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.

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33 episodes
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Episodes 33

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S1 · E34
Today · 46 min
Lyndon Johnson Hits CTRL+Z
On July 21st, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson walked into the Cabinet Room, where his top advisers were debating what to do about Vietnam. South Vietnam was losing a civil war to communist guerrillas, even with 75,000 American troops there to help. Back home, Johnson was using a historic landslide to pass the Great Society, the programs he called the woman he really loved. He had 2 choices. His Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, wanted to send 100,000 more troops. George Ball, the number 2 man at the State Department, told him America couldn’t win and offered to negotiate a way out. Johnson sided with McNamara. The war killed nearly 60K Americans and drove Johnson out of office, and the communists took South Vietnam anyway. What if he had listened to George Ball? This week we hit CTRL+Z on that Cabinet Room meeting, and follow the ripple to today: the last American troops sail home from Vietnam in December of 1966. Johnson wins a second term, where he signs a national child care law and appoints a majority of the Supreme Court. Ronald Reagan takes the White House in 1972, only to lose it 4 years later to Robert Kennedy. And next door in Cambodia, the communist guerrillas known as the Khmer Rouge never come to power. All of it happens because Lyndon Johnson chose to leave Vietnam.
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S1 · E33
Monday · 25 min
Jerry Jones Hits CTRL+Z
Close to midnight on October 11th, 1989, Jerry Jones sat in a restaurant in Irving, Texas, across from Herschel Walker, the best player on the winless Dallas Cowboys. Jones had owned the team for 7 months and was paying $40,000 a day in interest. His coach, Jimmy Johnson, wanted to trade Walker to Minnesota for 5 players and a stack of draft picks. Jones’s first answer to the trade had been, “You can’t get rid of Herschel Walker. We won’t score a point.” He had 2 choices. Pay Walker $1.25 million to leave, or keep him. He paid, and Johnson used the Vikings’ picks to draft Emmitt Smith and build the team that won 3 Super Bowls in 4 seasons. What if he had kept Herschel Walker? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the dinner in Irving, and follow the ripple to today: Emmitt Smith answering a call from Green Bay on draft day, Dan Marino winning a Super Bowl in Miami’s own stadium with that same running back behind him, Jimmy Johnson’s Arizona Cardinals beating his old college roommate in a playoff game in Dallas, and Herschel Walker retiring after 12 seasons, every one of them as a Cowboy. Jerry Jones is 84 and has won 1 Super Bowl in 37 years as owner, because one night in 1989 he wouldn’t pay his best player to leave.
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S1 · E32
October 31 · 36 min
Sandra Day O'Connor Hits CTRL+Z
On Tuesday, June 28th, 1983, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor read a letter from her colleague Harry Blackmun about the Betamax, the machine Sony sold that recorded TV shows onto tape. Universal Studios had sued Sony, arguing that a family taping one of its shows was making an illegal copy, and a federal appeals court had agreed. Justice Blackmun had written an opinion upholding that ruling, but he was 2 votes short, and in his letter he refused to change a word to win hers. She had 2 choices. Sign his opinion, or refuse. She refused, the Court heard the case again, and on January 17th, 1984, it ruled 5 to 4 that taping a show to watch later was legal. Congress never passed the studios' bill to control movie rentals, so video stores kept renting, and Blockbuster grew to about 9,000 locations. Money from rental tapes paid for A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dirty Dancing and Reservoir Dogs. In 1987 Americans spent more buying and renting videocassettes than they did on movie tickets. What if she'd signed? This week we hit CTRL+Z on Justice Blackmun's letter, and follow the ripple to today: a chip in every new recorder that stops it from taping a studio's shows, Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street shutting down just before filming, Quentin Tarantino behind the counter on the last day of the video store where he works, and Netflix selling itself to Amazon in its first summer. In 2026 most American homes pay a cable bill, the recorder under the TV plays every ad, and YouTube is for birthday parties, because one Tuesday in June Justice O'Connor signed the opinion against the Betamax.
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S1 · E31
October 25 · 36 min
Oliver Cromwell Hits CTRL+Z
On Friday, May 8th, 1657, Oliver Cromwell walked the length of the Banqueting House in Whitehall to tell a committee of Parliament whether he would be King. The Commons had voted 123 to 62 to write that title into a new constitution, and for 5 weeks they had waited for his answer. About 100 army officers had come to Whitehall to say he should refuse it, and only 2 wanted him to accept. He had 2 choices. Take the crown, or send it back. He told the committee he could not take the government with the title of King, so within 3 weeks the Commons struck out the word and wrote in Lord Protector. He died in September of 1658, and his son lasted less than 9 months. The January after Charles Stuart came home, Parliament had Cromwell’s body dug up and hanged at Tyburn. His head spent more than 20 years on a pole over Westminster Hall. What if he’d taken the crown? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the morning in the Banqueting House, and follow the ripple to today: the Speaker of the Commons setting a crown on Cromwell’s head, Richard the Fourth riding out to face his own regiments with the pay chests on carts behind him, a Dutch governor handing New Amsterdam to an English admiral who lets the town keep its name, and 13 American colonies declaring their independence from a king called Oliver. In 2026 Oliver the Fifth reigns under a written constitution from 1657, Dunkirk is an English town on the coast of France, and Cromwell has lain undisturbed in Westminster Abbey for 367 years, because one Friday in May he told a committee of Parliament he would take the crown.
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S1 · E30
October 17 · 33 min
Barack Obama Hits CTRL+Z
On Thursday, August 21st, 2008, Joe Biden sat in a dentist’s office while his wife had a root canal, and Barack Obama was choosing his running mate. For 2 months Obama had kept Hillary Clinton on his list, though his campaign manager and chief strategist wanted her off it. She had the smarts, discipline, and steadfastness he wanted, he told them, but Bill Clinton was a complication. If he picked her, he said, there would be more than 2 of us in the relationship. By December the former president had agreed to 9 rules on his foundation’s money so his wife could run the State Department. He had 2 choices. Call Biden at the dentist’s office, or offer the job to Clinton. He called Biden, who said yes. Clinton used a private email server as secretary of state, and the FBI director wrote Congress about it 11 days before she lost Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Biden took the oath as the 46th president in January of 2021. What if he’d offered it to Clinton? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the call to the dentist’s office, and follow the ripple to today: Bill Clinton holding the Bible while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swears in his wife as vice president, Secretary of State John Kerry receiving the coffins from Benghazi, a woman’s victory speech under the glass ceiling of the Javits Center, Donald Trump convicted by a Manhattan jury as his own TV channel covers the trial, and children taking class in tents on high school football fields in the fall of 2020. In 2026 Marco Rubio is the 46th president, Joe Biden is retired in Wilmington, and every public school built with federal money has a classroom outside, because one Thursday in August the call went to the Clintons’ house in Chappaqua.
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S1 · E29
October 10 · 41 min
Queen Isabella of Aragon Hits CTRL+Z
On January 2nd, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella took the surrender of Granada, and a 40-year-old sailor from Genoa watched from the crowd. For 6 years Christopher Columbus had asked them to pay for a voyage west to Asia, and twice their experts had told them the ocean was too wide. Within days they turned him down again, this time over his price: admiral, viceroy, and a tenth of the profit. He packed his charts on a mule and rode for France. Back in the camp, the king’s finance officer told the queen the whole fleet needed only 2,500 crowns, about a quarter of 1 percent of what the war had cost, and offered to lend it himself. She had 2 choices. Let him go, or send someone after him. She sent a court officer, who caught Columbus on a stone bridge 4 miles down the road. The contract was signed April 17th, 3 ships left Palos in August, and on October 12th a lookout sighted land in the Bahamas. What if she’d let him go? This week we hit CTRL+Z on the bridge at Pinos, and follow the ripple to today: a Genoese chartmaker growing old in a room over the harbor at Honfleur with Japan drawn 2,400 miles west of the Canaries, a Portuguese clerk writing Lisbon a letter about parrots from a beach in Brazil, a Breton captain named Jacques Cartier anchoring off Hispaniola in 1534, a grandson of Moctezuma ruling a city that buys its matchlocks from Norman traders, and a Spanish army marching out of the Netherlands because the king can’t pay it. In 2026 the 2 continents are called Santa Cruz, Portuguese is spoken from the Amazon to the River Plate, and Tenochtitlan is still on its lake, because one January a queen let a sailor keep riding.
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October 4 · 35 min
ICYMI: Hannibal Hits CTRL+Z
Unfortunately, I came down with an illness this week that took my voice completely. So, instead of nothing, I'm sharing one of my favorite episodes to research: Hannibal of Carthage conquers Rome. I'll be back next week with a new episode. Stay healthy out there.
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S1 · E28
September 27 · 32 min
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.
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September 26 · 1 min
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!
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S1 · E27
September 19 · 40 min
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.
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S1 · E26
September 12 · 36 min
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.
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S1 · E25
September 5 · 29 min
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.
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S1 · E24
August 29 · 44 min
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.
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S1 · E23
August 22 · 31 min
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.
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S1 · E22
August 15 · 31 min
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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S1 · E21
August 8 · 24 min
Nelson Rockefeller hits CTRL+Z
On May 9th, 1933, guards climbed a scaffold in the lobby of the RCA Building and brought Diego Rivera down mid-brushstroke. His fresco for Rockefeller Center held a portrait of Lenin, and Rivera had refused Nelson Rockefeller's written request to paint it out. The wall got a canvas drape, and 9 months later, workmen chiseled 63 feet of plaster into powder near midnight. Buried in Rivera's refusal letter sat a counteroffer almost nobody remembers. He would trade the mural's nightclub scene for Abraham Lincoln, standing with John Brown, Nat Turner, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Lenin on one side, Lincoln on the other. Nelson, 24 years old, said no. What if he'd said yes? This week we hit CTRL+Z on May 8th, 1933, and follow the ripple to today: a finished fresco drawing Depression crowds past a communist in a capitalist lobby, a congressman waving photographs of the wall on the House floor, a velvet curtain going up in the McCarthy years and coming down for a funeral, and delegates at the 1964 Republican convention booing the man who kept it. Rockefeller Center destroyed the painting, hired another artist, and put Lincoln on that wall anyway. The mural Rivera lost became the most famous artwork America ever destroyed, and the version that survives hangs in an office lobby where tourists walk past it on the way to the elevator.
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S1 · E20
August 1 · 25 min
Sears Hits CTRL+Z
On January 25th, 1993, Sears killed the most famous catalog in American history, and Wall Street applauded. The Big Book was losing up to 175 million dollars a year, and Arthur Martinez, 5 months into the job, chose to eliminate it rather than shrink it. 113 stores closed. 50,000 jobs vanished. The last telephone order came in on May 27th. Two weeks before the announcement, in White Plains, New York, a company called Prodigy passed 2 million subscribers and became the largest online service in America. It sold merchandise on a screen, years before the web. Sears owned half of it. What if Martinez had connected them? This week we hit CTRL+Z on January 25th, 1993, and follow the ripple to today: catalog buyers rebuilding an online store item by item, an electronic Wish Book selling Sega Genesis consoles at midnight, Jeff Bezos choosing books because a 100-year-old competitor already sells everything else, and a dot-com crash that kills every internet store except the ones sitting on real warehouses. Sears spent a century shipping goods to people who couldn't reach a store, built the screen that came next, and dismantled the machine 18 months before the future needed it.
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S1 · E19
July 25 · 31 min
John Curtin Hits CTRL+Z
In February of 1942, the ships carrying Australia's best soldiers were in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and Winston Churchill turned them around without asking. Singapore had surrendered 7 days earlier. Darwin had been bombed 3 days earlier. Churchill cabled Prime Minister John Curtin that the 7th Division was going to Burma, that some ships lacked the fuel to come home, and that the President of the United States agreed. Curtin, 4 months into the job, said no. 4 times. Every Australian prime minister before him had given London what it asked for. The convoy turned south, the men came home, and they held the Kokoda Track and won at Milne Bay, the first clear defeat of the Japanese army on land in the entire war. What if he'd said yes? This week we hit CTRL+Z on February 22nd, 1942, and follow the ripple to today: 5,000 Australians walking 900 miles out of a lost Burma, teenage militia holding a mountain track alone, a division stranded in Ceylon while its country waits, and a nation that signs the same American treaty in 1951 but signs it as a follower instead of a partner. Australia came within one midnight cable of staying a colony in its own head, and the refusal is where the modern country began.
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S1 · E18
July 18 · 42 min
Stephen of Blois Hits CTRL+Z
In December of 1135, Henry the First of England died in Normandy, and the man best positioned to take his throne had already sworn twice not to. Henry had made every baron in his kingdom kneel and lay a hand on a chest of saints' bones, promising to crown his daughter Matilda after him. One chronicler says Stephen of Blois pushed to reach the relics first. Stephen took a ship instead. He was crowned at Westminster three weeks later, and England spent the next 19 winters tearing itself apart. A monk at Peterborough wrote that Christ and his saints slept. Out of that wreckage, Matilda's son built the writs, the traveling judges, and the 12 sworn neighbors that England, the United States, and most of the Commonwealth still run their courts on. What if he'd kept his word? This week we hit CTRL+Z on December 22nd, 1135, and follow the ripple to today:a woman crowned at Westminster 4 centuries before Mary the First, a warlord who dies old in his bed instead of excommunicated in the Fens, a child named William Marshal who never gets handed to a king as security for his father's promise, a northern border that stays where Henry the First left it, and an ordinary man with a stolen field who waits two generations for a court that will hear him. England came within one kept promise of its first queen, and the broken one is where the common law came from.
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S1 · E17
July 11 · 33 min
General Electric Hits CTRL+Z
In 1980, the most respected executive in America needed a successor. Reginald Jones ran General Electric, a company of 400,000 employees and the last original member of the Dow, and he chose by calling each finalist into his office and asking the same question: you and I die in a plane crash, so who should run the company? Jones picked Jack Welch. Wall Street crowned him Manager of the Century, every boardroom in America copied him, and the doctrine he made respectable, the shareholder above everything else, still runs the economy you live in. What if Jones had picked the engineer? This week we hit Control Z on the vote of December 19, 1980, and follow the ripple to 2026: corporate raiders who die as convicts instead of prophets, two planes that land safely on mornings we remember for crashes, a machinist in Erie with a pension, and a middle class that never stopped getting raises. The old American deal came within one boardroom vote of surviving, and the man who killed it built his creed on its ashes.
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