Shell Game
4.9/5
Critic Rating
A podcast about things that are not what they seem, hosted by journalist Evan Ratliff. In Season One, that thing is Evan’s voice. By creating a voice clone and hooking it up to an AI chatbot, Evan set out to discover what happens when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you. Shell Game was named one of the the best podcasts of 2024 by New York Magazine and called "awesome" by The Verge. Over the course of six episodes, Evan’s voice agents talk to spammers and scammers, to Evan’s friends and family...
Critic Reviews
Score: 5
Louisa Lim • The Saturday Paper • Sep 29, 2024
"...the year’s most deeply satisfying moment of podcast schadenfreude. The heart of this series lies in Ratliff’s attempts to explore the limits of his identity and of human-AI interaction. It’s still easy to distinguish between his human voice and the emotionless AI pretender, but I was surprised at how quickly I anthropomorphised the endearingly eager AI-Evan."
Score: 4.8
Nicholas Quah • Vulture • Sep 3, 2024
"The resulting series can be a little shaggy and uneven at times, but the underlying oomph of Ratliff’s exploits here is reliably compelling. It’s fun to hear a human being rebel in a bid to defend his own humanity. …"
Score: 5
Stephen O. • Podcast Delivery • Jul 14, 2024
"If there’s one thing we implore you to take away from this six-episode banger of a podcast is that all this AI stuff can actually spark (or in some cases, re-spark) curiosity, ability, and individual economic mobility."
