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.
Howard Warshaw is infamous for creating the "worst video game ever," ET the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. He tells tales of the final days of Atari.
Fabrice Florin produced a documentary of the first ever Hackers Conference, and was influential in the development of Hypercard. He tells his story here.
Jaron Lanier is a virtual reality pioneer and the inventor of the EYE Phone, the first commercially available head-mounted display. He talks about the early days of VR.
Aaron Sittig was the first designer at Facebook, and the man who created the "Like" button. He talks about writing the first Mac client for Napster and the earliest days of Facebook.
Before Mark Pincus made it big with Zynga, he made it even bigger by investing in a couple of little companies called Napster and Facebook. He talks about those early days, and what Mark Zuckerberg was really like back then.
Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe are the founders of Wired Magazine and Wired.com. They talk about starting Wired, the early days of the Web, and inventing the banner ad.
Biz Stone is the co-founder of Twitter. He talks about his days at Google and Odeo, the predecessor of Twitter. He also tells his version of how Twitter was born.
Mark Pauline is the founder of Survival Research Labs, an art collective famous for its pyrotechnic shows featuring giant robots. He talks about his most infamous show, which resulted in a freeway in San Francisco being shut down due to the giant flames surrounding it.
Steven Levy is a legendary tech journalist and author of the seminal book Hackers. He talks about the reaction to his book and the famous Hackers Conference that followed.
Brenda Laurel tells what it was like working at Atari, the office antics and wild parties that occurred, and the eventual downfall of Atari with the infamous ill-fated ET game.
Joey Anuff created Suck.com, one of the earliest humor sites on the web. In his own words, he talks about working at Wired magazine's first website, HotWired, and creating Suck.com in secret.
Tony Fadell is one of the creators of the iPod and a co-founder of Nest. In his own words, he talks about his start at General Magic and building the iPod.
Ev Williams is the co-founder of Twitter. In his own words, he talks about starting Blogger and selling it to Google, starting Odeo as a podcast platform, and pivoting to create Twitter.
Alvy Ray Smith is the co-founder of Pixar. In his own words, he talks about his early experiments with computer graphics at Xerox PARC, work at Lucasfilm, and his opinions on Steve Jobs' contribution - or lack thereof - to Pixar.
Sean Parker is the co-founder of Napster and the first President of Facebook. In his own words he talks about the beginning and end of Napster, meeting Mark Zuckerberg, and the early days of Facebook.
Alan Kay is one of the founders of Xerox PARC. In his own words, he talks about developing early personal computers, the famous demo at Xerox PARC that gave Steve Jobs the idea for the Macintosh, and his feeling that computing has failed.
Everyone knows Larry Page and Sergei Brin, but who really came up with the idea of creating the Google search engine? Meet Google's unknown third creator, Scott Hassan.
Nolan Bushnel was the prototypical "t-shirt tycoon." He tells the stories of how he founded Atari, ushered in the first video game gold rush, and then lost it all.
Stewart Brand coined the term "personal computer" and the phrase "information wants to be free." He organized the first Hackers Conference and founded The Well, one of the earliest social networks. He talks about these and other events in his life as one of the most innovative minds in Silicon Valley.