Popular Episodes

Andrew L. Wilson is an Author and Professor of History of Christianity as well as host of The Disentanglement Podcast, exploring privacy tech and the surveillance state. We discuss in detail severals books about the origin of the state and money, including James C Scott’s, “Seeing Like A State”, Rees-Mogg and Davidson’s “The Sovereign Individual”, and David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years”. We discover some interesting parallels between the unconfiscatable nature of Bitcoin and the origins of state power with its ability to tax easily countable grain crops versus something like a potato which grows underground.We also talk about the history of the printing press as it relates to inflation within the church, and Andrew's personal proof of work undertaking a 1000-mile pilgrimage in the footsteps of Martin Luther from Germany to Rome.

Brandon Bucher is a Bitcoiner based in New Zealand working on several Bitcoin-related projects and an important figure in the local Kiwi Bitcoin community. We zoom out to discuss the recent high on-chain transaction fees, and what we can expect from discussions about scaling solutions moving forward. We talk about how rough consensus works for making changes to Bitcoin and what the situation was like during the period of the Blocksize Wars and SegWit activation from 2015 to 2017. Finally we discuss the importance of education and support for self-custody of bitcoin.

Jason Maier is the author of A Progressive's Case for Bitcoin: A Path Toward a More Just, Equitable, and Peaceful World. The book introduces Bitcoin to a progressive audience focussed primarily on the United States. Jason talks about how Bitcoin can actually help bring about positive social change, and he also dispels some of the common misconceptions about Bitcoin that would otherwise slow adoption among those who need it most.

I talk with Rob Clarkson about scaling Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning protocol, and how changes happen to Bitcoin more generally. Rob provides a technical introduction to some of the proposals such as ELTOO, APO, CTV, and we talk a bit about what covenants and vaults mean in Bitcoin.

I talk with gSovereignty, based in Hong Kong, going deep into questions about individual sovereignty and freedom. We also discuss the relationship with the legacy nation state and how Bitcoin and Nostr may interface with collectivist societies such as China. We talk about the Hong Kong protests, the dynamics of state and media, and Bitcoin’s eventual showdown with the Cantillon Pyramid. We also talk about G’s work in Nostr, including running the Nostrovia podcast, and building nostr.rocket – helping Bitcoiners organise projects in a way that is not beholden to the state.