CTRL+Z: Rewritten

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.

  1. 4 天前

    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 already waiting in a Dutch harbor. Britain was 38 days from declaring war, and an American named James Monroe was already riding for Paris with orders to buy one city, New Orleans, for 10 million dollars. He had 2 choices. Sign the order that sent the fleet, or sign the order that gave the whole territory away. At daybreak he told his treasury minister, "I renounce Louisiana." The United States paid 15 million dollars and nearly doubled in size. Britain declared war 18 days later. What if he'd listened to the other minister? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the palace at Saint-Cloud, and follow the ripple to today: a French garrison dying of yellow fever behind an earthen wall on the Chalmette plain, a British admiral landing troops through a Louisiana bayou 11 years before Andrew Jackson tries to take the same ground and fails, a Cherokee chief signing for land on the Arkansas river under the protection of the Crown, and a Canadian prime minister promising a railway from Montreal to New Orleans. In 2026 the Mississippi river is an international border for its entire length, and the customs post on the Memphis bridge flies a foreign flag, because one Easter Sunday a First Consul changed his mind by morning.

  2. 預告片

    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!

  3. 9月19日

    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. His lawyers had told him that printing the pages was a crime and that reading them was too. He had 2 choices. Put the government's own history of the war on the front page of Sunday's paper, or take the lawyers' advice and lock the boxes away. He printed it. Within days a federal judge shut the series down, and 19 days after the first story the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the government couldn't do that. What if he had taken the lawyers' advice? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the publisher's office at 43rd Street, and follow the ripple to today: a Washington Post editor in a Volkswagen under the Mayflower Hotel marquee at midnight, a freshman senator from Alaska reading 4,000 classified pages into the record of a subcommittee on public buildings, 2 men in hats running blank paper through the copiers at a church press on Beacon Hill, and a Times lawyer signing a receipt for 3 cardboard boxes. In 2026 the New York Times is suing the Pentagon with a 1931 case about a Minneapolis scandal sheet, because one Friday morning in 1971 a publisher listened to his lawyers.

  4. 9月12日

    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 not in the line. He had died at Calicut, on the coast of India, that spring. Sending the fleet back out would have cost the emperor almost nothing. The ships were built, and 2,000 tons of pepper sat in the warehouses at Nanjing. The ministers who wanted the ships broken up had paid for every voyage and got none of the income. Xuande had 2 orders in front of him, one that made the fleet permanent and one that left it to the ministers. He signed the second. Eighteen months later he was dead at 35, and the men governing for his 8-year-old son banned the building of seagoing ships. What if he had signed the other one? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the courtyard where the fleet was paid off, and follow the ripple to today: a 78-year-old admiral taking 100 ships out of Fujian, Vasco da Gama carrying 4 cloaks and 6 hats up the beach at Calicut while an agent of the emperor counts his guns, a Spanish captain rounding a bend in the California coast and finding a walled harbor already there, and a Chumash chief on Santa Cruz Island with a Ming customs stamp in his house. The oldest building in Monterey is a Chinese customs house, because in January of 1434 an emperor gave his ministers half the pepper.

  5. 9月5日

    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 heard the answer. Dick Rowe, the man who chose what Decca recorded, had picked a group from Dagenham instead, 12 miles from the studio rather than 200. Signing would have cost Decca almost nothing. Rowe's own assistant, Mike Smith, wanted both groups and was told he could have one. Epstein had promised Decca's sales department that his family's shops would buy 3,000 copies of any single the group made, which in 1962 was enough to cover the record before it existed. Rowe said years later that the number would have forced him to sign them. Nobody on the sales floor carried it upstairs, and Epstein left with 2 reels of tape in his briefcase. What if somebody had said the number out loud? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the lunch where Decca said no, and follow the ripple to today: a hired drummer at the kit while Pete Best watches through the control room glass, Ringo Starr on a boat to Hamburg for £20 a week, a producer who quits the biggest band in the world over a van driver's wages, an orchestra on a riser in West Hampstead in 1967, and a tour bus outside a red brick building that isn't Abbey Road. The tapes end up in the same company's vault either way, because on the one afternoon it counted, a sales manager finished his coffee and repeated a figure.

  6. 8月29日

    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 cardinals stood up in a converted monastery hall at Blackfriars and adjourned the court for the harvest. It never reconvened. Signing would have cost Clement almost nothing on paper. Popes had been dissolving royal marriages for 400 years, and Alexander VI granted Louis XII of France one in 1498 on a case so thin the queen produced witnesses to her husband's boasting. Clement himself offered to bless a wedding between Henry's daughter and Henry's illegitimate son to make the problem go away. What stopped him was a Spanish army that had sacked Rome in 1527 and held him in a fortress for 6 months, commanded by the queen's own nephew. What if he'd let that first document stand? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the annulment Rome refused, and follow the ripple to today: a prince born at Greenwich in 1531, an Englishman in white robes in Rome, a letter from Edinburgh that gets a polite refusal, and a bell tower in Yorkshire with the roof still on it. Nobody ever chisels the abbeys down, because on the one afternoon it counted, a frightened man in Orvieto signed his name.

  7. 8月22日

    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 morning taking the physical and turning down a ham sandwich. Officers called his name 3 times, warned him that refusing meant a felony, 5 years, and $10,000, and got a written statement instead. The step would have cost him almost nothing. The government had offered his lawyers "all kinds of deals," no combat and no rifle, just boxing exhibitions for the troops, the same arrangement Joe Louis had in World War II. Sugar Ray Robinson begged him to take it. Elijah Muhammad forbade it, and the last man who defied the Nation of Islam was Malcolm X. Ali's feet never moved. What if they had? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the step he refused, and follow the ripple to today: a quiet Sunday in Cleveland, a nickname that stays on a Harlem playground, a swimmer lighting the cauldron in Atlanta, and a roll call at the 2016 ESPYs that runs 1 name short. Nobody ever marches behind Muhammad Ali, because on the one afternoon it counted, Cassius Clay stepped forward.

  8. 8月15日

    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 seconds of black. Viewers across the country hit their cable boxes. The Boston Globe's television critic sat through those seconds certain his set had died and taken the review with it. Chase had spent years planning something else. Tony Soprano drives out of the Lincoln Tunnel at the top of all 86 hours of the show, and the last scene sent him back the other way, into Manhattan at night, to a meeting he wasn't walking out of. Then, driving down Ocean Park Boulevard in Los Angeles in 2005, Chase passed a little breakfast place, and a thought arrived: Tony should get it somewhere like that. The breakfast place won. What if it hadn't? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the last pages of the final script, and follow the ripple to today: a song that stays where it was in 1981, a corner booth in Bloomfield that stays furniture, a documentary that ends on an answer, and a decade of showrunners deciding what they owe an audience when the credits come. Nobody ever asks David Chase what happened to Tony Soprano, because 12 million people watched it happen.

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預告片

簡介

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.

資訊

  • 創作者
    Kevin Perez-Allen
  • 活躍年代
    2026年
  • 集數
    30
  • 年齡分級
    兒少不宜
  • 版權
    © 2026 Kevin Perez-Allen
  • 節目網站
    CTRL+Z: Rewritten

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