Better Than Yesterday with Osher Günsberg

Rob Wilson is the CEO and CoFounder of Incent, a cryptocurrency startup based in Australia, you can find you more about him and the work he’s doing at incent.com

If you’ve never heard of cryptocurrency before - let me quickly run over it with you.

So - money was a way that we found to put value into a common language that served as a way to help us exchange that value. If I spent a day digging up your garden and you wouldn’t give me a trolley full of groceries - even though that’s what I need. You give me a common language of agreed value, in this case money - which you probably got doing something of value for someone else. And I take an amount of that agreed language to the supermarket and I buy my fruit and veggies - which I didn’t have to plant or grow or dog up or transport to the market, and I give that money to the people that did and so on and so on.

Back in the day, money was of actual Value - made of metals that we agreed were valuable. Then a few hundred years back the Chinese went paper, which confounded some people but ultimately won out - but it solidified this idea that it’s just agreed value.

In our community money is plastic and metal, but it’s really just a useless object until two people decide its valuable.

But now, as we pay pass and tap our cards on terminals everywhere - money doesn’t even exist. It’s data on a file somewhere that you and the people who’s terminal you’re tapping your card on have agreed is worth something.

So now we are at essentially digital money, the next level from that is cryptocurrency.

Essentially, cryptocurrency is another agreement of value. One that by design makes all the transactions secure and importantly does away with intermediaries represented by banks, which have pesky fees and differing investment policies and things like that. 

The main feature of cryptocurrencies, security is provided by Blockchain technology — which is a network of computers having an identical copy of the database and changing its records by a common agreement based on pure mathematics. It’s kind of like - there’s only one bank statement - and everyone can see it. Those who deposited and withdrew are anonymised, but the amounts are there for all to see, and every time a transaction happens, it verifies itself with another copy of this statement to be sure the transaction is legitimate. 

Where things get interesting, is that within that baked in security and legitimate, there’s a thing called — smart contracts — it becomes possible to create your own cryptocurrency and issue your own token. Token is a type of privately issued cryptocurrency, a unit of value that exists and pays off within the ecosystem of a particular business model. 

And that’s kind of the work that Rob Wilson and the team at Incent are working on. 

Rob has a fascinating story, and the way his own life experience lead him to explore other ways of the way we run things is something I found truly inspiring. 

Big thanks to my buddy Jaxon for making this conversation happen. 

I hope you enjoy this conversation with Rob Wilson 

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I know a lot of people listening will be heading to Byron Bay for Splendour in The Grass - an annual music festival which is coming up on 20 years of gigs - and in honour of that yearly pilgrimage which so many music lovers make, Today's guest is one of the founders of Splendour in the Grass, and indeed one of the founders of Homebake before that - the one and only Jess Ducrou. 

She’s an incredible woman to listen to, and she has some excellent things to say about what it takes to make a safe event, what it takes to make a great event and some powerful words as well about pill testing.

She’s an inspirational person to listen to and I am so excited she’s on the show this week. 

I hope you get a lot out of this chat. 

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First up - you may know I like to ride bikes.

Bikes are freedom machines. Freedom from your physical location, freedom from a sedentary life and for me, freedom from unhelpful thinking - I love to ride because it gets me from place to place, clears my head and helps my body and mind work well while I’m at it. 

I am not a competitive cyclist. 

However right now the biggest competition in world cycling is happening every night on the telly - the Tour De France is upon us.

And while every sport has dealt with it, it’s hard to find a sport where doping has been dealt with in a higher profile than Cycling. 

Bryan Fogel won an Oscar for his incredible Documentary Icarus - which you can watch on Netflix in between Stranger Things 3 episodes. 

He was also nominated for a BAFTA for the film - which is extraordinary. 

Bryan set out to make a film about what happens when an incredibly fast and fit amateur cyclist competes in the hardest non-professional race in the world clean, and then while doping - just like the pros were doing at the time. 

What happened next is something that ended up blowing the lid off of a systemic international doping system which had implications in no small part playing a role in the entire Russian national team being banned from participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

This is a conversation that’s about more than cycling, doping, and international espionage - this is also a conversation about holding fast to your truth, and what happens when you powerfully tell a story in an authentic way. 

And, if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like having to rent out your place on AirBNB to make the mortgage and then winning an Oscar a short time later - you’re about to find out. 

Bryan and I caught up over Skype from his place in LA, and I’m so grateful he took the time to do so.

I promise you this conversation will inspire you even you haven’t ridden a bike since you were a kid. 

I hope you get as much out of this as I did. 

Enjoy this conversation with Bryan Fogel.

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Lucy Bloom is a CEO, author, doula, and charity leader from Sydney Australia. 

She’s done just so much, it’s hard to put it all into one intro.

But what she shares in this conversation is an unflinching drive to make the world a better place - be it by teaching men how they can be present and supportive during the birth of their children, helping charities from Cambodia to Ethiopia provide better outcomes for mothers and children struggling in those communities, or inspiring others with her own story about how she overcame the adversity of a catastrophic motorcycle accident to go on to achieve all of these things - all of this as the mother of three kids - Lucy is an absolute powerhouse. 

The author of two books, Cheers To Childbirth and her latest Get the Girls Out. You can find out more about Lucy Bloom at thelucybloom.com @thelucybloom on twitter and IG. 

Just a word - this conversation does contain some pretty graphic descriptions of things that can go very wrong in childbirth where either mum or baby don’t make it.

But for now, come to our kitchen table at our apartment in Bronte, Sydney, for a cuppa and a chat with Lucy Bloom. 

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Damien Echols is an author, activist and ceremonial magician from the US, and he was one of the West Memphis Three. 

It was an incredibly famous case of the miscarriage of justice. 

Along with two others, Damien was falsely convicted of the murder of three eight year old boys.

There are plenty of documentaries and dramas that were made about the case - but if you’ve seen Making a Murderer it will get you close to what went on at the trial. 

Barely 18yrs old, Damien was sentenced to death and ended up spending 18 years and 78 days on death row. 

I’m 45 - so if you’re ten years either side of my age, you’ll remember seemingly every band you liked getting involved in the activism around getting these men out of jail. 

Which indeed ended up happening. 

In 2011 the men were released from Prison as part of a plea deal. 

Since then Damien has been adjusting to life back in the world, and writing many books - his latest : High Magick: A Guide to the Spiritual Practices That Saved My Life on Death Row

You know me - I like to do the work. 

And while what worked for Damien isn’t exactly something I’d try in a hurry - it worked, and brought him peace and deliverance from the crushing mental load of waking up every day wondering if today’s going to be your day to die. 

Two things about this conversation - 

Go with it. 

While what Damien talks about, is an evangelist for and practices every day might not be for you - I got a lot out of hearing how it worked for him and it made me think about how I might double down on my own daily work and ritual that helps me get through the day. 

And secondly - we connected via Skype from far, far away. 

Sometimes not everything works as well as it could. 

I do have redundancies when I record, just in case - and thankfully in this instance, I had one because the original feed from my mic got lost in the netherworld. 

So, while Damien was talking to me over the phone, you’ll hear me as if I’m also on the phone. 

I apologies for that, sorry it’s not the greatest audio quality from my end - but I’d rather bring it to you as it was than re-record my bits and not remain authentic to the conversation. 

Also - a massive thank you to Rachel Barrett (elfymama on the gram) my producer who managed to track Damien down for this conversation. She’s the best there is, and we are thrilled that we were able to get Damien on the show. 

So - while I normally invite you to come to my kitchen table and enjoy a chat with one of my guests - today I’ll invite you to jump on a conference call with you, me and Damien Echols.  

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