Season 1
Philip Charter: The Totally Human Writer
Alana Mediavilla: The Filmmaker Behind Dirty Coin
In this conversation, Bitcoin For The Arts founder Dion Wilson sits down with Philip Charter, the British author, editor, and ghostwriter behind Totally Human Writer, and the co-editor of 21 Futures, the world's first Bitcoin fiction anthology. Philip lives in Gran Canaria. He is the co-editor of 21 Futures: Tales from the Timechain, a collection of twenty-one stories from twenty-one authors including Knut Svanholm and Ioni Appelberg, released by Konsensus Network in 2023 and presented at Bitcoin Atlantis in 2024. He has published seven books, and his writing tips have earned over three million impressions on LinkedIn. His thesis has quietly made him one of the most influential communicators in the Bitcoin space: "We don't need more technical explanations. We need to get better at telling stories." IN THIS EPISODE: - Walking away from a London marketing career in 2011 and teaching English across three continents - The coaching client whose book about "something called Bitcoin" changed everything - Founding Totally Human Writer as the deliberate opposite of AI-generated content - Editing 21 Futures: Tales from the Timechain, the world's first Bitcoin fiction anthology - Working with Knut Svanholm, Ioni Appelberg, and Niko Laamanen to build the book - 21 Futures becoming an imprint of Konsensus Network in 2025 - Building the Gran Canaria Bitcoin community and the monthly "Proof of Walk" gatherings - Three million LinkedIn impressions on writing tips, and what content actually works for Bitcoin founders - Ghostwriting for Bitcoin leaders: what converts, what falls flat, and what founders keep getting wrong - Advice for creators and writers looking to enter the Bitcoin space professionally - What a $500 to $2,000 Bitcoin micro-grant from BFTA would unlock for the next 21 Futures project READ PHILIP'S WORK: Totally Human Writer: https://totallyhumanwriter.com Philip Charter: https://philipcharter.com 21 Futures: https://21futures.com ABOUT PHILIP CHARTER: British author, editor, and ghostwriter based in Gran Canaria. Founder of Totally Human Writer. Co-editor of 21 Futures: Tales from the Timechain, the world's first Bitcoin fiction anthology. Author of seven books. ABOUT BITCOIN FOR THE ARTS: 501(c)(3) nonprofit empowering artists with Bitcoin micro-grants, workshops, and education. The first nonprofit paying artists exclusively in Bitcoin. https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org Donate: https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org/donate Grants: https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org/grants/apply Substack: https://substack.com/@bitcoinforthearts Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/c--KiT8r8iI
In this two-hour conversation, Bitcoin For The Arts founder Dion Wilson sits down with Alana Mediavilla, the Puerto Rican filmmaker behind the award-winning documentary Dirty Coin and founder of Campo Libre in San Juan. Alana spent more than a decade inside Silicon Valley producing for Google, Apple, PayPal, Volkswagen, and Volvo, including four years as a video producer for Google Cloud. In 2020 she walked away, moved her family home to Puerto Rico, and built the most important documentary on Bitcoin mining ever made. Dirty Coin has since been screened in over 200 cities through a community-hosted distribution model and won Best National Documentary in Puerto Rico, the first English-language film ever to do so. This is the full story: a photographer father at Kodak, a Cuban mother whose family left Havana under Fidel, the personal sovereignty question that runs through every choice she has made since, and why the next decade of cinema belongs to the artists who control their own rails. IN THIS EPISODE: - Growing up in Puerto Rico with a Kodak photographer father - Half Cuban, half Puerto Rican: sovereignty as a verb, not a noun - The 2018 phone call from her Cuban grandfather that reframed Bitcoin as a family tool - Buying 3 BTC at $200 each, and finding out her husband had sold them at $600 - Leaving Google Cloud during the 2020 lockdown and moving three kids home to Puerto Rico - Becoming a Bitcoin-only maxi after watching neighbors get rug-pulled on the island - Why Dirty Coin had to exist: policymakers regulating math they did not understand - What Malawi taught her that Texas could not, and how mining unlocks stranded renewable energy - Grid balancing: why a Bitcoin miner can turn on and off 20 times a day and an AI data center cannot - Financing a documentary in Bitcoin, and the day a 40k BTC donation became 70k of production spend - Building trust with Cynthia Loomis, flare-gas operators, and communities burned by mainstream media - Community-hosted distribution: 500 screenings, 200 cities, aimed at meetup leaders - Node Runners: the documentary she is filming through 2027 for 2028 release - What a $500 to $2,000 Bitcoin micro-grant from BFTA would unlock for Node Runners WATCH DIRTY COIN or HOST A SCREENING: Kinema: https://kinema.com/films/dirty-coin-the-bitcoin-mining-documentary-46arp1 ABOUT ALANA MEDIAVILLA: Puerto Rican filmmaker, director and producer of Dirty Coin, founder of Campo Libre (San Juan). Mother of three. Currently filming Node Runners, her next documentary. ABOUT BITCOIN FOR THE ARTS: 501(c)(3) nonprofit empowering artists with Bitcoin micro-grants, workshops, and education. The first nonprofit paying artists exclusively in Bitcoin. https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org Donate: https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org/donate Grants: https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org/grants/apply Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/tw4Hl5EFm4w
Mississippi mother Lindey Magee never planned to become a Bitcoin author. In August 2024, her husband Chuck lost his battle with cancer after twenty-five years of marriage, leaving her a widow with two children and no traditional income. Twelve years earlier, her then-twelve-year-old son Bennett had tried to teach her about Bitcoin. In grief, that conversation came back. In this two-hour episode of Share Your Bitcoin Journey, Bitcoin For The Arts founder Dion Wilson sits down with Lindey Magee, author of the Seuss-style rhyming children's book Bitcoin: A Treasury to HODL, which debuted at Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas and is now in the Ingram catalog for nationwide bookstore, library, and school distribution. Lindey walks through her journey from grieving widow to Bitcoin advocate. She talks about the Holy Spirit conviction that led her to put Chuck's life insurance into Bitcoin, the New Year's Eve she sat down at her kitchen table and wrote most of the book by three in the morning, the offset print run of ten thousand copies she committed to on her own, and the thirty thousand dollars she has invested in the book while raising her teenage daughter on a Bitcoin standard, currently from inside a twenty-six foot Winnebago after mold destroyed their home. IN THIS EPISODE: (bullets follow — full list in the doc) ABOUT LINDEY MAGEE: Mississippi author, homeschool mom, medical freedom advocate, and Bitcoin evangelist. Author of Bitcoin: A Treasury to HODL. Widow of Chuck. Mother of Bennett and Palin. Buy the book: lindeymagee.com. X: @LindeyMagee. Nostr: Lindey Magee. ABOUT BITCOIN FOR THE ARTS: 501(c)(3) nonprofit empowering artists with Bitcoin micro-grants, workshops, and education. https://www.bitcoinforthearts.org