Crazy Town: Episode 128. Gaslit by the Four Horsemen: Maddening Signs of the Apocalypse

Jason Bradford:
I am Jason Bradford.


Asher Miller:
I'm Asher Miller.


Rob Dietz:
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where three stooges take on the Four Horsemen. With the churn of daily news growing more apocalyptic by the headline and with Earth scientists competing ferociously for the title of Gloomiest Doomers, it's time for some fun, or at least making fun with a new fantasy football style draft. This time Jason, Asher and I are making our way through our top three signs of civilizational collapse in three categories: earth systems, pop culture and politics. But we refuse to remain mired in the muck. Each round of the draft will be accompanied by some countervailing forces, some real world examples of people facing reality and building resilience together. Welcome back to Crazy Town, Jason and Asher, my compadres.


Asher Miller:
What do you mean welcome back. I live here, dude.


Jason Bradford:
I know.


Asher Miller:
This is my home.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, that's actually the perfect response. I was going to introduce this by talking about how signs of the apocalypse seem to be multiplying, but the two of you are the main signalers of the apocalypse.
Yeah, I'm the least apocalyptic of us, but you guys are like, the earth should have burned years ago.


Jason Bradford:
I'm pretty much a walking locust.


Rob Dietz:
Well, here --


Asher Miller:
Don't they fly?


Jason Bradford:
Yeah.


Asher Miller:
Okay. But you just can't?


Jason Bradford:
I'm just too heavy.


Rob Dietz:
He's the walking version. Alright.


Asher Miller:
Okay.


Rob Dietz:
So we're kind of on the verge of summer here in the northern hemisphere and the reporting on extreme weather has been, shall we say, extreme. A lot of people are saying this is a time where you should be feeling kind of gloomy, maybe even getting some panic in the bones, but that's not really our shtick here in Crazy Town.


Asher Miller:
We cry to ourselves and then we put our game face on and we come on the mics and put on a brave face.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Come here with joy and dad jokes. Yeah. Well, we don't want to make light of the suffering that comes with what's happening out there in the world that's the great unraveling. But we do find ways to laugh at the darkness from time to time and it's getting pretty maddening. So I thought this was time to bring back our draft. Let's have some fun. The idea is we're going to do the fantasy football style draft or maybe like NBA teams do. We're each going to make our top three picks for signs of the great unraveling and we've got three rounds. We've got three of us making draft picks and we've got three categories. If we're really good, we could do this in three part harmony. So the three categories - Do you want me to lay 'em on you?


Jason Bradford:
Yep.


Rob Dietz:
Okay. Category one is earth systems or the biosphere, something that's unraveling with earth systems.


Jason Bradford:
Classic.


Rob Dietz:
Category two, of course, since I'm running things here is going to be pop culture.


Jason Bradford:
Classic.


Rob Dietz:
Classic. It would be Asher's number three, which is politics. I also decided to add a rule for this draft. After we get done making our draft picks and telling our listeners how woeful and pathetic the world is, we've got to come up with some countervailing forces. We've got to have some positive signs that people are actually trying to build resilience out there.


Asher Miller:
I kind of wish we could do this jeopardy style with your categories. Alex, what is, holy shit we're fucked?


Rob Dietz:
That would take some doing, but that would be a lot of fun. Plus I'm pretty sure I would just crush you guys in jeopardy.


Jason Bradford:
Probably.


Asher Miller:
I'm actually pretty good at jeopardy. I've got a good mix of trivia knowledge.


Rob Dietz:
Nice. We should form a team.


Asher Miller:
We should.


Rob Dietz:
If they have an apocalypse category we will just crush it. So I did a random drawing, kind of like the NBA lottery, and the pick order, number one pick goes to you, Jason. Asher, you're picking second. You can tell that this wasn't rigged because I'm picking last.


Asher Miller:
You tanked Jason, right? To get the first pick.


Jason Bradford:
Yes. Exactly.


Asher Miller:
You just mailed every fucking thing in for how many episodes?


Rob Dietz:
Do you know how badly -- He's been giving the worst podcast performances so he can go first.


Asher Miller:
Nice.


Rob Dietz:
Alright, so round one is your sign of the apocalypse in earth systems.


Jason Bradford:
Well, I would say there's this team that monitors this Thwaites glacier and this glacier is kind of the foot of the West Antarctic ice sheet. And it's this fast moving glacier. It just keeps, it moves over a mile a year. It sort of is moving towards the ocean. It's huge.


Rob Dietz:
Would you say that it's still moves at glacial speed?


Jason Bradford:
No, it moves faster than that. That's what is so crazy about it? It's like the size of Florida. And it's a glacier the size of Florida. Now the big deal is that what keeps it from moving even faster into the ocean is that there's this ice shelf out there, but this ice shelf, which is floating ice, so it's on the ocean and the glacier's mostly on the land. But this ice shelf, they just released, they came back from more surveys and the data and blah blah. And there was just this recent release about how the ice shelf, it's just rapidly just fracturing and thinning and just an amazing amount. They're like, oh yeah, this thing is probably going to start accelerating beyond its current rapid pace.


Rob Dietz:
On the plus side, I did get some ice shelves from Ikea for my house and I put those up.


Jason Bradford:
Nice. Yeah.


Asher Miller:
So what's the big deal? I mean, okay, this glacier comes in, goes out into the Arctic Ocean and then I mean we could just go and grab it, drag it.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, no.


Asher Miller:
And then just use it for drinking water.


Jason Bradford:
It averages like a thousand meters thick for the size of Florida.


Asher Miller:
A little bit hard to --


Rob Dietz:
I already tried to grab Florida and move it out into the ocean so they could have an island resort.


Jason Bradford:
There's the Antarctic circulating current. It's also failing a bit, slowing down like a lot. It's this huge current and because of it's slowing down, it's allowing an upwelling of warm water. It is cold surface water that kind of kept the ice shelves intact and now that's failing and these ice shelves are rapidly falling apart. And then -


Asher Miller:
So for the dumb people like me, this thing, this glacier, making it into the ocean is bad news because it's going to raise ocean -


Jason Bradford:
Well, Florida real state values will just plummet.


Asher Miller:
Good point.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah.


Asher Miller:
So this thing, the size of Florida is going to doom Florida real estate. Beachfront property.


Jason Bradford:
It also holds back the rest of the ice sheet. So the West Antarctic ice sheet is 14 times larger than this glacier. So anyway, I think it is a good chance that sea level is going to rise faster than anticipated because every time they go look at the like, oh, it's worse than -- They have no clue how fast. And of course this warm water and the loss of the ice shelf. Now there's going to be ocean water getting underneath the glacier. Actually, parts of the glacier is actually below sea level.


Asher Miller:
Kind of lubricates it.


Rob Dietz:
Give me the real news though. What does this mean for my stock portfolio?


Jason Bradford:
Well, apparently nothing because stocks keep going up.


Rob Dietz:
Thank goodness. We're fine.


Jason Bradford:
That's why we're in Crazy Town. But it represents the cryosphere in general, which is sort of the part of the earth that is in long-term ice cover and that's dramatically reducing and that ice is reflecting light. So the albedo is good to have all that bright white stuff and we're losing that. So it's just sort of these positive feedback loops. It's bad. So . . .


Asher Miller:
Nice.


Rob Dietz:
Positive meaning reinforcing.


Jason Bradford:
Reinforcing.


Rob Dietz:
Not happy positive.


Jason Bradford:
Correct.


Rob Dietz:
Because that sounded pretty damn doomerish to me.


Jason Bradford:
It's pretty awful. But anyway, no one talks about it.


Rob Dietz:
All right. So you've gone into climate hell. Asher, you are on the clock.


Asher Miller:
Well, so it's interesting because we went into this specifically saying we would not learn about one another's picks and there's a risk that we might pick the same thing.


Jason Bradford:
Oh no.


Asher Miller:
I did not pick the same thing, but there's a lot of similarity in what I picked in and you picked. So I'm also looking climate systems. You were down in the southern hemisphere, you are all the way down at the bottom.


Jason Bradford:
Yes. Yes.


Asher Miller:
I'm going all the way to the top.


Jason Bradford:
Oh.


Asher Miller:
Yeah.


Jason Bradford:
Oh. Summer ice melt or winter?


Asher Miller:
So I am going to talk about theNorth Atlantic Subpolar Gyre.


Jason Bradford:
Oh no. Not that dude.


Asher Miller:
And of course all of our listeners will be like, yeah, of course I know what this is because this is all anyone talks about is the sub polar gyre, right? I mean it's -


Jason Bradford:
The N-A-S-P-G,


Asher Miller:
Right.


Jason Bradford:
It rolls off the tongue


Asher Miller:
It's incredible how often. You hear it once, you hear it a thousand times.


Jason Bradford:
Well NASDAQ, NASCAR, N-A-S-G-P.


Asher Miller:
Exactly. That's right.


Rob Dietz:
NASDAQ, Nascar, NASGP. Can you pronounce it correctly? Come on.


Asher Miller:
So we've talked before on this podcast about climate tipping points. So you were just talking about an example of that, Jason, right?


Jason Bradford:
Yes. I couldn't help it.


Asher Miller:
One of the ones we've talked a lot about is AMOC, right? The Atlantic Meridian, Meridian Overturning Circulation.



Jason Bradford:
Mhm.


Asher Miller:
We'll just call it AMOC.


Jason Bradford:
Not to be confused with the AMC theaters.


Asher Miller:
No.


Jason Bradford:
Okay.


Asher Miller:
Although one might really put the other out of business.


Rob Dietz:
Which one will it be?


Asher Miller:
We've talked about this with Emily Schoerning for example. So for those who don't know, the AMOC moves warm waters from the very southern part of the Atlantic like South Africa, the tip of South Africa, all the way up to the North Atlantic. And it helps maintain mild climates in Western and Northern Europe. So if you think about it, Great Britain, for example, is actually much warmer, it's much more moderate temperatures than it would normally be considering how north it is. And that's because of what's basically happened with this ocean current system. And it not only just keeps Western Europe and parts of the North Atlantic warmer, it really regulates the entire global climate system. So people have been worried about the possibility of an AMOC collapse. It's not something people talk a lot about, but if you hear pieces or read articles about climate tipping points, it's probably the one that people talk about the most. Well, the North Atlantic Sub Polar Gyre is actually connected. It's sort of a part of AMOC, but it's a localized to the very, very northern most part of the Atlantic. It's this counterclockwise circulation of water there. And its impacts are more localized to Great Britain, Ireland, Eastern Canada, maybe Northeastern US areas. And it really helps those areas stay warmer. Now, the reason I bring up the SPG is some reporting that's been done, some analysis and research have been done by folks that we know, like Tim Lenton, colleagues of his at University of Exeter. They wrote a big report in 2023 about climate tipping points. In that report, I'm quoting here, "They identified SPG collapse as one of five tipping points at risk of being triggered under current levels of global warming." So at the time that they wrote this, we're talking about less than 1.5 degrees warming. We're already seeing a situation here.
We talked about this. I had a conversation with Emily recently about this of the possibility with things like El Ninos, Super El Ninos, those temperatures actually rising more quickly and then staying there. So this is just one of five tipping points that they identified as being a risk even just at current levels. We are shooting past those levels quickly. And then another friend of ours, Laurie Laybourn, commissioned some research looking very specifically at the risk of SPG collapsing. And their approach was actually to try to look at actually the security implications for Great Britain if this happens. And part of the reason they focused on that is because it seemed to be a higher risk. They found a 45% chance of SPG collapsing this century, but as early as 2040. So faster than AMOC a collapse likely. And again, this was under business as usual situation. And that it could collapse more quickly than that and it collapse very rapidly. So within 10 years.
And the implications of that is, let's say this thing shuts down, you're looking at three degrees Celsius, cooler temperatures in the winter potentially in Great Britain. Which doesn't sound like a lot. It's a lot, right? We're talking about -- People talk about the little ice age. Some people think that actually that might've been triggered by an SPG collapse. Many, many, many millions of people died during that. And not only does it create much cooler temperatures in Great Britain, Ireland, potentially the Eastern portion of the United States and Canada, but it'll also make summer temperatures potentially much warmer. So you're just looking at greater extremes, which will impact things like food production. So fun stuff, and nobody fucking talks about this, nobody's thinking about it at all, and it can happen very quickly.


Rob Dietz:
Obviously your two picks are related. I feel like you could take this giant ice sheet glacier in your pick, Jason and move it over to where Asher's talking about and we're done. It's like you don't even need to wait on the climate thing to do it. We just tow it up there.


Jason Bradford:
No, if it's attached to Antarctica, you'd be --


Asher Miller:
I wish our listeners could see Jason's face.


Rob Dietz:
I never cease to amaze Jason with my stupid ideas.


Asher Miller:
We can only harness stupidity.


Rob Dietz:
Okay, you guys were clearly in the climate zone when you're talking about your top draft pick and that makes sense. That's like, I don't know, it's like you drafted Victor Wembanyama first, Asher. And Jason, you drafted Shaquille O'Neill first. I'm kind of going with that --


Asher Miller:
Small card, small card.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. I'm getting like Steph Curry or something, right? I'm a little different.
Oh. Good choice. Okay.


Asher Miller:
So rather than being up in the air with the climate, I'm going to be on the land. And you guys know the Planetary Boundaries framework. I'm going to summarize it as quick as I can for our listeners. I'm sure most of them are familiar with it too. But this Planetary Boundaries framework, it's a way to analyze the safe operating space for humanity right here at home on planet Earth. So the scientists have come up with nine domains for this framework. Climate change is one of them. Novel entities in the environment is another, stratospheric ozone depletion. Basically all these things that if you screw 'em up, we're in trouble. And each domain has a boundary. If you stay within that boundary, we're relatively safe. So climate folks know or are most familiar with, there's this 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. Stay under that.
There was, yeah.


Rob Dietz:
You're pretty safe. Stay over it. Where we're currently at 431 parts per million and you've passed the boundary and you're in danger as the two of you elaborated with your first picks. So we've crossed the boundary for seven of these nine domains.


Asher Miller:
Who are the two laggards?


Rob Dietz:
Yeah.


Asher Miller:
Losers.


Rob Dietz:
I know.


Asher Miller:
Come on. Get it together.


Jason Bradford:
I think we kind of repaired the ozone on a bit.


Asher Miller:
Now we know where we need to focus our eneger. We've got to get those up.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah.


Rob Dietz:
Well, so there's one domain that hits me really hard and that is land system change. I always thought when this framework first came out, it was really underestimating land system change. So the idea of land system change is it's about the degree to which humanity has converted forests, grasslands, wetlands, and other natural areas into farms, cities, suburbs, and other ecologically degraded landscapes. So that process could happen legally. You get a permit and build a home. Or it could happen illegally like you're logging illegally and whatever the Amazon or here in North America. So this whole idea of land system change, when they measure it, they're mostly looking at forest depletion and they do that in the temperate zones, the tropical zones and up in the boreal forests. But I've always felt this is, we're in far worse shape than what the framework suggests. And that's because it's not just forests that get annihilated. You guys know I'm a map nerd and I like to fly around on Google Earth. I mean, go look at Iowa sometime on Google Earth.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, the grasslands are gone.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. And just see how much of that landscape is now corn and soy


Jason Bradford:
Wetlands have been drained.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Well I wanted to bring it home to here in the Willamette Valley where we are recording this episode, and it's often touted as kind of an eco hotspot in the United States, at least from a, I guess crunchy hippie perspective or something like that. But it's one of the most altered eco regions on the continent with well over 90% of our natural habitat having been changed. And it's your fault, Jason.


Asher Miller:
Exactly. I was going to say. That's a sheep outside.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, it's a farm animal.


Rob Dietz:
Back in the day, pre-colonialization, pre-industrialization, you basically had two types of ecological systems here. You had this wet prairie and you had Savannah and both have pretty much been converted almost entirely to agriculture and residential development.


Asher Miller:
What about the forests?


Rob Dietz:
Well, that's not within the Willamette Valley. That brings the Willamette Valley. And by the way, that's the one that drives me the craziest on Google Earth. When you go fly around the coast range from California up to Washington, clear cuts everywhere. It's like Aldo Leopolds, the problem with having an ecological education is that you see a world of wounds. Google Earth just lays that bare for you.


Jason Bradford:
Oh, it's pretty bad. Yeah, the forestry in the Oregon is pretty horrendous. It's on this really fast, like 30 to 40 year rotation with these tiny trees now. And they spread it all out. It's like monoculture. It's like farming the forest.


Rob Dietz:
Now that brings us to the end of round one, which that was pretty damn heavy. So hopefully there's a listener or two left out there. If so, we're going to bring some light here and we're going to talk about some things that maybe go against these horrendous trends. So I could start because I was just talking about land system change.


Jason Bradford:
Sure.


Rob Dietz:
There's a really amazing countervailing force here, and that's Land Trusts. I was looking up some of the stats and according to the Land Trust Alliance, which is a nonprofit here in the United States. There's almost 1,300 active land trusts across the country and they've protected 61 million acres, which is, I mean I know that's a number hard to understand, but it's more than all national parks.


Jason Bradford:
How's it compare to the state of Florida?


Asher Miller:
How does it compared to how much Gates owns?


Rob Dietz:
So apparently we haven't pulled you out of the darkness of round one yet. ,


Asher Miller:
No, that is pretty amazing


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, I mean if you look at the growth of land protected since 2015, they're responsible for 70%.


Jason Bradford:
Geez.


Rob Dietz:
So land trusts, I don't know how familiar everyone is, but they kind of come in two flavors. You've got these conservation oriented ones where they're trying to set aside habitat, but then there's also community based ones that have other purposes like affordable housing or protecting farmland or all kinds of stuff. So anyway, I just found that to be, it's kind of inspiring when we're faced with all this land use change.


Jason Bradford:
I love it because we think of, oh, the government protects things in parks, but often that's a historical legacy of like, well, what's not economically useful? But what land trusts are doing in many cases is finding people willing to take land out of economic production and do restoration work in it. So that's been inspiring to me. So in the Willamette Valley, they're pretty important for habitat preservation and restoration work.


Rob Dietz:
Right across the river here on the farm, there's some of that going on, right?


Jason Bradford:
That's not a land trust. That's actually the city of Corvallis.


Rob Dietz:
Wow.


Jason Bradford:
I know.


Rob Dietz:
Look at us go.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah.


Asher Miller:
Land trusts are amazing. I'm just going to push one idea even further out from that, just in terms of being not part of the conventional thing. And that is this very nascent movement called The Land that Owns Itself. And that's efforts to sort of build around the rights of nature work, but it's basically land that's not owned by a trust, it's not owned by humans. It owns itself legally. And that there are stewards on it, humans who help steward it basically and try to represent it, which is, there's basically one or two examples of this happening in the United States. It's very small movement right now, but it's kind of interesting as pushing the envelope even further.


Rob Dietz:
It'd be cool if we can actually abide by the idea. The idea that we don't own this land. It gets to do its own thing. I worry about whatever typical human get out there, cut some trees.


Asher Miller:
Yeah, I mean this is a concern I know that folks who've been part of this have had, and that's where they have these, they're looking at governance structures where they have oftentimes indigenous community members who are part of a stewardship council for the land, but also looking at actually people being on that land to protect it from exactly the kind of thing we're talking about. People poaching or doing whatever.


Rob Dietz:
Where are we with Ents?


Asher Miller:
With what?


Rob Dietz:
Ents. E-N-T-S


Jason Bradford:
Lord of the Rings. They're the forest trees that walk kind of.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. If we had a few Ents out there kind protecting that land, it would be awesome.


Asher Miller:
They could just slap people silly if they -


Rob Dietz:
Stomp me when I go there to cut down a tree.


Jason Bradford:
Alright, maybe we can make those.


Asher Miller:
When I was thinking about countervailing forces, it's really hard when you're thinking about the examples that Jason and I gave, these large dynamics that are happening in the oceans or with the glaciers. There's no real countervailing force in terms of what humans could do to counter that. But what I was thinking about was just again how incredible nature is, ecosystems are in repairing and healing and bouncing back when we fucking leave them alone and give 'em a chance to breathe. It's really amazing.


Jason Bradford:
It is.


Asher Miller:
We've seen examples of this. Unfortunately, it's usually when the human enterprise hits a wall.


Jason Bradford:
Like Chernobyl.

Asher Miller:
Chernobyl. COVID had some stuff that we saw like -


Rob Dietz:
Housing crisis.


Asher Miller:
It kind of takes people taking their foot off the gas pedal a little bit to allow that to happen, stepping back oftentimes against their will. And for me it's like, God, if we could just literally take our foot off the gas pedal, maybe we would be in a situation where the risks of these climate tipping points might be reduced. It's not going to turn around where these currents, these systems are going to revert right back to where they were overnight. But God, if we could just give a little bit of space. It is incredible how quickly nature adapts and responds.


Jason Bradford:
I had a very specific one. This is sort of an earth abides kind of perspective. The fact that evolution will sort things out in the end. And if you take a long view. So there's this soil bacterium, Ideonella sakaiensis that was discovered in Japan and it breaks down polyethylene terephthalate or PET.


Rob Dietz:
Nice. Plastic eating bacteria.


Jason Bradford:
A plastic eating bacteria. And so -


Rob Dietz:
I'm a little worried about my laptop now.


Jason Bradford:
So scientists has have figured out how it does it. It's got evolved unique enzymes to cleave the ester bonds and blah blah blah and great energy. So there literally now is at least one, and actually I bet in the ocean, if we really looked hard, there would be a lot of other plastic eating bacteria that are just sort of -


Rob Dietz:
Man, think how large and in charge those bacteria are going to get with the Pacific Gyre out there.


Asher Miller:
Isn't that where Godzilla came from?


Jason Bradford:
Well hat was because of radiation. Maybe we need a new sea monster.That would be cool.


Asher Miller:
Just plastic eating, yeah, just goes around and -


Jason Bradford:
New Kaiju


Asher Miller:
Eats entire Walmarts in a single bite.


Rob Dietz:
I think Godzilla is the perfect segue to round two, which hopefully is a little lighter than round one. Okay. Round one of the draft is in the books. We're going to go to round two. It's going to be a little bit lighter because the category here is pop culture. My favorite brain infested -


Asher Miller:
He thinks it's lighter.


Rob Dietz:
I know, I know.


Jason Bradford:
Challenge accepted.


Rob Dietz:
Right. Okay, Jason, you'll get the top pick in this round again.


Jason Bradford:
Okay. So my thing about pop culture is just my astonishment of how absolutely unresponsive it is to clear and present danger data. The pop culture seemed to have zero consciousness about things that are so obvious to me. So we have this unresolved conflict happening in the Persian Gulf and there's this huge supply crunch in some places already happening and it's eminent here for the primary enabling materials of modern industrial civilization. And I mean, I'm talking about oil, gas, fertilizer, sulfuric acid, blah blah blah.


Asher Miller:
Helium.


Jason Bradford:
Helium.


Rob Dietz:
How are we going to get those mylar balloons that drop out of the sky on Jason's farm.


Jason Bradford:
And Helium is needed to make the chips that the AI bubble is supposed to not collapse from. So then - But at the same time there's widespread now more and more confident reports every week it seems about like, oh yeah, this El Nino. Yeah, I think it is going to be super. I mean there's always a little caveat, the probability shifting from 50-50 Super El Nino to 80% probably. Whatever. It seems like the closer we get to the timing of the switch of the people are more confident that it's going to be absolutely massive. And so happening at the same time of this supply crunch for fuels and blah blah blah. This is one of these poly crisis double whammy sort of things where if you had a reasonable pop culture that was sentient, it could maybe rally people to start adapting now. You would want to do all kinds of things. But instead it's blindly ignorant. There's zero reaction. The stock market is at all time high.


Rob Dietz:
Is your draft pick the fact that there is no good pop culture reporting on the apocalypse.


Jason Bradford:
The fact that there's no reaction. I mean this is not even apocalypse. In other words, there's a material evidence in front of us of two things.


Asher Miller:
Of oh shit.


Jason Bradford:
Of oh shit. And they're going to collide. They're going to simultaneously, they're going to reinforce each other. And pop culture is doing nothing.


Rob Dietz:
Your pick is silence. It's crickets.


Jason Bradford:
The fact that the pop culture can't do anything at all is nuts. Fucking nuts.


Asher Miller:
It's not silence, it's blindness.


Jason Bradford:
Just blind to it. Just absolutely blind.


Asher Miller:
It's blindness, but -


Jason Bradford:
It's the people who should know.


Asher Miller:
There's signals there, it just can't.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, the market.


Asher Miller:
Deaf, blind and dumb basically.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah. Deaf, blind and dumb. And these are people who are watching oil markets and watching commodity markets for food.


Rob Dietz:
So you're hoping a show like the Pit, they'd be doing surgery on somebody and then they'd be like, what about this Straight of Hormuz thing, we're screwed.


Asher Miller:
Not it's like, shit. We don't have the plastic that we need to properly -


Rob Dietz:
We're going to intubate this person with some toothpicks and -


Asher Miller:
We don't have our gloves anymore.


Jason Bradford:
Right. Officials should be announcing rationing protocols that they're working on it and they're asking people to do the kind of things we did in COVID. Start now.


Asher Miller:
If we did that Jason, we would crash the economy and then the jig is up. Stock market goes down and all of those people, their holdings go down. We cannot have that.


Jason Bradford:
No.


Rob Dietz:
Alright Asher. What is your draft pick for apocalypse and pop culture?


Asher Miller:
I think Jason and I both did a bad job of following your instructions because I think we're doing sort of a more meta analysis than this specific sign. Or is this specific? I could pick look like -


Jason Bradford:
It's a sign.


Asher Miller:
Look maxing. Do you know what I mean?


Jason Bradford:
Yes. That's a great one.


Asher Miller:
Looks maxing, right?


Jason Bradford:
Yes.


Asher Miller:
I'm going to punch myself in the face so that I could get the right kind -


Jason Bradford:
Stronger cheeks.


Rob Dietz:
You don't have to do that yourself. Me and Jason will punch you in the face.


Jason Bradford:
We'll help.


Asher Miller:
That's true. I'm just saying there's signs everywhere. Right? Here, I'll give another one. The gamification -


Rob Dietz:
Two draft picks. What?


Asher Miller:
Hold on. I'm building up here.


Jason Bradford:
He's circling


Asher Miller:
The gamification of every experience that we have. Right? In some ways it's also putting you into a stupor state with media. So you're playing video games for hours and hours and you never get to the end of it. You goon. Look that up people. We're not going to get into that.


Rob Dietz:
Don't.


Asher Miller:
People gambling online. They're just this constant, everything has to be a game. You were talking about how we are not internalizing, we're blind to the signals that we're seeing out there of real crisis. In fact, in some ways what's happening instead are people are going on these poly market apps and betting on -


Jason Bradford:
How many millions will starve.


Asher Miller:
Or whatever it is. Because they are going to gamify it.


Jason Bradford:
How poor the wheat harvest will be in India. I mean it's just the craziest stuff that is scary as hell.


Asher Miller:
So what I want to talk about, the thing I was thinking about with pop culture that is a sign to me of it's not necessarily a sign of Armageddon. There's so many fucking signs of us being there. It's the indication that it's so hard to get out of this because it's about the incentive structure and the reinforcing mechanisms of, we talked about positive feedback loops, amplifying feedback loops with some of these climate systems, right?


Jason Bradford:
Reinforcing.


Asher Miller:
Think about it, what's happening with pop culture. You've got corporate social media that has developed these algorithms that they can tell it basically, here's what we want you to do. We want you to maximize time on our app. You marry that with human behavior. We get a rush from seeing something horrible, seeing something sexy, seeing something, whatever it is. We have this physiological, biological reaction to things, to stimuli that are put in front of us that overcomes our ability to be like, I should get off this fucking phone, get off TikTok, get off Instagram and go make dinner, take a walk around the neighborhood or pet my dog. And then you marry that to capitalism and profit seeking. So you've got people, you've got a situation where people have learned, influencers in pop culture have learned that the way that they can best get attention and to sell ads and make money is to be more and more extreme in their positions. They have to do things to shock people. They make fake fights with each other. They totally game the system. I mean you think about -


Jason Bradford:
Reality TV started this, maybe not started, but that was the big deal too.


Rob Dietz:
I think professional wrestling is the model here.


Jason Bradford:
Professional wrestling, yeah.


Asher Miller:
And Trump learned in both of those arenas. But like Candace Owen, I think she believes some of her shit, but she's like, people listen to her, it's entertainment. And she's saying things like -


Jason Bradford:
Shockjocking.


Asher Miller:
The Mossad and the French Legionnaires are trying to kill me. They've got a death sentence on my head. They're floating around trying to get me. Emmanuel Macron's wife is really a man. Just creating these crazy conspiracy theories. And people tune in at first because it's like entertainment and the algorithm is feeding this shit to them and it's like, what the fuck is this person talking about? And they're kind of horrified, surprised, whatever. And then they get drawn in.


Jason Bradford:
It's so sad because that stuff is just stupid. And I saw four new bird species for the farm yesterday. You know how excited I was? I mean that was great. I saw Western Tanager, Lazuli Bunting.


Asher Miller:
What if one of those shot one of the other ones. Would you be more excited?


Rob Dietz:
What if two different ones were sleeping together?


Jason Bradford:
Well four pelicans, American white pelicans were circling overhead too.


Asher Miller:
I'm just saying, I don't know how we get out of this because w-


Jason Bradford:
Do something, go out into nature is what I'm saying.


Asher Miller:
All of the incentive structures are there to keep people there, right.


Jason Bradford:
God.


Rob Dietz:
Alright you guys in your meta style, I'm going to go simple here. Okay? This is my pick for signs of the apocalypse in pop culture. Of course I was tempted to go with movie stuff here. I mean you know me, but I also happen to be a sports fan. I've been known to attend a Portland Timbers soccer game or an Atlanta Braves baseball game here and there. So what's apocalyptic in the sports world? Well, so many things. We did a whole episode on how the PAC 12 in college sports is sending teams flying all across the country.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, but not the PAC 12 anymore.


Asher Miller:
There is no PAC 12 anymore. Exactly.


Jason Bradford:
Well they reformed it.


Asher Miller:
Yeah, they dissolved and then you got like Stanford is in an east coast conference and whatever. So that's pretty apocalyptic. I was looking at, we're in the NBA playoffs now and one of the games it said tickets as low as $882.


Jason Bradford:
Oh God.


Asher Miller:
People are going to spend $882 for one seat in a basketball arena for a game.


Jason Bradford:
That's apocalyptic.


Rob Dietz:
But this is my apocalyptic thing.


Jason Bradford:
Oh, not even there yet.


Rob Dietz:
What is the fastest growing spectator sport in the world?


Jason Bradford:
Oh, slapping


Rob Dietz:
If only slapping, whatever that is.


Asher Miller:
MMA.


Rob Dietz:
Slap fighting, that has a very small footprint. No, it's Formula One racing, F1.


Asher Miller:
Oh, of course.


Jason Bradford:
But they're using batteries,


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, right? So F1 is 22 drivers, 11 teams. They drive super fast cars around a circuit, some kind of circular thing or around city streets that make laps. These cars get five to six miles per gallon.


Jason Bradford:
No. Aren't they all electric now?


Asher Miller:
No, they have electric motors as well. It's not all electric.


Jason Bradford:
Oh.


Rob Dietz:
52 fatalities from 1952 to 2017.


Jason Bradford:
This the fastest growing sport?


Rob Dietz:
Yeah.


Jason Bradford:
In terms of watching it?


Rob Dietz:
Spectator, yeah. And to me it's not just the resource use in the carnage that's apocalyptic, it's the way that it's pitched. So I found this article by this guy Douglas Jason. He says quote in there, "F1's best strength is how to sell the experience from premium ticket prices to hospitality suites and the ultra exclusive paddock club. Formula One isn't like your average Sunday game where you get wings. Race weekend feels closer to Coachella or Fashion Week. It's where speed, celebrity, fashion and status all collide." I don't know if he did that on purpose, but all collide is a pretty sorry thing to write about auto racing. And he says, "That's a huge part of why its appeal keeps expanding," and the sport is also backed in a big way by the Apple Corporation.


Jason Bradford:
Is that why they made that movie with Brad Pitt?


Rob Dietz:
There you go. Bring it around to my the movies. Yes.


Asher Miller:
Well, it started with Netflix. So there's a Netflix one, basically reality TV series. That you could actually, I haven't graphed this, but I bet you could chart the uptake in F1 popularity directly to when the Netflix show started. And it's again, it's backup to personalities of creating stories around these drivers and the teams.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, yeah. There's like feuds and political rivalry. That movie that you brought up, Jason, which is named F1, was the ninth highest grossing movie of 2025. It made 629 million worldwide. And I now have a proposal for Crazy Town. If we could get the funding -


Asher Miller:
We should sponsor an F1 car.


Rob Dietz:
Well that's a great idea, but I was thinking -


Asher Miller:
It just says, "This sucks."


Rob Dietz:
Can we do live broadcast from the Las Vegas Grand Prix that's coming up in November? Crazy Town trip.


Asher Miller:
Jason wanted to go to Vegas.


Jason Bradford:
I've never been. I've never been. And winter birding down there would be great.


Asher Miller:
In Vegas itself?


Jason Bradford:
Well no, but I get out of the city pretty fast.


Rob Dietz:
Alright, let's make the turn to what we see as some positives out there. And I can keep going on the sports front real quick. I've always thought why watch sports when you can play sports? To me it's more fun, it's more engaging. And so obviously if you're not watching F1, you probably can't participate in F1.


Jason Bradford:
The worst.


Rob Dietz:
But the fastest growing participation sport is pickleball, Jason.


Jason Bradford:
Oh God.


Asher Miller:
Way to trigger Jason.


Rob Dietz:
It's a little inside joke. Jason is a tennis instructor, hates any other racket sport.


Jason Bradford:
I don't hate - I mean pickleball is fine.


Asher Miller:
Pickleball is being banned in some communities.


Jason Bradford:
Pickleball just has some definite problems related to its noise, and actually it's kind of dangerous.


Rob Dietz:
I think you're racketist is what you are.


Jason Bradford:
I am. But if you do it right and safely it's fine.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Fairly low impact. Other team sports that have become popular. Flag football is really on the rise. Volleyball, soccer. And I was just thinking these are all pretty low footprint things if you want to do with your friends or your local team and just go out in the neighborhood and play.


Jason Bradford:
So participatory sports are up in general, you'd say?


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, and comparing that activity to going to Las Vegas to watch cars roll around a track and gamble and stuff like that.


Jason Bradford:
Well, I mean the people around me who play tennis take it very seriously and it is part of your life. You see the same people like, "Here again, Melissa?" It's like, "Oh yeah." So I think it does keep people healthy. Have something like that to do for sure.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Yeah.


Jason Bradford:
That's great.


Rob Dietz:
That's a sign that the apocalypse can be held back. Get up there, play more tennis people.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah. Okay.


Asher Miller:
What I was thinking about again, just in the context of my sign of the apocalypse being sort of social media and algorithms and all that stuff is just, it's more a feeling and a hope. This is where I am a secret closeted optimist at heart.


Rob Dietz:
What?


Asher Miller:
I didn't know that.


Rob Dietz:
That doesn't compute.


Asher Miller:
It's like 17 layers in. It's way deep. If it was a Russian nesting doll, you'd need a microscope to see it.


Rob Dietz:
We've got to do some surgical procedure here to remove the optimism.


Asher Miller:
It's in there.


Rob Dietz:
Okay.


Asher Miller:
And so when I think about the silver lining on this fucking shit show that is social media and all that is, I think the AI slop we're starting to see and we'll see more of could send people off.


Jason Bradford:
Oh right.


Asher Miller:
Just be like, I'm done with this shit.


Jason Bradford:
I want reality.


Asher Miller:
I can't deal with this anymore. There's so much inundation of bullshit. I can't tell what's real anymore. I want an authentic connection of some kind.


Jason Bradford:
Authenticity is in.


Asher Miller:
I think a reaction to, I don't if you guys seen that there's these been these commencement speeches of people talking about AI stuff and all the students are booing.


Jason Bradford:
Everyone gets booed


Asher Miller:
And I just think that there, I've been waiting for a long time. We talked about this. I've been waiting for a long time for sort of an anti-phone. When we were young in high school, you had these different cliques of people like you're goths and you're different -


Rob Dietz:
Nerds. I'm familiar with the nerds.


Asher Miller:
I was waiting for the Luddites that basically refuse to have a cell phone. Do you know what I mean? And there have been some of that. I just think that it's gone so far. It is going so far that people are, might just break at some point.


Jason Bradford:
I'm going to carry wads of cash around. That's what I'm going to start doing.


Rob Dietz:
Nice. Well a couple of reactions to that. One, shout out to our Australian listeners where they've enacted some law to cut back on social media in kids. Also, you just stunned me. Is it the epitome of maybe the worst day in your life where you're giving a commencement speech and you get booed off the stage? I mean, what a fail.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah.


Rob Dietz:
That is horrendous.


Jason Bradford:
These people deserve it.


Asher Miller:
They still go back to their a hundred million dollars checking account.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, I know. These are just unbelievable.


Rob Dietz:
Well, what about you Jason? Are you going back to your checking account to get that wad of cash that you're planning to carry around.


Jason Bradford:
Well, I would say that because it's paying with cash as opposed to digital, as opposed to your phone. People now use their phone to pay for stuff.


Asher Miller:
Go further man. Get yourself a local currency going.


Jason Bradford:
Okay. Yeah.


Rob Dietz:
Just trade.


Asher Miller:
Forget the U.S. dollar.


Rob Dietz:
Can't you grow some melons and trade.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, I'll just barter. Yeah. Melons are heavy though. I want lettable surplus grains. You know, seeds. Okay, here's my thing. I was wondering, I didn't know if this is true or not. I was wondering, I'm like, is there greater interest right now in gardening? And I realized like, oh, Google keeps track of this. Google trends. You can sort of see what people are searching for and yes, indeed. I looked at the data on Google Trends and they have it going back to 2004 and we are in a big, big spike of searching the term gardening. And it is higher than during the spring of the pandemic in 2020.


Asher Miller:
Wow.


Jason Bradford:
Higher than that. Nearly as high as a previous peak in 2009. Spring.


Asher Miller:
It's economic.


Jason Bradford:
Yes.
You could probably, like if you were an analyst on Wall Street and you see this stat, you should be going sell, sell, sell. This is the other thing. People obviously are feeling it and are worried. So while giving my previous rant saying pop culture is not doing anything, but maybe deep down there's other people, the people that are not caught up in pop culture are feeling it and thinking about it and they're responding sensibly. But of course you don't want to promote this too.


Asher Miller:
So I should long roundup because people are gardening more, so they're going to spray more stuff on their properties.


Jason Bradford:
Most home gardeners don't do that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah.


Rob Dietz:
I thought you were going to talk about some awesome gardening movie that's sweeping the nation or something.


Asher Miller:
There's that Zach Galifianakis


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, the Zach Galifianakis.


Rob Dietz:
There's lso the sheep movie too, right?


Jason Bradford:
I haven't seen that one. I want to see that. Apparently it has a bummer lamb in it. I've got a bummer land right now I'm very fond of, Olive, so. . . She follows me everywhere. I'm her mother, her daddy - mama. Anyway, it's cute.


Rob Dietz:
The world of combat sports is rapidly evolving. First, there was boxing, where grown men move around a square shaped ring to punch each other in the face until one falls down. Then there was mixed martial arts where grown men and women move around in octagonal ring to punch and kick each other in the face, squeeze necks and pull joints out of their sockets. Then there was slap fighting where people with gargantuan hands stand across a counter from one another and take turns giving and receiving full swing slaps to the face until one of them falls down. Each evolution of combat sports brings society ever closer to the nirvana of true meaning and lives well lived. That's why we're proud to present the next evolution, The Ultimate Nerpling Championship. At the start of each match, combatants will lock hands on each other's chests. At the sound of the bell we'll find out who has the most pinching power and twisting torque. In The Ultimate Nerpling Championship the only way to win is by knockout. You can't tap out when your fingers are locked down on your opponent's areolas. Join us live in Las Vegas or on pay-per-view for the toughest, baddest, meanest and purplest nerpling you've ever seen.

Alright. Round two is in the books. Let's move on to round three. Remember, the category is politics and as much as Asher is champing at the bit to go first, it's still your turn, Jason.


Jason Bradford:
Alright. I just became aware of something that was absolutely hysterical and insane at the same time, which is perfect for us. And it was actually a report that came out last year by the Dallas Fed and it was kind of titled something like pretty mild, "Advances in AI will Boost Productivity, Living Standards Over Time." I went in, I looked at that and I looked at some reports on it and it's pretty hysterical because the Fed has this chart that shows long-term economic growth in the U.S. and it's 1.9%. There's a little ups and down wobbles, but the straight line trend is 1.9%. And so it has these four scenarios. Maybe we stay on the straight line trend, but then there's this boost from AI that goes up. We go up to 2.2%, right? We get a little bump. It's a technology -


Asher Miller:
That's worth depleting all of our aquifers and putting people out of work.


Jason Bradford:
It's a technology that is nice to have, but it's not going to be super dramatic. But then they have two other scenarios. All that sort of hang out around 2030. Okay, this goes to 2050, the chart. But in 2030 there's this straight vertical line that goes up and it's this singularity where we all become infinitely rich.


Asher Miller:
They charted the singularity.


Jason Bradford:
They charted the singularity.


Asher Miller:
And we're all going to be rich.


Jason Bradford:
But then at the same time, at 2030, they have a line that goes straight down to zero and that's the extinction event.


Asher Miller:
Oh, cool.


Jason Bradford:
So the Fed is like, we might get this little boost in productivity, or we might be infinitely wealthy, or may all die. And so the economy, there's that range.


Asher Miller:
Talk about a K-Shaped recovery.


Rob Dietz:
How in the world does somebody with that job come back to work the next day?


Asher Miller:
That's a shrug of a graph. That's a, I don't fucking know.


Jason Bradford:
I don't know. But what's amazing is that of course, I don't think any of that's real. I mean there's no limits to growth. I mean the main thing they're thinking is it's probably just this growth with this little boost forever. Forever and ever. I don't care about the Twaites Glacier or the Persian Gulf. I don't care about any of that. I don't care about the planetary boundaries.


Rob Dietz:
Why would you? Alright. That's your draft pick is the Dallas Federal Reserve.


Asher Miller:
How is that politics?


Jason Bradford:
Well, I think it is political economy. I mean this is the Fed that's sort of outlining. Here's what we expect to happen in the U.S., and our target on monetary policy is to keep us on this path, right? It's politics. The Fed, these are political appointees and it's all one duopoly.


Rob Dietz:
Alright, Asher.


Asher Miller:
The fight could become completely politicized soon.


Rob Dietz:
What is your sign of the great unraveling?


Asher Miller:
In politics? God could pick so many things. I'm going to talk about the clear corruption of the U.S. Supreme Court.


Jason Bradford:
Oh my God.


Asher Miller:
So we don't have to get into all the specific examples about how courts, not just the Supreme Court, but courts generally. I mean you look at the lower courts and often people talk about, the court over here -


Jason Bradford:
It's all weird.


Asher Miller:
Is this way. And it's like it's such a clear indication. Well what's the difference between the court that's down in the south and the one that's in San Francisco? You know what I mean? It's like, it's politics. So we don't need to get into all of these examples. There have been a lot that have been happening by the use of Supreme Court, a lot of them on the shadow docket, which means that they're not actually happening in the light of day with public arguments being made. They do this not during sessions. They do this internally basically and put out these rulings. But I want to focus on basically a few that have happened just recently with this court. There's how they strengthened the power of the executive branch, specifically this executive, Donald Trump, in the ruling in 2024 Trump v United States that basically gave him presidential immunity for any action that he can claim was made in his role as the Chief Executive. So carte blanche, basically. In the same year they were reversed The Chevron Doctrine, which had for 40 plus years I think had basically provided technocrats in the executive branch with leeway to interpret and create regulations based upon laws that Congress passed. So if Congress didn't spell out exactly what was intended, what the rules would be around something, but they're like, let's regulate water, it was entrusted to the EPA to figure that stuff out. Well, the Supreme Court came in and basically said, the Executive Branch can't do that. These departments, the staff were often experts or used to be experts in their field, can't go do that and set regulations themselves. In fact, that's the role of the Judiciary. So they took it away from the Executive Branch, which is kind of interesting. And then just a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court basically gutted the Voting Rights Act, right? And I don't want to talk about the details of that specifically, I just want to talk about the timing of it. So it was kind of an unusual timing for when they kind of announced a decision because it was basically rushed out the door and used by some states to quickly change what they're doing. In fact to disenfranchise voters in the process. And it was just such a blatantly, to me, partisan act. But the thing I guess I want to point out about this is that I think it's important to recognize that we're seeing more political partisanship on the part of the Supreme Court, but there's already been a longstanding form of partisanship, certainly since John Roberts became the chief justice on the Supreme Court.
That's a partisanship towards corporations and businesses. So if you think about it, there's a great piece that Axios did back in '22, and I'm not going to quote them. They wrote, "When the court heard a case featuring a business - " So they looked at how much the Supreme Court sided with businesses or corporations versus defendants or litigants who took another side. So here, When the court heard a case featuring a business on one side and a non-business on the other, it found in favor of the businesses 83% of the time in 2020 and 63% of the time that John Roberts had been Chief Justice." So if you actually look at the chart, they have a chart on their site, we'll put a link in, you could see kind of a growth over time in courts and it's just gone more and more progressively in favor of corporations.


Rob Dietz:
You know, a corporation needed more power. I mean that's been clear for decades.


Asher Miller:
So just by context, right? 63% of the time that John Roberts has been Chief Justice, 83% of the time, 2020, they wrote this looking at 2020. I don't know the data after 2020.


Rob Dietz:
It's 140% now.


Asher Miller:
Exactly. But that could compares to his historically for the Supreme Court, they ruled in favor of businesses 41% of the time. And then if you think about it, even the most liberal justice probably arguably on the court, Sotomayor, she voted in the interest of businesses 48% of the time. So I just want to name that basically the fingers of the justice system have always kind of favored certain things and now we're just seeing it on I would say real political partisanship hyperdrive.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. Well, it's funny, my draft pick is really good to follow yours up, this whole partisanship idea, because my draft pick is gerrymandering in the U.S. So here in the U.S. government is supposed to be a republic. We have congressional representatives who serve their home districts. Each district contains about the same number of people. That's how it works. And that number is roughly 760,000 people. They're represented by one member of the House of Representatives.


Asher Miller:
And that keeps growing by the way, because population grows, but the number of representatives in Congress doesn't grow.


Rob Dietz:
Right, and occasionally changes can be made. But regarding how districts are drawn on the map, traditionally that's been done every 10 years when a new census happens. And recently states have begun redrawing the district's mid-cycle to give political advantage to a particular party. So Texas, California, Virginia, and Florida have all recently had these redistricting fights. And then you brought up that case -


Asher Miller:
Only Virginia lost theirs, but yeah.


Rob Dietz:
But you brought up this case, Louisiana v. Callais that gutted the Voting Rights Act and it opens the floodgates for redistricting. So now doing that, redrawing your district to favor your party, that's called gerrymandering. I don't know if you guys care about the origin story. There was a guy named Gerry.


Asher Miller:
We know Gerrymander.


Jason Bradford:
I know Gerrymander.


Rob Dietz:
It's not named after him. This goes way back to, it's actually like a portmanteau of a former governor of Massachusetts named Eldridge Gerry who signed the Declaration of Independence, and ironically, he was against redrawing districts. It's just that he was governor at the time that law passed. So his name's forever on it, and when political cartoonists drew this thing, they said it looked like some giant mythical salamander.


Jason Bradford:
Oh my God.


Rob Dietz:
So you got Gerry and Mander is the state of redrawing these districts.


Asher Miller:
I always thought language is beautiful and smart. That's pretty stupid.


Jason Bradford:
It's kind of amazing.


Rob Dietz:
Right. Well, so I read this article, came out of Harvard from a professor named Ben Schneer, and in the article he is talking about that Supreme Court case and he said, "It's court sanctioned partisan redistricting." He said, "We've now shifted to a world where gerrymandering for partisan advantage to advance the political power of a particular party is seen as legitimate redistricting criterion along with other traditional criteria like how compact is your district or is it contiguous?"


Jason Bradford:
It's such an absurdity. It's like, I don't know how they do this with straight faces. I have no clue. It's just so goes against the Voting Rights Act. They have no legitimate reason for overturning an act of Congress.


Asher Miller:
What happened with the overturning of the second clause of Voting Rights Act is they basically said, this is paraphrasing and I'm not a lawyer, basically said, it is fine to gerrymander the fuck out of districts for partisan purposes, but you can't do it in favor of historically disenfranchised communities. You can't do it based upon ensuring minorities have representation. So how fucked up is that? You know what I mean? And what we're seeing now is the south just rushing -


Jason Bradford:
Yeah, rushing


Asher Miller:
And you've got cities like Memphis that will basically have no representation of -


Rob Dietz:
There's a whole other piece to this too, which it just sets off a long-term sort of warfare mentality. I mean, right now the Republicans are in power, so they're going to redistrict as they can, but someday that'll change and then the Democrats are going to try to.


Asher Miller:
I'm going to point out some trends here in all of our examples, right? Because we started with earth systems and we looked at climate tipping points basically. I was talking, at least in my example when we were talking about popular culture about the way things feed on each other in terms of the incentive structure for things. And now what you're describing here is basically this one upsmanship, right? If one side is willing to go further, the other side feels like it has to go further and they keep doing this.


Jason Bradford:
It's Steve Bannon politics of war.


Rob Dietz:
Or maybe it's one downsmanship


Jason Bradford:
It's not Steve Bannon. It was a guy before that. But Bannon was a real believer in this philosophy.


Asher Miller:
It like in democratic circles right now there's conversation about because of what the Supreme Court did of saying actually we have to change the Supreme Court. Let's make more seats on the Supreme Court. So you just keep upping and upping and upping these things and they feed on each other.


Jason Bradford:
Extremism begets extremism.


Rob Dietz:
A positive feedback loop.


Jason Bradford:
Exactly. Reinforcing.


Rob Dietz:
That's also positive. Okay, let's find some examples of countervailing forces as difficult as that might be.


Jason Bradford:
No, I got a good one for this. There was a research done by Carnegie and the Civic Pulse people that looked, and this was done just a couple years ago. It looked at how local politics is affected by this national polarization, and it said that there's a lot of protective forces happening in local politics and it's not nearly as polarized as national politics. And so this is pretty nice. Basically there are all these, they interviewed thousands of local politicians. These would be like city council people, county commissioners, and ask them how polarized are things. And most of them said they're not that bad. We get along even though we know we're from different parties because a few things. One, we're dealing with really basic issues where we're looking at constituents who we know and we also live here, and so we understand the need and we want to get stuff done. It affects us. And then the other is they found this interesting thing that the smaller the local community, the least polarized it was at the local level.


Asher Miller:
It doesn't surprise me at all.

Jason Bradford:
Yes.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. You've got to have dinner with that person the next day if you're calling -


Jason Bradford:
Yes. Here's a quote, "The more one interacts with folks with divergent views, the more one realizes we are all human beings with more in common than not." One survey respondent, elected official from California told the studies authors, quote, "Hard to scream at someone and wave a flag or gun in their face when you just sat next to them at a Lion's Club function.


Rob Dietz:
Right?


Jason Bradford:
So I thought that was a good counterpoint.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah, mine is kind of similar. We have this ally, Jeremy Lent and he writes a blog called "Eco Civilization" and has a book with that title as well. And we published one of his pieces recently in resilience.org. The title was "Democracy was Never Designed to Work, but Something Better is Emerging." And he talks a lot in that piece about sortition. And sortition is where we appoint political leaders, not by election, but basically by public lottery.
So it's akin to how we do jury duty here. You just essentially call people in. He left a couple of reasons why the whole representative elections aren't working that were kind of fascinating to me. And one is kind of obvious. When a representative gets elected, their primary concern becomes reelection, and if you're going to get reelected, you need the money, which means you got to please the lobbyists and this is why the corporations are winning and all that. But a second one was really interesting to me. He said, elections often select for the wrong qualities. You get these candidates who have high charisma, wealth, ambition, they're connected to powerful people.


Jason Bradford:
Dark triad.


Asher Miller:
Dark triad.


Rob Dietz:
Jinx. They're dangerous because they're not representative of the population. So anyway, sortition is this idea we could overcome all that. And he gave some examples like in Ireland, they had 99 randomly chosen citizens who deliberated for 18 months on the issue of abortion. You can't get a more fraught issue, and they heard testimony from women who were in crisis with their pregnancies. They were able to ask questions of medical and legal experts, and the whole process was broadcast publicly. And they ended up with a recommendation to legalize abortion, and they passed a referendum that had a 60% of the vote agreed with them, and there just wasn't this toxicity, this divisiveness because they spent the time to deliberate and they were drawn from the citizenry. It's pretty amazing.


Asher Miller:
And I think people probably witnessing that there was real thought and to hear other people's rationale for things. You may still disagree with them, 40% of the population that voted disagreed, and some of them probably very strongly, but at least then they're not just a boogeyman on the other side that's evil. There's some kind of, they have a belief system. It may not be yours but you could see.


Rob Dietz:
In this country I would take a sortation of farm animals or lunch meats over the election of the people that we have now. I mean . . .


Jason Bradford:
It is astonishing. How often do you watch a politician at the national level giving some sort of speech or whatever in Congress and you go, this is just a show. Very seldom do you actually feel like they're a real human being trying to get some truth out of this, right? It's often just so much is show. And so it sounds like when you get regular people up there.


Asher Miller:
Right. Back to some of the trends that we were talking about earlier, like I was saying with AI and people seeking authenticity, I think that that's actually an area now, it could be dangerous authenticity. I think part of the appeal that Donald Trump has had is people thought he was authentic. He was not a polished politician. And so it was almost like seen as a plus that he said crass, disgusting, horrible things because no politician would do that. But I do think people are hungry for politicians that seem more real, and I think we'll probably see more of that. I think for me, again, thinking back about the example I gave with the Supreme Court, and you could say the same thing with gerrymandering and some of this other stuff when it's taken to such an extreme. I think when we make this awful stuff visible, that's largely invisible - I had a conversation with Thomas Lindsay on this podcast, Crazy Town, I think episode 103. It was called, "It was Never Your Democracy Anyway," and in that conversation we talk about the experience that he's had as a lawyer working with communities who are trying to stop initially hog farms or other really environmentally ruinous things coming into their community. A lot of the process was lifting the veil from people's eyes because they thought, this is a democracy and we all have a say. And if our community comes together and we all band together and our elected local elected officials say, we don't want this hog farmer in our community then that's democracy and we can have our way. And then to realize that actually, well, a lot of the constitution and the way things have been set up is corporations are given rights as individuals and they could basically say that these communities are infringing on their rights to do that. And you think about the commerce clause. And so it's like, to make visible some fundamentally flawed things in the DNA of our democracy, our judicial system, our constitution is really hard, but it's an important part of this. And I think trying to frankly run politics have become nationalized, and I would like to see potentially that that reverses as communities may need to band together a lot more. You talked about gardening, right?People reverting back to things that they can control and do on their own and be more self-reliant. If communities are able to do that more and then they have more of those relationships, then maybe people will be, the nationalization of politics in a sense will get hopefully more reversed in the sense of, no, the interests of this community are real. We know what this community needs. We're going to represent that, and then doing it at the local level. You've gave this example Jason, it's born out with groups that I talk to that are working on polarization and basically trying to get groups of people with different perspectives to come together. What they found is it's actually not just sitting around and hearing from each other about what their views are. It's actually doing projects together. When you do projects together with people to meet needs in the community, the politics goes to the side, and then those people who may disagree with you on abortion or gun rights or whatever it is, they're now human. You know what I mean? And you could live with your differences. It doesn't mean you all have to agree now, but you see them as human beings. But I think part of it, frankly, is just seeing how nakedly corrupt the system we currently have is. It's not a positive thing, but it's like I kind of feel like is a necessary.


Jason Bradford:
Yeah. This is a silver lining in that.


Rob Dietz:
Okay. We've done three rounds of signs of the apocalypse in the categories of earth systems, pop culture and politics. One thing we've learned here is that I clearly won this draft and my team will be the champions.


Asher Miller:
Well, you'll the only one who follow the rules fully. I think.


Rob Dietz:
I can't count on you guys to follow the rules, but no, my takeaway from this is that there's a lot of signs of the apocalypse, of society unraveling out there, and I agree with you, Asher, that making that visible, and it's not that we want to wallow in the mess all the time, but making it visible is really important. But there's also things to do out there, right? There are ways to go against these bigger forces. You are not going to go out and solve climate change. You can't push that ice ledge back up, put the glacier back on top of the mountain or whatever. But there are places to engage and I don't know. I feel like some of what we're proposing to go out and do in response, like, yeah. Let's get out and do it.


Asher Miller:
I want to hear from our listeners. I want to know what signs we missed.


Jason Bradford:
Yes.


Asher Miller:
And also what things are happening that give you some hope that are countervailing forces, Send us an email, [email protected].


Jason Bradford:
Sounds great. I can't wait to open that email. Well, Rob will.


Rob Dietz:
Yeah. I'll send you all the apocalyptic stuff and I'll read all the countervailing forces and it'll just reinforce where we are.


Jason Bradford:
Deal.


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.