Crazy Town
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.
- Update frequency
- every 14 days
- Average duration
- 51 minutes
- Episodes
- 151
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
Bonus Riff: Infinite, Unlimited, Forever - Water in the Desert
Just how much has the extractivist growth mindset come to dominate Phoenix and other cities in the desert Southwest of the United States? Prepare to turn your indignation meter up to 11 as Jason, Rob…
Bonus: Holding the Fire - Indigenous Voices on the Great Unraveling
We are pleased to share the new podcast from Post Carbon Institute, Holding the Fire. Award-winning journalist and author Dahr Jamail hosts in-depth interviews with leaders from around the world to u…
Bonus: Going Wild with Rae Wynn-Grant
Wildlife ecologist and communicator extraordinaire Rae Wynn-Grant visits Crazy Town to talk human-wildlife interactions, the social side of environmentalism, diversity and equity in the sciences, and…
Bonus: Bagdhad Bob Visits Climate Town
What do Saddam Hussein’s information minister and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have in common? Hint: it starts with a “d,” ends with “enial,” and isn’t just a river in Egypt. A new and v…
Bonus: Choose Your Own Adventure in the Great Unraveling
After hearing a story of woe on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Jason, Rob, and Asher cover the four critical ways of cultivating personal resilience to navigate the Great Unraveling. The report we …
The Surest Paths to a Hard Collapse: The Delusional Doctrines of the Phalse Prophethood (Season Wrap-up)
Asher, Rob, and Jason explore the lessons and dangers of the brotherhood of Phalse Prophets and consider better ways to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. Along the way, they examine how to…
The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk
Meet Elon Musk, the Muskian mogul who Elon Musks his way to the pinnacle of Muskitude. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spi…
How to Fast-Track Collapse: Manipulating the Masses While Massaging Megalomaniacs
Meet Steve Bannon, the Molotov mixologist who wants to light the world on fire. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy lang…
How to Lose Friends and Demoralize People: The Science (sic!) of Near-Term Extinction
Meet Guy McPherson, the extinction enthusiast who undermines legitimate climate concerns by predicting we’re all going to die yesterday. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conver…
Prepping for the Apocalypse: Elites' Foolish Fantasies for Surviving a Collapse of Their Own Creation
Meet Barrett Moore, the bunker-building bullshit artist who helps capitalists survive the apocalypse with beans, bullets, and bravado. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversa…
Announcement: 2023 Crazy Town Hall
How would you like to hang out with Asher, Rob, and Jason (well, virtually anyway)? Your chance is coming up at the fourth annual Crazy Town Hall. The town hall is our most fun event of the year, whe…
How Longtermism Became the Most Dangerous Philosophy You’ve Never Heard of
Meet William MacAskill, the puerile professor who helps crypto capitalists justify sociopathy today for a universe of transhuman colonization tomorrow. Please share this episode with your friends and…
Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The Climate Movement's Desperate Dependence on Tenuous Technologies
Meet Mark Jacobson and David Keith, the leading techno-fixologists who overpromise overhyped “solutions” to the climate conundrum. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation…
How Ecomodernists Hijacked the Environmental Movement: Technotopian Bullshit and a Raging Case of God Complex.
Meet Stewart Brand and his band of merry dematerialists, the Silicon Valley salesmen who undermined environmentalism with planet-saving fantasies that reek of technofetishism. Please share this episo…
Kinder, Gentler Colonialism: Bungling Billionaires and Their Arrogant Adventures in "Saving the World"
Meet Bill Gates, the philandering philanthropist who attempts to remake the world's operating system in his own image. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: Th…
Hot, Flat, and Totally Phucking Wrong: The Perilous Platitudes of a Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Propagandist
Meet Tom Friedman, the mustachioed metaphor maven who thinks we can have our cake and listen to it too. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
Warning: This podcast occa…
How Boomer Politicians Found a Third Way to Phuck Over the Working Class
Meet Bill Clinton, who converted the Democratic Party into slightly less loathsome neoliberals. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
For an entertaining deep dive into…
How to Become the Winningest Winner Who Wins: The Twisted Logic of the World’s Greatest CEO
Meet Jack Welch, celebrated wrecker of real jobs and leading light of Wall Street wankers. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
For an entertaining deep dive into the …
How to Have Sex with Yourself: The Bizarre Cult of the Singularity
Meet Ray Kurzweil, who combines Moore’s Law with nanobots in a faux recipe to cheat death. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
For an entertaining deep dive into the …
Why the Polycrisis Is a Statistical Anomaly: The Willful Delusions of the World’s Leading Pseudointellectual
Meet Steven Pinker whose denial of limits increases the likelihood of his worst fear: the end of the Enlightenment. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.
For an enterta…