Episodi

  • How Four Atari Hackers Turned a $20 Memo into the Multi-Million Game Revolution

    How Four Atari Hackers Turned a $20 Memo into the Multi-Million Game Revolution
    Sep 7 2026
    How Four Atari Hackers Turned a $20 Memo into the Multi-Million Game Revolution

    A routine marketing memo sat on David Crane's desk in early 1979, and he did something with it nobody expected: he ran the numbers. The games he had personally written had generated more than twenty million dollars for Atari, against a salary of twenty thousand. No independent company had ever published software for someone else's console before — the assumption was that to make console games, you first had to build a console. What happened when four programmers decided to test that assumption?

    In this episode, we trace the founding of Activision from a garage in California through a lawsuit, an industry crash, a corporate collapse, and a hostile takeover, asking whether the model four uncredited programmers invented in 1979 could actually survive the industry it created.

    Person: David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead
    Location: Cambridge Way, Crane's garage, California
    Date: October 1, 1979
    Case: the founding of activision, the first third-party console game publisher
    Status: settled with atari in 1982; later collapsed as mediagenic and was rebuilt by bobby kotick in 1991

    - Ray Kassar, installed as Atari CEO in 1978, allegedly called the four programmers "towel designers" during a May 1979 meeting
    - Activision was incorporated October 1, 1979, temporarily registered as Computer Arts, Inc., with roughly one million dollars from Sutter Hill Ventures
    - Atari filed suit in December 1980 alleging trade secret theft; the case settled in February 1982 with Activision agreeing to pay royalties
    - Pitfall!, released by Crane in March 1982, sold more than four million copies; by its June 1983 IPO on NASDAQ (ticker AVSN), Activision reported roughly 157 million dollars in total sales
    - Activision's quarterly revenue fell from about 50 million dollars in mid-1983 to 6-7 million by the end of 1984, and Bobby Kotick acquired the near-bankrupt company, then renamed Mediagenic, for approximately 500,000 dollars in 1991

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    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    22 min
  • The Agricultural Adjustment Act boosted output - Carver's wagon proved wrong

    The Agricultural Adjustment Act boosted output - Carver's wagon proved wrong
    Sep 7 2026
    Dr. George Washington Carver brings soil science to sharecroppers-so what happened next?

    The Agricultural Adjustment Act boosted output - Carver's wagon proved wrong

    In this episode, we follow a wooden wagon in rural Alabama around 1903 carrying Dr. George Washington Carver and practical soil science to farmers shut out of experiment stations and credit. The episode traces how Carver’s soil-focused lessons conflicted with the 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act and the half-century of farm laws that followed, and asks how that divergence shaped modern agriculture.

    Person: George Washington Carver
    Event: wooden wagon school on wheels delivering soil science
    Date: 1903 (around)
    Date: 1933 (Agricultural Adjustment Act)
    Topic: federal farm policy emphasizing output over soil health

    - Carver loaded his wagon with soil chemistry, crop rotation, and nitrogen-fixation know-how to teach the poorest farmers directly on their land.
    - Sharecroppers and tenant farmers were excluded from land ownership, credit, experiment stations, and extension offices, prompting the mobile school.
    - The 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Act reorganized U.S. farming around increasing output, using price supports and production controls as emergency levers.
    - Between 1933 and 1985 five major federal farm acts continued to prioritize production, sending consistent signals that soil was a medium to extract from rather than a living resource.
    - Scientific data cited (IPCC) shows conventional plowing loses soil at roughly one hundred times the rate it forms, framing the long-term consequence Carver warned about.

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min
  • The alternator rotor spun itself to pieces — and sent music down the coast

    The alternator rotor spun itself to pieces — and sent music down the coast
    Sep 7 2026
    The alternator rotor spun itself to pieces — and sent music down the coast

    In a sandbagged bunker on the Massachusetts coast, a Swedish immigrant barely out of his twenties watched a steel rotor accelerate toward speeds his own family believed would tear it apart. The machine had never been tried before: an alternator meant to generate a continuous electrical wave, something no spark-gap transmitter could produce. When it was finally switched on and wired to a violin, would the signal reach anyone at all — and would the rotor survive its own operation?

    In this episode, we trace the career of engineer Ernst Alexanderson from that bunker in 1906 through seven decades of patents, broadcasts, and one desperate personal use of his own invention, asking what it costs a man who has built his life on the certainty that a signal will reach its destination to send one and simply have to wait.

    Person: Ernst Frederick Werner Alexanderson
    Location: Brant Rock, Massachusetts
    Date: December 24, 1906
    Case: the Alexanderson alternator, the first machine to generate continuous radio-frequency alternating current
    Status: alternator preserved and still operational at Grimeton, Sweden; Alexanderson died in 1975

    - Born January 25, 1878, in Uppsala, Sweden; studied at Lund, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and the Technische Hochschule in Berlin before emigrating to the United States in 1902
    - Commissioned by researcher Reginald Fessenden, Alexanderson built the alternator installed at Fessenden's Brant Rock station in summer 1906, reaching 500 watts at 75 kilohertz by autumn
    - On Christmas Eve 1906, Fessenden's violin broadcast reached Navy and shore-station radio operators along the East Coast
    - In 1923, Alexanderson's son Verner was kidnapped; Alexanderson broadcast a radio appeal and the boy was found three days later
    - Alexanderson filed 345 U.S. patents over his lifetime, the last submitted in 1968 at age 90; he died May 14, 1975, at 97, and is buried at Vale Cemetery in Schenectady, New York
    - The only surviving working Alexanderson alternator stands at the Grimeton radio station in Sweden, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    18 min
  • The Loan from the Auctioneer Bought Van Gogh — and Bankrupted Him

    The Loan from the Auctioneer Bought Van Gogh — and Bankrupted Him
    Sep 7 2026
    The Loan from the Auctioneer Bought Van Gogh — and Bankrupted Him

    In November 1987, a canvas by Vincent van Gogh sold at auction for fifty-four million dollars — the highest price ever paid for a single painting in recorded history. The buyer used money lent to him by the very auction house running the sale. He was, at that moment, a national hero who had just ended a 132-year winning streak in international sport — so what happens when the loan comes due?

    In this episode, we trace the parallel rise and collapse of Alan Bond, from a twelve-year-old immigrant in Fremantle to the man behind Australia's America's Cup victory, a billion-dollar television network, a private university, and a record-setting art purchase — asking how genuine achievement and financial fraud occupied the same life at the same time.

    Person: Alan Bond
    Location: Fremantle, Western Australia
    Date: November 1987
    Case: the purchase of van gogh's irises for $54 million using a loan from sotheby's, the auctioneer itself
    Status: bankrupted in 1992, later convicted and imprisoned for siphoning $1.2 billion from bell resources

    - Bond emigrated from Hammersmith, London, to Fremantle at age twelve and was charged with attempted burglary at eighteen
    - His syndicate's yacht, Australia II, ended the New York Yacht Club's 132-year hold on the America's Cup in September 1983
    - In 1987 alone, Bond purchased Channel Nine from Kerry Packer for $1.05 billion, founded Bond University, and bought van Gogh's Irises
    - The Irises loan from Sotheby's was never repaid; the painting was sold on to the J. Paul Getty Museum around 1990
    - Bond's total debts reached $1.8 billion at bankruptcy in 1992; creditors ultimately settled for $12 million Australian
    - In 1997 he pleaded guilty to siphoning $1.2 billion from Bell Resources and was sentenced to seven years, serving four
    - His Order of Australia, awarded for the 1983 America's Cup win, was stripped following his conviction

    To listen to this podcast ad-free and access premium episodes, try our subscription with a 14-day free trial at obomedia.com.

    © 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
    This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: business@obomedia.com.
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    16 min