Plutopia News Network

Plutopians enjoy a free-form fiesta of facts and fictions! Jon, Suzy and Scoop discuss voting, Austin politics, Twitter, politics on Tik Tok, cannabis politics, Trump in 2024, and other nightmares. Suzy: I’m off Twitter. I’ll never Twit again. Jon: Oh, really? Suzy: No, I’m done. Did you see what happened, the spike in the use of racial slurs, most particularly the “n&#8221...

Daniel Hope is a Spiritual Director and Enneagram Coach who runs spirituality programming in the healthcare industry. In this Plutopia podcast, Daniel and Jon discuss spirituality, meditation, spiritual direction, artificial intelligence vs. humanity, finding common ground, and much more. Daniel Hope: Darwin was – I don’t think he was the first to propose this, but he put forward that...

In our latest Plutopia News Network podcast, with guest Robert Freeman Wexler, we discuss his early career, his work in book design and his new novel, The Silverberg Business . Robert Freeman Wexler is an author of surreal fantasy. His latest book is novel, The Silverberg Business, from Small Beer Press. Previous books include short story collection Undiscovered Territories, the novel The Painting...

Midterms are coming, and already-hot political discussions and divisions are getting even HOTTER. The Plutopian (Groucho) Marxists are on it! This podcast is a recording of our Plutopia Livestream from 10/13/2022. Plutopia’s Not Ready for Cable News players return for another free-form fiesta of political foolishness. Jon, Suzy and Scoop dissect a wide range of political potholes, including...

Wikimedia LLC President Lane Becker joins the Plutopia Podcast. We discuss Lane’s early career, and his involvement in UT’s ACTLab ; his work in product design, AI, VR and AR; the Institute for the Future; and all things Wiki. Lane Becker: I discovered that I wasn’t really a designer. I learned that in the best possible way, which was that I was working with some of what were, at...

Should we be obsessed with politics? Is political obsession really about our lives, or is it cultivated by skillful marketing of grievance, to raise more and more money? Are we using our cognitive surplus and our energies to fight abstractions, when we should be dealing with real problems, e.g. climate change? Do minorities care about ideology? Do they care about culture wars? What do people want?...

Plutopians welcome Johannes Grenzfurthner for a second discussion about his life and work, focusing especially on his new film “Razzennest,” which just premiered at Fantastic Fest. Johannes is an artist, film director, performer, and founder of the Austrian art collective Monochrom. With Johannes, we explore social media and mass media in the US and Europe. We also compare US and Europ...

Plutopians discuss current events, including Steve Bannon’s arrest and his plan for a wall made of weed, Trump’s document stash, borders, psychedelics, techsplaining, critical thinking, and much more! This is a recording of the Plutopia News Network’s livestream webcast on 9/8/2022. Jon: We were talking about borders – open borders vs controlled borders, and so forth &#8211...

Kevin Welch and Chris Boyd of EFF-Austin join Jon and Scoop for a lively discussion of technology past, present, and future. We begin with Jon’s history of EFF-Austin, followed by computer and Internet nostalgia, phone phreaking, encryption, open source software, license plate readers, and location data brokers. Kevin: One thing we did for the last couple of years was survive Covid, same as...

Roy Casagranda joins Plutopians for a wide-ranging discussion of current events and red vs blue political meltdowns. We ask the question, to jail or not to jail he who must not be named. We explore Christian nationalists, China vs Taiwan, Fox vs Dominion, the credibility of elections, abortion rights, and beer bongs! Roy: I think the problem is that something like 80% of Republicans still think he...

Plutopians join Bijoy Goswami to talk about bootstrapping your business vs. venture capital funding, the human journey and the American journey, the great replacement theory, capitalism and greed, socialism, and religion as a product. Bijoy Goswami: “The mindset is very different when you’re building to sell, when your product is essentially the company, you’ve already – th...

Plutopians perform a deep dive into the Dark Brandon meme. We also look at Dark Maga… to woke or not to woke – that’s the question… Trump in ’24… Beto… Mar-a-Lago gate… and much more! (Speaking about Darnold Trump:) Jon: Apparently there is a law that says that if you, in public office, appropriate documents and misuse them or take them elsewhere, th...

Plutopians explore the search for meaning in our lives, especially in an era of pandemic and polarization. Jon, Scoop and Suzy explore the Goldwater rule, a world based on lies, Victor Frankl, Q-Anon and lie-based causes, Alex Jones, capitalism, and Christian Nationalists. Suzy: I think it’s really interesting what people are trying to find to give meaning, or that is the meaning in their li...

Plutopians explore the use and misuse of language. Jon, Scoop, and Suzy take a deep dive into political language, the voices of Christian nationalism, the January 6 hearings and Liz Cheney, Donald Trump’s language, and much more. “Language is a virus from outer space.” – William S. Burroughs In which Jon discovers that you can’t google googl, because it’s not re...

Plutopians wax poetic on food and drugs. We discuss low fat diets, vegan diets, hospital food, narcotic pain killers, psychedelics, hot sauce, and hot foods. No herbivores or apex predators were harmed during the production of this podcast! Scoop: I’m from that school of thought where you’re only here so long, and if you avoid all these wonderful things, as you’re on your deathbe...

Suzy Shelor returns to Plutopia News Network’s livestream with an exploration of the current state of American politics. Never one to shy away from controversy, Suzy came prepared to offend those who deserve offending, and to support those who don’t. We discuss the January 6th Hearings, the 2022 Texas governor’s race, the Texas GOP party platform, the 1619 Project, Steve Bannon,...

Jon and Scoop take a nostalgic trip to the early days of the computer and online communication. We discuss our first computers and their impact on our lives, our early online experiences, and programs and services that change the way we work and play. We’re inspired by our recent conversations with Kevin Driscoll, author of The Modem World: A Prehistory of Social Media : Kevin Driscoll: The...

Dr. Roy Casagranda, Professor of Government at Austin Community College, and wise observer of politics, returns to the Plutopia podcast. Roy is also a political philosopher, aspiring feminist, author, internationalist, struggling revolutionary. We discuss the January 6th hearings, the Supreme Court vs. abortion, gerrymandering, angry and frightened voters, dog whistles, and 2024 presidential hopef...

Media Studies professor and “The Modem World” author Kevin Driscoll joins Jon and Scoop in taking a nostalgic and informative look back at the early days of online and Internet communication. Kevin explains the impact of early bulletin board systems, newsgroups, online services, and the coming of the web. This conversation is a followup to our February conversation https://plutopia.io/...

Ufology: the study of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) by people who believe that they may have extraordinary (e.g. extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional) origins. Often derided by skeptics and science educators as an example of pseudoscience, ufology has can represent a field of legitimate scientific investigation, as practiced by Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallée, Allen Hynek, et al. A ufologis...

Jim Rutt, host of “The Jim Rutt Show” podcast, joins Jon and Scoop for a wide-ranging discussion about business and technology. Jim details his start in business and tech, his time running Network Solutions, the evolution of the Internet, cancel culture, and AI censorship. Jim is also President and co-founder of the MIT Free Speech Alliance. He is the Executive Producer of the film &#8...

Before the Internet changed the way we experienced movies, dark theaters, and late night tv were the sole venues where sci-fi and horror fans could get a regular fix of cheap movie thrills. This time, on the Plutopia podcast, Jon, Scoop and Maggie discuss their favorite classic films, from the golden age of sci-fi and horror. Jon: They had Kid Shows then, on Saturday morning. So you’d go dow...

Philosopher Charles Herrman interviews Michael Webb, an advocate for the practice of meditative inquiry. They discuss interviewing and questioning, stillness, truth, centering, and much more. Michael Webb: Truth isn’t necessarily instrumental. A lot of people might think that, ‘I want to know something because I want to use it in order to achieve something else.’ Charles Herrman:...

In this episode, Jon and Scoop talk to Alexandra Alvarez about her new company “Love x Alex,” her activity supporting the “Free Britney” movement, which was seeking an end to Britney Spears’ court-ordered guardianship. The movement helped jump-start her line of fashion and pop culture goodies. We talk about her move from major studio casting to independent designer, m...

Jon and Scoop do a deep dive into the land of free speech, which is what this country’s supposed to be – land of the free, home of the brave. We discuss current issues of free speech in the Internet/post-Truth era. Jon: Should you be able to ban people from a system like Twitter? Which is supposedly set up for conversation, and has increasingly had to find ways to manage and moderate t...