Plutopia News Network

By Plutopia News NetworkSociety & Culture News

Plutopia News Network episodes

August 25, 2020 Joseph Rowe: Spiritual Community
Joseph Rowe joins Scoop and Jon in a discussion of spiritual community, evolution, and awakening.
Joseph 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.
Before our session, Joseph wrote in an email “I have this notion that there are vastly unexplored skillful means to use online technologies to enhance our soul-connections, and thereby enhance synergistic possibilities of new kinds of spiritual community. I feel that there is an entire category of spiritually-oriented conversation that is missing in our public life.”
Joseph has studied philosophy of religion, transpersonal psychology, and classical guitar. He also studied classical Middle Eastern oud with Hamza El Din, a master whose unique marriage of voice and oud, and of Nubian and Arab influences, was one of the pioneers of what is now called “world music.”
During the 1980’s he worked as a radio producer for National Public Radio stations, and was among the first designers of programs combining classical, jazz, world, and new music, and interspersed with cultural and public affairs interviews.
He now lives in Paris, where he has turned more and more to music and theater, working as musician, writer, composer, and actor. Besides his extensive work with Catherine Braslavsky, he has collaborated with Marc Zammit at the Théâtre Molière in Paris, and with Alain Kremski and Michael Lonsdale at the Cluny Museum (Paris Festival of Sacred Art). He has composed music for a number of theater pieces by authors such as Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot, Jean Giono, and Roland Dubillard. He has also composed and recorded music for French television and documentary films. A writer and storyteller, he writes texts for theatrical performance pieces with music. He has published a number of short stories, poetry, book reviews, and magazine articles.
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52 min
August 18, 2020Renshin Bunce: Love and Fear
Renshin Bunce is a hospice chaplain and Zen priest. She was ordained at San Francisco Zen Center in 2003, and received dharma transmission in April of 2013. She later began training as a chaplain at the Sati Center’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Training in Redwood City in 2007. A one year hospital residency in Clinical Pastoral Education followed. She moved out of Zen Center in 2008 and has been employed as a hospice chaplain since 2010. She’s author of Love and Fear: stories from a hospice chaplain, a beautiful and moving account of some of her experiences as hospice chaplain, and how she has grown through those experiences.
Renshin Bunce on Twitter
Books by Renshin Bunce, available from Amazon:
Love and Fear
Entering the Monastery
Image by Shundo Haye
The post Renshin Bunce: Love and Fear first appeared on Plutopia News Network.
50 min
August 11, 2020 Mark Frauenfelder: Make Wired Boing
Mark Frauenfelder, Research Director of Institute for the Future, discusses his life as editor, blogger, maker, and influencer. Mark has been a vital part of the mainstreaming of the Internet. He was associate editor of Wired Magazine, and he was editor-in-chief at Wired.com and Make Magazine. He was aslo founder of the popular boingboing zine and blog. .
Mark has illustrated a number of books for major publishers. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Los Angeles and Seattle. He also designed Billy Idol’s CD covers. He’s written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Popular Science, Business Week, The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, and other national publications. A popular public speaker, he has appeared on national radio and television shows to talk about technology and culture, including The Martha Stewart Show and The Colbert Report (twice). He’s the author of nine books, including The Computer: An Illustrated History. He wrote, produced, and animated an explainer video about Bitcoin which has over 2.8 million views on YouTube. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado State University and worked as a development engineer in the disk drive sector for five years.
Also by Mark Frauenfelder: Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World
The post Mark Frauenfelder: Make Wired Boing first appeared on Plutopia News Network.
57 min
August 03, 2020 Ed Ward and Nate Wilcox: Let It Roll!
Nate Wilcox is host of "Let It Roll," a podcast with a series of in-depth interviews with music writers. Nate and his collaborators are assembling a history of popular music in America with a focus on the social, technological and business forces that drive the culture. Rock journalist Ed Ward's History of Rock and Roll inspired the podcast, and Ed has been a regular guest and key collaborator. The second volume of the History was published recently, and Nate and Ed are just wrapping up a series of discussions inspired by that volume, which covers the late 60s and early 70s. In this discussion, we talk about the past, present and future state of rock and roll.

Buy both volumes of the History of Rock and Roll on Amazon:
* The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 1: 1920-1963
* The History of Rock & Roll, Volume 2: 1964–1977: The Beatles, the Stones, and the Rise of Classic Rock
54 min
July 28, 2020 Bijoy Goswami and Robert Matney: The Galloping Gurus!
Bijoy Goswami and Robert Matney work with Jon and Scoop to create a “cult of punditry.” This freewheeling conversation covers cults, conspiracies, gurus, toxic soup, science (and the lack of scientific thinking), Buddhism and the power of positive freaking.
1 hr 7 min
July 21, 2020 Robert Matney: Conspiracy Theories and Information Warfare
Robert Matney is Managing Director of Government Affairs at Yonder. Yonder is a company that discovers who controls and amplifies narratives across the internet. It uses AI to identify influential groups, called factions, making them visible to Yonder’s clients. Rob has his finger on the pulse of emerging online narratives, which puts him in a great position to understand conspiracy theories and how they spread. In this episode, we explore the current prominence of conspiracy theories, such as Q Anon, in public discourse.
58 min
July 13, 2020 Jasmina Tešanović: Europe in the Time of Covid-19
Jasmina Tešanović is a Feminist and political activist, originally from Serbia. She is also author of 15 books, a journalist, musician, translator and film director. More recently, she was one of the founders of Casa Jasmina, smart home of the future, in Turin, Italy. She is the author of the manifesto and movement “Internet of Women Things.” She writes in three languages and lives between Turin, Belgrade, Austin and Ibiza.
58 min
July 06, 2020 Emily Gertz: State of the News Industry Today
Jon and Scoop discuss the state of the news industry with Emily Gertz. Emily is a New York-based journalist, and Senior Editor at Drilled News. We consider what’s working and what’s not, especially with Internet-based journalism and news organizations. We also discuss the question of authority in a world of proliferating sources of news and claims of bias.
She was Plutopia’s guest for the June 23 edition of our livestream happy hour on Facebook.

* Emily on Twitter
* Emily at LinkedIn
* Emily at TED

1 hr 11 min
June 30, 2020 Gary Gach Returns: Covid-19, Mindfulness, and Equanimity
Gary Gach returns to the Plutopia Podcast to discuss mindfulness and joy in the era of Covid-19. Our conversation was inspired in part by Gary’s March Lion’s Roar essay, “Practicing Equanimity in a State of Emergency.” Excerpt:
To flex your mindfulness muscle, you might try this brief exercise. Visualize the now-familiar COVID-19 virus for a moment. As you see it, what comes to mind? Notice if your body signals fear. If so, where does your body express it? Is your breathing shallow? Heart skipping a beat? Are there tingly sensations? A stab of cold? Since our body is often the first-responder at the scene of emotional difficulty, it’s wise to discern, accept, and understand these patterns before they proliferate.
55 min
June 22, 2020 Honoria Starbuck: Mindful Creative Zen Chickens
Honoria Starbuck is a professor of practice in the School of Design and Creative Technologies in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas. She’s also an artist known for her vibrant watercolors, and especially for her Zen Chicken series.
Honoria studied art and art history at the University of Texas. She holds an interdisciplinary PhD in Fine Arts, Communications, and Education. She is influenced by art history stretching back to prehistoric cave art.
The Zen Chicken series is specifically influenced by contemporary calligraphic artists and the asemic writing movement. Zen Chickens also stem from the abstraction of Ikebana, the flowing flowers of Emile Nolde, the frottage of Max Ernst, the eye of Man Ray and Dada, the diffusion of ink by George Grosz, as well as current events.
In addition Honoria’s artwork is a form of moving meditation closely related to her 12 year practice of tai chi.
Honoria has decades of diverse experiences as a Mail Artist in the international Correspondence Art Network through which her work has been exhibited in over 400 exhibitions including three times in the Venice Biennale.
Honoria has also worked in Internet art creating the first Internet opera (1995) which was recognized by the Global Bangemann Challenge for innovation excellence.
Honoria’s theme is flow. Flow connects the molecules of pigment into patterns on the paper and intellectual themes flow from one individual artwork into the next. The Zen Chicken theme has a strong current of humor and flexibility as the dilettante rooster roams through a wide range of entanglements from Japanese flower arranging to modern art. Honoria is a professor of practice in the School of Design and Creative Technologies in the College of Fine Arts at The University of Texas.

* Honoria on Twitter: @honoria
* Honoria on Facebook: honoria.starbuck
* Honoria on Instagram: honoria.starbuck
* Honoria on LinkedIn: Honoria

49 min