Crazy Town

People REALLY love their impervious surfaces. Concrete structures practically permeate human-built landscapes. Rather than layering ever more concrete on top of living soils, in waterways, and all over the countryside, what if we re-established our connection with natural ecosystems and put a stop to the concrete madness? One of the most inspiring developments of environmental and cultural restoration involves the cleanup of tons and tons of concrete. We’re talking dam removal today. So grab a sledge hammer, a few sticks of dynamite, and a wrecking ball, and come along as we explore the battle between concrete placement and concrete removal. And don’t miss our interview with Tara Lohan, author of Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life. Originally recorded on 3/17/26.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The Reef Line
• “Underwater ‘traffic jam’ off Miami beach, CBS News, November 3, 2025
• Miami Beach’s New Traffic Jam Frolics With the Fishes, New York Times, December 1, 2025
• We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Stood The Test of Time, Science Alert by Michelle Starr, October 29, 2025
• L“Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future” by Mary Soderstrom. University of Regina Press, 2020.
• “Concrete: From the Ground Up” by Larissa Theule. Candlewick Press, 2022.
• “This is the total weight of everything humans have created since 1990” World Economic Forum, December 6, 2021
• “Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass” Nature.com, December 9, 2020
• “Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life” by Tara Lohan. Princeton University Press, 2025
• Map of U.S. Dams Removed Since 1912
• “Ten years after Oregon’s largest dam removal” Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2017
• “‘Salmon Everywhere’ One Year After Klamath Dam Removal” California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2025
• Undammed: The Klamath River Story podcast
• “First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath River after the largest dam removal in U.S. history” Oregon Public Broadcasting
• Car Free Alliance
• Auto Mat
• Transportation Action Network
• “Stop this destructive, car-centric development” Hindustan Times, December 22, 2025
• Ridges to Riffles
• Rivernetwork Member Directory
• Depave.org

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 48, “The Taming of the Slough: Humanity’s History of Trying to Control Water”
• Episode 123, “Mailbag: The Crazy Townies Speak!”

It’s really refreshing to hear from you, our listeners and fellow strugglers living in high-energy modernity (affectionately known as Crazy Townies). This mailbag episode offers the element of surprise, as it gives Jason, Rob, and Asher a chance to respond with delight and spontaneity to your questions and comments. Join the guys as they apply their dubious intellectual powers, subpar comedic talents, and underwhelming insights to your Crazy Townie queries. Originally recorded on 3/6/26.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Tradable Energy Quotas
• Carfree City Alliance
• Braver Angels
• Maclean Art Blog

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 19, “I Can’t Drive… 35! The Rationale for Rationing”
• Episode 45, “Feedback Loops and Climate Catastrophe, or… the Story of the Baseball Bloodbath”

What happens when technology and competition start to invade our experiences in nature? For example, what if you’re so focused on documenting a bird sighting in your iPhone app that you fail to appreciate the majestic songs of the bushtit or dickcissel on the branch in front of you? In this episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher explore the world of competitive birding, the relationship between those who love nature and the technology they use to connect to it, and how even the most gentle of shared passions can get corrupted by status-fueled competition. Bear with us through the maddening tech and over-the-top competition as we rediscover how to observe and just exist within our home ecosystems. Originally recorded on 3/5/26.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Holding the Fire
• Owen Reiser, Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching, 2025
• David Frankel, The Big Year, 2011 film
• Nature photographer Hannah Seilhan

Have you ever had that feeling in your gut, when you suddenly realize that the person you’re talking with might have a screw or two loose? What about when you’re the one others are trying to slowly back away from at the punch bowl? The question of who’s the real nut often arises for us collapse-aware folks living here in Crazy Town. Since Mr. Peanut is no longer returning their phone calls, Rob, Jason, and Asher invite Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, professor, and host of the Team Human Podcast to answer the question. In this far ranging conversation, they discuss why “leveling down” might be the best strategy for navigating late stage capitalism and bringing ourselves back into right relationship with each other and the planet. Originally recorded on 2/24/26.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Team Human
• Douglas Rushkoff YouTube Channel
• Douglas Rushkoff, “You Are Not Crazy,” Substack, January 7, 2026
• Douglas Rushkoff, “Survival of the Richest,” Medium, July 5, 2018
• Jesse Armstrong, Mountainhead, 2025 film
• Dan Fogelman, Paradise, Hulu, 2025 series
• Prospera
• Neom
• California Forever
• Jack Manno, Privileged Goods, 1999 book

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Tech Bros on Acid with Douglas Rushkoff (Bonus episode of Crazy Town)
• It’s All Paradox with Douglas Rushkoff (Bonus episode of Crazy Town)

Immortality projects represent an often irrational, and sometimes even unconscious, way to tamp down anxiety about death. There are some shocking examples of people, especially those with lots and lots of money, who try to leave some sort of mark in a futile attempt to keep from facing death. In this episode, we run a special fantasy-football style draft to take a look at immortality projects, some horrendous, but some with positive effects. Originally recorded on February 6, 2026.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Adam McCay, The Big Short, 2015 film
• Henry VIII
• Gabriella Angeleti, “Two men sentenced to prison time for vandalising Nevada petroglyphs,” The Art Newspaper, November 10, 2022
• Owen Clarke, “A Utah Woman Must Pay $15,000 in Fines for Vandalizing Ancient Petroglyphs,” Outside Magazine, November 20, 2025
• Lehman’s Catalog
• John Prine, “Paradise” 1971 song
• X post on Brian Johnson’s erections, February 11, 2024
• Epic of Gilgamesh
• Tompkins Conservancy and Patagonia National Park
• Instituto Terra
• Eric Grundhauser, “Visit a Beard That Killed Its Owner,” Atlas Obscura, January 26, 2018
• Raoul Wallenberg

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Crazy Town Classics “Terror Management Theory”
• Episode 51, “A Load of Papal Bull: Greenlighting Colonization and the Mindset of Extraction”
• Episode 54, “Colonizing the Sky: The Untold Environmental Toll of Skyscrapers”
• Episode 92, “Escaping Otherism: Why Dr. Seuss Could Never Find a Rhyme for Genocide”

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 of us are that we are susceptible to such bad behavior when we’re reminded that one day we’ll die. Follow Jason, Rob, and Asher as they try not to deny climate change, vilify any out-groups, or assault one another while diving into the topic of death. In the Do-the-Opposite segment, Michael Hebb (author of Let’s Talk about Death over Dinner) shares wisdom for developing a healthier relationship with death. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website. Originally recorded on December 22, 2020.

What if there were a news outlet that actually covered the most important environmental stories of our time? Dr. Emily Schoerning and her nonprofit, American Resiliency, translate the latest and most urgent climate science into useful information for communities across the United States. Jason and Emily discuss the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the merits of mitigation versus adaptation, and how to take meaningful action in your own community. Originally recorded on 12/22/25.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• American Resiliency
• Mark Rober YouTube Channel
• Sixth National Climate Assessment, International Panel on Climate Change

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 8, “Mosquito-Flavored Popcorn, or What Climate Scientists Are Getting Wrong”
• Episode 34, “Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom”
• Episode 37, “Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or… the Story of the Dueling Economists”
• Episode 45, “Feedback Loops and Climate Catastrophe, or… the Story of the Baseball Bloodbath”
• Episode 77, “The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk”
• Episode 97, “The House Is Quite Literally on Fire: Peter Kalmus on the Climate Emergency Hitting Home”

Jason and Asher replace Rob with a much more humane and humble co-host, Elon Musk, to explore the feasibility of harnessing the entire sun to power AI superintelligence. We come away perplexed that not much of the excellent reporting on the environmental, energy, and financial risks of the AI boom address the googleplex-sized elephant in the room – that both AI success and failure lead to immiseration. Originally recorded on 12/3/25.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• “Colossus 1” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
• “Colossus 2” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
• Episode 77, "The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk", Crazy Town podcast, June 14, 2023
• “Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, Evolving with AI, Why the West is Imploding” All In podcast, September 9, 2025
• “Is there an A.I. Bubble? And What if It Pops?” The Daily, November 20, 2025
• Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, “What If AI Is a Bubble?” The Atlantic, November 13, 2025

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 77, “The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk”
• Episode 84, “Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History”
• Episode 101 “Even AI Chatbots Hate Us: The Rise of the New Luddites, with Brian Merchant”

Mainstream economists and environmentalists share something in common. Both tend to tout efficiency -- think better light bulbs -- as the solution to climate change and all our other environmental problems. But the little-understood Jevons Paradox intervenes to overwhelm any progress that comes from improved efficiency. We skewer the efficiency gains of electric vehicles, lighting, and plenty of other sectors, and we cover ideas for avoiding the efficiency trap, including unveiling our new political platform, which is sure to take the country by storm.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Jason Barlow, "EVs Have Gotten Too Powerful," Wired, September 19, 2025.
• Russ Heaps, "Heaviest Electric Vehicles of 2025," Kelley Blue Book, April 7, 2025.
• Wikipedia article on energy efficiency in transport that includes a table that compares many modes of transport
• William Stanley Jevons, The Coal Question: An Inquiry concerning the Progress of the Nation, and the Probable Exhaustion of our Coal-mines (London: Macmillan and Co., 1866). 2nd edition, revised.
• Tomas Kloucek, "Darkness as an Endangered Species: Why Light Pollution Matters," Earth Bridge, June 11, 2025.
• Scenic America, "Billboards in the Sky: The Hidden Culprit Behind Light Pollution," July 30, 2025.
• Prepared Mind, "Welcome to the Great Unraveling (Tapestry Cloud Style Reweaving Polycrisis into Polyopportunity," June 20, 2025.
• 2,000 Watt Society
• Calculate your ecological footprint.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 3, "One Point Twenty-One Jigawatts"
• Episode 19, "I Can’t Drive... 35! The Rationale for Rationing"
• Episode 101, "Even AI Chatbots Hate Us: The Rise of the New Luddites, with Brian Merchant"

Picture the future 100 years from now. What do you imagine? Flying cars? Space colonies? AI talking toasters?

But if we can’t sustain an endlessly growing economy - even with a transition to green energy - what does a realistic and positive future look like?

Alex Leff of the Human Nature Odyssey podcast joins Jason, Rob, and Asher to imagine life in the 22nd century: walking from our family farms into communal villages, living off the land in a low-energy lifestyle, taming our pet donkeys, and resisting our local warlords.

It’s not the future the movies told us to expect. But it might be a future we enjoy living in.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Human Nature Odyssey podcast

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?, 2015
• Tom Murphy, Galactic-Scale Energy, Do the Math, 2011.
• Tom Murphy, Limits to Economic Growth, Nature Physics, August, 2022.
• Solar Freakin' Roadways, Indiegogo, 2014
• Human Nature Odyssey podcast

Related 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 MUSIC

Modified version of "Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" by Strauss, from classicals.de — licensed under CC BY 4.0

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"

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 initiative

Related 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"

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.

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.

• 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.

• 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"

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 excavator
• Dams powered airplane and ship building in the Pacific Northwest (Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams).
• The cross-Atlantic sailing voyage of Greta Thunberg
• Short comic with the story of reindeer on St. Matthew Island
• Episode of the Radiolab podcast with a wild story about mTOR

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Maximize profits, exploit nature, hoard money, and, like Buzz Lightyear, grow the economy to infinity and beyond! That’s the modern economic playbook. But for decades, one renegade country has taken a contrarian stance that actually cares about people’s wellbeing and environmental health: the Himalayan nation of Bhutan. When Bhutan embraced “Gross National Happiness” and a sane notion of progress, environmentalists and social reformers rejoiced. They spotlighted Bhutan as an example of how we can build a better economy. But now it seems that no one can escape the gravity field of techno-capitalism’s black hole of cryptocurrency and bullshit investments. In today’s episode, we explore Bhutan’s dark turn and go on the hunt for other examples of nations doing things to curb overexploitation of people and the planet.

Originally recorded on 7/21/25. Visit Crazy Town on the web.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• To be fair, Bhutan is still working on Gross National Happiness. In fact, there's a Global GNH Forum being staged November 7-12, 2025 in Dungkar Dzong, Paro, Bhutan.
• Steven Anderson, "Bhutan Uses Bitcoin to Boost Salaries and Curb Brain Drain," The Currency Analytics, April 15, 2025.
• The creation of Nunavut

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 37, "Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos"

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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 Magazine
• Echo PB-9010T backpack leaf blower
• SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California
• Ronald Reagan’s 1985 inaugural address
• Barbie Pool Party Playset
• The world's biggest landfill in Las Vegas, Nevada
• The world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas
• Jimmy Dean blueberry pancakes and sausage on a stick

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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.

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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"

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The “tragedy of the commons” is an idea that has so thoroughly seeped into culture and law that it seems normal for people and corporations to own land, water, and even whole ecosystems. But there’s a BIG problem: the “tragedy” part of it has been debunked – it really should be the triumph of the commons. Learn the origin story of privatization and explore the true meaning of commons and how to manage them for sustainability and equity. Also check out our suggestions for championing the commons (beyond Robin Hood’s strategy of stabbing the aristocracy). Originally recorded on 2/10/22.

• The oddity of the queen’s ownership of swans
• More about the swans
• An Act Concerning Swans (1482)
• Simon Fairlie wrote the article “A Short History of Enclosure in Britain” in The Land (2009).  
• Briony McDonagh and Carl Griffin wrote “Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500-1850,” Journal of Historical Geography (2016).
• Stephen Knight of the University of Melbourne writes about Robin Hood and the Forest Laws.
• Stephen Quilley & Katharine Zywert wrote the article “Livelihood, Market and State: What Does a Political Economy Predicated on the ‘Individual-in-Group-in-Place’ Actually Look Like?,” Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-23, July 2019.
• Munro Fraser and Thomas Mande wrote a report called The Commons in a Wellbeing Economy, a briefing paper published by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
• David Bollier wrote the outstanding and super-readable book The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking: Tools for the Transitions Ahead.   
• On the Commons has been helping to build a commons movement since 2001.  
• Peter Barnes has written many articles and books about property rights and the commons.
• “Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons” based on Derek Wall’s book Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals

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As Trump’s tariffs kick in, the Republican party is suddenly spouting anti-consumerist rhetoric that would make the Lorax smile. Should we cheer on this accidental experiment in economic shrinkage, or will this ham-fisted set of trade policies cause a backlash against the proponents of degrowth? As political confusion reigns, we offer eco-localism as the no-regrets way to build community resilience in the face of unprecedented ineptitude that probably won’t go away anytime soon. Originally recorded on 6/16/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, Avid Reader Press, March 2025.
• UN Alliance For Sustainable Fashion addresses the damage of ‘fast fashion’
• Kelsey Piper, "Trump’s bizarre new push to make us poorer," Vox, February 7, 2025.
• Kenneth Pucker, "Lessons From Trump’s Degrowth Experiment," Business of Fashion, May 9, 2025.
• Kenneth Bradsher, "China’s Chokehold on This Obscure Mineral Threatens the West’s Militaries," New York Times, June 9, 2025.
• Adam Tooze, "Trump's futurism: Elon's rockets and fewer dolls for "baby girl," Chartbook, May 6, 2025.
• "The End of Fast Fashion?," The Daily, May 15, 2025.
• Kurt Cobb, "Trade war vise grip: China is squeezing rare earth supply and it’s hurting," Resilience, June 8, 2025.
• "Derek Thompson: Trump's War on Dolls," The Bulwark, May 2, 2025.
• Richard Heinberg, "How Eco-Localism Differs from Tariff Terrorism," Resilience, April 17, 2025.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 86, "Escaping Growthism"
• Episode 94, “Breaking News: Crazy Town joins the newly formed Department of Entropy”

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Solar panels and other modern energy technologies can be really useful, but the belief that we can technologize our way to a bigger and better society powered by clean energy is tragically flawed. Asher, Rob, and Jason dig into the up-and-down story of the Ivanpah concentrated solar power plant, review the Harry Potteresque thinking behind complex, centralized power plants, and expose the truth of the energy transition. After they finish making fun of concentrated solar/golf course/outlet mall complexes in the desert, they discuss how to make real progress on energy and sustainability. Originally recorded on 6/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Michael R. Blood, “11 years after a celebrated opening, massive solar plant faces a bleak future in the Mojave Desert,” AP News, January 30, 2025.
• Laura Paddison, "This alien-like field of mirrors in the desert was once the future of solar energy. It’s closing after just 11 years," CNN, February 13, 2025.
• Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, January 1, 2024.
• Rachel Donald, “The ‘Energy Transition’ is a Pipe Dream | Jean-Baptiste Fressoz,” Planet: Critical podcast, March 19, 2025.
• Drax Power Station
• U.S. Department of Energy, Facts about Ivanpah
• Energy Monitor report on the opening of Ivanpah
• Louis Sahagun, "This Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year. Here’s why that won’t change any time soon," Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2016.
• Annual carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions worldwide from 1940 to 2024

Resources for conservation and local solar power:

• Solar United Neighbors
• 2,000-Watt Society
• Peter Kalmus, Being the Change, New Society Publishers, July 10, 2017.
• Kris De Decker, "How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel," Resilience, October 21, 2021.
• Coop Power
• Seeds for the Sol
• The Institute for Local Self-Resilience has a community solar program.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 45 on feedback loops
• Episode 60 on air conditioning

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Jason, Rob, and Asher are taking out a huge, unaffordable mortgage on the housing crisis. What’s behind the shortage in housing? Why is it that no one, except canine Tik Tok influencers with billion-dollar bank accounts, can afford to own a home? While mainstream pundits press for an energy-blind buildout of desert sprawl and gleaming towers of glass and steel, we propose a surprising change of course inspired by little people with hairy feet. Originally recorded on 5/21/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The story of Gunther, the world's most moneyed canine.
• You can't make this stuff up: Gunther offers to buy Nicholas Cage's island.
• David Wessel, "Where do the estimates of a 'housing shortage' come from?," Brookings Institute, October 21, 2024.
• Alex Fitzpatrick and Alice Feng, "Americans' average daily travel distance, mapped," Axios, March 24, 2024.
• Jon Gertner, "America Is on Fire, Says One Climate Writer. Should You Flee?," New York Times, March 22, 2024.
• U.S. News and World Report, "Fastest-Growing Places in the U.S. in 2025-2026."

Good Ideas for Addressing the Housing Crisis:

• Jason Bradford, "Growing the Shire, Not the 'Burb: Facing the Housing Crisis with Ecological Sanity," Resilience, May 27, 2025.
• Global Ecovillage Network
• Nate Hagens, "Alexis Zeigler —  Living Without Fossil Fuels: How Living Energy Farm Created a Comfortable Off-Grid Lifestyle," The Great Simplification, April 9, 2025.

Energy-Blind Non-Solutions for the Housing Crisis:

• Conor Dougherty, "Why America Should Sprawl," New York Times, April 10, 2025.
• Binyamin Applebaum, "Build Homes on Federal Land," New York Times, April 15, 2025.
• Ezra Klein, "Abundance and the Left," The Ezra Klein Show, April 29, 2025.
• Samuel Moyn, "Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?," New York Times, March 18, 2025.
• Tyler Cowen, "Ezra Klein on the Abundance Agenda (Ep. 236)" Conversations with Tyler, March 7, 2025.

Related Episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 37. Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or… the Story of the Dueling Economists

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The world has gone bunking mad. The bespoke security industry is burying bunkers stocked with arsenals of automatic rifles and surrounded by flaming moats. Is there a better way to prepare for the polycrisis, the zombie apocalypse, or whatever hard times are on the horizon? Jason, Rob, and Asher have some fun at the expense of the bunker builders before examining the positive aspects of peasanthood and stressing the need to build community.

Originally recorded on 5/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Coralie Kraft, "The 'Panic Industry' Boom," New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2025.
• The SAFE company offers "bespoke, fortified residences" and other silly signs of our times. 
• Aaron Gell, "'All of his guns will do nothing for him': lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday," The Guardian, April 17, 2025.
• Will Petersen, "Nuggets star Nikola Jokic is again living a good life back in Serbia," Denver Sports, June 20, 2023.

Related Episodes of Crazy Town:

• Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most Dangerous Philosophy You’ve Never Heard of
• Episode 34. Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom
• Episode 100. A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out of Love with Modernity

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Democracy and environmental protection have two things in common: (1) they’re both supposed to be enshrined in the laws of the United States and (2) they’re both under severe attack right now. Asher speaks with Thomas Linzey of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights to uncover how the source code of the U.S. Constitution and the body of environmental laws that follow it are actually designed to allow corporations to override the will of the people. After pinpointing the problem, Thomas explains what can be done, especially at the local level, to reach sustainable and just outcomes that provide wellbeing for people and ecosystems.

Originally recorded on 4/2/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Bio for Thomas Linzey
• Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
• Matt Wuerker's cartoon: "The Closed-Door Constitutional Convention"

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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.

Other Crazy Town episodes you might like:

• Crazy Town 100 - A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out or Love with Modernity
• Crazy Town 35 - Self Domestication and Overshoot, or… the Story of Foxes and Russian Melodrama
• Crazy Town Bonus Riff - Vanilla Andreessen, Pygmy Marmosets, and Hi-Tech Delusions

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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”

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Recovering technology booster Tom Murphy visits Crazy Town to discuss his journey from shooting lasers at the moon, to trying to "solve" the energy predicament, to falling out of love with modernity itself. Asher, Jason, Rob, and Tom discuss the roots and short-lived nature of modernity, which has not only shaped the world we inhabit but conquered our very imaginations. They reminisce about aspects of hi-tech society that have already fallen away in its hubristic march towards mastering (or should we say undermining?) nature. They close by contemplating what it means to detach from humanocentric delusions of grandeur and make peace with living with one foot in and one foot out of the modern world. Originally recorded on 3/4/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• "Acceptance and Agency at the End of Modernity," a live online Resilience event on April 1, 2025 featuring Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine
• Tom Murphy's Do the Math

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How will we feed people living in the megacities of the 21st century, especially while confronting climate chaos and the depletion of fossil fuels and fossil water? According to the mainstream media: ecomodernism! Massive deployment of technology on factory farms and an extreme ramp-up of industrialization will save the day – right? RIGHT?!? If you read the New York Times, you might think that supermarket shelves will forever overflow with 3D-printed fish sticks, mylar bags full of genetically modified cheesy poofs, and faux corn dogs that ooze out of laboratory vats. Jason, Rob, and Asher question the wisdom of doubling down on industrialization in food and farming. It’s no surprise they recommend paying attention to nature and ecological limits. Stick around for ideas you can use in your community to support a healthy, regenerative food system (and keep on eating). Originally recorded on 1/21/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Jason Bradford, The Future Is Rural, 2/19/19.
• Eliza Barclay, "What to Eat on a Burning Planet," The New York Times, 7/29/24.
• David Wallace-Wells, "Food as You Know It Is About to Change," The New York Times, 7/28/24.
• Andrew Nikiforuk, "A Reality Check on Our 'Energy Transition'," Resilience, 1/6/25.
• Michael Grunwald, "Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food," The New York Times, 12/13/24.
• "Changing How We Grow Our Food: Readers disagree with an essay about factory farms," The New York Times, 1/4/25.
• Jay Famiglietti, "Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?" The New York Times, 8/5/24.
• Clip of the Hydrologist in Chief "explaining" the oh-so-simple solution to water shortages.

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Do you contemplate topics like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the risk of civilizational collapse? If so, then you probably understand something about bargaining – a psychological defense mechanism that’s one of the five stages of grief. With just a wee bit of embarrassment, Asher, Jason, and Rob reveal damning episodes of bargaining from their personal histories (involving green consumerism and cult-like devotion to technology). Having admitted their sins, they discuss the allure of false solutions to our environmental predicaments and how even veteran environmental journalists can be susceptible to it. Stay to the end for thoughts on how to avoid getting hoodwinked by the horde of ecomodernist tech bros who continuously shove unworkable "solutions" down our throats. Originally recorded on January 16, 2025.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Julia Musto, "The end of the world as we know it? Theorist warns humanity is teetering between collapse and advancement," Independent, January 13, 2025 (about Nahfeez Ahmed's take on superabundance versus collapse).
• Rob Dietz, "Chris Smaje Vs. George Monbiot and the Debate on the Future of Farming," Resilience, October 27, 2023.
• Crazy Town episode 32 on cognitive bias
• Megan Phelps-Roper's six questions
• Crazy Town episode 45 on feedback loops, featuring an interview with Beth Sawin
• Post Carbon Institute's Deep Dive on building emotional resilience

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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.

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In the world of college sports, money talks and the volleyball team walks, er, flies 33,000 miles to play games. The NCAA, like almost everyone else, is playing games with Mother Nature. What do we expect student-athletes to gain from ignoring the climate emergency (not to mention putting their health at risk)? Who cares, as long as we can wring a few more dollars out of the TV deals -- am I right?!? Jason, Rob, and Asher propose a new plan for college sports and for taking the climate emergency seriously.

On a happy note: FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Jeff Eisenberg, "Conference realignment has redefined 'travel ball'," yahoo!sports, September 11, 2024.
• Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and Doerr School of Sustainability
• Stanford has the most winning NCAA program, counting all sports. (2nd and 3rd are UCLA and USC, by far!)

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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.

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Rob, Jason, and Asher talk about joining the new Trump Administration, at least until Elon Musk eradicates it. They explore the implications of Trump 2.0 through three reality-bending lenses – shifting baselines, entropy, and the upside of down – and three ways of responding: resistance, resilience, and regeneration. They decided they couldn’t stomach a fourth R – respect.

We’ve added something new to this and future episodes: VIDEO! If you’d like to feel even more like you’re in the room with the Crazy Town gang, please check out the video and let us know what you think. 

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Daniel Pauly’s 1995 article, Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries
• Randy Olson’s op-ed in the LA Times, Slow-Motion Disaster Below the Waves
• Video of Howard Dean’s speech with the infamous “Dean Scream”
• NASA’s description of the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy law (Be sure to read it before the incoming US administration repeals the laws of thermodynamics!)
• Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book The Upside of Down

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Sometimes you just wanna hear from someone else. In this bonus episode, Alex Leff enters Crazy Town to introduce his podcast, Human Nature Odyssey. Before playing the first episode of the podcast, Jason, Rob, and Asher find lots of laughs with Alex as they contemplate environmental destruction, gorilla suits, the fate of civilization, tandem bike rides, imaginary games, and how to make a podcast. If you need a little more encouragement to check out Human Nature Odyssey, our friend Tom Murphy (author of the Do the Math blog) gives it his highest recommendation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Human Nature Odyssey on Apple Podcasts
• The work and philosophy of Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael
• Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
• Alex Leff’s Patreon page for Human Nature Odyssey

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After a full season of trying to escape more than a dozen evil -isms (fun things like capitalism, industrialism, extremism, and otherism), Rob, Jason, and Asher come to one conclusion: there is no true escape -- at least not for those of us who want to help their communities collapse and re-emerge gracefully. Join the boys as they explore what the cult classic Groundhog Day has to teach us about navigating the endlessly insane world of modernity and reflect on key lessons and actionable steps we can all take to navigate the Great Unraveling of environmental and social systems.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Trailer for the cult classic Groundhog Day
• Article: "Harold Ramis didn't intend 'Groundhog Day' to be Buddhist, but it's a dharma classic" by Perry Garfinkel in Lion's Roar
• Article: "Was Modernity Inevitable?" by Tom Murphy in Do the Math
• Article: "Hospicing Modernity: Not a new idea" by Eliza Daley in Resilience
• Article: "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System" by Donella Meadows, published by the Donella Meadows Project
• Multisolving Institute
• Book: A Darwinian Survival Guide: Hope for the Twenty-First Century by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta, published by MIT Press

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The drive to belong to an in-group and the tendency to observe differences in others are core parts of the human condition. But differentiating can (and often does) turn deadly when it morphs into othering. Jason, Rob, and Asher try not to other one another as they explore the roots and consequences of othering, and the ins and outs of belonging as a key organizing principle of society.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Wes Tank rapping Fox in Socks
• The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Seuss
• Definition of othering from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
• Stereotype Content Model
• Susceptibility to othering
• Othering and Belonging Institute
• Book by john a. powell and Stephen Menendian - Belonging Without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World
• Crazy Town episode 51 on colonization and the mindset of extraction
• Seeing White podcast
• Racial Equity Institute
• Colonial roots and other drivers of genocide in Rwanda
• Trump’s reprehensible remarks about immigrants and about liberals
• The dystopian, othering politics of Balaji Srinivasan (article by Gil Duran in The New Republic)
• Christian Picciolini’s Ted Talk about how he stopped othering and helps more people do the same
• Marnita’s Table
• Needham Resilience Network

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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

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The myth of human dominion and exceptionalism is as old as the Bible and as unquestioned as gravity, at least in "modern" society. Rob, Asher, and Jason explore the ways that humanocentrism has come to dominate the planet and our minds, while pointing to ancient and newly emerging ways that the more-than-human world is respected and protected, even the dung beetle.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Eileen Crist defines (and critiques) anthropocentrism.
• Global biomass of wild mammals
• Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass.
• Decline of pollinators
• Decline of flying insect biomass
• Daniel Quinn’s book Ishmael
• Human Nature Odyssey podcast with Alex Leff
• Tom Murphy’s journey of understanding the pitfalls of human exceptionalism
• Two-thirds of the world’s longest rivers have been dammed.
• Declining wild bird populations in North America
• Ed Yong’s book An Immense World
• Yellowstone to Yukon conservation initiative
• Restor
• Douglas Tallamy’s book Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard
• Story of mining permit revocation in Panama
• Timeline of expansion of the rights of nature that was compiled by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund
• Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
• Stop Ecocide International
• Crazy Town episode with Danielle Celermajer on multispecies justice
• Robin Wall-Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass
• Prominence of nature in the Tuvan language
• Holding the Fire episode with Anne Poelina
• Quote by Kenneth Brink of the Karuk Tribe
• Quote by Sammy Gensaw III of the Yurok Tribe

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The epidemic of loneliness isn't just a product of technology or even capitalism -- it has its roots in the same fertile ground as the founding of the United States. And it may just be the most important "ism" of all to escape as we enter the Great Unraveling of social and environmental systems.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Definition of individualism from the American Psychological Association
• Article in Opumo magazine - "Super singles: 10 coolest one seater cars"
• U.S. Surgeon General's 2023 report: Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
• BBC Loneliness Experiment
• Robert Putnam's classic book - Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
• Country comparison tool for exploring Hofstede's Individualism Index
• Part 1 of Post Carbon Institute's webinar on mutual aid; Part 2
• Donna M. Butts and Shannon E. Jarrott, "The Power of Proximity: Co-Locating Childcare and Eldercare Programs," Stanford Social Innovation Review, April 2021
• Pets for the Elderly
• Dean Spade's book - Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
• History of the free breakfast movement of the Black Panther Party
• Teju Ravilochan, "The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow's Hierarchy"
• City of Knoxville program guide: Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness Plan

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Perhaps no community has undergone more versions of imperialism than the tiny island nation of Nauru, which has morphed from being "Pleasant Island" to the mined-out home of offshore banks, discarded refugees, and deep sea mining interests. Jason, Rob, and Asher take a bad trip to wrap their heads around Nauru, the topic of "psychedelic imperialism," and imperialism's new frontier - the clean energy transition.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• "A Dark History of the World's Smallest Island Nation" tells the tale of Nauru.
• S.J. Gale, "Lies and misdemeanours: Nauru, phosphate and global geopolitics," The Extractive Industries and Society, vol 6, July 2019.
• FAQs of the Metals Company
• Eric Lipton's New York Times article about imperialistic mining of the Pacific Ocean floor.
• Mining Watch Canada questions the claims of the Metals Company.
• Elham Shabahat's article in Hakai Magazine, "Why Nauru Is Pushing the World Toward Deep-Sea Mining" 
• Definition of imperialism from the Cornell Law School
• J.A. Hobson's book Imperialism: A Study
• Jason Hickel et al., "Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990-2015," Global Environmental Change, vol 73, March 2022.
• Critique of lithium extraction in the Atacama Desert
• Indigenous people's response to lithium mining in Nevada
• How the Sami people are protesting Sweden's "green transformation"
• Episode 3 of the Holding the Fire podcast, featuring Sami leader Aslak Holmberg
• Cobus van Staden on "Green Energy's Dirty Secret: Its Hunger for African Resources"
• Jim Robbins in Yale Environment 360 on "How Returning Lands to Native Tribes Is Helping Protect Nature"
• "Indigenous Land Return Announcement by Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Movement Generation!" -- article by Ines Ixierda
• "New Zealands's Maori fought for reparations -- and won"

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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

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Grow or die. It's the governing principle of companies, investment portfolios, national economies, and even philanthropic foundations. Oh, and cancer. Asher, Jason, and Rob lay bare the stats on everything from human population, energy consumption, global GDP, greenhouse gas emissions, and the size of cars and cruise ships, before concluding that the global economy should be named after the Wendigo from Algonquian folklore. They turn to the natural world for examples of self-regulation, along with promising new economic frameworks and on-the-ground models, for how to end Wendigo economics before it ends us.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Timeline of Sarah Winchester's story
• Timeline of the largest passenger boats
• Parks and Rec clip on soda sizes
• Kaitlin Smith, "More Than Monsters: The Deeper Significance of Wendigo Stories"
• Winona LaDuke discusses Wendigo economics in a Yes! Magazine online conversation.
• Hannah and Kevin Salwen, The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back
• CBS news story about a family giving away half their income
• SparkToro, an unusual tech company that doesn't believe bigger is better
• Report: Resilient Biocultural Heritage Landscapes for Sustainable Mountain Development, which contains information about Peru's Potato Park
• Krystyna Swiderska, "Here's why Indigenous economics is the key to saving nature"
• Al Bartlett lecturing on exponential growth

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From the top of a skyscraper in Dubai, Jason, Rob, and Asher chug margaritas made from the purest Greenland glacier ice as they cover the "merits" of globalism. International trade brings so many things, like murder hornets, piles of plastic tchotchkes, and deadly supply chain disruptions. The opposite of globalism is localism -- learn how to build a secure local economy that can keep Asher alive, hopefully at least through the end of the season.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Guardian article about shipping Greenland glacier ice to Dubai
• Wired article that tells the story of the Ever Given and all the supply chain problems that ensued
• The Observatory of Economic Complexity compiles statistics on global economic activity with interesting graphics, including this profile of China's trade.
• Michael Carolan's book Cheaponomics: The High Cost of Low Prices, and his follow-up book The Real Cost of Cheap Food
• Vasilis Kostakis's article on cosmolocalism
• Vicki Robin's book Blessing the Hands that Feed Us
• Website for Fibershed
• Molly Scott Cato's book The Bioregional Economy: Land, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

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Modern humans have a Stockholm Syndrome relationship to technology, which has kidnapped us while convincing us it has our best interests in mind. But when one looks back at the history of plastics or the current frenzy around AI, it isn't hard to see the insanity of doubling down on new technology to save us from previous technology. Find out what a person or society can actually do to develop a healthy, non-abusive relationship with technology, aside from joining an Amish community or going "full Kaczynski."

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Moriah McDonald reports on the big underestimates of Greenland ice loss in Inside Climate News.
• Typical article about how AI can solve climate change
• Another such article about the "magic" of AI
• And another -- sheesh (no wonder Jason was so upset)!
• Report on the future of petrochemicals from the International Energy Agency
• Kelly Oakes of the BBC asks, "What would happen if we stopped using plastic?"
• Website of The Ocean Cleanup
• Low Tech Magazine
• Low Technology Institute's 10-Mile Building Challenge
• Sulan Chen writes for UNDP, "A global treaty to end plastic pollution is in sight."
• BBC reporting on the EU's efforts to regulate AI

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Consult your inner tortoise to find novel ways of slowing down and living the good life. In a world haunted by just-in-time delivery, hyperactive business, accelerating environmental calamities, and metric tons of stress, Jason, Rob, and Asher work at a fast and furious pace to savor the moments, because there aren't many left.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Top 10 most unrealistic car crashes in movies
• Clip from the movie The Blues Brothers
• Clip from the movie Speed
• Clip from the movie Live Free or Die Hard
• Clip from the movie Furious 7
• Definition  of high frequency trading
• Graphical representation of the Great Acceleration
• Interview with Hartmut Rosa
• Bart Zantvoort's article about Harmut Rosa's work
• Article about social acceleration by Bettina Hollstein and Hartmut Rosa in the Journal of Business Ethics
• Podcast episode about shrinking attention spans (episode 225 of Speaking of Psychology)
• Article about technology and perception of time by Fiona MacDonald in ScienceAlert

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Did a whimsical 1960s TV sitcom presage climate migration and a reversal of urban growth? We're not calling for a Godzilla-esque teardown of cities, but climate change is forcing a serious urban rethink. Jason, Rob, and Asher offer visions of better infrastructure, policies, and culture that you can embrace, even if your home is in the city.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Wikipedia page for Paul Henning, creative force behind the spate of 1960s rural sitcoms.
• The Rural Climate Dialogues: A Community-Driven Roadmap for Climate Action in Rural Minnesota is a report by Tara Ritter with good summary statistics on the rural U.S.
• “Total and urban population” in UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2023.
• United Nations prediction about urban migration.
• “Out-of-Towners Head to ‘Climate-Proof Duluth,’” article by Debra Kamin in the New York Times.
• “Indonesia Is Moving its Capital to a Futuristic, Green City,” article by Katherine McLaughlin in Architectural Digest.
• Anthropogenic mass – the weight of everything humanity has built, statistics from the World Economic Forum..
• Analysis of transportation-related energy consumption and urban density, published in “U.S. Cities Factsheet” from the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems.
• The 15-Minute City
• Retrosuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future, book by David Holmgren.
• Global Ecovillage Network
• Daily Acts
• StoveTeam International
• One Planet Council

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If American consumers ever come up for air under the pile of crap in their storage units, they find themselves face to face with a materialistic hellscape of megastores, McMansions, endless fleets of delivery trucks, and evil hordes of targeted ads. But help is on the way. Jason, Rob, and Asher present ideas for shaping up a world beyond consumerism.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The original (and both catchy and annoying) Toys “R” Us theme song
• The melancholy remake of the theme song for a bankrupt Toys “R” Us, performed by Chase Holfelder
• U.S. Material Use Factsheet
• United Nations statistics on material footprint
• Self storage industry trends
• The environmental costs of fast fashion
• Story by Beth Porter, “What Really Happens to Unwanted Clothes?”
• Forbes list of billionaires
• George Carlin’s classic comedic bit about “stuff”
• Sandra Goldmark’s book Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet

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Jason, Rob, and Asher take a tour of New Caledonia, California's Central Valley, Bhutan, and Cuba to uncover the ins and outs of industrialism, especially as it has been applied to agriculture. Along the way they riff on how the hell we can escape from an -ism that completely engulfs us.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Tom Murphy “does the math” on declining wild mammal mass.
• Understanding the primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary sectors of the economy.
• USDA graphic and statistics on the scale of family farms.
• Our World in Data: “Farm Size and Productivity”.
• Video clip from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
• Hossain, S., Jami, A.T. (2023). “Opportunities and Challenges in Sustainable Development and Governance in South Asia: Case Study of Bhutan.” In: Wu, HH., Liu, WY., Huang, M.C. (eds) Moving Toward Net-Zero Carbon Society. Springer Climate.
• Arch Ritter, “Can Cuba Recover from its De-Industrialization?”.
• Julia Wright, “The Little-Studied Success Story of Post-Crisis Food Security in Cuba: Does Lack of International Interest Signify Lack of Political Will?” International Journal of Cuban Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2012, pp. 130–53.

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