Podcast find of the week: Reply All’s ‘The Case of the Missing Hit’
- Each week we highlight a contender for best podcast episode of all time – this week, a 2020 episode from a pod by PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman
The lost-memory itch that cannot be scratched – or googled – is a universal experience. My longest lasting was about 10 years ago and went on for more than a year, when I couldn’t remember the name of one of my favourite childhood books so that I could pass it on to my own children. I could recall the picture on the front, chunks of dialogue and how much I loved the way that book made me feel but, frustratingly, none of it was enough to track it down, until after some painstaking effort, I finally did. Of course, neither of my daughters was remotely interested in Canadian author Douglas Hill’s (frankly perfect) Galactic Warlord (1979).
It wasn’t hard then for me to imagine the torment of American filmmaker Tyler Gillett, who found himself with an earworm song from the 1990s that no one else seemed to remember, but that he could sing almost in its entirety. Was this a case of the Mandela Effect, when something is collectively misremembered? Or had he made the whole thing up himself?
The fevered rabbit-hole investigation that follows is a captivating listen and if you grew up in the 90s the happy nostalgia of the music stays with you, too. If you haven’t listened to this already, that’s as much as you need to know. If you have, you will know that it’s worth an immediate re-listen just for the bounce in your step after you have finished it.
Reply All, “a podcast about the internet” but really about the deepest currents of culture, was Gimlet Media’s most popular show, running from 2014-2022, and is still a mainstay of the top 50 technology charts in several countries. At the time of writing, it is outside the top 200 in Hong Kong.
