Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Is hypocrisy the one thing that can grow infinitely on our finite planet? When you learn that humanity’s fossil fuel burning, including your own, is contributing to climate chaos, what can you do?
Chris Smaje visits Crazy Town for some farmer-to-farmer straight talk. We cover Viking raids to agrarian populism, from societal collapse to the practicalities of making your way in a failed state. And they can’t get away from the shop talk of gardens, livestock, and home economics.
The Town Hall is your chance to hang out with Jason, Rob, and Asher – and your fellow Crazy Townies – as we continue our arduous journey to the center of a collapsing techno-industrial, politically incompetent civilization.
We’re talking dam removal today. So grab a sledge hammer, a few sticks of dynamite, and a wrecking ball, and come along as we explore the battle between concrete placement and concrete removal. And don’t miss our interview with Tara Lohan, author of Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life.
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 us a chance to respond with delight and spontaneity to your questions and comments.
Jason, Rob, and Asher explore the world of competitive birding, the relationship between those who love nature and the technology they use to connect to it, and how even the most gentle of shared passions can get corrupted by status-fueled competition.
The question of who’s the real nut often arises for us collapse-aware folks living here in Crazy Town. Since Mr. Peanut is no longer returning their phone calls, Rob, Jason, and Asher invite Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, professor, and host of the Team Human Podcast to answer the question.
In this episode, we run a special fantasy-football style draft to take a look at immortality projects, some horrendous, but some with positive effects.
Dr. Emily Schoerning and her nonprofit, American Resiliency, translate the latest and most urgent climate science into useful information for communities across the United States. Jason and Emily discuss the potential collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the merits of mitigation versus adaptation, and how to take meaningful action in your own community.
Jason and Asher replace Rob with a much more humane and humble co-host, Elon Musk, to explore the feasibility of harnessing the entire sun to power AI superintelligence. We come away perplexed that not much of the excellent reporting on the environmental, energy, and financial risks of the AI boom address the googleplex-sized elephant in the room – that both AI success and failure lead to immiseration.
Mainstream economists and environmentalists share something in common. Both tend to tout efficiency — think better light bulbs — as the solution to climate change and all our other environmental problems. But the little-understood Jevons Paradox intervenes to overwhelm any progress that comes from improved efficiency.
Picture the future 100 years from now. What do you imagine? Flying cars? Space colonies? AI talking toasters? But if we can’t sustain an endlessly growing economy what does a realistic and positive future look like?
