Claire L. Evans. is an American musician, writer, and artist whose career has spanned music, technology, and cultural criticism. Best known as the co-founder and lead singer of the indie pop group YACHT, she has helped steer the group into bold experiments at the intersection of sound, performance, and digital art.

She’s also the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, a widely acclaimed history that re-centres the pioneering women whose work shaped our digital world. Beyond that, her essays and criticism have appeared in VICE, Wired, and The Guardian, where she often explores the ways technology and culture collide.

Most recently, she's one of the creators of Blippo+, a TV channel-surfing game for Switch, Steam, and Playdate in which players flip through a surreal lineup of alien broadcasts, lo-fi oddities, and hidden lore, uncovering the strange culture of Planet Blip one channel at a time.

LINKS:

YACHT

Claire' website

Blippo+

Night and the City, Christian Donlan.

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Alexander O. Smith is a translator, writer, and creative producer whose work has brought some of Japan’s most acclaimed stories to audiences around the world. After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in classical Japanese Literature, he went on to become one of the most respected voices in literary and video game translation.

He is best known for his celebrated work on Final Fantasy XII, Vagrant Story, and the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorneyseries, as well as his translations of Japanese novels and manga, including those by Miyuki Miyabe and Akira Toriyama. With a rare gift for capturing cultural nuance, he has helped define how English-speaking players and readers experience modern Japanese storytelling.

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Charlie Rosen is a Grammy award-winning musician, composer, and arranger whose work sits at the intersection of jazz, pop, and video game nostalgia. As the founder and leader of The 8-bit Big Band, a 35-piece jazz-pops orchestra, he had transformed classic video game soundtracks into virtuosic symphonic showstoppers.

Under his direction, the ensemble has reimagined themes from Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Sonic the Hedgehog, with flair—earning critical acclaim, viral attention, and a devoted global audience. The band’s latest album, Orchestrator Emulator, was named Jazz Album of the Week by The Sunday Times and continues my guest’s mission to build what he calls “The Great Video Game Songbook.”

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