Wired.com presents The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here are your hosts. John Joseph Adams and David Barr

Kirtley.

Hi this is Dave and this is Dave. And this is John.

And welcome to episode 88 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Ann O'Lee Newitz, editor of I.

9, the Internet's most popular science fiction website.

Her new book, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember describes massive disasters throughout Earth's history

and explores how we might increase our chances of surviving the next one.

Then stick around that review review as guest... might increase our chances of surviving the next one.

Then stick around after the interview as guest geek Julia Gaeliff,

host of the Rationally Speaking Podcasts joins us to discuss rationalism and science fiction.

All right, so let's get to our interview.

All right, so we're here with Ann O'Lee Newitz.

Welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me.

All right, so your new book is called Scatter, Adapt, and Remember.

So what's that about?

This is a science non-fiction book,

which I am describing as being somewhere

between very hard science fiction and absolutely straight science

writing. It's partially a scientific discussion of the history of

mass extinction on the planet and it's partly a speculative

...