It’s up! My first effort as an audiobook narrator, The Eudaemonic Pie by Thomas A. Bass, is available for purchase through Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. You can listen to the entire prologue of the book in the episode here:
This is a story of the very early days of personal computing. It’s the late 1970s in Santa Cruz. Intel has just recently released the CMOS processor – the first “computer on a chip.” The Homebrew Computer Club, just an hour up the road, is putting together the early basis for what became Apple. The air is electric in more ways than one. A band of physicists, artisans, artists, and adventurers decides that the game of roulette can be beaten. Not by reaching out and affecting the game, but by deducing the Newtonian equations that govern the game and then using computers embedded in their shoes to play the game in the computer’s brain at hyperspeed to predict in advance where the ball will land.
To be sure, this is a story of going to Las Vegas to do battle with the casinos. But, much more importantly, this is the story of the democratization of computing and the very birth of the hacker culture. And, even though the book came out more than 30 years ago, it remains astonishingly relevant – you could almost change the names of the computer chips and restaurants in the story and have it read like it came out yesterday. I’m honored that Thomas trusted me with this story. We worked closely to make the audiobook carry the energy and inspiration of the story. Thomas tells me that I managed to do it. I hope that you think so, too.
The read is dedicated to Bill and Barbara Tozier (who have been my spirit animals and guides to ways of thinking about information and people for 15 years) and David Fry, the tech entrepreneur whom I most admire.
Want to catch the spirit of this story and provide an incentive to get more stories like this into audiobook form? Here’s how.
(1) If you’re not already an Audible subscriber, please sign up for a free trial using the URL http://www.audibletrial.com/AIRSPEED. You sign up for a free trial on Audible and pick The Eudaemonic Pie as your first selection. The show gets a few bucks from Audible for your free trial sign-up and the author and the show splits a bounty when you pick our book as your first selection.
(2) If you’re already an Audible subscriber, buy The Eudaemonic Pie just like you would any other audiobook. The show gets a little taste of Audible’s revenues associated with your purchase.
Thanks for supporting efforts that bring important and inspiring stories to you!