The Bitcoin Standard Podcast

In this episode Saifedean talks to Jeff Davidson, Executive Director at Saylor Academy, about how online learning is disrupting traditional education. Jeff describes why he became interested in education and how he came to partner with Michael Saylor on developing Saylor Academy into one of the world’s leading online learning platforms. They discuss the limitations of traditional university education, why government involvement in education has led to bureaucratization and stifled innovation, and how Jeff expects universities to change in the decades ahead.

Related links:

• Khan Academy – a nonprofit with the mission to provide free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.m for building skills with courses, certificates, and degrees online from world-class universities and companies.
• Coursera – a platform for building skills with courses, certificates, and degrees online from world-class universities and companies.
• Saylor Academy Open Textbooks – these books are available for everyone to use, keep, revise, and share under open licenses.
• Saylor Academy Mobile App – for browsing courses on the go, downloading materials for offline access, checking your grades, receiving course notifications on your mobile device.
• Georgia Tech, Udacity and AT&T partnership – offering an online Master’s degree in computer science – the first of its kind delivered through a MOOC platform.
• edX – massive open online course (MOOC) provider created by Harvard and MIT.
• Google & Coursera partnership – Google Professional Certificates for the job-ready skills needed to launch a career in IT Support, Data Analytics, UX Design or Project Management.
• AWS Educate – Amazon platform with access to content developed to skill up for cloud careers in growing fields. AWS Educate also connects companies hiring for cloud skills to qualified student job seekers with the AWS Educate Job Board.

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

In this episode Saifedean continues his discussion on homeschooling and fiat education with Daniel Prince. They touch on whether homeschooling is just for the wealthy elite, what a forgotten 1917 book can tell us about the true purpose of state education, and why – when all costs are considered – private education and homeschooling are more cost-effective than state alternatives. To hear the first part of this conversation, check out episode #76 of The Bitcoin Standard Seminar.

Related links:

• Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall Project (1999, New Delhi)
• Daniel’s book Choose Life on Amazon
• The Six Purposes of Schooling by John Taylor Gatto
• John Taylor Gatto’s book
• Principles of Secondary Education by Alexander James Inglis
• The Open Society and its Enemies by Karl Popper
• Goodhart’s Law on Wikipedia
• The Cost-effectiveness of Public and Private Schools of Choice in Wisconsin paper by Corey A. DeAngelis
• Corey A. DeAngelis on Twitter
• Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity?— the most popular TED talk of all time

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

In this episode Saifedean talks to Daniel Prince – author of the book Choose Life and host of the Once BITten! podcast – about homeschooling. Daniel describes his experiences travelling around the world and homeschooling his four children, what he learnt along the way and how to avoid some common mistakes. He and Saifedean discuss the arguments in favour of non-traditional forms of education – drawing on the ideas of thinkers such as Ken Robinson, Naomi Fisher and Peter Gray – and why this can help children become more creative and sociable. Daniel also shares a range practical tips and online resources for parents thinking about homeschooling.

Related links:

• Daniel’s book Choose Life on Amazon
• Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity?— the most popular TED talk of all time
• Naomi Fisher’s book Changing Our Minds
• Naomi Fisher appearance on the Once BITten! podcast with Daniel Prince
• Galileo online platform for self-directed education
• ECON103: Principles of Austrian Economics I on Saylor.org
• Plato quote on compulsion in education. See The Republic, Chapter 7
• Peter Gray’s book Free to Learn
• Peter Gray’s appearance on Daniel’s podcast
• Peter Gray talks about Sudbury Valley School
• Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admission Scandal on Netflix
• Class Dismissed, movie by Jeremy Stuart
• Self Taught, movie by Jeremy Stuart
• Homeschooling Summit interviews
• Online events Daniel is hosting on Galileo
• InspirED resources on language learning recommended by Daniel

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

Saifedean is delighted to be offering a free introductory course on Austrian economics through Saylor.org, Michael Saylor's free online university. In this Twitter Spaces discussion, Michael and Saifedean discuss the course content, how the Austrian School’s approach to economics differs from the mainstream, and why it is best to study economics in the Austrian tradition. They also discuss the incredibly successful model of Saylor.org. The platform has registered almost a million students, offers more than 100 courses, and is offering students a chance to complete a university degree for free.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

In this episode Saifedean talks to Paul Saladino MD about meat eating and his book The Carnivore Code. They begin by discussing how transitioning from a vegan to a carnivore diet helped Paul to cure his eczema and why he now recommends others do the same. They cover why toxins are present in many commonly-eaten plants, what Paul learnt from studying the eating habits of the Hazda tribe, and whether fruit and honey have a place in a predominantly meat-based diet. They end by talking about the limits of methods used by researchers to come to conclusions about diet and why epidemiology represents a poor way of forming reliable conclusions about cause and effect.

Related links:

• The Carnivore Code on Amazon
• Paper introducing the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis written by Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler
• The Social Leap: The New Evolutionary Science of Who We Are, Where We Come From, and What Makes Us Happy
• Wikipedia page on Peters’s elephantnose fish
• Wikipedia page on the psychology of eating meat
• Paul hanging out with the Hadza tribe
• Weston Price’s book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

 Visit saifedean.com/meat to find out more about Saifedean’s experience following the carnivore diet. 

In this episode Saifedean talks about popular misconceptions regarding scientific progress, focusing on aviation as a case study. He describes how the Wright brothers invented the first airplane in 1903 despite claims from scientific authorities of the time that human flight was impossible, and how commercial aircraft capabilities started to decline after the 1970s. Drawing on insights from the work of Terence Kealey, Saifedean describes how many other historical inventions – such as those of Thomas Newcomen and James Watt – were the result of tinkering and practitioner trial and error rather academic study. The podcast ends with a discussion of why the initial treatment of the Wright brothers has parallels with the treatment of bitcoiners today.

Related links:

• Graphs showing trends since the US went off the gold standard in 1971
• Encyclopedia Britannica article on Concorde
• Saifedean’s thread on trusting “the science” and technological decline in aviation
• Saifedean’s paper “Slowdown: Aviation and Modernity’s Lost Dynamism”
• Paul Graham on Twitter
• Graphic showing technologies invented under a non-inflationary gold standard
• The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey. The discussion of Thomas Newcomen starts from page 63 and on saifedean.com in Arabic
• The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science by Robert K. Murton and Elinor Barber

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

In this episode Saifedean talks to software developer and author Gigi. They start by talking about Gigi’s book 21 Lessons: What I've Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole, and why Gigi’s most important lesson is “you will not change bitcoin, but bitcoin will change you”. They move on to discuss the relationship between bitcoin and time. They cover how bitcoin solved the problem of reaching decentralized agreement on time and how bitcoin, as an unparalleled savings technology, serves to lower human time preference. The Q&A touches on topics such as the mind-boggling security of the SHA256 cryptographic hash function and threats to bitcoin’s future.

Related links:

• Gigi’s book, 21 Lessons: What I’ve Learned from Falling Down the Bitcoin Rabbit Hole
• Bitcoin is Time
• “Bitcoin derangement syndrome” explained by Urban Dictionary
• For more discussion on Nassim Taleb see Episode #53: Allen Farrington’s Adventures with Fiat Intellectuals
• Video recommended by Gigi on how hard SHA256 would be to crack
• Gigi’s personal website
• Gigi’s article: “Dear Family, Dear Friends, A letter to all of you who still have no bitcoin” on Medium, and on saifedean.com in Arabic
• Ludwig von Mises’ discussion of how the expensiveness of gold production is “the minor evil” compared to the inflations caused by easy money
• Follow Gigi on Twitter 

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

Saifedean appearance on The Human Action podcast, hosted by Jeff Deist, President of Mises Institute. Quoted from the original description:

Saifedean Ammous, famous for The Bitcoin Standard, has a remarkable new book detailing the effects of fiat money on virtually every aspect of society. In the tradition of Guido Hülsmann's The Ethics of Money Production, Ammous returns with The Fiat Standard. From a framework of Austrian economics, this book explains the sordid history of central banks severing currencies from gold redemption—both to finance war and enjoy the political benefits of default. But it also considers the far-ranging effects of inflation on civilization: as time preference increases, everything gets worse.  Education, food, architecture, family, and science all suffer, as inflation makes us live today at the expense of tomorrow.

On the 50th anniversary of Nixon's gold shock, The Fiat Standard is an amazing explication of how the West fell to its current state. You don't want to miss this show, especially Saifedean's epic takedown of fiat academia at the end!

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/

In this episode Saifedean talks to bitcoin developer and author Jimmy Song about programming and Jimmy’s new book Thank God for Bitcoin, which explores bitcoin from a Christian perspective. They discuss how Jimmy’s Python coding skills helped him to get a job at a bitcoin company in 2013, and what benefits learning to code can bring to bitcoiners. In their discussion of Thank God for Bitcoin they cover how money affects our morality and time preference. They tackle questions such as whether it is ethical to go into debt, whether Western civilisation started to decline after going off the gold standard, and whether Karl Marx was inspired by the character of the devil in Goethe’s Faust.

Related links:

• The Little Bitcoin Book
• Mises Institute article on Nicole Oresme
• The Ethics of Money Production by Guido Holsman. Reference to “reverse transubstantiation” is made on pages 162-164
• The Bitcoin Standard Podcast episode with Harris Irfan
• Fiat Fuels chapter of The Fiat Standard, passage on per capita energy consumption
• Website with metrics on economic and social changes that have taken place since the Nixon shock
• Saifedean Ammous’ 2017 paper on technological regression in the aviation industry including, Federation Aeronautique Internationale world flight speed records
• Jeffery Tucker: article on dishwasher
• Edward Gibbon: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire including the five signs of civilizational decay
• The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival by Sir John Bagot Glubb
• The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration

Enjoyed this episode? You can take part in podcast seminars, access Saifedean’s courses and read chapters of his forthcoming books by becoming a Saifedean.com member. Find out more here.

THE BITCOIN STANDARD TOOLKIT/SPONSORS

NYDIG - https://nydig.com

Cyphersafe - https://cyphersafe.io/ 

OKCoin - https://okcoin.com/

Nodl - https://www.nodl.it/

Coldcard - https://coldcardwallet.com/

CoinBits App - https://coinbitsapp.com/