Wired.com presents The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 368 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Ryan Holiday.

He is a media strategist whose clients have included American apparel and Google,

as well as many best-selling authors such as Tony Robbins and Tim Ferris.

He's also the author of six books, including The Obstacle is the Way and Ego is the Enemy.

And we'll be speaking with him today about his new book conspiracy,

a true story of power, sex, and a billionaire secret plot

to destroy a media empire about Hulk Hogan's lawsuit

against Gocker.

And if you're not familiar with this case,

basically what happened is that Gocker was a gossip website that was

notorious for its take-no prisoners attitude. After they published a sex tape of

Hulk Hogan which had been recorded without his knowledge, Hogan sued

Gocker for invasion of privacy and 1-150 million dollar judgment that bankrupted

the company.

It later emerged that this lawsuit had been secretly funded by Silicon Valley billionaire

Peter Teal, who for years had been incensed by

Gocker's coverage of him and his associates. And I'm especially interested in

his case because both Peter Teal and Nick Denton, the founder of

Gocker, are big science fiction fans.

And it seems to me that their love of science fiction

...