Plutopia News Network

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....

With Dr. Michael Edward “Ed” Lenert, Plutopians discuss communications and democracy: the Fairness Doctrine, hate speech, cancel culture, and much more. Ed’s work is at the intersection of communication theories and democratic practices. He has 25 years of experience teaching law, communications, and journalism at the university level, including MA and PhD-level students. He is a...

Doc Searls joins the Plutopians to discuss social media’s impact on the Internet, mass media’s changes in the digital age, streaming music, movies, and much more. “Social media enhances conviviality enormously. Suddenly you’re in touch with people from high school, relatives you haven’t seen in a long time, and I thought it retrieved gossip. Gossip is enormous there....

Plutopian discussion with visionary culture hacker Jean M. Russell , focusing on thrivability, healthcare, twisting language for political gains, social media, and much more. Jean engages in a social ecosystem design, culture hacking, and facilitation as a visionary but also a pragmatist. She acted as project lead for the Holo ICO , which raised 30,000 ETH (valued at $22M at that time). In 2016 wi...

In this episode of the podcast, Scoop and Jon talk to author Carol Flake Chapman about politics, the religious right, Covid-19, grieving, and poetry. Carol is a distinguished journalist and editor. She was a founding editor of Vanity Fair , horse racing correspondent for The New Yorker , rock critic for The Village Voice , and Texas stringer for US News and World Report . She was an editor and col...

Ruth Glendinning and Kent Dahlgren discuss The Anti-Fragile Playbook and the power of soft capital. The Playbook outlines strategies for underserved people and communities to start an economic and social revival. Ruth: What we’ve been talking about, and this is a big thing in Austin and everywhere, is affordability vs. ability to afford. Those on the surface might sound similar, but which on...

Members of the Plutopia team discuss social media (including Clubhouse and Facebook ), streaming entertainment, cancel culture , cartoons, gurus, and cults. What is social media for? What is it good for? If data is the new oil, where are our mineral rights? Including the history of the term and concept “social media” and how user attention and data became the product.

“It’s not just robust, it’s not just resilient, but we will be stronger on the other side of adversity. So we went into the pandemic expecting to come out a more robust institution. If you went into the pandemic thinking you’d weather the storm, but that it was a storm, and it would pass – I had colleagues that thought this was like a long spring break … well, t...

Joseph Rowe is a musician, composer, writer, storyteller. He is also an author and translator, and a meditator and teacher. He performs sacred music and conducts workshop with Catherine Braslavsky. In this, his second visit to the Plutopia podcast, Joseph discusses Covid-19 and vaccines, postmodern madness, relativism and absolutism, moral perception, spirituality, beauty, the Tao, the overlooked...

Scoop and Jon, both based in Texas, talk about their experience of extreme winter weather in the week following Valentine’s Day 2021, during Winter Storm Uri . The storm caused a power crisis in Texas . For more, see Jon’s blog post, “Heavy Weather in Texas.”

Emily Gertz is Senior Editor at Drilled News. She is also a journalist who reports on the intersections of climate, environment, science, technology and society. Emily, a regular Plutopia News Network guest, discusses the state of climate change policy, with a new president recommitting the USA to climate change goals.

January 14 Plutopia Livestream with guest Tom Jennings ! Jon, Scoop and Suzy talk to Tom about some of the history of network communications, as well as about current events. Tom is a Los Angeles-based artist and technician, known for his work on FidoNet , the first message and file networking system for BBSes. He also built Wired magazine’s first internet presence, wrote the portable BIOS t...

In this recording of the October 13, 2020 EFF-Austin meeting, Ritika Gopal discusses the current state of copyright law, and its ability to address modern-day forms of artistic expression. In a time when brick-and-mortar venues are closed, consumers rely on digital platforms for entertainment, communication, and human connection. Streamed content from DJs and other artists, through platforms such...

Photo: Jordan Reznick Sandy Stone is a cultural theoretician, audio engineer, computer hacker, filmmaker and performance artist; founding director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin; Fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute; a founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies ; and recipient of the...

Robert Matney is Managing Director of Government Affairs at Yonder . Yonder was originally called New Knowledge, and was known for its role in developing the authoritative report on Russian influence operations targeting US elections from 2015 forward for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The report leveraged data from Alphabet (Google), Twitter, and Facebook. In his role at Yond...

In this episode, we discuss complexity, post-Covid foresight, climate change, and building capabilities to evolve and survive with Zaid Hassan. Zaid is a strategist, facilitator, social innovator and writer. He is the co-founder of several ventures, most recently 10-in-10 and Complexity University. Zaid has 20 years of experience tackling complex social challenges, working all over the world. His...

Justin Hall has a two decade history pushing the limits of networked media. His website J ustin’s Links from the Underground launched in 1994. The site grew to thousands of hand-coded pages. The New York Times referred to Justin as “perhaps the founding father of personal weblogging,” and he was the focus of the Doug Block documentary “Home Page.” He’s worked on...