Plutopia News Network

Christopher Brown is an author, attorney, and urban naturalist living in Austin, Texas. His newest book, A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places, blends nature writing, memoir, and nonfiction. The book explores the intersection of nature and urban spaces, encouraging readers to reconnect with the wilderness found in city edgelands and forgotten lots. Brown’s narrative examines how wildlife adapts to urban environments and offers practical advice for rewilding urban life without relying on remote landscapes. Through personal stories and reflections, he inspires readers to appreciate and act on the urgent need to preserve biodiversity within their immediate surroundings.

Chris writes a popular Substack newsletter about his adventures in the edgelands, called “Field Notes,” which we discussed in a previous podcast.

Chris also writes science fiction, including the novels Rule of Capture, Tropic of Kansas, and Failed State.

Chris Brown:

It is kind of a love story with place. It’s also a love story about nature and about the natural world and about learning to connect with nature in a way that doesn’t involve trying to inhabit some gear catalog or goofy car ad of imagining yourself in some remote depopulated landscape that probably doesn’t really exist much anymore in real life, right?

And coming to terms with it. There’s a bunch of great blue herons making their giant mess there in this trashy tree behind this dumpy old warehouse down the street. Why are they doing that there? It could have been because there’s nowhere else for them to go.

And getting excited about that and at the same time kind of saddened by that as you think about as you wonder if the presence of a lot of these animals in the city is because they’ve run out of other places to hang out.

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Sustainability pioneer Gil Friend joins the Plutopia podcast this time. He has been called one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America.

Gil is the founder, chair, and CEO of Natural Logic Inc. and Critical Path Capital. He advises leading companies, communities, and investors on value-driving sustainability strategies. He has been a noted sustainability pioneer for more than 50 years and is widely considered one of the founders of the sustainable business movement.

We currently mostly have a system where if I make something and sell it to you, I’m done. It’s out of my hands, it’s in your hands. There’s a system called Extended Producer Responsibility that’s in place in a number of places around the world that says the producer is responsible for the safe, disposal of the stuff they make at the end of its life. So as a producer, I have responsibility throughout the value chain, so therefore I need to think about the implications and the costs of recovery at the end of life and I start to design things differently. We saw an early version of that in the United States with bottle pills, with deposits on soda bottles. It’s much more sophisticated in other countries. So that notion of responsibility, connecting actions and consequences, reducing and eliminating the subsidies, both the actual payments to companies, but also the pervasive subsidy of giving folks a free ride for their bad effects.

Gil discusses the importance of extended producer responsibility, a system in which producers are accountable for the safe disposal of their products at the end of their life cycle. He explains how this principle encourages companies to design more sustainable products, drawing on historical examples like bottle bills in the U.S. and more advanced systems in other countries. He discusses his background in systems ecology, highlighting the need to consider complex, interrelated factors in sustainability efforts. The conversation touches on challenges in addressing climate change, the evolving nature of renewable energy, and how businesses, governments, and individuals can collaborate to create a more sustainable future. Gil also explores the benefits of employee ownership, alternative business models, and ways to shift cultural norms toward more environmentally responsible practices.

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Filmmaker Nadya Wynd recently premiered her new movie “At Her Feet” in Hawaii and select mainland theatres. She joins the Plutopia podcast this time as we explore her creation of this moving and beautiful film. Nadya is a Hawaii-based director, writer and producer with extensive experience in writing, acting, producing and directing for stage and film.

Nadya Wynd:

I went to the big island and went up and communed with the volcanoes because I needed to shift my energy. I was still really frustrated about my documentary. And while I was up there at the crater of Kilauea Volcano, this story just came down, flooding through me. And I realized it was a gift to shift my energy, give me something to pour my creativity into. And thank God, because three years later, I would have been crazy if I’d still been focused on my documentary. Instead, I made this amazing movie that has been super successful in our theatrical release. And people have really embraced it. The Hawaiian people love the culture and history and language and spirituality, all the aspects of Hawaiian culture that is very seldom seen authentically in movies.

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In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, Linda Castellani and Tim Powers join Jon to discuss the legendary science fiction author Philip K. Dick. Linda and Tim recount their personal interactions with Dick. The discussion considers Dick’s complex personality, his writings, and his often tumultuous relationships, including Linda’s own experience as one of Dick’s “dark-haired girls.” They explore Dick’s paranoia, his mystical experiences, and his deep influence on the science fiction genre. Despite his brilliance, Dick’s life was marked by emotional instability, which profoundly affected those around him.

Dick’s science fiction was mind-bending – his stories explored the nature of reality and of human perception, and he wrote about alternate realities and histories, monopolistic corporations, authoritarian regimes, drugs, the nature of consciousness. He had his own mystical and metaphysical experiences that were reflected in his work. Later science fiction including the cyberpunk subgenre owed much to his work.

Linda Castellani:

I wrote the letter because I was in a class taught by a professor named Will McNelly. I was in his Chaucer class; in the previous semester I was in his science fiction class. And one day he came to the Chaucer class with a letter from Phil, saying “Some of you might know who Philip K. Dick is and some of you may not, but you were in my science fiction class so maybe you’d be interested in this letter.” And it was all about his time in Canada at a rehabilitation place called X-Kalay, and the story of how he ended up being in Canada was kind of interesting. But I knew nothing of Philip K. Dick. I just heard this letter. I was 21, quite young and as you will see quite naive. And I thought, “Oh this man’s so sad, he needs a friend I’ll write him a letter.” Although I have come to wonder lately if I might not have been encouraged to do so by McNelly. But that’s a whole nother train of thought. So I wrote Phil a letter. My letter was dated April 7th, 1972. And a couple of days later McNally called me into his office and said, “Phil wants you to pick him up at the airport on Thursday night.” Which totally freaked me out.

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Climate scientist Dr. Michael Tobis returns to the Plutopia podcast with an update on the current state of the Earth’s climate. The current state, it appears, is not so good. Michael discusses the worsening state of the Earth’s climate, highlighting the missed opportunities to transition away from fossil fuels over the past 30 years. He delves into the complexities of attributing specific extreme weather events to climate change, emphasizing the importance of focusing not just on these dramatic incidents but also on the subtle, day-to-day environmental shifts that are already occurring. Despite growing awareness, Tobis expresses concern that meaningful change is still lacking, with society continuing to operate unsustainably, driven by economic and political inertia.

Michael Tobis:

If we had started going down the road of moving off of fossil fuels 30 years ago, it would not have been a major adjustment. Back then we were saying, “Okay, if we don’t behave ourselves, the world could warm as much as two degrees Celsius.” And now we’re saying, “Well, if we really step on things and really work really hard, the world could warm as little as two degrees Celsius.” So we’re already pushing, we’re hoping for what was once considered the worst

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This time, on the Plutopia podcast, blogger and author Susan McCarthy, a noted authority on apologies, helps us perform a verbal autopsy on the worldwide CrowdStrike security meltdown. Unlike most large outages, the CrowdStrike outage impacted individual workstations, Microsoft Windows workstations. In the aftermath, CrowdStrike apologized and even offered a $10 Uber Eats voucher. Susan found the CrowdStrike apology somewhat lacking.

Our discussion centers around the global impact of the outage, which caused thousands of Microsoft Windows workstations to crash, leading to significant financial losses for companies like Delta Airlines. McCarthy critiques CrowdStrike’s apology, noting its inadequacies, particularly the company’s decision to offer those Uber Eats vouchers, which she argues were both insufficient and potentially damaging to the company’s reputation. The conversation explores the broader implications of corporate apologies in the tech industry, emphasizing the importance of taking full responsibility and making meaningful reparations to restore trust.

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Nick Selby, a law enforcement and security expert, shares insights from his extensive experience in the complexities of policing and information security. He highlights the often misunderstood realities of police encounters, noting that while 1,400 people die annually following interactions with police, the use of non-deadly force—such as intimidation and humiliation—more significantly erodes public trust in law enforcement. Selby also discusses the challenges in modern policing, including the integration of technology and the balance between civil liberties and effective law enforcement. The conversation delves into the nuanced issues surrounding police culture, training, and the societal impact of these practices.

Nick is an information and physical security professional who provides information security, disaster- and cyber incident-readiness assessments at Fuzz Technology, a subsidiary of EPSD, Inc.

Nick Selby:

Every year, 1400 people die after an encounter with police. There are 80 million encounters in the United States between police and citizens. And every year, 1400 people end up dead. Some of them are unarmed, usually about 150 to 200. The rest of them are either armed or something. Even the Washington Post says that 92% of the people who were killed by police had initiated a deadly force encounter. But every cop knows that if you shoot somebody, you’re going to absolutely get investigated. You probably are going to be the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit. It’s going to be a nightmare for years and years. Actually, non-deadly force is the problem. The slap, the kick, the punch, the humiliation, the ordering people to do stuff that is unfair, talking to people who believe. These are the things that destroy trust in law enforcement, of the community. And there’s no data anywhere in the world, anywhere about that.

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Plutopians Jon and Scoop converse with Bruce Sterling, renowned for his cyberpunk novels. The discussion delves into Sterling’s interests beyond cyberpunk, including industrial design, steampunk, Frida Kahlo, and space exploration. Sterling shares insights on the evolution of the Viridian Design Movement and its impact on addressing climate change, albeit with limited success. He reflects on his experiences with design criticism and the intriguing intersections between historical fantasy and science fiction in his work. The conversation also touches on the surreal state of the world, AI advancements, and Sterling’s perspective on the resilience and adaptability of humanity through history’s challenges.

Bruce Sterling:

I follow space stuff. I mean I’m very interested in astronomy and space exploration so I’m looking up stuff from NASA or the ESA or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, I follow a lot of people who are doing stuff like that. Things like looking for potential asteroid impacts and the amount of space technology that is present there and the sophistication of it is really impressive. I mean there aren’t a lot of manned human bases where things are but there are unbelievable amounts of drone coverage and fantastic amounts of incredibly detailed photos of the surface of Mars, the surface of Venus – like we know what’s on the dark side of the moon. We have samples from the dark side of the moon.

Links:

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David Miles, a British immunologist, joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss vaccines and vaccine hesitancy, sharing insights from his book, How Vaccines Work. The conversation covers the history of vaccine development, from artisanal methods in the 1930s to modern techniques. Miles addresses the current skepticism towards vaccines, explaining that while no vaccine works perfectly for everyone, they have historically been game-changers in public health. He emphasizes the importance of transparent communication to dispel myths and provide factual knowledge, allowing people to make informed decisions. Miles also touches on the challenges of vaccine distribution, particularly in low-income regions, and highlights the need for better ventilation in public spaces to reduce virus transmission. The discussion reflects on the evolution of vaccine technology and public perception, aiming to bridge the gap between scientific understanding and public awareness.

Wendy Grossman discusses David and his book in “The Skeptical Inquirer.”

David Miles:

Back in the 1930s, most vaccines were done in universities, or actually a lot of them were done in the Institut Pasteur specifically, at that point. At the same time, there was this sort of artisanal vaccine development thing going on where people who had an outbreak in their general area would try and culture whatever microbe was causing it and then kill it and then inject it as a vaccine. I mean, fundamentally, that’s how vaccines work. You take the microbe that causes the disease, you do something to it so it can’t cause the disease, but it can trigger the immune memory to it. And then you give it to people and if it works, it protects them. Most people doing this really didn’t have a clue what they were doing and probably a lot of them probably did more harm than good.

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Investigative journalist James Ball is no stranger to bullshit. In his 2017 book, Post Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, he explains how the political left and right tend to exist in an ecosystem of bullshit.

James is also author of The Other Pandemic: How Q-Anon Contaminated the World, which explores the pervasive nature of misinformation and conspiracy theories (aka “bullshit”) in contemporary society. In his work, James argues that both political left and right are susceptible to such falsehoods, highlighting that intelligence and prior success in uncovering actual conspiracies can make individuals more prone to believing in new ones. He emphasizes that societal distrust in mainstream media and institutions fuels the spread of misinformation. Currently, James is working on a new book while also covering UK politics and pursuing a law degree, doing a thesis on AI and human rights. He engages in discussions on various platforms, including the right here on the Plutopia podcast, where he discusses his views on the media, conspiracies, and the influence of digital platforms like 4chan and YouTube on public perception and behavior.

James Ball:

I think people have a tendency to think that only their political opponents get into conspiracies and only stupid people get into conspiracies. And my experience, and I’ve checked and there’s some quite good research supporting this, is peer reviewed, but hey, there’s a million replication crises right now. Clever people are the people who get pulled into conspiracies, especially clever people who have been right when the world has suggested they’re wrong. People who’ve had a breakthrough theory or people who have exposed an actual conspiracy. Lots of investigative journalists become conspiracy theorists because being right is dangerous. When people stop trusting or stop buying mainstream media, we say we must change the people. The people are wrong, our product is just as good as it ever was. And that manifested all sorts of strange ways, because I think there is a habit of confusing, this is how we’ve always done it, with this is good and how it should be done. You know, I think especially the US media confuses traditions with values or with quality.

Wendy Grossman’s review of Post Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World: https://www.zdnet.com/article/post-truth-book-review-the-facts-about-alternative-facts/

Wendy’s review of The Other Pandemic: How Q-Anon Contaminated the World:

net.wars on Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger:

Workshop on the Economics of Information Security:

Wendy’s review of Culture Warlords, by Talia Lavin is an exploration of the online far right.

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