For the past year, the tech world has been buzzing about the metaverse. Facebook father Meta and Microsoft they are investing billions. But there is a metaverse that has been going on for decades. It’s called Second Life, and it was created by a small San Francisco company called Linden Lab. There, people started businesses, built houses, and fell in love, all as avatars.

In a new four-part podcast series from The Journal, producer Annie Minoff returns to that largely forgotten virtual world to tell the story of the metaverse we already have and what it reveals about the one to come. We heard from Linden Lab’s founder and early employees, and people who have lived in this world for years.