Podcast
Radio Detox
Hosted by Heather Larson · EN
Radio Detox brings the artists & builders in the Bitcoin + Nostr space directly to you.
13episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Some New Music This Week!
2w ago00:56:01Tap to summarizeHeather opens with zap shoutouts from the week. Sara Jade sent 700 sats after hearing her song on the previous episode. Shadrach sent 323 sats with a comment on the NosVegas Bitcoin figures and San Diego Music Awards episode. OpenMike sent 3,333. Shoutouts also to Sir Libre, Annonymal, Matt Finley, Tumbleweed, Henrik Flyman, Tree Ducks, and P@T. Heather also issues a correction from the Helene episode. The title referenced BMI but should have said EMI. Haleen caught it and Heather is setting the record straight. P@T left a comment on the Helene episode about paying for music rights versus paying performers and Heather digs into it, ultimately concluding he is probably agreeing with her point. The broader discussion covers how monthly streaming subscriptions do not actually trickle down to pay artists, with Sara Jade's line quoted: she has made more money complaining about Spotify than she has ever made on Spotify. This week's songs: Who’s Garden by Zazawowow* Cherry Cherry by Right Said Fred New song from Haleen: “I Can Still Smile” Paradox by Zhaklina Waves by Charley T (to keep with the chill vibe this week) Blunt Knife - the latest from Ivy Lumi! My Frined Jimi - Telling Lies (trending on both Fountain & Wavlake) Ryan Zak “Movement 6: Awakening” and it’s almost 18 minutes long! Heather closes with her ongoing argument that songs have gotten shorter since Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard in 1971, that commercial stop sets on radio are now longer than the songs themselves, and that a Bitcoin standard would bring long songs back. Sats sent during songs go to the artists. 10% of Radio Detox proceeds go to HRF for supporting the Bitcoin & Nostr ecosystem. *The song that opens this episode is actually "Who's Garden?" from Zazawowow, not EP, but there seems to be a Fountain bug about this.
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May 8: 4 Songs to Know, NosVegas Bitcoin Figures, & San Diego Music Awards Winner Sara Jade!
3w ago00:21:51Tap to summarizeA quick one this week to highlight the songs, artists, apps, and movement! Right Said Fred - Lord Have Mercy Best Pop Song: Sara Jade, “Hippies Raised a Cowgirl” https://archive.ph/20260507172119/https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/05/06/san-diego-music-awards-2026-announces-27-winners-surpasses-1-million-in-fundraising/#selection-2525.0-2530.0 Zazawowwow with Webfivefourthreetwoone is #1 today on Wavlake! I missed this one from Ollie, "This That." Now, for the Nos Vegas breakdown! Tunestr says, "Nos Vegas artists received 2,581,496 sats on April 28 at @thebitcoinconf side event." https://ditto.pub/nevent1qgstn5pvhr7aavv3wq0vqeywxlk376hm5f37qps0cpsfnf3g28f9upqqyqj9nc2pv0h0skkjx3e0drmncryy8h2swl5l8dkdtzjvylqng85jvelshp4 Join me on Ditto Music: https://ditto-creators-program.shakespeare.wtf/
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Post Vegas Vibes & San Diego Music Awards
May 200:37:39Tap to summarizeRecap of Vegas! NosVegas was great, thanks to Francis Mars at Pubpay.me, great artits like Abel James, Sara Jade, Noa Gruman, and the Higher Low! Maxi Madness was performed in Vegas by Noa Gruman Tuesday night! Here’s her ONLY Bitcoin circular economy song. https://fountain.fm/album/KuRBmoy28vylkRK8Cluo Abel James performed some new music, Sara Jade is also working on new stuff. Shoutout to Richard Greaser for coming to the party. And can’t forget The Higher Low! The Higher Low - Welcome to the Dawn The 35th annual San Diego Music Awards will be held on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 at Humphreys by the Bay. Country singer-songwriter Lissa Dee is a multi-year nominee at the San Diego Music Awards (SDMA). For the upcoming 35th annual ceremony on May 6, 2026, she is nominated for Best Country or Americana Song for her track "Chasing Whiskey with Whiskey.” Find Lissa Dee on Wavelake: https://wavlake.com/lissa-dee Miranda Ramos is nominated for Best Country or Americana Song, find her on Wavlake: https://wavlake.com/miranda-ramos Monica Larrea is a San Diego-based singer-songwriter nominated for a Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Song award at the 35th Annual San Diego Music Awards (2026) for her song "Mental”. Here is Brilliant Sun, you can find on Fountain: https://fountain.fm/artist/W3p6W0vjTaaVuFCNaTuX Jessie is nominated for Best Pop Artist! Let’s hear her on rainbows (i saw her in green) ft. Sara JadeJessie Lark . Find her on Wavlake & Fountain: https://fountain.fm/artist/W8VUm7b4qNds2TVO2gcB Sara Jade is nominated for Best Pop Song for Hippies Raised a Cowgirl, find her on Fountain and Wavlake: https://fountain.fm/artist/TYD62gCR67EYFScibWB8 Let’s hear the nominated song, Hippies Raised a Cowgirl! Shoutout to Dion Wilson, who’s started Bitcoin for the Arts, a 501(c)3 non-profit: https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org/ For musicians who publish music to Nostr, go to: https://ditto.pub/music To learn more from me about Ditto Music: https://ditto-creators-program.shakespeare.wtf/ See the 2026 San Diego Music Awards nominees: https://www.sandiegomusicawards.com/nominees/ *Noa Gruman gets a 20% split in this episode since she has only 1 song in the Bitcoin circular economy at present and because I love how she shared her insights with me Sunday night at the Women in Bitcoin Bash!
Transcribe →Haleen Said NO to BMI
Apr 2501:04:50Tap to summarizeRadio Detox: Haleen on Nostr, Ivy Lumi, and Music as Vibration Heather sits down with Ashna and Kathleen of Haleen, the ambient duo first introduced to Radio Detox by Seth from Zap Cooking. Seven months on Nostr and everything changed. They talk about rebuilding their studio, mastering Ivy Lumi's new single, and why no traditional music platform has ever been designed with the artist in mind. We also getting into why they said no to a deal with BMI. In This Episode Haleen turned down a BMI deal years ago and never looked back. They sold their studio gear to survive. By the time they found Bitcoin and then Nostr, the dream was nearly over. Seven months in, they have more real connections than in all the years before combined. Ivy Lumi found them through that network. Now they are mastering her album. Heather brings her yoga teacher perspective to the conversation. ASCAP and BMI will come after a five-person yoga studio for playing music on a speaker. Fountain and Wavlake let yoga teachers pay artists directly and cut the PROs out entirely. That is the pitch she is taking to every yoga teacher she knows. Ashna played support for Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Whitesnake in a past heavy metal life. The music changed when the energy did. Now it is ambient, healing, and still making people cry at live shows for entirely different reasons. Chapters (for the video version) 00:00 Haleen Is Here 01:45 Mastering Ivy Lumi's Blunt Knife 03:00 Seven Months on Nostr Changed Everything 05:14 Music That Wakes Something Up in You 07:00 Yoga Teachers and the Music Rights Problem 13:00 How Haleen Found Bitcoin and Nostr 16:00 Turning Down BMI 17:30 Selling the Studio to Survive 22:00 Nostr Is Made for Humans 27:00 SoundCloud Took Their Streams and Paid Nothing 28:00 No Platform Is Built for the Artist 32:00 Post Once, Show Up Everywhere 36:00 Explaining Sats to People Who Think Bitcoin Is $77,000 39:00 Ashna's Heavy Metal Past 41:00 AC/DC at 13 Changed Everything 47:00 Geyser Helped Rebuild the Studio 48:30 Kathleen Is Back and New Music Is Coming 49:00 Bitcoin Film Festival Warsaw 50:00 Seeing Haleen Live Is on the Bucket List
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The Contra-versy About AI Slop: How a Father-Son Duo Creates with Logic
Apr 1800:43:15Tap to summarizeContra is a military veteran, Bitcoiner, Nostr philosopher, and the creative force behind a father-son music project. This conversation covers his Bitcoin origin story, why military veterans seem to take to Bitcoin and Nostr like a mission, and the real story behind his music that a lot of people consider to be AI slop. Contra found Bitcoin in 2016 through a military training class that touched on dark web operations and technology. His first instinct was pyramid scheme. The class instructor reframed it as dollar cost averaging and the rest is history. Nostr came next, around late 2022 or early 2023. On why military veterans seem to gravitate toward Bitcoin and Nostr: the mission-oriented mindset, the tight community, the shared sense that no one is coming to save you and that it is time to take matters into your own hands. The music. Contra has a soon-to-be 19-year-old son who has played drums since childhood, picked up every instrument in the house, and has been learning Logic Pro for years. They sit down together, his son starts with guitar or drums, they record and clip pieces in Logic Pro, find a consistent voice for the album, and build it out from there. It is a father-son project about two and a half to three years in the making. The AI component is used to enhance, not replace. His son is the musician. Contra is the music fan who showed up. The Geyser Fund for their music exists because his son asked a fair question: what am I getting out of this? All zaps and sats from Wavlake and Nostr go directly to his son. Contra keeps none of it. On what Contra wants to see more of in Nostr: better onboarding, more people understanding they do not own their audience on legacy platforms, and bringing back the randomness of the internet. He floated the idea of coordinated comment section raids into Bitcoin Twitter to pull people toward Nostr. He wants more people awake, not more followers. On the difference between Nostr and Twitter engagement: on Twitter a post can get thousands of views with zero real interaction. On Nostr someone is actually going to respond. That realness is the whole point. Find Contra on Nostr. Find Heather at ditto.pub. Support independent music at wavlake.com and fountain.fm. https://ditto.pub/reformedsaint@zaps.lol https://ditto.pub/heather@nostrplebs.com https://ditto.pub/ https://soapbox.pub/blog/ditto-updates-april-2026
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Emergency Episode: My Reaction to the Live Nation / TicketMaster Court Case
Apr 1600:38:00Tap to summarizeIt's a loooong rip and I'm riffin' hard, y'all. Getting excited because the American legal system has come down (finally) on big corporations misses the point. We've built an alternate system that can work for artists and fans. And we need your participation in it. Or else Corporations and Big Tech™ will KEEP WINNING. You want the artists & fans to win, don't you? You don't want indie music and the economy it upholds to die, do you? You'd rather pay for music with BTC than keep paying endless subscriptions that benefit big CEOs instead of your local artists, venues, and economy, right? In this rip, I'm talking about: The government breaking up monopolies is a good start but won't return power to artists or fans \ The real fix is already built: a Bitcoin and Nostr-based music ecosystem that lets fans pay artists directly with no middlemen, no fees, no algorithms, no censorship \ How it works: fans send sats (Bitcoin) directly to artists through the Lightning Network, artist receives it instantly, splits it however they want, no Stripe, no banks, no waiting \ What a zap is: a direct Bitcoin tip from fan to artist inside any Nostr app \ ditto.pub is the on-ramp: post music, build community, can't be deplatformed, no ID required, no subscription fees, no ads \ Other apps in the ecosystem worth downloading: Fountain (fountain.fm), Wavlake (wavlake.com), Primal, Nostr on the web: Tunestr (tunestr.io) \ Sarah Jade earned $700 in 30 minutes playing original music at a small Phoenix show with fewer than two dozen people in the room, plus online viewers zapping from Tunestr \ Matthias McIntyre posted daily violin videos on Nostr all of August, grew to 400 followers fast, earned directly from fans across multiple apps \ Joe Martin example: Heather can watch him play in London from Phoenix and send him money in real time via Lightning \ Call to musicians: get on ditto.pub, post your music, ask questions, give feedback on what doesn't work \ Call to Bitcoiners: stop making excuses, the parallel music system exists, your 21 sat zap on Fountain or Wavlake actually moves the needle unlike a million Spotify streams \ NosVegas is Tuesday April 28, 7pm to 1am, We All Scream at 517 Fremont Street, $21 tickets: https://nosvegas.shakespeare.wtf/ \\\ Talks first, then live music from Sarah Jade, Abel James, The Higher Low, at least one surprise guest, then DJ Tatum Turnup \ Stream the show live at tunestr.io if you can't be there in person
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Radio Detox: Full Metal Bitcoin
Apr 1101:24:55Tap to summarizeAnnonymal is a six-piece heavy metal band whose members are completely anonymous. No names, no faces, no location. By day they are Bitcoin journalists. By night they are the band giving Bitcoin its metal soundtrack, and they made a deliberate choice: they say heavy metal is the only genre built for what Bitcoin is. This episode gets into how a journalist asks "how can I be scarce?" and ends up writing songs that open with the Genesis block. Annonymal and Heather talk about why metal is the correct soundtrack for a money that is anti-establishment by design, how MTV deliberately dropped rock and metal to defang a generation of critical thinkers, and why Bitcoin fixed something in them that journalism, protest, and social work could not. They also get into the attention economy, what it takes for original music to survive the AI era, why they put their first album only on Wavlake, and what killswitch.gov.exe means. Find Annonymal on Wavlake and Fountain. Follow them on Nostr and search the hashtag #HornsUpforSatoshi. Annonymal's first full album is on Wavlake. Their second album, killswitch.gov.exe, is in production. A live show recording of approximately 40 minutes is coming soon. Their Geyser Fund campaign to raise $7,000 for the second album did not reach its goal. They are recording it anyway. Their songs include As Government Dies, War Strategy, The Arrow of Time, and The Soul Behind the Mask, which is written in first person as Satoshi. They recently released a cover of Megadeth's In My Darkest Hour. Before Bitcoin, they were afraid of losing their income and being poor. They describe themselves as still poor but no longer afraid. They reference the scene in V for Vendetta where Evey walks out into the rain with nothing left to fear. That is where Bitcoin took them. Not to wealth. To clarity. Follow Heather on Nostr: https://ditto.pub/heather@nostrplebs.com Follow Annonymal on Nostr: https://ditto.pub/anonnymal@primal.net Join Nostr on Ditto: https://ditto.pub/
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Joe Martin: Alone in Valentine & the Broken Music Industry
Apr 301:20:05Tap to summarizeYour weekly dose of fiat & Big Tech™ detox is back with UK singer-songwriter Joe Martin, one of the most recognized artists in the value-for-value music space. Joe just wrapped a whirlwind US trip: three weeks in Nashville to record his new album, a stop in Valentine, Texas, to shoot album artwork and music videos, and a songwriter round at Bitcoin Park with Ainsley Costello. His new album, Alone in Valentine, drops April 17. Singles are already out on all streaming platforms and on Wavlake and Fountain ahead of the release. Vinyl and CDs are available now at joemartinmusic.com. This episode covers the real business of being an indie artist in 2026 and why the music industry needs the value-for-value model so musicians can thrive. Joe and Heather get into the barriers to adoption: clunky terminology, broken UX, the regulatory walls that block fiat-to-sats on-ramps, and what it actually feels like when a musician wakes up to find their entire catalog deleted off Spotify with no recourse. They also get into what could change everything, including Joe's idea for a Tidal and Cash App integration that could bring Lightning payments to a mainstream audience overnight. Joe's origin story: he found Fountain through a podcast about Lightning, figured out RSS feeds by trial and error, uploaded a song, tagged a few Bitcoiners on Twitter, and made the equivalent of $80 in two days. Sam Means from Wavlake reached out shortly after. He has been in the ecosystem since around 2022 and got into Bitcoin through The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean Ammous, whom he later met and thanked in person at the Plan B conference in El Salvador. The conversation gets honest. The tech is not sticky enough. The onboarding is too hard. Artists are already overwhelmed, and another platform added to the pile is a tough sell. The terminology like value for value, lightning, sats, & decentralized, is not landing. Joe says it needs to just work, display balances in fiat, and abstract away every layer of complexity. Heather talks about why the messaging keeps failing and what a real on-ramp would actually require. Joe also breaks down the state of live music after watching a Luke Combs tribute act sell out a thousand-seat venue at £28 a ticket, 150 shows a year. He did the math on the tour gross. Meanwhile original artists split the remaining crumbs. The only way back, he says, is to disintermediate the monopolies. He is still in it. He just wants more people to care. Alone in Valentine is out April 17. Northern UK tour in April, southern UK tour in September. Physical copies including vinyl at joemartinmusic.com. joemartinmusic.com fountain.fm wavlake.com ditto.pub 00:00 Joe Martin - Hand Me Down Heart 3:07 Intro and welcome 00:56 Nashville recording sessions and Valentine, Texas 02:37 Joe as a live artist and the UK tour breakdown 04:35 Alone in Valentine: album title and release date 05:41 The story behind the song and the Uber driver in Nashville 10:04 How Joe found Fountain and Wavlake 11:12 Joe Martin - Alone In Valentine 15:00 Joe was a Bitcoiner first 17:06 The Bitcoin Standard and meeting Saifedean in El Salvador 20:31 Why the UX needs to be radically simpler 22:07 What Ditto is and where it fits 24:31 When a friend's entire catalog gets wiped off Spotify overnight 28:14 The fiat bridge problem and the regulatory walls that block it 33:00 The thousand true fans model as the only path forward 36:13 Tribute acts are winning while original artists fight over crumbs 40:00 Why the messaging keeps failing and what might actually work 44:16 IP ownership: who decides how music is used 49:28 An honest look at why the tech is not sticky enough yet 51:23 It should just work 57:37 Shared cultural moments, the Thriller premiere, and the fragmentation of music 01:01:00 Support your local artists 01:13:13 The Tidal and Cash App idea that could change everything 01:15:30 Joe's Fountain radio takeover experiment 01:16:21 The chicken and egg problem 01:17:00 Joe Martin - Backseat Driver
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Radio Detox with M.K. Fain: The Internet You Actually Want
Mar 2800:45:52Tap to summarizeDitto.pub is live! MK Fain, co-founder of Soapbox Technology and one of the engineers behind Ditto, joins Heather Larson to pull back the curtain on what Ditto is, where it came from, and where it is going. This is not a Twitter alternative. It is not another app asking you to learn a new protocol. It is the fun, customizable, personality-driven internet that most people stopped believing was still possible. (In full disclosure, Heather works for M.K. at Soapbox). The new Ditto strips out the Twitter-style text notes by default. What you see when you arrive is video, photos, music, and creative content. This was a deliberate choice. MK makes the case that Nostr has done itself a disservice by producing seventeen Twitter clones. Ditto is done with that. If you're sick of mainstream platforms but have never found an alternative worth staying on, Ditto is for you. Remember MySpace? Custom themes, custom fonts, the ability to upload a photo and turn it into a profile background, avatar frames, Blinkies, all of it. It's BACK! And we're just getting started. The direction MK is pointing toward is a future where the Edit in Shakespeare button on Ditto means users can build any feature they want themselves rather than waiting for the dev team to add it. On AI: M.K. breaks down what open source actually means for models. Training data, weights, and the ability to run it locally are three separate bars. Something can be fully open and still require a billion-dollar data center to run. The distinction between open models and open tools matters. Shakespeare works with any model, open or closed, and the tool itself is open so you can see exactly what it is doing. Get on Ditto at ditto.pub. Make it yours. Chapters 00:01 Intro and M.K. Fain Background 00:40 Soapbox History: Fediverse, Mostr Bridge, and the Move to Nostr 02:52 Spinster, Hen House, and Building Feminist Spaces Online 05:00 The Original Ditto: Bridging Fediverse and Nostr 06:11 Why the Old Ditto Did Not Work 06:29 Ditto 2: Built for Everyone 08:50 Bringing Whimsy Back: MySpace Energy and Custom Themes 12:02 The Indie Web, Blinkies, NeoCities, and Vibe Coding 14:23 Ditto Gives You Indie Web Freedom Without Needing to Code 17:25 Why People Are Skeptical of Free Open Platforms 18:27 What Open Source AI Actually Means: Weights, Data, and Local Models 20:06 Anthropic Said No to the Pentagon 20:19 Should You Learn to Code in 2026? 24:10 Kids Understand Ditto Immediately 25:41 The Knitting Analogy: Code for the Love of It or Do Not Bother 28:59 Knowing What to Prompt Is the New Skill 31:26 Early User Feedback on Ditto 2 32:39 The Edit in Shakespeare Button and What It Means for the Future 33:59 Nostr Is Not a Twitter Alternative and Ditto Is Done Pretending It Is 35:20 The New Ditto Landing Page: No Notes, Just the Good Stuff 37:30 TikTok: Great Algorithm, Dystopian Everything Else 41:25 Do Not Say Nostr in the Marketing 43:06 Zapvertising and Why People Still Do Not Get It 45:14 The Bitcoin and Zaps Strategy: Wait Until They Want to Buy Something 46:15 In-Game Currency and Why Zaps Win 48:48 Soapbox Live Teaser and Where to Find Ditto Links Ditto: https://ditto.pub Soapbox Technology: https://soapbox.pub Shakespeare AI Builder: https://shakespeare.diy Listen on Fountain: https://fountain.fm
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Radio Detox Artist Takeover in DC: David Tarr
Mar 2100:57:12Tap to summarizeThis one is different! Heather Larson's Radio Detox went live at Pubkey in Washington DC for the inaugural RUNSTR 5K on March 15, 2026, and singer-songwriter David Tarr took over as emcee for a full day of music, conversation, and community. A new music platform launched in the room, EpochMusic.xyz! Three young women made the case for Bitcoin better than most people twice their age. 🔥 Thank you, Ella Hough, Ainsley Costello, and Kathryn! And David Tarr debuted his new EP the day he dropped it. 🚀 LFG! Listen to hear how Bitcoiners are using peer-to-peer payments and new technology (including vibe coding) to fight the greedy music industry by making their own lane. If you have ever wondered what this community actually feels like in person, this is the episode that shows you. LINKS RUNSTR: runstr.app Epoch Music: epochmusic.xyz Wavlake: wavlake.comFountain: fountain.fmBitcoin District: bitcoindistrict.orgHuman Rights Foundation: hrf.org Pubkey DC: pubkey.bar Radio Detox is released every Friday around 7pm Arizona time. Support with boosts and zaps on Fountain, Podverse, or any Podcasting 2.0 app.
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