Plutopia News Network

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, Jon and Scoop follow up our January 2021 interview with Sandy Stone. In this episode, we discuss her experience working as part of the Olivia Records collective, her authorship of “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” her role in originating the Transgender Studies discipline, and her experience establishing the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas at Austin.

Sandy Stone: “I think most people who knew me in the 70s knew that I was running around avoiding being an academic. I was trying to avoid getting involved with academia in any way that I could. And for me, academia was the hound of heaven, which is a reference to, for those of you who may not remember, it’s a reference to a poem. I was being followed around by this thing that was saying, ‘This is what you are. This is who you are. Admit it – you’ve got to admit it. Everything you do in your life says This is what you are. And yet, you’re looking the other way.'”

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Jon and Scoop have a conversation with author and consultant John Hagel about his new book, The Journey Beyond Fear, which explores the psychology of change, the passion of the explorer, and how to identify, face, and move beyond your fears to focus on opportunities and realize your full potential.

John has more than 40 years’ experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. He recently retired from Deloitte. Post-retirement, McGraw-Hill published the new book, and John founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with companies and people who are seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact.

John Hagel: “I actually did a survey of the U.S. workforce – of the entire U.S. workforce – and I came across this notion – and again, it’s a very specific form of passion, the passion of the explorer. And what I found was at most 14% of US workers have this kind of passion about their work. 86% do not. And I don’t think that’s an accident. I believe all our institutions are actually deeply suspect, and even hostile to, this kind of passion. People with this kind of passion ask too many questions. They take too much risk. They deviate from the script and do things that weren’t assigned to them. And that’s not what we need from efficient workers. So the instruction is, if you have a passion, pursue it as a hobby after work. But when you’re at work, just follow the instructions. And I think it’s surprising that 14% still held onto this passion, even though they’re in an environment that’s very hostile.”

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Rancher, author, activist and punk rock knitter Spike Gillespie joins Plutopians Maggie Duval, Scoop Sweeney and Jon Lebkowsky to talk about the challenge of small town politics in the crazy polarized 2020s. Spike has been raising hell since she was born with her fist raised in the air.

She is, among other things, an author, influencer, secular minister, provocateur, serial entrepreneur, social justice warrior, avid knitter, aging punk rocker, dog addict, great friend and dedicated spinster. Some say she is a witch, and she’s cool with that. She’s also known for her scones.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Real Simple, Smithsonian, GQ, Playboy and many other publications. She is a former columnist for the Dallas Morning News and occasional commentator for Austin’s NPR affiliate KUT Radio. She is the author of nine books, including six memoirs and three in-depth books about quilting.

After raising her son in Austin for 24 years, Spike bought an abandoned meth lab and junkyard out in the country and converted it into an events venue whilst simultaneously hoarding livestock. These days she still visits the ranch often, in particular to love on her sheep, but has moved residence to historic Smithville, Texas, where she shares her historic mansion with five dogs, all of whom are at least half Wackadoodles, and one of whom, Milo, is her service dog and constant companion.

“The town decided that I had called City Hall and demanded that every flag in Smithville be taken down. Rumors spread – I mean, like wildfire. And I didn’t know what was happening at first, because I wasn’t on my computer. People are driving by my house in golf carts with Trump flags, American flags. And then I got a death threat. So these people have decided that I’m a piece of shit and they’re going to drive me out of town for something I didn’t do. I walked over to the police station, and I said “Look, I don’t want to tell you any names, I don’t want to file a report, I want to let you know I got a death threat. I’m new to town. Can you let me know will I actually be killed, or are they just trying to scare me? I just want to know.” And the guy wanted me to name names, and like, no. The whole thing culminated in… they had a parade on July 12. They got a parade permit. And it was a parade to drive me out of town, but they labeled it ‘a patriotic parade.’ I knew it was a parade to drive me out of town because 90% of the city government has come to my house. I’m not even going to tell you who, because this will just start another big ball of shit. But I would say no fewer than five city officials gave me the heads up that this was targeted at me.”

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Nate Wilcox manages Combat Sports properties for Vox Media | SB Nation, running four of the most popular web properties covering MMA/UFC, boxing and pro wrestling. He also hosts the rock and roll podcast “Let It Roll.” In a past life, he was a political consultant. He joins Plutopians Jon and Scoop for a deep dive into politics. This session was originally broadcast live on our YouTube channel.

Nate Wilcox: “The Republican Party’s a different situation where they’ve morphed into this proto-fascist party that’s way different from the Karl Rove/G.W. Bush party of fifteen years ago, that was totally in service of the donors and is now in service to Trump in this almost cult-of-personality way, and in this way, where Trump’s not necessarily trying to accomplish anything beyond keeping his profile high, and raising money – in really egregious scams. They’ve gone over to the prayer cloth model of fundraising. You know, like Robert Tilton and the televangelists or something. Where they’re just literally scalping their donors just to get a quick buck. There’s not any kind of long-term big business agenda there. There’s not agenda at all, than short-term profiteering. And this voter suppression stuff is sort of a parallel track.”

Nate Wilcox on Twitter

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David Gans is a musician, author, and radio producer based in Oakland, California. David writes and performs his own music. He also had a career writing about music, particularly the music of the Grateful Dead. He’s published 4 books about the Dead, and produced the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour.

In this Plutopian conversation, David discusses his music career, his long-running radio show, the Grateful Dead Hour, independent music, and his long involvement with the online community, the WELL.

“The whole world is now operating on the Grateful Dead’s model. Because they never did very well in the record business, they made their living playing. And they would record, and they would play, and sell their records, and stuff. But it wasn’t their principle source of income. And they were running that model ‘way back in the 80s. And now, the whole damn business has to run that way. I remember, when Prince played at the Oakland Coliseum once, and everybody who bought a ticket to the show got a copy of the CD. Which is an absolute inversion of the way the music business had been ten years earlier.”

Books

Tip jars:

Photo by Fabrice Florin.

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Scoop and Jon talk about the news! We start by talking about link rot and content evaporation on the Internet, referencing Jonathan Zittrain’s Atlantic piece. We talk about Dead Media, content filtering, algorithmic curation and filter bubbles, information anxiety, newsreaders, cancel culture, political classifications, racism, power, corruption, and the Alamo.

The post Plutopian News Analysis and Ramble, July 2021 first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

Writer and technology critic Paulina Borsook has written for Wired, Mother Jones, and Suck.com. She is perhaps best known for her 2000 book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech She’s also an artist, with projects like “My Life as a Ghost” and “The Hindsight Institute.”

In our Plutopia News Network interview, we discuss her writing career, Silicon Valley libertarians, traumatic brain injury, and her art project, “My Life as a Ghost.”

“To pursue my artistic pretensions, I went first to the MFA program at Arizona, which was ghastly. And then I transferred to Columbia, which was the right program for me. I had the one good writing teacher I ever had in my life, the guy’s name is Philip Lopate. You may have heard of him, he’s an essayist. I tried out some story, and he yelled at me, and he said ‘Quit jumping around in time and space! You’re doing the pseudo Thomas Pynchon stuff. Knock it off!’ But he said, ‘You know, you really have captured the pseudo intimacy of the online world. I think you should write about that.'”

Subscribe to Paulina’s writing via Patreon

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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 Rivera, launched the Latinx Mafia’s Staged Reading series this March. Molecule LitMag just published her quick-fire climate change play, North Pole Bedtime. Fourth Wave on Medium publishes her poems. Her one-woman show, Freeloader in the House of Love, won “The Most Compelling Story” award at the Boulder Fringe.

For 13 years, she’s taught performance studies at San Francisco State University. She managed Computer Programmers for Social Responsibility, directed the second iteration of The Community Memory Project, developed the Working Families Online Roundtables for HandsNet, and launched the first online community for California Community Clinics. She’s a proud member/owner of the world’s greatest online community, The WELL.

Evy’s website: http://www.evelynjeanpine.com/

Instagram: @evyyes

Twitter: @evypine

The post Evelyn Jean Pine: Playwright In The Pandemic first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

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, Mary Roach, Salman Rushdie, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Charlie Jane Anders, Gail Sheehy, Cleve Jones, and Martin Short.

Angie worked fifteen years at KQED Public Radio, where she started as an announcer and traffic reporter. She finished with a two-year stint as a news anchor and the host of Friday Forum. She moved to the national airwaves with Mother Jones Radio on Air America. As host of the syndicated radio show IN DEEP with Angie Coiro, she worked with her hand-picked production team to deliver an immersive hour of political and cultural conversation.

Angie’s many professional accolades include the coveted Public Radio News Directors’ Award for Best Interview, for her hour with Salman Rushdie.

Angie hosts and co-produces the This Is Now with Angie Coiro series with the Kepler’s Literary Foundation. She hosts and moderates public events and discussions, appearing over the years with The Commonwealth Club and City Arts and Lectures and in private venues. Her work as a voiceover talent includes corporate demos, narrations, and commercial work.

From the interview: “I’ve been saying this for decades. If I had access to just a ton of money, I would create age-appropriate critical thinking courses from kindergarten on. Maybe even preschool on. And if a school wouldn’t carry it, you could do private lessons that parents could maybe sign a consent for. Or teach it in summer camps. Or do whatever you can to let people access that from day one. I think, if you look at Q Anon, if you look at one third of people who identify as Republican, and think that Trump is going to re-take the office this year – my God! And I think that that’s a reflection of the fact that we don’t prioritize in the very beginnings of education teaching people how to think. Not what to think, how to think. How do you take information? How do you find the coloring in that information? How do you check out the sources of that information?”

The post Angie Coiro: The Art of the Interview first appeared on Plutopia News Network.

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 roll, culture, and great food. Ed was also “rock-and-roll historian” for NPR’s Fresh Air from 1987 to 2017, and one of the original founders of Austin’s South by Southwest music festival. He wrote for Crawdaddy! (1967), Rolling Stone (1970), and Creem (1971–1977), and for the Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle. He didn’t like being called a “rock critic” or “rock journalist,” but he was one of the very best. Most recently, he had written a two-volume “History of Rock and Roll” and co-founded the “Let It Roll” podcast with Nathan Wilcox.

Ed Ward Memorial webpage, established by his sister Louise Ward.

The post Remembering Ed Ward first appeared on Plutopia News Network.