Popular Episodes

I talk with Kieran Nolan about his work combining Bitcoin, teaching, and open-source technology. Kieran’s official role is STEM Wizard, teaching at a primary school in Melbourne, Australia. He has been able to bring tech and learning together into the classroom, including helping kids to run Bitcoin nodes, building projects on Nostr, setting up Minecraft servers with other schools, and more. We discuss teaching and learning, and how kids can be better equiped for our rapidly changing world as well as the challenges with bureaucracy and standards-based education in government schools. Kieran is involved in a huge range of other Bitcoin and education projects including the Mornington Peninsula Bitcoin Group, The School of Bitcoin, the Digital Playhouse Foundation, and more.

Sam Kivi is the CTO and Director at Grid Share, a New Zealand company building flexible load infrastructure centred around renewable energy and Bitcoin mining. We talk about how flexible load works, and the benefits that it provides to the power grid, how it interacts with renewable power generation, and what the opportunities and challenges are, given New Zealand’s unique energy mix. We also discuss the emerging opportunities for landfill methane capture, and what it actually takes to put in the proof of work to stand up a mining operation as Grid Share have done. Sam also shares a new initiative from the company, offering hosting services for Bitcoin miners in New Zealand.

Zed is a Bitcoiner originally from the Czech Republic, but now living in Wellington, New Zealand, where he organises a Local Bitcoin meetup.We dive into Zed’s story, leaving the Czech Republic to go to London around the time of the occupy movement where he first discovered Bitcoin.We talk about Bitcoin art and the role of popular culture in sharing new ways of thinking, as well as the cultural background that Zed brings to Bitcoin, having being born into a communist system. We also talk about how people such as the Gypsies of Europe or the New Zealand Māori represent a different kind of relationship to the state that we can learn a lot from.

Jeff is a Senior Lecturer for Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand. He is also a Bitcoiner, and we discuss how he has been teaching Bitcoin to his students, including sharing Satoshi’s White Paper and exploring the technology of the lightning network.

Today I talk with Nicki and James in El Salvador. The couple left New Zealand, buying one-way tickets to El Salvador just over a year ago! We talk about what it is like in their new home and the hope and optimism that they see around them.