Hi, I'm David Bar-Curtley, author of the book Save Me Please and other stories, and welcome to episode 610 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Megan McArdle. She's an opinion writer at the Washington Post, and her articles have also appeared in The Economist, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and Salon.

She's also the author of the nonfiction book The Upside of Down, while failing well is the key to success. And in this

interview, we'll be discussing her favorite science fiction, and her new podcast, reasonably

optimistic, which tries to provide a more hopeful outlook on the future.

And now here's her interview with Megan McArdle.

All right, so we're here with Megan McArdle.

Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, so a few years ago, you listed Golden Age Science Fiction as one of five topics that you can talk about for 30 minutes with zero prep.

Now we're going to test me.

We're not going to test you.

I'm just curious to know, though.

How did you first get interested in Golden Age science fiction?

When I was eight years old, my father, it was my eighth birthday, January 29th, 1981.

I got two books from my father.

They were Sargasso of Space by Andre Norton and Tunnel in the Sky by Robert Heinland.

And while I liked Sargasso of Space, the Robert Heinlein started me on a lifelong love affair with first Robert Heinlein juveniles.

My school library had some, and I read all of them, and then I discovered more.

I've read everything I could get my hands on by him, and I think the last thing I read when I went for completion was the unpleasant profession of Jonathan Hogue.

Although I then later, after he died, you know, unpublished stuff that had not been put out during his lifetime became available.

Like his amazing story of traveling around the world with Ginny, his wife in, I believe,

...