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.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Jan 14, 2021 • 12min
Season 3 Announcement
Climate change, collapse, sarcasm, and silliness are still on the menu, but we've got a special theme for the third season of Crazy Town: hidden drivers that have pushed humanity into overshoot. Catch up with Jason, Rob, and Asher as they explain the architecture of the upcoming season, and look for new episodes to drop in March.Support the show
Sep 15, 2020 • 38min
Bonus: Green Dreamer with Jason Bradford
Kamea Chayne is the host of Green Dreamer, an excellent podcast that features interviews with thought leaders about ecology, sustainability, and wellbeing. In this episode, Kamea's thought leader is our very own Jason Bradford, cohost of Crazy Town and author of the report The Future Is Rural. Jason explains his systemic perspective on energy, food systems, resilience, and the future of human society.Support the show
Aug 11, 2020 • 1h 4min
Bonus: The Practical Stoic with Richard Heinberg
Simon Drew is the host of The Practical Stoic, an outstanding podcast that explores philosophy and the human predicament. In this episode, Simon invites Richard Heinberg, senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, for a lively and wide-ranging conversation about consumerism, sustainability, and the coming corrections across society.Support the show
Jul 14, 2020 • 1h 33min
Bonus: Decolonizing the Mind with Sherri Mitchell
PCI Executive Director Asher Miller speaks with Sherri Mitchell (Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset) on the long history of colonization and conquest -- upon which our legal, religious, and educational structures continue to be based -- and how the coronavirus pandemic and the growing recognition of white privilege present a unique opportunity to decolonize our society, minds, and hearts. Sherri Mitchell is a lawyer, educator, writer, speaker, and organizer who has been actively involved with Indigenous rights and environmental justice work for more than 25 years.Support the show
Jun 18, 2020 • 48min
Tis but a Scratch: the Insanity of Getting the Economy "Back to Normal"
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 business as usual was already chopping the limbs off of planetary life-support systems and unjustly drawing blood from people in need all over the world. In the season finale of Crazy Town during this upside down year of 2020, it's only fitting that a return to "normal" actually means a return to "crazy." For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
Jun 11, 2020 • 22min
A Time to Speak up, but Also a Time to Shut up: White Privilege and Systemic Racism
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 racism and white privilege. This is a short episode, because, although it's important to speak up, it's also important for white people to shut up and listen. As is customary in Crazy Town, we consider inequality and racism using the lenses of systems thinking and resilience science. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
May 28, 2020 • 46min
Mailbag: Dark Humor and Sustainability from Listeners around the World
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 repurposing, and community resilience, all while keeping a good sense of humor. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
May 21, 2020 • 54min
Breaking the Brady Vase: Coronavirus and Fault Lines in American Politics
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 episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
May 14, 2020 • 39min
Poked by a Porcupine: the Politics of Contraction as We Encounter the Limits to Growth
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 contraction and bureaucratic breakdown. While expressing a profound desire to retain the progress humanity has made on numerous fronts (don't sleep on 21st-century dentistry), they make sure to insult one another just enough for proper ego containment. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
May 11, 2020 • 44min
Doors and Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Reimagining Lifeboat Ethics in the Age of Overshoot
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 lifeboat ethics and find prosocial ways to manage humanity's shared crises. Bonus: find out what to do if you should find that the soles of your feet have fallen off. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show
