A Life Well Wasted, gaming radio done right
A Life Well Wasted is the brainchild of former Computer Gaming World, Game for Windows Magazine contributor, and member of the legendary 1up GFW Radio podcast (you can find a ‘best of’ here), Robert Ashley. After the demise of the ‘old’ 1up, and the end of GFW Radio, he decided to continue keep that show’s legacy and high-standards, alive by producing his own podcast. However, unlike GFW Radio, A Life Well Wasted is not a roundtable discussion style show, but more akin to the kind of radio shows found on NPR. Robert calls it ‘an internet radio show about videogames and the people who love them’, and I have been an avid listener since the first episode. It is quite simply brilliant!
Robert is also member of the band I Come to Shanghai, who provides music for the show, and it is this music and the masterful editing of it into the interviews, that makes ALWW something special. Unlike a lot of other shows, that devote as much time to the host talking as to the people being interviewed, you very rarely hear Robert talk – instead the focus is on the words of the interviewees. Over the past five episodes ALWW has talked to people as diverse the founder of an art show about videogames, and the best-selling pinball game designer of all time. In the latest Episode Six, Big Ideas, the show continues to surprise me with probably one of the most bizarre gaming interviews I have ever heard:
Robert Ashley edits listener-submitted game ideas into one big, crazy game, talks to the guy who owns the rights to Tetris about his plans to save the world, gets a lecture on the future of games from a New York University professor, and meets a struggling game blogger who happens to possess freakishly enormous genitalia.
You can download the latest episode of A Life Well Wasted here. You can also listen to Robert’s debut on NPR here.
Robert has also created a music ‘single’, of what will be ‘a series of short musical stories’ from ALWW, which you can check out after the break.
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