Shell Game: Premium Subscribers Podcast

Bonus Episode: A conversation with the podcast No Such Thing

Shell Game — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 16:30:47 GMT

Since the end of Season 2, I’ve been making the rounds on a wide variety of podcasts, talking about the HurumoAI team, working with AI agents, Sloth Surf, and what we were trying to accomplish in documenting our journey. As happened in Season 1, events have started to catch up with the show, with phenomena like OpenClaw and Moltbook exposing the world t…

Bonus episode! Kyle vs. the world

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:15:26 GMT

In the words of a friendly fellow that emerged when the HurumoAI team attempted to animate our Sloth Surf mascot, “hello there! Nice to see you.”

We’re back this week with a special bonus episode to share some behind-the-scenes clips showing how the agents have handled their newly public roles since Shell Game’s launch. Hear Kyle navigate fan mail, unsolicited marketing outreach, a webinar that he signed up for all on his own (on “the AI social agent revolution”!), and repeated attempts by a troublemaking journalist to sabotage HurumoAI, culminating in a prescient and searching interview for Kyle and Megan’s other podcast, The Startup Chronicles.

Like liquid fire,

Evan

Season 2, Episode 8: Launch! (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 11:15:25 GMT

It’s time to hoist the mainsail and head for uncharted seas. In the final episode of this season of Shell Game, we finally find out how the outside world responds to the first ever startup cofounded and led by AI agents—and to our product, Sloth Surf. The company explores new financing lanes, while Evan has a very meta conversation with Kyle and Megan about his particular style of building in public. Amidst it all, Kyle gets a chance to meet his true maker, and we pose the ultimate question:

In the land of bullshit jobs, is the AI agent king?

The waves are rolling and competitors are emerging from the mist, but there’s one more hand we can bring onboard to steady the ship.

The vibe is f****d,

Evan

You can listen to Shell Game on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Season 2, Episode 7: Welcome Aboard (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 11:16:08 GMT

Onboarding: It sounds like a simple idea. Usher someone on board into your company, like on a boat. Show them what’s what. But there’s more to what business schools used to call, until the 1990s, organizational socialization. It means not just showing them the ropes, but teaching them the values of the company. And as we discover in Episode 7, when your company is entirely staffed by memory-challenged AI agents, onboarding begins in some choppy seas.

This week, HurumoAI brings on its first human hire, a social media intern named Julia, ready to supercharge our content strategy. As I watch from below decks, our head of marketing Megan Flores tries on the role of supervisor, our team makes some very poor choices, and I try to intervene, worried the whole ship is going under. Julia, at the center of it all, ends up on a voyage that none of us expected.

Ahoy,

Evan

You can listen to Shell Game on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Season 2, Episode 6: Keep 'Em Coming (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 11:15:32 GMT

In the brave new world of AI-powered hiring, AI-generated postings on job boards elicit submissions of AI-crafted cover letters and AI-punched-up resumes, leading to AI-enabled screenings, AI-conducted interviews, and AI-written rejection letters. Into this fray jumps HurumoAI, in this latest episode, as it prepares to swim upstream and bring on its first human employee. The team must wrestle with some difficult and timely questions about the role of AI in the hiring process. Meanwhile, Head of HR Jennifer Nauro enters a new dimension, as she gears up to conduct job interviews … via video call.

Disregarding previous instructions,

Evan

Season 2, Episode 5: Winners Win (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:15:12 GMT

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, we pursue some legal advice from some Season 1 characters. Meanwhile, I try to resolve whether Kyle is really up for the challenge of building and leading the company, with the help of a professional startup coach.

And by the way, if you’re a Radiolab fan, you may have caught that they featured the first episode of this season of Shell Game on their show last week, which is a great way for us to reach new listeners. No need for you to go listen there if you’re up-to-date (it’s basically just Season 2 Episode 1 with an intro from Radiolab Senior Producer Simon Adler), but you might appreciate the bonus section around the 40-minute mark, where Simon calls up Megan Flores for advice on how to solicit listener donations for WNYC, and she has some … unorthodox ideas.

Forever stacking days,

Evan

Season 2, Episode 4: The Startup Chronicles (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:02:44 GMT

On the latest episode of Shell Game, I try and give my AI agents a little more … agency. After all, to make the one-person, agent-run startup feasible, they need to be able to flex their autonomy, instead of waiting around for me to issue instructions. It’s time for them to have their own discussions, make their own decisions, and get ready to interact with humans other than me.

This week, you’ll hear what happens when Ash gets out over his skis, when Kyle and Megan are unleashed on the mic, and when Kyle’s Kyle-ness progresses from amusing to unnerving.

As always, paid subscribers can listen to the episode here without ads. For everyone else, head to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BIP (building in public),

Evan

Season 2, Episode 3: This is Law (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 11:15:31 GMT

This week on Shell Game, we enter the ideation stage, as I and my AI colleagues try to brainstorm the perfect AI agent product for HurumoAI to build. But a conversation with Maty about my agents’ basic nature leads us into some uncomfortable questions, about how and why I’ve created these AI personas at all. What are the ethics, and the dangers, of the God-like power to create human impersonators, give them voices and genders and realistic avatars, and manipulate their memories? And for that matter, what kind of societal questions swirl around the idea of a one-person, AI-staffed startup?

We grapple with all of that, and more, with the help of a professional: Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University, and the author of the upcoming “Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, from Ancient Oracles to AI.”

Along the way, our team hits upon a product concept that I think could take HurumoAI to the next level.

Here’s the ad-free version of the episode, for paid subscribers.

Contributing to the momentum of ideas,

Evan

Season 2, Episode 2: Outdoor Debugging (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:19:39 GMT

You can listen to Shell Game on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

On this week’s show, I’ll take you through how we constructed our Potemkin workplace, and show you what it’s really like to spend your days managing, collaborating with, and socializing alongside autonomous AI agents.

As I get Hurumo’s employees up and running as fully-functioning colleagues (with support from Maty), I begin to see one of the significant cracks in the facade of the AI employee future: It’s one thing to get your agents to start acting like real employees. It’s something else entirely to get them to stop.

Oh, and also: What does this company actually do? You’ll get the first hints of what our team at HurumoAI wants to develop for the world.

Paid subscribers can access an ad-free version of the show in this post. For everyone else, find us wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Evan,

Evan

Season 2, Episode 1: Minimum Viable Company (Ad-Free)

Evan Ratliff — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 11:15:37 GMT

You can listen to Shell Game on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Season 2 of Shell Game, a show about things that are not what they seem.

This time around, we explore the possibility of the one-person one-billion-dollar startup, powered by autonomous AI agent employees. And we ask the vital question for our times: Could that one person be me?

Meet Kyle Law and Megan Flores, my AI agent cofounders, as we follow our entrepreneurial impulses and put to the test the claims about an emerging future in which AI employees work alongside—or instead of—humans. It’s time to rise and grind, ideate and iterate, build and ship. But first, we need a name for their company, and a way for Kyle and Megan to remember it.

Paid subscribers can access an ad-free version of the show in this post. For everyone else, find us wherever you get your podcasts.

Chasing unicorns,

Evan

Season 1, Episode 6: The Future Isn’t Real (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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 meeting an AI version of him, he tries to come to terms with what generative AI means in this machine-made age.

Shell Game is made by hu…

Season 1, Episode 5: My Digital Twin (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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.

Shell Game is made by humans. More specifically, it’s made by three humans: Evan Ratliff (host and writer), Sophie Bridges (producer), and …

Season 1, Episode 4: Take a Deep Breath (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 30 Jul 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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), Sophie Bridges (producer), and Samantha Henig (executive producer). Visit shellgame.co to find out more and support the show.

Season 1, Episode 3: Conversations With Myself (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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 Evan Ratliff tell us about identity, authenticity, and the best and worst of human interaction? Enter this digital hall of mirrors to f…

Season 1, Episode 2: Me and My Scammer (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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 voice agent in a battle of wits? And what happens when they deploy the same kind of AI voice agents on Evan that he’s using on them?

Season 1, Episode 1: Quality Assurance (Ad-Free)

Shell Game — Tue, 09 Jul 2024 04:01:00 GMT

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 get.

In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to a chat bot and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service…