Alright. We've got one of my favorite people today. I think maybe one of the most productive
people in the Bitcoin master space. It's like it's like if you look at the list of things that Avi Burra
is up to that's just the things we know about Avi. I bet you've got a few things in the background
that, maybe, maybe got up your sleeve because you're, you're always doing something. Thanks for being on Radio Detox today. No. Thank you for having me, Heather. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the kind words. And yes, there's always something cooking. Some of it public, some of it not. I'm excited. I finally did get to meet you in real life. And so our our moment of meeting was at Bitcoin Park in Nashville.
You know, there's big tall Avi with his cowboy hat smoking a cigar, it was it was like you walked out of a movie. Just, great to meet you in real life finally. We were at Nostrilville Oh gosh. Three point Yes. Oh god. It was it was like, I I feel like I knew you. And then, you know, but I'm here in Phoenix with, with QW.
So I obviously
I get to hang out with QW once in a while. He's a really busy guy these days, but it was finally got to hang out with you in real life and it lived up to my expectations.
And we got to do Nosterville. And, I hadn't done a Nosterville either. Hadn't been to Bitcoin Park yet. I hadn't even been to Nashville. So first of many occasions for me, I wanted to know what your feedback was or what your takeaway was on Nostrilville 3 point o. What did what did you think of all all of the cool stuff that went on for kind of we were there for a whole weekend. Yeah. Look, first of all, it's always great to be around other Bitcoiners and Nostriches. Irrespective of which subgroup of Bitcoiners and
ostrich as it is, it always feels like a family reunion. Right? And so that that was the best part, just getting to meet all, you know, a whole bunch of folks, some some for the first time, like, in your case, I learned, and some again, second, third, fourth time. So
I had a great time. The conversations
were,
you know, high energy, high signal. You could see that there are people really committed to building, right? This is not I
mean, I was in the blockchain world seven, eight years ago, and you could see people were just showing up and
there was no sense of community, no sense of actual belief in what they were doing. It was all a set of buzzwords and all of that thing. And I've, I've been in the healthcare tech world as well, and there's such a jadedness at those conferences. I hear it's just, it's all optimism.
It's like I said, it's a family reunion. I've never been part of any community that feels this way.
So, yeah, it it was great. I had a great time. That's true. What do you think it is about us?
Because you, you know, clearly you've traveled around the world. You've been doing this for a while. You've been to a lot of these events in Prague.
I don't know all the events you've gone to off the top of my head,
but you've managed to be a part of this community.
Just kind of, you have a breadth and depth, I think that a lot of people don't because you're, you're not a chest thumping type person. You're, you're more quiet, I think, and studious. You're, you're very, I think, well cultured.
So you're probably the best person to ask this is what is it about us, you know, weird group of, I don't know, rapscallions that kind of binds this culture together across, across the miles, across different countries,
even. What do you think the secret sauce is? I think there are a few factors at play.
And all of it all of those factors are kind of in the broad family of ideological alignment,
but also maybe
just personality
alignment. I honestly believe this is especially true for Bitcoiners, but also for Nostra to some extent. Most of us are misfits in the big bad world.
Right from when we were kids, I suddenly the case with me. Never fully understood
why things had to be the way they were. People would just assert that, oh, get over it. This is life. Life is unfair. Life is this. Life is that. Nihilism. You know? You need nihilism. Complete nihilism.
And,
And, you know, and I've talked to a lot of Bitcoiners who who said, yeah. Look. Ever since I was a kid, I never fit in.
Something felt wrong, and I didn't know what. I didn't know what it was. And I think Bitcoin comes along. And for a lot of us, it's like, wait a second.
First of all,
almost everything that felt wrong with the world suddenly makes sense through, through the lens of understanding the fiat world and, and, and then understanding Bitcoin.
But secondly, there's actually hope now.
Right? Maybe it's a long shot. I don't know, but at least there is something,
there is a solution. We don't have to sit here and play victim saying, the world's a terrible place. There's nothing we could do. Yeah. Let's let's just get drunk and whatever. Right? There
is a real solution. And I think that hope
and that, from which, you know, that, so that is the ideological alignment. I think that is people believe that this this movement or whatever you want to call it that we're part of is
something that's gonna, if not lead us, at least our children to a much better place.
Yeah. I've had that thought, you know, working with Ainsley Costello and and her being so young. I I know. Who said this? Was it Sam Means on your podcast that this will be ready for Ainsley's kids?
I think it was a It was Sam. Yeah. Yeah. Was Sam said that. I'm like, I think about that sometimes and, you know, and I have, you know, I think Ainsley's the exception. Exception. That Gen Z who's just she's got it because I I look at my niece and nephew and they're like, I wanna play video games.
I wanna work and and maybe save for community college. They're kind of in that, you know, stage where the niece is niece is doing the college thing. The nephew's like, I don't know about this college thing. And I'm like, yes, can we expand on that? And you know, he's, he's working, he's got his girlfriend, but it hasn't quite
hit them. I think that they may have, you know, this is part of being young too. Think that there's a good portion of Gen Z that's kind of getting drawn towards that black and white thinking and that nihilism. And then there are the ones like Ainsley who totally get this and grasp it and they've seen it work for them in this value of value for value economy,
which is something I think you're taking part in now with, plug chain radio. And
can we just, how did you guys, cause I feel like we need to go back now because Nostra's been around for a few years. I've been in it for almost three years, but active for like two. And you know, I think PCR predates me coming to Nostrad. When did you guys start Plugchain Radio? How did it all begin?
Yeah.
So I joined NOSTA around, I know the date is 12/15/2022.
I think QW joined a week after that. And there was that in that initial
period of NOSTA there, and there were a lot, a lot of the accounts that now everyone's familiar with, NIMs, not NIMs, whatever, came in that time period.
And I guess they've built the social capital by sticking around
Yeah. In the last three years and continue Web of trust. Continuing to post.
Web of trust. Exactly. So it was just such an incredibly
fun time. Big it was it felt innocent. It felt people just having a good time. And, know, you have to think about where the world was
back then. That was when the Twitter files or whatever were were dropping. John was wasn't the Twitter files? There was something going on there. Something ugly happening on Twitter. Maybe Twitter Elon Elon bought it. Elon
bought it in the It was same
it was the Elon purchase at the same time that ChatGPT burst on the screen. So there was this like, this worry of I think the Twitter purge happened at the same time as well, like where they just a whole bunch of people got purged,
like with no recourse. So
Yeah. So I think Elon 2022.
I think Elon had bothered by that. That's right. And the Cryptophile stuff was and you know, you had all these Twitter spaces. And, you know, this was a month after the, what is that? SBF fiasco, right, with FTX Yeah. And all
It was it was an explosive, interesting time. I was a young Bitcoiner then. Was class of 2020. So I was
kinda cruising Bitcoin, Twitter, but I don't think I was getting anywhere with that. Was meeting some people and making some friends, but not like Noster. Right. Twitter
was just this insanely ugly place. I mean, believe it or not, it's actually gotten worse now.
But Oh, yeah. It felt it felt just
you know? And, you know, I would try and communicate with people, you know, try and post something.
Everything went into the void. Right? I'm I'm I'm the same person. Nothing's changed. I'm saying the same things that I say now that I was saying those back then.
I mean, no engagement. Nothing. All I would see is this constant stream of anger coming in, anger and outrage.
Mhmm.
And that was so Nostrad felt like such an amazing contrast. I felt like some of us gray beards, I dare say, were teenagers back in the early days of the Internet, and we experienced
just the joy of nonsense conversation, innocent and nonsensical conversations.
The freedom of it.
The freedom of it. Right? Mhmm. There was no
there were no algorithmic overlords dictating
your behavior and and all of that. So it it was incredibly freeing.
It felt like being young again. So there was all of that going on. And, obviously,
it wasn't just QW. There was several others I I got to know in that period, became good friends with.
And and, you know, we QW and I would have this constant back and forth, playful back and forth. We were doing these silly auctions
for for JPEGs, you know, making fun of the NFT,
nonsense that we put a picture up and say, okay. Starts at this picture for sale. So, you know, there's all of that going on. And then sometime in February, so just a couple months after that, I reached out to him, and I said, look. I don't quite know what this thing is. All I know is it could be huge. It could become huge one day. Right? This this thing being Nosta. Right? Like what this movement that is organically taking place.
I think we should get ahead of this and just be chroniclers
of this revolution. Right? So let's just start podcast. And I'd never done a podcast before. He'd never done a podcast before, but let's, let's just do it. Let's just do it. And let's just start talking to people, you know, and,
and, and see where it goes. So February 2023,
that's when blockchain radio began.
That's what I Right.
So initially, kiddo, he was like, oh, I don't know. I had just had a baby.
I was like, dude, just think about it. Talk to your wife. See if you can carve out an hour a week, and we'll, we'll, we'll make this happen.
And then he eventually,
agreed and then we started doing it. Basically I don't, we've barely taken a couple of weeks off since then.
Yeah. And, and he's, he's gotten a little bit busy taking over the family business, but he's still, he's still around. He's active in the space. And I think this is actually kind of cool because,
you know, sometimes in a, in a project, somebody gets busy and then it just kind of dies off. But you have not only kept blockchain radio going when QW gets busy, you've actually expanded. And I wanted to talk about like some of the things that have going have been going on. Think last year, so with Radio Detox, I did, like, one episode in March 2025, and then, like, I just had life and work went crazy, and I I had to stop doing the podcast for a little while. And then during that time Mhmm.
I I was using RSS Blue, so that went away. And so then I was looking at, do I do, Fountain for podcasters?
Because Fountain absorbed RSS Blue and hired WDOS, whom we love from RSS Blue. And so now Fountain has expanded as well. I haven't joined Fountain yet. I'm using Pod Home right now because, you know, the podcast went away. It doesn't have that much of a listening audience to kind of make sense. So while I get back in the swing of things, I wanted to try Pod Home and and see how some different podcast two point o things work. And one of the one of the cool things that I loved about RSS Blue, and you could probably answer a bunch of my questions about Fountain, and and I love Fountain, but Podhome for me is it does a lot of things well, and it's very easy for me to kinda grab
the value from value songs and add them into the podcast, the audio version
anyway. And and that to me is kinda the most important thing because I may do some interview podcasts like this where we're on camera. I also wanna keep doing the music podcast and keep, you know, paying it forward for that community and just kind of
I think it's important to show that we can do that and also show that, you know, like,
just kind of the variety of what you're doing on fountain
with Club Chain Radio and and just kinda can you explain where the podcast moved in 2025 using Fountain?
Yeah. Yeah. So,
you know, we we've had Oscar on the show.
I think we had him first time in 2023. We've had him in 2024. So he, you know, he became a friend of the show, and then I got to meet him in person. Think for the first time in might've been in Madera for Bitcoin Atlantis. So
built a good relationship with Oscar there, and then met him several times at other conferences subsequently.
And then he'd reached out to us early last year or spring of last year and said, look. We're rolling out
hosting on Fountain. And we were using RSS Blue at that time. We just switched to RSS Blue. And he said that I don't know if he actually told us Globitas was coming over because it wasn't finalized yet,
but he said, I think it was to the effect of you'd be you'd be a really good candidate because you're using RSS Blue.
And we said, yeah. I'm happy to do it. Happy to be, early adopters. So we were the first podcast,
to get onboarded onto fountain. I think I can't remember exactly when we made the switch. Might have been May.
Yeah.
I can't remember now. But we were the first ones. Right? We we entered the whole onboarding session with them. Oh, yeah. That was so that was great. And that was the switch,
fountain.
Gotta say I I I love it. Now I talk to a lot of podcasting two point o folks,
especially people who've been in the in that area for a while.
You know, where they come from is
for better or for worse. Right? This is just their perspective.
I'm
a podcast Podcasting two point o Maxi. I'm an RSS Maxi, which is fine. Right? That's that's your thing. And then Bitcoin is incidental.
For me, it's the other way around. I'm a Bitcoin Maxi, and podcasting two point o is a tool. RSS is a tool for me to help in the in the broader agenda of spreading Bitcoin awareness and Bitcoin adoption.
This is a long way of saying because Fountain is so Bitcoin centric, it was a no brainer for me to jump to Fountain.
Yeah. That's that's a good thing too. And and I'm looking at the variety of things I could do with Fountain, and I'm like, I'm not there yet. Let me warm the podcast back up.
I'm curious because the
coolest thing that you did and what I want people to really understand is that
whether you do music or not, it's very doable to kinda convert to podcasting two point o. And I'm I'm kind of I'm hitting a point where I'm kind of straddling the line where it's like, yes, I want there to be Bitcoin adoption.
Yes. I want there to be RSS adoption.
Yes. I want there to be Nostrad adoption. And can we fit it all together in a way that doesn't drive people away? Because I think we get very highly technical and I think we get really nerdy
and I think we get ideological
sometimes. I think we get a little jargony whether we're talking about Bitcoin or Noster or RSS.
And in the end of the day, I think it doesn't look fun, but I think you and QW make it look fun, and you make it look like it's teamwork, and there's
you guys don't have any ego in this. You're very wonderful people to be around. You're easy people to work with. If you have an opinion or if QW has an opinion, and I'm like, well, where'd you get that from? You both can have, like, a good sit down conversation and be like, well, let me let me tell you. You know, my thought process. And it's just very calm and easygoing, and I love that about you guys. You're just very down to earth. And so I, I, I hate it when the conversation and podcasting gets away from that because it does get more people into the space. And I love to see more people either doing what you guys are doing and especially the new thing you're doing with the music. And I kind of wanted to know, like,
you guys didn't play music on blockchain radio for a long time, but you suddenly added that. And I I don't know if that's a technological
like, technology got better or you just decided to go all in. Yeah. It's a bit of both. So one of the things that happened you know, what had I've gone through phases with blockchain radio. Right? You know, we're approaching
episode a 150 now.
And when you've been doing this week so that's three years. Right? This is we are close to the three year mark.
When you've done so many episodes, you invariably go through phases when where, you know, there's a five, six episode stretch, 10 episode stretch. You're just dialing it in. You're like, oh, I've got stuff going on. I'm just gonna show up and just True. Blabber it blabber into the mic for an hour and then bugger off and back to my other stuff.
That was happening to, at,
late fall
of of this up to 25
for me. Right? I I just felt like I was dialing it in half assed. I mean, look. The thing is because
we've been doing it for so long, it just it it happens. Right? Maybe the audience won't notice it. Maybe guests don't notice it, but I was certainly noticing it. I was like, well, that know, I'm just showing up.
You know, maybe spending fifteen minutes before the episode to scribble some notes together to ask the guest questions.
Understandable. Then,
you know, it happened. And, and there is not the first time this phase has happened, but this, this, this had been I mean, as
somebody who's put a lot of shit on radio and TV over the years, that, that's what happens. You do mail it in at some point. You do show up five minutes before you hit the air and you're like, like, Oh my God, am I even wearing pants? And you crack a mic and sometimes it's the best show of your life. And then sometimes it's just a rut that you get into because I don't know, life happens. Creativity
can go up and down too. So it's totally normal, And I
so what, what happened then was that coincided with
QW coming and saying, look, I've got way too much on my plate. Right. Family business, this, that and the other. Right. And I need to take a, whatever it is, few months off just to sort this stuff out. I'll be back. Obviously, at that point, the question was, do we continue
Or
just take the easy way out, which is, okay, QW is gone. I'm not feeling it. Let's just, pull the plug.
And I think for whatever reason, at that point, the answer became very simple to me, which is, okay. This is a perfect opportunity.
I've been going half half assed for the last three, four months.
Maybe and we're approaching a new year. Why not go all in, double down, and do this the proper way? Also, you know, it's it's the format's gonna change. It's gonna be just me for a while. Right? So it gives me a chance to experiment a little more.
So that was the original idea there. Then I had Aaron Apessex on the show,
and he was like, look. Why don't you just play music on your show, man? I was like, you know what? So good. Fantastic idea. Why don't I just start? He's great. Yeah. So this was that happened a month ago. So I looked into it. I reached out to Oscar. They said they were just adding the time value split
feature on it was it's, I think it's still in beta mode on in fountain.
So for folks who are not that familiar with forgetting too technical here, what that basically means is if you place music on, on your podcast, you can set up just the segment of, of the music for a different split. So you can say 90% of the stats that a 100% of the stats that come in, go to the musician. You can choose the song.
And, and that's what happens. So for the rest, let's say, let's take a simple example. Let's say for the rest of the show, I'm getting a 100%.
Right? But, so if someone sends 10,000 sets at any point in the show,
I will get the 10,000 set.
But if,
if I set up a 90 split
and they send the boost during the song,
where where I've said that 90% split and they send 10,000 shots,
I will I will only get 1,000 and the musician will get the 9,000. Right? Then you could do this multiple times over the
I'm I'm I'm sure RSS Lou had this feature, if I'm not mistaken. RSS Blue did. Yeah.
And that was for me when RSS Blue was kind of fading, I was like, well, this is this is a key selling point for me because I'm not gonna I'm not a coder. Right? Like, I'm a vibe coder, you know? So I'm not gonna insert, you know, I'm not gonna go through this whole like XML and podcast tags. I'm not gonna do that. I want a, you know, slick UI where I could click some buttons and, and do it. Because also fun fact about me, I have a learning disability with numbers. So the value tied to splits like is enough for me. I have dyscalculia because I just transpose numbers like a mofo.
And so it's, I get like riled up, just try to enter like 10 or 15 of these value time splits. So, you know, if somebody out there is like, this podcasting two point zero thing sounds cool, but I'm non technical. Like if I can do it,
anybody can, can do it if I can do these things. So like,
I think that's a key because it makes it easy to sort of process,
you know, how do, how do I do the thing? If you're thinking, well, how, how do these people put music on a podcast? Me coming from radio, I'm thinking about, oh, I've got a a radio station, and, you know, this broadcasting company spends 6 figures a year on ASCAP, CSAK, BMI.
And so that's why I can play Taylor Swift on the radio. Right? Like, that's how it works. So if you are familiar with that old model, it's like, well, how do Heather and Avi play music on their podcast? Well, there's a whole world of music released to RSS,
and we can put that on our podcast. And it's built in with this interface that we're talking about on various podcasting two point zero apps that you use for podcast hosting.
And so like we had RSS Blue, Fountain is absorbing RSS Blue and WDOS for lack of a better explanation there. So I've moved to Podhome. Avi has moved to Fountain.
I'm still looking at Fountain in the long term. I'm very happy with Podhome too, because I think the key difference is just, Barry who does Podhome does an awesome job. And it's just, it's a low monthly price of like $16.
And so it makes it, I think very doable for somebody
who's like, I'm still trying to figure this out. Maybe I have no audience. Maybe I have no experience doing this and I'm just trying this out
and I'm not sure about it. I think you get in at a lower price point where I think Fountain probably costs a little bit more, but has tons more features. Like you can add video, you can, you know, there's
what do you guys call it? Like, you guys have subscription,
in addition to doing the zapping and the boosting with the Lightning Network. So you can, you know, you can listen to me and Avi, send us Bitcoin. You can listen to Avi's podcast
and him Bitcoin or subscribe to like, how do you guys do the subscription thing? Like you have,
you know, like bonus content or early access content, or I think both.
Both.
That's how it works on Fountain.
It is, it's a very, very easy thing to set up.
If you set up a podcaster account, you just go in, you click the button that says subscription, and then you can choose
whether
So, I mean, you just use the price, right? You can set it at $50 a month, which would be silly.
Or you could say we've
started at $5 a month. And what we do is,
we there's bonus content that's ex which is exclusive to subscribers.
We, you know, we give a preview that free preview to non subscribers and subscribers get the whole thing. There's early access, which we have, which I, we did for a while. Yeah. I might bring it back for the Sunday show. And we could talk about the Sunday show in a second. Yeah.
Yeah, early access for our for the regular episode, the Friday episode, there's no it's just everyone gets it at the same time. But as we roll out new shows, we'll add the early access to that. Now we don't take we don't have advertisers.
I don't know if we will. Maybe there's someone truly aligned with the cause who comes and makes a good offer, then perhaps I'd consider it. But definitely would never have a fiat advertiser on my show. Right? That's just the I think that's a form of freedom because I I don't want ads either. I don't wanna deal with them. I don't wanna sell. I don't want another thing to insert
into the podcast. I want it to just be about the music and like getting getting you to an audience. Like you obviously have your own audience, but getting people who listen to me going, oh, who's this Avi guy? Like, probably most people who listen to Radio Detox already know who you are and probably already listened to Plubchain Radio. I've been on Plubchain Radio. You know, QW's had me on there like we did a live from Vegas. Like, we kind of have a nice audience share, I think. But I think a lot of people might listen to me that, you know, at least in the future, as more people discover this and go, well, who are these people? What are they up to? Why should I listen to them? And more importantly, like how can I do the same thing? Do I, you know, I think most people probably can, you know, record video and audio and most services now, we both use Riverside. They're easier than ever to record
and edit and do it quickly. Like, my other podcast soapbox sessions, Derek and I recorded last night. We have a deadline. Right? We gotta get it out Thursdays, but holidays and and whatnot. I said, dude, we just recorded the podcast and I edited it and got it out for YouTube. Like, the whole the whole process took me exactly two hours and fifty eight minutes. I couldn't have done that like two years ago. In the beginning, Radio Detox took me forever to produce. The more you do this, the easier the process is. And it's like, well, can I do what used to take me five hours? Can I do it in two or three now so that I can get more done because, you know, we're not making millions of dollars doing this? So like the easier it is for me to insert to music, you know? Yeah.
Get the thing edited, put it out, but, you know, get the music in it and kind of have that that freedom that we're talking about to do it our way and not have to sell
ourselves or put in ads that are obnoxious. Some of my favorite podcasts have six minutes of ads at the beginning of them. And it's like the same two ads played over and over three times. And this is, this is lunacy.
This is, this is the engineification and this is what people have to do to support their podcasting habit. Whereas like,
I don't look at this as how much money I'm going to make off of it. I, I do, you know, see the Zaps and the Boost come in and I definitely appreciate them from people. But I, I know I'm not going to pay rent off of this podcast thing, at least not right now. Now growing space is important, but that that freedom thing is like, I can do what I want. I know that I'm not gonna make a million dollars doing this. You know, I know why I'm doing this is because it's fun. And I get to talk to Avi, or I get to talk to Joe Martin or Ainsley Costello. And I get to be a part of building this world that I want to see that we were talking about for like, maybe our kids will have it. Maybe Ainsley's kids will have it.
And that's just the freedom to say, no, I don't want to advertise some shitty fiat. You know, like I can't think of something off the top of my head. And certainly I don't think that Radio Detox has that kind of following, but I don't want to have to put things on Radio Detox that I don't want to do so that I can go get the following so that I can go make the money and become one of those like influencer type of people. I get to do Radio Detox how I want, when I want.
And maybe I get a couple bucks, you know, a week from it. And like, that's the best part is I don't have to change who I am or who I talk to on the podcast. I don't know if that's something
that you, I don't know, share, I guess with Plubchain Radio. Yeah. I, I mean, I certainly share the sentiment about
the fiat advertising.
And now having said that though, if we haven't done this, but if there was some amazing new Nostra client that came up.
Now chances are we talk about it on the show for free anyway. But if they came up to us and said, Hey, can you, can you actually talk a little more about it? We'll pay you X amount of money to do it. I think if, it's a lot if it's a really good master client that actually makes sense, that that's aligned with the values,
then that certainly be open to that. Now that is that clearly is advertising,
but I would be open to that at some point, similarly for Bitcoin products as well, because all of that's a lot harder to weed out the bad ones. Right? So I mean, you've actually got to use it to make sure it's truly legit and it's aligned with your values. But, so that's the sort of thing I'd be aligned to. For example, if Pfizer came and asked me to advertise whatever, the vaccine or something, and asked them to have a really good day and leave me alone.
Yeah. It's like if the Phoenix Open came up to me, it's like the we joke about it around here because I live in Phoenix. Know, if the Waste Management Open came up to me and said, hey, you want to advertise? I'd be like, no, you have nothing to do with me. If they dangled a bunch of money in front of me, I'm like, you know, like, I'm not on sale. You know, it's it's like, but if it was, you know,
someone that I, it's the the web of trust thing, and it's just living it in real life of like, okay, if your product's amazing, I've tried it, I've tested it.
Maybe I've used it for a while. I did these things in radio. Like I actually made Buddy, true story, when I was like 21 years old, I used to do an on air sponsorship for like Max Factor Lipfinity.
And I made a ridiculous amount of money for it. And I had to record a commercial every day for lipstick, you know, and it was, but it was, it made sense because I was a woman on the air. We, our target demo was women 18 to 34.
And that's the sort of thing that they would buy. And so that sort of thing would make sense, you know, and for me, it's like, well, I don't know what people in the value verse want other than other than like,
you know, because we kinda, we have this, I don't know, like you were calling us misfits earlier. It's like, well, we have people in music who are putting their music online
and trying to get away from, get away from Spotify,
get away from, you know, having to pimp yourself on Instagram so that people will give you a few spins on Spotify that you're not gonna make any money off of. You know, that's kind of, I,
know, just trying to reach that audience who's outside of like the Bitcoin and Noster, the people who need this stuff. It's, it's so hard and we keep trying, you know. That's what is important to me and motivates me to do this because you know, there's, there's so much talent out there that deserves to be heard and this, this is a way that we can do that. And it's just kind of, we need, we need more Obbies and QWs and plug chain radios and radio detoxes and soapbox sessions. We just, we need more people to show that we've got this amazing place where we can do this amazing thing and kind of create this alternate, you know, parallel path to the traditional music business. And you could do it independently and you could earn Bitcoin and you don't have to worry about a rights organization like CSAC and you don't have to, you know, worry about royalty checks coming out quarterly
from
ASCAP. And that's,
I think the cool thing about playing music is you I think you guys have, I'm assuming a pretty big audience. So the choice to kind of get into playing a little more music on pleb chain radio, I think that's
gonna be great for this space and probably bring in some more interest, hopefully more musicians,
hopefully more fans,
hopefully more podcasters so we can get more shows that play music. That's to me, that's huge.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
I I'm doing it because it's fun, but I certainly recognize all the knock on benefits,
that come from that.
It is, it is fun playing music, talking about it. And I'm not the kind of person who's going to say anything mean about the music. I wouldn't pick a song that I would criticize
in a bad So I'd pick a song that I'm going to say something nice about. I picked it because I liked it.
So it's fun. It's fun doing it. And then,
in fact, I've been having so much fun that I said, let me just do a music show.
Hey. And I know it's it's not gonna be the first one. There are obviously several out there
that take
do the value time split and all of that stuff.
You know,
I thought I would do a nice laid back Sunday show.
Don't you, really, the conversations can get a little intense and philosophical at times,
or or just very technical in some cases.
And that's I think it serves its purpose for the Friday show, but I want a completely laid back Sunday show. So I'm calling it Sunday brunch. The idea is to mimic the kind of conversation that you would have on on a Sunday brunch, which is just decompressing from the week to stop shooting the breeze. But the idea of the twist here is the guest is the DJ.
So every guest has a little bit of homework to do. They have to go to podcasts and decks or fountain or wherever it is, find three to five, preferably
tracks that they really like, and then send them to me beforehand
so that I can load them up on the Riverside media bot. That's the only way it actually plays on the, on the live stream.
And then, and then come and chat and, you know, talk about life or whatever. And then every
few minutes we, we play a song and then they tell me why they picked that song, what it means to them. And, and then we just move on to the next topic.
And then the next song and just, that's it. Easy one hour, hour and fifteen minutes, whatever it's going to be. I'm hoping it's an easy laid back conversation, but the Bitcoin is in ostriches. Chances are we're talking about some crazy
titanic conspiracy with the Federal Reserve or something else. We'll be talking about meat and chemtrails on a Sunday morning getting riled up and like it. And then by the way, like the song by Joe Martin. No. That's why I so the first one is gonna be you know, this this podcast will probably come out after it has happened. So the first one is with Oscar Mary. Yeah. I know. I I couldn't think of a better person to have for the first episode.
Yeah.
Just because, you know, it's they were talking about they're
making a huge push into into music.
Oscar's a friend, I think, and it'll be really good for him to come and talk about
some of that stuff, what they're doing in music and then play. And I'm curious to see what his playlist looks like.
Yeah. So it's gonna be Oscar. We're gonna live stream on,
on Noster as well on Zapdos stream on Sunday, and then maybe have the episode out for subs subscribers the next day. And then for non subscribers a day or two later,
all the time value split,
value time splits, all of that set up. So the artists get 90% during the song. The rest of the time
it's fifty, fifty between the guests to me. And then one thing I do need to figure out, and this probably needs to be vibed
somehow.
Okay. Is during
the live stream on Zap. Stream, how do you how how to split the Zaps that come in in the same way? Because That's a good question. Value to lead time to split is an RSS concept, a pod Podcasting two point zero concept. It's not a Gnostic concept. Right? Right. I don't know how you do that. Yeah. So I'll I'll have to think about that. I feel like this is the age old problem that
well, there's a couple of things on the technical side, and I don't wanna get into technical leads. I always like to word things. It's very, like, nontechnical.
So, like,
you and I both being Riverside people, that's that's interesting that that's that's how you do it because I was wondering how you were gonna do it. So are you and Oscar going to do the the music show on video, or is it gonna be audio only?
It's gonna be audio only. I mean, we might it's
just it's so much easier to be relaxed and stuff. The thing is this is my video set. I'm sitting in a fairly uncomfortable chair, and, you know, I I don't have my I'm on my head, but this is what mic stand looks like, which I don't have my mic set up. So, you know, I'd have to put it up here like this. It's kind of uncomfortable.
So
if I can get a more comfortable setup with, with an armchair and a nice little,
Yeah. That's a Sunday morning show. Yeah. You need an armchair and and you could just be in your pajamas where, like and I don't know if I can turn this off. I probably can't in the middle, but, we we lost my set last night for soapbox sessions. Like, the fake background is is what I prefer because I'm actually in my closet. Like, I made I soundproofed my largest
closet and turned it into recording studio. Put a desk in here. It's like rugs and blankets and and, like, every linen I have is stacked in here for sound deadening. So this is like the old school, easy way to make a little sound recording studio. So that's that's how I do it. So it's it's not a good looking room. There's, like, you know, sweatshirts here and my door is here, you know, so it's, it's not pretty. So that's like, that's one part of it. Like live time splits are an issue. Video time splits would be the next frontier. We're not there yet. But even, even the live time splits with audio or with the ZapStream, like we do need to like start vibe coding some solutions there for sure. Oscar
might have something cooking on that, but within the fountain universe though. Okay.
Yeah.
One thing I might so the other thing I I again, this is after q w love. The other thing I took a hi hiatus is I've started streaming on my own ZapStream server.
I'm I'm self hosting at my
I
don't wanna use that that infrastructure. So maybe for the Sunday show,
when fountain is ready,
I'll move to the fountain infrastructure. They will they'll be using Nosta for streaming as well. But they'll build their customized thing, which might allow might allow for real time DApp splits. So once they have that, just for the Sunday show, might do it through them. We'll see. And again, real time.
Yeah. Oh, we are so is it is that real time with audio or video or both? No. I think both.
Okay. That would be interesting. I'd be interested in that. Another application that I think of or use case, I should say, for podcasting two point o would be, what if I wanna teach a live yoga class and, you know, do it on video and with the music? Like that would be the ultimate convergence of technologies.
If I can teach yoga and people can take the class and listen to a playlist of music that I have prepared and have it, you know, so that the audio works and so that my voice track is above the music, but you know, people get to hear the music as well. And then maybe, you know, obviously get a playlist later so they can do the yoga practice again with the same playlist. I think that would be a really cool use case as well. But you know, I'm not there yet. What I've done with that is I'll take like, when I was doing HiveTalk yoga, I would take the video of the class with no, you know, silent, no music is playing. I'm just talking to the students.
And then I would take it and I would lay the music in later using Riverside. And then I would post it online on my yoga site. And then, then people could kind of get, oh my God, this is so tedious, you know, cause I feel like even, even Riverside's not quite there as far as doing that sort of production. It's they've gotten a lot better on Riverside, but, know, Ling and audio tracks or different video tracks with video has been a little laborious.
You know, you do have a media board. You see the little music icon
that you could just upload pre before the show. You can upload all of your tracks there now. And you can adjust the volume. It allows you to adjust the volume there. What I have been so there's the other thing. Other upgrade I've made to the podcast is I'm actually doing some real post production.
Mhmm. I've upgraded to Logic Pro, which is, you know, like,
it's not GarageBand.
This it's a it's a real a
a professional tool. And I've I've been playing around quite a bit with
the compressor and, and the equalizer and all of that stuff. You split, you know,
different frequencies down and, and so it allows you to, I've
been using AI for everything. Hey, I'm in logic. I'm, I'm sorry, I'm lost. Help me. And it says, okay. Yes. And and then I send the screenshots
of of this thing. No. I I don't understand. It says, no. You go to the top right and press this button.
It's it's super helpful to use AI for that kind of stuff, learning how to use a complicated tool like logic. But logical, but the reason I brought it up is it allows you to lower the volume, you know, preset lower the volume, and then at the level where your voice actually can cut through it.
And then you just load it up in the Riverside media board and you do it like now. So this Friday show,
I know your episode will probably be out after the show, but so on Friday, Friday, January,
which is tomorrow at the time of recording. I am going to be actually doing this. I'm going to be doing a live reading of
four of Max Hillebrand's
essays
that to vibe crafted
neoclassical
music. I've spent hours.
Never spent this much time on a podcast. Spent hours on Mureka getting the prompts just right just to make the music match with with you know, I don't wanna use regular I'm I'm I'll be screwed if I use regular classical music Exactly. On a podcast. Right? That's one of the worst ones, Bret.
Yeah. So
I'm I'm doing that, and I found an unbelievable
musician. Like, there's a prog musician from England on I think I found him on on podcast index. Or yeah.
And I'm gonna be playing two of his songs in Dispair. So,
yeah, trying to convert the podcast into performance art.
We'll see. Dude, only Avi would do this. And it's like, Max has like these really heady, I mean, like amazing writings, just kind of like you do. And it's just got what a perfect match for Avi to read them and be kind of like a Bitcoin Audible, but like, this is the cultural matchup mashup that we didn't know we needed. Avi reading Max Hillebrand with like the perfect classical music. I've been on a classical music binge this week myself, so I'm really gonna enjoy this one when you're doing that one. So, okay, we have talked a lot about podcasting two point zero, like you are gent. That's like probably more than I thought we would talk about, but that's important stuff. So hopefully,
I think this
space of podcasting for this
world where,
you know, podcasters have the ability to have a little more freedom, even just to get away from advertising
the way it's traditionally been done. And and we have the the freedom to support musicians
and other creators like you supporting Max's essays. I mean, that's that's that's just another way that podcasters can support an ecosystem and support creators who are doing things differently. I I I love that. There's so much creativity
going on with Mhmm.
The tools that we have have been improving the last few years and also the the ideas. Just it's it's good to see. I'm glad you didn't quit plug chain radio. We need, we need plug chain radio and we need all these ideas
in this space just to kind of show people like what can be done, you know? So now I'm gonna switch gears
into talking about your docu series, Finding Home, as I just watched them all yesterday to just kind of prepare
to talk to you about this. So I signed up for Indie Hub.
I had no idea. Indie Hub's cool. Like I know I've, I've, I've probably talked to Zach online, but I had no idea that when I watched Finding Home,
I would be streaming Sats or that I could pay in Bitcoin. And that there's a there's a choice when you sign up at IndieHub that you can you can pay with with your Bitcoin wallet or you can pay with your credit card. It's it's your choice. Right? So you got some freedom of choice there. And then I started watching and I'm like, oh my god. I can see this the stats are streaming
while I'm watching Finding Home. So I love both episodes. This is so Avi because Avi is just so cultured and just so laid back and you're interviewing Shaquille at the Safari restaurant in Harlem, and then you go to Prague and you're talking to Grafton and just kind of the premise of this being finding home. And you know, the one thing I don't know about you, Avi, I don't know, you've got an accent,
but I don't know where that accent is from. Where are you from? Like originally, where did that accent come from, Avi?
Yeah. If I tell you where I'm originally from, you won't believe that the accent is from there. But I was born and raised until I was 20 in India. And then I moved here when I was 21.
Very nice. Moved to New York. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, so where is where's home for Avi? It's a good question. It's a very good question. I mean, maybe that's the reason why I'm finding making the show because it's an unanswered question.
Probably the closer look. I mean, I, I love the country of my birth and my parents are still there and, you know, I have I have a deep affection for it, but I didn't. I was only a boy when I left. New York City was where I became a man. Probably the closest is New York City, but Mhmm. You know, it's
yeah.
Yeah. But, maybe it's a it's a question I still need to answer by I need to make 12 episodes of the show to answer that qu 12.
I'm sorry. Twelve seasons of the show to be able to answer that PlumChain Radio. It's got it's gotta go on for years, but to answer kinda or like, well, Plum CherryRadio's chronicling
our, our Nostril Bitcoin, you know, adoption. Then of course finding home is, is a really unique premise and of like, is Somalia home? Is Prague home? Is Mississippi home? Is New York home? And that's, I've really got me thinking about like, I've always been looking for home too, because I'm another person who's just kind of bounced
around and you know, like I was born in the Bay Area and I consider San Francisco and the Bay Area home. But nobody lives in our hometown anymore. Everybody, everybody left the Bay Area like I did,
twenty five, twenty six years ago because it was like, like we got hit with housing and inflation first. It was, it was a thousand dollars a room to rent a place in, in my hometown and around the Bay Area, you know, more in San Francisco. I'm, I'm from the East Bay and the Peninsula is where I grew up. And I was like, wow, I'm like a dumb kid who hasn't graduated college and I'm 20. And how am I gonna pay, you know, 2,200 a month for a crappy place to live?
And now, twenty six years later, I'm like, this is kind of a problem now everywhere,
where the housing is overpriced and you know, my niece and nephew still live at home and as
they're in their early twenties. And that is true of a lot of early twenties, some things, Gen Z is
kind of screwed. So like there's that financial, you know, the the fiat evil comes into
my story of of finding home. And and now I'm like, well, I I don't know. I've spent most of my life in Arizona and I, this is where I live right now. I don't know that this is the final destination.
I like places. I don't know that I love places. And then when I go back to San Francisco to do things there,
it's, it's changed so much. It is, it is not the San Francisco that I grew up in, in the seventies or the nineties. It's, it's very,
oh boy, it is the Valley. The Silicon Valley thing used to just be like, you know, the Valley,
but now it's the entire Bay Area. It's all the way up into San Francisco and now it's the world because a lot of us work in, we're remote workers in tech. Like, I feel like I'm in Silicon Valley in Phoenix. So I've got TSMC
up the street making semiconductors.
We have a lot of tech companies here as well. And it's, it's like,
I never,
I can't get away from Silicon Valley if, even if I want to. It's
a part of me. So it's like, is that home, does, does home follow me or do I go home? I, you know, I don't, I don't feel like I have that homing pigeon
instinct like a lot of people do. And then I lived in Kansas for, you know, thirteen years and sometimes I got so excited one day. I was at a party and, and, it was, it was our Christmas day party, family party.
Barry Sanders,
comes on screen because we're watching football and I was like, oh my God, you know, Wichita. My cousin looks at me funny and she's like, is he from Wichita? And I'm like, do you not know that? You know, that the people not know Barry Sanders is from,
yeah, there's like certain things that you pick up on. And I was like, overjoyed to have this like Wichita moment. And everybody looked at me like I was crazy. Cause like, that's like the big, one of the biggest things in Wichita is like Barry Sanders, Wichita state basketball.
And when Harrison Ford comes to town to visit, there's just these kitschy little things that folksy
Midwestern things that, you know, the way you talk, the way you say, excuse me,
or the food that you eat. And it's like, well, what makes home? Because I could probably be home
anywhere. And now I'm looking for a new one. I want to live somewhere else, Avi, but I don't know which place to choose. And so I have to watch a lot more Finding Home. Maybe I can get some ideas
from some of the people that you've interviewed. Well,
you know, it's funny you actually bring up the topic of finding home today. Today, maybe
an hour before I joined the show
today, at the time of recording is January 8. I dropped the trailer for episode three. You did? I feel that I watched too. Okay. Cool. I gotta go see now. When is it coming out?
It's coming out on Wednesday, January 14.
Good. Good. I believe Wednesday is the fourteenth.
That was the Paraguay episode. And really the premise of the show is to follow, like we've, you know, we've talked about it, but is to follow Bitcoiners or freedom tech developers, right? Gnostic Bitcoin
around the world, especially if they're expats. Right. And
yeah, we just had to have conversations with them about
overfood
in some cases in the, in the first episode, which is just a pilot. So we filmed just one session,
with Shaquib,
the proprietor of,
the party, the Somali restaurant in Harlem.
That was just one session. Second episode was in Prague with, during BTC Prague of 2025
with drafters. So we had multiple locations over three or four days. Similarly, the Paraguay episode has a lot, lot more. Right. It's just talking to these people who who try to create a new home for themselves. Right? And it's parallel journeys.
One is finding this physical home, right? They're experts. They're trying to create a new life for themselves. But the other is a more metaphorical
journey of finding their sovereign home in the work they do in Bitcoin, in Nostra. In some sense Yes. We're all expats. We're all refugees from fiat.
We are. And we found a home a home in Bitcoin. Yeah. Which brings me to one of my most important questions.
And I'm excited about the Paraguay
episode. I, I kind of, I became interested in being an expat, but, but didn't do it. Like physically looked at different places. At the same time in 2020 that I became a Bitcoiner, I also started looking at like, why do I live in The United States? You know, and looked at my genealogy and what brought my family here from Poland and how, you know, that whole story is a long one, but I was like, I can do the expat thing. Haven't done it yet. You know, I'm definitely open to it. Like I would, I would love to see where in the world I fit better, but I think that's something heavy that you just hit on the being
expats from the fiat world and that, you know, I work not at all in the fiat world. I work a 100% in the Bitcoins
doster, you know, technology space. I'm
a tech bro.
And that happened for me in 2025.
I knew at some point,
maybe 2023,
that I wanted to work full time in Bitcoin and or Nostr and like Nostr being young back then, was like, well, that's a dumb idea. What, what a Nostram I gonna do? What companies are hiring for the marketing kind of stuff that I do?
Or do I be a journalist, you know, because I was still a journalist as recently as last year too. And so leaving the fiat mind, I guess, does make us kind of expats,
which is something you did last we both,
actually a lot of people, I would say, in our in our dossier cohort have left finally
the fiat minds. It's something I think we all worked for. We are we expat? We are expats from from the fiat working world, would you say? Yeah.
Yeah. Expats,
certainly not vacationers.
Anyhow, in our case, refugee is not a nice word because you're
I feel like we're, we're running towards something, right, rather than running away from something. Although at times it does, Yeah. It does. When you're there, it makes you want to run away from it.
But yeah, I, I did. July 4
in interestingly
enough was my last day in Fiat, my independence day. That's nice.
Yeah. Chose that date intentionally.
Yeah. I was in I was in a large health tech company, a name that I'm I'm not gonna mention, but
probably everyone
who's listening to the show has heard of multiple times and hates
a large healthcare company.
I, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was, I was okay because I was sort of on the side running an AI innovation team. So I was in my little sandbox
building things, but after a point, it just catches up with you. I couldn't take it anymore. And I left.
I left. I had to, it was ruining my life, ruining my health.
You know, without, without,
an actual safety net, I jumped
saying, I'll just do big con and nostal stuff. I'll figure it out.
You'll figure it out. You'll just you had faith. You took a leap of faith.
Yeah.
Yeah. When you say
it was ruining your health, was it the stress of the job? Was it the stress of
the ideological
shift? I know I, last year I felt very much like it was a record stretch going between having a foot in the Bitcoin world and working there, but then also having a foot in the Fiat world. It was, it was like two parts of my day that I couldn't quite reconcile. It didn't feel congruent.
It didn't feel good. And like I knew I would get there. I knew I'd get where I wanted to be and I did. But it was exhausted me. I don't know if that was like, did it,
did it make you physically sick? Was it psychologically
sick? When you talk about the impact on So your for the longest time it was a low grade existential angst, which is because the job hadn't become toxic. It was just, you know, a nonsense job, right? Just nonsense, be our job. So I was like, yeah, well, at least it pays the bills and, you know, it's not
horribly unpleasant.
But what am I doing? There's no meaning or purpose to any of this work, but other than the fact that, you know, I am able to keep the lights on. I think there was, there was a one year period or almost one year period between
2024
and 2025.
And I finally just couldn't take it anymore and quit where it became actually toxic, like decidedly toxic.
And
I was clinging on, clinging on saying, well, what about the money? What about you have to keep the lights on? I have a family,
all of that. And that was, it was just
a horrible feeling to wake up every morning. And the first thought is, oh, crap. Another day.
This this is no way to live. Right? No way to live. And then, you know, people, you know, not respecting your boundaries.
And and when someone doesn't respect your boundary, then I'm the one who has to become unpleasant. Right? And and to intel or not unpleasant, but just have that confrontation with them saying, right? It's I never chose this confrontation. They put me in this position where I've gotta
confront them for just not respecting my boundaries and, you know, or going behind my back and all of that.
It just it's not it's not pleasant at all. I mean, it became increasingly unpleasant,
and my stress levels were very high for and to what end?
Right. Nothing. So I
it just became when the answer arrived, it was
blindingly obvious to me, which is
up until that point, it was like, well, I'm trapped. I'm trapped because I have to have a job to pay the bills.
I'm I'm I'm a prisoner in this job, and that's it.
And then if I said, wait. I'm not a prisoner. I've had the key all along. The door's right there. All I had to do is walk out. And I did. But it it took it took me a year of incredible unpleasantness to actually have that moment of clarity.
What would you recommend people do when they want to leave
Fiat for good? You know? And I and I say this as somebody who is looking at, stacker resumes this morning of people who just wanna work for Runster. And, Runster
being an app that was born of your Nosfabrica
challenge last year. And I see people and I go, okay, these are solid Bitcoiners. And I guarantee you every single person here, whether they've communicated it effectively or not with a job application,
they want to get out of fiat and this could be their first step. And to me, that's super exciting to
so what would be your advice to someone who's like, okay, I'm where Avi was. I'm miserable. This is not congruent with my values or ideology. I know that I can do something in Bitcoin. I bring skills to the table. But I think for me, I didn't have a bad job. So it was, it was like cool. I can part time it in Bitcoin. You know, I've got my Bitcoin job. Nobody cares what I'm doing. You know, it's like, but it gets hard. You get into a rut because
yeah, it does pay the bills or you have some kind of security and stability and a family to provide for maybe, or you're comfortable because the job's not bad and you go, oh,
do I get to the next spot? How do I get from fiat
to Bitcoin? So there's no looking back. At some point last year, I realized I was going to get a Bitcoin job and there was no going back from that. And then I had to understand and
grasp that. And once I grasp that there's no going back to fiat,
that was that was the mindset that broke everything open for me and got me to where I am now.
So I don't know what your advice would be. It really depends on what stage of life they're in. I would say if someone's in their early twenties and they don't have, or early mid twenties, even late twenties, and they don't have any dependence, just do it. They don't do
it now. Don't even like, don't, if you're, if you truly believe in the movement, what are you what are you doing? What are waiting for? Your life. Yo. Do it. Approve of your life. Just do it.
I think it gets a little trickier if you have a kid who's depending on you. Right? And Yes. Or or more than one, multiple kids depending on you. And, you know, you need to do right by them.
And I think then even that splits into a few scenarios. One is if you have, if your job is pleasant enough
or not
horribly unpleasant, and you have enough time to do stuff on the side,
then just do that. Right? Just do that. Mind that fiat.
Save, live as frugally as you can save the rest of Bitcoin, knowing that if nothing else, that Bitcoin's gonna be life rough for you in a year or two, and your job's not killing you. So, and you have time to work on at least for a few hours a week on what you like. That's actually in some sense, a really good scenario to be in. So that way you do two years, two or three years, you've stacked enough. You're like, okay, you know what? I have enough runway for a year because numb number does go up over a long enough time period. It does. I bought myself a year. Now I can go all in for a year and make this happen. So that that's a good scenario. I think the the the trickiest scenario is when it's a
decidedly toxic job,
and you don't have a stack to fall back on and you have dependents,
what do you do then? I still think the right choice there is not to kill yourself because you want to be there as a parent for your kids. You want to be present.
And if the job consumes you, you won't be able to do that. You're better off as a guy with no savings and no job, but a present parent versus a dead parent or someone who dies in stress.
Yeah. There's a trade off to everything. And it's like, well, I don't have a child depending on me, my adopted, you know, kid. She is an adult, So she's got her own life. I was already freelancing. So like the the
way that I got in where I am is because I I freelanced my way up into a full time job working at Soapbox. But I, know, I started
freelancing
working at Wrigley and then started freelancing working at Soapbox while I was still doing B2B social media at an agency. And then, what else happened in there? Oh, and then there was a, the B2B world slowed down, right? Because, you know, marketing, economy,
the way tech startups
etcetera. So then I was like, well, I need to do something. So I went back to an old job. I went back to my job from a twenty year relationship
working at KTAR News. And so I went back to that for a little while and that was where the record scratch came in. Because I would work all day
in the morning doing my,
you know, Bitcoin jobs
and Nostril jobs. And then I would be like, okay, I'm I gotta, I gotta hard stop here. I gotta go drive to the radio station and go report
for the afternoon, early evening.
And, and then, you know, as news news is consuming, you know, as soon as I step back in a radio TV station, they're going be like, Hey, can you do this too? Hey, can you do this too? Hey, can you come in on Saturday? Hey, can you work a little late? Hey, can you cover this? Hey,
Trump's bombing something. Can you do, you know, can you do a little extra coverage there? And it turns into like this whole, like being in two worlds that aren't congruent. So it's like, okay, in the morning, I'm working on Freedom Tech. And in the afternoon, I'm reporting on the Fiat war.
Got it. This is so surreal.
And then when the opportunity came along to like, let go of the fiat world completely, and that happened in about July.
So I got to to walk out on the fiat world finally for good.
It was August. August 1 I started, you know, full timing it in this space. And it's like, okay, I had a little little, you know, I'm solid as a freelancer. I already know this world.
I started doing freelancing
in like 2006,
before it was cool to work remotely from home. Like we didn't have all these phrases
back then. So I think that gave me a little bit of like,
no fear. Like, like there's you gotta have no fear, I guess, to be in Bitcoin anyway, because everybody's gonna, you know, our misfit factor is high and family and friends sometimes don't understand the conviction that we have about Bitcoin and then certainly not about Noser. And then like, third of people are like, what do you do for a living? You know, family and friends are like, we're happy for you. You're not homeless. You know, they're like, what do you what do you do? Why do you believe in this? Bitcoin
is boiling the oceans, and mining is boiling the oceans, and your and AI is boiling the oceans. This is like stuff that my nieces told me, I'm like, well, guess what? This is this is what I work in. I guess I'm an ocean boiler. But the the cool thing about mining is that now you you're starting to see that it's becoming more of a mainstream thing because people are starting to realize, oh, I can mine Bitcoin
and use flared gas. So like oil's not evil. Like we can actually, you know, power things with, you
know, and so maybe it's just me and my, the circles I travel in, but I start to see stories like that more and more. And I realize that we're in a long game. Right. And then not everybody's going be able to work in Bitcoin, but everybody probably
Bitcoinify
or Nostrify
the space that they work in too, which I think is just as valid of being able to do that or have the skill to do that as hyper
Bitcoinization comes along or nostril adoption comes along. I think there's a space for everybody,
but I think,
I think not having fear. And I think what you touched on of like, is it, is it healthy for you where you are? Do you YOLO and take a leap of faith kind of like I did cause I could. I had the ability to. But also
I would mention that sometimes
I think a lot of people, a single person, I don't have a spouse to kind of fall back on.
And so I don't have like somebody around to be like, Oh, hey, I'm a help you out. I'm going to do the groceries and dinner and do the laundry. Like that would be such great support. I don't have that, you know? And when I, when I do travel and go to conferences and events, I do need some support there. And like, you know, I've got somebody that'll come in and watch
the pets and watch the house and everything.
So like, I think when you're in a marriage and or a partnership of some kind and you've got that extra support, like, yes, go for it. But if you don't, ideally you're somebody in your twenties
who can just like YOLO, take a leap of faith, you know, like Avi said, and travel around the world and do the thing. Or, you know, you've gotta be somebody who's absolutely not afraid to like lose your company provided health care and pension and, and, and figure the thing out. And, and so I think that's, that's also what the people in this space are built to do is figure the thing out. Yeah. Well, health insurance is such a scam, especially in this country anyway. Oh yeah. I had health insurance and I'm most, like, I barely ever touched the deductible. So everything was out of pocket Yeah.
And the premiums were, were up, were daylight robbery. So what I'm, what, what was I buying exactly? Anyway, so don't, don't get me started on health insurance. That's like a whole other podcast. Yeah. I loved healthcare a long time ago.
Well, we start to leave these systems that we ultimately realize have no value to them. They are harming us. They're harming other people. The healthcare system is part of the Fiat disease for sure. So I know you probably have to go soon. So I want to wrap up with a question about Noster and how Noster
to me is, is vitally important as I think you can agree, right? It's vitally important that it make it, that it be adopted and that people have it, but more importantly, they have the freedom. So my opinion of Noster
is that it cannot fail.
You know, how do we ensure
Noster's success? Yeah, I think it has to continue to be the most fun place on the internet.
Mhmm.
Which
I believe it is.
So that's one, the sense of fun shouldn't go. And then the user experience has got to improve. If those two things are,
addressed,
and I honestly think web web of trust, all the new developments that are happening, and we'll see that a lot more of it in 2026,
will make
discovery and curation of content so much easier on Nostra. And I think, and user experience people are working on it. Yes, these things take time. There is no single CEO who can command an army to build, you know, a unified user interface or user experience. Right? So we have to embrace this messy emergent consensus.
Open source In
any, in this open source, decentralized world.
That is a thing. But user experience discovery and curation
will make NOSTA will continue to keep NOSTA in the most fun place. And that's how it survives.
Awesome.
And Avi, what's your favorite
value for value song at the moment that I could play at the end of the podcast? There are so many. I know. You know, it's funny you ask You can pick a few. Because then I I've been let me let me hold on. I'm gonna pull up podcast indexes as as we talk here. I've forgotten the name. You can pick more than one. I can play more than one because that's, you know, that's what we do around here. We do whatever we want. We've got no no format except for, you know, Sam's band. I've been doing this for the show.
Mhmm.
So I discovered this ba a band called Polanski.
They're a Finnish grunge band, a contemporary band. They sound like they're out of Seattle in the early nineties. They sound like the stone temple pilots, actually. That's the one they're closest to. So why didn't you play have a silver player
by the band Polanski?
Okay. Silver player.
Silver player Polanski.
Giving Polanski some love. We wanna thank them for being in the value verse.
Value for is value for value the best term? Do you think I'm gonna get everybody's opinion on this this year because it's so hard to I've been struggling with it.
Yeah. Okay. It's it's not just me. Right?
No. I mean, I've heard value,
buzz. I've heard the V for V movement or whatever. And
then DMU is I know someone who
is whoever came up with the name,
they probably love it. So I'm sorry if they're listening and they're they're insulted by it.
But it's a horrible name. It's cringe. It's yeah. It sounds like something that Andreessen Horowitz
came up with for a shit con project.
I I did heinous.
I agree. I hate it. And I I've grown to dislike value for value, but we don't have a better phrase than value for value. And I don't want I don't want to use it because there's a whole cabal that will come after me and tell me I'm not using it right. So, you know, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want the drama and the negativity. So it's like, I've settled on like, maybe it's sound music, maybe it's just independent
music. Don't know. But whatever it is, we're, we're doing a thing that's actually really fun and really cool. Polansky's a part of that. So, and I value your opinion on things more than most people, because you are chill and you don't
argue with people and you have great discussions
I think. When we do kind of poke at you and thank you for letting me, you know, poke at you today and get some, of your opinions and see what you think of things because, you know, you're you're not a fly by night person. You're you are very
logical
and and very you prepare well. I know that you know your stuff and and I know that you're gonna you're gonna tell me straight whatever I ask you about. And that's just one of my favorite things about you. I can always trust Avi. You know, Avi's in my web of trust on Dodister, but also in real life. I know like Avi's gonna tell me not what I wanna hear. Avi's gonna tell me what I need to hear. And that's
one of the things that makes you a good person and a value to the space. And I just can't wait to see what you keep doing because I mean, you've got two books on Amazon, Avi Burra, he's got 21, he's got July 18. And if you go on IndieHub,
he's got the docuseries Finding Home. He's got the Nosfabrica
Challenge right now, which is are we calling it a Wattathon
this time around?
Yeah.
It is a Wattathon.
Wattathon. Web of trust. Watt- So yeah.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's good stereotype for Nostrad that you're supporting people who wanna work on web of trust, with this, this year in Osprehabrica.
So, you know, I think, you know, if, if, if I died off tomorrow, I think Noster's obviously in good hands with, with Avi Burra,
John Gordon, and, Vitor
Pomplona. You guys doing the Wadathon this year with lots of great people, and I'm excited about Webatrust because I think that'll probably get rid of a lot of social media drama, but there's so many applications for it. I think that that's probably a separate podcast. So thank you. Thank you, Avi, for joining me today. For sure.
Thank you, Heather. Real quick. Mhmm. David Strahan too,
our new founder at NOS,
NOSFabrica.
I love him. Yeah. I, I, I didn't get to know him very well when we were in Nashville, but I, I heard later that he and I have some common interests.
He he's definitely someone I wanna talk to again,
for sure. So shout out to David Strahorn.
I absolutely love, love his expertise,
and web of trust alone.
Noster's in good hands and I think it's going good places. And this is the year of the builder and all of, all of the vibe coding, all of the leveling up that we're doing with, with all of the technology from fountain and, and pond home on. This is gonna be a fun year, Avi. I'm glad I'm kicking off the year with you. You're the best. Excellent.
Excellent. Well, thank you for having me, Heather. Thank you for the kind words. And yeah, well, looking
forward to building Nostom.