Crazy Town

https://feeds.captivate.fm/crazy-town/

168 Followers 161 Episodes

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.

Episode List

Getting Real about Resiliency with Emily Schoerning

Feb 11th, 2026 10:00 AM

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 ResiliencyMark Rober YouTube ChannelSixth National Climate Assessment, International Panel on Climate ChangeRelated 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”

Choose Your AI Adventure: Immiseration or Extinction

Jan 28th, 2026 10:00 AM

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, 2025Episode 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, 2025Related 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”

EVs on Speed: The Jevons Paradox Strikes Again

Jan 14th, 2026 10:00 AM

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 transportWilliam 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 SocietyCalculate 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"

Sane Town: A Realistic Vision of Life 100 Years from Now

Dec 17th, 2025 10:00 AM

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

Toasting Bread Is WAY Harder Than You Think: The Challenges of a Renewable Energy Future

Dec 3rd, 2025 10:00 AM

What does a livable future look like 100 years from now? If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the old fossil-fueled, drill-baby-drill mentality?Alex Leff of the Human Nature Odyssey podcast hosts this special Crazy Town highlights compilation. Alex revisits some of the most thought-provoking moments from Crazy Town, weaving in new commentary and context. Together, we explore energy literacy, the promises and pitfalls of a renewable-energy transition, and why toasting a simple slice of bread is much harder than you might think.Along the way, we meet an Olympic athlete trying to toast bread with nothing but a bicycle. We also step inside a billionaire’s latest invention—a time-travel device designed to fling us one hundred years into the future.Stay tuned for Part 2, where we take the full leap into the time machine and imagine what life a century from now could really look like in a post high-energy future.Sources/Links/Notes:The Toaster Challenge, Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?, 2015Tom Murphy, Galactic-Scale Energy, Do the Math, 2011.Tom Murphy, Limits to Economic Growth, Nature Physics, August, 2022.Solar Freakin' Roadways, Indiegogo, 2014Human Nature Odyssey podcastRelated episode(s) of Crazy Town:Episode 3 "1.21 Jigawatts: Energy Literacy and the Real Scoop on Fossil Fuels"Episode 5 "Solar Freakin' Roadways: How Technological Optimism Undermines Sustainability"Episode 106 "Blinded by the Light - Facing Reality with Renewable Energy"ADDITIONAL MUSICModified version of "Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" by Strauss, from classicals.de — licensed under CC BY 4.0

More Episodes