Crazy Town, Episode 123 Mailbag: The Crazy Townies Speak!

Rob Dietz:
I am Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford:
I'm Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller:
And I'm Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where we snort lines of microplastics before recording each episode.

Jason Bradford:
Oh, that burns.

Rob Dietz:
It's really refreshing to hear from you, our listeners and fellow strugglers living in high energy modernity, affectionately known as Crazy Townies. This mailbag episode offers the element of surprise as it gives your humble hosts a chance to respond with delight and spontaneity to your questions and comments.Join us as we apply our dubious intellectual powers, subpar comedic talents, and underwhelming insights to your Crazy Townie queries. Hey, Jason. Hey Asher. Welcome to our mailbag episode of Crazy Town. This is going to be a lot of fun. We get to hear from listeners.

Asher Miller:
I'm a little nervous.

Jason Bradford:
Was it a lot of work to open up those envelopes? All those envelopes.

Rob Dietz:
An incredible amount. It was like a miracle on 34th Street. Santa has his bag of mail and just dumping it all out on the -

Asher Miller:
Never seen it.

Jason Bradford:
I haven't seen it either.

Rob Dietz:
Well, I am the movie pop culture head of this podcast, so it figures that I've seen a few movies you guys haven't.

Asher Miller:
You picked all the mailbag questions to be about pop culture, eighties pop culture.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah. We've turned this into an eighties movie podcast instead of -

Jason Bradford:
Awesome.

Rob Dietz:
Alright, well let's jump into this. The first comment comes in from Jakob or Jacob who is from Slovakia, currently living in the UK. He says, "I've recently started listening to this podcast and have been enjoying the experience." That's a good start. "Listening to the episode on the Jevons Paradox, I was struck by how a conversation about transportation could go by for an hour without a single mention of public transport on a podcast about climate and related topics. Is this a U.S. thing?"

Jason Bradford:
Do you guys know what he's talking about? What does he mean by that? Public transport? Can we define this first for me?

Asher Miller:
It sounds communist to me.

Rob Dietz:
I mean I first read it as pubic transport, but that wasn't right.

Jason Bradford:
Right, right.

Asher Miller:
I mean, it's a fair question, but Jacob, this was about EVs, right? This is about electric vehicles, and we tend to love our personal transportation devices in this country. If there's two people in a car together, there's something clearly wrong. Somebody must be rushed to a hospital or something.

Jason Bradford:
Or it was like a little kid or something. That's obvious.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Dietz:
I had two thoughts on this. I mean, one is, yeah, it is a U.S. thing, which is basically what you're saying now, Asher. But also one of the reasons I wanted this to be our first listener comment is it's a reminder of how stupid we are.

Asher Miller:
I didn't need the reminder.

Rob Dietz:
When I read that I was like, yeah. Did we not talk about public transportation whatsoever? Not even in passing. Not a little mention.

Jason Bradford:
Alright. Well, something to keep in mind for the future.

Asher Miller:
They do have electric public transit now that I think about it in places. You have it in Portland.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah.

Rob Dietz:
Well, our bad. It won't be the last time either. I'm sure it was not the first, so yeah. But thanks for listening, Jacob.

Jason Bradford:
Well, thanks for the first one and really making us feel like shit, Rob. I hope it gets better for me.

Asher Miller:
The next one is like, why is Rob the most handsome one of the three of you?

Rob Dietz:
I wish this was a solo pod with just Rob. Can we get rid of the other two hosts? Okay. The next one comes in from Nelson who says, "Hello, Grazy Town gang. Energy usage is what drives climate change, but people need a minimum amount of energy to survive. The people who use extraordinary amounts of energy need their usage cut. So energy should be priced progressively." So he goes on to say that, "A person filling up a Prius to commute 10 miles per day to get to a job, to put food on the table, they should pay a fraction for gasoline, or petrol as our European friends call it, as the Hollywood high school dropout." And he named John Travolta here is who he's talking about. "Topping off the tanks of his Boeing 707 jet to fly his buddies to Aruba. for the weekend."

Asher Miller:
Does he do that?

Jason Bradford:
I hope so.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah. I was not aware of this, but I did look it up. I've got something to . . .

Jason Bradford:
Aruba, Jamaica, oooh I want to take you to Bermuda, Bahama.

Asher Miller:
Okay, shut up.

Rob Dietz:
Stop tanking our ratings here.

Jason Bradford:
Okay.

Rob Dietz:
So Nelson's got a policy idea. He says, "Everyone could be granted an allotment of energy valued at a price close to production cost. People could save their allotment and then sell it to the Gulf Stream class." That's the private jet people. "Which would be a feedback loop to give funds to the poor and restrict energy use. So what do you guys think of that policy?"

Jason Bradford:
That was the tradable energy quotas that came out a long time ago.

Asher Miller:
Exactly. Yeah.

Jason Bradford:
TEQs, look it up. TEQs, quotas.

Asher Miller:
Are we going to be serious in this podcast?

Rob Dietz:
I think we can be both.

Asher Miller:
Yeah.

Rob Dietz:
You can -

Asher Miller:
So Nelson, I mean, I think it's a good idea. I immediately go to all the problems with it, or the challenges with it, which is when you have a trading system like that, we've seen those things get gimmicked. And I just imagine, how does the person in the Prius drive up somewhere and somehow prove that they're only going 10 miles and they're doing it for this or that purpose or whatever. It just feels like quite a challenge to actually implement the pricing thing. But quotas -

Jason Bradford:
Yes, quotas.

Asher Miller:
I think they are important. In fact, I prefer a quota, and maybe not even tradable if we really want to get austere here because the truth of the matter is a billionaire has so much fucking money that it doesn't matter if you want to sell it to them, it's not going to curtail their consumption. Maybe it will shift a little bit of money over, but it actually gives them a permission structure to get on their fucking plane and not feel guilty about it, is kind of my view.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Well, I did want to say he's proposing it as a feedback loop. We do have a good episode on feedback loops. That's episode 45. We also have one on rationing, which gets at this quota idea. That's episode 19. And you guys recently made fun of me big time for my policy prescriptions, which are kind of along the lines of Nelson's. I was like, yeah, we need higher taxes, more rationing, blah blah, and it's the political suicide pathway. It's tough.

Asher Miller:
I remember we came up with a platform for the political campaign, which is sure to get you negative votes. If anyone's going to get below zero votes, it would be that.

Jason Bradford:
Consumption taxes, rationing, and quotas.

Rob Dietz:
I mean, Jason, didn't you say something? I don't think we had it on an episode, but you had this idea of political reality is ecological suicide and ecological reality is political suicide.

Jason Bradford:
That's it.

Rob Dietz:
I think that's pretty astute, at least in our current climate which is bizarre.

Jason Bradford:
Well, it'll be interesting to see if the Straits of Hormuz is shut for long enough and things are chaotic, there may be places that have to implement something like this, which we did in the U.S. We had these rationing systems in the seventies.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, but driven not by people suddenly becoming enlightened and realizing we need to take our foot off the gas pedal. It's because of being forced by whatever circumstances are happening. I will say, Nelson, speaking of Crazy Town, what you're laying out is completely fucking rational in a world where we actually operated rationally. Right? The problem is we don't do that. And it's true, and people have talked about this in various ways. Putting a price on the actual extraction, the burning of resources, the use of resources, whether it's energy or materials more broadly speaking, is the right way to tax things. Not necessarily taxing income or people's meager earnings that they get from working at some jobs. So you're right about this. It's just unfortunately we live in a fucked up world.

Rob Dietz:
Well, while we're talking about irrationality, let me add a footnote here. It seems that John Travolta did purchase a former airliner Boeing 707. He flew it around.

Asher Miller:
Was it the one in faceoff? Was it?

Rob Dietz:
Probably, I don't know. But he recently donated it to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society. So I was kind of thinking, oh good, he's retiring this thing. But he put out a press release when he donated it, and then his sign off has this Crazy Town moment where he says he's "excited that the airplane will continue to fly well into the future." So the historical restoration's just going to keep this thing taking his buddies to Aruba, I guess.

Asher Miller:
Sure.

Rob Dietz:
Good times. Okay, let's move on. This is, speaking of feedback loops, we got a suggestion from Tom. Tom says, "Hi, love your podcast." Thanks, Tom. "I'm an organic farmer, construction worker, and former high school teacher in Ontario. When I was teaching science, there was always a difficulty in the language for feedback loops. In particular, the term positive feedback loop. So at some point I learned to say reinforcing feedback loop. I hope it works for you. As listeners we won't incorrectly get warm fuzzies and blush when we consider methane and melting permafrost as actors in a positive feedback loop."

Asher Miller:
Well, we might blush, we're really hot.

Jason Bradford:
That's right. I like that.

Rob Dietz:
I really like that suggestion. There's always little language problems. I remember when we did our episode on feedback loops and we basically had to stop somewhere early and say, okay, we're not talking positive, happy, feel good. We're talking positive in the sense that it reinforces.

Jason Bradford:
And what would be a negative feedback -- Is there another term for that? Like dampening?

Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Or restricting.

Asher Miller:
Restricting feedback loop.Containing curtailing.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah.

Asher Miller:
We used amplifying, I think. We talked about amplifying feedback loops. So we started using that term.

Jason Bradford:
Yes, because of the amplifier when you get the feedback of the amplifier.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah.

Jason Bradford:
Okay. Thank you.

Rob Dietz:
Thanks, Tom.

Asher Miller:
Thanks Tom.

Rob Dietz:
Appreciate it. And keep up the organic farming. Big supporters in this room, obviously. Okay. I'm sorry about this one, Asher, but I had to put it in. This one comes from Kevin. He says, "I see a missed opportunity for your outro of your Crazy Town podcast. I'm not clear who the woman who recorded that outro is, but it's far better than most."

Asher Miller:
That's Melody.

Jason Bradford:
Melody.

Asher Miller:
Our former producer.

Rob Dietz:
It's Melody. Yup. "But maybe it's time to ask her to do a new version. Every instance of the word share should be changed to Asher. Please Asher Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that Asher button." I'm not hitting any of Asher''s buttons.

Asher Miller:
You hit them all the time dude.

Rob Dietz:
"In your podcast app. Thanks again for listening and Ashering."

Jason Bradford:
Wow, that's a pretty good dad joke.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, I think I would bet a lot that Kevin here is right there in that Gen X kind of boomer age group. I want to hear back.

Jason Bradford:
How far back can the eyes of his children roll if he's - H

Asher Miller:
I will confess two things to Kevin. One is when I try to tell people how to pronounce my name, I often say it's like a share of stock, which is funny because I own no stock. The second thing is that one of my personal email addresses is ashering@.

Jason Bradford:
So you're culpable.

Asher Miller:
I am. Well, Kevin's actually me.

Rob Dietz:
Well now I have a suggestion. When you are saying your name and how to pronounce it, can you say it's like a share in a community supported agriculture where -

Asher Miller:
Oh, that's much better.

Jason Bradford:
That's better.

Asher Miller:
That is much better.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah. It's like a sharing economy,

Asher Miller:
Right.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah. Okay.

Asher Miller:
Nice job, guys.

Jason Bradford:
Alright. This actually was useful, Kevin. Thank you so much, Kevin.

Rob Dietz:
And we're not taking that idea at all, but keep 'em coming.

Asher Miller:
Well I am.

Rob Dietz:
Okay. This next comment comes in from Ashley. "Long time fan of Crazy Town here. In my opinion, you guys managed to hit the perfect balance of education and entertainment, and I've directed a lot of friends and family your way when they seem curious about the poly crisis." So lemme just stop there for a sec.

Asher Miller:
That's nice.

Rob Dietz:
Thank you.

Asher Miller:
That's exactly what we want.

Rob Dietz:
Thank you very much Ashley. That is super kind and glad that you're bringing others to the party. She goes on to say, "It's so mentally helpful to have dire information picked apart and delivered with a healthy dose of sarcasm. I wanted to let you know that your particular brand of communication has inspired me to create my own YouTube channel, which will be focused on personal and community resilience. I'm still working through how exactly I want my style and voice to come across, so my videos are currently a hot mess of exploration and figuring things out. But my latest one doesn't completely suck, and there's enough chaos that I thought you might enjoy it. So thanks again for everything you guys do." Lemme just say, I think this is great. I love it if anybody out there feels like they can bring something to help communicate the ideas and get 'em into a wider circulation.

Asher Miller:
And experiment with different ways and being yourself. I mean, the truth of the matter is our particular brand of humor is not everyone's brain of humor, but it is our brand of humor and we just have fun together. And so yeah, whatever keeps you going in this. Yeah, do it.

Jason Bradford:
Nice going.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, thanks Ashley. And we will be interested to see your videos and hit us up and maybe we can help share 'em too. Okay, next one comes in from Alan. I had to cut this one down a bit so this is just a summary that Alan is concerned about losing indigenous languages and with them the wisdom of the cultures that speak those languages. He sees artificial intelligence as potentially helpful. So he says, "maybe if AI can learn the importance and relevance of native languages, could it perhaps be more useful, more insightful and less destructive than it is now? Or would it just be abused, watered down and misunderstood?

Asher Miller:
I have lots of thoughts about this.

Jason Bradford:
Wow.

Asher Miller:
So where my mind goes is, well in a couple directions. One is I thought about Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

Jason Bradford:
What? Say that again.

Asher Miller:
Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

Jason Bradford:
Okay. Thank you.

Asher Miller:
Who, he's a Lakota elder, someone who I've only had a chance to be kind of in his presence a few times, but has always sort of blown me away. And one of the things he talks about is just the difference in language between Lakota and English or other European languages. In their language so much is a verb. And in our language, so much as a noun.

Jason Bradford:
Because we can own it.

Asher Miller:
Exactly.

Jason Bradford:
Nice.

Asher Miller:
And a verb is about something being fluid and moving, and that's much more akin to life, what life is itself. So it's interesting to think about AI, these LLMs adopting, not just trying to maybe preserve or being exposed to indigenous languages, but actually maybe even orienting around thinking more in verbs. That's an interesting thought.

Jason Bradford:
That's interesting. Would you say to an AI, do you know this language? And if it does, you could say, well, I want you to write a response in English, but with the feeling of this language. That would be kind of interesting.

Asher Miller:
Sure. Or there's terms that come from other language, and people always talk about how many words for snow there are in Inuit or whatever. The other thought is, there are people that are working on trying to improve LLMs by introducing other cultures, other belief systems, other perspectives into it. So like Vanessa Andreotti, who we've done things with before, is doing a lot of work around that. My skepticism has to do with just the sheer scale of the data. And if you go in and you're trying, if we plugged into Claude or something all of our books, or read every resilience article on resilience.org, which is what, probably 40,000 articles at this point. It's not even a drop in the buck in terms of what it's taking in. So how much impact really does that have? But it doesn't hurt in my view. And the bigger thing is honestly, Alan, you're right. We are losing not only so much culture, but the loss of languages. It is a form of extinction that's happening right now.

Jason Bradford:
And it's about the understanding of the different cultures and way of life. What I'm worried about is do they have all the words for plastics in Inuit that we have.

Asher Miller:
You're right. They will someday.

Jason Bradford:
So I mean, maybe there can be a back and forth kind of movement here too, and not just learning about their snow terms.

Asher Miller:
We won't have snow. Well, unless the AMOC collapse happens.

Jason Bradford:
Yes, yes.

Asher Miller:
Okay. So we might need, yeah.

Jason Bradford:
Interesting.

Rob Dietz:
I have not had an original thought since ChatGPT came out. So I took this question of Alan's and I put it into ChatGPT, and it said, of course AI will get it all right. I am all powerful. I own you. You are a noun.

Asher Miller:
You are a noun. Nice.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, that's where we're headed.

Jason Bradford:
Okay.

Rob Dietz:
Okay. Thanks for that, Alan. Next one comes in from MacLean from Montreal. MacLean also has some serious misgivings about AI, but then kind of turns to the topic of peak oil, which I'm going to put you guys on the spot. Can you just give a one paragraph summary of the idea of peak oil?

Jason Bradford:
You're the head honcho of PCI.

Asher Miller:
Basically the concept of peak oil is the point of maximum production or extraction of oil as a resource. And basically from that maximum point, you're in terminal decline after that. And it's been applied to specific fields. It's been applied to types of oil.

Jason Bradford:
Regions.

Asher Miller:
Regions. It's also applied as a term kind of to other resources as well. So people talk about peak coal. Our colleague Richard Weinberg, years and years ago wrote a book called "Peak Everything." So the concept has broadened out to other things and I think has had its probably heyday in terms of the public consciousness a while back.

Rob Dietz:
And I think the key point was that long before you run out of oil, you run into economic trouble once you hit that peak.

Asher Miller:
Sure, you're at the halfway point of what could possibly be extracted. But the impacts of that -

Jason Bradford:
Yeah, and when our system can't grow anymore, it gets in trouble because of debt-based currencies, blah, blah, blah. And the debate is always about, can the economy resource switch fast enough, effectively enough to replace the services that oil provides.

Asher Miller:
There's that. And then there's the rate of the decline and how impactful that will be. And it's led split between people thinking that you're going to have what's called a Seneca cliff type of decline, which is just a massive cratering, or something that's a longer descent. So those are some of the flavors of the conversations.

Rob Dietz:
So like you said, Asher, the heyday of the analysis of it was a decade or so ago, but MacLean says, "Peak oil never went away. Doubling down on fracking and on the tar sands of Athabasca. And the similar but harder to extract oil in Venezuela is the story of peak oil."

Asher Miller:
A hundred percent.

Rob Dietz:
"The temporary abundance that this boom has generated is only possible because of the peak in conventional output, which appears to have occurred globally in about 2007. When you look at the energy returns on energy invested, you're faced with diminishing returns. We're pouring low grade fuel into an economic engine that was designed to run on Grade A petroleum from the start." And he says, "Just when peak oil begins to demand of us that we respond with measured caution and adjusted expectations, we instead choose to endorse AI as a very expensive, extremely energy intensive solution that will only accelerate our trajectory in the direction of overshoot." So I want to hear your thoughts on AI during this peak oil. First, do you think he's right about peak oil? I think I heard yeses, but then what about the AI build out when this is going on? And before you answer, I'll give you a chance to collect your thoughts, he doubles down. He says that he likes Kevin's dad joke idea. He says -

Asher Miller:
Wait, how does he know Kevin?
They're in touch with each other?

Rob Dietz:
He just says, "P.S. I like how you guys always prompt listeners to hit the share button, but you guys should also consider having an Asher button.

Asher Miller:
No. Another one.

Rob Dietz:
We could hit that button every time Asher drops an F-bomb.

Jason Bradford:
So we are attracting people to our show you are just into puns.

Asher Miller:
I've got a fan club. And me. They're into me.

Jason Bradford:
Yes. Okay, okay.

Rob Dietz:
So Jason, don't take these comments as an up the pun ratio of the show please.

Asher Miller:
Oh, please.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, please. Okay. Back to AI blossoming in the age of peak oil. What do you guys got on that?

Asher Miller:
Well, Rob, do you have anything on this? We're talking so much.

Rob Dietz:
What it made me think of is that from time to time, scholars will revisit the 1972 limits to growth study.

Jason Bradford:
Right. Like Gaia Harrington.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, yeah. Gaia Harrington, who is now on our board of directors sort of had a viral moment by showing that the business as usual model from limits to growth is kind of playing out. And what that's saying is that we're getting to the peak of consumption and our economies are going to be heading towards contraction because we've failed to deal with our overconsumption. So anyway, when these scholars do this, they go back revisit and they find that this business as usual thing is going on. I wonder if we did the same with peak oil. It's like it's now time to revisit all the peak oil studies from a few years back. And with those scholars and journalists, they look at things that are 20 years old now, would they find that current economic conditions are exactly what was predicted given that we have diminishing energy return on energy invested. And that term, what it means is how hard is it to get a barrel of oil out of the ground or out of the seabed or from the fracking of shale. And it's becoming harder and harder and you would expect the economy to be tougher and tougher because the energy to run it costs more to get.

Jason Bradford:
That's a great question. I don't think it's played out like I imagined.

Asher Miller:
I think, God, we could do an entire episode on this. I'll try to be brief on it. I think one of the challenges with the whole peak oil conversation was that it's similar to the bet right, that Paul Ehrlich had with Julian Simon.

Rob Dietz:
Julian Simon. Yeah. Let me summarize it real quick. So Paul Ehrlich thought we're running out of resources, which means that the supply is getting less, prices are going to go up. And Julian Simon was like, no, everything always gets better. The economy adjusts.

Asher Miller:
We substitute things.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, we find substitutes.

Jason Bradford:
More efficient.

Rob Dietz:
Things get cheaper. So they made a very public bet on several commodities prices in the future. They're like, okay, 5, 10 years from now, copper is going to be higher or lower priced and Ehrlich like it's going to cost more. And Simon was like, it's going to cost less. And Ehrlich lost the bet, which kind of set back some of the limits to growth arguments in a ha ha ha told you so kind of way.

Asher Miller:
But he lost it because of the timeframe, right? And this is the key thing. I think a lot of the early conversation, or the heyday of the peak oil conversation was a lot of, no offense to anyone, feels like a bit of navel gazing stuff around what's the moment that this is going to happen? And narrowly focused, I think, on looking at conventional sources of oil. So what MacLean was talking about here is tar sands, deep water oil, fracked oil, these are unconventional sources of oil. It's kind of the stuff that you have to, it's not scraping the bottom of the barrel, but much harder to get. Right? And that was not factored in. I think that there was a lack of systems thinking in terms of seeing how the impacts, even though a lot of the conversation was around peak oil is going to trigger an economic collapse or whatever, not seeing how the playing out of what happened with peak conventional oil and the global economy, how that played out in a way that one incentivized fracking to become more affordable. There's technology that actually entered into the equation. It's like, these are complex systems that are happening here. So I think there was a mistake made fixating on the narrow scope of when is this going to happen rather than the larger conversation, which is this is a finite resource. Our economy is dependent upon finite resources. We can even put a wide band on when we hit peak coal and oil and natural gas, or whatever. And those specifics matter, but the bigger story you could debate, is it 2040, is it 2020? Is it whatever it is, right? Is that this is an inescapable reality that we're in and that's where the conversation should have been. But you're absolutely right. The way that we're operating with AI is absolutely insane. We're building this stuff out. We're taking water out of the hydrological cycle. We're using all this energy now. We're talking about AI companies creating their own power stations basically to power stuff.

Jason Bradford:
Buying coal plants back.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, and so it's absolutely insane and it may well hasten a faster down slope.

Jason Bradford:
Seneca Cliffy.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, and I don't want to spend time predicting that, but it certainly doesn't fucking help. And what doesn't help too is that people could just easily say the peak oil thing was debunked because again, a lot of the conversation was focused on making specific predictions and we were guilty of it too.

Rob Dietz:
Well, I would just say that with AI it's another reminder that we do not deploy technology with wisdom. I mean, we've talked previously about NFTs cryptocurrency and the amount of power and resources used for what now exactly? Do we really need a 427th cryptocurrency just so some bots can trade?

Jason Bradford:
I think you're behind. There's way more than that.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, yeah. Sorry. 427,000th I should have said. Or millionth. And so AI is just another in a nice long line there.

Jason Bradford:
It's like people are just trying to figure out ways to get rich without really having to do much. I don't know what is going on. They're so abstracted. How can I -

Asher Miller:
That's the whole promise of AI, right?

Jason Bradford:
Yeah.

Asher Miller:
We just sit back and let AI replace our jobs, but somehow we'll be okay.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah. I can't figure it out.

Rob Dietz:
All you have to do is ask AI how you'll be okay and it'll tell you. It's fine.

Asher Miller:
Exactly. Well Sam Altman says . . .

Rob Dietz:
Right. Okay. Thanks for that MacLean. Appreciate it. Also, just wanted to shout out that there's a website, MacLeanart.com that he has created. He's an artist, and I went and looked at it. It's pretty cool.

Asher Miller:
Is this John MacLean from the Diehard series you think?

Rob Dietz:
Probably related. I'm sure this MacLean is a hero just like John MacLean.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, we could use more heros.

Rob Dietz:
So yeah, that's M-A-C-L-E-A-N-A-R-T.com. So check that out folks. Justin from Valencia, Spain and works at the Car Free Cities Alliance, which is a cool place that if I get fired after this episode, I might hit him up and see if they've got any openings.

Asher Miller:
They probably talk about public transit.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah, we have to know what that means.

Rob Dietz:
Damn it.

Asher Miller:
Before you apply for a job there, Rob.

Rob Dietz:
No.

Asher Miller:
You might want to take a bus or something.

Rob Dietz:
What's a . . . Whatever. Okay, so Justin says, "Societies around the world seem hopelessly divided and fractured. Polarization is the word of the day. Left is left and right is right and never the twain shall they meet. But does it have to be that way?"Justin says, "My humble suggestion is that we should reach out more to those who we don't agree with. Can we take party politics out of climate and the environment for starters? How can we make progress here? Who are the trailblazers out there, offering an olive branch and trying to make a difference and bring people together? How does consensus building look among disparate groups? Is there even a future for peacemakers?"

Jason Bradford:
Fortunately, I can confidently answer all these questions.

Asher Miller:
Can you?

Jason Bradford:
Actually, no. I have no idea. These are all tough ones.

Asher Miller:
I have some thoughts.

Jason Bradford:
Okay, good. Phew.

Asher Miller:
The first thing is I'd love to hear more from Justin about what polarization looks like in Spain. We're really locked in to our particular form of polarization here, which is absolutely critical and frankly a life or death kind of stake situation. But I'm just curious if that's experienced there in Spain as well. There are people trying to work on this. I mean, Jason, you just had a conversation on this podcast with Emily from American Resiliency. And a lot of her work is trying to communicate things in a way to people that are, you could say people call it disparagingly, fly over country in the United States. Tends to be more conservative, more rural areas. So she's trying to do direct communication with folks like that who are resonating with what she's saying. There are lots of organizations that are trying to overcome othering and polarization. There's the Othering Belonging Institute, and there have been attempts, we've actually done events at PCI working on these things with groups that try to bring people from different political persuasions together in conversation. What my understanding is from talking to people that work on this stuff is actually what they found that is the most effective is to get people from different perspectives working together on a shared project.

Jason Bradford:
That's what I thought. Except don't we have to do something?

Asher Miller:
It's not about conversations and trying to understand each other and listening sessions. I mean, those things can be helpful, but working together on projects is the way to go. And the truth is, there are so many projects to be undertaken. So for people like us who see the connections of all these things and want to shape people and be like, don't you see this, or whatever. Sometimes we have to bite our tongue and just get our hands dirty working with people. And then there's folks like Nicole Argo, who's one of our advisors. She has developed a really interesting project in a town called Needham, Massachusetts where they brought together, they've convened folks from different groups within the community to create connections but work on shared problems in the community. So it's like people being bought in and stakes and building social ties is really critical in that and it includes social ties across differences. But the key thing is I think focused on share projects where you're not debating stuff.

Jason Bradford:
We're here to do something together that we all agree is worth doing.

Asher Miller:
Yes.

Jason Bradford:
And then the other stuff doesn't matter so much once you start working together.

Asher Miller:
It makes it much harder to other people when you've had an experience with someone who maybe is gay or is of a different ethnic background or whatever. It makes it a little bit harder to just other them when you go to the ballot box.

Rob Dietz:
Well and I'll give you some credit, Asher. I think it was you a few years back who you were really on top of the issue and we did an event. I think Braver Angels was the name of a group that we interviewed some folks from. And I would just say on a personal level, we're not involved in a community building project, but when I try to talk with somebody about some, I don't know idea that I have on how we could live differently, like maybe we don't drive big old gas guzzling trucks all over the place. Maybe we bike. I just try to do it not in that blamey way like I do on this show all the time, but more in the come along with me. Here's what I do and here's why I do it, and I have a lot of fun. And maybe they think I'm an idiot or maybe they kind of like, oh yeah, I see that point.

Asher Miller:
I just like to flip people off.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, that's how it works best. Okay, well yeah, thank you Justin for writing in with that. Gabrielle from here in the Pacific Northwest, although up the river a little bit there north of Seattle says -

Jason Bradford:
Oh, go Seahawks!

Rob Dietz:
"I have been concerned."

Jason Bradford:
That's a football team.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, football. American football. Won the Super Bowl

Jason Bradford:
They won the Super Bowl. 

Rob Dietz:
"I have been concerned about climate and population growth since 1992 when I took my final class to graduate with a degree from the University of Washington Environmental Studies Program." 

Jason Bradford: 
Oh, the same year I graduated.

Rob Dietz:
Yeah.

Jason Bradford:
Alright.

Rob Dietz:
Sweet. Yeah, that's a year before me. She says, "I have lived small all my life. I've been influenced by Joanna Macy, Wendell Berry, Ruth Stout, the Nearings, Star Hawk, Bell Hooks and so on. You all have really helped me feel less alone. I have friends and companions that like nature, birdwatching, yoga, but they're all living with blinders still. I've not found my real community, but for a few online, and even those that understand that the rate of climate change is accelerating are not with me on building resilient communities. She says, "I'm a horsey girl. I can take care of any animal. I like caring for elders, proponents of land back." She's "seeing western red cedars slowly giving up as temperatures change and the rain cycle changes" and kind of exasperatedly says, "no one is paying attention."

Jason Bradford:
Go Seahawks.

Rob Dietz:
Do I have a question? Not really. Just letting you know that she likes being in community with us. Yeah, I mean besides the sarcastic Go Seahawks, I mean I think that Gabrielle is really hitting on the premise of Crazy Town.

Asher Miller:
Yes.

Rob Dietz:
It's like we have been lamenting this. You take a look anywhere that you live in the United States and you're like, wow, we're doing this wrong. We're going in the wrong direction. Emissions are going up, species diversity is going down, soils being blah, blah, blah, blah, and people are not responding in the way that they should. So I just encourage, find that community wherever you can, be able to talk with folks, be able to vent, be able to make fun of stuff. I mean, I think in some ways this is a little bit of a therapy session for us and for some of our listeners like Gabrielle

Asher Miller:
Work on joint projects. We were just talking about that. Gabrielle, I think it may not feel like this, but you are contributing positively to what we're dealing with, right? You're focused on care of people and animals. You're trying to live lighter. We appreciate you living your values and it helps us to hear from people that are doing that and get that positive feedback loop with them if we're offering you something valuable.

Rob Dietz:
You mean that self-reinforcing feedback. That amplifying loop.

Asher Miller:
In this case, I actually meant positive feedback loop.

Jason Bradford:
Got it.

Asher Miller:
Because at least I'll speak for me, hearing from folks like Gabrielle inspires me to keep talking to you bozos. And if us talking to each other helps folks like Gabrielle, then great.

Jason Bradford:
I wonder if she knows about donkeys because I'm going to get some donkeys. I'm really excited about it.

Rob Dietz:
Well, Gabrielle write in if you do know about donkeys, if you've got any advice for Jason. Last thing we want is abused donkeys here on the farm.

Jason Bradford:
We'll take good care of 'em. They'll guard the sheep and be my friends. I want to have a donkey cart sort of set up as well to move stuff around.

Rob Dietz:
Can you get a Donkey Kong? I can play that. Okay, you guys only a couple more question comments. So second to last one here. This comes in from Liza from Texas who says, "Do you have tips for community resilience building activities for introverts, or those who aren't really people-people?" Which maybe that falls to Asher and me more so than our extroverted compadre, Jason

Asher Miller:
It's a great question because I tend to be more of an introvert or I find it tiring to be doing stuff with people a lot. There are ways of tapping in, I mean I've talked about this before with things when we were very involved with the transition movement in the formation of new initiatives. I always thought you should have different personality types as part of the core group because you have your outgoing, extroverted people who can recruit people. You have your strategic thinkers, you have your researchers, and the latter two might be more introverted types. So I think there are ways to plug that in. I mean, I don't know for you Liza, if you like to do research or you're more on the geeky side or whatever data collection side, but there are ways to offer support and help without necessarily having to be in front of a lot of people or organizing with people that much. It's just trying to figure out what those things are. Like for example, you could work at a food bank or a food pantry stocking shelves. You don't actually have to deal with people on the front.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah, exactly.

Rob Dietz:
Well Liza does like to do research. Shout out to Liza. She's helped me with research for an upcoming episode.

Asher Miller:
Oh, nice.

Jason Bradford:
That's huge.

Rob Dietz:
So she's putting her words into action.

Jason Bradford:
We need all the help we can get, obviously.

Rob Dietz:
So thanks Liza for helping us with the research, getting involved, and for the question. Appreciate that. This one is from David in Ireland. He says, "He's been a listener for a number of years" and says, "there's no one else doing it the way we're doing it," so I really appreciate that.

Asher Miller:
That could be a compliment, it could be an insult.

Rob Dietz:
Well it does say, he says, "For as long as you keep going, I'll keep listening." So that's like job security. We got one listener out there, it's a good ratio, three to one.

Asher Miller:
Exactly. It's almost like tar sands, right?

Rob Dietz:
So his mailbag question is "How do I communicate with my children on these topics as they get older, becoming teenagers and moving towards adulthood. As a family we gave up flying seven years ago now. I know the planes have flown anyway, but there's a small sense of agency from this. At least as parents, we make the choices for our kids, but they will make their own choices one day. They're all good kids and I know they'll make the right choices for themselves if they're looking at it through the right frame. Thanks and keep going. So yeah, thanks David. Thoughts on -

Jason Bradford:
You just have to force them to listen to us. So basically if you just put Crazy Town, start from the first episode and just play it in your house continually as the children are trying to go to sleep.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, I would say in the middle of the night while they're sleeping, just pipe it in.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah, it's subliminal that way even.

Asher Miller:
Yeah, exactly. This is a really hard question and I don't know, I had to hear what you guys have to say about this.

Rob Dietz:
Well, I did struggle with this quite a lot. First of all, David's right. It's a lot easier if you have these values and you have the, let's call it the will to live lighter, you can just kind of put that on your kid. And I did that with my kid. We moved into this eco village when she was two years old and kind of this idea of like, hey let's raise you in a place where people are really trying to care for the land and are really considering how much energy they're burning and all that sort of stuff. So I think as a little one, she got some of those values, but then I've tended to let go a lot as she's grown up and she's actually going to be graduating from college this coming summer. For me, it's more just finding those opportunities to continue expressing gratitude for the natural world and being able to have conversations that you explore the trouble that we're in and how to stay with that trouble. So as you two know, I'm going to go on a hike with her this summer on the Pacific Crest Trail. We're not going to do the whole thing, but we're doing a pretty large enough chunk that I think we're going to have plenty of time in nature and we're also going to have plenty of time to think about, hey, what are some ideas of how to live in a world that's in this much trouble?

Jason Bradford:
I'm glad you're going to do this. You think you'll have the ability or time to talk out of being a banker for the oil and gas industry on this trip?

Rob Dietz:
Well, no, that's my retirement plan.

Asher Miller:
Yeah. Whatcha talking about?

Rob Dietz:
Yeah, I mean I honestly think we've also, all three of us I think have noted we're all living in this system that kind of forces you, unless you're just going to drop out, you have to behave in ways that aren't awesome. I had to come from Portland down to Corvallis to sit with you guys here today and I'm going to burn energy doing that. I don't know the way around it, but I think it's worth doing for how we're spending this time together and trying to help.

Jason Bradford:
Yeah, I think it's a tough one because obviously there always is a separate. When they're little they sort of can go along. You're their parents and they tend to idolize you maybe a little bit, or just be so happy to just be with their family. But as they start to get more going to their friends' houses or becoming teenagers and sort of thinking of on their own and trying to separate, then they're going to maybe look back on how their family was and raised and kind of go, why did they make me do that? Nobody else is doing that. So it is interesting. Some teenagers are probably going to be appreciative and stick with it and others may be rebellious. I don't know. I don't know how much you can control just being loving and stuff and kind and have good communication, I guess.

Asher Miller  
Yeah, I think some of it depends on the kid. Some of it depends on the parent and the relationship between them. My two boys are different, and I may have overcompensated for what feels like a mistake that I made when my youngest, Eli, was - Was he nine or 10? I can't remember exactly how old he was. He was at a talk I gave, and I decided at that talk that I was speaking to other parents locally, and I decided I was going to let myself get really emotional. I actually went into it saying, I'm going to allow myself to feel what I feel. And I was even crying a bit when I was talking. And if people want to make fun of me, I think the video is like on our website somewhere. 

Jason Bradford  
Oh good. 

Asher Miller  
And that was really hard on him, because he was at that stage in life where he did look up at me and see me as, like, this kind of strong, whatever role model, I know, don't laugh, Jason. I know you're about to laugh.

Rob Dietz  
Asher is the tough guy in charge.

Asher Miller  
It wasn't so much that, but just seeing how vulnerable I was and how kind of scared I was, made him scared. You know? And I think that, I kind of wish I hadn't done it quite that way with him, you know, to be honest. And the way that he is, and by the way, think about what - It depends on how old your kids are, you know, David, like my 15 year old, you know, he's been living under a Trump reality for two thirds of his life. You know, he went through COVID as a younger kid. He's seen a lot of really hard, and gone through a lot of really hard stuff. And I think it veers towards cynicism. So talking to him more about how bad things are, which, you know, I sometimes do, is not actually what he needs, right? Like, and my older son, I think, is much more rational and very like in his prefrontal cortex about everything, you know? Whereas my younger self is more emotional about things. And so talking to him about stuff is a little different, too. The key thing, I think, for me, that I probably feel has been the most valuable thing. One is actually my wife contributing more than I do. Which is, she actually does things in the real world to help this community around food system stuff, and she's modeling that way. And we model for them by being honest and available to talk to them about things. So not trying to push a conversation, but being available for conversations. And being honest about when we're upset at things. I rail about stuff. I also laugh about things, you know, like just the absurdity of things with them, and share that sense of humor. But then they see us actually trying to do things that are helpful, and that's almost the best thing that you could do more than I think even having conversations or trying to start conversations, is being available and modeling. And part of that is just modeling love and care.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, I think also I just want to add that most of the teens I've met who have some sort of ecological literacy, they're pretty worked up and upset and struggle with the same kind of guilt that we've brought up. Like, you know, if you're flying to see your friend and go on a ski trip or something like that, it feels like, oh should I be doing this? And I mean it's a hard time. We're gonna have to start facing that yeah, we can't just burn whatever we want when we want for for fun, but it's pretty hard to tell kids, like, "Here's your ration. Use it wisely." When all their friends around them are doing something completely different.

Asher Miller  
Sorry, one last thought, which is, it's not necessarily about the conversations you have. It's about the practices you help them form for themselves around self care, right? So because they're going to be dealing with lots of stress, whether you talk about it with them or not, they're  probably experiencing a lot of it. They're seeing a lot of it. They're going to be living a lot of it. So like the practices that they build of self care, you know, like exercising, even things like meditation, you know. These are important things in order to cope. We all need them, but it's certainly something we can help form as habits, you know, for our kids when they're younger.

Rob Dietz  
Okay, guys, our final question comes in from Ryan. He actually had like five or six questions. I'd call them pseudo serious. So I picked the one I thought you guys could go to the most, which is, "Some pundits have seen Venezuela and Iran as distractions from the Epstein files. But what if, in an ironic twist, the Epstein files were a distraction from the U.S. invading Venezuela and Iran for access to their oil."

Jason Bradford  
I think this is sort of like people want a pattern recognized. Like there's clouds and you're like, "Oh that's a pony!" And it's not a pony, it's just a fucking cloud.

Rob Dietz  
Wow.

Asher Miller  
Way to squash the dreams of six year old girls.

Rob Dietz  
We're not allowed to like, just look at clouds and dream of what they look like. No, no, that's water vapor. Two atoms of hydrogen bonded to one of oxygen in gaseous form. Now shut up.

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, that's me.

Melody Travers  
Is that all you have to say, Jason.

Jason Bradford  
Yeah, I don't think they're related at all. I just think this just happens to be a bunch of shit happening at the same time, and correlation is not causation. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Asher Miller  
I think there's a mix, right? I think that we've heard, you know, Steve Bannon talk about flooding the zone with shit. I do think that there's a strategy there of overwhelming people with, you know, too many things happening. I do think that Trump is attuned to trying to change the conversation when he feels like the conversation is going in a bad direction for him. I think there's something there around like putting something out there and trying to get people to focus on that so you can control the narrative, right? I think there's a deeper underlying thing here that's really serious and might not be what was motivating Ryan, but that is, like, what is going on here with Venezuela and Iran, you know? And I mean, Trump has been explicit where in the past, we pretended that we're just about bringing democracy. We don't care about that. Oh, there's oil there. There's oil in Iraq. I didn't know. So at least he's explicit, like, Yep, we're getting the Venezuela oil. We want to get the Iran oil. I think we're dealing with multiple factors here, but one of them could be that there is a recognition, not on the part of Donald Trump, but on the part of some that resources are critical. Control of resources geopolitically is a really important matter. And I think you could say there is some kind of picture you could paint. It's patterning. So Jason's gonna shit all over this, but there's definitely deeper things at play here.

Jason Bradford  
I'm gonna amend what I said a little bit. I would say that whenever I bomb the crap out of another country, I do it for a lot of reasons. 

Asher Miller  
Yes. You're stacking functions. 

Jason Bradford  
Right. So the thing I don't like is a simplistic narrative. It's because of the Epstein files, or . . . It's like, no. It's because there's a whole lot of thumbs on this scale towards a decision for something. It's because there's all these interest groups coming in. Israel has an interest. 

Asher Miller  
You get alignment. 

Jason Bradford  
You get alignment of interest. Countering China, there's an interest there. Blah blah blah. Distracting from what's happening with your DHS director, There's an interest there. Blah blah blah. 

Rob Dietz  
Well, and I would just say that Ryan's question, and your answers of it, just remind me that we are in the time of polycrisis and all of these different strands, whether it's sick billionaires who are abusive of children, whether it's the peak oil, whether it's willingness to bomb, to grab resources, whatever craziness that we're looking at here. It's all these different strands coming together, and it makes our jobs all the harder to to look at it, to process it, to navigate it, but all the more reason to work towards building community resilience, finding the people who are with you and don't want that to be the way our world goes. And the last thing that I want to ask is, if you looked up at that cloud and it looked like a donkey, would that be okay?

Asher Miller  
Oh right. Good point, Rob.

Jason Bradford  
Oh. Thank you for giving me another perspective on things. I really appreciate that about you.

Asher Miller  
I just want to thank the folks that took the time to send us, you know, comments into the mailbag, and even more broadly, for bothering to listen to the three of us. 

Rob Dietz  
Yeah, we really do love our listeners. Appreciate you. Appreciate the insight that you have and your willingness to stay with the trouble and keep trying to do good things in the world

Melody Travers  
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.