A Life Well Wasted is an internet radio show about videogames and the people who love them. Each episode focuses on a specific subject and employs interviews, music, writing, and fast-paced editing to create something unique in the podcasting space .
Robert Ashley catches up with a former guest of the show, gets some layoff numbers from the current downturn in the games industry, and talks to several developers who worked on what might be the biggest flop in video game history about what it was like to spend years making something that no longer exists.
12 Dec 2022
Memory
Robert Ashley finds out what it takes to speedrun games in a blindfold, visits a museum in Moscow dedicated to Soviet-era arcade machines, and talks to a group of friends about a childhood summer spent dreaming up a game of their own.
20 Mar 2013
Work
Robert Ashley talks to a developer at a big game studio about his strange trip from blue collar work to video game work, gets a lesson in work ethic from legendary game designer John Romero, finds out what can happen when you give your work away for free, and profiles Nick Smith (aka Ulillillia), whose body of work includes one of the Internet's most monumental--and strange--personal websites.
20 Mar 2012
ALWW update: Eternal Life Vol 2
Robert Ashley returns from the mysterious deep with another musical offering that won't satisfy your desire for more episodes of A Life Well Wasted, but might hold you off for a while longer.
11 Jul 2011
ALWW update: Eternal Life Vol 1
Robert Ashley checks in with you to see how you've been. Oh, did you hear that he has a new album coming out? Want to hear it?
23 Jun 2010
Big Ideas
Robert Ashley edits listener-submitted game ideas into one big, crazy game, talks to the guy who owns the rights to Tetris about his plans to save the world, gets a lecture on the future of games from a New York University professor, and meets a struggling game blogger who happens to possess freakishly enormous genitalia.
25 Nov 2009
Help
Robert Ashley helps people in videogames instead of helping people in real life, meets a comedy group who spend hundreds of hours every year playing the most boring videogame ever created, talks to a guy who quit playing games for a year, and profiles the best selling pinball designer of all time.
31 Aug 2009
Artists, Fans and Engineers
Robert Ashley visits a cosplay enthusiast, talks to the founder of an art show about videogames, discovers the strange world of fan fiction radio plays, and profiles a self-taught computer chip designer racecar driver/roller derby bruiser.
28 May 2009
B-Side: Why Game?
Listeners tell stories about why they play videogames.
29 Apr 2009
Why Game?
Robert Ashley wonders why he spends his free time playing videogames, asks random people on the street about it, talks to a researcher whose work attempts to harness the brain power wasted on gaming, gets to know an eccentric, forward-thinking game designer who lives sustainably with his family of four on $14,000 a year, and gets a first-hand account of what it's like to work on terrible games (and what it's like to get terrible reviews) from an anonymous game developer.
11 Mar 2009
B-Side: The Henry Lowood Interview
Pretty much the opposite of A Life Well Wasted, this is the unedited, full interview with Stanford University gaming curator Henry Lowood, as partly heard in Episode 2.
3 Mar 2009
Gotta Catch 'em All
Robert Ashley explores the world of collectors and archivists, visiting a massive underground collection of videogames, a vintage pinball museum, and a program at Stanford University that hopes to save the history of online gaming.
27 Jan 2009
The Death of EGM
Robert Ashley talks to former Electronic Gaming Monthly writers and editors about their experiences at the long running magazine.
Inside a recent episode
Game Over
Published 4 Sept 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] I found out that we were taking the game offline during my honeymoon right after my wedding. So I was in Spain when I got an emergency meeting from work to join, where we learned that the game had been taken offline due to a lack of players. Kind of put a damper on the dinner, you know. Was it surprising that the game was just removed from the marketplace? It doesn't seem like that happens. I was surprised that that was the first choice. I thought, okay, if we're going this extreme, then we're going to make repairs as we need to and start addressing the feedback immediately, and then we'll put it back online. […]
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