Byzantine Dreams

In this special ✨LIVE ✨episode, we bring you 3 on-stage convos we had earlier this year with 3 humans who've helped define what it means to practice activism through crypto.Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn is the creator of Zcash, the first privacy coin. He's an outspoken advocate on privacy and surveillance, and has been working on free, open source cryptocurrency and privacy-preserving tech since the 1980s.Emily Yang (Pplpleasr) is the multidisciplinary artist at the core of PleasrDAO. She made headlines in 2021 when PleasrDAO formed to buy her Uniswap NFT for >$500k—the first time ever a DAO or collective had made a such a large art purchase—and for her work with groups like Stop Asian Hate.Nadya Tolokno is a Russian-born artist + activist, best known as the co-founder of artist collective Pussy Riot. She was sentenced to two years in prison for their 2012 performance ‘Punk Prayer' and has made waves since by starting UkraineDAO, which raised >$20 million in a matter of days.Start times 2:45 mins →  Zooko 21:20 mins→ Emily 37:30 mins → Nadya Links from our chat with Zooko An amazing episode of Radiolab that talks about the Zcash ‘Ceremony' Zooko's Triangle on wikipedia ‘Crypto' by Steven Levy (a wonderful history of renegade 1970s cryptographers and the early cypherpunks) ‘1984' by George Owell

Daniel Schmachtenberger is a renowned theorist, systems thinker, and polymath. In this episode, he speaks with us about the existential threats facing humanity, our society's ability to make sense of the world, exponential technology, and steps we can take towards a more beautiful civilization.About Daniel Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue.The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal.Towards these ends, he's had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science.Motivated by the belief that advancing collective intelligence and capacity is foundational to the integrity of any civilization, and necessary to address the unique risks we currently face given the intersection of globalization and exponential technology, he has spoken publicly on many of these topics, hoping to popularize and deepen important conversations and engage more people in working towards their solutions. Many of these can be found at http://civilizationemerging.com/media/Links from our show The Consilience Project Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter Daniels' blog His New Economics Series

Named one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals" by MIT Technology Review, Douglas Ruskhoff is a media theorist, author, and documentarian studying human autonomy in the digital age. He’s the author of over 20 books, including Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Media Virus, and most recently Team Human.

Sarah Friend is a badass infrastructure developer, digital artist, activist, and community crypto pioneer who works on Circles UBI and lives in Berlin.

In this episode Christian Langalis aka Bitcoin Sign Guy takes us on a fascinating journey through Urbit and the Bison Sphere: touching on cognitive malware, casino jails, dopamine vending machines, mimetic language, and his vision of the future primitive, colored by his classical tastes and background in studio art.

Cryptoeconomics wouldn't be what it is today without Simon de la Rouviere. An artist and early Ethereum developer, he's best known for his role crafting the original ERC-20 token specification, meme markets, and token curated registries. In this episode, we delve into CHAZ + autonomous zones, South Africa's water crisis and statue controversy, the ERC-20 origin story, how Simon was radicalized by Dogecoin, and the importance of communities, optimism, and proper incentive design - in blockchain networks, 2020, and beyond.

Jameson Lopp is a professional cypherpunk, outspoken privacy and self-sovereignty advocate, and CTO of Casa. In our first episode, we delve into ACAB, the police, offensive and defensive technologies, life extension, cryogenics, Bitcoin, resilience-first systems, and life beyond the State.

Byzantine Dreams is a pirate radio blast, bringing you into conversation with the most important thinkers in crypto and high tech.