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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

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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40:14

Mayor McCheese & Modern Medicine: Squandering Energy...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/23

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 High Energy Modernity is on the way out, what will we miss most, and what will we be glad to see

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27:21

An Ecofascist and a Social Justice Warrior Walk into...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/20

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 actually backfire and fuel ecofascist views instead, while wrestling with some of the skeletons in the

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54:37

Foreclosing on the Frackers: Coronavirus and the...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/16

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 (virtually, of course) for how much recent episodes, though recorded before the %@#*$^ virus hit, apply to our

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33:00

Delusion to the Left, Denial to the Right, and the...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/09

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 your family disease history! Bonus: if you stay to the very end of the episode, you'll hear a

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35:52

I Can't Drive 35: the Politics of Rationing and its...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/06

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 ante and establish a rationing program for oil and other sources of energy. Drop the hoarding

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42:14

Coronavirus and the Three Bears: the Right-Sized...

Crazy Town ·

2020/04/02

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. But changes don't materialize just because you want them--usually you need a crisis to get people

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71:55

Our Naked Emperors Catch Coronavirus: How to Think...

Crazy Town ·

2020/03/30

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 cycle,” and Naomi Klein’s “shock doctrine.” With these frameworks of systems thinking in mind, they

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1:30

Announcement: Keeping up with Coronavirus

Crazy Town ·

2020/03/28

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39:07

The 10,000-Mile Cod, Insane Global Trade, and the...

Crazy Town ·

2020/03/26

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 Goldberg machine of criss-crossing cargo ships, vulnerable supply chains, and just-in-time delivery, all so

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34:44

The Long and Shart of Extreme Travel as Climate Chaos...

Crazy Town ·

2020/03/19

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 cousin’s niece performing in a school play in Omaha? Wanna see the Great Barrier Reef before climate

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