Episode 14: Psychological Warfare, with Annalee Newitz

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[upbeat music] Welcome back to Dreaming Against the Machine. I'm your host, Adam Becker. This week's guest is author and journalist, and my friend, Annalee Newitz. Annalee writes both novels and nonfiction books. Her most recent novel actually is coming out in October of this year. It's called A Wall Is Also a Road, and you can pre-order it wherever you get your books. But we spend most of this episode talking about her most recent nonfiction book, Stories Are Weapons, which is about psychological warfare. And I know that sounds pretty heavy, but I promise this is Dreaming Against the Machine [laughs] and we find a way to have fun with it, uh, which is easy 'cause Annalee is a fun person and we s- always have a good time talking. So I, uh, I hope you enjoy it. Annalee, welcome to Dreaming Against the Machine.

Thank you so much for having me.

Let's see. How would I describe you? I would, I would describe you as a science journalist and science fiction author and, uh, also founder of a website that, uh, that was near and dear to my heart, IO9, and just general cool person. Uh, I don't know if you feel that this is an accurate description.

I mean, very kind of you to say. Um-

[laughs]

... I think very cool person should definitely be part of my, my bio. Um-

Yeah, you should have it on business cards

[laughs] And, um, I write books that are both nonfiction and fiction, but not in the same book. I don't mix them in the books.

[laughs]

I keep them separate.

We've known each other for a while. How did we meet? I think it was Kishor's fault.

Kishor Hari brings lots of cool people together, and is himself-

Almost professionally at this point, yeah

... insanely cool. What a-

Yes

... what an awesome guy. I think that is how we met, but also then I asked you to be my science advisor on my second novel-

Yeah

... which dealt with time travel.

Yeah.

And I had this idea that there was a scientific way to do time travel, and you said the kindest and most helpful thing to me, which was, you