Crazy Town

All of humanity’s feats, whether a record-setting deadlift by the world’s strongest man or the construction of a gleaming city by a technologically advanced economy, originate from a single hidden source: positive net energy. Having surplus energy in the form of thirteen pounds of food per day enables a very big man, Hafthor Bjornsson, to lift very big objects. Similarly, having surplus energy in the form of fossil fuel enables very big societies to build and trade very big piles of stuff. Maybe Hafthor has a rock-solid plan for keeping his dinner plate well stocked, but no society seems ready to have a mature conversation about how our sprawling cities and nations will manage as net energy declines. Calling our conversation “mature” might be a stretch, but at least we’re willing to address climate change, sustainability, and the rest of the net energy conundrum head on. Alice Friedemann, author of Life after Fossil Fuels, joins the conversation. Originally recorded on April 10, 2021.

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Put on your best polyester pants, grab a bunch of gleaming mylar balloons, and crack open a case of bottled water. In today's episode, we're entering the plastic world of plastic pollution in all its glorious plasticity. We're on the hunt for microplastics – and we won’t have to go very far, as they're present everywhere – in the soil, in the water, in the air, and in our bodies. We'll be looking for systemic solutions and talking with Matt Simon, author of the book A Poison Like No Other. 

Originally recorded on 7/10/25. Visit Crazy Town on the web.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Matt Simon, A Poison Like No Other: How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet and Our Bodies, Island Press, October 27, 2022.
• Katie Okamoto, "Microplastics Are Everywhere. Here’s How to Avoid Eating Them." New York Times, April 21, 2025.
• Ocean Cleanup (large organization with a popular, but frustrating, ecomodernist approach to plastic pollution).
• Jen Fela, "Global Plastics Treaty Delayed, but Not Defeated," Earth Island Journal, December 11, 2024.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 84, "Escaping Technologyism"

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The “tragedy of the commons” is an idea that has so thoroughly seeped into culture and law that it seems normal for people and corporations to own land, water, and even whole ecosystems. But there’s a BIG problem: the “tragedy” part of it has been debunked – it really should be the triumph of the commons. Learn the origin story of privatization and explore the true meaning of commons and how to manage them for sustainability and equity. Also check out our suggestions for championing the commons (beyond Robin Hood’s strategy of stabbing the aristocracy). Originally recorded on 2/10/22.

• The oddity of the queen’s ownership of swans
• More about the swans
• An Act Concerning Swans (1482)
• Simon Fairlie wrote the article “A Short History of Enclosure in Britain” in The Land (2009).  
• Briony McDonagh and Carl Griffin wrote “Occupy! Historical geographies of property, protest and the commons, 1500-1850,” Journal of Historical Geography (2016).
• Stephen Knight of the University of Melbourne writes about Robin Hood and the Forest Laws.
• Stephen Quilley & Katharine Zywert wrote the article “Livelihood, Market and State: What Does a Political Economy Predicated on the ‘Individual-in-Group-in-Place’ Actually Look Like?,” Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(15), pages 1-23, July 2019.
• Munro Fraser and Thomas Mande wrote a report called The Commons in a Wellbeing Economy, a briefing paper published by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.
• David Bollier wrote the outstanding and super-readable book The Commoner’s Catalog for Changemaking: Tools for the Transitions Ahead.   
• On the Commons has been helping to build a commons movement since 2001.  
• Peter Barnes has written many articles and books about property rights and the commons.
• “Elinor Ostrom’s 8 rules for managing the commons” based on Derek Wall’s book Elinor Ostrom’s Rules for Radicals

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As Trump’s tariffs kick in, the Republican party is suddenly spouting anti-consumerist rhetoric that would make the Lorax smile. Should we cheer on this accidental experiment in economic shrinkage, or will this ham-fisted set of trade policies cause a backlash against the proponents of degrowth? As political confusion reigns, we offer eco-localism as the no-regrets way to build community resilience in the face of unprecedented ineptitude that probably won’t go away anytime soon. Originally recorded on 6/16/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, Avid Reader Press, March 2025.
• UN Alliance For Sustainable Fashion addresses the damage of ‘fast fashion’
• Kelsey Piper, "Trump’s bizarre new push to make us poorer," Vox, February 7, 2025.
• Kenneth Pucker, "Lessons From Trump’s Degrowth Experiment," Business of Fashion, May 9, 2025.
• Kenneth Bradsher, "China’s Chokehold on This Obscure Mineral Threatens the West’s Militaries," New York Times, June 9, 2025.
• Adam Tooze, "Trump's futurism: Elon's rockets and fewer dolls for "baby girl," Chartbook, May 6, 2025.
• "The End of Fast Fashion?," The Daily, May 15, 2025.
• Kurt Cobb, "Trade war vise grip: China is squeezing rare earth supply and it’s hurting," Resilience, June 8, 2025.
• "Derek Thompson: Trump's War on Dolls," The Bulwark, May 2, 2025.
• Richard Heinberg, "How Eco-Localism Differs from Tariff Terrorism," Resilience, April 17, 2025.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 86, "Escaping Growthism"
• Episode 94, “Breaking News: Crazy Town joins the newly formed Department of Entropy”

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Solar panels and other modern energy technologies can be really useful, but the belief that we can technologize our way to a bigger and better society powered by clean energy is tragically flawed. Asher, Rob, and Jason dig into the up-and-down story of the Ivanpah concentrated solar power plant, review the Harry Potteresque thinking behind complex, centralized power plants, and expose the truth of the energy transition. After they finish making fun of concentrated solar/golf course/outlet mall complexes in the desert, they discuss how to make real progress on energy and sustainability. Originally recorded on 6/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Michael R. Blood, “11 years after a celebrated opening, massive solar plant faces a bleak future in the Mojave Desert,” AP News, January 30, 2025.
• Laura Paddison, "This alien-like field of mirrors in the desert was once the future of solar energy. It’s closing after just 11 years," CNN, February 13, 2025.
• Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy, January 1, 2024.
• Rachel Donald, “The ‘Energy Transition’ is a Pipe Dream | Jean-Baptiste Fressoz,” Planet: Critical podcast, March 19, 2025.
• Drax Power Station
• U.S. Department of Energy, Facts about Ivanpah
• Energy Monitor report on the opening of Ivanpah
• Louis Sahagun, "This Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year. Here’s why that won’t change any time soon," Los Angeles Times, September 2, 2016.
• Annual carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions worldwide from 1940 to 2024

Resources for conservation and local solar power:

• Solar United Neighbors
• 2,000-Watt Society
• Peter Kalmus, Being the Change, New Society Publishers, July 10, 2017.
• Kris De Decker, "How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel," Resilience, October 21, 2021.
• Coop Power
• Seeds for the Sol
• The Institute for Local Self-Resilience has a community solar program.

Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 45 on feedback loops
• Episode 60 on air conditioning

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Jason, Rob, and Asher are taking out a huge, unaffordable mortgage on the housing crisis. What’s behind the shortage in housing? Why is it that no one, except canine Tik Tok influencers with billion-dollar bank accounts, can afford to own a home? While mainstream pundits press for an energy-blind buildout of desert sprawl and gleaming towers of glass and steel, we propose a surprising change of course inspired by little people with hairy feet. Originally recorded on 5/21/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The story of Gunther, the world's most moneyed canine.
• You can't make this stuff up: Gunther offers to buy Nicholas Cage's island.
• David Wessel, "Where do the estimates of a 'housing shortage' come from?," Brookings Institute, October 21, 2024.
• Alex Fitzpatrick and Alice Feng, "Americans' average daily travel distance, mapped," Axios, March 24, 2024.
• Jon Gertner, "America Is on Fire, Says One Climate Writer. Should You Flee?," New York Times, March 22, 2024.
• U.S. News and World Report, "Fastest-Growing Places in the U.S. in 2025-2026."

Good Ideas for Addressing the Housing Crisis:

• Jason Bradford, "Growing the Shire, Not the 'Burb: Facing the Housing Crisis with Ecological Sanity," Resilience, May 27, 2025.
• Global Ecovillage Network
• Nate Hagens, "Alexis Zeigler —  Living Without Fossil Fuels: How Living Energy Farm Created a Comfortable Off-Grid Lifestyle," The Great Simplification, April 9, 2025.

Energy-Blind Non-Solutions for the Housing Crisis:

• Conor Dougherty, "Why America Should Sprawl," New York Times, April 10, 2025.
• Binyamin Applebaum, "Build Homes on Federal Land," New York Times, April 15, 2025.
• Ezra Klein, "Abundance and the Left," The Ezra Klein Show, April 29, 2025.
• Samuel Moyn, "Can Democrats Learn to Dream Big Again?," New York Times, March 18, 2025.
• Tyler Cowen, "Ezra Klein on the Abundance Agenda (Ep. 236)" Conversations with Tyler, March 7, 2025.

Related Episode(s) of Crazy Town:

• Episode 37. Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos, or… the Story of the Dueling Economists

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The world has gone bunking mad. The bespoke security industry is burying bunkers stocked with arsenals of automatic rifles and surrounded by flaming moats. Is there a better way to prepare for the polycrisis, the zombie apocalypse, or whatever hard times are on the horizon? Jason, Rob, and Asher have some fun at the expense of the bunker builders before examining the positive aspects of peasanthood and stressing the need to build community.

Originally recorded on 5/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Coralie Kraft, "The 'Panic Industry' Boom," New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2025.
• The SAFE company offers "bespoke, fortified residences" and other silly signs of our times. 
• Aaron Gell, "'All of his guns will do nothing for him': lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday," The Guardian, April 17, 2025.
• Will Petersen, "Nuggets star Nikola Jokic is again living a good life back in Serbia," Denver Sports, June 20, 2023.

Related Episodes of Crazy Town:

• Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most Dangerous Philosophy You’ve Never Heard of
• Episode 34. Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom
• Episode 100. A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out of Love with Modernity

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Democracy and environmental protection have two things in common: (1) they’re both supposed to be enshrined in the laws of the United States and (2) they’re both under severe attack right now. Asher speaks with Thomas Linzey of the Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights to uncover how the source code of the U.S. Constitution and the body of environmental laws that follow it are actually designed to allow corporations to override the will of the people. After pinpointing the problem, Thomas explains what can be done, especially at the local level, to reach sustainable and just outcomes that provide wellbeing for people and ecosystems.

Originally recorded on 4/2/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Bio for Thomas Linzey
• Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
• Matt Wuerker's cartoon: "The Closed-Door Constitutional Convention"

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Happy Earth Day! There are two concepts that every person should understand to be a better Earthling: entropy and self-organization. It seems like a paradox, but systems on Earth are simultaneously breaking down into disorder and arranging themselves into complex superorganisms. Everything on Earth (well, really in the whole universe) is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, which means it all dies and decays. But with access to steady flows of energy, organisms, ecosystems, and human societies can hold back the death and decay for a spell. After dropping the kids off at the pool, Asher, Rob, and Jason cover the interplay of entropy and self-organization and contemplate how to manage the inevitability of entropy with elegance (beyond morphing into a lizard person).

Originally recorded on 4/8/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, Penguin Books, 2018.
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Scribner, 2024.
• William Rees, “End game: the economy as eco-catastrophe and what needs to change,” Real-World Economics Review, 2019.
• The laws of thermodynamics, as explained by the website “Physics for Idiots"
• "Telegraph Road" - song by Dire Straits
• David Owen, "Green Manhattan," The New Yorker, October 10, 2004.

Other Crazy Town episodes you might like:

• Crazy Town 100 - A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out or Love with Modernity
• Crazy Town 35 - Self Domestication and Overshoot, or… the Story of Foxes and Russian Melodrama
• Crazy Town Bonus Riff - Vanilla Andreessen, Pygmy Marmosets, and Hi-Tech Delusions

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Who knew that the breakthrough moment of AI sentience would come from interacting with an annoying neo-Luddite?

After failing to raise a single dollar for PCI’s newest initiative — the $350 billion Transdisciplinary Institute for Phalse Prophet Studies and Education (TIPPSE) —  Jason, Rob, and Asher devise the only profitable pitch for raising capital: using AI technology to cure the loneliness that technology itself causes. The only problem is that AI chatbots won’t talk to us, as evidenced by Asher’s experience of being blocked by an AI “friend.” So Asher turns to the flesh-and-blood author of Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant, to discuss the rise of the neo-Luddite movement — the only people who might be able to stand your humble Crazy Town hosts. 

Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter, and author. He is currently reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute and publishes his own newsletter, Blood in the Machine, which has the same title as his 2023 book. Previously, Brian was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a senior editor at Motherboard.

Originally recorded on 1/3/25 (warm-up conversation) and 3/24/25 (interview with Brian).

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Press Release announcing closure of TIPPSE
• Funding for Friend
• Screenshot of Asher’s conversation with Friend’s bot, Faith
• Lyrics to “Not Going to Mars” by Pyrrhon
• Brian Merchant’s Substack, Blood in the Machine
• Brian’s book, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech  
• New York Times article on the Luddite Club: “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes”
• Crazy Town Episode 72: Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The Climate Movement’s Desperate Dependence on Tenuous Technologies
• Brian’s essay in The Atlantic, “The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down”

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