Crazy Town

Wildlife ecologist and communicator extraordinaire Rae Wynn-Grant visits Crazy Town to talk human-wildlife interactions, the social side of environmentalism, diversity and equity in the sciences, and ideas for young people (don't worry if you're older—the ideas apply to you, too). Rae is the host of the PBS Nature podcast "Going Wild" and will soon be appearing as the cohost of Wild Kingdom, a reboot of the ultra-classic tv nature show. Listen to the end of the episode to catch Rae’s thoughts on the most important stories people need to hear (and tell) to make a transition to sustainable and just society.

 Notes and Resources:

• Rae’s website
• The podcast: Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant
• Rae discussed how Ayana Elizabeth Johnson influenced her.
• Rae also highlighted the work of Leah Thomas on intersectional environmentalism.
• Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program
• National Geographic HBCU Media Scholarship
• Article about the reboot of the Wild Kingdom television series

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What do Saddam Hussein’s information minister and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board have in common? Hint: it starts with a “d,” ends with “enial,” and isn’t just a river in Egypt. A new and virulent strain of climate denial could be called “doomer shaming.” Instead of acknowledging how logical it is to be distressed about the state of the climate (and the pitiful worldwide political response), delusional boosters of the status quo would rather belittle people who worry about rising temperatures, wildfires, super-storms, and ecosystem breakdown. Jason, Rob, Asher, and Melody consider how to manage climate anxiety and use it in service of caring for planet Earth.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
References:

• Video of Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob
• Allysia Finley wrote this Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Climate Change Obsession Is a Real Mental Disorder”
• Nature article dismissed by Finley
• Lancet article dismissed by Finley
• Rebuttal written by PCI Advisor Leslie Davenport and published in the Wall Street Journal
• Rebecca Solnit’s article in The Guardian, “We Can’t Afford to Be Climate Doomers.”
• Survey on climate distress by the Yale Program on Climate Communication
• Gen Dread newsletter on climate distress
• Climate Psychology Alliance
• Good Grief Network

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After hearing a story of woe on the streets of Portland, Oregon, Jason, Rob, and Asher cover the four critical ways of cultivating personal resilience to navigate the Great Unraveling. The report we reference several times is Welcome to the Great Unraveling: Navigating the Polycrisis of Environmental and Social Breakdown.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

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Asher, Rob, and Jason explore the lessons and dangers of the brotherhood of Phalse Prophets and consider better ways to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. Along the way, they examine how to start a cult, turn the insufferability index on themselves, respond to listener feedback, and repeatedly mispronounce amygdala. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

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Meet Elon Musk, the Muskian mogul who Elon Musks his way to the pinnacle of Muskitude. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Prepare to be wowed by the Musk Foundation website.
• Luc Olinga, "Errol Musk, Elon's Dad, Prompts a New Controversy," TheStreet (2022).
• Musk's attack on Jane Goodall
• Cade Metz and Neal E. Boudette, "Inside Tesla as Elon Musk Pushed an Unflinching Vision for Self-Driving Cars," The New York Times (2021).
• Andrew J. Hawkins and Umar Shakir, "Elon Musk unveils a new Master Plan, a path to sustainable energy future, but no new cars," The Verge (2023).
• Adam Kovacs and Adam Westbrook, "Elon Musk Has Some bad Ideas for Mass Transit. We Have Solutions," The New York Times (2022).
• Adam Something, "Elon Musk’s Loop is a Bizarrely Stupid Idea," YouTube (2021).
• Ted Mann and Julie Bykowicz, "Elon Musk’s Boring Company Ghosts Cities Across America," The Wall Street Journal (2022).
• Nikki McCann Ramirez, "Paul Pelosi Conspiracy Theory Trends on Twitter After Elon Musk Pushes It," Rolling Stone (2022).
• Ted McCormick, "The billionaire space race reflects a colonial mindset that fails to imagine a different world," The Conversation (2021).
• Marina Koren, "The War in Ukraine is Testing the Myth of Elon Musk," The Atlantic (2022).
• Radhika Viswanathan, "Elon Musk’s plan to bring a mini-submarine to rescue the Thai boys," Vox (2018).
• A podcast episode from Backpacker that describes the amazing Thai cave rescue
• Zoe Schiffer and Casey Newton, "Yes, Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first," Platformer (2023)
• Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi vision should concern us all," Salon, July 17, 2022.

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Meet Steve Bannon, the Molotov mixologist who wants to light the world on fire. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 1 with Daniel P Aldrich, Amira Odeh, and Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.
• Video: Mutual Aid in the Great Unraveling, Part 2 with Dean Spade, Joanna Swan, and Aliza Tuttle, Post Carbon Institute, November 2022.
• Dean Spade, "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),"  Verso Books, October 2020.
• "Democracy Rising" essay series on deliberative democracy
• Global Tapestry of Alternatives
• Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols, "What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read," Politico, February 7, 2017.
• Lisa Marshall, "Inside Steve Bannon's 'War for Eternity'," CU Boulder Today, April 22, 2020.
• Joshua Green, "Inside the Secret, Strange Origins of Steve Bannon’s Nationalist Fantasia," Vanity Fair, July 17, 2017.
• David Breitenbeck, "A Brief Summary of Traditionalism," The Imaginative Conservative, March 21, 2019.
• Generation Zero, Bannon's poorly reviewed documentary
• Guo Wengui's video for his song, "Take Down the CCP," -- the third best comedy yacht video of all time.
• Douglas Rushkoff, "How to Avoid Becoming a Fascist: Why I turned down an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast," Medium, October 21, 2021.
• Olivia Goldhill, "The neo-fascist philosophy that underpins both the alt-right and Silicon Valley technophiles," Quartz, June 18, 2017.
• Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, "Bannon vows a daily fight for ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’," The Washington Post, February 23, 2017.

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Meet Guy McPherson, the extinction enthusiast who undermines legitimate climate concerns by predicting we’re all going to die yesterday. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Guy McPherson, "Near-Term Extinction blog post," Nature Bats Last (last updated 2016).
• Scott Johnson, "How Guy McPherson gets it wrong," Fractal Planet, 2014.
• Michael Tobis, "McPherson’s Evidence That Doom Doom Doom," Planet 3.0, 2014.
• Nathan Curry, "Humanity Is Getting Verrrrrrry Close to Extinction," Vice, 2013.
• BizNewsTV, "'Humans will be extinct by 2026' - 'doom and gloom prophet' Prof McPherson on abrupt climate change," January 19, 2023.
• Shannon Osaka, "Why climate 'doomers' are replacing climate 'deniers',” Washington Post, March 24, 2023.
• Jerome Roos, "We Don’t Know What Will Happen Next," New York Times, April 18, 2023.
• List of McPherson predictions

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Meet Barrett Moore, the bunker-building bullshit artist who helps capitalists survive the apocalypse with beans, bullets, and bravado. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• History of the Kelly Butte Civil Defense Center
• Article on Kelly Butte in the Atlas Obscura
• A Day Called X -- video of a dramatized atomic evacuation of Portland, Oregon
• Donald Fagen's "New Frontier"
• Sam Biddle, "The Rise and Fall of the Ultimate Doomsday Prepper," The Intercept, July 5, 2021.
• "Three Robots: Exit Strategies" -- episode 1 of season 3 of the Netflix series Love, Death & Robots.
• National Geographic produced the popular video series Doomsday Preppers.
• Molly Redden, "The American Elite Are Planning Their Escape — And It Starts With Paying For Passports," Huffington Post, March 19, 2023.
• John Ramey, "New statistics on modern prepper demographics from FEMA and Cornell," theprepared.com August 4, 2021.
• Bradley Garrett, "Living with bunker builders: doomsday prepping in the age of coronavirus,"The Conversation, May 14, 2020.
• Interview about Bradley Garrett's study of prepping
• J. Oliver Conroy, "We mocked preppers and survivalists – until the pandemic hit," The Guardian, April 30, 2020.
• Walter Karp, "When Bunkers Last in the Backyard Bloom-d," American Heritage, February/March 1980.
• Red Cross’s Preparedness Checklist
• FEMA’s 12 Ways to Prepare
• Tom Prugh, "Democracy Rising 1 Introduction: Idiots R Us," Resilience, October 27, 2021.
• Jana Reiss, "For today’s Latter-day Saints, it’s food storage light," The Salt Lake Tribune, January 27, 2023.

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How would you like to hang out with Asher, Rob, and Jason (well, virtually anyway)? Your chance is coming up at the fourth annual Crazy Town Hall. The town hall is our most fun event of the year, where you can ask questions, play games, get insider information on the podcast, and share plenty of laughs. It’s a special online event for the most dedicated Crazy Townies out there, and it’s coming up on June 6, 2023, from 10 to 11:15 AM U.S. Pacific time.

To get an invitation, make a donation of any size. Go to https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/. When you make a donation, we’ll email you an exclusive link to join the Crazy Town Hall. If you're already a donor, we'll be sure to send you the invitation as well. 

If we get enough donations, maybe we can hire some decent hosts! Join us at the town hall on June 6th, 2023. Again to get your invitation, go to https://www.postcarbon.org/supportcrazytown/.

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Meet William MacAskill, the puerile professor who helps crypto capitalists justify sociopathy today for a universe of transhuman colonization tomorrow. Please share this episode with your friends and start a conversation.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

For an entertaining deep dive into the theme of season five (Phalse Prophets), read the definitive peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis from our very own Jason Bradford, PhD. 

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Andrew Anthony, "William MacAskill: 'There are 80 trillion people yet to come. They need us to start protecting them'," The Guardian, August 21, 2022.
• Guiding Principles of the Centre for Effective Altruism
• Peter Singer, "Famine, Affluence and Morality," givingwhatwecan.org.
• Sarah Pessin, "Political Spiral Logics," sarahpessin.com.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky, "Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down," Time, March 29, 2023.
• Emile Torres explains the acronym TESCREAL in a Twitter thread.
• Benjamin Todd and William MacAskill, "Is it ever OK to take a harmful job in order to do more good? An in-depth analysis," 80,000 Hours, March 26, 2023.
• William MacAskill, "The Case for Longtermism," The New York Times, August 5, 2022.
• Emile P. Torres, "Understanding “longertermism”: Why this suddenly influential philosophy is so toxic," Salon, August 20, 2022.
• Nick Bostrom, "Existential Risks," Journal of Evolution and Technology (2002).
• Nick Bostrom, "Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development," Utilitas (2003).
• Emile P. Torres, "How Elon Musk sees the future: His bizarre sci-fi visions should concern us all," Salon,  July 17, 2022.

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