You're listening to song exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, your way.

This episode contains explicit language.

Four years ago on November 24th,

2014 the first episode of the podcast reply all came out. It's a podcast about the internet hosted by Alex Goldman and PJ vote.

And since then they've put out 131 episodes. The show's gotten over a hundred million downloads so far.

Robert Downey Jr. is going to star in a movie based on one of their episodes.

And from the debut, it's been one of my favorite podcasts. A while back in 2015, I did a special edition of song exploder for reply all about their theme song by

Break Master Syllinder. I'd heard the guys talk about the mysterious Break Master Syllinder in the show's credits, but I didn't really know who or what that was and I wanted to find out more.

So in honor of the four year anniversary of reply all's launch, I'm putting out this special crossover edition for the first time here on song exploder.

I hope you enjoy it. It starts with the reply all theme song, which goes like this.

By the way, I'm not sure how many of you know this, but before reply all, Alex and PJ had another podcast about the internet called TLDR.

And a lot of aspects of reply all first manifest in that show, including having a theme song by Break Master Syllinder.

So they've all been working together since September 2013. When I wanted to find out how the reply all theme was put together, I discovered a few surprising things like the fact that PJ and Alex have never actually spoken to Break Master Syllinder, who prefers to remain anonymous. They've only ever emailed.

So when the guys say the mysterious Break Master Syllinder in the credits, they really mean it. They don't even know if Break Master is a he or a she. I interviewed Break Master Syllinder, but out of respect for his or her privacy and mystery, I had an actor replace Break Master Syllinder's voice.

Or did I? I'm sworn to secrecy. I also discovered that before there was a theme for reply all before there was even a theme for TLDR, PJ and Alex first had to agree on whether or not their podcast should have a theme at all. Here's PJ Alex wanted one and I didn't want one.

I think I remember like feeling like it was not a good idea because because you would end up having episodes that didn't totally fit the theme song. Do you remember that argument? Yes.

I don't think that I had a particularly strong counter argument. So why did you win that? It's a weird question. I never win any arguments.

I wanted something kind of anthemic and break BD and just like really heavy. Isn't it an anthemic like an anthem and seven and theme.

So many years ago, probably 2008 or 2009, I somehow stumbled upon a video that Break Master Syllinder made, which was a remix of Mr. Sandman by the Cordettes.

It was this video that was just the most gruesome moments from every horror movie strung together to the tune of this sort of creepy distorted remix of Mr. Sandman.

And I was like, well, this is someone I want to keep an eye on.

So I started looking through Break Master Syllinder's other videos and I started following their music.

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