Plutopia News Network

In this episode of the Plutopia News Network podcast, philosopher Charles Herrman [https://charlesherrman.substack.com/] 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 [https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=ag3qQkoAAAAJ&hl=en]

Journalist and author Brendan McNally [https://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/authors/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, [https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9781837730322] which tells the story of Martha Dodd, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_projecthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 [https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/women-of-the-third-reich] 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. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Diels] 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 [https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/], author of the “Medieval Myth-Busting” blog, [https://triskeleheritage.triskelepublishing.com/mediaeval-mythbusting-blog/] and writer of Historic Building Myth Busting: Uncovering Folklore, History, and Archaeology [https://bookshop.org/a/52607/9781803994475] — 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 [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.