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Retronauts

751: Episode 751 Preview: SimCity Spinoffs

Retronauts

Retronauts

Games, Leisure, Technology, Video Games

4.52.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You're listening to a free preview of Retronauts 745: SimCity Spinoffs. To hear the rest, and get two exclusive extra episodes every month, access to our previous Patreon-exclusive episodes, and early access to ad-free podcasts, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everybody, what you're about to hear is a free preview of a podcast on our $5 exclusive episodes tier at patreon.com slash retronauts.

0:09.4

And if you want to hear the whole thing, please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up at the $5 exclusive episodes tier.

0:16.7

Once you do that, you'll get access to all of our previous exclusive episodes and our future ones as well, as long as you remain a patron, and our exclusive episodes will launch every other Friday.

0:26.2

Again, that is the Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com slash Retronauts, and I'll let you get to this free preview of one of our exclusive episodes.

0:57.7

Thank you. of one of our exclusive episodes. So we're going to move on to Sim Ants.

1:00.4

So we zoomed way out with Sim Earth.

1:04.9

Now we're going to zoom way in with Sim Ant to the little critters who steal our crumbs.

1:05.8

We all know ants.

1:08.2

We either love them or hate them or just find them fascinating.

1:12.4

But this one is much more whimsical than the very classroom-friendly Sim Earth, although I'm sure this was probably used in plenty of computer

1:16.2

classes in the early 90s. But as expected from Moor Wright, this game has one foot in the world

1:21.3

of hard science. And Sim-Aunt falls back on the work of Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, his 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning

1:29.2

book release, The Ants, which I believe he co-authored with Bert Hull Dobler.

1:35.0

And this was a massive academic tome that weighed in around 800 pages.

1:40.2

There was a mass market version released in 1994, four years later, called Journey to the Ants.

1:45.9

But this was very important ant research.

1:49.1

I didn't know you could possibly learn this much about ants, but that's because I never

1:51.9

looked into it until now.

1:53.6

But apparently ants have a lot going on.

1:55.5

There are so many kinds of ants.

1:57.3

And E.O. Wilson is the guy who discovered the idea that ants communicated with each other through these pheromones they left behind. So very important. Something that's referenced all the time in media, he is the guy who discovered that fact about ants.

2:12.5

That is a very, and the book, the book is very heavy. I don't know if you've held the book. It's huge. I had a copy for many years and then it got, water got into it somehow and had to throw it away. Yeah, I never saw the actual book itself, but learning that's 800 pages in an academic book, it has to be massive and frankly hard to read. So I'm glad that they released a more, you know, layman-friendly

...

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