On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, the hosts revisit Austin’s formative 1970s music scene through Scoop’s archival 1977 interview with Fletcher Clark and Jack Jacobs, co-founders of the eclectic show band Balcones Fault. The conversation traces their unlikely journey from academia and banking into Austin’s burgeoning countercultural soundscape, where the band became known for wild, genre-blending performances and theatrical full-moon shows at the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. Mixing satire, spectacle, and musical virtuosity, Balcones Fault embodied Austin’s spirit of creativity and weirdness, helping lay the foundation for the city’s later reputation as the “Live Music Capital of the World.”

Fletcher Clark:

Jack was living down in Austin. I was living up in Boston, getting kind of fed up with doing the banking business. And I was coming down to Austin on my way to California, and I stopped in, and Jack had been hyping me about what a nice place it was. You know, come on down, it’s a nice place. And the good music scene happened, and he was hanging out and picking a lot with the Greezy Wheels and some of the local bands that were happening down there. And he jammed a few times with this drummer and bass player and this other guy. And I came down to visit, and it became clear that my plans to go to California ought not to go through, and I just ought to stay there. So we had this jam session in the afternoon. We worked up — it was me and Jack and a bass player and a drummer, and this other fellow who, by the way, now runs Armadillo World Headquarters, Hank Aldrich — sat on the original jam session. We worked up about 20 tunes.

Jack Jacobs:

Yeah, and thing that really kept him there though was you know those double wide papers? Well, Fletcher came down from Boston where uh I started turning on when I was in college and I always thought that pot was something that was sort of like allspice or paprika that came in a little plastic bag and it was some kind of green powder. And I didn’t really discover that it was an agricultural commodity until I moved much closer to the border.

On this episode of Plutopia, we welcome Michael Marshall — project director at the Good Thinking Society, editor of The Skeptic, President of the Merseyside Skeptics Society, and host of the Be Reasonable podcast — to unpack “compassionate skepticism”: why emotions drive belief, how pseudoscience and conspiracies spread (from flat earth to QAnon to the Rogan pipeline), and practical ways to change minds without shaming. He shares fieldwork — from exposing psychic scams to organizing homeopathy protests — and lessons on building resilient, rational communities in a post-truth world.

Michael Marshall:

If you want to start to be an effective communicator and you want to start to be effective at helping people check their own biases and beliefs, you come through that because you realize that’s not the best tactic. Telling people they’re an idiot isn’t going to help them, and shouting at them, and acting like you’re smarter than them, is never going to help people out. So, if you really have the right goals in mind of trying to help people, you come through that adolescence into an understanding that, first of all, we need to know what it is these people feel. Because people are led first and foremost by their emotions and not by the facts. That’s true of them, it’s true of us. We train our emotions to be satisfied by good answers, but our our instincts, first and foremost, come from our gut. If I said something to you that sounded false, you’d fact-check it. If I said something to you that sounded true, you’d accept it, because your gut is telling you, yeah, that sounds about right, I won’t question it. So we all make these decisions based on emotion.

In this episode of the Plutopia podcast, acclaimed journalist and New Yorker staff writer John Seabrook joins hosts Scoop Sweeney, Wendy Grossman, and Jon Lebkowsky to discuss his deeply personal and provocative new book, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. Drawing from a trove of family documents inherited after his father’s death, Seabrook uncovers the complex, and often dark, legacy of Seabrook Farms — his family’s frozen food empire that once dominated agriculture in southern New Jersey. The conversation explores themes of power, exploitation, family dysfunction, capitalism, and historical memory, as Seabrook reflects on uncovering painful truths, reconciling with his past, and telling the long-silenced stories of exploited workers whose labor built his family’s fortune.

John Seabrook:

I felt that I was fulfilling some kind of from the grave wish of my father, to achieve, not just revenge, but also justice in some way for what he endured and what he tried to do and and why the company failed. And so that’s kind of what I did. And it motivated me while I was writing to feel like I was doing this for my father. And it also brought me into a better understanding with my father, who was kind of a chilly and remote person. But now I understood why, because he had to survive this sociopath. It was pretty clear that this man who created this company was a sociopath, and that probably helped him in many ways in creating and controlling the company, but it brought the family down.

On this episode of the Plutopia podcast, veteran journalist and author Chris Tomlinson joins us to unpack his reporting on the July 4th floods in Central Texas — why they were predictable and preventable — and to warn that American democracy is being endangered by aggressive redistricting and other election-rigging tactics. Now a columnist on money, politics, and life in Texas for the Houston Chronicle and Hearst newspapers, Tomlinson — author of Tomlinson Hill and co-author of Forget the Alamo — also talks about accountability journalism, Texas’s evolving disaster-response model versus FEMA, H-E-B’s disaster brand, the precarious economics of local news, and the threats reporters face in today’s polarized climate. It’s a sobering, timely conversation about policy failures, history Texans still aren’t taught, and what it will take to keep both journalism and democracy alive.

Chris Tomlinson:

We are in dangerous times. And I feel like I rub my bosses the wrong way when I keep trying to make this point — that we are in far more perilous times than most Americans realize. As soon as I get off with you, I’m going to file my column about redistricting that will be online tomorrow. You know, this is fundamental democracy stuff going on now. And if we keep losing journalism and we keep losing independence and we keep allowing the election elections to be rigged through how we draw the political maps — then we’re in serious trouble.

Chris’s page at the Houston Chronicle:

July 2025 Central Texas floods

Jessie Singer, There Are No Accidents

H-E-B Grocery: https://heb.com

Mattress Mack

Citizen Kane

New York Times Pitchbot:

Texas Constitution

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan joins the hosts to discuss her new novelization of the classic Japanese sci-fi series Ultraseven. Cadigan shares how she came to work on the project, her early exposure to Ultraman, and her appreciation for the show’s themes of teamwork and heroism. The discussion branches into reflections on science fiction’s role in shaping cultural perspectives, changes in media consumption, the challenges of AI and copyright, and the increasing dangers of misinformation and deepfakes. The conversation also reflects on nostalgia, historical awareness, and the enduring value of books and analog media in an increasingly digital world.

Pat Cadigan:

I was one of the very rare Americans who had seen the original Ultraman, so they asked me if I would be interested in doing the novelizations. And I said, yeah, sure, I’ll try anything. So they they got me the DVDs and uh and they picked out the stories For Ultraman, but when it came to Ultraseven, they told me to pick out the stories to novelize. So I did that on Ultra 7. I think that’s the big strength of both of them – of Ultraman and Ultraseven. It’s not just that he’s such a powerful hero — but he has he’s got people who have his back.

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, philosopher Charles Herrman discusses his lifelong study of honor and dignity as cultural forces, framing them as a dichotomy shaping societies and conflicts worldwide. He explains that honor and dignity function as intertwined yet distinct values—honor is the face of dignity, and dignity has honor’s back—and explores how cultures typically emphasize one over the other. Herrman illustrates how honor-based societies, driven by respect, trust, and earned worth, contrast with dignity-based societies that uphold acceptance, faith, and inherent rights. Applying this lens, he examines political, religious, and international tensions, arguing that deeper understanding and mutual respect between these cultural types could reduce conflict and help preserve democratic values.

Honor and dignity are not easy to define, but most people have an idea of what honor and dignity are, and generally speaking, that idea is going to be fairly good. But let me try something on you that is not that well known. In my work, I consider that dignity is the back of honor. And honor is the face of dignity. So if you lose a little bit of honor by doing a faux pas, and people recognize you as having a fair amount of dignity, that dignity will keep you afloat. And if you have honor and you express that honor in doing a good job for the community, then that’s not only honor, but it also heightens your dignity. So honor is a reflection of dignity and dignity has honors’ back.

Charles Herrman on Google Scholar

Journalist and author Brendan McNally joins the Plutopia podcast this time as we discuss his latest book, Traitor’s Odyssey: The Untold Story of Martha Dodd and a Strange Saga of Soviet Espionage, which tells the story of Martha Dodd, the daughter of an American ambassador in 1930s Berlin who became a Soviet spy. McNally spent years researching declassified CIA files and interviewing people with knowledge of Martha and her amazing story. McNally reveals how Dodd’s promiscuous entanglements with Nazi elites and later a Soviet diplomat drew her into espionage, leading to years of FBI surveillance, a failed spy career, and an absurd exile in Communist Prague. His meticulous research, drawing on declassified CIA, FBI, KGB, and Venona project files, plus interviews with old spies and exiles, paints a darkly comic portrait of espionage driven by flawed, colorful personalities.

Brendan McNally:

I found what was essentially a hot babes of the Third Reich website where somebody had devoted a whole website to Nazi girlfriends and wives and mistresses, and there she was, Martha Dodd. And as it turned out, she had been lovers with so many different Nazis, it would make your head spin — including the head of the Gestapo. And similar along the line, she fell in love with a Russian diplomat who turned out to be a Soviet spy, and he recruited her for the Soviet intelligence. For a year or two, she was Stalin’s top gal, top spy in Berlin.

On this Plutopia News Network episode, buildings archaeologist Dr. James Wright — founder of Triskele Heritage, author of the “Medieval Myth-Busting” blog, and writer of Historic Building Myth Busting: Uncovering Folklore, History, and Archaeology — joins hosts Jon Lebkowsky, Scoop Sweeney, and Wendy Grossman to unpack 25 years probing cellars, attics, castles, pubs, and church walls. Wright explains how he marries fieldwork, archival sleuthing, and dendrochronology to challenge cherished legends: ship timbers recycled from Spanish-Armada wrecks, mile-long secret tunnels, pubs claiming eleventh-century origins, spiraling castle stairs built to favor right-handed defenders, and the bawdy carvings adorning medieval churches. While his evidence-first approach can anger believers, Wright uses humor and detailed “show-your-work” transparency to bridge emotion and fact—demonstrating that, even in a post-truth age, rigorous archaeology can separate folklore from history without losing the stories that make old buildings matter.

James Wright:

People don’t like their truths, their entries, their stories being questioned, being queried. But I always try and do this by presenting all the evidence. In this anti-truth environment that we live in at the moment, a post-truth world, that doesn’t always work. Logic and reason and evidence are discounted by people — it’s feelings and emotion for most people at this point — which is why I do try and deliver some of these debunkings in a wry and exasperated and humorous sort of way. I do find that humor can sometimes help it across the line, trying to meet people halfway rather than just standing up and being bullheaded and trying to shout them down. That’s never going win any fans at all. But I always do show my working out. I always do show where the evidence comes from. I do think that the truth is fundamentally important.

In this “Talking Heads” edition of the podcast, Plutopia News Network cohosts Jon, Scoop, and Wendy roam freely across a grab-bag of current issues and curiosities: airport security hassles, billionaire excesses, the politics of air-conditioning, ICE detentions, LA’s media myths, Juneteenth and U.S. travel fears, hometown highways, regime-change misadventures, MAGA culture wars, abortion and right-to-die debates, food safety, cannibalism lore, hot-pepper cuisine, and even Joe Rogan. It’s an unscripted, globe-spanning conversation that blends personal anecdotes, cultural commentary, and wry humor into an hour of eclectic Plutopian chatter.

You might say Professor Chris French is a skeptic’s skeptic. He has published over 150 articles covering the psychology of paranormal beliefs and anomalous experiences. He emphasizes the importance of understanding why people believe in the paranormal, emphasizing psychological explanations for experiences often attributed to ghosts, aliens, psychic powers, or past lives. Professor French joins the Plutopia podcast this time as we discuss his latest book, The Science of Weird Shit, Why Our Minds Conjure the Paranormal. Drawing from personal experience and decades of research, he outlines how cognitive biases, memory flaws, sleep paralysis, and suggestibility contribute to paranormal beliefs. Chris shares his transformation from believer to skeptic, discusses the challenges of testing paranormal claims, and critiques popular yet unsubstantiated phenomena like alien abductions and reincarnation. The conversation underscores the importance of critical thinking in an age saturated with misinformation, conspiracy theories, and entertainment masquerading as fact.

Chris French:

Like a lot of post-graduates, when I was doing my PhD, I used to teach in an adult education college in Leicester. I would give an introductory lecture on psychology and then say, “what topics would you like me to prepare lectures on?” I must have had so much time on my hands. And I’d go away and prepare a lecture just for the following week. I remember doing one on parapsychology that was totally uncritical, and I look back now and think — now they’re probably sitting there thinking, well, he’s doing a PhD, he must know what he’s talking about. I did not know what I was talking about at all. But it was during that period when I was doing my PhD that a friend recommended a particular book, called Parapsychology, Science or Magic. It was by James Alcock, a Canadian psychologist, and it was the first skeptical treatment of all this stuff that I’d ever read. And not only did I really enjoy the book, I also found his arguments very persuasive and that’s what opened my eyes to the wonderful world of skepticism.