Plutopia News Network

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 [https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9780262048361]. 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. [https://archive.org/details/parapsychologysc0000alco] 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.

Dr. Patrick Ball, a statistician and founder of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), [https://hrdag.org/] joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss how rigorous data analysis can expose and challenge human rights abuses — even when official data is missing or manipulated. Beginning with his work in El Salvador during its civil war, Ball explains how statistical methods, including multiple systems estimation, have been used to identify patterns of violence, hold perpetrators accountable, and support truth commissions worldwide. He emphasizes that governments committing abuses rarely provide accurate data, so HRDAG has developed tools over decades to uncover the truth, even in the face of lies and obfuscation. While Ball’s own focus is mostly international, HRDAG increasingly works on U.S. issues like police violence, missing data, and systemic racism, using AI to process large volumes of testimony and documents efficiently but with rigorous oversight. Despite rising disinformation and political secrecy, Ball remains committed to defending truth with data, underscoring the moral obligation to witness and document state violence — cheerfully and persistently.  Patrick Ball: > Governments that commit human rights violations do not generally provide us with data about it, so our methods have been developed over decades specifically to respond to government obfuscation. People who commit violence and, even more so, those who apologize for people who commit violence, always lie about it — always. My experience is not mostly in the United States. My colleagues at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group mostly work on U.S. issues now. I do not. I wrote that one paper and I don’t really work much on the U.S., I work in a variety of other countries. But our methods, the methods that we use to figure out what’s going on even when there is no official data, and in the face of official lies, are useful in all these contexts. And so if under your hypothesis is that the Trump administration is going to hide data, misrepresent arguments, lie about it, well, our methods will be very useful. RELEVANT LINKS * Human Rights Data Analysis Group [https://hrdag.org/] * HRDAG’s page on police violence, [https://hrdag.org/poli/] including a link to “Violence in Blue” [https://granta.com/violence-in-blue/] * Structural Zero [https://hrdag.substack.com/] * New Scientist interview [https://archive.ph/j8TIA] of Patrick Ball by Wendy Grossman * Wendy Grossman’s net.wars interview [https://www.pelicancrossing.net/netwars/2017/06/the_ghost_in_the_machine.html] with Patrick Ball regarding correlation and piles of data   

In this wide-ranging Plutopia podcast episode, Dr. Neil Baer — television writer and producer, physician, and public health advocate — discusses The Promise and Peril of CRISPR, [https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9781421449302] a book he edited that explores the ethical, medical, and social implications of gene editing. While CRISPR [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR] holds transformative potential to cure diseases like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia, Baer warns of a slippery slope when it comes to altering human embryos, raising difficult questions about disability, human variation, and who decides what traits are worth preserving. The conversation touches on potential abuses such as eugenics, designer soldiers, bioterrorism, and corporate exploitation, while also examining CRISPR’s impact on biodiversity, animal welfare, and transhumanism. Baer emphasizes the need for public understanding, strong ethical frameworks, and compassionate storytelling in navigating the complex intersection of science, identity, and politics in an era where scientific facts are increasingly challenged. Neal Baer: > You know, evolution is so long, and this is what makes me nervous when we start to tinker with evolution as well. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have CRISPR to alleviate suffering. I think we should have CRISPR to alleviate the suffering of sickle cell disease or beta thalassemia or many other genetic diseases. Should we use it to get rid of these these diseases? Well I think there would be no one who would argue that Tay-Sachs is a good thing. But in our book, Ethan Weiss, who’s a cardiologist at UC San Francisco, has a child with albinism. And he says that he and his wife would have probably decided to abort had they known that she was carrying a fetus with albinism. But once their child was born — they can’t imagine life without her. So should we get rid of albinism? Should we get rid of Down Syndrome? This is the slippery slope of CRISPR. RELEVANT LINKS * CRISPR [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR] * Genetically modified organism [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism] * Genus [https://www.genusplc.com/] * Genetically Modifying Livestock for Improved Welfare: A Path Forward [https://philpapers.org/archive/SHRGML/] * Eugenics [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics] * New Yorker article on people who feel no pain [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/a-world-without-pain] * Michael Sandel, The Atlantic, “The Case Against Perfection” [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/04/the-case-against-perfection/302927/] * Hollywood, Health, and Society [https://hollywoodhealthandsociety.org/] * ER [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ER_(TV_series)] * ER: Blizzard [https://er.fandom.com/wiki/Blizzard] * ER: Hell and High Water [https://er.fandom.com/wiki/Hell_and_High_Water] * The Pitt [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pitt] * St. Elsewhere [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elsewhere] * Dr. Kildare [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Kildare_(TV_series)] * The Boys From Brazil [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boys_from_Brazil_(film)] * Gattaca [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca] * Law and Order SVU: Selfish [https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Selfish] * Law and Order SVU: Transitions [https://lawandorder.fandom.com/wiki/Transitions] * JK Rowling’s essay explaining her views on trans issues [https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/] Background image by Elena I Leonova, [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CRISPR_CAS9_technology.png] license: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en]

Cybersecurity expert Jonathan Kamens, [https://federate.social/@jik] a longtime technologist with a background in software engineering and digital security, was dismissed from his role at the Department of Veterans Affairs by Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE). [https://doge.gov/] Kamens, who had joined the U.S. Digital Service [https://www.usds.gov/] to serve the public, criticized DOGE for pursuing three main goals: profiting Musk and his allies through government contract manipulation; dismantling the federal government to remove constraints on elite power; and centralizing Americans’ personal data to support authoritarian control. In a revealing conversation on the Plutopia News Network podcast, Kamens discussed his career roots in digital activism, his work on early internet FAQ archives, [http://www.faqs.org] and his dismay at the dismantling of functional government institutions. He warned of growing threats to democracy, including loyalty vetting for government hires, data misuse, and Project 2025’s goals, while holding out faint hope that economic backlash from Trump’s tariffs could galvanize public resistance. Jonathan Kamens: > Doge is trying to do three different things. I think it’s important to lift this out of the weeds and to look high level at what the three things they’re trying to do are. The first thing is grift, right? They’re trying to steal money to benefit people like Elon Musk. You know, Elon Musk wants to rig how contracts are awarded by the government so he and Donald Trump can control who gets the contracts. And guess what? Funnily enough, a lot of those contracts are coincidentally going to go to Elon Musk’s companies and his friends, right? So that’s number one. Number two is they’re trying to destroy the government. I’m just going to be frank here. I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’m not going to equivocate. What Trump and Project 2025 are trying to do is destroy the federal government. It was Grover Norquist who said many years ago that he wanted to shrink the government down to a size that was small enough that he could drown it in a bathtub. These folks do not believe that there should be a federal government which constrains rich white Christian men in any substantive way. And therefore they are trying to destroy every aspect of the federal government which constrains them or their actions, which is most of the government, right? The whole, you know. And then the third thing they’re trying to do is they’re trying to amass all of the data that the federal government has on Americans in one place. Image background via Martin Grandjean. [https://www.martingrandjean.ch/] Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 LINKS * USDS 2024 report [https://www.usds.gov/impact-report/2024/] * Michael Lewis: The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk] * Michael Lewis: Who is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/michael-lewis-conclusion-who-is-government/] * Repository of Usenet FAQs [http://www.faqs.org] * Project 2025 [https://www.project2025.org/] * DOGE plan to rewrite SSA code [https://www.wired.com/story/doge-rebuild-social-security-administration-cobol-benefits/] * Russell Vought [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Vought] * Moshe Feinstein [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Feinstein]