ASOMOCO Unplugged

Dear ASOMOCO community,

I’m really happy to present Episode 2 of my new podcast ASOMOCO Unplugged, a relaxed and informal walk through the chaos of our economic system, accompanied by musical compositions and guest contributions. In the first half we cover:

* Karmic reciprocity, David Graeber and Intro to Econ Life

* The Inner Civil War, my follow-up to the Stone Soup Theory of Billionaires

* Shaun Chamberlin on why we should use Mastodon

* Animism vs. monotheism, and a beautiful song from The Mononoke Wolf Choir

* Cory Doctorow’s concept of Big Tech Enshittification and whether Jay Graber of Bluesky can avoid it

In the second half, we have a crypto special:

* Jemima Kelly and Eli Gothill on the Grim Ghost of Crypto Future

* Numerical nouns vs. numerical adjectives and why this matters for the Hole in Bitcoin’s Heart

* Professional wrestling and how it inspired my recent essay, the Art of Crypto Kayfabe

* The crucial concept of countertrade, and how it secretly governs the Bitcoin world

* Josh Davila on TrumpMusk’s Bitcoin gambit, patronage networks and the risk of political manipulation of the crypto markets

* Cryptography vs. cryptocurrency

Links and community shout-outs

* Mark Kohr’s great ‘Ecodemmurage Currency’ video

* Sarah Jaffe’s Work Won’t Love You Back

* Surviving the Future by the late David Fleming, edited by Shaun Chamberlin (see also Lean Logic)

* Shaun on Mastodon, and his excellent course on Surviving the Future

* Josh Davila’s Blockchain Socialist podcast, and Blockchain Radicals book

* David Graeber, Cory Doctorow and others in the SPECTRE video about basic income

Bonus for paying subscribers

All my sweet paying subscribers who keep ASOMOCO going get a bonus 14 minute meditative track here. Enjoy!

Welcome to ASOMOCO Unplugged, a new experimental podcast format in which I discuss some big things happening in the world of political economics alongside bits of juicy gossip from friends, all interspersed by musical compositions. On today’s episode I play a kalimba through an Ibanez TubeScreamer and talk about…

* Stone Soup Theory of billionaires

* The influencer economy and algorithmic holidays

* Propaganda on X, and the rise of Bluesky and Substack

* A recent discussion on the potentially contradictory meanings of ‘anti-woke’

* Ethnomusicology, and the anthropology of music

* Grace Blakeley on the US election

* Marxism, David Graeber and SPECTRE

* My friend Julio’s upcoming book on Abolishing the US dollar

* Julio reporting in live from Thailand about quantum money and crypto kings

* Why I’m planning to write about crypto again

* Upcoming articles

Free subscribers get the first half, but if you want the full 45 minutes, sign up for a paid subscription here…