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PODCAST

Crazy Town

Post Carbon Institute

With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves. Each fortnightly episode helps you understand the “Great Unraveling” of our environmental and social systems and describes how we can make the transition to a sustainable and equitable world. If you’re someone who questions the trajectory of society and struggles to understand why most

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All Episodes

62:32

Feedback Loops and Climate Catastrophe, or... the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/06/09

Did you ever think a baseball melee could effectively explain nuanced topics like cybernetics and systems dynamics? This episode examines the fascinating world of positive feedback loops, which play an outsized role in the not-so-positive phenomena of climate change, biodiversity loss, and political polarization. In addition to basebrawls, you’ll hear how these feedback loops produce a variety of outcomes, from the mundane (e.g., restaurant acoustics and family squabbles) to the horrendous (e.g.,

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83:01

Net Energy and Sustainability, or… the Story of the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/06/02

All of humanity's feats, whether a record-setting deadlift by the world's strongest man or the construction of a gleaming city by a technologically advanced economy, originate from a single hidden source: positive net energy. Having surplus energy in the form of thirteen pounds of food per day enables a very big man, Hafthor Bjornsson, to lift very big objects. Similarly, having surplus energy in the form of fossil fuel enables very big societies to build and trade very big piles of stuff

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62:13

Overproduction of Elites and Political Upheaval,...

Crazy Town ·

2021/05/26

Imagine a factory assembly line running at full steam, but instead of spitting out car parts or plastic trinkets, the conveyor belt is loaded down with Jeff Bezos wannabes. That's a disconcerting image, but an accurate picture of what's happening: society is producing too many elite people, and their decisions are causing extreme inequality, which is one of the key components of today's sustainability crisis. Join Asher, Rob, and Jason as they struggle with elite words and phrases

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79:40

Runaway Money and Overconsumption, or... the Story of...

Crazy Town ·

2021/05/19

Way back when money consisted of iron pieces, if you wanted to buy a horse or some spices to season your horse meat, you practically had to carry an olympic weightlifting set with you. Early bankers figured out how to clear that obstacle (and prevent a lot of hernias and back injuries) when they invented paper money. Over time all-too-clever financiers cleared more and more obstacles that kept people from accessing and spending money. Today’s world of online purchases, easy credit, and

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74:57

The Attention Economy and Nature Depletion, or… the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/05/12

There's an insidious feature of modern life: as the economy and technology continue to grow, attention becomes ever more scarce. Nowadays footage from Russian dash cams and the latest "wisdom" issued on social media by people who are good at kicking balls compete to grab our attention and suck up our time. This state of affairs could be laughed off except that it keeps most people from focusing on climate change and other existential crises of the 21st century. If all goes well, by

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86:05

Nature Detachment and Ecocide, or... the Story of the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/05/05

Velcro pants and legs. Booster rockets and spacecraft. Humans and nature. What do these three pairs have in common? They're all things that are detached from one another. That's right, we modern humans seem hellbent on detaching ourselves from nature, despite the obvious fact that we evolved to spend our days and nights in natural habitats. The more we wall ourselves off from nature, the more likely we are to continue on the path of climate chaos and extinction. Join Asher, Rob, and Jason

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80:18

The Myth of Progress and Limits to Growth, or... the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/04/28

Who in their right mind is against the idea of progress? You'd be hard-pressed to find a candidate for public office with a platform of maintaining the status quo or regressing to days of yore (as bad as the Democratic and Republican Parties are, there's no support for a Yesteryear Party). But what, exactly, is progress, and is humanity preordained to achieve it? What if the modern concept of progress costs more than it's worth and turns out to be a harmful myth? Join Asher, Rob, and

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73:41

Complexity and Armageddon, or… the Story of the Hemp...

Crazy Town ·

2021/04/21

Society has become so complex that all the complexity begets more complexity. And if that’s not complex enough for you, jobs have become so specialized that hardly anyone knows how anything is made or works. Join Jason, Rob, and Asher as they contemplate how to make a microphone from scratch, break down the tertiary jobs in a pirate economy (parrot tenders and eyepatch makers), and explain the Lloyd Dobler hypothesis. They also explore a conundrum: even though the industrialized economy is bumping

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64:58

Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or... the...

Crazy Town ·

2021/04/14

An argument between economists is usually as exciting as reading the phone book (what's that?), especially about something as boring-sounding as the discount rate. But it's an argument that underlies how governments and businesses solve (or don't solve) climate change. So, literally life and death stuff. Jason, Rob, and Asher explore why the discount rate, and discounting the future more broadly, is so deadly important, and why the number 0 is what our kids and grandkids deserve. In

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69:02

Conspiracy Theories and Collapse, or… the Story of...

Crazy Town ·

2021/04/07

First things first, we try not to confuse ourselves or our listeners as we distinguish between conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies. Then we unpack a bunch of questions about why people (even some of the smart ones) are so easily suckered by conspiracy theories. Are we experiencing a spike in conspiracy theories akin to the days of the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials? What's the role of science and technology in spreading such theories? Have lizard people infiltrated the government

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36:12

Self Domestication and Overshoot, or… the Story of...

Crazy Town ·

2021/03/31

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57:03

Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of...

Crazy Town ·

2021/03/24

What can we learn about death from the X-Men, small screaming rodents, and unwitting college students in psychology experiments? It turns out that the fear of death (or death anxiety) affects human behavior in all sorts of surprising and deeply troubling ways. Especially disconcerting is the way such fear entices people to cling to cultural beliefs so tightly that they will attack anything or anyone they perceive as a threat to their beliefs. And extra-super-duper disconcerting is how unaware most

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0:57

Crazy Town Trailer

Crazy Town ·

2021/03/17

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47:29

Relative Status and Environmental Breakdown, or......

Crazy Town ·

2021/03/17

How can the climate disaster and humanity’s overall sustainability crisis be explained by 80s sitcom characters, birdbrained hats from the late 1800s, and a dubious new use for scratch-and-sniff technology? Go for a ride to discover the hidden driver of status-seeking behavior. You can always expect a topsy-turvy, twisty-turny journey when Jason, Rob, and Asher dissect the downsides of human nature. Along the way, they tour status-signaling show-offs, the historic meeting between the Yankton Sioux

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57:10

Cognitive Bias and Global Warming, or... the Story of...

Crazy Town ·

2021/03/10

If only we were as rational as we think we are! It turns out that we’re all subject to cognitive biases, those errors in thinking that influence how we process the complex information we encounter in daily life. Jason, Rob, and Asher take a tour of ice cream shops, Scandanavian DMVs, and the chess team to explain such cognitive biases as the Dunning-Kruger effect, confirmation bias, default effect, and sunk cost bias. Listen as your hosts try to overcome their own biases and uncover how human

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12:01

Season 3 Announcement

Crazy Town ·

2021/01/14

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38:02

Bonus: Green Dreamer with Jason Bradford

Crazy Town ·

2020/09/15

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64:18

Bonus: The Practical Stoic with Richard Heinberg

Crazy Town ·

2020/08/11

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93:20

Bonus: Decolonizing the Mind with Sherri Mitchell

Crazy Town ·

2020/07/14

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48:28

Tis but a Scratch: the Insanity of Getting the...

Crazy Town ·

2020/06/18

You know you're in for a bumpy ride when societal institutions start behaving like the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In one of the most famous comedic movie scenes of all time, the delusional knight believes he can keep fighting ("It's just a flesh wound.") as geysers of blood spurt from his severed limbs. Similarly communities, corporations, and entire nations are clamoring for a return to normal after months of corona-induced quarantines, even though

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152 results

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