Reply All #158: The Best Podcast Episode Ever

This post is to tell you to listen to one episode of a podcast. Just one hour-long episode, that’s it. I had heard about this episode yesterday on Twitter via NPR's Linda Holmes (who subsequently recommended it on today's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter) and then it showed up in today's New York Times Morning Briefing email. So I downloaded it at 8 am. I started listening to it while walking to work, and by the time I was halfway through, I had texted several friends to tell them to start listening immediately. I got to work and couldn’t finish since I had a bunch of meetings, but the second I was free, I gobbled up the rest, giggling like a loon at my desk. And when I finished, I stood up and told my colleague sitting in front of me to seek this episode out. I was utterly besotted.

The episode is called The Case of the Missing Hit and it is the 158th episode of the popular Reply All podcast from Gimlet Media. I have never listened to Reply All before and I don’t know if I will again, because this episode has set such an impossibly high bar for the world of podcasting that I feel like I might just have to call it quits after this. OK fine, that's a lie, and I will probably now listen to Reply All's entire back catalog. But it is really not hyperbolic to say this podcast episode completely turned my day/week/month/life around.

So what is The Case of the Missing Hit about? It is the tale of a man in Los Angeles who suddenly remembers this pop song he heard a lot on the radio in the 90s when he was living in Flagstaff, Arizona. He remembers the flute solo at the beginning, he remembers numerous lyrics that bear a resemblance to One Week by the Barenaked Ladies, but accompanied by a rousing chorus more reminiscent of U2. But try as he might, he simply cannot find this song on the Internet. He keeps Googling lyrics as he remembers them but Google stubbornly refuses to return a single sensible hit. This song doesn’t seem to exist and so this man turns to PJ Vogt from the Reply All podcast to help him solve the mystery.

Listen to this episode. Follow the journey as these two men go down an ever-deepening rabbit hole and consult an increasingly ridiculous roster of people to see if anyone has heard of this song. There are so many incredible twists and turns and it genuinely turns into the most compelling mystery you’ve ever encountered. Sherlock Holmes couldn’t have done it better. It is a wonderfully silly but miraculous story with an astonishing payoff. And it is a feat of remarkable storytelling that should be stored in posterity for future generations.

Technology is responsible for a lot of strife in our world but in The Case of the Missing Hit, we have the clearest distillation of what the Internet can help us achieve. Did you think the oral tradition died with Homer? Well, it's back baby. And I will be saving this episode on my phone and listening to it every time I need to restore my faith in humanity. My God, it was so good.