Crazy Town

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 language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 1 with Daniel P Aldrich, Amira Odeh, and Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 2 with Dean Spade, Joanna Swan, and Aliza Tuttle, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.Dean Spade, "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),"  Verso Books, October 2020."Democracy Rising" essay series on deliberative democracyGlobal Tapestry of AlternativesEliana Johnson and Eli Stokols, "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read," Politico, February 7, 2017.Lisa Marshall, "Inside Steve Bannon's 'War for Eternity'," CU Boulder Today, April 22, 2020.Joshua Green, "Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia," Vanity Fair, July 17, 2017.David Breitenbeck, "A Brief Summary of Traditionalism," The Imaginative Conservative, March 21, 2019.Generation Zero, Bannon's poorly reviewed documentaryGuo Wengui's video for his song, "Take Down the CCP," -- the third best comedy yacht video of all time.Douglas Rushkoff, "How to Avoid Becoming a Fascist: Why I turned down an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast," Medium, October 21, 2021.Olivia Goldhill, "The neo-fascist philosophy that underpins both the alt-right and Silicon Valley technophiles," Quartz, June 18, 2017.Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’," The Washington Post, February 23, 2017.Support the show

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 conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Guy McPherson, "Near-Term Extinction blog post," Nature Bats Last (last updated 2016).Scott Johnson, "How Guy McPherson gets it wrong," Fractal Planet, 2014.Michael Tobis, "McPherson’s Evidence That Doom Doom Doom," Planet 3.0, 2014.Nathan Curry, "Humanity Is Getting Verrrrrrry Close to Extinction," Vice, 2013.BizNewsTV, "'Humans will be extinct by 2026' - 'doom and gloom prophet' Prof McPherson on abrupt climate change," January 19, 2023.Shannon Osaka, "Why climate 'doomers' are replacing climate 'deniers',” Washington Post, March 24, 2023.Jerome Roos, "We Don’t Know What Will Happen Next," New York Times, April 18, 2023.List of McPherson predictionsSupport the show

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 conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:History of the Kelly Butte Civil Defense CenterArticle on Kelly Butte in the Atlas ObscuraA Day Called X -- video of a dramatized atomic evacuation of Portland, OregonDonald Fagen's "New Frontier"Sam Biddle, "The Rise and Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper," The Intercept, July 5, 2021."Three Robots: Exit Strategies" -- episode 1 of season 3 of the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.National Geographic produced the popular video series Doomsday Preppers.Molly Redden, "The American Elite Are Planning Their Escape — And It Starts With Paying For Passports," Huffington Post, March 19, 2023.John Ramey, "New statistics on modern prepper demographics from FEMA and Cornell," theprepared.com August 4, 2021.Bradley Garrett, "Living with bunker builders: doomsday prepping in the age of coronavirus,"The Conversation, May 14, 2020.Interview about Bradley Garrett's study of preppingJ. Oliver Conroy, "We mocked preppers and survivalists – until the pandemic hit," The Guardian, April 30, 2020.Walter Karp, "When Bunkers Last in the Backyard Bloom-d," American Heritage, February/March 1980.Red Cross’s Preparedness ChecklistFEMA’s 12 Ways to PrepareTom Prugh, "Democracy Rising 1 Introduction: Idiots R Us," Resilience, October 27, 2021.Jana Reiss, "For today’s Latter-day Saints, it’s food storage light," The Salt Lake Tribune, January 27, 2023.Support the show

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, where you can ask questions, play games, get insider information on the podcast, and share plenty of laughs. It’s a special online event for the most dedicated Crazy Townies out there, and it’s coming up on June 6, 2023, from 10 to 11:15 AM U.S. Pacific time.To get an invitation, make a donation of any size. Go to https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/. When you make a donation, we’ll email you an exclusive link to join the Crazy Town Hall. If you're already a donor, we'll be sure to send you the invitation as well. If we get enough donations, maybe we can hire some decent hosts! Join us at the town hall on June 6th, 2023. Again to get your invitation, go to https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/.Support the show

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 start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Andrew Anthony, "William MacAskill: 'There are 80 trillion people yet to come. They need us to start protecting them'," The Guardian, August 21, 2022.Guiding Principles of the Centre for Effective AltruismPeter Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality," givingwhatwecan.org.Sarah Pessin, "Political Spiral Logics," sarahpessin.com.Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down," Time, March 29, 2023.Emile Torres explains the acronym TESCREAL in a Twitter thread.Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, "Is it ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good? An in-depth analysis," 80,000 Hours, March 26, 2023.William MacAskill, "The Case for Longtermism," The New York Times, August 5, 2022.Emile P. Torres, "Understanding “longertermism”: Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic," Salon, August 20, 2022.Nick Bostrom, "Existential Risks," Journal of Evolution and Technology (2002).Nick Bostrom, "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development," Utilitas (2003).Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi visions should concern us all," Salon,  July 17, 2022.Support the show

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.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:The Solutions ProjectCarbon EngineeringDavid W. Keith et al., "A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere," Joule, August 15, 2018.Christopher T. M. Clack et al., "Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar," PNAS, June 19, 2017.Natanael Bolson, P. Prieto, and T. Patzek, "Capacity factors for electrical power generation from renewable and nonrenewable sources," PNAS, December 20, 2022.Simon Michaux's websiteRichard Heinberg, "Can Civilization Survive? These Studies Might Tell Us," Resilience, December 19, 2022.Average household electricity consumptionDavid Fridley and Richard Heinberg, "Can Climate Change Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline?," Renewable Energy World, June 19, 2018.Mark Jacobson on Late Night with David LettermanJames R. Martin, "Energy Transition & the Luxury Economy," Resilience, October 31, 2022.Yamina Saheb, Kai Kuhnhenn, and Juliane Schumacher, "It’s a Very Western Vision of the World," Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung.Mark Z. Jacobson et al., "Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries," Energy & Environmental Science (2022).Nicole Jewell, "Leading Stanford climate scientist builds incredible net zero home, complete with Tesla Powerwall," In Habitat (2017).Raymond Pierrehumbert, "The trouble with geoengineers 'hacking the planet'," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (2017).Support the show

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 episode with your friends and start a conversation.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:John Markoff, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand, 2022.Anna Wiener, "The Complicated Legacy of Stewart Brand’s 'Whole Earth Catalog'," The New Yorker, November 16, 2018.Wolf Tivy and Matt Ellison, "'Life Goes On' With Stewart Brand," Palladium, September 14, 2022."Ecomodernist Manifesto"Timothee Parrique, "A response to Paul Krugman: Growth is not as green as you might think," Resilience, February 28, 2023.Low-Tech MagazineThe Long Now FoundationRevive & RestoreSupport the show

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: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, 2021.Alan Guebert, "Given What We Don't Know, Why Do We Act Like We Do Know?," Food and Farm File, September 25, 2022.Gates Foundation, "Bill and Melinda Gates Pledge $10 Billion in Call for Decade of Vaccines," January 2010.Bill Gates TED Talk, "The next outbreak? We're not ready," 2015.Erin Banco, Ashleigh Furlong, and Lennart Pfahler, "How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight," Politico, September 14, 2022.Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, October 1, 2019.Timothy A. Wise "Failing Africa’s Farmers: An Impact Assessment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa," Tufts University, July 2020.Anmar Frangoul, "Bill Gates on why he'll carry on using private jets and campaigning on climate change," CNBC, February 7, 2023.Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy, Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth In The Time Of Collapse, October 17, 2022.Support the show

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 occasionally uses spicy language.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Thomas Friedman, "Foreign Affairs Big Mac I," The New York Times, December 8, 1996.Matt Taibbi's critique of Hot, Flat, and Crowded -- "Flathead" Strauss Media, November 21, 2014.Jason Hickel et al., "Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015," Global Environmental Change, March 2022.Thomas Friedman, "The Earth Is Full," The New York Times, June 7, 2011.Thomas Friedman, "Something's Happening Here," The New York Times, October 11, 2011.Thomas Friedman, "Want to Save the Earth? We Need a Lot More Elon Musks.," The New York Times, November 16, 2021.Thomas Friedman, "How We Broke the World," The New York Times, May 30, 2020.Belen Fernandez, The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, November 1, 2011.Here's the archive of Global Citizen columns by Donella Meadows.Ian Parker, "The Bright Side: The relentless optimism of Thomas Friedman," The New Yorker, November 2, 2008.Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1999.Thomas Friedman The World Is Flat, YouTube video of Yale University Lecture, 2009.Garrett Graff, "Thomas Friedman is On Top of the World," Washingtonian Magazine, July 1, 2006.  Support the show

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 the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Lily Geismer wrote an outstanding and comprehensive book, published in 2022, on Clinton and the legacy of neoliberal policies called Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality.Lily Geismer, "How the Third Way Made Neoliberal Politics Seem Inevitable," The Nation, December 13, 2022.Alex Parnee, “The Disastrous Legacy of the New Democrats,” The New Republic, May 16, 2022.Michael Pierce, “How Bill Clinton Remade the Democratic Party by Abandoning Unions” The Labor and Working-Class History Association, November 23, 2016.Support the show

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 theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:David Gelles, The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of America—and How to Undo His Legacy (2022).David Gelles, "How Jack Welch’s Reign at G.E. Gave Us Elon Musk’s Twitter Feed," New York Times (2022).Malcolm Gladwell, "Was Jack Welch the Greatest C.E.O. of His Day--Or the Worst?," The New Yorker (2022).Geoff Colvin, "The Ultimate Manager," Fortune (1999).Matthew J. Belvedere, "Jack Welch says Obama’s ‘wacky’ climate-change agenda hurts the US economy," CNBC (2016)."Jack Welch Fast Facts," CNN (2020).Scott Tong, "This is how shareholders got to be first in line for profits," Business Insider (2016).James B. Stewart, "Did the Jack Welch Model Sow Seeds of G.E.’s Decline?," New York Times (2017). Jack & Suzy Welch Winning (2005).Geoff Gloeckler, "Jack Welch Launches Online MBA," Bloomberg Businessweek (2009).Della Bradshaw, "Jack Welch on the executive MBA he created in his own image," Financial Times (2014).Jack Welch Management Institute .Oxfam "Top 1% grab twice as much new wealth as everyone else combined".Economic Policy Institute “CEO pay has skyrocketed".  Support the show

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 theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book checks in at 672 pages -- it's called The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.Kurzweil's sequel from 2022 is called The Singularity Is Nearer.Brian O'Keefe, "The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth," Fortune, May 2, 2007.David Hochman, "Reinvent Yourself," Playboy, April 19, 2016.Episode of Doug Henning's World of Magic, 1980.Society for CryobiologySingularity UniversitySarah Begley, "The Future of Food: Experts Predict How Our Plates Will Change," Time, October 9, 2014.Alan Thompson, "Dr Ray Kurzweil: 2022-2023 Updates," LifeArchitect.aiEric Brende wrote a book that counteracts some of Kurzweil's absurdities. It's called Better Off: Flipping the Switch on Technology.The Simplicity Collective is a good organization for exploring voluntary simplicity.Support the show

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 entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:David Marchese, "Steven Pinker Thinks Your Sense of Imminent Doom Is Wrong" in The New York Times Magazine (2021).The Work that Reconnects NetworkGood Grief NetworkThree relevant past episodes of Crazy Town are episode 39 on the myth of progress, episode 35 on self-domestication, and episode 34 on terror management theory."Steven Pinker: The Mind Reader" in The Guardian (1999).Robert Wright, "The 2004 Time 100" in Time Magazine (2004).Nick Gillespie, "Steven Pinker Loves the Enlightenment" in Reason Magazine (2018).David A. Bell, "Waiting for Steven Pinker’s enlightenment" in The Nation (2018).Emile Torres, "Steven Pinker’s fake enlightenment" in Salon (2019).Robert Epstein, "Book Review: The Better Angels of Our Nature" in Scientific American (2011).Tyler Cowen, "Steven Pinker on Language, Reason, and the Future of Violence," Mercatus Center (2016).Mike Freiheit and Lyta Gold, "Comic: Steven Pinker--Certified Grief Counselor" in Current Affairs 2018). George Monbiot, "Contrary to Reason" in The Guardian (2018).Alex Blasdel, "Pinker's progress: the celebrity scientist at the centre of the culture wars" in The Guardian (2021).Support the show

Meet the unelected leaders of Crazy Town, who keep our collective heads in the sand while the planet burns. Please share this episode to your friends and start a conversation.For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. Sources/Links/Notes:"Bundyville: The Remnant" -- long-form article and podcast by Leah Sottile.Five topic categories of the Phalse Prophets season: progress myth, neoliberalism, ecomodernism, effective altruism, and doomerism.Story of Bruce's Beach.Yes! Magazine article on land justice.  Support the show

Stuart McMillen is a systems thinker disguised as a cartoonist. His long-form comics condense important academic topics into understandable and entertaining works of art. Stuart tackles topics in the fields of ecology, economics, psychology, and sociology. With original drawings, thought-provoking narration, and expertly paced storytelling, he introduces readers to critical ideas that are often under-reported and underappreciated, including energy slaves, property rights, peak oil, and the war on drugs. Go behind the scenes with Stuart to learn how he crafts his comics, from his philosophy to the nitty gritty of how he makes a living. And be sure to explore his work at stuartmcmillen.com. Support the show

Bob Jensen has written a book with Wes Jackson titled An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity. With a title like that, Jason and Bob have lots of heavy ground to cover, including overshoot, the limits to growth, and the cascading environmental and social crises of our times. They conclude that there are no easy answers or silver-bullet solutions, but by focusing on sustainable size of the human population, appropriate scale of social organization, optimal scope of human competence for managing high-energy modernity, and required speed of taking action to avoid catastrophe, they home in on some strategic responses to the crises. Support the show

Asher is joined in Crazy Town by Danielle Celermajer, author and professor at University of Sydney, for a far-ranging conversation about human rights and the more-than-human world. Dany shares how her personal relationship with the Shoah (Holocaust) set her on a path of human rights work and impacted her experience of the devastating Black Summer Fires that swept through Australia in 2019-2020. They discuss her journey towards scholarship and activism for the more-than-human world, the intersection of human rights and multispecies justice, and the way that individuals and groups of people have stepped up to care for the billions of non-human lives impacted by the fires and floods that have ravaged Australia in recent years. Finally, Dany shares ideas for how listeners can (re)connect with the more-than-human world. For more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Climate scientist and activist Peter Kalmus returns to Crazy Town, but this time with a green badge of courage. Earlier this year, he locked himself to the entrance of the JP Morgan Chase building in downtown Los Angeles to protest their ongoing investment in the fossil fuel industry. As you would expect, he was arrested for his troubles. It was an experience he describes (paradoxically) as "scary as f**k," but also opening and wonderful. In this wide-ranging interview, Rob and Peter cover civil disobedience, climate denial, activism, ego management, and coping strategies for anxiety about climate disaster and collapse. It makes you wonder why we can't arrest the executives at JP Morgan Chase, ExxonMobil, and all the other truly radical corporations that appear to be on an ecocidal mission from hell! For more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Douglas Rushkoff revisits Crazy Town, where he and Asher discuss why so many billionaires, academic institutions, and "serious" people are drawn to longtermism - the view that our top priority should be ensuring that humanity can spread its wings throughout the physical and virtual universe. What's the suffering of a few billion people in the here and now, when there's quadrillions, no quintillions, of potential future people to worry about? Sure, the climate crisis is bad. But is it really an existential threat? Douglas explains why, when you take a tech bro to drink Ayahuasca in the Amazon, he still comes back a tech bro. And why, when you hear buzzwords like longtermism, effective altruism, and transhumanism, all you need to ask is: Does it perpetuate capitalism? Asher and Douglas riff on why longtermism is denialism – denial of death, denial of the body, and denial of responsibility – and why the antithesis is living in the here and now, with our neighbors. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

In her latest book "Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law," Mary Roach approaches the topic of human-wildlife conflict with entertaining stories, scientific insight, and a healthy dose of wit and humor. There are plenty of animal stories in this episode, from marauding mountain lions to bothersome bears, from macaques who are jerks to gulls who are dicks, and of course that most meddlesome of all species – the human being. The phrase "going out clubbing" takes on a decidedly macabre meaning when the context is U.S. military attempts to control albatrosses living their lives near an air base. And find out if a scenario seemingly cribbed from an unaired "Breaking Bad" script portends the collapse of civilization. Hiding amidst all the stories and fun are big implications for ecosystems, biodiversity conservation, and human society. For episode notes and more information, please visit our website.Support the show