Crazy Town

Asher explains the changes to Crazy Town's schedule as we try to keep up with new developments during the coronavirus pandemic.Support the show

What do Scottish cod, rubber duckies, rock phosphate, and shipping containers have in common? They all ride the oceans in really big boats as part of the insanity of today’s global trade. Trade seems like it should be a simple thing. I give you something, you give me something else in return, and we’re both better off. But our capitalism-on-steroids society has converted the simple into a Rube Goldberg machine of criss-crossing cargo ships, vulnerable supply chains, and just-in-time delivery, all so we can save some bucks while exploiting workers and habitats around the world. We’ve gone batshit crazy! Seriously, check out the history of trade in bat guano. With coronavirus prompting a slowdown in global trade, it’s all the more critical to find a different way forward. Thankfully, Asher, Rob, and Jason have a few ideas about how to have fun while building a resilient local economy. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for our newsletter.Support the show

Coronavirus has put the kibosh on frivolous travel for the moment, but we might want to do some reflecting before returning to business as usual. Prior to the outbreak, you were constantly told to put on your traveling shoes, cue up some good music for a journey (no, not the band Journey), and pack your bags. As long as costs stay down, we can fly to any destination for any purpose. Is your third cousin’s niece performing in a school play in Omaha? Wanna see the Great Barrier Reef before climate change bleaches it into oblivion? Do you feel like crashing the party at an away game where your favorite pro sports team is playing? No problem. Hop aboard a jumbo jet, and, like Dr. Seuss, people cheer, “Oh the places you’ll go!” That’s the story of extreme travel in Crazy Town. But maybe this is the perfect time to start a new conversation about travel and begin aligning our actions with our values. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and be sure to sign up for our newsletter.Support the show

It’s easy to picture a group of social justice and environmental activists gathering in a circle. But these days, instead of holding hands and singing songs, they’re loading weapons and taking aim. Ahhhhh, the carnage! Why are progressives so eager to join a circular firing squad? Maybe this isn’t our best bet for solving climate change and the other wicked problems of the 21st century. Wouldn’t it be smarter to jettison the holier-than-thou act and find ways to collaborate? Asher, Rob, and Jason uncover lessons from the misadventures of an oxen team, a $10 million lawsuit, and an avalanche of emails about thorium, hemp, and overpopulation. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website and sign up for the newsletter.Support the show

Pop quiz! A friend of yours has just had an unfortunate chainsaw accident and cut a femoral artery: do you (a) make a tourniquet with your t-shirt, or (b) stick a Band-Aid on the wound? If you picked (b), congratulations! You've followed the instruction manual for humanity’s pathetic response to climate change. In this final episode of season 1, Asher, Rob, and Jason consider the psychology behind both inaction and effective action in these times of crisis. And for the very practical-minded, they also cover when to prescribe tobacco poultices and whiskey shots -- good fun for the whole family. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Have you ever wondered how dolphins feel about quantitative easing? OK, probably not, but it is important to consider the effects that money and monetary policy have on the real world of energy, society, and the environment. Nate Hagens joins Asher, Rob, and Jason to discuss said dolphins, a never-ending Grateful Dead concert, and the prospects of two mature solar panels giving birth to a little bitty baby solar panel. Oh, and Nate also offers coherent comments on how money works, how our economic system is likely to perform in the coming years, and how individuals can respond appropriately to humanity’s overshoot predicament (spoiler alert: it doesn’t involve stockpiling guns, gold, and beans). For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

You know what drives Jason really crazy about auto traffic? No, it’s not the 42 hours per year that the average commuter wastes stuck in it or even the global warming pollution spewed, it’s the 3 BILLION (with a B people!) gallons of fuel that are wasted instead of helping with the transition of our food system. In this episode, Rob, Asher, and Jason talk about why fossil fuels are so embedded in our food system and how changes in the way we grow food might change where all of us live. This episode is designed especially for people who like to eat food and hope to continue doing so. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Chuck Collins joins Asher, Rob, and Jason in Crazy Town to describe his startling journey from undercover trust fund kid to tireless campaigner for economic equality. Together they examine why Richie Rich, Donald Trump, Scrooge McDuck, and Jeff Bezos keep getting richer (hint: it might have something to do with the rigged economic system). And they discuss what it means to address inequality on a finite planet. Is FDR’s New Deal still the best playbook? For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

The threats of overshoot and climate chaos loom larger by the day, but it’s all going to work out just fine. At least that’s what you hear from starry-eyed techno-optimists, hemp enthusiasts, and the output of ultra-hypothetical computer models. The silver bullet could come from outer space (e.g., mining asteroids or colonizing other worlds), it could come from the sky (turning air into carbon-sequestering rocks), or it could come from beneath our feet (building infrastructure out of hemp). Maybe we should stop grasping at these (carbon nanotube) straws, and look for alternatives to the politically expedient worship of technology? Warning: we employ some math to get at the answer. Get out your abacus. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Did you know that we can lose half our food supply and it won’t matter? That’s because agriculture is only 3% of GDP, so there’s no need to worry about the effects of climate change on farming. Or so says the latest genius to win the Nobel Prize in economics. This “logic” is pretty darn disturbing on its own, but what happens when such muddled thinking comes to infest climate models? Besides causing Jason, Asher, and Rob to lose their minds (and their cool), it can lead to unrealistic optimism surrounding the Green New Deal and other worthwhile policies for dealing with climate change. Well, maybe we can use cryptocurrencies to purchase information about food for our virtual bellies when we run into problems on the farm. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

What do we want our children to do in the waning days of the fossil fuel frenzy and the early days of climate chaos? Being a good parent is hard enough under the best of circumstances, but it’s really difficult to know how much we should expose our kids to the realities of environmental meltdown and social injustice. In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason explore what we could be teaching kids these days and debate which is the more valuable skill: being comfortable eating beetles or understanding how to deal with difficult people. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Apocalypse is upon us, at least in movies, television shows, books, and even podcasts. Teen characters in youth literature are more likely to solve their differences by bow-hunting one another rather than hugging it out in the school hallways. In this episode, Asher, Rob, and Jason search for reasons why the movie theater is so obsessed with Armageddon and the political theater offers empty promises of infinite progress, when the reality is likely to be somewhere in the messy middle. For listeners interested in culinary topics, this is your chance to explore cannibalism-lite cuisine. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

We’re GOING to make the transition to renewable sources of energy. There is no scenario outside the dark mind of Dick Cheney where we continue to use depleting and polluting fossil fuels over the long run to power society. So how exactly are we going to make the transition? In this episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher talk about some of the magical “solutions” that are being peddled out on the streets of Crazy Town (solar roadways, anyone?!?) and why we’re so quick to jump at technological fixes that ignore math, physics, and ecology. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

If you jam on the brakes for just a minute and take a look at cars and car culture, you just might find something stinky (maybe even as stinky as the black plume of diesel exhaust emanating from that souped-up pickup truck you’re stuck behind). Yes, there are some upsides to cars and driving, but those are overshadowed by the unbelievable downsides. Do you know how many deaths -- of people and animals -- can be attributed to the automobile? How about cars’ contribution to total greenhouse gas emissions? Have you ever thought deeply about how car culture can diminish the quality of ordinary life experiences? Luckily, there’s a straightforward (albeit not as straight and forward as the typical section of interstate highway) way to improve how we get ourselves from place to place. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Visit postcarbon.org/crazytown for more notes, resources, and to sign up for updates.Support the show

What would we do without energy? The short answer is, “Nothing, absolutely nothing.” And sadly, most people know next to nothing about energy and its fundamental role in society and life itself. If you’ve ever tried to push a car a small distance down a street, then maybe you have some understanding. But do you know how many hours of human labor are contained in a barrel of oil? Or how much it would cost for people to do the work of a fossil-fueled machine? Or how hard a world champion cyclist has to pedal a bike to toast a single slice of Wonder Bread? In this episode of Crazy Town, Asher, Rob, and Jason look for answers as they tour the insane asylum where our energy habits reside. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

In his 2nd inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said, "There are no limits to growth and human progress when men and women are free to follow their dreams." First impression: that's a nice-sounding sentiment -- way to stay positive, Ronnie! Second impression: what a load of crap (and a horrible foundation for economic policy in the age of overshoot)! This episode focuses on the limits to growth, including the growth imperatives built into our economic institutions, and explores how the economy could make a shift toward sustainability. Along the way, Asher, Rob, and Jason take some potshots at Ronnie and his cohort of math-challenged wishful thinkers. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Can you imagine putting on a Santa Claus suit, not to pull a fast one on the kids and deliver Christmas presents, but to protest Big Oil and climate change in front of your local gas station? That may sound insane, but given what's at stake, it might be the sanest thing you could do on Christmas Eve (plus it's kinda funny). In this first episode, Asher, Rob, and Jason explore how tough it can be to keep from going crazy as our society rushes headlong toward the cliff edge of environmental and social meltdown. Welcome to Crazy Town, where most of the inhabitants just want you to keep contributing to an economy already in overshoot, keep distracting yourself from the most important stories, and (most of all) keep your mouth shut. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show