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On the show
From 16 epsHosts
Recent guests
Recent episodes
Hugh Forrest: Growing Experiences
Jun 22, 2026
Unknown duration
Steven Bellovin: Don’t Get Hacked!
Jun 15, 2026
Unknown duration
Deborah Cohen: Bad Influence
Jun 8, 2026
1h 00m 04s
Patient Power in the Age of AI
Jun 1, 2026
1h 01m 49s
Plutopia Tribal Chat
May 25, 2026
1h 02m 58s
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| Date | Episode | Topics | Guests | Brands | Places | Keywords | Sponsor | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/22/26 | ![]() Hugh Forrest: Growing Experiences | Former SXSW co-president and chief programming officer Hugh Forrest joins Plutopia to reflect on nearly four decades helping shape South by Southwest, its growth alongside Austin, and the challenges of scaling creative communities without losing authenticity. Forrest discusses how SXSW succeeded by bringing diverse creative people together, but also how rapid growth created problems of cost, accessibility, logistics, and community displacement. Now leading Gather and Grow Experiences, he advises organizations to build meaningful, locally grounded, face-to-face experiences that prioritize quality over quantity, reflect their host communities, and foster human connection in an increasingly digital, automated, and politically fragmented world. Hugh Forrest: The most successful events and experiences — again, I like the word experiences more than events, as much as I use the word events — are very much a reflection of the local community that they’re in. And certainly, I think what we found with South by Southwest when we tried to do these events in other markets, was that you couldn’t treat this as a franchisable cookie cutter approach if it was going to be successful. If we’re going to do an event in Blank-blank city that’s going to be successful, it really has to reflect the the values, the the strengths, the interests of that particular city. So I don’t know that there’s a playbook on that. If anything, the playbook is reflect where you are. YouTube Video | — | ||||||
| 6/15/26 | ![]() Steven Bellovin: Don’t Get Hacked! | In this Plutopia podcast episode, security researcher and educator Steve Bellovin discusses the increasingly centralized and balkanized internet, the practical and social problems with age verification, the limited role of consumer VPNs in an era of widespread encryption, and the history and evolution of cryptography. He also shares advice from his new book Don’t Get Hacked, Protect Yourself at Home: keep software updated, use two-factor authentication—especially on email and financial accounts—and rely on a password manager to avoid password reuse. Steve Bellovin: I think the most important things you can do are keeping your software up to date and using two-factor authentication. Especially on the most important accounts, and that especially includes your email account. Which other than maybe your bank account is your most important password, most important account, because it’s used to reset all of your other passwords. So two-factor authentication, keeping your software up to date, and, given reality, probably you should use a password manager because you cannot keep track of a hundred or more strong (I’m not fond of that word) different passwords. Password reuse is a much greater sin than a quote weak unquote password. Links Don’t Get Hacked, Protect Yourself at Home “Netnews: The Original Story” On the Early Days of Usenet: The Roots of the Cooperative Online Culture Video on YouTube | — | ||||||
| 6/8/26 | ![]() Deborah Cohen: Bad Influence✨ | health informationsocial media+4 | Deborah Cohen | Bad Influence: How the Internet Hijacked Our Health | — | healthinternet+5 | — | 1h 00m 04s | |
| 6/1/26 | ![]() Patient Power in the Age of AI✨ | patient empowermentAI in healthcare+4 | e-Patient Dave deBronkartHugo Campos+1 | — | — | AIhealthcare+4 | — | 1h 01m 49s | |
| 5/25/26 | ![]() Plutopia Tribal Chat✨ | early online culturedisaster response+5 | — | The WELLAOL+10 | Texas | online culturedisaster response+5 | — | 1h 02m 58s | |
| 5/18/26 | ![]() Cindy Cohn: Privacy’s Defender✨ | privacydigital civil liberties+3 | Cindy Cohn | Electronic Frontier FoundationNSA+2 | — | privacyencryption+5 | — | 1h 02m 52s | |
| 5/11/26 | ![]() David Miles: The Viral Sneeze✨ | common coldrespiratory viral illness+4 | David Miles | HondiusCOVID-19+4 | — | common coldCOVID-19+6 | — | 1h 05m 00s | |
| 5/4/26 | ![]() Nathan Schneider: Governable Spaces and Democracy✨ | cooperativesplatform ownership+5 | Nathan Schneider | Plutopia News NetworkSection 230+6 | — | cooperativesplatform ownership+7 | — | 1h 01m 43s | |
| 4/27/26 | ![]() Ed Lenert: AI, Truth, and Political Kayfabe✨ | AIpolitics+5 | Dr. Edward Lenert | — | — | AIpolitical kayfabe+5 | — | 1h 03m 13s | |
| 4/20/26 | ![]() Helen Pearson: Beyond Belief✨ | evidence-based decision-makingmedicine+4 | Helen Pearson | Plutopia News NetworkBeyond Belief | — | evidence-based practicerandomized trials+3 | — | 59m 34s | |
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| 4/13/26 | ![]() Tereza Pultarova: Space, Science, and Drone Wars✨ | space explorationdefense technology+5 | Tereza Pultarova | IEEE SpectrumStarlink | UkraineWestern cities+2 | drone warsmilitary technology+5 | — | 1h 01m 43s | |
| 4/7/26 | ![]() Stephen Dulaney: The AI Ambition✨ | AIhuman creativity+3 | Stephen Dulaney | Plutopia News Network | — | AIUX strategist+3 | — | 1h 03m 27s | |
| 3/30/26 | ![]() Paulina Borsook on Tech, AI, and Billionaire Madness✨ | tech cultureAI+5 | Paulina Borsook | Greenland Defense FrontPlutopia News Network+1 | — | Silicon Valleylibertarian mindset+5 | — | 1h 02m 43s | |
| 3/23/26 | ![]() Anne Boysen: AI Hype, Agents, and Risk✨ | AI systemslarge language models+4 | Anne Boysen | — | — | AIagents+5 | — | 1h 00m 29s | |
| 3/16/26 | ![]() Marc Abrahams: Improbable Research and Ig Nobel Prizes✨ | Ig Nobel Prizeshumor in research+4 | Marc Abrahams | Journal of Irreproducible ResultsIg Nobel Prizes+2 | United StatesZurich | Ig Nobel PrizesMarc Abrahams+5 | — | 1h 02m 49s | |
| 3/9/26 | ![]() Roy Casagranda on Iran, War, and Global Fallout✨ | Irangeopolitical conflict+4 | Dr. Roy Casagranda | GCCUAE | IranIsrael+2 | IranIslamic Republic+5 | — | 1h 07m 37s | |
| 3/2/26 | ![]() Kate Devlin: Robot Love✨ | AI companionssex robots+5 | Kate Devlin | Black MirrorPygmalion | — | AIcompanions+6 | — | 1h 01m 18s | |
| 2/23/26 | ![]() Gareth Branwyn in Slumberland✨ | dreamingcreativity+5 | Gareth Branwyn | Plutopia News NetworkDreaming for Creatives+6 | — | dream recalllucid dreaming+5 | — | 1h 03m 33s | |
| 2/16/26 | ![]() Shira Chess: The Unseen Internet | Shira Chess joins the Plutopia News Network to discuss The Unseen Internet: Conjuring the Occult in Digital Discourse, arguing that online culture has always been shaped not just by code and commerce but by myth, ritual, and “enchanted logic.” The conversation traces how early internet and 90s cyberculture overlapped with Technopaganism and other non-mainstream spiritual currents, creating a productive (and sometimes destabilizing) fuzziness between “technology as magic” and “magic as technology,” echoing Arthur C. Clarke’s famous formulation (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”). Chess explores how this occult-inflected sensibility persists today as background “wallpaper” in everything from simulation theory and reality-shifting to conspiracy culture and politicized “meme magic,” while also touching on the loss of open-web imagination among younger users, the fragility and importance of digital archives, and how fragmentation at scale has helped erode consensus reality, leaving us in an internet-shaped world where, as the counterculture mantra goes, “nothing is true, everything is permitted.” Shira Chess: The thing about that Arthur C. Clarke quote that always sort of struck me was that it works in both ways, right? Any significantly advanced society is indistinguishable from magic, or technology is indistinguishable from magic. But any any magic is also indistinguishable from an advanced technology. And I think that slippage helped create a kind of fuzziness, right? Where it can both be magical and not magical at the same time, right? And people could kind of choose how they wanted to look at things. I think that was very much part of the Technopagan ethos. It wasn’t some people absolutely believed in literal magic. Some people just were like — well, the technology that we have is magical enough. Video on YouTube | — | ||||||
| 2/10/26 | ![]() David Weinberger on AI | David Weinberger joins the Plutopia podcast to weigh AI’s real strengths, especially pattern recognition, against its major dangers: hallucinations, bias, corporate power, and energy costs. He’s less focused on sci-fi doom than on how AI reshapes how we think about knowledge and ourselves. We dig into surveillance and facial recognition failures, “human-in-the-loop” debates in medicine and justice, job disruption, and whether copyright is the right tool for regulating training data. David Weinberger: I am less concerned, but I may just be wrong about this — I am less concerned about machine learning AI becoming conscious and consciously hostile to us and subjugating us. I cannot evaluate the risk of it in a non-malignant way, taking over for us. I mean, there’s some popular scenarios from very knowledgeable and responsible people saying, you know, this conceivably could… even if we tell it, do no harm to humans, only do good, do what’s good for humans… that it could come to very bad conclusions about what’s good for humans and get us into a situation that we don’t want to be in. YouTube video version: | — | ||||||
| 2/3/26 | ![]() Ken MacLeod: Imagined Futures | Award-winning Scottish science fiction author Ken MacLeod joins the Plutopia News Network to discuss his work’s political themes: failed modern systems, rising nationalism, and the struggle to find common interest in a fragmented world. He also reflects candidly on the craft of writing as he nears completion of his 21st novel, which he says still hinges on the hardest part: plotting and bringing a story to a satisfying, coherent conclusion. In conversation with hosts Jon, Scoop, and Wendy, Ken explains how he distinguishes science fiction from fantasy (material processes versus mental ones), describes his note-driven worldbuilding process, and weighs the real prospects for human space colonization, skepticism about today’s power-hungry “AI,” and the enduring pull of socialist ideas. By far and away, the hardest thing for me to do is plot. You know, getting a general idea of the story, getting a world, an imaginary world, getting ideas. That’s easy, that’s the first stage. The thing I sweat and swear and stumble over repeatedly is plot. And most of the mental writing goes into that. At the moment I’m writing my, I guess, my 20th novel and it hasn’t got any easier. I’ve got a couple of chapters, maybe two or three chapters left to write. I’ve just re-read everything I wrote so far on the novel. It’s not quite as bad as I thought, you know. You get very critical of your work if you’ve read it several times over. Editor’s note: We realized after the interview that Ken has written 20 novels, and the one in process is his 21st! YouTube video version: | — | ||||||
| 1/26/26 | ![]() Adam Roberts: Fantasy | On this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon, Scoop and Wendy welcome award-winning British science fiction novelist and literature professor Adam Roberts to discuss his new critical book Fantasy: A Short History and what it means to “suspend disbelief” in fantasy and science fiction. Adam explores how science fiction can be seen as a subset of fantasy rooted in modern scientific thinking, while fantasy is humanity’s default storytelling mode, stretching from ancient epics to Tolkien and beyond. He traces how genre fantasy crystallized as a recognizable category in the late 1960s and 1970s with Tolkien’s paperback boom and publishing lines like Ballantine Books. The conversation ranges across the Avatar films blending of sci-fi spectacle and mythic enchantment, the commercial and cultural drive toward endless sequels and mega-series (from Victorian triple-deckers to Star Wars), and the idea of fantasy as “re-enchantment” in a disenchanted modern world. The conversation is tempered by questions about grimdark violence, romantic fantasy trends, fascism and authoritarianism in fantasy settings, and how technology, the internet, and AI may reshape imagination, community, and the ways people escape into (or build) alternate worlds through books, film, cosplay, and video games. Adam Roberts: But I think it may be that cinema is becoming more like video games. And it’s more about particular special effects, spectacular. That’s diminishing, I think, for the art form, because video games are necessarily structured by the obstacles that you put in the way of the player. The player overcomes the obstacles and gets to the end of the stage and beats the big boss. And that’s a rather kind of denuded way of thinking about the possibilities of storytelling. But then I also think that in a game like Skyrim you can do anything at all. You can fight dragons and you can go on adventures and quests, or you can just live in a village and explore what the possibilities of that are. And that’s rare. It’s rare certainly in cinema, but even in book form, where there usually is a more linear conflict that has to be overcome. Video on YouTube: | — | ||||||
| 1/19/26 | ![]() Dave Evans: Does It Square? | In this Plutopia News Network podcast, author and social media expert Dave Evans discusses the nature and spread of online misinformation and introduces Does It Square?, an AI-assisted fact-checking tool designed to help users pause, evaluate claims, and ground conversations in shared facts. Evans explains that misinformation is often “half true,” built on a factual core but extended with unsupported interpretations that exploit emotion, division, and engagement-driven social media algorithms. Drawing on his long experience with social media’s evolution, he argues that ad-driven platforms amplify outrage and reinforce echo chambers, while bots and click farms further accelerate false narratives for profit. Rather than declaring content simply true or false, Does It Square focuses on linguistic analysis — identifying emotionally charged, authoritarian, or intuition-based language — to encourage media literacy, reflection, and more constructive dialogue in a polarized information environment. Dave Evans: One of the more interesting facts about misinformation is that it’s generally about half-true. In developing Does It Square?, one of the first scales that I implemented was how true, how false is this? And what I found was everything was basically 50% right, because really good information starts with some kind of fact that everyone agrees, “this is a fact .” But then it extends that in a way that either the data or the methodology doesn’t support. It makes some kind of unfounded claim. It makes no references to anything that supports those extensions or those interpretations or anything like that. So you’re left with — okay, if this underlying fact is true and here’s the interpretation of it, wow, I mean, I guess that’s, you know, true. Well, not really. Link to DoesItSquare.com | — | ||||||
| 1/12/26 | ![]() Living Philosophy | In this Plutopia News Network podcast, Charles Herrman interviews philosopher Randall Auxier about his unconventional academic path, process philosophy, and personalism, exploring how his early struggles with formal instruction led him to self-directed study and original interpretations of thinkers like Peirce, Whitehead, Bergson, Dewey, and Royce. Auxier critiques mainstream academia for discouraging originality and enforcing conformity, argues that philosophy is a way of life rather than a profession, and explains his view of “process personalism,” in which personhood is relational, dynamic, and present throughout reality in varying degrees. He challenges individualism, defends communities as primary moral persons, critiques corporate personhood as sociopathic, and aligns his thought with pragmatism, radical empiricism, and process traditions that emphasize becoming, value, and shared meaning over static doctrines or institutional authority. Randall Auxier: From the very beginning, I had difficulty finding teachers, and so kind of had to teach myself this stuff… and most people regard it as enormously difficult stuff. And so, in a way, it was a challenge to not have a teacher, and in a way, it was a blessing. Because if I had a teacher, I might have fallen into whatever that teacher thought about this material. Because that’s the natural thing to do, is to pay attention to your mentors and the people you respect. As it turned out, since I had no one to teach me this stuff — I mean, my professors were perfectly content for me to study it, but they said, you know, we don’t read this stuff. We don’t know what you’re talking about. And so I ended up having to sort of make it up, in the sense of make up my own interpretations of these people’s very difficult ideas. And that ended up being pretty good, actually, for me, because I don’t think that I would have been satisfied with anyone else’s version of this stuff. | — | ||||||
| 1/5/26 | ![]() Roy Casagranda: Reviewing 2025 | Roy Casagranda returns to the Plutopia News Network to help the hosts process what Scoop calls the “cornucopia of crap” that was 2025, ranging from social media’s corrosive incentives to AI hype, rising economic pain, and the destabilizing effects of Trump-era foreign and domestic policy heading into the 2026 midterms. Casagranda argues the U.S. is drifting toward an “electoral monarchy,” with a hollowed-out Congress and a Supreme Court increasingly empowering a unitary, executive-order-driven presidency, while the panel connects this to broader institutional decay, public cynicism, and a sense that global leaders are making irrational, self-destructive choices reminiscent of darker historical periods. They debate whether social media is the primary driver or merely an accelerant that converts frustration into addictive “hour of hate” posting rather than real-world collective action like organizing, boycotts, and strikes, and they trade observations about AI’s usefulness as a tool versus its dangers as an unaccountable decision-maker, especially as “AI slop” contaminates law, education, and public knowledge. The conversation also touches on crypto, energy-hungry data centers, and governance contrasts, with Casagranda describing Dubai’s future-oriented planning and service efficiency as a stark counterpoint to U.S. dysfunction, before closing on skepticism that the Democratic Party alone can meaningfully “rein in” Trumpism and a worry that the same cycle of backlash, complacency, and renewed crisis could repeat. The definition of monarch is one person rules. It’s not necessarily that it’s hereditary. So what the United States has basically done is — Congress doesn’t function anymore, and the Supreme Court is handing the power over to the presidency, and the president is ruling through executive orders. And so at that point, that’s the definition of a monarchy. You could have it so that you elect the monarch every four years. But the Constitution James Madison wrote us was meant for Congress to be in charge, not Congress to be the rubber stamp for the president. And that’s where we are. We’re in a situation where we have devolved into a monarchy. Osama bin Laden’s in his grave laughing his head off… like, wow, I triggered U. S. idiocy to the point where Americans can’t get their heads out of 911. And here it is, 24 years later, and they voted for this maniac who’s destroying the empire. He did more damage to the United States than could have been imaginable. Well, the United States did all the damage Link to Roy Casagranda’s podcast Video on YouTube: | — | ||||||
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