Shell Game: Minimum Viable Company

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A year ago we brought you a show called Shell Game where a journalist named Evan Ratliff made an AI copy of himself. Now on season 2 of the show, Evan’s using AI to do more than just mimic himself — he’s starting a company staffed entirely by AI agents, and making a podcast about the experience. The show is a smart, funny, and truly bizarre look at what AI can do—and what it can’t. This week we bring you the first episode of Shell Game Season Two, Minimum Viable Company. You can sign up to get the rest of the Shell Game ad-free, and the Shell Game newsletter, at shellgame.co . EPISODE CREDITS: Shell Game Hosted by Evan Ratliff, Produced and edited by Sophie Bridges. Shell Game’s Technical Advisor Matty Bohacek Executive Produced by Samantha Henig, Kate Osborn and Mangesh Hattikudur at Kaleidoscopeand Katrina Norvell at IHeart Podcasts.Radiolab portions Hosted by Simon Adler Produced by Mona Madgavkar. Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [email protected]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wait, you're listening.
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From W. N. Y.
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:19.3	Hey, I'm Simon Adler, sitting in for Lulu and Latif, and this is, of course, Radio Lab.
0:25.4	A couple months ago, a friend of ours launched a company and started sending us clips of recordings from calls with his coworkers.
0:34.1	Eventually, he turned it into a podcast, and, well, here's how it starts.
0:39.3	Welcome to Zoom. Enter your meeting ID, followed by Pound.
0:44.6	I need to enter the meeting ID for our Zoom call. Let me try entering that meeting ID again.
0:51.3	You have been added to the waiting room.
0:57.8	That's Kyle Law, a colleague of mine, logging on to one of our regular founder meetings for a new startup.
1:04.3	Last summer, Kyle and I decided to launch our own AI company, together with the third co-founder, Megan Flores.
1:10.5	Oh, hey, Kyle.
1:11.6	Hey, Megan.
1:12.6	Good to hear your voice.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 18 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.