CTRL+Z: Rewritten cover art

CTRL+Z: Rewritten

CTRL+Z: Rewritten

By: Kevin Perez-Allen
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Summary

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.

2026 Kevin Perez-Allen
Political Science Politics & Government Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Trailer- CTRL+Z: Rewritten
    May 10 2026

    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?

    Show More Show Less
    1 min
  • Disney Hits CTRL+Z
    May 10 2026

    In October of 2016, Bob Iger was 48 hours from buying Twitter for $15 billion. Both boards had approved. The lawyers were drafting. Goldman Sachs was working the weekend. Then Iger went through the user data one more time, read his own notifications, and couldn't sleep. Sunday morning he typed an email to his board with the subject line "cold feet," called Jack Dorsey, and killed the deal. Twenty-eight days later, Donald Trump won the presidency.

    Fourteen months after that, Disney bought 21st Century Fox instead, and Disney+ followed.

    This week we hit Control Z on the Sunday morning phone call, and follow what happens when the man who runs Disney decides to own the platform that hosts the president.

    Show More Show Less
    30 mins
  • Pope Urban II Hits CTRZ+Z
    May 5 2026

    In November of 1095, a sixty-year-old French pope stood in a field outside the cathedral of Clermont and gave the most consequential speech of the Middle Ages. Eight months earlier, ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor had asked him for a few thousand professional knights to help fight the Seljuk Turks. Standard contract work. Urban II sat with the request through the summer, then walked outside on November 27th and offered something nobody had ever heard before. Full remission of sins for everyone who took the cross. The crowd shouted back, "Deus vult." God wills it.


    They asked for soldiers. He gave them a holy war.

    This week we hit Control Z on the speech that launched the Crusades, and follow what happens when one man writes the smaller answer.

    Show More Show Less
    32 mins
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