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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

science earth sciences

All Episodes

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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21:58

A Time to Speak up, but Also a Time to Shut up: White...

Crazy Town ·

2020/06/11

We had planned to record and release our season finale this week, but felt compelled to address the unfolding battle over police violence and systemic racism in our country which has come to a boil with the murder of George Floyd. Is there anything crazier than the people in our towns, who are sworn to protect and serve, instead coldly taking the lives of our neighbors? Given this moment in American history marked by outrage, sadness, and massive protest, we discuss the need to address institutional

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45:39

Mailbag: Dark Humor and Sustainability from Listeners...

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/28

Heathens, kooks, and fertilizer for corn and bean fields: these are a few of the names applied to your humble hosts here in Crazy Town. We set ourselves up for abuse in this special mailbag episode, and our listeners didn't disappoint. Despite the occasional (and well deserved) insult, we love our listeners and find them to be some of the most intelligent, caring, and committed people in the world. Learn how they're working toward sustainable transportation, healthy farms, infrastructure

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53:41

Breaking the Brady Vase: Coronavirus and Fault Lines...

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/21

Besides lessons in ethics (and in Asher's case, lessons in the English language), the Brady Bunch offers up a metaphor about the fault lines in American politics -- fault lines that include the undermining of government, extreme individualism, race and class divides, and capitalist and corporate excesses. Blood pressures soar, especially when Jason contemplates the Dunning-Kruger effect, but your intrepid hosts release the tension by suggesting some pathways out of political malaise. For

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38:42

Poked by a Porcupine: the Politics of Contraction as...

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/14

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 short period of expansionism, and what of our values must be kept or discarded as we enter a new era of

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43:45

Doors and Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Reimagining...

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/11

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 search of better ideas and better leadership, Asher, Rob, and Jason discuss how we can reinvent

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45:53

Koala Butts Ablaze: Growth, Conservation, and...

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/07

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 it can be applied to the modern world. By the end of the tour, besides having a useful lens for

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5:02

Announcement: Luciferian Mailbag Call

Crazy Town ·

2020/05/04

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38:01

Banana Town: Where Michael Moore Stokes Controversy...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/30

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 of ecofascism and doing all they can to avoid addressing the film’s legitimate questions about population

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164 results

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