Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchCarol Shaw: The Atari Kernel Master Who Built River Raid in 128 Bytes
Episode 11075
Before she retired at roughly 35, Carol Shaw built part of the foundation of the modern video game industry using less memory than a single text mess…
4 days, 22 hours ago
Speedrunning: Doom Demos, Arbitrary Code Execution, and Catching Cheaters
Episode 11074
A team spends five years building a 40-hour game, and a player rips it apart to reach the credits in under a minute. This episode dives into the subc…
4 days, 22 hours ago
BioShock: Rapture, Objectivism, and the Twist That Redefined Player Choice
Episode 11073
You spend hours making choices in a dangerous underwater city, only to learn you never had a choice at all. This episode explores the 2007 game BioSh…
4 days, 22 hours ago
Billy Mitchell: Kill Screens, Emulator Forensics, and Six-Figure Lawsuits
Episode 11072
Over $686,000 in legal fees to defend high scores on 1980s arcade games. This episode traces the life of William James Mitchell Jr., known as Billy M…
4 days, 22 hours ago
The Atari Brand: From Pong to Crypto Casinos and Back to the Arcade
Episode 11071
The word Atari comes from the board game Go, where it describes a player on the brink of capturing an opponent's stones. That turns out to be the per…
4 days, 22 hours ago
Angry Birds: How a Bankrupt Studio's Sketch Became Global Infrastructure
Episode 11070
In 2009, Finnish developer Rovio Entertainment was on the brink of bankruptcy when a designer's sketch of round, wingless, irritated birds changed ev…
4 days, 22 hours ago
Atari 2600: Racing the Beam, the Activision Split, and the 1983 Crash
Episode 11069
In 2014, excavators in Alamogordo, New Mexico dug up hundreds of thousands of buried Atari cartridges, many of them copies of E.T. This episode trace…
4 days, 22 hours ago
Picasso's Guernica: From Reluctant Commission to Anti-War Icon
Episode 11068
In February 2003, as U.S. officials including Colin Powell made the case for war in Iraq at the United Nations, a plain blue curtain hung behind the …
5 days, 23 hours ago
Girl with a Pearl Earring: Vermeer's Hidden Curtain and Vanishing Pearl
Episode 11067
In 1881, a filthy, flaking canvas sold at an auction in The Hague for two guilders plus a 30-cent premium, about 24 euros today. The buyer, Arnoldus …
5 days, 23 hours ago
Whistler's Mother: The Accidental Icon of Motherhood He Never Intended
Episode 11066
James McNeill Whistler spent his career tearing down sentimentality in art, demanding to be judged purely on form and color. History answered by reme…
5 days, 23 hours ago