Hypocrisy and Deception in "Reply All" Podcast

“Reply All” is a podcast produced by Gimlet Media, and hosted by, up until recently, PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman. The podcast often focuses of things related to technology and the internet, like a batch of suspicious pizza orders, or a Facebook hacker, but also just general stories about interesting things going on in the world. The Guardian describes it as “‘A podcast about the internet’ that is actually an unfailingly original exploration of modern life and how to survive it.” Recently they were working on producing a 4 part series focusing on the work culture at food magazine Bon Appetit and scandals that happened surrounding that in 2020. Then, after 2 episodes came out, a series of complaints came out against “Reply All” and the general culture at Gimlet, starting an interesting chain of events.

 

In the beginning of 2020 many complaints came out about Bon Appetit, saying that the work environment was incredibly toxic, and made it very hard for POC to rise to any position other than the very bottom. Traditional dishes were demonstrated and written about by white people who did not know much about them. For example, one person wrote an article about the Vietnamese dish, Pho, explaining the “best” way to eat it, but in a way that was not accurate to the traditional dish. POC that were hired were treated horribly and not listened to or chosen for any important roles or positions. “Reply All” decided to do 4 episodes about what happened and conducted many interviews with people that worked at the company and were involved. One person that I haven’t mentioned yet is Sruthi Pinnamaneni. She is not a regular host, but does periodically report some stories, and does a lot of work behind the scenes. She is important as the main host and interviewer of this 4 part series.

 

On February 16^th, Eric Eddings, a host of a different show at Gimlet, posted a thread on twitter talking about PJ and Sruthi, and how they had contributed greatly to unhealthy work culture and racism at Gimlet. Employees at Gimlet, particularly many POC, decided to unionize to try to make the situation better and get treated with proper respect. Eddings described how PJ and Sruthi had both been passionately against the union and diversity efforts, calling people derogatory terms and trying to shut the union down. The situation he described was very similar to what was going on at Bon Appetit. Sruthi talks about the situation at Bon Appetit as if it would be completely unheard of that something similar would happen at Gimlet, which was why it was so upsetting to find out the things she had been saying behind the scenes.

 

“Reply All” released a statement, spoken by host Alex Goldman, about the situation on February 25^th, informing everyone that PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni were stepping down from the podcast. Alex says, “We plan to find a way to get to the bottom of what went wrong here, both with this series, and with our show. And once we fully understand it ourselves, we also want to tell you as best we can what happened. As we contend with everything, we’re placing the show on pause.” It is also important to note that many people have said that Alex was significantly more supportive of unionization and diversity efforts than PJ or Sruthi. Sruthi and PJ also each released their own statements. A lot of people, including myself, were surprised to hear all of this. “Reply All” presents themselves as a pretty progressive show, and it was surprising to hear all of what was going on in the background. Nevertheless, it is important that they be held accountable.

 

The show only got through 2 of the 4 planned episodes, and there is some debate about whether they should be released. “Reply All” has said they won’t be releasing them, but many people think that they should be. While it may not have been done in the best way, and there was a lot of bad stuff going on at Gimlet, the series is about the people at Bon Appetit. They shared their personal stories and I would argue that those still need to be shared, and it’s disrespectful not to. I also don't know if they are already produced yet though.