Hey everyone, a quick disclaimer up top before we get into it. Today's episode focuses on a magazine

interview with Frank Herbert, and so there's actually no audio of the man himself speaking.

That makes it a little bit difficult to make a podcast about it, but we came up with a creative

solution. We asked Leo's dad, Mick Wiggins, to read all of Frank's responses from that magazine interview.

And so throughout today's episode, you're going to hear Frank's responses read by Leo's dad,

who clearly has a voice acting career ahead of him. Get that man out of retirement is all I have to say about that.

Thank you so much to Mick for offering his voice talents to us for

today's episode, and we hope you enjoy this one. It was a lot of fun to put together.

In 1981, staff writer Pat Stone of Mother Earth News magazine trudged out to a homestead in Port Townsend, Washington

to interview a very successful author. Stone couldn't have known it at the time, but the man

he sat down to chat with would be remembered as one of the most legendary sci-fi writers in Western

history. But Stone couldn't even get him to admit he was an author.

Who, me? A science fiction writer?

I've always considered myself to be a yellow journalist.

Like the best muck-wracking yellow journalist at the news media, I ask questions that other

people aren't asking and do a lot of investigating

into the world around me. By 1981, Frank Herbert was at the peak of his career. He was an award-winning

author whose most famous book, Dune, was being adapted into a major Hollywood film. He'd written

four Dune books and numerous other sci-fi novels and short stories.

An outspoken environmentalist

and individualist. By this time

in his life, Frank and his wife

...