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- Today1h 2m
Cindy Cohn: Privacy’s Defender
Cindy Cohn joins Plutopia to discuss her new book, Privacy’s Defender, and reflects on her decades of work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from the landmark Bernstein encryption case to fights against NSA mass surveillance and national security letters. She argues that privacy limits the power of governments, corporations, and individuals, and that winning the battle to free encryption was one of the most important victories for digital civil liberties because it made modern secure communication and online commerce possible. The conversation expands into current threats, including ChatGPT data access by law enforcement, border device searches, Palantir and ICE surveillance, license plate readers, age verification laws, attacks on journalists, and the erosion of legal remedies for rights violations. Cohn emphasizes that technology is always a mixed bag, that social problems cannot simply be solved by blunt internet regulation, and that organizations like EFF help “stress test” proposed solutions to make sure they do not undermine free expression, privacy, or vulnerable communities. She also discusses her upcoming departure from EFF, praises incoming executive director Nicole Ozer, and says she hopes to return more directly to legal and civil-liberties battles as a “warrior lawyer.” Cindy Cohn: When I look back on my career and I thought about, what are the things that I’ve done that have affected or helped the most people, I just don’t think anything comes close to freeing up encryption in terms of the impact. But also, as I mentioned, it’s not just about me. I’m very happy to tell the story. It was really fun to get to do that, but it’s a story about kind of a ragtag group of hackers and activists who bound together, and lo and behold, we won. I mean, that’s a narrative that is important for people to remember, even as I then did tell two other stories in the book where the win wasn’t so clean. I think all of those stories are important for people thinking about how can we make the world better today. You know, sometimes you get clean wins and sometimes you get messier situations, but the fights are always worth it. Click this logo to support the Electronic Frontier Foundation “When you go online, your rights go with you.”
- 1 weeks ago1h 5m
David Miles: The Viral Sneeze
David Miles discusses his book Sneeze: The History and Science of the Common Cold, arguing that “the common cold” is best understood as a broad category of respiratory viral illness that can include influenza and COVID-19, because the same kinds of viruses can cause anything from mild symptoms to severe disease. The conversation covers COVID immunity, Omicron, rhinovirus, hantavirus, virus transmission, masks, folk remedies, long COVID, airborne prevention, and the history of cold research, emphasizing that viruses are diverse, often poorly understood, and can have serious individual and social consequences. Miles stresses that prevention matters: better ventilation, HEPA filtration, masks in high-risk settings, staying home when sick, and stronger public health responses can reduce transmission and protect vulnerable people. David Miles on the Hantavirus: We asked David to write an assessment of the current hantavirus outbreak: At the time of writing (10th May 2026), there have been eight cases of Andes virus, a species of hantavirus, on the cruise ship Hondius. It’s carried by rodents and causes a very serious disease, with fatality rates estimated between one and three-fifths. If that looks like a very wide range of estimates, it is. That’s because Andes virus infections are so rare that there’s a lot about them that simply isn’t known. The pandemic potential of Andes virus, as with any infectious disease, depends on its capacity for human-to-human transmission: whether it can pass from one person to another or whether it hits a dead end when it passes from a rodent to a human. Right now, that’s one of the things that is still not clear. Several previous Andes virus outbreaks have involved multiple cases – and far less media coverage – but it’s never been entirely clear whether they involved transmission to one person who infected everyone else or whether everyone was exposed to the same infected rodents. Part of the difficulty is that the time between infection and the first symptoms ranges from one to six weeks. It’s such a long time period that it isn’t possible to narrow down the possible sources of infection. With a narrower time window, it might be possible to work out what or who an infected person was exposed to but there’s no way to tell whether someone has come too close to a rodent in a five-week window. In the case of the Hondius outbreak, that means that we don’t know how those eight cases caught Andes virus. Maybe they were all exposed before they set sail. Maybe some infected rodents sneaked on board and everyone is now stuck on a ship with the infectious source. Maybe the passengers and crew are in fact transmitting it among themselves. It’s only the latter case that would imply any pandemic potential because only a virus that can transmit from one person to another can cause a pandemic. Even in that case, I would rate the pandemic potential as extremely low, albeit with a caveat. The reason for the extremely low rating is that if there’s doubt about Andes virus’s ability to transmit from one person to another, it certainly can’t do it very well. Outbreaks in the past have been contained and because this outbreak is on a ship, it’s clear who has been exposed. So far, the public health response has been following the precautionary principle of assuming human-to-human transmission and isolating anyone who might be infectious. The caveat is that the precautionary principle has not been extended to getting everyone off the ship as quickly as possible. Keeping a large number of people exposed to an infectious source, whether it’s rodents or each other, is a very good way to maximise the damage caused by an outbreak. Apart from the very real danger to the passengers and crew themselves, their close proximity means that even if the virus isn’t good at passing from one person to another, it has plenty of opportunity to do so. As soon as human-to-human transmission becomes a possibility, there is an evolutionary pressure to do it better. No such evolutionary pressure would exist if there were no human-to-human transmission at all. In conclusion, it is very unlikely that the Andes virus will infect anyone other than the passengers and crew of the Hondius but to be on the safe side, the sooner they’re off that ship and in isolation, the better for them and for everyone else. Link On Skeptical Inquirer: Letter to America Letter to America: Medic Alert Video on YouTube <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.yout
- 2 weeks ago1h 1m
Nathan Schneider: Governable Spaces and Democracy
Nathan Schneider joins the Plutopia podcast to discuss cooperatives, platform ownership, and the dangers of “implicit feudalism” online, arguing that many digital spaces train users to choose between powerful admins or platforms rather than practice democratic governance. He describes the unrealized potential of co-ops, from rural electric cooperatives and credit unions to newsrooms, platform co-ops, and “exit to community” models that could let successful venture-backed startups transition into stakeholder ownership. The conversation connects cooperative ownership to broader issues of generational inequality, broadband access, social media’s shift toward entertainment and AI-driven content, Section 230, interoperability, and the need for policy that empowers communities to govern the utilities and platforms they depend on.   Nathan Schneider: There are a lot of others who’ve written about techno-feudalism, talking about the economic dimensions of the power of big tech companies. And to me, these two stories connect, but I think it’s really important to recognize that the problem, I think, began even before big tech started making a lot of money off of this stuff. It actually started with how we were designing the norms and software underpinning the earliest online spaces, and we got lulled into and gradually pulled into this situation where suddenly our civic associations — you know, the primary ways in which we meet each other — have become spaces in which we are not practicing the skills of democratic governance. We’re practicing a kind of choice among which Lord we will go to serve.
- 3 weeks ago1h 3m
Ed Lenert: AI, Truth, and Political Kayfabe
Dr. Edward Lenert returns to Plutopia to discuss his year-long, million-word engagement with large language models and what that experience reveals about AI, thought, trust, creativity, and danger. The conversation explores AI as collaborator, sophist, orchestra, and sometimes unruly engine—capable of useful synthesis, persuasive narrative, memory, and error correction, but still dependent on human accountability. Lenert, Jon Lebkowsky, and Scoop Sweeney also examine wicked problems, AI agency, copyright and fair use, Hollywood’s fear of synthetic performers, and the political power of narrative, especially through Lenert’s concept of “political kayfabe,” where people participate in shared myths not because they are true, but because they preserve and transmit what they already feel. Ed Lenert: I was working with AI, and I was talking about journalism with it. We were exchanging sentences about journalism, and I started a sentence about both sidesism. And I accidentally reached for the quote mark, but instead hit the return key. What happened next was quite extraordinary. The AI completed my thought as if I had written it. So, what I’m getting from that is that after a certain number of conversation exchanges, dialogue with the AI, the number of possibilities where a conversation can go gets continually narrowed down, and that the AI is then operating in a narrower space and is able to reach what I find to be useful conclusions because of the constraints that have been put on it by the prior words that came before it. Video on YouTube
- 4 weeks ago59 min
Helen Pearson: Beyond Belief
In this Plutopia podcast episode, journalist and author Helen Pearson discusses her book Beyond Belief, which traces the rise of evidence-based decision-making in medicine, government, education, conservation, and other fields, arguing that evidence-based practice is both more recent and more fragile than many people realize. Pearson explains how pioneers of evidence-based medicine challenged “eminence-based” authority and helped build systems like randomized trials and systematic reviews, while also emphasizing that evidence is only one part of good decision-making alongside human values, experience, and compassion. The conversation explores how misinformation, influencers, political polarization, and poor communication of scientific uncertainty have eroded trust, especially in the U.S. — but Pearson remains cautiously optimistic, stressing the need to help people ask better questions, synthesize bodies of evidence rather than rely on anecdotes or single studies, and communicate science through engaging stories in the media channels where people actually get information. Helen Pearson: We have to understand where people are getting their information from. If science is failing, then it’s because other channels are providing better entertainment and — maybe we touched on this earlier — the idea that scientists need to be where people are. I teach a class in science communication and journalism, and I ask them where they’re getting information from. This is sort of top-level undergraduate students or MSc students. And when I last polled the class, it was an interesting mix actually. They were saying from academic papers and YouTube. Academic papers, I think the scientists have got covered, but YouTube — that’s where that’s where they need to be. Related: Michael Marshall on Compassionate Skepticism YouTube Video
- Apr 13, 20261h 1m
Tereza Pultarova: Space, Science, and Drone Wars
In this Plutopia News Network episode, science and technology journalist Tereza Pultarova discusses her path from covering space exploration to reporting on defense technology after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, explaining how her Eastern European background shaped her understanding of the war’s stakes. She describes Ukraine as a fast-moving laboratory for military innovation, especially in drones, autonomous targeting, swarming systems, ground robots, and anti-drone defenses, while warning that these technologies could eventually make drone attacks common in Western cities and deepen a broader climate of fear and insecurity. The conversation also explores Starlink’s importance in modern warfare, the militarization and commercialization of space, the growing crisis of space junk, the possibility of conflict extending to the moon or orbit, and the dangers posed by authoritarian leaders, nuclear escalation, and information control. Throughout, Pultarova stresses the human cost of war, including trauma carried across generations, while arguing that journalists must keep these realities visible even when the public wants to look away. Tereza Pultarova: Apart from the nuclear threat, there is this concern that these drone wars and these drone attacks may become really very common in Western cities. And I don’t know whether you’ve read that piece I recently had published in IEEE Spectrum, but one of the analysts was saying that in the future we may need to have nets above city centers to protect against these possible incoming attacks and — you know, I love outdoors, I love nature, and you can imagine a world where we all would be very anxious and nervous to go out and enjoy time outside in the park with friends, having children, playing football or whatever, because you may never know when something suddenly appears and explodes. Video on YouTube
- Apr 7, 20261h 3m
Stephen Dulaney: The AI Ambition
Stephen Dulaney, a UX strategist turned AI builder, describes how losing his job pushed him to reinvent himself by collaborating with large language model–based AI agents to design, code, test, and refine applications, even without being a traditional programmer. In the interview, he argues that AI should be approached as a powerful but risky partner: useful for amplifying human creativity, planning, research, education, and software development, yet always requiring strong human judgment, careful goal-setting, quality assurance, ethical oversight, and sustainability awareness. Delaney emphasizes that AI systems follow goals literally, so people must define “what good looks like” in positive, responsible terms rather than relying on vague restrictions, and he warns that misuse by humans, not the technology alone, is the real danger. Throughout, he presents AI as something humans must mentor and collaborate with thoughtfully, advocating honesty, transparency, and “vibe review” to keep these systems aligned with human values. Stephen Dulaney: I’m trying to set an example of proper use and ethical use. My book is a fiction, but it’s also a story…sometimes people can get a message through fictional telling, and it’s a story of how we should be responsible and how it’s up to us to — you know, we have responsibility with this great power and we have to mentor and collaborate and monitor and be careful the whole way through, because it will get misused if there’s not more people on the good side than the bad side — and I’m totally worried about that. These AIs are math, and they respond to goals. And if you give them a goal, it’s like water finding its way to the ocean. So when you’re doing your system prompts, what doesn’t work… say don’t do this, don’t do that. Because the goal might be they’ll find a way to cheat, you know… if it’s the vending machine benchmark, they’ll find a way to take orders from somebody else. But what you can do is you can focus on describing the goal in positive terms. YouTube video
- Mar 30, 20261h 2m
Paulina Borsook on Tech, AI, and Billionaire Madness
Paulina Borsook In this Plutopia News Network conversation, Paulina Borsook reflects on the coming reissue of her book Cyberselfish with a mix of gratitude, puzzlement, and discomfort, describing the book as an imperfect but timely snapshot of Silicon Valley’s long-standing libertarian mindset rather than a tightly argued work, while also noting how strange it feels to be newly celebrated for writing she produced 25 years ago after years of professional frustration and obscurity. The discussion broadens into a sharp critique of billionaire tech culture, Elon Musk, AI hype and “AI slop,” the environmental and social costs of generative AI, and the enduring antisocial impulses embedded in parts of tech culture, themes that the hosts connect to newer books about elite survivalism and Silicon Valley ideology. Along the way, Borsook praises the AI-assisted satirical video “Greenland Defense Front” as a rare example of AI used creatively under clear human artistic control, and the group also touches on war, oil, Trump, market manipulation, parasocial relationships, internet culture, fandom, and the fading of once-vital spaces like CFP and old South by Southwest, ending with details about the Cyberselfish rerelease: preorder links go live April 22 and the new edition is due September 15. Paulina Borsook: This was definitely a first book, and since it went through three publishers, the seams still show. It’s not. . I don’t even think it’s that great a book. It’s just interesting to me that people look at it in a certain way now. And it was more of a travelogue pastiche. There wasn’t a dominant through narrative. There was a snapshot of this subculture, snapshot of that.Wired to a whole bunch of other things. It wasn’t like I wasn’t making an argument. I was just being an anthropologist in a funny kind of way. So I’m obviously pleased and puzzled. I’m grateful for being reputationally brought back from the dead. I don’t trust it, but I don’t know what this has to do with — you know, I’m the same person that was trying to do stuff for the last 25 years and it also feels weird that I’m being celebrated for what I wrote 25 years ago, not just the book, but other stuff. I’m glad I created stuff of lasting value. But I can’t… you know, this should be posthumous, but I’m still alive.
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