PLAY PODCASTS
Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It

Jason Scott

354 episodesEN

Show overview

Jason Scott Talks His Way Out of It has been publishing since 2017, and across the 9 years since has built a catalogue of 354 episodes. That works out to roughly 95 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a weekly cadence, with the show now in its 7th season.

Episodes typically run ten to twenty minutes — most land between 13 min and 19 min — though episode length varies meaningfully from one episode to the next. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-language Technology show.

There hasn’t been a new episode in the last ninety days; the most recent episode landed 3 months ago. The busiest year was 2024, with 50 episodes published. Published by Jason Scott.

Episodes
354
Running
2017–2026 · 9y
Median length
15 min
Cadence
Weekly

From the publisher

Historian and loudmouth Jason Scott shares stories of technology, retrocomputing, documentary filmmaking, and general schennanigans from his decades of travels and research. From experiences on the road while shooting documentaries to often-obscure points of order, Jason keeps a fast-moving pace and even he doesn't know where we're ending up at the end.

Latest Episodes

View all 354 episodes

S5 Ep 354The Pile of Badges Episode

The Pile of Badges Episode: A Soft Crash, Gathering, Badges of All Sorts of Shapes and Materials, Attending Conferences, A Late Start, Some Early Predecessors, Keeping the Badges and Keys, Looking Down the Range of Forever, A Mass of Moments, A Life Lived.Contemplating my many dozens, possibly hundreds, of conference badges now hanging on my wall.

Feb 2, 202611 min

S5 Ep 353The Scarecrow Video Episode

The Scarecrow Video Episode: Visiting Seattle, Walking into Scarecrow Video, My Own Mind, The Shelves, The Subjects, The Uniqueness, A Short History, The Scarecrow Video of Internet Archive, Bang, Disgust-o-Meter, Harvard Square Basements, Textfiles and Materials, The Inevitable Jumble.My experience visiting Seattle's legendary Scarecrow video: https://scarecrowvideo.org/

Jan 30, 202613 min

S5 Ep 352The Halo Championship Episode

The Halo Championship Episode: Heading to the Championship, Missing Out, The Layout of the Championship, Missing Out Again, Not Missing Out, Lineups, AARP, Competition, Amazing Staff, The Results, Shotgun.Some experiences from when Kyle and I went to the Halo Championship to finally compete against people half our age and surprising things that happened. Well, perhaps not that surprising.

Jan 26, 202613 min

S5 Ep 351The Final March of the Floppies Episode

The Final March of the Floppies Episode: A Visit with John Morris, The Applesauce, The Imaging of Floppies, An Office Becomes a Battlefield, The Forever Trickle, Images and Analytics, The Final Boss of the Floppies.A celebration of what may turn out to be one of the most definite major projects in the big-office era of my work - taking down the thousands of floppy disks people have sent me over the years.

Jan 23, 202613 min

S5 Ep 350The Mirrorball Episode

The Mirrorball Episode: A Very Intense Machine, The Birth of Mirrorball, What Mirrors Are, Online Culture, Demoscene, The Ebb and Flow of Interest, A Lifetime of Mirrors, The Harvesters of Data, The Mantle of Honor, A Lottery Win, Holding To The Future.A little bit about the Mirrorball, at http://mirrorball.textfiles.com. No particular indication in the episode, but wow! 350 Episodes!

Jan 19, 202611 min

S5 Ep 349The Excessive Air Filtration Episode

The Excessive Air Filtration Episode: Why Am I Like This, Air Filtration, The Old and the Plastic, Environments, Buying an Air Filter, Going Hardcore, Features and Facts, Health and Home, 50 Degrees, A Soon Forgotten Appliance.About the excessive air filter I got for the office. This is not an endorsement or a paid promotion - it's just a ridiculous thing to have gotten and having to turn it down from "Storm King" setting to "Off" to be able to record an episode reminded me this little bit of intensity was in the area.

Jan 16, 202610 min

S5 Ep 348The Upstairs Downstairs Episode

The Upstairs Downstairs Episode: Watching Gosford Park, The Simplicity, Upstairs Downstairs, Process, Exactitude, Logistics, The Archive's Stacks, Users, Servitude, Class, A Pleasant Movie Theater.A rumination on finally seeing Gosford Park (2001) and being fascinated at the arrangement of the kitchen, and, reaching out a bit, comparing it to the arrangements of the Archive.

Jan 12, 202613 min

S5 Ep 347The Sorting Stacks Episode

The Sorting Stacks Episode: Light After Shadow, Facing Down The Stacks, The Nature of Chaos, Order From Chaos, A Lifetime of Sorting, Millions of Choices, Oddity And Insanity, The Joy Of 50 Percent, Amy.With the settlement of Internet Archive's last major public lawsuit, a chance to burst out into the fields of Valhalla and appreciate the great stuff I get to do with an incalculable island of data. https://hiphopradioarchive.org/ was mentioned; I always love that effort.

Jan 9, 202613 min

S5 Ep 346The Video Files Episode

The Video Files Episode: Hard Drives Locked, Thousands of Hours of Video, Television, Audio Versus Video, The Missing Dates, The Usefulness of Video, The Sheer Disk Space, The Future of Analytics, The Unknown.About how the thousands of hours, soon to become tens of thousands of hours, of television will find a home at the Internet Archive and maybe, with some luck, the future.

Jan 5, 202611 min

S5 Ep 345The HOPE Seminar Episode

The HOPE Seminar Episode: Attending Hackers on Planet Earth, A HOPE Workshop Building, Presenting a Class, The Process of Interviews, The Goals, The Process, How I Apparently Teach, Thoughts of Preparations Beyond, A Different Kind of Hope.I decided to do a workshop/class on interviewing at the HOPE Conference in NYC this year. I've not taught a class before in any way - now I know what kind of teacher I am.

Jan 2, 20269 min

S5 Ep 344The Decay and Entropy Episode

The Decay and Entropy Episode: A General Store, A Long Bike Ride, The Accident, The Changes in the Neighborhood, Decay, Buildings, Malls, Arcade, Personal Times, Formation of Memories, The End of it All.A rumination on a general store that once operated at my childhood home for over 100 years before it came to an end, and what that trend means generally.

Dec 29, 202510 min

S5 Ep 343The Yard of Hard Drives Episode

The Yard of Hard Drives Episode: Throwing Hands with Backlogs, The Literal Yard, Drives Cast Out, The Grind of Pain, Survivorship Bias, The Success and the Failure, The Arcane Nature of Repair, The Realization of Entropy, The River Styx.I find myself staring down many, many hard drives left in the yard, and try to find value and rescue in what I can get. It's going fine! But it's noisy.

Dec 26, 202510 min

S5 Ep 341The Game Company Employment Episode

The Game Company Employment Episode: That Time I Worked for Psygnosis, The US Outpost, Temp Job, The Small and Tiny Firm, Deliveries and 800 Numbers, What People Did, The Temptations of Valor, The Wonders That Were Real, An Expanse of Time, The Dreams Yet To Live.A small rumination of my time working for Psygnosis putting some realistic boundaries on what I did while I was there, in reference to people sometimes overplaying their hands as to proximity to greatness.

Dec 19, 202512 min

S5 Ep 340The Sinistar at Extremes Episode

The Sinistar at Extremes Episode: Synamax and Sinistar, Source Code, Experiments, Sinistar Research, Sinistar Upgrade, California Extreme, A Panel of Legends, An Excellent Evening, Drinks and Chats, The True Meaning, Our Vanishing Opportunity. To watch Synamax's excellent documentary on Sinistar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCuoUSDBVac

Dec 15, 202511 min

S5 Ep 339The Seagull Painting Episode

The Seagull Painting Episode: A Very Large Painting, a Suburban Life, a Gargantuan Campus, Divorce and Time, Aunts and Couches, Smaller Than I Remember, The Painting for Money, Customers, An Office Wall, a Regret of No Better Memory.An episode about a very large painting that lives in my office, and the story (and life) behind it.

Dec 12, 202510 min

S5 Ep 338The Audio Engineering Lessons Episode

The Audio Engineering Lessons Episode: Bovine Ignition Systems, They Might Be Giants, Mixing, Equipment, Future Plans, Why Audio Engineering, Going to Class, Learning the Lessons, A Part of the Chain, Lessons Learned, Jason and Jeremy Forever.The lessons learned one summer for audio engineering in a college course that still helped Jeremy and Jason even when they stopped making music (together).

Dec 8, 202511 min

Ep 337The Book Release Episode:

The Book Release Episode: A Moment of Pride, Chris and Alexas Orcutt, The Books of Chris Orcutt, The Nine-Book Series, To Hold In One's Hands, Luck and Opportunity, The Years to Come....in which, like some sort of errant fellow at a ceremony, I raise a toast to Chris Orcutt getting review copies of his first book of his new series out. He's at https://orcutt.net/weblog/ and worth every amount of attention I can bang pans to get.

Dec 5, 202510 min

S5 Ep 336The Catalogs of False Promise Episode

The Catalogs of False Promise Episode: The Meanings of Catalogs, The Promises, The Possibilities, Assistants and Artists, Apps, Crashed TestFlight, Computer Stores, Collections, Walking Among the Stacks, Lost Players, Lost Makers, The Guideposts to What Was.A rumination on computer software catalogs and what they might be, what they matter for, and what might happen.

Dec 1, 202514 min

S5 Ep 335The Regretted Moment of Decision Episode

The Regretted Moment of Decision Episode: Bootleg, The Bootlegger, Stone Cold Hustler, House Flipping 1970s Style, Crank, Apple II Basement, Grey Market, Lost Floppies, Decisions Made, No Regrets.I've mentioned Bootleg before, but it's time once again to talk about the uniqueness of him and an unexpected life lesson he provided me in his basement.

Nov 28, 202513 min

S5 Ep 334The Couch Episode

The Couch Episode: Staying Overnight, The Glow and The Sounds, Previous Spaces, The Draw of an Overnight, Dreams of A Hacker Goblin, Welcome Changes. I thought I'd stay overnight in the office.

Nov 24, 202510 min
Creative Commons Attribution