Video games are arguably the antithesis of nature; highly constructed worlds, synthetic, inorganic. If you grew up gaming, you may recall grown-ups telling you to shut down the console, go outside, and touch some grass.
These days, though, touching grass isn’t something you have to do outside. As gaming has grown into a 200 billion dollar industry, the boundary between screen and soil has muddied. New technologies and types of play are getting gamers ever-closer to the experience of real nature. And yet, in a kind of weird feedback loop, those same technologies and types of play meant to simulate nature are now changing the real thing in ways that could outlast us all.
Credits:
This episode was produced by Dean Russell. Edited by Kelly Prime. Mix, sound design, and music composition by Paul Vaitkus. Additional mixing by Martín Gonzalez. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia.
Special thanks to Samuel Åberg, Alex Beachum, Tracy Fullerton, Will Matthee, Kelsey Myers, and Mike Rougeau.
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Surgical Precision: One doctor's quest to show how video games can save lives
Dr. James "Butch" Rosser was a pioneer in minimally invasive surgery in the 1990s. When he credited his surgical skills to video games, people dismissed him. The prevailing narrative was that kids who played video games became killers, not doctors. So Butch set out on quest: to show how video games can help make better doctors.
Show notes:
The impact of video games on training surgeons in the 21st century
(JAMA Surgery)
Study: High-School Video Gamers Match Physicians at Robotic-Surgery Simulation (Slate)
We Have to Operate, but Let's Play First (The New York Times)
He’s really on his game (Orlando Sentinel)
Credits
This episode was written and produced by Grace Tatter and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Emily Jankowski.
"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.
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Hidden Levels: Choose Your Player (Side Quest)
Today, Stef Sanjati is a creator on YouTube with over half a million subscribers. Her content mostly focuses on her two greatest loves — makeup and gaming — often combining the two with her otherworldly video game-inspired beauty tutorials.
Growing up in small-town Ontario, though, Stef was a quiet, introverted kid who was bullied a lot. For one thing, she looked different from her peers. Having been born with a rare genetic condition called Waardenburg Syndrome, Stef has several distinct physical features, including wide-set blue eyes and a natural streak of white hair.
But there was something else that she didn’t quite have the words for back then – something she felt closest to while playing as her favorite avatar in World of Warcraft, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. That something else was that Stef is trans.
Choosing your player is a near-ubiquitous experience in gaming. Whether it's picking from a stock of ready-made options in Mario Kart or carefully calibrating a custom avatar in World of Warcraft, a gamer's choice of character has a huge impact on the gaming experience. But when a gamer is given the chance to choose, or even build, a brand new identity outside of the one they experience every day, the potential impact goes far beyond simple gameplay.
Credits
This episode was written and produced by Frannie Monahan and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix, sound design and music composition by Paul Vaitkus.
"Hidden Levels" is a production of 99% Invisible and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.
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This song wants you to stick out your what!?
If you know what "Sticking out your Gyat for the Rizzler" means you're likely a part of Gen Alpha or you're chronically online. And if, like us, you have no idea what that means when you first encounter it, then strap in and get ready to be schooled on what the internet is coining "Gen Alpha Lingo."
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The Vault (from the vault)
We're going underground into what might be the most important vault in the world. What's inside? A treasure that originates with a Russian scientist during WWII.
Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.
Netherlands