Category: Interviews

For this interview I spoke to Dr. Paul Dylan-Ennis (@polarpunklabs), professor at University College Dublin, and Rose O’Leary (@lunarmining), previous writer at CoinDesk and now a programmer for DarkFi. They are both also the editors for a new philosophy journal called Agorism in the 21st Century which recently published its first issue.  Agorism is a heterodox libertarian political tendency…

For this episode I spoke to Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan (@TinaRiversRyan), Assistant Curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, art historian, critic, and educator. She’s been involved in digital art on the internet well before NFTs were ever a thing but has written some interesting critiques about it all. During the interview…

For this interview I spoke to @againstutopia he’s known as on anarchist and crypto Twitter. He has a background in working in tech, platform cooperatives, and is one of the stewards of PrimeDAO. We  had followed each other online but finally had the opportunity to meet in person during The DAOist in Lisbon a few months ago. During…

For this episode I spoke to James Muldoon (@james_muldoon_), a researcher at Autonomy in the UK, senior lecturer at University of Exeter, and author of the book Platform Socialism , coming out with Pluto Press on January 20th.  You may have seen that I also reviewed Platform Socialism on my site so check that out as well if you want to…

For this episode I spoke with Harry Halpin (@harryhalpin), open internet advocate, professor, internet researcher, and the current CEO of Nym. Nym is  a project trying to build a global privacy commons for the internet using mix nets, crypto, and anonymous credentials. During the interview we talk about the current issues with privacy on the internet…

This week, after a a few delays, I was finally able to interview  a couple of the masterminds behind DisCO (Distributed Cooperative Organization). I spoke to Stacco Troncoso (@StaccoP2P) and Natalia Avlona who are both members of the crew working on DisCO, also called DisCONAUTS. A DisCO is an alternative / critique / complement to DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations)…

For this week’s episode I spoke to Ori Shimony (@orishim),  co-founder of dOrg, a full-stack Web3 development collective. dOrg is incredibly interesting because it is run similarly to a worker-owned cooperative but functions as a DAO while also being at the forefront of building some of the most cutting-edge crypto platforms and products. During the interview…

While I was in Lisbon a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet in person and interview Amir Taaki (@Narodism), one of the first Bitcoin core developers. For a long time Amir has been involved in left wing activism including volunteering in Rojava and is a big digital privacy advocate. At Liscon, Amir…

For this interview I spoke with Alexandra Elbakyan (@ringo_ring) the founder of Sci-Hub, the first pirate website in the world to provide mass and public access to tens of millions of academic research papers for absolutely free. As you can imagine, what she’s doing is illegal and has had countless issues with government and privately owned…

For this week’s episode I spoke with Ethan Buchman (@buchmanster), the founder of Cosmos and the CEO of  Informal Systems, a worker-owned cooperative helping build the infrastructure of the Cosmos Network. Cosmos is a particular blockchain with the goal of creating the internet of blockchains by creating a layer that facilitates interoperability between different blockchains. During the interview we talk about…

For this episode I spoke with Maryam Monalisa Gharavi (@wcncnd), an Iranian-American artist, writer, and theorist whose work explores the interplay between aesthetic and political valences in the public domain. She conceived of the Oil Research Group, a one woman collective exploring the relationship between oil, data, and bitcoin. “Data is the new oil” was coined by…

For this interview I spoke with Rhea Myers (@rheaplex),  an artist, hacker and writer originally from the UK now based in Vancouver. Her work places technology and culture in mutual interrogation to produce new ways of seeing the world as it unfolds around us. She’s been involved in the blockchain art world probably for as long as…

Bailbloc is a cryptocurrency scheme against bail through The New Inquiry, in which you can  download the app and a small portion of your computer’s unused processing power is redirected toward mining Monero. At the end of every month, Bailbloc exchanges the Monero for US dollars and donates the earnings to one of the bail funds in the National…

The Drivers Cooperative is a ride-hailing platform similar to Uber except owned by the workers not venture capital starting in NYC. They are currently having a fundraiser here where you can invest in and support the workers’ movement in the US directly while receiving potentially a 2.5x return. For this interview, I spoke with Jason Prado (@jasonpjason),…

It has been reported that the country of Iran has been using bitcoin to get around sanctions imposed by the United States. Some Iranians are even using it as a hedge against inflation some say. To get a better understanding on the situation, I spoke to Salman Sadeghi (@salman_sadeghi), a Masters student at GCAS studying cryptoeconomics based…

For this week’s interview, I spoke with Murtaza Hussain (@MazMHussain), reporter at The Intercept focused on Foreign Policy with an interest in cryptocurrency. The past year Murtaza has been researching and learning more about cryptocurrencies specifically because of its anti-imperial potential. During the interview we spoke about how the United States specifically uses US Dollar…

Although it feels like the Bitcoin Miami Conference was ages ago, it still only happened a little over a month ago. There were plenty of memorable events, like Laura Loomer heckling Jack Dorsey, the weird doge coin guy who took his pants off on stage, and the announcement that El Salvador will pass a law…

For this week’s episode, I spoke with Caleb James Delisle (@cjdelisle),  founder of PKT Cash, the world’s first bandwidth-hard blockchain meant to support de-monopolizing internet access through mesh networking. Previously he also founded Cjdns, which implements an encrypted IPv6 network using public-key cryptography for address allocation and a distributed hash table for routing, and Packet Crypt,…

For this week’s episode I spoke with Samer Hassan (@SamerP2P), activist, researcher, and Associate Professor at Universidad Complutense Madrid and Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. His current focus is his work on P2P Models (@P2PMod), a project to build collaborative economy organizations that are decentralized, democratic & distribute their profits through the use of decentralized…

This week I spoke with Dr. Filipe Calvao (@filipecalvao), a  socio-cultural anthropologist and professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International Development Studies in Geneva and trained gemologist with ethnographic research in diamond mines in Africa. He is the author of two different papers published comparing crypto mining with physical mining : “Crypto-miners: Digital…

For this week’s episode, I spoke with Austin Robey, cofounder of Ampled, a cooperatively owned music platform owned by artists and workers similar to Patreon. He recently published an article through Forefront titled “How Community Tokens Can Power Cooperatives.” During the interview we talk about how Ampled is working to create a cooperative alternative to Patreon for…

For this week’s interview I spoke with Kris Jones (@KrisJ_Official) who wrote his Masters thesis in 2018 titled “Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain” as well as another article titled “Blockchain in or as governance? Evolutions in experimentation, social impacts, and prefigurative practice in the blockchain and DAO space.” He also has a Medium profile where he…

For this week’s episode, I spoke with 1Dime (@TheRapNerd7), a youtuber who focuses on videos about politics, critical theory, and pop culture.  During the interview we talk about his latest video which was a Marxist analysis of the stock market, how Karl Marx would probably be a dogecoin trader, and why many of the left’s criticisms of crypto tend…

For this interview I spoke to Julio Linares (@Julio_Linares_) an Economic Anthropologist studied under David Graeber at the LSE, Social Outreach at the Basic Income Org, and Research & Community for CirclesUBI (@CirclesUBI). CirclesUBI is a project seeking to provide people a universal basic income using the xDAI ethereum sidechain based on mutual credit. You may have…

For this episode I spoke to Chris D’Costa (@cjdcosta), the founder of Totem Live Accounting (@totem_live_). Totem is building a real-time global accounting ledger built on the Polkadot blockchain to compete against traditional accounting and ERP software. I thought it was interesting to hear how blockchain could potentially be used to develop alternatives to the bureaucratic free…

This week’s episode is dedicated to the crypto influencers. For the first half I give a crash course on the history and some of the more well known influencers and for the second half I have an interview with Tom Gillespie (@TomPeterGill), former currency trader on the Perth stock exchange turned TV investigator and filmmaker…

For this week’s episode I spoke to Dr. Emaline Friedman (@emalinus4). She is a network activist for the Commons Engine, part of Holochain, a social critic and theorist, has a PhD in psychology, a writer for Mad In America, a researcher at GCAS, and author of the recent book Internet Addiction: A Critical Psychology of Users. During the interview…

For this week’s interview I spoke with Mike Watson (@_leftaesthetics),  co-host of The Acid Left and author of “Towards a Conceptual Militancy” and “Can the Left Learn to Meme: Lessons for the cultural left, from cat memes to gaming, to Stranger Things, and more.” with an upcoming book “The Memeing of Mark Fisher: How the Frankfurt School…

For this week’s interview I spoke with Ruth Catlow,  Artistic Director at Furtherfield (@furtherfield), a not-for-profit international community hub for arts, technology and social change founded with Marc Garrett in London, in 1996. Co-editor of Artists Re:Thinking the Blockchain, Director of DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab, a Furtherfield initiative which exists to mobilise research and development by leading artists, using…