Crazy Town
Post Carbon Institute: Sustainability, Climate, Collapse, and Dark Humor
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.
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Top 10 Crazy Town Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Crazy Town episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Crazy Town for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Crazy Town episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
04/02/25 • 69 min
Who knew that the breakthrough moment of AI sentience would come from interacting with an annoying neo-Luddite?
After failing to raise a single dollar for PCI’s newest initiative — the $350 billion Transdisciplinary Institute for Phalse Prophet Studies and Education (TIPPSE) — Jason, Rob, and Asher devise the only profitable pitch for raising capital: using AI technology to cure the loneliness that technology itself causes. The only problem is that AI chatbots won’t talk to us, as evidenced by Asher’s experience of being blocked by an AI “friend.” So Asher turns to the flesh-and-blood author of Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant, to discuss the rise of the neo-Luddite movement — the only people who might be able to stand your humble Crazy Town hosts.
Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter, and author. He is currently reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute and publishes his own newsletter, Blood in the Machine, which has the same title as his 2023 book. Previously, Brian was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a senior editor at Motherboard.
Originally recorded on 1/3/25 (warm-up conversation) and 3/24/25 (interview with Brian).
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Press Release announcing closure of TIPPSE
- Funding for Friend
- Screenshot of Asher’s conversation with Friend’s bot, Faith
- Lyrics to “Not Going to Mars” by Pyrrhon
- Brian Merchant’s Substack, Blood in the Machine
- Brian’s book, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
- New York Times article on the Luddite Club: “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes”
- Crazy Town Episode 72: Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The Climate Movement’s Desperate Dependence on Tenuous Technologies
- Brian’s essay in The Atlantic, “The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down”
02/03/25 • 53 min
Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and returning friend of Crazy Town, used to live in Altadena, California, where one of the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires struck on January 7th. Having learned that his former house had burned, Peter penned an emotional article for the New York Times about his family's decision to leave LA two years prior, out of safety concerns about frequent heat waves, drought, and just the sort of tragic conflagration that has reduced parts of LA to ashes. Get Peter's take on this historic wildfire, what nature is trying to teach us, and how to think about unnatural disasters now and in the future. Note: this interview was recorded on January 24, 2025.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Peter Kalmus’s article in the New York Times from January 10, 2025: “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles”
- Peter’s book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution
- News story about the huge Bobcat Fire that struck Los Angeles County in 2020
- Article in Science about the damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton
- Peter mentioned the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which relates vapor pressure to temperature.
FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.
05/10/23 • 82 min
Meet Mark Jacobson and David Keith, the leading techno-fixologists who overpromise overhyped “solutions” to the climate conundrum. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- The Solutions Project
- Carbon Engineering
- David W. Keith et al., "A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere," Joule, August 15, 2018.
- Christopher T. M. Clack et al., "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar," PNAS, June 19, 2017.
- Natanael Bolson, P. Prieto, and T. Patzek, "Capacity factors for electrical power generation from renewable and nonrenewable sources," PNAS, December 20, 2022.
- Simon Michaux's website
- Richard Heinberg, "Can Civilization Survive? These Studies Might Tell Us," Resilience, December 19, 2022.
- Average household electricity consumption
- David Fridley and Richard Heinberg, "Can Climate Change Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline?," Renewable Energy World, June 19, 2018.
- Mark Jacobson on Late Night with David Letterman
- James R. Martin, "Energy Transition & the Luxury Economy," Resilience, October 31, 2022.
- Yamina Saheb, Kai Kuhnhenn, and Juliane Schumacher, "It’s a Very Western Vision of the World," Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.
- Mark Z. Jacobson et al., "Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries," Energy & Environmental Science (2022).
- Nicole Jewell, "Leading Stanford climate scientist builds incredible net zero home, complete with Tesla Powerwall," In Habitat (2017).
- Raymond Pierrehumbert, "The trouble with geoengineers 'hacking the planet'," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2017).
Shotgunning Hedwig: The Dilemma of Invasives and the Bizarre Decision to Slaughter Barred Owls
Crazy Town
12/18/24 • 33 min
The US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to "manage" barred owls by shooting half a million of them over the next three decades. Jason, Rob, and Asher (along with the postal workers at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry) are upset about this plan for addressing the predicament of invasive species. Surely there's a finer tool than a double-barreled shotgun for conserving ecosystems and protecting the species that inhabit them.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Bill Lucia, "Plan Finalized to Kill Thousands of Barred Owls around Northwest," Washington State Standard, August 28, 2024.
- U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Final Barred Owl Management Strategy, August 2024.
- "Killing barred owls to save northern spotted owls: Rethinking American wildlife conservation," On Point, WBUR, 9/5/2024.
- Avram Hiller, Jay Odenbaugh, and Yasha Rohwer, "A Dystopian Effort Is Underway in the Pacific Northwest to Pick Ecological Winners and Losers," New York Times, August 8, 2024.
- Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, "Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program."
- Robert Dietz and Brian Czech, "Conservation Deficits for the Continental United States: an Ecosystem Gap Analysis," Conservation Biology, August 16, 2005.
- Tom Murphy, "Metastatic Modernity #12: Human Supremacy," Metastatic Modernity Video Series, August 9, 2024.
06/05/24 • 66 min
The forces of media, technology, and even the wiring of our own brains seem aligned to draw people toward extremism. But never fear: Asher, Jason, and Rob unpack why we're so susceptible to wackadoodle viewpoints and offer ways to tamp down extremist thinking and behavior in ourselves, our communities, and across society. Along the way, they tour the worlds of extreme sports, extreme politics, and extreme yogurt. They even question their own decidedly non-mainstream views on the environment and the economy.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Kevin Roose’s article in the New York Times “A QAnon ‘Digital Soldier’ Marches On, Undeterred by Theory’s Unraveling”Definition of extremism from the Anti-Defamation League
- Concepts of “malignant bonding” and “scarcity mind” in the article “Widening the ‘We’” by Colin Greer and Eric Laursen
- Zeynep Tufecki’s 2018 article in the New York Times “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer”
- Kari Paul’s 2021 article in the Guardian “‘It let white supremacists organize’: the toxic legacy of Facebook’s Groups”
- Peter D. Kvam et al., “Rational inference strategies and the genesis of polarization and extremism,” Nature, May 5, 2022.
- Statistics on rising levels of hate crime in the United States
- Statistics on domestic terrorism in the United States
- Statistics on antisemitism around the world
- Crazy Town episode 78, which includes the six questions Megan Phelps-Roper developed to challenge her entrenched beliefs.
- Rapoport’s Rules for constructive criticism
- Post Carbon Institute’s Deep Dive on Building Emotional Resilience
- Diane Benscoter’s nonprofit, Antidote.ngo, which runs recovery groups for people caught up in disinformation.
- Thought reform consultation
- Crazy Town episode 89 on escaping individualism, in which we discussed mutual aid networks
- Lawsuit to allow social media users to control their algorithms
- Ranked choice voting
Crazy Town Trailer
Crazy Town
03/17/21 • 0 min
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.
05/28/20 • 45 min
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.
Escaping Capitalism: How to Replace the "Logic" of Psychopaths, Pharma Bros, and Private Prisons
Crazy Town
05/08/24 • 70 min
Capitalism ruins SO many things, from key sectors like college sports all the way down to novelties like people's health and the environment. Jason, Rob, and Asher rely on their keen insight and otherworldly investigative talents to somehow unearth a few flaws of capitalism. But rather than wallow in the world of profiteering and privatization, they explore the solidarity economy and other alternatives to the "greed is good" way of running things.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Wikipedia page “Nike and the University of Oregon”
- Joshua Hunt book: University of Nike: How Corporate Cash Bought American Higher Education.
- Erik Olin Wright, How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, Verso 2019.
- Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty First Century, Harvard University Press 2014.
- Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers.
- Jeffrey Sachs, “Twentieth-Century Political Economy: A Brief History of Global Capitalism,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Vol. 15, No. 4.
- Summary of End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act
- David Bollier, The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking
- Lobbying to defeat bills that prohibit private prisons
- More lobbying in support of private prisons
- Incredible drug price increase after hedge fund manager acquires it
- Annual report of Weaver Street Market
- Donnie Maclurcan's explanation of not-for-profit enterprises
- Ranking of the world's happiest countries
- Boston Ujima Project
- Alfie Kohn, No Contest: The Case Against Competition, Houghton Mifflin, 1992.
- B Corps and B Lab
- Definition of the solidarity economy from the New Economy Coalition
09/22/22 • 2 min
Please check out our newest podcast, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival featuring Richard Heinberg. How have humans become powerful enough to disrupt the world's climate, trigger the sixth mass extinction, and cause serious harm to the biosphere? And with all the abilities and technologies we've accrued, why do we so often oppress instead of uplift one another? Join us as we explore the hidden driver behind the converging crises of the 21st century. It all comes down to power - our pursuit of it, overuse of it, and abuse of it. Learn how different forms of power arose, what they mean for us today, and why giving up power just might save us.
04/20/25 • 50 min
Happy Earth Day! There are two concepts that every person should understand to be a better Earthling: entropy and self-organization. It seems like a paradox, but systems on Earth are simultaneously breaking down into disorder and arranging themselves into complex superorganisms. Everything on Earth (well, really in the whole universe) is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, which means it all dies and decays. But with access to steady flows of energy, organisms, ecosystems, and human societies can hold back the death and decay for a spell. After dropping the kids off at the pool, Asher, Rob, and Jason cover the interplay of entropy and self-organization and contemplate how to manage the inevitability of entropy with elegance (beyond morphing into a lizard person).
Originally recorded on 4/8/25.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, Penguin Books, 2018.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Scribner, 2024.
- William Rees, “End game: the economy as eco-catastrophe and what needs to change,” Real-World Economics Review, 2019.
- The laws of thermodynamics, as explained by the website “Physics for Idiots"
- "Telegraph Road" - song by Dire Straits
- David Owen, "Green Manhattan," The New Yorker, October 10, 2004.
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FAQ
How many episodes does Crazy Town have?
Crazy Town currently has 141 episodes available.
What topics does Crazy Town cover?
The podcast is about Collapse, Climate, Environment, Earth Sciences, Energy, Comedy, Nature, Podcasts, Science, Economy, Global Warming, Sustainability, Dark Humor and Politics.
What is the most popular episode on Crazy Town?
The episode title 'Bonus: Boys and Oil with Taylor Brorby' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Crazy Town?
The average episode length on Crazy Town is 51 minutes.
How often are episodes of Crazy Town released?
Episodes of Crazy Town are typically released every 7 days.
When was the first episode of Crazy Town?
The first episode of Crazy Town was released on Mar 14, 2019.
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