You Ain’t Gonna Live Forever: The Dos and Don’ts of Legacy Building

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:

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

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

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