Almost everyone is a gamer now in some form, especially now that the pandemic has left many with way more free time than usual. In this episode, we sit down with Tom Derr, a socio-cultural historian who studies the history of games. He tells us about why pinball was banned for 30 years in New York City and how games came to be associated with skill, the first RPGs, and how morality started getting folded into gaming, which has huge implications as games become more and more realistic with Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) and a shrinking workforce due to automation.  We also talk about gender and other cultural minorities in gaming culture and the profound impact the Internet has had on our psyches and social worlds, often in a toxic but seemingly inescapable way.

Tom's podcast: https://anchor.fm/getinformedpodcast

Music is The Beauty of Maths by Meydän.