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Ripped from the pages of Adam Fisher's uncensored history of Silicon Valley, Valley of Genius features the hackers, founders, and freaks who made Silicon Valley boom, in their own words. Drawn from over 200 interviews with the brightest stars and hidden heroes of technology, Valley of Genius is required listening for history buffs, tech lovers, and anyone interested in the innovation, betrayal, and magic of Silicon Valley.Although the show is no longer in production, you can enjoy episodes from the TWiT Archives.
Atari was a lit rocket; you get to hear who got the credit when it took off.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
An Apple II, an acoustic modem, and a public-health mission give early computing a tangible human scale.
Valley of Genius frames early personal computing through an object with a strange second life. Larry Brilliant remembers receiving one of the first Apple IIs from Steve Jobs, taking it into Nepal as a typewriter, and pairing it with an early acoustic modem while working amid…
A firsthand Atari story where Spielberg's praise meets five punishing weeks and a workplace under pressure.
Howard Warshaw's Atari story turns the old genius myth into something more human: a pressure test shaped by acclaim, uncertainty, and exhaustion.
A rainy first hackers conference becomes a vivid portrait of curiosity turning into community.
Fabrice Florin's memory of the first hackers conference gives this PlayNext episode its most inviting shape: a gray, rainy gathering tied to the wider Whole Earth circle around Stuart Brand, where strangers introduced themselves, named what they hoped to make, and then drifted…
Charlie Ayers remembers early Google as a workplace where play and work blurred into one odd rhythm.
Google's early workplace comes into focus through Charlie Ayers, whose restaurant background made the scene feel especially strange at first. Hockey, ping pong, pinball, massages, scooters, rollerblades, and a giant dog were not side details so much as part of the atmosphere.
Tech founders and investors, with the operating details left in.
Specialists walking through software's tradeoffs, one system at a time.
Founders and engineers on AI coding agents like Claude Code, and supply chain security.
Valley of Genius: Larry Brilliant examines the doctor’s work eradicating smallpox and his encounters with Steve Jobs in India and Silicon Valley.
Howard Warshaw tells Adam Fisher how he left Hewlett-Packard for Atari in 1981, accepting a 20% pay cut from $25,000 to $22,000.
Valley of Genius host Adam Fisher interviews Fabrice Florin about the first Hackers Conference, organized by Whole Earth Catalog editors Stuart Brand and Kevin Kelly near Sausalito.
Charlie Ayers describes becoming Google's early chef after a 25-chef trial and starting on November 17, 1999.
Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey built Twitter from a two-week hackathon around SMS status updates.
An interview with Pixar co-founder Alvy Ray Smith about his role in the early days of computer graphics and Silicon Valley.
An interview with author Adam Fisher about Nolan Bushnell, the inventor of the first arcade video game and founder of Atari, drawn from oral histories of Silicon Valley.
This episode explores the life and influence of Stuart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, and his role in the early Silicon Valley counterculture.