Hey, Snap-FU fans, it's Ed. Today, I'm coming to you with an episode of a podcast I have

been loving. It's called business history. Hosts Jacob Goldstein and Robert Smith, former

Planet Money Guys, dig up the wildest, most, wait, what? about businesses big and small? Like how Hitler's

favorite car became the ultimate hippie vehicle, or why Thomas Edison got mixed up in the

invention of the electric chair. Every episode is a master class in how fascinating people

built something incredible and either watched it sore

or burned to the ground. Either way, it tells us something about how we run business today.

Today's tale is really wacky. Fueled by hot tubs, recreational drugs, and a love of games, Nolan Bushnell took computer

games out of research labs and into bars, launching an industry. His arcade game, Pong, was a

monster hit. So he set up Atari to build a home games console, which became the must-have Christmas present of 1975.

Atari was the name on every kid's lips, but then the investors came, and the investors brought

pressure. Bushnell and his engineers were pushed aside as Atari expanded, and in a desperate

bid to cash in on Hollywood hype,

the company concocted a wild plan for a game based on Steven Spielberg's mega hit,

E.T. The extraterrestrial. Developed in mere weeks, it tanked. And brought Atari down with it, which is ironic because I remember

the game E.T on Atari when I was a little kid and I loved it. Anyway, here's the episode. If you

enjoy it, there's more tales of founders, business success, and spectacular failures on business history, available on

YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Robert Smith, here is the big question for today's show.

Yes.

How did Atari essentially invent the video game industry when the hearts of millions of young people, the 1970s?

And then blow up entirely in the early 1980s, basically

never to be heard from again. It's a great question. We are both of the age where we remember

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