More than a week after Reply All was faced with a toxic workplace reckoning that followed the release of its new investigation “The Test Kitchen,†the podcast has announced it will no longer release the remaining episodes of the Bon Appétit–centered miniseries, and that Reply All as a whole will be taking a pause as well. In a recorded message posted to the miniseries’ Gimlet page, Reply All co-founder Alex Goldman updated listeners about the departures of longtime senior reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni and fellow Reply All co-founder P.J. Vogt, which occurred after a former staffer alleged that the duo contributed to a “toxic dynamic at Gimlet†that was “near identical†to the Bon Appétit culture depicted in the miniseries.
“These accounts prompted a reckoning on our team about the work culture at Reply All and they left us asking whether we could continue airing this story without interrogating ourselves and what has unfolded at Gimlet,†Goldman explained. “We now understand that we should never have published this series as reported, and the fact that we did was a systemic editorial failure. We are not going to be continuing the series, and P.J. and Sruthi have both decided to leave the Reply All team.â€
“We also know that we let a lot of people down and made a lot of mistakes. We’re very sorry for our many failings,†Goldman continued. “We’re sorry to our colleagues and our former colleagues that we hurt, we’re sorry to you, our listeners, and of course we’re sorry to the people who spoke to us for ‘The Test Kitchen’ who shared their extremely personal stories with us.†While listeners will never get to hear the complete “Test Kitchen†podcast — there were going to be four episodes in total — Goldman confirmed that the miniseries will keep the two already-published episodes on its feed, but with a disclaimer, as not to “bury our failure.†He also reiterated Reply All’s commitment to “get to the bottom of what went wrong.†Pinnamaneni and Vogt, meanwhile, have issued apologetic statements of their own.