Crazy Town

What would it actually mean to live with less? From World War II rationing to the possibility of a contracting economy, the search explores what happens when a civilization built on endless expansion runs up against ecological limits. And if we're forced to power down, can we preserve the things we value most—health, human rights, cultural diversity, individual freedom—without preserving the system that created them?

In Part 6 of our six-part series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff reaches the final stop in his investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. After following clues through global trade, complexity, economic growth, progress, and the adaptive cycle, Alex finally looks in the one place he hasn't searched yet: the future.

Originally recorded on 9/11/26 with archival episodes.

• Episode 19, “I Can’t Drive… 35! The Rationale for Rationing”
• Episode 27, “Poked by a Porcupine: the Politics of Contraction”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

What if collapse isn't the end of the story but part of a larger cycle?

In Part 5 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues his investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following clues from the Crazy Town archives leads to the adaptive cycle: a framework from ecology that describes how complex systems move through growth, maturity, collapse, and reorganization.

From the Titanic and lifeboats to Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic expedition, the search turns toward a more difficult question: How do we navigate a period of contraction while building something more just, sustainable, and resilient on the other side?

Originally recorded on 9/10/26 with archival episodes.

• Episode 25, “Koala Butts Ablaze and the Sweet Relief of the Adaptive Cycle”
• Episode 26, “Doors and Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Reimagining Lifeboat Ethics in the Age of Overshoot”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

What if the story we tell ourselves about progress is wrong?

In Part 4 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues his investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following clues from the Crazy Town archives, Alex begins questioning one of the most deeply held assumptions of modern society: that history is a story of continual progress.

From rising life expectancy and GDP to expanding material wealth and technological innovation, there are plenty of reasons to believe things are getting better. But where did this idea of progress come from? And what happens when the energy and resources required to keep progressing begin to run up against the limits of the natural world?

Along the way, Alex follows the trail from the Enlightenment and fossil fuels to techno-optimism, Jeff Bezos, cargo cults, and the dangerous belief that technology will always come to the rescue. Maybe the problem isn't that we're failing to make progress. Maybe it's that we're asking the wrong question altogether.

And if Jason, Rob, and Asher aren't looking for a ladder to the future, where exactly could they have gone?

The search continues.

Originally recorded on 8/19/26 with archival episodes.

• Episode 9, “They’ll Think of Somethingisms”
• Episode 39, “The Myth of Progress and Limits to Growth, or… the Story of the World’s Largest Shovel”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

Can our economy keep growing forever on a finite planet?

In this third installment of Finding Crazy Town, we explore the idea of exponential economic growth, why economists and politicians have become so committed to it, and what happens when our economic models fail to account for the environmental systems that make the economy possible.

Along the way, Jason, Rob, and Asher revisit the problems they see in conventional economics, Jason recounts the experience that sent him down the rabbit hole of Limits to Growth and ecological economics, and the trio asks whether growth and progress really mean the same thing.

From Robert Wadlow to Ronald Reagan, Donella Meadows to Julian Simon, the IPCC to the three musketeers, we follow the clues—and discover that sometimes limits aren't the enemy of creativity. They’re what make creativity possible.

Originally recorded on 7/21/26 with archival episodes.

• Episode 2, “Punching Ronnie in the Mouth”
• Episode 8, “Mosquito-Flavored Popcorn, or What Climate Scientists Are Getting Wrong”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

What if the greatest strength of modern civilization—its incredible complexity—is also its greatest weakness?

In Part 2 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues investigating the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following the trail leads from a simple podcast microphone into the astonishing complexity of modern techno-industrial civilization, where every solution creates new layers of coordination, specialization, and dependence.

We'll revisit one of Crazy Town's core ideas: that complexity creates complexity. As societies become more interconnected, they also become more fragile—raising difficult questions about resilience, simplification, and what it would take to build a civilization that's durable enough to weather the challenges ahead.

Originally recorded on 7/15/26 with archival episodes.

The world has lost a voice of clear, truth-telling wisdom—a man whose work reached millions of people and fundamentally changed the lives of thousands.

Richard Heinberg was regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He was Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute for nearly twenty years. Richard was the author of fourteen books, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis.

Crazy Town producers Alex Leff and Melody Traverse discuss Richard's legacy and play episode one of The Power Podcast.

We'll resume our regular programming of the Finding Crazy Town series next week.

What happens when the global economy depends on fish traveling 10,000 miles, oil flowing through a single strait, and enough cheap fossil fuel energy to build civilizations that previous generations couldn't even imagine?

In Part 1 of our six-part summer series, producer Alex Leff begins investigating the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following the clues leads to international shipping, global trade, and the hidden energy that powers modern civilization. Along the way, we'll revisit some of Crazy Town's foundational ideas—and begin asking how our modern techno-industrial world came to be, why it's so fragile, and what it would take to build something more resilient.

Originally recorded on 7/1/26 with archival episodes.

• Episode 11, “My Dinner Is Stuck in Traffic”
• Episode 16, “The 10,000-Mile Cod and Insane Global Trade”
• Episode 23, “Mayor McCheese & Modern Medicine: the Good & Bad of High Energy”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

With the churn of daily news growing more apocalyptic by the headline, and with earth scientists competing ferociously for the title of “gloomiest doomer,” it’s time for some fun (or at least making fun) with a new fantasy-football-style draft. This time, Jason, Rob, and Asher are making their way through their top 3 signs of civilizational collapse, in 3 categories: Earth systems, pop culture, and politics. But they refuse to remain mired in the muck. Each draft pick has to be accompanied by a countervailing force, a real-world example of people facing reality and building resilience together. Originally recorded on 5/22/26.

• The 'Doomsday' Glacier's Giant Ice Shelf by Alison George, New Scientist, May 18, 2026
• Thwaites glacier in Antarctica
• Antarctica’s ‘doomsday glacier’ by Hope Nguyen, Yahoo! News, May 20, 2026
• Plastic-Eating Microbe by Hafsa Aslam, UC Davis, Apr 7, 2025
• Gardening google search trend
• Advances in AI will boost productivity, by Mark A. Wynne and Lillian Derr, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, June 24, 205
• Dallas Fed Chart 3 Possible AI Futures by Rudo Chakrabarti, Yahoo! Finance, May 9, 2026
• Local governments oases of compromise by Alexandra Marquez, NBC News, Oct 23, 2024
• North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre collapse by Laurie Laybourn, IPPR.org, Oct 9, 2024
• Global Tipping Points: Atlantic Circulation
• The most pro-business Supreme Court ever by Felix Salmon, Axios, Aug 4, 2022
• Voting Rights Decision, New York Times, May 28, 2026
• Planetary Boundaries framework
• Land System Change
• Willamette Valley Wet Prairie
• Willamette Valley Upland Prairie and Savanna
• Maps of Crazy Town: Mar de Plastico by Rob Dietz, Resilience, Sep 4, 2025
• The Land Trust Alliance
• Community Land Trusts
• How F1 Became the Fastest Growing Sport in the U.S. by Douglas Jase, Complex, May 6, 2026
• Fatalities in F1 racing
• Explainer: What’s happening with gerrymandering in the United States—and who will “win” the redistricting battle? Harvard Kennedy School, May 4, 2026
• Democracy was never designed to work — but something better is emerging by Jeremy Lent, Resilience, May 6, 2026

• Episode 96, “The Frequent Flyer Tree: Losing the Last Bit of Sense in the Climate Emergency”
• Episode 103, “It Was Never Your Democracy Anyway: Thomas Linzey on Rethinking the Constitution”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

It’d be easy, with the clusterf**k of crazy-making economic, geopolitical, and democracy-in-decline news dominating the scene, to forget that the unraveling of environmental systems waits for no person. That’s why we’ve asked Emily Schoerning to return to Crazy Town. Asher and Emily sit down together (uh, virtually) to discuss the oceanic dynamics – from worrisome to downright apocalyptic – that could make the Strait of Hormuz disruption look like a five-minute wait at the Starbucks drive-thru. In this episode they discuss the possibility of a 2026-2027 Super El Niño, the growing risks of an AMOC collapse, and how each of us can approach near- and longer-term resilience.

Originally recorded on 5/20/26.

• American Resiliency
• Links to graphs/resources that Emily mentioned:
• NOAA ENSO Update (see page 23)
• Columbia El Nino Update
• Climate Reanalyzer (to visualize average SST changes as a graph)
• Zach Labe's visualizations (to visualize currently non-apocalyptic Antarctic sea ice)
• Copernicus (to visualize SST anomalies on world map)
• Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown modulates atmospheric rivers in a warmer climate by Mimi, M. S., Liu, W., Ma, W., & Chen, G. Nature Communications, 2026
• Articles/papers related to AMOC and El Nino:
• Observational constraints project a ~50% AMOC weakening by the end of this century by Portmann, V., Swingedouw, D., Khattab, O., & Chavent, M. Science Advances, 2026
• Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought by Carrington, D. The Guardian, April 15, 2026
• El Niño/Southern Oscillation (Enso) Diagnostic Discussion, Climate Prediction Center, 14 May 2026
• A'super El Niño?‘ The Conversation, May 14, 2026

• Episode 119, “Getting Real about Resiliency with Emily Schoerning”

Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.

Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.

Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

Join your fellow Crazy Townies by registering at resilience.org/crazytownhall

The Crazy Town Hall is a live, online get-together for our most engaged listeners, affectionately known as Crazy Townies. 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. This 75-minute event will feature plenty of lampoonery, fun pop quizzes, and even good ideas for building community resilience.

Like any respectable political circus these days, this event is also a fundraiser. So please consider making a donation to our modest nonprofit organization, and join us for some fun at the Crazy Town Hall.