reply All podcast is on hold and canceling the remaining two episodes of a series that explored structural racism and a problematic work culture at the Bon Appetit food magazine after former Gimlet colleagues noted similar behavior by the people behind the podcast. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File) (Patrick Semansky, Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The “Reply All” podcast said goodbye with its 189th episode and after eight years of streaming.

In February of last year, the podcast was put on hiatus and canceled two episodes of a series that explored allegations of structural racism and problematic work culture at the food magazine Bon Appetit.

Recommended Videos



The hiatus was because former Gimlet Media (the company that owns the podcast) employees alleged that two people behind the “Reply All” podcast had acted similarly to what they were investigating at Bon Appetit.

Read more: ‘Reply All’ podcast paused amid charges of toxic behavior

One former employee, Eric Eddings, spoke out on Twitter on Feb. 16, 2021. Eddings alleged that P.J. Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni “contributed to a near identical toxic dynamic at Gimlet.”

Eddings said Vogt and Pinnamaneni tried to rally others against a drive to unionize and that Vogt had sent harassing messages to organizers. Vogt and Pinnamaneni apologized on Twitter, although Pinnamaneni’s Twitter account does not exist anymore.

On Feb. 25, 2021, Alex Goldman, one of the hosts, released an audio statement that reads, in part:

“These accounts prompted a reckoning on our team about the work culture at Reply All. They also left us asking whether we could continue to air this story without interrogating ourselves and what has unfolded at Gimlet. We now understand that we should not have published this series as reported, and the fact that we did was a systemic editorial failure. We’re not going to be continuing the series and P.J. and Sruthi have both decided to leave the Reply All team.”

While “Reply All” did not release the rest of the episodes of the investigation into Bon Appetit, they did leave the episodes up that had aired.

With that, they placed the show on pause. The show returned with “The Test Kitchen Revisisted,” which explained a little more about the situation and why PJ and Sruthi left. The show would only air 15 more episodes, including the farewell episode.

The show was hosted by Alex Goldman, P.J. Vogt and Emmanuel Dzotsi. Shortly before Vogt left the show, Dzotsi became the third host. When Vogt left, Goldman and Dzotsi were the only two hosts.

Goldman and Dzotsi were the ones who hosted the final episode, which you can listen to by clicking the link below -- “If this is the first time you’ve listened to the show, you’ve really picked a weird episode.”



About the Author
Kayla Clarke headshot

Kayla is a Web Producer for ClickOnDetroit. Before she joined the team in 2018 she worked at WILX in Lansing as a digital producer.

Loading...

Recommended Videos