17 May 2026
TL;DR
In this Bitcoin And Revisited episode, I go back to my conversation with Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast, one of the people who helped push me over the edge into finally buying Bitcoin. We talked about permaculture, preparedness, systems thinking, edge effect, and why Bitcoiners should care about more than just the money
This episode is part of Bitcoin And Revisited, where I go back through the archives and rerun older interviews that still have something worth hearing today. And this one absolutely does. Jack Spirko was one of the people who finally got me to stop circling Bitcoin and actually buy some. I had heard about it, read about it, ignored it, heard about it again, and still did nothing. Then Jack basically said, “If you haven’t tried this thing yet, grab some, learn how to use it, and send me some.” So I did.
But this conversation was never just about Bitcoin. That is the whole point of Bitcoin And. I came to Bitcoin through the side door: permaculture, regenerative agriculture, aquaculture, preparedness, and systems thinking. Before I was hearing Bitcoiners talk about time horizons, fragility, anti-fragility, brittleness, and resilience, I had already been hearing those ideas from the permaculture world. Bitcoin didn’t feel like falling down a rabbit hole as much as walking through a looking glass. It was the same world reflected back at me from the other side.
Jack’s version of preparedness is also worth revisiting because it is not the cartoon version of bunker cospla with some guy stacking MREs and waiting for zombies. Jack’s preparedness is practical, boring in the best possible way, and rooted in redundancy. Food, water, shelter, energy, security, health, and sanitation. In other words: back up your life. Bitcoiners understand backing up a wallet. Jack’s argument is that you should apply the same thinking to everything else you depend on.
The permaculture side of this conversation is where things really start to connect. Jack describes permaculture as a systems-level design science, not just organic gardening with better branding. It is about designing human systems that work with nature instead of constantly fighting it. His own property in North Texas started as thin soil over limestone slab. Basically the kind of place where most people would throw up their hands and say nothing can grow. Jack looked at it differently. Trees, ducks, swales, chop-and-drop fertility, and patience turned that place into something alive.
That matters because permaculture forces humility. Nature gives feedback whether you want it or not. If weeds show up, they are not just “weeds.” They are information. They are the land telling you what is broken, missing, compacted, exposed, or out of balance. Most people see a patch of amaranth and reach for the mower or poison. Jack sees a repair crew. That is the difference between dominating land and learning to read it.
And then there is edge effect, which is the heart of this show. In ecology, edge effect describes the abundance that appears where two systems meet. Field and forest. Water and land. Bitcoin and permaculture. Bitcoin and podcasting. Bitcoin and preparedness. Jack makes the point that commerce itself is an edge. When two people voluntarily exchange value, abundance is created. When that value moves through Bitcoin, when it touches food production, podcasting, local resilience, or community, you get new edges that provide new possibilities.
That is why this conversation still holds up. Bitcoin is not supposed to be a sterile asset sitting in cold storage while everybody refreshes the price chart and argues online. It is supposed to rub up against the rest of life. Food. Land. Energy. Media. Education. Preparedness. Community. The good stuff happens at the edges
- Bitcoin And Revisited Jack Spirko
- Bitcoin and permaculture
- Bitcoin preparedness podcast
- Jack Spirko Survival Podcast interview
- Bitcoin resilience and systems thinking
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