This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, co-host of Longform and 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 ChatGPT and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives.

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show.

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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? Over the past six months, Evan Ratliff has been trying to find out. He combined a clone of his voice, an AI chatbot, and a phone line—many phone lines, actually—into what are called “voice agents.” Then he sent them out… as himself. They talked to sources and colleagues (including his fellow Longform co-hosts), friends and family, scammers and spammers, other AI voice agents, and even therapists. The result is a story of what it feels like when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you.

New episodes drop on Tuesdays starting July 9.

Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show.

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John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History.

“I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.”

Show notes:

• Sullivan on Longform
• Sullivan’s GQ archive
• Sullivan’s New York Times Magazine archive
• 10:00 “Uhtceare” (Paris Review • May 2021)
• 28:00 Pulphead (FSG Originals • 2011)
• 30:00 The Best American Essays 2014 (Mariner Books • 2014)
• 30:00 “The Ill-Defined Plot” (New Yorker • Oct 2014)
• 50:00 “Man Called Fran” (Harper’s • Sept 2023)
• 50:00 “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (GQ • Aug 2006)
• 50:00 “Upon This Rock” (GQ • Jan 2004)
• 50:00 “Peyton’s Place” (GQ • Oct 2011)
• 50:00 “Leaving Reality” (GQ • Oct 2011)
• 54:00 “Pulp Fever” (Daniel Riley • GQ • Nov 2011)

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The hosts answer a few listener questions.

Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try:

• Creative Nonfiction
• Press Box
• The Stacks Podcast:
• Sunday Long Read
• True Stories
• Question Everything

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Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message.

“I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.”

Show notes:

• ta-nehisicoates.com
• Coates on Longform
• Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Longform Podcast #225: Ta-Nehisi Coates
• Longform Podcast #360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson
• Longform Podcast #408: Ta-Nehisi Coates
• 04:00 "Fear of a Black President" (The Atlantic • Sep 2012)
• 05:00 The Beautiful Struggle (One World • 2009)
• 12:00 "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • Jun 2014)
• 13:00 Between the World and Me (One World • 2015)
• 36:00 "The Mask of Doom" (New Yorker • Sep 2009)
• 40:00 "How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I." (Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nic Grant • New York Times • Apr 2024)
• 42:00 Shell Game (Evan Ratliff • 2024)

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Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye.

“At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.”

Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908.

Show notes:

• @jaycaspiankang
• Kang on Longform
• Kang on Longform Podcast (Oct 2021)
• Kang on Longform Podcast (Aug 2017)
• Kang on Longform Podcast (Apr 2013)
• Kang’s New Yorker archive
• 06:00 Coin Talk
• 08:00 Tyler Austin Harper’s Atlantic archive
• 10:00 Serial
• 12:00 The Daily
• 20:00 “The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High” (The Morning News • Oct 2010)
• 28:00 James (Percival Everett • Doubleday • 2024)
• 34:00 “American Son” (ESPN • July 2024)
• 35:00 Kang’s VICE archive
• 42:00 “Mike Francesa Still Believes in the Power of Radio” (New York Times • Aug 2018)
• 43:00 Kang’s Grantland archive
• 43:00 Kang’s New York Times archive

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Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.

“In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.”

Show notes:

• @josephfcox
• Cox's 404 Media archive
• Cox's Vice archive
• Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever (PublicAffairs • 2024)
• 08:00 "FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates; Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown" (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of California • Jun 2021)
• 10:00 Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (Bradley Hope and Tom Wright • Hachette • 2018)
• 19:00 "Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI" (404 Media • Sep 2023)
• 38:00 "Follow The Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs on Silk Road’s Black Market" (Andy Greenberg • Forbes • Sep 2013)
• 41:00 "Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years" (Motherboard • Feb 2019)

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Tavi Gevinson is a writer, actor, and the founder of Rookie. Her new zine is Fan Fiction.

“Stories are unstable, and memory is unstable, and identity is unstable. All of these things that I've tried to make permanent in writing, they're actually unstable. So even though it's tempting to go, Oh, that was fake, it's more like, No, it was just temporary.”

Show notes:

• @tavitulle
• tavigevinson.world
• Gevinson on Longform
• Gevinson on Longform Podcast
• Gevinson’s Rookie archive
• 10:00 Operation Shylock (Philip Roth • Simon & Schuster • 1993)
• 10:00 Erasure (Percival Everett • Graywolf Press • 2011)
• 14:00 “Taylor Swift Has No Regrets” (Elle • June 2015)
• 20:00 I Love Dick (Chris Kraus • Semiotext(e) • 1997)
• 24:00 “Who Would Tavi Gevinson Be Without Instagram?” (New York • Sept 2019)
• 40:00 “Editor’s Letter” (Rookie • Nov 2018)
• 50:00 “The Special Panic of Singing Sondheim” (New Yorker • Dec 2021)

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Rachel Khong is a journalist and author whose latest novel is Real Americans.

“It's about the ways in which we miss each other as human beings and can't fully communicate what it is like to be ourselves. … And I think that's what makes it so interesting to me, to work on a novel and to spend so much time trying to get down on the page what it feels like to be a human being who's alive. … I think the effort itself is what human relationships are.”

Show notes:

• rachelkhong.com
• 01:00 Real Americans (Knopf • 2024)
• 01:00 Goodbye, Vitamin (Picador • 2017)
• 01:00 Lucky Peach archive
• 01:00 "Would Limitlessness Make Us Better Writers?" (The Atlantic • Apr 2024)
• 01:00 "Dust to Dust" (Eater • May 2024)
• 05:00 "New Pornographers + Stars, 6/25 Prospect Park Summer Stage" (Village Voice • Jun 2005)
• 09:00 Same Bed Different Dreams (Ed Park • Random House • 2023)
• 12:00 "Inside My Days as a Content Bot" (Esquire • Apr 2024)
• 24:00 "The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert" (Rumpus • Oct 2012)
• 24:00 Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert • Riverhead • 2007)
• 24:00 Elizabeth Gilbert's GQ archive
• 54:00 "The Great Pacific Oyster Trail" (Eater • Jun 2017)

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Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip.

“I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.”

Show notes:

• @mckinneykelsey
• kelseymckinney.com
• McKinney on Longform
• McKinney’s Defector archive
• 04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?” (Slate • Jan 2000)
• 13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel” (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011)
• 23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive
• 31:00 God Spare the Girls (Harper Collins • 2022)
• 39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin” (New York Times • July 2021)
• 43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me (Viking • 2025)
• 58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital” (Defector • Dec 2023)

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Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End.

“I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.”

Show notes:

• 00:00 Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations that Never End (Spiegel & Grau • 2024)
• 00:00 YR Media
• 33:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (Sam Anderson • New York Times Magazine • Oct 2021)

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