Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.

Episode 271.

I am Andrew Ryan and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his

brow? No, says the man in Washington it belongs to him. This audio you're hearing is from the

beginning of a video game, BioShock, which is one of my favorite video games. One of my favorite

works of art and at this point in the story of that game you the player are descending under the

ocean deep deep deep inside a bathosphere headed into the underwater city of Rapture.

I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose

Rapture.

A secret metropolis built by Andrew Ryan who greets you with this recorded message over the speakers

inside the bathosphere as you get closer and closer to the city that he built.

The premise of BioShock is Andrew Ryan a play on iron rand since the game is a critique of the

philosophy of objectivism. He's a mega billionaire and oil and railroad tycoon who used his money

to build an underwater city in the 1950s to escape the coming nuclear apocalypse. He moves there

and invites a group of elites like himself to join along with doctors and scientists and artists

to create a utopia where the laws of religion and government no longer apply. A place as he puts it

where the parasites can no longer hold them back. It's a great big party for a while and the

scientists do things without anyone regulating them so do the business people so do the doctors

so you can imagine how that spins out of control but eventually the people they trusted to do the

dirty work, security, shipping, manufacturing, etc. They revolt and they use the bioengineering

projects to gain superhuman powers and destroy his deep sea utopia and that's where the game begins.

You go into that world right as it's crumbling. I was reminded of BioShock when recently

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