Crazy Town

If American consumers ever come up for air under the pile of crap in their storage units, they find themselves face to face with a materialistic hellscape of megastores, McMansions, endless fleets of delivery trucks, and evil hordes of targeted ads. But help is on the way. Jason, Rob, and Asher present ideas for shaping up a world beyond consumerism.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• The original (and both catchy and annoying) Toys “R” Us theme song
• The melancholy remake of the theme song for a bankrupt Toys “R” Us, performed by Chase Holfelder
• U.S. Material Use Factsheet
• United Nations statistics on material footprint
• Self storage industry trends
• The environmental costs of fast fashion
• Story by Beth Porter, “What Really Happens to Unwanted Clothes?”
• Forbes list of billionaires
• George Carlin’s classic comedic bit about “stuff”
• Sandra Goldmark’s book Fixation: How to Have Stuff without Breaking the Planet

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Jason, Rob, and Asher take a tour of New Caledonia, California's Central Valley, Bhutan, and Cuba to uncover the ins and outs of industrialism, especially as it has been applied to agriculture. Along the way they riff on how the hell we can escape from an -ism that completely engulfs us.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Tom Murphy “does the math” on declining wild mammal mass.
• Understanding the primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary sectors of the economy.
• USDA graphic and statistics on the scale of family farms.
• Our World in Data: “Farm Size and Productivity”.
• Video clip from Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
• Hossain, S., Jami, A.T. (2023). “Opportunities and Challenges in Sustainable Development and Governance in South Asia: Case Study of Bhutan.” In: Wu, HH., Liu, WY., Huang, M.C. (eds) Moving Toward Net-Zero Carbon Society. Springer Climate.
• Arch Ritter, “Can Cuba Recover from its De-Industrialization?”.
• Julia Wright, “The Little-Studied Success Story of Post-Crisis Food Security in Cuba: Does Lack of International Interest Signify Lack of Political Will?” International Journal of Cuban Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2012, pp. 130–53.

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Escape Routes! That's the theme of the sixth season of Crazy Town. We're exploring how to escape industrialism, consumerism, globalism, capitalism, and all the other -isms that are causing a polycrisis of environmental and social breakdown. Most of all, Jason, Rob, and Asher are looking to maintain their sense of humor while escaping fatalism and finding meaningful ways to avoid collapse.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Wikipedia article on China’s Mango Cult
• France’s Dancing Plague of 1518
• Geoffrey Cohen, Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides, W. W. Norton, 2022
• Asch line experiment
• Bystander Intervention Tip Sheet
• Summary of Marvin Harris’s work on cultural materialism
• Research that extends Asch’s conformity experiments and highlights the personality trait of openness as a key to resisting the behavior of conforming.
• Big Five Personality Assessment
• Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley

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Join us on March 13, 2024 for the launch of our sixth season, in which Jason, Rob, and Asher explore escape routes from industrialism, capitalism, consumerism, and a bunch of other "-isms" that are causing the polycrisis of environmental and social breakdown.

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LaUra Schmidt visits Crazy Town to discuss her work with the Good Grief Network and her book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet. Along the way, she shares wisdom and insights on courage, taking meaningful action, terror management theory, and practices for processing the strong emotions that accompany facing climate change and other aspects of the polycrisis.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• LaUra's book, How to Live in a Chaotic Climate: 10 Steps to Reconnect with Ourselves, Our Communities, and Our Planet
• The Good Grief Network's 10 Step Program
• LaUra mentioned Bayo Akomolafe and his work on "questioning our questions."
• Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects
• Video of Dr. Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 breathing technique
• David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs
• Crazy Town episode 34, "Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or... the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom"
• Fiftieth anniversary book review in the New York Times: Ernest Becker's The Denial of Death
• Ayisha Siddiqa's poem "On Another Panel about Climate, They Ask Me to Sell the Future and All I've Got Is a Love Poem"

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Asher, Jason, and Rob reflect on 2023 – a year filled to the brim with Crazy Townisms like the COP climate conference being held in Dubai, an anti-aging nutbag who parasitizes his own son, and the hijinks of the world’s dumbest billionaires. After a few predictions (all with money-back guarantees), they turn to some personal resolutions that might even help you cope with what’s coming in 2024.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

References:

• 183 regional and local conflicts around the world
• Zuckerberg’s tragically misguided Hawaiian bunker
• Anti-aging nutter
• When do we get to use the guns?
• The 10-step program of the Good Grief Network

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The most vomit-inducing document of 2023 has to be the "Techno-Optimist Manifesto," written (oh so obviously) by a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Join Jason, Rob, and Asher if you feel like sharing in some outrage and learning about a WAY better manifesto that just so happens to focus on the world's smallest monkeys.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

References:

• Marc Andreessen's horrifying "Techno-Optimist Manifesto" 
• Peer-reviewed paper featuring Jason's far superior "Dehumanist Manifesto"
• Description of the pygmy marmoset
• The idea of Beth Sawin's Multisolving Institute
• The dark triad -- narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy
• The original paper on the taxonomy of Phalse Prophets
• Article by Richard Heinberg about free will.

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Investigative journalist Leah Sottile writes articles teeming with insights, and she produces and hosts podcasts filled with ah-ha moments. Rob tries not to sound like too much of a fanboy as he interviews Leah about political extremism, environmentalism, and the craft of storytelling during the Great Unraveling.

Resources:

• Leah's website
• Leah's Substack page, titled "The Truth Does not Change According to Our Ability to Stomach It"
• Article in The High Country News "The 90-foot sentinel of Butte, Montana"
• Bundyville: The Remnant, a must-listen podcast about the patriot movement and right-wing extremism
• Burn Wild, another must-listen podcast about the Earth Liberation Front and left-wing extremism

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Just how much has the extractivist growth mindset come to dominate Phoenix and other cities in the desert Southwest of the United States? Prepare to turn your indignation meter up to 11 as Jason, Rob, and Asher consider desalination, pipelines, and the folly of pursuing infinite growth in a dry climate.

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We are pleased to share the new podcast from Post Carbon Institute, Holding the Fire. Award-winning journalist and author Dahr Jamail hosts in-depth interviews with leaders from around the world to uncover Indigenous ways of reckoning with environmental and societal breakdown.

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