Episode 6.08 Are you crypto crazy? Bitcoin: The Firstborn

How does Bitcoin work? Is it really worth anything, or could its value fall to zero? Why would ‘value investor’ Warren Buffet refuse a deal to buy all the Bitcoin in the world – for just $25?

Watch Warren Buffet’s full argument against Bitcoin here.

Episode 6.06 Where’s My Crypto Gone…? Don’t Panic!

My producer, Josh, just lost his shirt on a cryptocurrency known as $LUNA. Should we be prepared to lose everything when we speculate? And how can anyone focus on the long-term in the middle of a wild roller-coaster of a ride?

Read more about what happened to $LUNA and the $UST stablecoin it backed in this article from the Australian Financial Review…

Episode 6.05 Briefing: Feeding the Feed

The pandemic has produced numerous supply chain issues, some impairing our ability to manufacture fertiliser. Could this mean we won’t be able to grow all the food we need?

Read the article from Bloomberg Quint that inspired this briefing.

Read this article from ABC about how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could spark a food crisis.

Episode 6.03 2022 Predictions: We ask the experts

We turn to the experts – Jason Calacanis, Sally Dominguez, Ramez Naam, Drew Smith, Mark Jeffrey and Tony Parisi – to learn their predictions for the future of work, sustainable energy, transportation, cryptocurrencies and the metaverse.

Episode 6.02 – 2022 Predictions: I’m a Futurist, not a psychic!

At the start of 2021 I made four big predictions for the year about digital currencies, the transition to a sustainable economy, geopolitics and social media. How did I score? (Hint: I got to grade myself.)

Episode 6.01 – New and Improved Futures!

A new series, a new podcast production partner – and a new theme: WORLDCHANGING, bringing together amazing talent, tools, and a driving need change the world in this decade! We’re bringing you WORLDCHANGING stories in series 6 of The Next Billion Seconds.

Have a look at Saul Griffith’s amazing new book, The Big Switch: Australia’s electric future

And – if you use Microsoft Windows – you can have a play with that early metaverse software that Tony Parisi and I wrote, nearly 30 years ago – just go here.

SUSTAIN #6: What three changes can we make to effortlessly lower our carbon emissions?

We worry that doing ‘the right thing’ for the climate will be hard yards. Three simple, easy changes show us how much we can do – and how empowered we already are to fix this problem.

Here’s the New York Times reporting on the rains in Greenland.

A recent survey of 16-25 year olds reveals the majority feel ‘doomed’ because of climate change.

Our World in Data visualises an ugly truth: Australians emit more carbon per person than almost everyone else.

What to do?

CHOICE shows you how to identify and switch over to a renewable electricity generator. Switching to a renewable electricity generator does more to lower your carbon emissions than any other single act. Let’s do this!

SUSTAIN #5: Can we radically reduce the emissions created growing our food?

Growing the meat we eat produces a lot of Australia’s carbon emissions. The four innovations explored in this episode – Rob Kinley’s amazing seaweed, George Peppou’s vat-grown meats, Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin’s vertical farms, and Nick Hazell’s plant-based ‘meats’ – show us a path toward an agriculture that can be radically more efficient.

SUSTAIN #4: Would electrifying everything eliminate carbon emissions?

Inventor Saul Griffith has a radical proposal: electrify everything, saving energy, money, and cutting emissions almost to zero. It simultaneouisly transforms the costs of climate change into enormous opportunities. Co-host Sally Dominguez explores three amazing new battery technologies.

A must-read companion to SUSTAIN:

Saul Griffith’s forthcoming book ELECTRIFY is, well, an electrifying read that makes the clear, and obvious case that electrifying everything (coupled with renewable generation) is the win-win solution for the planet and our economy. Pre-order it here.

Sally Dominguez loves sodium-ion batteries, and here’s a report about why they may come to rival the dominant Lithium-ion batteries we use today…

Sally and I both love ‘structural batteries’ – they’ll allow us to store electricity pretty much everywhere, in pretty much everything. Read about them here.

SUSTAIN #3: Can we collect and store enough renewable energy to replace coal-fired electricity?

In 2020, renewables became the cheapest source of electricity – and frequent guest Ramez Naam brings us all the stats about this fully underway transition to solar and wind power. But without cheap storage, renewables will never be able to be the entire solution for a world that looks to need a lot more electricity. Australian startup MGA Thermal may have invented the ideal technology to accelerate our transition from coal to solar.

Read this article about how much wind energy the USA added to the grid in 2020 (a record!)

Here’s a Techcrunch article about MGA Thermal getting backed by Australian VCs Main Sequence – and their power station trial in Switzerland.

And finally, here’s a story about the day that solar generation (briefly) eclipsed generation by coal-fired plants in Australia’s winter!