Plebchain Radio

Avi opens Episode 147 with “The Return of the Local Oracle,” a sermon on outsourced knowing, supply-chain truth, and rebuilding trust through people you can look in the eye: ranchers, butchers, and neighbors with gardens. Tom Taber returns to unpack his work with the Beef Initiative, arguing that ranching culture runs on integrity, “cowboy code,” and accountability in a world he frames as increasingly Truman Show-ish. They dig into the initiative’s mission: connecting consumers to ranchers (via beefmaps.com) while building something bigger. Tom explains that Texas Slim acquired beef.com, positioning it as a “digital ranc...

Sunday Brunch is your lightning-laced decompression chamber: no sermon, no prepared questions, just coffee, a record player, and a guest DJ, with Value-for-Value splits (90% of boosts/streams during songs go to the artist; talk-time splits go to the guest + show). This episode’s guest is Rod Palmer (Bitcoin Bugle), spinning a playlist that sparks a wide-ranging riff on staying sovereign through the noise: “the remnant will subscribe,” waves of normie dilution, and why the frontier always keeps a core that survives every cycle. Between tracks, Avi and Rod go from “slop culture” (AI-generated everything and the new “h...

Avi opens with a sermon on “embracing the outsider” and argues that the real mission isn’t winning debates, but building a parallel city, with art as core infrastructure and Bitcoiners as the new patrons. Guest Dion Wilson, former professional dancer (including the touring cast of Disney’s The Lion King), shares his path from the demanding Broadway ecosystem into Bitcoin and launches Bitcoin for the Arts, a 501(c)(3) designed to support artists, institutions, and nonprofits with Bitcoin microgrants plus practical education on living and creating on a Bitcoin standard. They talk NYC’s cultural cycles, fi...

Say WoT? with host Avi Burra kicks off by staking the claim that Nostr’s “exit ramp” from addictive, black-box feeds is Web of Trust, and then immediately drops into the engine room with Vitor Pamplona (Amethyst), Derek Ross (Soapbox), and David Strayhorn (NosFabrica). The trio breaks down NIP-85 trusted assertions as a simple delivery mechanism for portable, personalized trust scores (clients shouldn’t compute them), and tackles the “is this a social credit score?” fear head-on: the key difference is user-chosen providers + user-specific perspective, not a single global, centralized rating. They close by mapping real use-cases: spam/scam su...

Welcome to the inaugural serving of Sunday Brunch – a new weekly format from Plebchain Radio designed to be your decompression chamber after a long week in the fiat mines. No roadmap grilling, no deep-dive technicals, just coffee, conversation, and a curated playlist of independent Value-for-Value music. To kick things off, Avi is joined by Oscar Merry, the creator of Fountain, to spin tracks, discuss the state of the Open Music ecosystem, and chat about everything from the rise of Arsenal FC to the surprising resilience of London's food scene. In this episode: The Brunch Fo...

This week, I strip it back. No interviews. No sermon. Just signal. I explore the philosophy of the Exit. Why fighting the system is a trap, why building alternatives is the only winning move, and how to navigate the inevitable friction this creates with the people we love. I perform a reading of four essential essays by Max Hillebrand, woven together with a custom musical score to help the signal land. The Program: Builders, Not Talkers: Why waiting for mass adoption is a waste of time. Societies break down collectively, but they...

In the first Plebchain Radio episode of 2026, Avi is joined by Noa Gruman (lead singer of Scardust) and Lahav, for a conversation ranging from Scardust’s Bitcoin-adjacent music lore (including the “RIP” video) to the reality that “Bitcoin is definitely metal” … and prog. Noa shares highlights from Sabaton’s Legendary Orchestra project, a massive arena-scale production where she both conducts and performs lead vocals. The conversation digs into the “fiat loop” musicians get trapped in, plus how value-for-value and Lightning splits could offer a more direct path between listeners and artists (and how labels might react). Fin...

In this episode, Chad F joins the show to dismantle the false dichotomy between the "ancient scrolls" of RSS and the high-speed relays of Nostr. As a longtime Podcasting 2.0 + V4V operator (and “welcoming committee” booster), Chad traces the arc from No Agenda’s time-talent-treasure model through the Alex Jones deplatforming moment that helped catalyze Podcast Index, and onward into Lightning-powered media. The conversation dives deep into the practical challenges of this union, specifically regarding music curation and the decentralized "discovery problem". Chad and Avi explore the concept of a "Contextual Web of Trust" to replace algorithmic feeds...

Episode 142 is a Nostr year-in-review roundtable with Avi, QW, Vitor Pamplona, and Corndalorian. They reflect on the mid-year “Nostr bear market” in engagement and argue it wasn’t a death spiral, it was infrastructure season: fewer tourists, more plumbers, deeper roots. Vitor breaks down why user drop-off is normal at this stage, and why 2025 felt like “working on the pipes,” with Nostr expanding beyond Twitter-style clients into a richer set of social shapes (chat, Instagram/TikTok-like experiences, etc.). The group riffs on Nostr’s culture of resisting ad-driven incentives, celebrates experimentation (like Jumble forks), and spotlights h...

In this episode, Avi sits down with de-commerce builder Eric FJ, creator of Conduit Market, to explore how Nostr and Bitcoin can rebuild the old-school bazaar in protocol form. They dig into NIP-99 product listings, NIP-17 DM-based order flows, and the emerging “infinite product pool” that multiple marketplaces like Shopstr, Plebian Market, and Conduit can all share and filter in their own ways. Along the way, they tackle price discovery vs discovery distortion on Amazon-style platforms, local artisans thriving in a monoculture world, and how web-of-trust, reputation and privacy-preserving messaging could solve the “who do I trust with my addres...

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi sits down with Aaron of Essex, the Bitcoiner, hairdresser, and music superfan behind Bitcoin Essex and the New Music Nudge Unit. Aaron shares his 90s-era origin story, from Napster and CDs to discovering Bitcoin and realizing he could help working musicians build parallel rails for their art. He explains how the New Music Nudge Unit works in practice: self-hosting tracks, publishing them once via RSS to dozens of Podcasting 2.0 apps, and routing sats straight to artists through value-for-value. Along the way, he tells onboarding stories of artists like Longy, Fable...

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi sits down with London-based bitcoiner, artist and playwright Psyfer, caretaker of the legendary Cyphermunk House in Bloomsbury. They trace the unlikely origin of the house back to a 10-day Vipassana retreat in rural India, where Psyfer was flooded with images of fiat collapse and Bitcoin art, eventually leading him to turn a four-story Victorian building into a living Bitcoin sanctuary. He describes Cyphermunk as an ever-shifting gallery, bar and salon where sats flow, incense burns, random locals wander in off the street, and culture quietly onboards the curious. The conversation ranges from...

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW interviews Sam Means (aka Lightning Store, Wavlake), a musician, father, and entrepreneur, discussing his various projects and perspectives on the music, his band The Format and much more. The Format Live on Tonight Show : https://youtu.be/5i9GQzPM8G0 The Format Merch : https://www.theformat.com/home/#merch Hello Merch : https://www.hellomerch.com/?srsltid=AfmBOoqOPiYjnUxxk3V9pPFrlG4gLtS1GLWI7swneEYPoE76NQCNS3VB Avi's New Book – July 18 Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ] Avi's First Book – 24

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, Avi talks with Swiss-German Bitcoin artist Yena, aka Lady Block Jane, about how vivid dreams and a forest vision pulled her into Bitcoin and birthed works like Dressed in Entropy and the mermaid piece I’ll Take Yours Too, who quietly stacks sats from our “boating accidents.” They get into the gritty reality of hauling physical Bitcoin art across borders, the birth of her A2B project in a Swiss tunnel, and the hilariously doomed “laser eyes” performance at a conference. The conversation closes with Yena’s reflections on taking the pressure off monetizing h...

Max Hillebrand returns to the show to map the cypherpunk “freedom stack” for real life. He digs into open source hardware and works up the stack to Nostr-native coordination (from relay hygiene to posting CoinJoin rounds). We talk private, scalable group communication – what’s missing, what’s promising, and how mixnets and layered encryption fit. Max makes the case for value-for-value as the funding rail that keeps builders sovereign and aligned with users. Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ] Avi Burra's Book 24 BitFest 10% Discount Code: plebchainradio

This episode of Plebchain Radio features QW and Avi hosting Shadrach, a cypherpunk and Bitcoiner, to discuss Bitcoin, Nostr, A to B, Web of Trust, Meshtadel and building parallel societies. A to B : https://atobitcoin.io/ Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ] Avi Burra's Book 24 BitFest 10% Discount Code: plebchainradio

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW and Avi are joined by Ainsley Costello, Heather Larson & Open Mike live from Bitcoin Park in Nashville to discuss the intersection of Nostr and Bitcoin, including the latest developments on the live music front, Nostrrville 3.0, Nostr Shire, and Nostr Valley and more. Finding Home Episode 2 [IndeeHub Code For 21% off: PIONEERCHAIN21 ] Avi Burra's Book 24 BitFest 10% Discount Code: plebchainradio

Summary David Strayhorn, creator of Brainstorm and Grapevine, joins the show to announce a major initiative to build a decentralized Web-of-Trust for Nostr. David explains his journey from neurologist to trust-protocol architect and details how NosFabrica pivoted from healthcare to tackling the foundational problem of trust that all Nostr applications face. The discussion covers David's GrapeRank algorithm, a personalized scoring system that uses follows, mutes, and reports to effectively combat spam and impersonation, and how NIP-85 (Trusted Assertions) can deliver these scores to any client. The episode culminates in the official announcement of the "WoT-a-thon,"...

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW and Avi welcome back Rob Brinded, author of "Glitch," to discuss his new book, the reception it has received, and the underlying principles of understanding one's own mind. Citadel Garden : https://citadel.garden/ Glitch Book : https://www.glitchthebook.co/ Rob Brinded : https://www.robbrinded.com/ Finding Home Episode 2 : https://indeehub.studio/film/finding-home/season/1/episode/2 Finding Home Discount code for IndeeHub (21% off): PIONEERCHAIN21 Avi Burra's Book 24 : https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8...

In this episode of Plebchain Radio, QW and Avi interview Franzap, creator of Zap Store about Paraguay, Fran's work, La Crypta, Web of Trust, Nostr, Bitcoin and more. Zap Store : https://zapstore.dev/ Avi Burra's Book 24 : https://www.amazon.com/24-Avi-Burra/dp/B0CN9NRNNB/ref=sr11?crid=27RW9P8JQ4YMV&keywords=avi+burra+24&qid=1700327391&sprefix=avi+burra+24%2Caps%2C122&sr=8-1