Drive a virtual bus from Tucson to Las Vegas at 45 miles per hour on an empty, unchanging desert highway for eight real-time hours. You cannot pause. The bus veers slightly right, so taping down the controller strands you in the sand and summons a tow truck that also drives in real time. Your reward is one point. This episode traces the wildest life cycle of any piece of media the hosts have encountered: Penn and Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, a 1995 Sega CD game built explicitly to prank the owner's friends. Hidden owner menus rigged astrology and card tricks like Mofo the Psychic Gorilla, competitive scams like Buzz Bombers secretly flooded a friend's screen with penalties, and Sun Scorcher faked a television meltdown.

Desert Bus itself was political satire: television producer Eddie Gorodetsky's malicious-compliance response to Janet Reno a ...