3. Reply All
More podcast suggestions for my list! I have to thank Steve Robinson for sending three suggestions my way, including ReplyAll. This is what he said:
ReplyAll — Blind Spot — I learned a ton about the state of medicine in the US and where crowdsourcing applies to things you wouldn’t normally crowsource. Plus a few medical facts that were interesting and where the premise of the show “House” came from.
ReplyAll is definitely in my top 10 favorite podcasts, maybe even top 5. I’ve heard their entire episode list since they started on Gimlet a year ago, and have even gone back to listen to some of their pre-Gimlet episodes as TL;DR.
As you can see from this photo, I choose a ReplyAll shirt as part of my Gimlet membership.
So it was not a stretch for me to write about ReplyAll.
But I did go back and re-listen to part of Blind Spot before writing this. It was such a dense episode with so many twists and turns, I felt like I could absorb more while listening to it again. So I did so today while walking my dog Bella and getting my son Xavier to sleep.
In no particular order, here are some of my take-aways from this episode:
We’ve only scratched the surface of crowdsourcing
As Steve pointed out, we’re starting to crowdsource things we wouldn’t normally crowdsource. In the last few years, we started crowdsourcing cars, labor and space with taxi drivers (Uber, Lyft) and houses and hotels (Airbnb). As Blind Spot shows, we’re now crowdsourcing medical expertise — and the results seem to be encouraging. What other industries might be disrupted by crowdsourcing?
Gimlets ads are the best
Most podcast ads are… not great. The advertising side of podcasts have not kept up with the innovations in the editorial side. Aside from Serial’s “Mail…kimp?” ads, the only other podcast ads I find entertaining are Gimlet’s. That’s because the hosts actually treat them as a podcast within a podcast. Sometimes, this has caused problems, but at least they’re trying out new solutions. The Slack ad about connecting researchers between Antarctica and Madison, Wisconsin, was especially delightful. And they’re about to get better — listen to the new episode of Startup for a major development in their advertising strategy.
They’re excellent journalists
What sets Gimlet shows apart from so many podcasts out there is the quality and care of its reporting. They don’t just arrive at an answer and then accept it at face value — they keep digging. In this case, Sruthi Pinnamaneni dug and dug and dug to arrive at an answer to a question that may be life or death.
Gimlet has taken This American Life’s narrative and run with it
All of Gimlet’s shows, including ReplyAll, keep you guessing about what’s going to happen until the end — and then you might still be guessing. That’s definitely the case with Blind Spot. The brilliant title of this episode has multiple meanings, and it may refer to the fact that at the end, you’re still left with a blind spot. This is the legacy of Ira Glass at work. This one thing happened, and you think this will happen next, but something else happens instead. You know that’s the set-up — and yet it still gets you every time.
I’m going to stop there and let you listen to the episode yourself. Or if you’ve heard it already, considering listening to it again, with fresh ears.
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