Earmail Talks Back

Since we launched Earmail, the conversation has been one-directional: you send us your newsletters (or paste in URLs), we do the narration, and an episode lands in your podcast feed. But starting today, Earmail can talk back.

Each episode now gets its own reply address. This address is in the narration confirmation emails and it's also in the notes that show up in your podcast app. If you want to go deeper on anything you heard in the episode (a term you didn't understand, an argument you want unpacked, or a claim you'd like more context on), just send a question to that email address and in a few minutes you'll have an answer — as an email, an audio episode, or both.

The answer you get will be grounded in the article you just heard. This isn't a chatbot half-remembering details — we go back to the source material and answer directly from it, with citations so you can see where the answer came from. If you saw our blog post about Reflection Prompts you might recall my college-professor analogy — the one who cold-calls you after the reading. Now, you can raise your hand and ask the professor a question of your own. And, in keeping with our "screens-off" philosophy, the whole exchange can happen without opening a web browser: listen to an episode on your commute, hit reply when you get home, and listen to the answer while you're washing the dishes.

This is one of the biggest new features for Earmail since we launched, and like everything else we'll keep iterating on it based on your feedback. Try asking a question or two about your next episode and let me know what you think of the answers — I read every note and love getting feedback.

Jeff