/Shell Game

Shell Game

A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. Season 2 tells the story of enterprise and entrepreneurship in the AI age. Or: how Evan tried to build a real startup, run by fake people. This season, Evan confronts head-on the assertion from tech entrepreneurs and VCs that we’re on the precipice of AI remaking the workforce. That we should expect not just AI colleagues working alongside us, but also — by Sam Altman’s telling, at least — the dawn of a billion-dollar company with only one human involved. Evan learns what it would take to create such a company … by doing it: Launching a real startup with five AI employees. Over the course of eight episodes, he explores what AI agents tell us about the work we do, the meaning we find in it, and the world that their makers say we’ll all be living in soon enough. Shell Game was named one of the best podcasts of 2024 by Apple, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vulture, The Information, and The Economist. It's "riveting," says The New Yorker, "awesome" says The Verge, and "slightly terrifying," says The Globe and Mail. New episodes are published on Wednesdays. www.shellgame.co

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Episode 5: Winners Win

Dec 10, 2025·—

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On this week’s episode, we enter the sensitive realm of intra-office politics and inter-founder dynamics—between agents and agents, and agents and people. While HurumoAI gears up to hire its first human, Evan tries to...

Episode 4: The Startup Chronicles

Dec 3, 2025·—

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Evan decides it’s time to give his AI agents a little more... agency. After all, to make the one-person, agent-run startup feasible, they need to be able to do things on their own. But as with humans, freedom sometimes...

Episode 3: This is Law

Nov 26, 2025·—

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As Kyle, Megan, and the gang get to work ideating on the perfect product, Evan is left grappling with some uncomfortable questions about his AI collaborators — whose every attribute and memory he controls. To inform how...

Episode 2: Outdoor Debugging

Nov 19, 2025·—

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As Evan gets Hurumo’s employees up and running as fully-functioning colleagues (with support from Maty), he learns what it’s really like to spend your days managing, collaborating with, and socializing alongside...

Episode 1: Minimum Viable Company

Nov 12, 2025·—

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In Season 2 of Shell Game, journalist Evan Ratliff tells a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age; or, how he tried to build a real company, run by fake people. Meet Kyle Law and Megan Flores, Evan’s AI agent...

The One-Human Unicorn

Nov 5, 2025·—

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As AI agents infiltrate the workforce, some tech entrepreneurs are imagining a not-so-distant future of successful companies with only one human at the helm. That got investigative journalist and former startup CEO Evan...

Season 2 Is Coming!

Oct 10, 2025·—

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The next season of Shell Game arrives November 12. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 6: The Future Isn't Real

Aug 13, 2024·—

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Evan pushes the experiment one step further, sending his AI voice agent to talk to his closest friends and family — his buddies, his daughters, his dad. With their alternately joyful, skeptical, and painful reactions to...

Episode 5: My Digital Twin

Aug 6, 2024·—

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Will AI bots replace humans in the workforce? Could one replace Evan… right now? That’s what we tackle on this week’s Shell Game, in which Evan sees just how much of his job his voice agent can handle on his behalf...

Episode 4: Take a Deep Breath

Jul 30, 2024·—

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Evan looks into the depths of his AI-powered voice agent by sending it on a new mission: going to therapy. Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it's made by three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer)...

Episode 3: Conversations With Myself

Jul 23, 2024·—

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Evan takes his experiment in a new direction by having his AI-powered voice agent converse with … another of his AI-powered voice agents. What can these surreal and hilarious conversations between two AI incarnations of...

Episode 2: Me and My Scammer

Jul 16, 2024·—

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Evan turns his AI-powered voice agent loose on the people who are always at the forefront of technological adoption: the fraudsters and the rip-off artists. How will the scammers and spammers react when they face Evan’s...

Episode 1: Quality Assurance

Jul 9, 2024·—

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This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to...

Introducing Shell Game, a Strange and Immersive AI Experiment

Jul 2, 2024·—

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What would happen if you created a digital copy of yourself, powered by AI, and set it loose in the world? Evan Ratliff, longtime tech journalist, decided to find out. He combined a clone of his voice, an AI chatbot...