Plutopia News Network

This time, we dig deep into the archives for a flashback to the final episode published prior to our seven-year “sabbatical”. “Miller is as quirky and delightful as ever, treating the Southwest as a vast midden from which he plucks many odorous but tasty treasures. The fun, as usual, comes from watching Tom digest.” – Larry McMurtry Based out of Tucson, Arizona, Tom Miller has traveled...

Stephanie Vale, the pen name of a longtime WELL member, is a semi-retired attorney and part-time university instructor in the US Pacific Northwest.   She has loved Jane Austen for more than 40 years, and has been reading and enjoying Austenesque fiction since 2008. In 2017 she finally became inspired to attempt writing her own JAFF or Jane Austen Fan Fiction. Her first book, THE COLONEL’S BR...

Johannes Grenzfurthner is a happily subversive artist, filmmaker, author, and performer. He’s based in Vienna, Austria. He’s founder and director of monochrom, an international art and theory collective. He’ll be premiering his latest film, “Masking Threshold,” at Fantastic Fest in Austin (coming soon to a brainstem near you!). In this interview, we discuss nerd cultu...

Chris Zappone works as a foreign news editor in Australian media. Chris has written about geopolitics, space, technology, ideology, and the future. He has consulted with universities, think tanks and businesses in the area of tech disruption, information war, and cryptocurrencies. And he has an interest in history and utopia (and Plutopia!). Chris Zappone: “I think part of the issue with the...

Suzanne Stefanac, aka Zorca, is an interactive media consultant and former journalist. As a journalist, she wrote about digital issues for Wired, Macworld, New York Times and Rolling Stone, among others. With the launch of MSNBC in 1996, Stefanac was executive producer for The Site, an hour-long, nightly television program and website that explored how technology impacts modern life. Lately she&#8...

Rock and roll! Plutopia News Network cohosts Scoop and Jon talk about their internet radio show, Radio Free Plutopia. They also discuss their lifetime love of rock and roll, vinyl records, digital music, record shops, album covers, and much more!

Artist Eliza Evans returns with an update on her activist art project, “All the Way to Hell.” We also talk about fracking, the oil industry, nonprofit organizations, hybrid art forms, and much more. Eliza Evans: “When I launched the project last fall, not quite a year ago, I had this I thought crazy reach goal of giving away mineral rights to a 3 acre Oklahoma property – gi...

Tom Jennings joins Plutopians for a free-range, grass-fed conversation about programming and software, Afghanistan, racism, the Civil War, Tom’s FrankenRambler, and much more. Tom is a Los Angeles-based artist, tech, and AMC Rambler aficionado. He is known for his work on FidoNet, the first message and file networking system for BBSes. He’s also known for his work at Phoenix Technologi...

Climate scientist Michael Tobis returns to the Plutopia podcast. He discusses the conflict of fascism vs. internationalism, the right wing co-opting of the anti-vax movement, conservative resistance to climate science, and virtue signaling on social media. Also wondering if democracy can survive the right’s fascination with fascism. Michael is interested in the interface between science and...

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon and Scoop follow up our January 2021 interview with Sandy Stone. In this episode, we discuss her experience working as part of the Olivia Records collective, her authorship of “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” her role in originating the Transgender Studies discipline, and her experience establishing the Ad...

Jon and Scoop have a conversation with author and consultant John Hagel about his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear , which explores the psychology of change, the passion of the explorer, and how to identify, face, and move beyond your fears to focus on opportunities and realize your full potential. John has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneu...

Rancher, author, activist and punk rock knitter Spike Gillespie joins Plutopians Maggie Duval, Scoop Sweeney and Jon Lebkowsky to talk about the challenge of small town politics in the crazy polarized 2020s. Spike has been raising hell since she was born with her fist raised in the air. She is, among other things, an author, influencer, secular minister, provocateur, serial entrepreneur, social ju...

Nate Wilcox manages Combat Sports properties for Vox Media | SB Nation, running four of the most popular web properties covering MMA/UFC, boxing and pro wrestling. He also hosts the rock and roll podcast “Let It Roll.” In a past life, he was a political consultant. He joins Plutopians Jon and Scoop for a deep dive into politics. This session was originally broadcast live on our Yo...

David Gans is a musician, author, and radio producer based in Oakland, California. David writes and performs his own music. He also had a career writing about music, particularly the music of the Grateful Dead. He’s published 4 books about the Dead, and produced the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour. In this Plutopian conversation, David discusses his music career, his long-running ra...

Scoop and Jon talk about the news! We start by talking about link rot and content evaporation on the Internet, referencing Jonathan Zittrain’s Atlantic piece. We talk about Dead Media, content filtering, algorithmic curation and filter bubbles, information anxiety, newsreaders, cancel culture, political classifications, racism, power, corruption, and the Alamo.

Writer and technology critic Paulina Borsook has written for Wired, Mother Jones, and Suck.com. She is perhaps best known for her 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech She’s also an artist, with projects like “My Life as a Ghost” and “The Hindsight Institute.” In our Plutopia News Network interview, we discuss he...

Evelyn Jean Pine’s plays wrestle with moments when life feels so new your hair is electric. In May, PlayGround presented a staged reading of her latest play, 7 Secrets of Teaching Online. A June Ann Baker Prize winner, a PlayGround Resident Playwright, and a Djerassi Alum, she writes about Queen Isabella, the Lumiere brothers, and Bill Gates at 20. The Invisible Project, co-written with Katja Rive...

Angie Coiro is an award-winning radio journalist and on-stage interviewer. She’s done radio and TV work in the San Francisco Bay Area over the last 25 years. She just ended her syndicated radio show, “In Deep with Angie Coiro.” Angie is an acclaimed interviewer. She has recorded conversations with Al Gore, Roxane Gay, Anna Quindlen, Peggy Orenstein, Morgan Jerkins, Will Durst, Ma...

In early May, author and critic Ed Ward died in his home in Austin. As word spread, his friends and fans shared their stories about Ed. This time, on the Plutopia podcast, four of his friends share their recollections – warts and all. Joe Nick Patoski and Nate Wilcox join Jon and Scoop to share stories and opinions about their very complicated friend. Ed spent his life writing about rock and...

“John is the guy who made the WELL into a community” -Howard Rheingold John Coate has spent much of his life managing and building online communities, including the seminal online community, The WELL. John also created the first major online news site at SFGate.com. He’s currently doing community management as part of the European Commission Next Generation Internet initiative. O...

“Sacred Data and AI: An Indigenous Perspective” was recorded May 11, 2021, at an EFF-Austin meeting featuring Michael and Caroline Running Wolf. Michael Running Wolf was raised in a rural village in Montana with intermittent water and electricity with grandparents who only spoke their tribal languages, Cheyenne and Lakota. These languages, like many other indigenous languages, are near...

In this episode, Jon and Scoop discuss their plan to channel Art Bell and Fox Mulder in future episodes, specifically discussing UFOs. UFOs are currently subject of serious discussion, with disclosure of more facts imminent. The New Yorker just published an article, How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously , and 60 Minutes just featured a report on UFOs: Stanton Friedman on UFOs The late...

Pat Cadigan is an esteemed science fiction author, and one of the original contributors to the cyberpunk subgenre. She is sometimes referred to as the Queen of Cyberpunk. Pat writes fiction that deals with the the interaction between the human mind and technology. Early on she was a writer for Hallmark Cards but soon transitioned to editing fantasy and science fiction magazines, including Chacal a...

Patrick Lichty is a conceptual artist, curator, and theorist. He explores how media shape our perception of reality, as well as the borders between the digital and the material. Pat describes himself as “a culturally engaged human being who’s involved in art, writing, art curation, and technoculture.” With Scoop and Jon, Pat discusses art, technology (including NFTs and AI), and...

With Scoop and Jon, technology writer and broadband consultant Steve Stroh discusses broadband access, rural wireless Internet providers, satellite-based Internet, fiber networks, and much more. “If you can get fiber, do it. Because it is the best, highest quality – not just fastest, but it’s the best option for broadband Internet access. Because, basically, it’s pure data....