Merlin Mann and Alex Cox
478 episodes listed below
Weekly challenges, semantic fires, tiny disasters.
Do By Friday is a weekly challenge show where Alex Cox and Merlin Mann let the assignment become the least stable part of the episode. Coke fights, app icons, Good Friday marketing texts, audio setups, and semantic traps all get treated like urgent civic problems.
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Do By Friday is a weekly challenge show with a strong tolerance for derailment. The premise gives Alex Cox and Merlin Mann something to push against, but the best material often starts before the assignment can stand up straight. A routine greeting becomes a dispute over enthusiasm. A yes-or-no question turns into a lesson in decorum, then into a fight about whether answering correctly is even the point. The show is at its sharpest when a tiny word choice becomes a full comic investigation. Goal, reason, project, intention: all of them can become suspicious if held too close to the light. That same energy carries into the physical world. A Coke fight is remembered as an almost uniquely terrible social act. A remote control becomes a robot because somebody once called it one. A forgotten phone case order from 2012 can keep paying dividends through promotional texts, especially when the marketing calendar wanders into Good Friday. The show is especially good at making products, apps, and interfaces feel morally overdetermined. Custom app icons, liquid glass, widgets, reminders, Readwise page curls, audio gear, Audacity settings, and old video formats all become evidence in some larger case that may or may not exist. The show also has room for invented holidays, visual-only episodes, Sanrio lists, coins, bells, and the specific weirdness of trying to make an audio podcast admit that a screen would help. Pop culture arrives sideways: The NeverEnding Story, Labyrinth, David Bowie, Conan, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman lore, and old tech YouTube all appear as trapdoors rather than prepared topics. The tone can be blunt. It can also catch itself being blunt, which is part of the texture. Discussions of racism, bad jokes, sexual references, religion, and social embarrassment are handled through argument and correction rather than tidy moral packaging. Nothing stays polished for long. The appeal is the live mechanics: interruption, objection, self-correction, overexplanation, and the sudden moment when a throwaway phrase becomes the whole episode. For the right listener, Do By Friday feels less like a challenge show than a weekly audit of how strange ordinary conversation can get when nobody agrees to move on.
Made for: For listeners who like fast comic banter, tech-adjacent digressions, overexplained social minutiae, and conversations that keep correcting themselves into better trouble.
What sets it apart: The challenge format is only the launchpad; the signature is how quickly a small prompt mutates into etiquette, language, product design, memory, and mock-serious moral judgment.
A weekly challenge show hosted by Alex Cox and Merlin Mann.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Alex Cox and Merlin Mann turn weekly assignments and everyday irritations into precise, escalating comic arguments.
Do By Friday gives Alex Cox and Merlin Mann a challenge, then lets their conversational chemistry pull the assignment in wonderfully unruly directions.
A phone icon becomes a moral crisis, and somehow you are still waiting for the challenge.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A soda-splashed conversation that drifts from semantics to Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and God-talk.
The episode opens with a cleaning bit, a question about what counts as an area, and a teenage Coke fight memory that ends with a large Arby’s cup to the head.
A Good Friday sale becomes a debate about wording, etiquette, and the weird poetry of gadgets.
Do By Friday turns a simple yes-or-no exchange into a running joke about decorum, bad naming, and the odd intimacy of a remote control, which one friend insists on calling a robot.
A Coxmas bit turns into a funny, exact conversation about icons, widgets, and the relief of not needing to matter.
This episode treats a Coxmas challenge as a knowingly silly, slightly slapstick bit, then slips into a discussion of app icons, widgets, and phone customization.
A book challenge becomes a lively detour machine, with corrections, callbacks, and just enough chaos to keep it moving.
Do By Friday turns a book-making challenge into a loose studio scramble, with technical problems, a nose-hair trimmer by the microphone, and enough digressions to keep knocking the rhythm off balance.
A small lie at a bar becomes a funny, unruly argument about tone, manners, and scripted openings.
Dubai Friday, the weekly challenge podcast with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann, turns a small lie about whether someone has dined there before into a sharp comic look at greeting rituals and the pressure they can create.
Breakfast banter gives way to a sharp, uneasy look at The Perfect Neighbor.
Do By Friday opens in breakfast banter, then slides from the donut-to-crumble-tops riff into The Perfect Neighbor, where Alex Cox and Merlin Mann keep the pace light while working through a woman whose complaints about kids, neighbors, and her own behavior grow steadily harder…
Tiny debates, treated with heroic seriousness.
Sanitizing kicks off the trouble.
Merlin Mann and Alex Cox open by debating the word 'decorous' before spending most of the episode on Merlin's enthusiasm for two Canadian/British films: Nirvana: The Band, The Show, The Movie (2024) and The Testament of Anne Lee.
Do By Friday's annual Coxmas episode is a visual tradition in which people submit iPhone home screen screenshots for Alex Cox to critique; the 2026 edition includes a detour through the word 'bimbofication,' Alex's thesis that 'you shouldn't put your aspirations in your pocket,' and Merlin's story of attending a Nick Lowe concert and delivering a spontaneous lecture about trauma to a stranger named Maureen.
Dubai Friday features Alex Cox and Merlin Mann opening with the weekly challenge, “clean the shit out of something,” before moving into a long, awkward discussion of a joke from Radhika on the Line.
Do By Friday’s “The Pitiless World” opens with Alex and the other host turning a simple greeting into a semantic argument about whether someone is “feign[ing] excitement.” The exchange includes phrases like “what does mean mean,” “what is question thought,” and “or a boros,” making the episode immediately more about language play than small talk.
This episode of Due By Friday features hosts Alex Cox and Merlin Mann engaging in humorous confusion and improvisation around a weekly challenge that appears to involve faking enthusiasm or making something up, possibly related to Sanrio characters.
Two hosts engage in a chaotic and humorous pre-show conversation about movies like The NeverEnding Story and Labyrinth, while discussing audio issues and computer problems.
Hosts engage in humorous pre-show banter about typing sounds and a new pre-flight segment.
The hosts engage in playful banter and technical difficulties before starting their weekly challenge show.
Alex Cox and Merlin Mann kick off a weekly challenge podcast with playful banter and a discussion about editing and names.
The hosts engage in playful banter and prepare to start their weekly challenge show.
The hosts banter about audio issues and introduce a weekly challenge to find Stuart Lee bits they like.
Alex and Merlin banter about shitting yourself and America's hangups, introducing a challenge to share Christmas.
Two hosts engage in playful banter and voice impressions, discussing a personal theory about illness duration.
Alex and Merlin banter about flu shots, malingering, and a favorite movie while introducing a weekly challenge.
Hosts Alex Cox and Merlin Mann introduce a weekly challenge to review your year in media, engaging in humorous banter.
Make a book, somehow.
A restaurant greeting goes wrong.
Breakfast turns into a chain.
Hosts Alex Cox and Merlin Mann engage in humorous banter about The Crown and attempt impressions, introducing their weekly challenge.
The hosts joke about recording the show's intro and clarify the weekly challenge phrase.
Alex and Merlin banter about self-hypnosis and devolve into absurd jokes about customer service and parthenogenesis.
Hosts Alex and Merlin engage in humorous banter about profile pictures and set up a weekly challenge.
The hosts engage in lighthearted banter about a Bob Mortimer special, a Maria Bamford impression, and a fake Will Rogers quote.
Alex Cox and Merlin Mann introduce a weekly challenge involving show notes with humorous banter about Zoom and other topics.
Alex and Merlin banter about partying and the host's prepared bits before introducing the week's challenge to make a newspaper comic.
Hosts Alex and Merlin banter about a weekly challenge involving watching only HBO, with playful teasing and discussion of media immersion.
Hosts Alex Cox and Merlin Mann engage in playful banter about t-shirts and friendship before introducing the week's challenge.
Do By Friday opens with Alex Cox and Merlin Mann talking through LCD Soundsystem, DFA, and the song “Get Innocuous!” while also checking whether the label is in New York or Brooklyn.
Two hosts discuss a weekly challenge while one gets distracted by his new interest in shipping containers and container ships.
Two hosts engage in playful banter about punctuality and start their weekly challenge podcast.
A chaotic and humorous conversation between hosts discussing distractibility, anxiety, quirky topics like a meditating dog and a can crusher, and references to Maria Bamford and John Dewey.
Two hosts engage in comedic banter about a weekly challenge and a mysterious apparatus near one host's home.
The hosts discuss the new Pope announcement and explore personal Catholic identity, addressing progressive views on queerness and cultural versus religious aspects of faith.
The hosts discuss the impact of sleep on daily energy and productivity, with personal anecdotes about sleep quality and health metrics like heart rate variability.