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

Hello and welcome to episode 396 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Peter Bugosian.

He's a philosophy professor at Portland State University,

and author of the book Emmanuel for Creating Atheists.

Together with James Lindsey and Helen Pluck Rose, he published a series of intentionally

ridiculous papers in academic journals in order to show that editors care more about ideological

conformity than intellectual rigor.

As you might imagine, this did not go for well

with many of his colleagues.

And we'll be speaking with him today about his obsession with science fiction

TV shows and about his new book

How to Have Impossible Conversations, which he wrote with James Lindsey.

And now here's our interview with Peter Bogotian.

All right, so we're here with Peter Bogotian.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me on, David. So how did you first get interested in science fiction?

Oh, this is one of my, all right, well you're talking about science fiction, this is one of my favorite topics to be a long podcast. It's a hobby of mine and I've liked it ever since I've been a child. I used to watch the old lost in space and then I used to read a ton when I had now I

consume I watch my science fiction movies and TV and I read non fiction but ever since I was a child I've just always been my

passion and my hobby.

Did you well were your parents into it or teachers or friends or anything?

No in fact they always found it to be bizarre.

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