Visionaries, Rebels and Machines

From fleeing war-torn Europe to walking into the heart of Silicon Valley, this is a story of survival turning into something much bigger. It traces how one outsider navigated identity, ambition, and opportunity to shape the modern tech world. And just when it feels like the journey settles, it sets up a mindset that would change how companies operate forever. Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A boy survives war and oppression, making impossible decisions just to stay alive. At the same time, a quiet breakthrough in technology is about to reshape the world. Their paths are worlds apart, yet they’re closer than you’d think.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before computers were machines, they were people crunching numbers by hand and making mistakes that shaped history. This episode uncovers how a scattered set of ideas about code, logic, and machines finally clicked into something world changing. And at the center of it all is one mind that quietly built the foundation for the digital world you live in today.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

History is messier and darker than your textbooks ever told you, and this finale pulls no punches. It connects the telegraph, racism, and propaganda to the tech and algorithms shaping your world right now. If you think technology is neutral, this episode might change your mind.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The telephone almost failed, and one stubborn manager is the reason it didn’t. Discover how Theodore Vail turned chaos into strategy, replacing lawyers with engineers and inventing a culture that lasted decades. This episode jumps from Victorian physics labs to courtroom battles, monopoly drama, and a tiny invention that changed everything.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The legendary rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla makes for great internet drama, but almost none of it is true. In this bonus episode, Jamie Dobson digs into the historical record to separate fact from meme mythology, uncovering a story far more human and far more interesting than the fan-fiction version that dominates the web. From Paris workshops to New York dynamos, from mutual admiration to misremembered autobiography, this is the real relationship between two of history’s most celebrated inventors; and how a comic strip, a museum campaign, and the internet turned them into enemies they never were.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A young inventor arrives in New York with almost nothing and decides to outshine the brightest mind of his era. What follows is a clash of egos, experiments, and shocking twists that shaped the future of electricity. This episode dives into the origins of the rivalry that would spark one of the greatest battles in tech history.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A scruffy kid with a knack for telegraphs becomes the most famous inventor in America. A simple question about light turns into a race to rewrite the future. Hear how Thomas Edison went from hustling newspapers on trains to lighting up the world.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A scrunched-up letter pulled from a wastebasket. A race to the patent office with only hours to spare. In this episode, Jamie Dobson unpacks the explosive courtroom drama that decided who really invented the telephone. Was Alexander Graham Bell a visionary genius or a brilliant opportunist who stole Elisha Gray’s ideas? Tune in for a story of ambition, betrayal, and the shocking twist that rewrote technology history.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discover how a sickly young Scot, sent to Canada to die, ended up inventing the telephone and changing the world. Was Alexander Graham Bell a genius inventor or just a lucky teacher in love with the right student? This episode dives into the love, rivalry, and surprising twists behind one of history’s most famous inventions.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInFind out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A young artist loses everything and stumbles onto an idea that could make messages outrun horses and ships. Rival inventors, shaky demos, and a code of dots and dashes turn doubt into worldwide buzz. Hear how one line between cities rewired ambition, politics, and the way news travels.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if the real story behind Frankenstein began not in fiction, but in a London prison with a corpse and a few jolts of electricity? In this episode, Jamie Dobson uncovers how a strange 18th-century experiment led to one of the biggest scientific rivalries of all time. Discover how a twitching frog’s leg helped spark the invention of the battery we use in our world today.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What do frog legs, cloud computing, and failure have in common?They’re all part of the messy, magnificent story of how we got here.I’m Jamie Dobson - author of Visionaries, Rebels and Machines — and in this podcast, I’ll take you on a journey through the ideas, accidents, and breakthroughs that shaped our digital world.From Edison’s lightbulb moment to the birth of the cloud…From the engineers who fled war to build machines of peace…To the technologists today trying to teach machines to think.This isn’t just the history of tech.It’s the story of creativity, chaos — and the strange, beautiful way we fail our way forward.Each episode, we’ll unpack the big themes that shaped humanity’s extraordinary journey from electrification to cloudification.So if you’ve ever wondered how the web got weird,why management matters more than machines,or what the hell the cloud really is......you’re in the right place.This is Visionaries, Rebels and Machines.Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts and let’s take the long view of the future.Find out more about the Visionaries, Rebels and Machines:BUY THE BOOK HEREListen to more episodes of the podcast here.Download sample chapters here.Ask Jamie questions here.Learn more about our people:Jamie Dobson: LinkedInJoin Jamie’s Substack If you enjoyed this episode then please either:Follow, rate, and review on Apple PodcastsFollow and rate on SpotifyWatch our videos on our YouTube Channel! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.