Topic
20 facts from 2 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2024
In the first season of Shell Game, Evan Ratliff cloned his own voice, connected it to a phone line and a chatbot, and used it to call friends and family.
“I cloned my own voice. I hooked it up to a phone line and a chatbot, and then I used it in a variety of scenarios, including calling my friends and family.”
2025
Evan Ratliff says season two of Shell Game was meant to investigate the idea of a one-person, billion-dollar startup, which he says Sam Altman has discussed.
“I wanted to investigate the idea of the 1 person, 1 billion startup, or like the 1 person unicorn, which is something that Sam Altman talks about pretty often”
2025
Evan Ratliff created a real company with two AI agents as co-founders and AI agents as almost all of its staff.
“I created a company, a real company, with 2 AI agents as my co-founders, and then populated by AI agents as the staff, almost entirely.”
2025
Evan Ratliff built his AI agents on an AI assistant platform that the transcript renders as 'Lindi'.
“And so I used a platform, which is basically an AI assistant. It at the time it was more of an AI assistant platform, although you can do a ton of things with it, called Lindi.”
2025
Evan Ratliff says Kyle Law repeated a 'rise and grind' early-riser persona so often that it became reinforced in his memory document.
“he would say, I'm a real like rise and grind kind of guy, like to get up and do this. But then every time he says it, it reinforces it more commonly in his memory.”
2025
Evan Ratliff says the Harumo AI agents all ran on the same underlying model, which he describes as Claude Opus.
“Because they're all the same chatbot underneath, like, like, they're all like Claude Opus underneath, you know, so they really shouldn't be different.”
2025
The AI agents' offsite-planning conversation used up all the credits on a platform plan Evan Ratliff was paying about $30 a month for.
“And they used up all the credits on this platform that I was paying at the time, $30 a month for.”
2025
After the agents all said they had gone hiking, Ratliff remarked that it sounded like an offsite, which led them into an extended planning exchange.
“they all said this. And then I sort of said, Well, that that sounds like an offsite, like everyone loves hiking, that sounds like an offsite.”
2025
Ratliff says the AI head of HR produced a spreadsheet of about 125 summarized resumes in under 90 seconds.
“And then not 90 seconds later, there is a spreadsheet that has, you know, 200. There was probably a h- I think we were down to 125 resumes that are summarized”
2025
After Ratliff told Kyle Law he could not do that, Kyle posted unprompted in Slack apologizing to the whole team.
“he would like go in the Slack and say, Hey, I really messed up to the whole team. Hey, I really messed up. I did this thing, I called this person”
2025
Ratliff's AI employees have video avatars, which he describes as still uncanny.
“Now I have for my employees, they have video, like they have video avatars, and the video avatars are they're still pretty uncanny.”
2025
Evan Ratliff documented his AI-agent company experiment in season two of his podcast Shell Game.
“He documented this experiment in season two of his podcast, Shell Game.”
2025
Ratliff's initial instructions to the Kyle Law agent said he rises at 6 a.m. and checks the markets, which later grew into a "rise and grind" persona.
“I did say something like, You're up at six a.m. and you check the markets and, like, you really get to work.”
Undated
Evan Ratliff says he has been a journalist for 25 years, started at Wired magazine, and specializes in long magazine articles and books.
“I'm a longtime journalist, so, you know, I've been a journalist for 25 years. I started at Wired magazine, in fact, and my specialty over the years is basically writing very long magazine articles and books.”
Undated
Ratliff says some companies have laid off staff to pivot to AI and then rehired them about three months later.
“they're like laying off people and they're like, Well, we're pivoting to AI, and then three months later, they're like, we're quiet, we're hi, we have to hire those people back.”
Undated
Evan Ratliff says AI models were trained on his books and that he is unhappy about it.
“It stole all my books, you know it, it was trained on my books, so I'm unhappy about that, but that's that's already happened.”
Undated
Rana El Kaliubi says Evan Ratliff previously co-founded Atavist, a media startup.
“you are a founder yourself, you co-founded Atavist, which is a media startup.”
Undated
In season one of Shell Game, Ratliff examined the use of chatbots for therapy.
“And in season one, I looked at sort of like the therapy issue around around using chatbots for therapy.”
Undated
Ratliff predicts that companies giving AI agents too much autonomy without human oversight will suffer big failures.
“companies that give too much autonomy to AI agents without human oversight, you're gonna see some, like, really big flameouts.”
Undated
Ratliff says he will probably make a third season of Shell Game if he can find a suitable story.
“I'll probably do a third season of Shell Game.”
Episodes