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 people would rather eat nachos on the deck of the “SS Denial” than face reality, you’ll find community and plenty of laughs in Crazy Town.
Brought to you by https://www.resilience.org/ and the unconventional minds at Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit think tank that builds awareness of the polycrisis and prescribes community resilience-building as the most appropriate response.
Your hosts:
Asher Miller - Nonprofit executive director by day, apocalypse comedian by night. Feels most at home exploring insanity-inducing topics while trying not to spill coffee on his keyboard as he convulses over the latest ecomodernist fantasy. In danger of losing his mind every time he encounters someone using a gas-powered blower to move leaves from one spot to another.
Rob Dietz - Jack-of-all-trades environmental scientist, conservation biologist, and ecological economist with a penchant for relating planetary overshoot to the catalog of movie scenes that play on a continuous loop in his colonized brain. Known for inserting random ecological facts into casual conversation, often in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice. His friends call him “pessimistically hilarious.”
Jason Bradford - Activist farmer and former encyclopedia salesman with a PhD in plant ecology who gets genuinely excited discussing soil microbes and societal collapse in the same breath. Morally opposed to doomsday prepping, but predisposed toward sharing everything he keeps in his bunker, er root cellar, including potatoes, wine, and a 47-month supply of scientific esoterica and embarrassing anecdotes.
These guys are the Three Stooges of sustainability podcasting, although they tend toward scientific analysis, righteous outrage, and self-deprecation rather than beating each other up with hand tools. How can they have this much fun while contemplating collapse and navigating the Great Unraveling?
Heartfelt thanks to the team at Post Carbon Institute, our volunteers, and all our fellow Crazy Townies out there who help bring this podcast to life.
Brought to you by https://www.resilience.org/ and the unconventional minds at Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit think tank that builds awareness of the polycrisis and prescribes community resilience-building as the most appropriate response.
Your hosts:
Asher Miller - Nonprofit executive director by day, apocalypse comedian by night. Feels most at home exploring insanity-inducing topics while trying not to spill coffee on his keyboard as he convulses over the latest ecomodernist fantasy. In danger of losing his mind every time he encounters someone using a gas-powered blower to move leaves from one spot to another.
Rob Dietz - Jack-of-all-trades environmental scientist, conservation biologist, and ecological economist with a penchant for relating planetary overshoot to the catalog of movie scenes that play on a continuous loop in his colonized brain. Known for inserting random ecological facts into casual conversation, often in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice. His friends call him “pessimistically hilarious.”
Jason Bradford - Activist farmer and former encyclopedia salesman with a PhD in plant ecology who gets genuinely excited discussing soil microbes and societal collapse in the same breath. Morally opposed to doomsday prepping, but predisposed toward sharing everything he keeps in his bunker, er root cellar, including potatoes, wine, and a 47-month supply of scientific esoterica and embarrassing anecdotes.
These guys are the Three Stooges of sustainability podcasting, although they tend toward scientific analysis, righteous outrage, and self-deprecation rather than beating each other up with hand tools. How can they have this much fun while contemplating collapse and navigating the Great Unraveling?
Heartfelt thanks to the team at Post Carbon Institute, our volunteers, and all our fellow Crazy Townies out there who help bring this podcast to life.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 3, 2025 • 37min
Toasting Bread Is WAY Harder Than You Think: The Challenges of a Renewable Energy Future
What does a livable future look like 100 years from now? If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the old fossil-fueled, drill-baby-drill mentality?Alex Leff of the Human Nature Odyssey podcast hosts this special Crazy Town highlights compilation. Alex revisits some of the most thought-provoking moments from Crazy Town, weaving in new commentary and context. Together, we explore energy literacy, the promises and pitfalls of a renewable-energy transition, and why toasting a simple slice of bread is much harder than you might think.Along the way, we meet an Olympic athlete trying to toast bread with nothing but a bicycle. We also step inside a billionaire’s latest invention—a time-travel device designed to fling us one hundred years into the future.Stay tuned for Part 2, where we take the full leap into the time machine and imagine what life a century from now could really look like in a post high-energy future.Sources/Links/Notes:The Toaster Challenge, Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?, 2015Tom Murphy, Galactic-Scale Energy, Do the Math, 2011.Tom Murphy, Limits to Economic Growth, Nature Physics, August, 2022.Solar Freakin' Roadways, Indiegogo, 2014Human Nature Odyssey podcastRelated episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 3 "1.21 Jigawatts: Energy Literacy and the Real Scoop on Fossil Fuels"Episode 5 "Solar Freakin' Roadways: How Technological Optimism Undermines Sustainability"Episode 106 "Blinded by the Light - Facing Reality with Renewable Energy"ADDITIONAL MUSICModified version of "Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" by Strauss, from classicals.de — licensed under CC BY 4.0
Nov 19, 2025 • 52min
Worried about the Future? Join the Club
There’s the book club, the Rotary Club, the Mickey Mouse Club, and the club sandwich. Whatever your preference, you might want to think about joining a club. Social clubs, fraternal orders, and the like have had a storied and critical role in public life. That is, until government programs and technology gave us an out from having to deal with each other. But with modernity failing, will clubs and community organizations make a huge comeback? In this episode we explore club life – past, present, and future, if there is one. Originally recorded on 11/6/25.Sources/Links/Notes:Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Simon & Schuster, 2000.John Michael Greer, "Secret Handshakes," The Archdruid Report, January 21, 2010.Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 65, "Why the Polycrisis Is a Statistical Anomaly: The Willful Delusions of the World’s Leading Pseudointellectual"
Nov 5, 2025 • 51min
Searching for the Golden Toad with Kyle and Trevor Ritland
Frog and Toad Are Friends, at least according to a venerable children’s book. And so are Jason (Crazy Town’s resident biology nerd) and conservationist brothers, Kyle and Trevor Ritland, authors of The Golden Toad: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species. The three eco-explorers connect over wondrous habitats and critters in Costa Rica's cloud forest and swap stories that cover Lazarus species, global pandemics, self-taught naturalists, birding, and even pregnancy tests. Spliced into the nostalgia and stories are reflections on how to cope in a world where biodiversity is declining and how to regain the connections that modernity has severed between humanity and wild nature. Originally recorded on 10/9/25.Sources/Links/Notes:Kyle and Trevor Ritland, The Golden Toad: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species, Diversion Books, 2025.Adventure Term, Kyle and Trevor's nonprofit experiential learning initiativeRelated episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 40, "Nature Detachment and Ecocide, or… the Story of the Marauding Mountain Lion"Episode 49, "A Day at the Zoo Is No Walk in the Park: Humanity’s Overexploitation of Animals and Nature"
Oct 22, 2025 • 57min
Unsung Heroes: Sustainability Gurus Who Influenced the Crazy Town Worldview
Some key understandings in Crazy Town: the Earth is finite; the economy cannot grow forever; people can harm ecosystems and cause global warming; physics, chemistry, and biology are real; inequality hurts everyone; healthy humans need community, and it’s more fun to laugh than to cry. But where did principles like these originate? In this episode, Jason, Asher, and Rob use the format of a fantasy football draft to pick the pundits who most influenced their thinking on sustainability, resilience, community, science, economics, and politics. Like starry-eyed fanboys (but hopefully a bit more articulate) they gush over their heroes and tell behind-the-scenes stories about how they came to be influenced. And they ask listeners to share their top picks for influencers (in the best sense of the term). Originally recorded on 9/29/25. Visit Crazy Town on the web.
Oct 8, 2025 • 45min
Burned by Billionaires, with Chuck Collins
Billionaires. They should be objects of scorn rather than envy. While they ride around in their super-yachts and private jets, producing the climate-damaging pollution of entire nations, they’re doing things to extract even more wealth, harm your health, diminish democracy, and rig the whole system in their favor. How did this happen? Why do we tolerate it? How can we stop the billionaires? And can we get a hold of our own super-yacht for Crazy Town pleasure cruises? Chuck Collins returns to Crazy Town to offer insights from his new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet. Originally recorded on 10/3/25.Sources/Links/Notes:Chuck Collins, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, The New Press, October 2025.Chuck Collins, Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good, Chelsea Green Publishing, September 2016.Chuck Collins, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, Polity, January 2022.Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 10, "Tackling Inequality, One Pair of Lederhosen at a Time"Episode 43, "Overproduction of Elites and Political Upheaval, or... the Story of Rich People Doing Stupid Things"
Sep 24, 2025 • 59min
Crazy Town Classics - Maximum Power and Scarcity, or... the Story of the Birdbrained Backhoe on the Beach
The “maximum power principle” may sound like the doctrine of an evil supervillain, but it actually applies to all living creatures. The principle states that biological systems organize to increase power whenever constraints allow. Given the way humans adhere to this principle, especially by overexploiting fossil fuels, we often do behave like supervillains, wielding power in wildly irresponsible ways and triggering climate change, biodiversity loss, and other aspects of our sustainability predicament. Sometimes it seems like we’re using a backhoe to dig our own grave. Fortunately, once you understand efficiency and its different flavors, you can see opportunities to optimize power rather than maximize it. While considering the outlook for humanity, the Crazy Townies ponder a weird question: are we smarter than reindeer? Richard Heinberg, author of Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, joins the team to share his research on how people can optimize power. Originally recorded on May 6, 2021.Sources/Links/Notes:Richard Heinberg’s book is Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival.John DeLong’s definition of the maximum power principle is that biological systems organize to increase power whenever the system constraints allow.DeLong also wrote: “The maximum power principle predicts the outcomes of two-species competition experiments“.Statistics on the Bagger 293 bucket-wheel excavatorDams powered airplane and ship building in the Pacific Northwest (Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams).The cross-Atlantic sailing voyage of Greta ThunbergShort comic with the story of reindeer on St. Matthew IslandEpisode of the Radiolab podcast with a wild story about mTORSupport the show
Sep 10, 2025 • 36min
Et Tu, Bhutan? Cryptocurrency and Late-Stage Capitalism
Explore Bhutan's radical departure from traditional capitalism with its Gross National Happiness philosophy. Discover how Bhutan's embrace of Bitcoin reveals the pitfalls of techno-capitalism. The hosts debate the environmental costs of crypto mining and reflect on the irony of consumerism. They then search for positive global examples, like Nunavut's Inuit self-governance and Wales' well-being legislation. Ultimately, the discussion highlights the importance of prioritizing well-being over profit in our economic systems.
Aug 27, 2025 • 1h 3min
Artifacts of Collapse: Touring the Crazy Town Museum
In this episode we travel in time to the year 2125, to visit the Crazy Town museum, which showcases today’s world of wanton consumption and profligate waste. How will humans in 2125 – if there are any of us left – judge the things everyone sees as normal today? Jason, Rob, and Asher take turns serving as expert curators of this future museum, nominating items that best encapsulate how foolish and environmentally ruinous our priorities are. At the end we call on you, dear listener, to share what you would include in the museum.Originally recorded on 7/11/25. Visit Crazy Town on the web.(Spoiler Alert) View Artifacts in the Museum:Sportscar hopping from skyscraper to skyscraper (from the movie Furious 7)"Ronnie Fieg Has Mastered The Art Of Collecting" in Haute MagazineEcho PB-9010T backpack leaf blowerSoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, CaliforniaRonald Reagan’s 1985 inaugural addressBarbie Pool Party PlaysetThe world's biggest landfill in Las Vegas, NevadaThe world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean Icon of the SeasJimmy Dean blueberry pancakes and sausage on a stickSupport the show
Aug 13, 2025 • 1h 27min
Crazy Town Classics - Net Energy and Sustainability, or… the Story of the Overstuffed Strongman
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. Maybe Hafthor has a rock-solid plan for keeping his dinner plate well stocked, but no society seems ready to have a mature conversation about how our sprawling cities and nations will manage as net energy declines. Calling our conversation “mature” might be a stretch, but at least we’re willing to address climate change, sustainability, and the rest of the net energy conundrum head on. Alice Friedemann, author of Life after Fossil Fuels, joins the conversation. Originally recorded on April 10, 2021.Support the show
Jul 30, 2025 • 53min
Just One Word: Microplastics, with Matt Simon
Put on your best polyester pants, grab a bunch of gleaming mylar balloons, and crack open a case of bottled water. In today's episode, we're entering the plastic world of plastic pollution in all its glorious plasticity. We're on the hunt for microplastics – and we won’t have to go very far, as they're present everywhere – in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in our bodies. We'll be looking for systemic solutions and talking with Matt Simon, author of the book A Poison Like No Other. Originally recorded on 7/10/25. Visit Crazy Town on the web.Sources/Links/Notes:Matt Simon, A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, Island Press, October 27, 2022.Katie Okamoto, "Microplastics Are Everywhere. Here’s How to Avoid Eating Them." New York Times, April 21, 2025.Ocean Cleanup (large organization with a popular, but frustrating, ecomodernist approach to plastic pollution).Jen Fela, "Global Plastics Treaty Delayed, but Not Defeated," Earth Island Journal, December 11, 2024.Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 84, "Escaping Technologyism"Support the show
