The One About The Important Thing

The One About The Important Thing

From The Important Thing by Michael Lopp

July 12, 2026 · 46 min

About this episode

Lyle and Rands discuss the evolution of their podcast over a hundred episodes, including automation and naming conventions.

One hundred episodes. For this occasion, years in the coming, Lyle and Rands talk about the thing itself — the nuts and bolts of the podcast, including how the robots now do an alarming amount of the work, what a hundred episodes taught us, and why we use the "The One About…" naming convention. 🎁: the show has a home at importantthing.show . Deep-link a favorite or just scroll through a hundred episodes of history. Stuff that came up: Riverside , where this show has been recorded since the We Are Netflix days Rands Leadership Slack , now staffed by a helpful jobs robot named Floyd Planetfall , the Infocom classic Floyd is named after Friends , the homage hiding in plain sight in every episode title Marco Arment , listening since at least Rands' fiftieth birthday Related Important Things episodes: EP 56: The One About the Month of Podcasting EP 51: The One About Names... Again EP 98: The One About The Joy of Bots EP 18: The One About Sugar — Lyle's favorite, as heard on-air EP 78: The One About Sandwiches — the other favorite EP 96: The One About ARC Raiders — the first episode the robots dressed up

People in this episode

Host: Rands

Guest: Lyle

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Riverside, Rands Leadership Slack

Books & works: Planetfall, The One About the Month of Podcasting, The One About Names... Again, The One About The Joy of Bots, The One About Sugar, The One About Sandwiches, The One About ARC Raiders

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