Crazy Town

Before you heap praise on someone's cooking, even for something as delicious as porcupine pot pie, you might want to consider the effects of ego inflation and the downsides of a hyper-individualistic culture. In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason wonder if individualism (not to mention all those other "-isms"... capitalism, socialism, communism) is simply the product of a relatively...

As we continue heading toward planetary disaster, like the Titanic steaming toward its rendezvous with a big freakin' iceberg, we might want to figure out how to prepare and manage our lifeboats. In environmentalism’s seedy past, a famous ecologist used the metaphor of lifeboats getting swamped to argue for a "screw the poor and non-whites" strategy to deal with the limits to growth...

In the disorienting days of corona quarantine, wouldn't it be dope to have a model that can help you make sense of the world? Enter the adaptive cycle from the field of systems ecology -- arguably the most important framework you never heard of. Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they give a guided tour of the growth, conservation, collapse, and reorganization phases of the cycle, and hash out how...

We want to hear your Crazy Town stories and questions. Please send email to crazytown@postcarbon.org, and if your message strikes the right chord (kinda like the voicemail we dissect in this announcement), we'll discuss it in our upcoming mailbag episode. Support the show

Paying attention to the buzz around Planet of the Humans , the new film by Michael Moore, is like standing in the middle of a three-ring circus. In ring #1 are the filmmakers, who raise critical questions about how renewable sources can power industrial society, but do so with questionable facts and mean-spirited attacks. In ring #2 are the left-wing enviros, who are barfing out lazy accusations o...

Some anthropologists argue that we're living in an anomalous historical period called High Energy Modernity, which will end sooner than we might like because of declining 'net energy.'  It's an era of contradictions in which we've acquired unbelievable technology but put it to some of the most frivolous uses. In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason ask themselves, "If...

We've seen a frightening rise in recent years of violence and violent rhetoric by so-called ecofascists, who use environmental and resource limits arguments to justify hateful views around immigration and population. But does that mean those of us who are concerned about ecological limits should keep our mouths shut? Rob, Jason, and Asher explore why squelching discussions about limits might...

In the last episode Asher, Rob, and Jason discussed the danger of political denial and delusion limiting how well we respond to the climate crisis. This week we address the risk that another "d"--distraction--will keep us from recognizing the huge threats and opportunities the pandemic presents for our energy future. The lads also take a few minutes to pat themselves on the back (virtual...

How much of a stretch is it to compare autoimmune disease to the politics of climate change? Let's just say your hosts at Crazy Town were able to do it without any need for medical intervention. In this episode, Asher, Rob, and Jason examine how both ends of the political spectrum are getting it wrong and propose how you can start a new conversation. And it doesn't even have to involve y...

If you ask a hundred people what they want to do about climate change or other crises in the age of overshoot, approximately zero of them will enthusiastically call for rationing. But is rationing all that bad? If your grocery store is out of toilet paper thanks to pandemic-induced hoarding, maybe not so much. And considering our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, maybe it's time to up the...

First of all, f*ck this virus. We don't want anyone to experience pain and suffering from coronavirus, but maybe there's a lesson to learn. In fact, even a simple story like Goldilocks and the Three Bears may have something valuable to teach us. Here at Crazy Town headquarters, we've been calling for pretty drastic changes to the economy to make it fair, resilient, and sustainable....

Asher goes for a deep dive in his interview with investigative journalist Nafeez Ahmed about how the novel coronavirus is rippling through the systems that make up modern society. To set the stage, they cover some heady territory, including Thomas Homer-Dixon’s “synchronous failure,” Joseph Tainter’s analysis of collapse and the diminishing marginal returns of complexity, C.S. Holling’s “adaptive...

Asher explains the changes to Crazy Town's schedule as we try to keep up with new developments during the coronavirus pandemic. Support the show

What do Scottish cod, rubber duckies, rock phosphate, and shipping containers have in common? They all ride the oceans in really big boats as part of the insanity of today’s global trade. Trade seems like it should be a simple thing. I give you something, you give me something else in return, and we’re both better off. But our capitalism-on-steroids society has converted the simple into a Rube Gol...

Coronavirus has put the kibosh on frivolous travel for the moment, but we might want to do some reflecting before returning to business as usual. Prior to the outbreak, you were constantly told to put on your traveling shoes, cue up some good music for a journey (no, not the band Journey), and pack your bags. As long as costs stay down, we can fly to any destination for any purpose. Is your third...

It’s easy to picture a group of social justice and environmental activists gathering in a circle. But these days, instead of holding hands and singing songs, they’re loading weapons and taking aim. Ahhhhh, the carnage! Why are progressives so eager to join a circular firing squad? Maybe this isn’t our best bet for solving climate change and the other wicked problems of the 21st century. Wouldn’t i...

Pop quiz! A friend of yours has just had an unfortunate chainsaw accident and cut a femoral artery: do you (a) make a tourniquet with your t-shirt, or (b) stick a Band-Aid on the wound? If you picked (b), congratulations! You've followed the instruction manual for humanity’s pathetic response to climate change. In this final episode of season 1, Asher, Rob, and Jason consider the psychology b...

Have you ever wondered how dolphins feel about quantitative easing? OK, probably not, but it is important to consider the effects that money and monetary policy have on the real world of energy, society, and the environment. Nate Hagens joins Asher, Rob, and Jason to discuss said dolphins, a never-ending Grateful Dead concert, and the prospects of two mature solar panels giving birth to a little b...

You know what drives Jason really crazy about auto traffic? No, it’s not the 42 hours per year that the average commuter wastes stuck in it or even the global warming pollution spewed, it’s the 3 BILLION (with a B people!) gallons of fuel that are wasted instead of helping with the transition of our food system. In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason talk about why fossil fuels are so embedded in...

Chuck Collins joins Asher, Rob, and Jason in Crazy Town to describe his startling journey from undercover trust fund kid to tireless campaigner for economic equality. Together they examine why Richie Rich, Donald Trump, Scrooge McDuck, and Jeff Bezos keep getting richer (hint: it might have something to do with the rigged economic system). And they discuss what it means to address inequality on a...

The threats of overshoot and climate chaos loom larger by the day, but it’s all going to work out just fine. At least that’s what you hear from starry-eyed techno-optimists, hemp enthusiasts, and the output of ultra-hypothetical computer models. The silver bullet could come from outer space (e.g., mining asteroids or colonizing other worlds), it could come from the sky (turning air into carbon-seq...

Did you know that we can lose half our food supply and it won’t matter? That’s because agriculture is only 3% of GDP, so there’s no need to worry about the effects of climate change on farming. Or so says the latest genius to win the Nobel Prize in economics. This “logic” is pretty darn disturbing on its own, but what happens when such muddled thinking comes to infest climate models? Besides causi...

What do we want our children to do in the waning days of the fossil fuel frenzy and the early days of climate chaos? Being a good parent is hard enough under the best of circumstances, but it’s really difficult to know how much we should expose our kids to the realities of environmental meltdown and social injustice. In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason explore what we could be teaching kids thes...

Apocalypse is upon us, at least in movies, television shows, books, and even podcasts. Teen characters in youth literature are more likely to solve their differences by bow-hunting one another rather than hugging it out in the school hallways. In this episode, Asher, Rob, and Jason search for reasons why the movie theater is so obsessed with Armageddon and the political theater offers empty promis...

We’re GOING to make the transition to renewable sources of energy. There is no scenario outside the dark mind of Dick Cheney where we continue to use depleting and polluting fossil fuels over the long run to power society. So how exactly are we going to make the transition? In this episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher talk about some of the magical “solutions” that are being peddled out on the streets o...