PODCAST · society
CTRL+Z: Rewritten
by Kevin Perez-Allen
On a computer, Control Z is the undo button. When you press it, whatever you just typed gets reversed and allows you to make a different decision. What if you could press Control Z on some of the biggest decisions in history? Every episode, we take a real decision by a real person, rewind it, and build the alternate timeline from scratch. What happens to the country, or the company or society, when the person in the room picks the other door? Sony turned down Marvel's entire character catalog for $25 million. Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers instead of negotiating. NBC almost killed Seinfeld after one episode. King Edward VIII nearly kept the British throne three years before World War Two. What happens if they go the other way? Politics, business, sports, history, and pop culture. New episodes weekly.
Episodes
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Barack Obama Hits CTRL+Z
On Thursday, August 21st, 2008, Joe Biden sat in a dentist’s office while his wife had a root canal, and Barack Obama was choosing his running mate. For 2 months Obama had kept Hillary Clinton on his list, though his campaign manager and chief strategist wanted her off it. She had the smarts,...
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Queen Isabella of Aragon Hits CTRL+Z
On January 2nd, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella took the surrender of Granada, and a 40-year-old sailor from Genoa watched from the crowd. For 6 years Christopher Columbus had asked them to pay for a voyage west to Asia, and twice their experts had told them the ocean was too wide. Within days they...
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ICYMI: Hannibal Hits CTRL+Z
Unfortunately, I came down with an illness this week that took my voice completely. So, instead of nothing, I'm sharing one of my favorite episodes to research: Hannibal of Carthage conquers Rome. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Stay healthy out there.
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Napoleon Hits CTRL+Z
On Easter Sunday, April 10th, 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sat inside the palace of Saint-Cloud with 2 ministers who couldn't agree. One told him to sell the French colony of Louisiana before the Royal Navy took it for nothing. The other told him to keep it and send the 12 ships and 3,000 soldiers...
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A Quick Update!
Just a quick update as to why there was no episode today and informing you that Episode 28 comes out tomorrow! Thank you all so much for listening!
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Arthur Sulzberger Hits CTRL+Z
On June 11th, 1971, Arthur Sulzberger sat in the publisher's office at the New York Times with 7,000 pages of a top secret Pentagon history of the Vietnam War, copied without permission by a former analyst named Daniel Ellsberg. His reporters had been writing in secret in a hotel for 3 months.…
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Emperor Xuande Hits CTRL+Z
On July 27th, 1433, the officers of the biggest navy on earth lined up in a palace courtyard in Beijing to receive robes and paper money from Emperor Xuande. They had been gone 2 and a half years, as far as the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Zheng He, the admiral who had led them for 28 years, was...
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Decca Records Hits CTRL+Z
On January 1st, 1962, the Beatles drove 10 hours through snow to a Decca studio in West Hampstead, borrowed the company's amplifiers, and played 15 songs in an hour with Pete Best on drums. Five weeks later, on February 6th, Brian Epstein sat down to lunch at Decca's head office on the Thames and...
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Pope Clement VII Hits CTRL+Z
On June 8th, 1528, Pope Clement VII signed a decretal commission — a document giving two cardinals the power to end Henry VIII's marriage on English soil, with no appeal to anyone — and then ordered it shown to the king once and burned. Fourteen months later, on July 23rd, 1529, one of those...
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Muhammad Ali hits CTRL+Z
On April 28th, 1967, Muhammad Ali stood in a line of 46 men on the third floor of a Houston induction center while Lieutenant Steven Dunkley read the rule: take one step forward when your name is called, and the step itself puts you in the Army. The heavyweight champion of the world had spent the...
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David Chase Hits CTRL+Z
SPOILER ALERT: This episode discusses the endings of The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Lost, Parks and Recreation, Mad Men, The Leftovers, and Ozark. On June 10th, 2007, David Chase ended The Sopranos with a family eating onion rings in a New Jersey ice cream parlor, a bell over the door, and 10…
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Nelson Rockefeller hits CTRL+Z
On May 9th, 1933, guards climbed a scaffold in the lobby of the RCA Building and brought Diego Rivera down mid-brushstroke. His fresco for Rockefeller Center held a portrait of Lenin, and Rivera had refused Nelson Rockefeller's written request to paint it out. The wall got a canvas drape, and 9...
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Sears Hits CTRL+Z
On January 25th, 1993, Sears killed the most famous catalog in American history, and Wall Street applauded. The Big Book was losing up to 175 million dollars a year, and Arthur Martinez, 5 months into the job, chose to eliminate it rather than shrink it. 113 stores closed. 50,000 jobs vanished.…
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John Curtin Hits CTRL+Z
In February of 1942, the ships carrying Australia's best soldiers were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and Winston Churchill turned them around without asking. Singapore had surrendered 7 days earlier. Darwin had been bombed 3 days earlier. Churchill cabled Prime Minister John Curtin that the...
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Stephen of Blois Hits CTRL+Z
In December of 1135, Henry the First of England died in Normandy, and the man best positioned to take his throne had already sworn twice not to. Henry had made every baron in his kingdom kneel and lay a hand on a chest of saints' bones, promising to crown his daughter Matilda after him. One...
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General Electric Hits CTRL+Z
In 1980, the most respected executive in America needed a successor. Reginald Jones ran General Electric, a company of 400,000 employees and the last original member of the Dow, and he chose by calling each finalist into his office and asking the same question: you and I die in a plane crash, so...
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General Howe Hits CTRL+Z
4th of July Episode! In 1776, one British general had George Washington cornered. Washington's army was trapped on a strip of high ground in Brooklyn, its back to a river with no boats, beaten and out of room. General William Howe's officers begged him to storm the position and end the revolution...
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Mikhail Gorbachev hits CTRL+Z
In 1991, the men around Mikhail Gorbachev spent two years begging him to send in the army and hold the Soviet Union together. He had already ordered three crackdowns that left unarmed civilians dead, but when it came time to crush the republics for good, he refused. By the end of that year the...
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Kodak Hits CTRL+Z
In 1981, a study Kodak paid for and signed told the company that digital photography would kill film within a decade. Kodak read its own warning and used it to squeeze a few more years out of film instead. The company that invented the digital camera filed for bankruptcy in 2012. It almost went…
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Hannibal Hits CTRL+Z
In 216 BC, at a place in southern Italy called Cannae, Hannibal destroyed the largest army Rome had ever raised, tens of thousands killed in a single afternoon. With the capital nearly defenseless, he chose not to march on it. That restraint let a broken Rome survive, and the Republic that lived...
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Anthony Kennedy Hits CTRL+Z
In December 2000, the Supreme Court stopped Florida's recount and let George W. Bush's 537-vote lead stand. Those votes, out of nearly six million cast, decided Florida, and Florida decided the presidency. It almost went the other way. Seven of the nine justices agreed the count was broken. They...
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Charles V Hits CTRL+Z
In October 1555, a dying Charles the Fifth split the largest empire in Europe between two heirs. Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the silver of the New World went to his son Philip. The imperial crown, plus Austria and the lands to the east, went to his brother Ferdinand. The most powerful man…
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Howard Hughes Hits CTRL+Z
In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that Hollywood's five biggest studios had been running an illegal monopoly. People remember the case as the government ordering the studios to sell their theaters. That's not what happened. The Court banned the worst practices, sent the theater question back to a...
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Reagan Hits CTRL+Z
On October 20th, 1980, Ronald Reagan wrote the president of the air traffic controllers' union a letter calling their working conditions "deplorable" and promising his administration would fix them. PATCO endorsed him three days later. It was the first time the union had ever backed a Republican....
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Disney Hits CTRL+Z
In October of 2016, Bob Iger was 48 hours from buying Twitter for $15 billion. Both boards had approved. The lawyers were drafting. Goldman Sachs was working the weekend. Then Iger went through the user data one more time, read his own notifications, and couldn't sleep. Sunday morning he typed an...
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Trailer- CTRL+Z: Rewritten
On a computer, Control Z is the undo button. When you press it, whatever you just typed gets reversed and allows you to make a different decision. What if you could press control Z on some of the biggest decisions in history?
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Pope Urban II Hits CTRZ+Z
In November of 1095, a sixty-year-old French pope stood in a field outside the cathedral of Clermont and gave the most consequential speech of the Middle Ages. Eight months earlier, ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor had asked him for a few thousand professional knights to help fight the…
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Blockbuster Hits CTRL+Z
In September of 2000, three guys from a tiny DVD-rental startup called Netflix flew to Dallas on a chartered jet they couldn't afford to make a pitch to the most powerful video rental chain on Earth. Reed Hastings asked Blockbuster CEO John Antioco for fifty million dollars. Antioco's mouth...
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Rod Thorn Hits CTRL+Z
In April of 1979, the Chicago Bulls had a coin flip against the Los Angeles Lakers for the first pick in the NBA Draft. The Bulls' marketing department had run a fan vote on what to call. Heads won. Bulls GM Rod Thorn, who'd called tails his entire life, looked down at the marketing handout and...
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King Edward VIII Hits CTRL+Z
In December of 1936, King Edward VIII signed a piece of paper that changed a thousand years of British monarchy. He gave up the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée his government refused to accept as queen. His brother Bertie became George VI. Bertie's daughter became Queen...
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NBC Hits CTRL+Z
In December 1989, NBC had a pilot nobody wanted. "The Seinfeld Chronicles" had tested as one of the worst pilots in network history, the president of entertainment called it "too New York, too Jewish," and Fox had already passed. The show was dead. Then a specials executive named Rick Ludwin...
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Apple Hits CTRL+Z
On December 10, 1996, Apple was months from bankruptcy and out of options. Two men flew to Cupertino to pitch their software as the company's last hope, Jean-Louis Gassée and Steve Jobs. Apple picked Jobs and used the software he brought with him to build the iMac, the iPod, the iTunes Store, and...
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Nixon Hits CTRL+Z
On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced his resignation rather than face near-certain impeachment and removal. Barry Goldwater told him he had 15 votes. He needed 34. So he quit. But what if he didn't? What if Nixon told Goldwater to go to hell and forced the United States Senate to remove…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
On a computer, Control Z is the undo button. When you press it, whatever you just typed gets reversed and allows you to make a different decision. What if you could press Control Z on some of the biggest decisions in history?
Every episode, we take a real decision by a real person, rewind it, and build the alternate timeline from scratch. What happens to the country, or the company or society, when the person in the room picks the other door?
Sony turned down Marvel's entire character catalog for $25 million.
Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers instead of negotiating.
NBC almost killed Seinfeld after one episode.
King Edward VIII nearly kept the British throne three years before World War Two.
What happens if they go the other way?
Politics, business, sports, history, and pop culture.
New episodes weekly.
HOSTED BY
Kevin Perez-Allen
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does CTRL+Z: Rewritten have?
CTRL+Z: Rewritten currently has 33 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is CTRL+Z: Rewritten about?
On a computer, Control Z is the undo button. When you press it, whatever you just typed gets reversed and allows you to make a different decision. What if you could press Control Z on some of the biggest decisions in history? Every episode, we take a real decision by a real person, rewind it, and...
How often does CTRL+Z: Rewritten release new episodes?
CTRL+Z: Rewritten has 33 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to CTRL+Z: Rewritten?
You can listen to CTRL+Z: Rewritten on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts CTRL+Z: Rewritten?
CTRL+Z: Rewritten is created and hosted by Kevin Perez-Allen.
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