Radio Detox: Nostr, Bitcoin, and the Quest for Home with Avi Burra

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Radio Detox Season 2, Episode 3: Avi Burra Transcript:

Heather Larson (00:01.606)
All right, we've got one of my favorite people today. I think maybe one of the most productive people in the Bitcoin Nostr space. 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 got up your sleeve, because you're always doing something. Thanks for being on Radio Detox today.

Avi Burra (00:27.052)
Now, 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.

Heather Larson (00:37.157)
I'm excited. I finally did get to meet you in real life. And so our moment of meeting was at Bitcoin Park in Nashville. You know, there's big tall Avi with his cowboy hat smoking a cigar. And it was it was like you walked out of a movie just great to meet you in real life. Finally, we were at Nostraville 3.0. Yes. God, it was was like I feel like I knew you. And then, you know, but I'm here in Phoenix with with QW. So I obviously

Avi Burra (00:56.268)
close.

Avi Burra (01:06.23)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:06.314)
I get to hang out with QW once in a while. He's a really busy guy these days, but I finally got to hang out with you in real life. And it lived up to my expectations. And we got to do NostrVille. And I hadn't done a NostrVille either. Hadn't been to Bitcoin Park yet. 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 NostrVille 3.0. What did you think of all of the cool stuff that went on?

for kind of we were there for a whole weekend.

Avi Burra (01:37.678)
Yeah, look, first of all, it's always great to be around other Bitcoiners and nostriches. Irrespective of which subgroup of Bitcoiners and nostriches it is, it always feels like a family reunion. Right. And so that was the best part, just getting to meet a whole bunch of folks, some for the first time, like in your case, Heather, and some again.

Heather Larson (01:49.732)
you

Heather Larson (01:55.493)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (02:06.368)
second time, fourth time. So I had a great time. The conversations were, you know, high energy, high signal. You could see that there people really committed to building, right? This is not, I mean, I was in the blockchain world seven, 8 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. There's all a set of buzzwords and.

Heather Larson (02:19.969)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (02:27.199)
hahaha

Avi Burra (02:33.768)
of that thing. And I've been in the healthcare tech world as well. And there's such a jadedness at those conferences. Here, it's all optimism. Like I said, it's a family reunion. I've never been part of any community that feels this way. So, yeah, it was great. I had a great time.

Heather Larson (02:36.995)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah

Heather Larson (02:53.027)
Yeah, it'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 more quiet, I think, and studious. You're very, I think, well cultured. So you're probably the best person to ask this is, what is it about us, know, weird group of, I don't know, rapscallions that kind of binds this culture together across the miles, across different countries even? What do think the secret sauce is?

Avi Burra (03:42.766)
I think there are a few factors at play. And 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 Nostr to some extent, most of us were misfits in the big bad world.

Right from when we were kids, I started the case with me. Never fully understood why things had to be the way they were. People would just assert that, get over it. This is life. Life is unfair. Life is this. Life is that. you need nihilism, complete nihilism and defeatism. And, you know, and I've talked to lot of big corners who said, yeah, look, ever since I was a kid, I never fit in.

Heather Larson (04:26.976)
Nihilism.

Heather Larson (04:30.967)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (04:39.223)
something felt wrong and I didn't know what. I didn't know what it was. 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 the lens of understanding the fiat world 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.

Heather Larson (04:39.884)
Right?

Avi Burra (05:09.057)
There is a solution. So we don't have to sit here and play victim saying, the world's a terrible place. There's nothing we could do. Let's just get drunk and whatever. So there is a real solution. And I think that hope and that from which, you know, so that is the ideological alignment, I think, that is people believe that this movement or whatever you want to call it, that we're part of.

Heather Larson (05:16.63)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (05:20.771)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (05:37.581)
is something that's going to, if not lead us, at least our children, to a much better place.

Heather Larson (05:43.715)
Yeah, I've had that thought, you know, working with Ainsley Costello and her being so young. I know. Who said this? Was it Sam Means on your podcast? this will be ready for Ainsley's kids. I think it was, as Sam said that, I'm like, I think about that sometimes. you know, and I have, know, I think Ainsley's the exception. That Gen Z who's just, she's got it. Cause I look at my niece and nephew and they're like, I want to play video games.

Avi Burra (05:56.798)
That was sad. Yeah.

Heather Larson (06:12.526)
I want to work and maybe save for community college. They're kind of in that stage where the 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 he's working, he's got his girlfriend, but it hasn't quite hit them. think that they may have, 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 for value economy. which is something you're taking part in now with Plebchain radio. And can we just, how did you guys, because I feel like we need to go back now because Nostr has 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.

Avi Burra (06:52.354)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (07:10.421)
coming to Nostr. When did you guys start Plebchain Radio? How did it all begin?

Avi Burra (07:16.173)
Yeah, so I joined Nostr on, I know the date is December 15th, 2022. I think QW joined a week after that. there was that in that initial period of Nostr, and there were a lot of the accounts that now everyone's familiar with, nyms not nyms, whatever, came in that time period. And I guess they've built the social capital by sticking around in the last three years and continuing to post. Web of Trust, exactly. So

Heather Larson (07:22.251)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (07:39.519)
Yeah, web of trust.

Avi Burra (07:44.653)
It was just such an incredibly fun time. It felt innocent. felt people just having a good time. And you have to think about where the world was back then. That was when the Twitter files or whatever were dropping. Elon was... I think was the Twitter files. There was something going on there. Something ugly happening on Twitter. Maybe Twitter files was later. It hadn't yet...

Heather Larson (07:59.659)
True.

Heather Larson (08:06.047)
It was Elon, Elon bought it. Elon bought it and it kind like the same time it was it was the Elon purchase at the same time that chat GPT burst on this screen. So there was this like this worry of I think the Twitter purge happened at the same time as well. Like where there's a whole bunch of people got purged. Like with no recourse. So

Avi Burra (08:17.44)
Avi Burra (08:25.674)
Yeah, so I think Elon had bought it by then. That's right. And the Twitter file stuff was, you had all these Twitter spaces. And this was a month after the, what is that, SBF fiasco, right, with FTX and all of that.

Heather Larson (08:33.418)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (08:44.417)
That's right. Yeah, it was an explosive interesting time. I was a young Bitcoiner then I was class of 2020. So was kind of cruising Bitcoin Twitter, but I don't think I was getting anywhere with that was meeting some people making some friends but not like Nostr

Avi Burra (08:52.652)
Yeah

Avi Burra (09:00.78)
Right. And Twinnum was just this insanely ugly place. mean, believe it or not, it's actually gotten worse now, but it felt just... And I would try and communicate with people, try and post something. Everything went into the void. I'm the same person. Nothing's changed. I'm saying the same things that I say now that I'm saying those back then.

Heather Larson (09:07.412)
yeah!

Avi Burra (09:24.816)
I mean, no engagement, nothing. All I would see is this constant stream of anger coming in, anger and outrage. that was so Nostr felt like such an amazing contrast. I felt like some of us are gray beards. I dare say we're teenagers back in the early days of the internet. And we experienced just the joy of nonsense conversations, innocent and nonsensical conversations.

Heather Larson (09:31.617)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (09:44.767)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (09:53.235)
The freedom of it.

Avi Burra (09:55.371)
the freedom of it, right? There were no algorithmic overlords dictating your behavior and all of that. So 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 were several others I got to know in that period and became good friends with.

Heather Larson (09:56.689)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (10:22.068)
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 JPEGs, you know, making fun of the NFT nonsense. So we'd put a picture up and say, okay, start this picture for sale. So there's all of that going on. And then sometime in February, so just a couple of months after that, I'd reached out to him and I said, look, I don't quite know what this thing is.

Heather Larson (10:36.027)
yeah!

Avi Burra (10:50.506)
All I know is it could be huge. It could become huge one day, right? This thing being Nostr 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 a podcast. And I'd never done a podcast before. He'd never done a podcast before, but let's just do it. Let's just do it. And let's just start talking to people, you know.

and see where it goes. So February of 2023, that's when Plebchain Radio began. And initially, by the way,

Heather Larson (11:23.263)
That's when I joined.

Avi Burra (11:26.54)
Right. So initially, QW was like, oh, I don't know. I had just had a baby. And 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 make this happen. And then he eventually agreed. And then we started doing it. And basically, don't we've barely taken a couple of weeks off since then.

Heather Larson (11:33.726)
you

Heather Larson (11:49.503)
Yeah, and he's gotten a little bit busy taking over the family business, but he's still around, he's active in the space, and I think this is actually kind of cool because sometimes in a project somebody gets busy and then it just kind of dies off, but you have not only kept Plebchain Radio going when QW gets busy, you actually expanded, and I wanted to talk about some of the things that have been going on. think last year, so with Radio Detox, I did one episode in March of 2025, and then like,

I just had life and work went crazy and I had to stop doing the podcast for a little while. And then during that time, I was using RSS Blue. So that went away. And so then I was looking at, I do Fountain for podcasters because Fountain absorbed RSS Blue and hired Dovydas whom we love from RSS Blue. And so now Fountain has expanded as well.

Avi Burra (12:25.313)
Amen.

Avi Burra (12:39.584)
Yes.

Heather Larson (12:40.699)
I haven't joined Fountain yet, I'm using Pod Home right now because 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 see how some different podcasting 2.0 things work. And one of the cool things that I loved about RSS Blue, and you can probably answer a bunch of my questions about Fountain, and I love Fountain, but Pod Home for me, it does a lot of things well and it's very easy for me to kind of grab.

the value for value songs and add them into the podcast, the audio version anyway. And that to me is kind of the most important thing because I may do some interview podcasts like this where we're on camera. I also want to 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 Plebchain Radio and just kind of can you explain where the podcast moved in 2025 using Fountain?

Avi Burra (13:37.068)
You

Avi Burra (13:44.172)
Yeah, yeah. So we've had Oscar on the show. I think we had him first time in 2023. We've had him in 2024. So he became a friend of the show. And then I got to meet him in person, I think for the first time in, might have been in Madiera 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.

Heather Larson (14:00.765)
and

Avi Burra (14:13.607)
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 had just switched to RSS Blue. And he said, I don't know if he actually told us Dovidas was coming over because it wasn't finalized yet. But he said, I think words to the effect of you'd be a really good candidate because you're using RSS Blue. And we said, yeah, happy to do it. Happy to be early adopters. So we were the first podcast.

Heather Larson (14:16.871)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (14:22.045)
and

Heather Larson (14:29.809)
Ha ha.

Heather Larson (14:36.188)
Hmm

Avi Burra (14:42.891)
to get onboarded onto Fountain. can't remember exactly when we made the switch. It might have been May. I can't remember now. But we were the first ones. We went through the whole onboarding session with them. that was great. That was the switch to Fountain. And I've to say, I love it. Now, I talked to a lot of podcasting 2.0 folks.

Heather Larson (14:49.244)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (14:56.1)
yeah.

Avi Burra (15:10.059)
especially people who've been in that area for a while. where they come from is, for better or for worse, this is just their perspective, is I'm a podcasting 2.0 maxi. I'm an RSS maxi, which is fine. That's your thing. And then Bitcoin is incidental. For me, it's the other way around. I'm a Bitcoin maxi. And podcasting 2.0 is a tool. RSS is a tool for me.

Heather Larson (15:32.603)
Yeah

Avi Burra (15:38.923)
to help in that 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.

Heather Larson (15:52.984)
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's that's a good thing too. 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, just be the coolest thing that you did. And what I want people to really understand that whether you do music or not, it's very doable to kind of convert to podcasting 2.0. And 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.

Avi Burra (16:14.123)
Ahem.

Heather Larson (16:21.853)
Yes, I want there to be Nostr 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 Nostr 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

Avi Burra (16:26.667)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (16:46.425)
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 tell you my thought process. And it's just very calm and easy going. And I love that about you guys. You're just very down to earth. And so I hate it when the conversation and podcasting gets away from that because it doesn't,

Avi Burra (17:02.634)
I'm going.

Heather Larson (17:15.546)
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 Plebchain Radio for a long time, but you suddenly added that. And I don't know if that's a technological like technology got better, or you just decided to go all in.

Avi Burra (17:24.907)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (17:37.515)
Yeah, it's a bit of both. So one of the things that happened, you know, what had happened, I've gone through phases with Plebchain Radio, you know, we're approaching episode 150 now. And when you've been doing this week, so that's three years right? This is close to the three-year mark. When you've done so many episodes, you invariably go through phases when there, you know, there's a five, six episode stretch, 10 episode stretch. You're just dialing it in. You're like, ah, I've got stuff going on. I'm just going to show up and just...

Heather Larson (17:46.586)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (17:53.253)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (18:06.267)
True.

Avi Burra (18:06.667)
blabber into the mic for an hour and then bugger off and back to my other stuff. That was happening to us late fall of this, after 25 for me, right? I just felt like I was dialing it in. It was about half-assed. I mean, look, the thing is, because we've been doing it for so long, it just, it happens, right? Maybe the audience won't notice it. Maybe the guests don't notice it, but I was certainly noticing it. I was like, you know, I'm just showing up.

Heather Larson (18:21.595)
you

Heather Larson (18:30.299)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (18:36.905)
you know, maybe spending 15 minutes before the episode to scribble some notes together to ask the guest questions. Then, you know, it happened. it's not the first time this phase has happened, but this has been...

Heather Larson (18:45.084)
Understandable.

Heather Larson (18:50.863)
Yeah, you know, I mean, as somebody who's put a lot of shit on radio TV over the years, like 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, 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, I think.

Avi Burra (19:16.393)
Yeah. And so 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 whatever it is a 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, OK, QW is gone. I'm not feeling it.

Heather Larson (19:27.738)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (19:39.63)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (19:45.963)
Let's just pull the plug. And I think for whatever reason, at that point, the answer became very simple to me, which is, OK, this is a perfect opportunity. I've been going 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, the format's going to change. It's going to be just me for a while. So it gives me a chance to experiment a little more.

Heather Larson (19:46.264)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (20:10.02)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (20:12.746)
So that was the original idea there. Then I had Aaron of Essex on the show and he was like, look, why don't you just play music on your show? And I was like, you know what? That's a fantastic idea. Why don't I just have... He's great. Yeah. So 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. I think it's still in beta mode in Fountain.

Heather Larson (20:22.464)
He's so good.

Heather Larson (20:37.027)
Ooh.

Heather Larson (20:41.786)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (20:41.83)
So for folks who are not that familiar, if you're getting too technical here, what that basically means is, if you play music on your podcast, you can set up just the segment of the music for a different split. So you can say 90 % of the sats, 100 % of the sats that come in go to the musician. You can choose the song and that's what happens. for the rest, let's say, take a simple example. Let's say for the rest of the show, I'm getting 100%.

Heather Larson (21:00.078)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (21:11.594)
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 percent split and they send the boost during the song where I've said that 90 percent split and they send 10,000 sets, I will only get 1000 and the musician will get the 9000. Right. And then you can do this multiple times over the I'm sure RSS Blue had this feature.

Heather Larson (21:33.836)
Awesome.

Avi Burra (21:40.254)
Mistaken, right Heather? Yeah.

Heather Larson (21:40.609)
RSS Blue did, yeah, that was for me when RSS Blue was kind of fading, I was like, well, 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, know, I'm not gonna go through this whole like XML and podcast tags. I'm not gonna do that. I wanna, know, slick UI where can click some buttons and do it. Cause also fun fact about me, I have a learning disability with numbers. So the value time splits like is enough.

for me, i have discalculia because I just transpose numbers like a mofo. And so it's, I get like riled up just trying to enter like 10 or 15 of these value time splits. So, you know, if somebody out there is like, this podcasting 2.0 thing sounds cool, but I'm non-technical, like, if I could do it, anybody can do it if I could 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 do these people put music on a podcast? Me coming from radio, I'm thinking about, I've got a radio station and you know, this broadcasting company spends six figures a year on ASCAP, seasac and 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 model, it's like, well, how do Heather and Avi play music on their podcasts? 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 2.0 apps that you use for podcast hosting. And so like we had RSS Blue, Fountain is absorbing RSS Blue and dovydas for lack of a better explanation there. So I've moved to Pod Home, Avi has moved to Fountain. I'm still looking at Fountain in the long term and I'm very happy with Pod Home too because

I think the key difference is just Barry who does Pod Home does an awesome job and it's just it's a low monthly price of like 16 bucks. And so it makes it I think very doable for somebody who's like, 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

Heather Larson (23:57.945)
tons more features like you can add video, can, you know, there's a, what do you guys call it? guys a 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, send 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.

Avi Burra (24:07.049)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (24:27.449)
Yeah, both. That's how it works on Fountain. It's a very, very easy thing to set up. If you set up a podcast or account, you just go in, you click the button that says subscription, and then you can choose whether, so you can choose the price, right? You can set it at $50 a month, which would be silly. Or you could say, we've set it at $5 a month. And what we do is we

Heather Larson (24:34.998)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (24:52.359)
There's bonus content, which is exclusive to subscribers. We give a free preview to non-subscribers, and subscribers get the whole thing. There's early access, which we did for a while. I might bring it back for the Sunday show. And we could talk about the Sunday show in a second. yeah, early access. For the regular episode, the Friday episode, it's just everyone gets it at the same time.

Heather Larson (25:01.932)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (25:08.958)
Yeah. yeah.

Avi Burra (25:20.957)
But as we roll out new shows, we'll add the early access to that. Now, we don't have advertisers. don't know if we will. Maybe there's someone truly aligned with the cause who comes up 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...

Heather Larson (25:34.69)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (25:41.432)
Yeah, I think that's a form of freedom because I don't want ads either. don't want to deal with them. I don't want to sell. don't want another thing to insert into the podcast. I want it to just be about the music and getting you to an audience. You obviously have your own audience, but getting people who listen to me going, who's this Avi guy? Probably most people who listen to-

Avi Burra (25:50.994)
Okay.

Avi Burra (26:04.306)
Uh-huh.

Heather Larson (26:04.566)
Radio detox already know who you are and probably already listened to pleb chain radio. I've been on pleb chain radio, know, QW's had me on there like we did a live from Vegas. like, 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

Avi Burra (26:28.115)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (26:33.185)
probably can record video and audio and most services now, like we both use Riverside, they're easier than ever to record and edit, 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, holidays and whatnot. And I said, dude, we just recorded the podcast and I edited it and got it out for YouTube. like the whole process took me exactly two hours and 58 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 the music, you know, yeah, get the thing edited, put it out, but, you know, get the music in it and

Avi Burra (27:07.667)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (27:24.851)
Thank you.

Heather Larson (27:31.595)
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 enshittification 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 do, you know, see the zaps and the boost come in and I definitely appreciate them from people. But I know I'm not gonna pay rent off of this podcast thing, at least not right now. Now, growing, space is important, but 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.

Avi Burra (28:10.749)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (28:23.528)
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.

Avi Burra (28:34.678)
Ha

Heather Larson (28:51.552)
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, what 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 Plebchain Radio.

Avi Burra (29:19.987)
Yeah, I mean, I should certainly share the sentiment about the fiat advertising. Now, having said that though, if we haven't done this, but if there was some amazing new Nostr 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, can you actually talk a little more about it? We'll pay you X amount of money to do it. I think if...

Heather Larson (29:32.565)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (29:44.297)
and

Avi Burra (29:45.275)
If it's a really good Nostr client that actually makes sense, that's aligned with the values, then I'd certainly be open to that. Now, that clearly is advertising, but I would be open to that at some point. Similarly for Bitcoin products as well, because although that's a lot harder to weed out the bad ones, right? You've actually got to use it to make sure it's truly legit and it's aligned with your values.

Heather Larson (29:48.852)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (30:06.665)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (30:14.901)
True.

Avi Burra (30:15.1)
But yeah, so that's the sort of thing I'd be aligned to. For example, if Pfizer came in and asked me to advertise whatever the vaccine or something and asked them to have a really good day and leave me alone.

Heather Larson (30:27.702)
Yeah, it's like if the Phoenix open came up to me, it's like the joke about it around here because I live in Phoenix, you know, if the waste management open came up to me and said, Hey, you want to advertise it? I'd like, No, you have nothing to do with me. And 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 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.

Avi Burra (30:38.6)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (30:45.128)
No.

Avi Burra (30:50.704)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (30:55.741)
Maybe I've used it for a while. I did these things in radio. Like I actually made money 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.

Avi Burra (31:09.713)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (31:11.669)
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, like, cause we kind of, have this, I don't know, like you were calling us misfits earlier and 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 going to make any money off of. You know, that's kind of, you know, just trying to reach that audience who's outside of like the Bitcoin and Nostr, the people who need this stuff. It's it's so hard. And we keep trying. You know, that's I

what is important to me and motivates me to do this. Because there's so much talent out there that deserves to be heard. And this is a way that we can do that. And it's just kind of, need more Avi and QWs and plug chain radios and radio detoxes and soapbox sessions. 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, parallel path to the traditional music business.

And you can do it independently and you can earn Bitcoin and you don't have to worry about a rights organization like seasac and you don't have to worry about royalty checks coming out quarterly from ASCAP. And that's, think the cool thing about playing music is 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 Plebchain radio, I think that's just.

going to 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.

Avi Burra (33:12.308)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm doing it because it's fun, but I certainly recognize all the knock on benefits that come from that. But it is fun playing music, talking about it. And you know, I'm not the kind of person who's going to say anything mean about the music. So I wouldn't pick a song that I would criticize in a bad way. So I'd pick a song that I was going to say something nice about. I picked it because I liked it. So it's fun. It's fun doing it. And then, you know, in fact, I've been having so much fun. I said,

Heather Larson (33:30.292)
and

Avi Burra (33:40.68)
let me just do a music show. And I know it's not going to be the first one. There are obviously several out there that do the value time split and all of that stuff. But I thought I would do a nice laid back Sunday show. Plebchain radio, the conversations can get a little intense and philosophical at times, or just very technical in some cases.

Heather Larson (33:42.834)
Hey!

Heather Larson (33:48.276)
Okay.

Heather Larson (34:05.31)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (34:08.922)
And that's, think it serves its purpose for the Friday show, but I want to 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 a Sunday brunch, which is just decompressing from the week, just talk, shooting the breeze. but the idea, 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 index or fountain or wherever it is. Find three to five, preferably B5.

Heather Larson (34:16.628)
Thanks.

Avi Burra (34:39.068)
tracks that they really like and then send them to me beforehand so that I can load them up on the Riverside media board. That's the only way it actually plays on the the live stream. And then and then come and chat and talk about life or whatever. And then every few minutes we play a song and then they tell me why they picked that song, what it means to them. And then we just move on to the next topic. Then the next song and just that's it.

Heather Larson (34:49.87)
Avi Burra (35:08.772)
easy one hour, hour and 15 minutes, whatever it's going to be. I'm hoping it's an easy laid back conversation, but with Bitcoin as an nostriches, chances are we're talking about some crazy Titanic conspiracy with the Federal Reserve or something else.

Heather Larson (35:18.227)
you

You never know.

Heather Larson (35:29.911)
be talking about meat and chemtrails on a Sunday morning getting riled up about like, and then by the way, I like the song by John Martin. it's, you know, it's, it's, it's I, so the first one is going to be, you know, this, this podcast will probably come out after it has happened. So the first one is with Oscar Mary.

Avi Burra (35:33.448)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (35:39.73)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (35:49.64)
That's right.

Heather Larson (35:51.113)
That's awesome. mean, it'll be... Go ahead.

Avi Burra (35:55.816)
Yeah, I I couldn't think of a better person to have for the first episode. Just because, know, it's talking about they're making a huge push into into music. Fountainous. So Oscar's a friend, 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. I'm curious to see what his playlist looks like. Yeah, so it's going to be Oscar. We're going to live stream on on Nostr as well on Zap.stream

Heather Larson (36:00.346)
Yeah!

Heather Larson (36:19.131)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (36:25.583)
on Sunday and then maybe have the episode out for 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, rest of the time it's 50-50 between the guest and me. And then one thing I do need to figure out and this probably needs to be vibed somehow is

Heather Larson (36:52.786)
Okay.

Avi Burra (36:54.341)
during the live stream on zap.stream, how to split the zaps that come in in the same way. Because value time split is an RSS concept, podcasting 2.0 concept. It's not a Nostr concept. I don't know how you do that. Yeah, so I'll have to think about that.

Heather Larson (37:03.548)
That's a good question.

Heather Larson (37:10.084)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Heather Larson (37:17.586)
like this is the age-old problem that well there's a couple of things on the technical side and I don't want to get into technical leads I always like to word things it's very like non-technical so like um and 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 going to do it so are you and Oscar going to do the the music show on video or is it going to be audio only?

Avi Burra (37:41.958)
It's going to be audio only. mean, 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. I don't have my mic stand looks like, which I don't have my mic set up. So 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 an armchair and a nice little

Heather Larson (37:43.567)
Okay.

Yeah, true.

Heather Larson (37:52.37)
and

Yeah.

Heather Larson (38:02.097)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Avi Burra (38:10.375)
The mic set, I, yeah.

Heather Larson (38:10.566)
Yeah, that's a Sunday morning show. Yeah, you need an armchair and you could just be in your pajamas. like, I don't know if I can turn this off. I probably can't in the middle, but we lost my set last night for soapbox sessions. Like the fake background is what I prefer because I'm actually in my closet. Like I made, I soundproofed my largest closet and turned it into a recording studio. Put a desk in here. It's like rugs and blankets and...

Avi Burra (38:17.382)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (38:29.243)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (38:36.845)
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 how I do it. So it's not a good looking room. There's like, know, sweatshirts here and my door is here, you know, so 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 like,

Avi Burra (38:38.491)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (39:06.245)
the live time splits with audio or with the ZapStream, like, we do need to start Vibecode and some solutions there for sure, you know.

Avi Burra (39:14.961)
Well, Oscar might have something cooking on that, but within the Fountain universe, though. yeah. One thing I might, so the other thing I, again, this is after QW. The other thing I took a hiatus is I've started streaming on my own ZAP stream, so I'm self-hosting my own. I don't want to use that infrastructure. maybe for the Sunday show,

Heather Larson (39:19.217)
Ooh, okay.

Heather Larson (39:36.485)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (39:44.899)
when Fountain is ready, I'll move to the Fountain infrastructure. They will be using Nostr for streaming as well. But they'll build their customized thing, which might allow for real-time DAP splits. So once they have that, just for the Sunday show, might do it through them. We'll see. It's only days. have to... Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Larson (39:51.086)
Ooh, okay.

Heather Larson (39:58.288)
Heather Larson (40:04.014)
And again, real time. Yeah, we are so realizing is that real time with audio or video or both.

Avi Burra (40:11.627)
Well, I think both.

Heather Larson (40:13.712)
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 2.0 would be what if I want to 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.

Avi Burra (40:24.795)
Okay.

Heather Larson (40:41.634)
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 Hive Talk yoga, I would take the video of the class with no, 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,

posted online on my yoga site and then people could kind of get like, my God, this is so tedious. You know, because 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 you know, laying in audio tracks or different video tracks with video has been a little laborious.

Avi Burra (41:14.683)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (41:32.967)
You know, you do have a media board. You see the little music icon. you could just upload pre, before the show, can upload all of your tracks there. And you can adjust the volume. It allows you to adjust the volume there. So this is the other thing, other upgrade I've made to the podcast is I'm actually doing some real post-production. I've upgraded to Logic Pro, which is, know, like not.

Heather Larson (41:36.909)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (41:44.576)
Okay.

Heather Larson (41:56.493)
Mm-hmm. All right.

Avi Burra (42:00.61)
It's not GarageBand It's a real professional tool. And I've been playing around quite a bit with the compressor and the equalizer and all of that stuff. You're moving different frequencies down. so it allows you to... I've been using AI for everything. Hey, I'm in logic. I'm lost. Help me.

Heather Larson (42:02.383)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (42:14.392)
Hmm.

Heather Larson (42:22.966)
yeah.

Avi Burra (42:25.602)
and says, OK, yes. And then I send the screenshots of this thing. No, I don't understand. I says, no, you go to the top right and press this button. So it's super helpful to use AI for that kind of stuff, learning how to use a complicated tool like Logic. But Logic, the reason I brought it up is it allows you to lower the volume, preset, the volume, and then at a level where your voice actually can cut through it.

Heather Larson (42:36.355)
Cut.

Avi Burra (42:52.358)
And then you just load it up in the Riverside Media Board and you do it live. Now, so this Friday show, I know your episode will probably be out after the show. so Friday, January the 9th, 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.

Heather Larson (42:58.284)
huh.

Heather Larson (43:07.683)
Nice.

Heather Larson (43:22.297)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (43:22.49)
that to vibe crafted neoclassical music. I've hours. I've never spent this much time on a podcast. I spent hours on Mureka getting the prompts just right, just to make the music match with, you know, I don't want to use regular, I'll be screwed if I use regular classical music on a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm doing that. And I found

Heather Larson (43:31.088)
my god.

Heather Larson (43:42.339)
Exactly, because that's one of the worst ones with rights

Avi Burra (43:49.645)
and unbelievable musician like a prog musician from England on think found him on on podcast index or yeah and I'm going to be playing two of his songs interspersed so yeah trying to convert the podcast into performance art we'll see

Heather Larson (44:10.147)
Dude, only Avi would do this. 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. So we're Avi to read them and be kind of like a Bitcoin audible. like, this is the cultural mashup that we didn't know we needed.

I'll be reading Max Hillebrand with like the perfect classical music. I've been on a classical music binge this week myself. So I'm really going to enjoy this one when you're doing that one. So, okay, we have talked a lot about podcasting 2.0 and like you are gent. That's like probably more than I thought we would talk about. 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 we have the freedom to support musicians and other creators like you supporting Max's essays. I mean, that's just another way that podcasters can support an ecosystem and support creators who are doing things differently. I love that. There's so much creativity going on with... The tools that we have have been improving in the last few years and also the ideas. It's good to see...

Avi Burra (45:22.502)
you

Heather Larson (45:31.313)
I'm glad you didn't quit Plebchain Radio. need, we need Plebchain 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 going to switch gears into talking about your docu-series, Finding Home, as I just watched them all yesterday, just kind of prepare to talk to you about this. So I signed up for IndeedHub. I had no idea. IndeedHub's cool. I know, I know 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 choice when you sign up at IndeedHub that you can pay with your Bitcoin wallet or you can pay with your credit card. It's your choice, right? So you've got some freedom of choice there. And then I started watching and I'm like, my God, I can see this. The Sats are streaming while I'm watching Finding Home. so I loved both episodes. This is so obvi.

Avi Burra (46:08.749)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (46:29.067)
because Avi is just so cultured and just so laid back and you're interviewing Shakib 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?

Avi Burra (46:53.775)
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.

Heather Larson (47:07.017)
Oh, wow. Okay, so where is home for Avi?

Avi Burra (47:15.461)
It's a good question. It's a very good question. I mean, maybe that's the reason why I'm making the show, because it's an unanswered question. Probably the closer look. I I love the country of my birth. My parents are still there, and I have a deep affection for it. But 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...

Heather Larson (47:21.143)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (47:29.773)
and

Heather Larson (47:36.139)
Okay.

Heather Larson (47:43.949)
and

Avi Burra (47:44.197)
You know, yeah. Yeah. But maybe it's a question I still need to answer. But I need to make 12 episodes of this show to answer that question. 12 seasons, I'm sorry, 12 seasons of this show to be able to answer that question.

Heather Larson (47:56.569)
Yeah, like Plebchain Radio. It's got to go on for years to answer kind of, like, well, Plebchain Radio is chronicling our Nostr Bitcoin, you know, adoption. And then of course, finding home is a really unique premise of like, is Somalia home? Is Prague home? Is Mississippi home? Is New York home? And it 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.

Avi Burra (48:16.601)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (48:23.998)
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 25-26 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 my hometown and around the Bay Area you know more in San Francisco 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 gonna pay, you know, 2200 a month for a crappy place to live? And now 26 years later, I'm like, this is kind of a problem now everywhere, where the housing is overpriced. know, my niece and nephews still live at home and as they're in their early 20s. that is true of a lot of early 20 somethings, Gen Z is.

Avi Burra (49:09.017)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (49:18.373)
you

Heather Larson (49:19.276)
kind of screwed. like there's that financial, you know, the fiat evil comes into my story of finding home. And now I'm like, well, I don't know. I've spent most of my life in Arizona. And 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 changed so much. It is not the San Francisco that I grew up in.

Avi Burra (49:29.349)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (49:48.843)
in the 70s or the 90s, it's very, ooh 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 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 like, I never...

I can't get away from Silicon Valley, even if I want to. It's a part of me. it's like, is that home? Does home follow me or do I go home? I don't feel like I have that homing pigeon instinct like a lot of people do. And then I lived in Kansas for 13 years. And sometimes I got so excited one day, we were at a party and it was our Christmas day party, family party. And Barry Sanders comes on screen because we're watching football.

Avi Burra (50:21.924)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (50:36.517)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (50:48.255)
And I was like, my God, Wichita. My cousin looks at me funny and she's like, is he from Wichita? And I'm like, do you not know that? Do people not know Barry Sanders is from, there's like certain things that you pick up on. And I was like so 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, these kitschy little things that.

Avi Burra (50:57.557)
Ha

Heather Larson (51:17.695)
folks see Midwestern things that, you know, the way you talk, the way you say excuse me and 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 get some ideas from some of the people that you've interviewed.

Avi Burra (51:36.197)
you

Avi Burra (51:41.861)
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, at the time of recording is January 8th, I dropped the trailer for episode three of finding home.

Heather Larson (51:53.594)
Mm-hmm. You did? Now that I've watched two? Okay, cool. I gotta go see now. When is it coming out?

Avi Burra (52:01.708)
It's coming out on Wednesday, the 14th of January. I believe Wednesday is the 14th. That was the Paraguay episode. And really the premise of the show is to follow, like, you know, we've talked about it, but it's to follow Bitcoiners or Freedom Track developers, really, not to Bitcoin around the world, especially if they're expats, right? And you just have conversations with them about over food.

Heather Larson (52:04.959)
good. Good, I need some more.

Heather Larson (52:10.387)
Mm.

Heather Larson (52:19.146)
and

Heather Larson (52:24.061)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (52:28.772)
In some cases, in the first episode, we just used a pilot. So we filmed just one session with Shakib, the proprietor of the Safari the Somali restaurant in Harlem. That was just one session. The second episode was in Prague, during BTC Prague of 2025 with Grafton. So we had multiple locations over three or four days. Similarly, the Paraguay episode has a lot more, right?

Heather Larson (52:34.25)
and

Heather Larson (52:40.148)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (52:47.4)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (52:53.764)
It's just talking to these people who to create a new home for themselves and it's parallel journeys. One is finding this physical home, right? They're expats. They're trying to create a new life for themselves. But the other is a more metaphorical journey of finding the sovereign home in the work they do in Bitcoin, Nostr. In some sense, we're all expats. We're all refugees from Fiat. And we found a home in Bitcoin. Yeah.

Heather Larson (53:03.134)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (53:13.671)
Yes. We are.

Which brings me to one of my most important questions and I'm excited about the Fair Play episode. kind of I became interested in being an expat but didn't do it. Like physically looked at different places. At the same time in 2020 that I became a Bitcoiner, 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.

Avi Burra (53:25.463)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (53:42.477)
huh.

Heather Larson (53:49.385)
haven't done it yet, you I'm definitely open to it. Like 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. you know, I work not at all in the fiat world. I work a hundred percent in the Bitcoin Nostr you know, technology space. I'm a tech bro. And that happened for me in 2025. I knew at some point, maybe 2023,

Avi Burra (54:08.484)
Thank you.

Heather Larson (54:17.801)
that I wanted to work full time and Bitcoin and or Nostr and like Nostr being young back then I was like, well, that's a dumb idea. What what a Nostr am I going to do? What companies are hiring for the marketing kind of stuff that I have here? 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 mines, I guess does make us kind of expats, which is something you did last year. We both actually a lot of people I would say in our at our Nostr cohort have left finally,

Avi Burra (54:28.366)
Ha ha ha.

Avi Burra (54:43.342)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (54:47.56)
the fiat mines is something I think we all worked for. Are we we expat? We are expats from from the fiat working world, would you say?

Avi Burra (54:55.812)
Yeah, yeah. Expats, certainly not vacationers. Anyway, in our case, refugee is not a nice word because you're I feel like we're running towards something, right, rather than running away from something. Although at times it does. Yeah, does. When you're there, it makes you want to run away from it. But yeah, I did. July 4th of last year, interestingly enough, was my last day in Fiat, my Independence Day. Yeah, chose that date intentionally.

Heather Larson (55:00.408)
Yeah.

the

Heather Larson (55:07.847)
and

Yeah.

Heather Larson (55:20.776)
that's nice.

Avi Burra (55:27.051)
Um, and yeah, I was at, I was in a large health tech company, a name that I'm not going to mention, but probably everyone who's listening to the show has heard of multiple times and hates, um, large healthcare company. And, 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.

Heather Larson (55:50.994)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (55:56.612)
I left, I had to, it was ruining my life, ruining my health. And, you know, without an actual safety net, I jumped, saying I'll just do Bitcoin and all that stuff, I'll figure it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Heather Larson (56:09.138)
same.

figure it out. You just you had faith. You took a leap of faith. 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 and but then also having a foot in the fiat world. And 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. I knew I would get there. I knew I'd get where I wanted to be and I did. But it exhausted me. don't know if that was, did it make you physically sick? Was it psychologically sick when you talk about the impact on your health?

Avi Burra (56:56.077)
Yeah. So 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. had job. So I was like, well, at least it pays the bills. And, know, 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.

Heather Larson (57:05.926)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (57:12.136)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (57:23.299)
I think there was a one year period or almost one year period between summer of 2024 and summer of 2025 when I finally just couldn't take it anymore and quit where it became actually toxic, decidedly toxic. And I was clinging on, clinging on saying, well, what about the money? What about you? How do you keep the lights on? 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.

Heather Larson (57:36.712)
Bye.

Avi Burra (57:53.4)
This is the whole way to live, right? No way to live. then, you know, people, you know, not respecting your boundaries. And when someone doesn't respect your boundary, then I'm the one who has to become unpleasant, right? Or not unpleasant, but just have that confrontation with them saying, right? I never chose this confrontation. They put me in this position where I've got to confront them for just not respecting my boundaries and, you know, or going behind my back and all of that.

Heather Larson (57:53.926)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (58:12.55)
and

Heather Larson (58:22.021)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (58:24.035)
It just, it's not, it's not pleasant at all. It became increasingly unpleasant. And my stress levels were very high for, and to what end? Nothing. So I, it just became, when the answer arrived, was blindingly Avi 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 a prisoner in this job and that's it.

Heather Larson (58:32.931)
Right?

Avi Burra (58:51.491)
And then I said, I'm not a prisoner. I had the key all along, the door's right there. All I have to do is walk out. And I did. But it took me a year of incredible unpleasantness to actually have that moment of clarity.

Heather Larson (58:56.964)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (59:07.174)
what would you recommend people do when they want to leave fiat for good? And I say this as somebody who was looking at a stack of resumes this morning of people who just wanna work for RUnstr And RUnstr being an app that was born of your NOS Fabrica 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 see. 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 was.

Avi Burra (59:42.583)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:00:03.366)
I 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, and 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, well, how 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

Avi Burra (01:00:07.074)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:00:30.596)
I was gonna 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 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.

Avi Burra (01:00:35.224)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (01:00:49.08)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:00:52.699)
It really depends on what stage of life they're in. I would say if someone's in their early 20s and they don't have or early mid 20s, even late 20s and they don't have any dependence, just do it. Don't do it now. If you truly believe in the movement, what are you doing? What are you waiting for? Make this your life. Just do it. I think it gets a little trickier if you have a kid who's depending on you.

Heather Larson (01:00:55.75)
and

Heather Larson (01:01:03.15)
Yeah, do it now.

Yeah.

Heather Larson (01:01:13.255)
Make this your life. Yo, do it. Proof of work.

Avi Burra (01:01:21.761)
Right. And 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. They've lived as frugally as

Heather Larson (01:01:22.254)
Yes.

Heather Larson (01:01:43.813)
Yeah. Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:01:51.011)
you can save the rest of Bitcoin, knowing that if nothing else, that Bitcoin is going to be a life rough for you in a year or two. And your job is not killing you. 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 it. Two or three years, you've stacked enough. You're like, OK, you know what? I have enough runway for a year. Because number does go up over a long enough time period.

Heather Larson (01:02:17.288)
Yeah, it does.

Avi Burra (01:02:21.356)
I bought myself a year, now I can go all in for a year and make this happen. That's a good scenario. think 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.

Heather Larson (01:02:32.698)
Yeah!

Heather Larson (01:02:36.133)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:02:48.638)
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, someone who dies of stress.

Heather Larson (01:02:50.053)
Yeah.

Heather Larson (01:03:00.281)
Yeah. Yeah, every 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 freelanced my way up into a full time job working at soapbox. But I, you know, it started

Avi Burra (01:03:21.654)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:03:23.656)
freelancing, working at Rigly and then started freelancing, working at Soapbox while was still doing B2B social media at an agency. And then what else happened in there? and then there was a, the B2B world slowed down, right? Because, you know, marketing economy, the way tech startups are, etc. So then I was like, well, I need to do something. So I went back to an old job. I back to my job from 20 year relationship, working at KTAR News.

Avi Burra (01:03:40.833)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:03:51.588)
And so I went back to that for a little while. That was where the record scratch came in, because I would work all day in the morning doing my Bitcoin jobs and Nostr jobs. And then I would be like, OK, I got a hard stop here. I got to go drive to the radio station and go report for the afternoon, early evening.

And then, you know, news is consuming, you know, as soon as I step back into a radio TV station, they're gonna 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 wars.

Avi Burra (01:04:19.007)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (01:04:23.98)
Yes.

Heather Larson (01:04:43.396)
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 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

Avi Burra (01:04:44.354)
Ha

Heather Larson (01:05:09.027)
freelancing in like 2006 before it was cool to work remotely from home. Like we didn't have all these phrases back then. I think that gave me a little bit of like no fear. Like, like there's, you've got to have no fear, I guess, to be in Bitcoin anyway, because everybody's going to, 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 Nostr. And then like, certainly these people are like, what do do for a living?

Avi Burra (01:05:22.434)
you

Heather Larson (01:05:37.643)
You know, family and friends are like, we're happy for you. You're not homeless. You know, like, what do you do? Why do you believe in this Bitcoin is boiling the oceans and mining is boiling the oceans and you're an AI is boiling the oceans. This is like stuff that my niece has told me. And I'm like, well, guess what? This is what I work in. I guess I'm an ocean boiler. the cool thing about mining is that now you're starting to see that it's becoming more of a mainstream thing because people are starting to realize, I can mine Bitcoin.

Avi Burra (01:05:42.358)
Okay.

Heather Larson (01:06:06.252)
and used flared gas, like oil's not evil, like we can actually, you know, power things with, what? You know, and so maybe it's just me and 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 gonna be able to work in Bitcoin, but everybody would probably Bitcoinify or Nostrify the space that they work in too, which I think is just as valid, being able to do that or have the skill to do that as

Avi Burra (01:06:12.514)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:06:35.637)
hyper bitcoinization comes along or Nostr 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? Because I could I had the ability to but also, I would mention that sometimes I think a lot of people as 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, hey, I'm gonna help you out. I'm gonna 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 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. And so like, I think when you're in a marriage or a partnership of some kind and you've got that extra support, like,

Avi Burra (01:07:15.308)
me.

Avi Burra (01:07:26.69)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:07:33.281)
Yes, go for it, but if you don't, ideally you're somebody in your 20s 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 got to be somebody who's absolutely not afraid to like lose your company provided healthcare and pension and figure the thing out. And so I think that's also what the people in this space are built to do is figure the thing out.

Avi Burra (01:07:56.151)
Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:08:01.611)
Yeah, well, health insurance is such a scam, especially in this country anyway. I had health insurance and I'm most, I barely ever touched the deductible. So everything was out of pocket anyway. And the premiums were daylight robbery. So what was I buying exactly? Anyway, so don't get me started on health insurance.

Heather Larson (01:08:05.291)
yeah.

Heather Larson (01:08:11.935)
I know! Yeah.

Heather Larson (01:08:18.719)
Yeah.

nothing. that's like a whole other podcast. Yeah, I left health care 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 health care 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 Nostr. And how Nostr to me is vitally important as I think

Avi Burra (01:08:35.221)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:08:51.049)
you can agree, right? It's vitally important that it make it, that it be adopted and that people have it, but more importantly, so they have the freedom. So my opinion of Nostr is that it cannot fail. You know, how do we ensure Nostr success,

Avi Burra (01:08:59.392)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (01:09:09.281)
Yeah, I think it has to continue to be the most fun place on the internet, which I believe it is. So that's one. That 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 of Trust, all the new developments that are happening, and we'll see that a lot more of it in 2026, will make

Heather Larson (01:09:14.389)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:09:31.692)
Yeah. Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:09:37.366)
discovery and curation of content so much easier on Nostr. 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 a unified user interface or user experience. So we have to embrace this messy emergent consensus that we have in any, in this open source decentralized world.

Heather Larson (01:09:59.555)
This open source world.

and

Avi Burra (01:10:05.865)
That is the thing. But user experience, discovery, and curation will continue to keep Nostr the most fun place, and that's how it survives.

Heather Larson (01:10:17.115)
Awesome. And Avi, what's your favorite value for value song at the moment that I could play at end of the podcast?

Avi Burra (01:10:25.441)
There are so many. You know, it's funny you ask. because I've been. Let me let me hold on. I'm going to pull up podcast index as we as we talk here. I've the name.

Heather Larson (01:10:27.265)
I know. You can pick a few.

Heather Larson (01:10:37.833)
Yeah, there we go. You can pick more than one. I can play more than one because that's what we do around here. We do whatever we want. We've got no format except for Sam's band, the format.

Avi Burra (01:10:48.747)
And I've been doing this for the show. So I discovered this band called Polanski. They're a Finnish grunge band, a contemporary band. They sound like they're out of Seattle in the early 90s. They sound like the Stone Temple Pilots, actually. That's the one they're closest to. So why don't you play, have a silver player by the band Polanski?

Heather Larson (01:10:51.743)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Larson (01:10:59.531)
you

Heather Larson (01:11:14.647)
Mm-hmm. Okay, Silver Player, Silver Player Polanski. Give him Polanski some love. We want to thank them for being in the value verse. Is value for value the best term? I'm gonna get everybody's opinion on this this year because it's so hard to name this movie. Yeah.

Avi Burra (01:11:17.707)
Silver Player.

Avi Burra (01:11:32.097)
I've been struggling with it.

Heather Larson (01:11:34.801)
Okay, it's not just me, right?

Avi Burra (01:11:35.969)
No, I mean I've heard value of us, I've heard the V for V movement, whatever. And then demu is, I know someone who, whoever came up with the name, they probably love it. So I'm sorry if they're listening and they're insulted by it. But it's a horrible name. It's cringe. It sounds like something that Andreessen Horowitz

Heather Larson (01:11:59.974)
It's, yeah.

Avi Burra (01:12:04.256)
came up with for a shit-con project. I hate it.

Heather Larson (01:12:06.963)
It's very calcanus. I agree. I hate it. And 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 to use it because there's a whole cabal that will come after me and tell me I'm not using it right. you know, I don't want the drama and the negativity. So it's like, I've settled on like maybe it's sound music, maybe just independent music. I don't know. But whatever it is.

Avi Burra (01:12:34.08)
What's that music?

Heather Larson (01:12:35.475)
We're doing a thing that's actually really fun and really cool and Polanski'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 poke at you today and get some of your opinions and see what you think of things because

Avi Burra (01:12:51.2)
You

Heather Larson (01:13:02.676)
You know, you're not a fly by night person. You are very logical and very, you prepare well. I know that you know your stuff and I know that 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. Avi's in my web of trust on Nostr, but also in real life. I know like Avi's gonna tell me not what I want to hear.

Avi Burra (01:13:25.205)
Ha ha.

Heather Larson (01:13:28.767)
he'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 you got two books on Amazon Avi Burra he's got 21 he's got July 18th and if you go on IndeedHub he's got the docu-series Finding Home he's got the Nosfabrica challenge right now which is we're calling it a wot-a-thon this time around

Avi Burra (01:13:54.763)
Yeah, it is a water thon. of trust. Yeah. Yeah.

Heather Larson (01:13:56.955)
wot-a-thon, Web of Trust, Web of Trust-athon. So yeah, that's good stewardship for an Nostr that you're supporting people who want to work on Web of Trust with this year in us, us Fabrica. So, you know, I think, you know, if I died off tomorrow, I think Nostr is obviously in good hands with Avi Burra.

Avi Burra (01:14:10.464)
Mm-hmm.

Avi Burra (01:14:19.36)
You

Heather Larson (01:14:19.911)
John Gordon and Vitor Pomplona. You guys doing the WAD-A-Thon this year with lots of great people and I'm excited about Web of Trust 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.

Avi Burra (01:14:38.068)
Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Heather. Real quick, David Strayhorn, too, our new founder at Nosfabrica

Heather Larson (01:14:43.145)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

I love him. Yeah, I didn't get to know him very well when we were in Nashville, but I heard later that he and I have some common interests. So he he's definitely someone I want to talk to again for sure. So shout out to David Strayhorn. Absolutely love love his expertise and web of trust alone. we've got Nostr in good hands and I think it's going good places. And this is the year the builder and all of all of the vibe coding.

Avi Burra (01:14:59.691)
excellent.

Heather Larson (01:15:16.508)
all of the leveling up that we're doing with all of the technology from Fountain and Podhome on this is gonna be a fun year, I'm glad I'm kicking off the year with you. You're the best.

Avi Burra (01:15:28.798)
Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you for having me, Heather. Thank you for the kind words. And yeah, looking forward to building Nostr

Heather Larson (01:15:39.494)
I'm gonna end it on that note, awesome.