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Crazy TownAuthor: Post Carbon Institute
With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why were all deluding ourselves. Each fortnightly episode helps you understand the Great Unraveling of our environmental and social systems and describes how we can make the transition to a sustainable and equitable world. If youre someone who questions the trajectory of society and struggles to understand why most people would rather eat nachos on the deck of the SS Denial than face reality, youll find community and plenty of laughs in Crazy Town. Brought to you by https://www.resilience.org/ and the unconventional minds at Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit think tank that builds awareness of the polycrisis and prescribes community resilience-building as the most appropriate response. Your hosts: Asher Miller - Nonprofit executive director by day, apocalypse comedian by night. Feels most at home exploring insanity-inducing topics while trying not to spill coffee on his keyboard as he convulses over the latest ecomodernist fantasy. In danger of losing his mind every time he encounters someone using a gas-powered blower to move leaves from one spot to another. Rob Dietz - Jack-of-all-trades environmental scientist, conservation biologist, and ecological economist with a penchant for relating planetary overshoot to the catalog of movie scenes that play on a continuous loop in his colonized brain. Known for inserting random ecological facts into casual conversation, often in Arnold Schwarzeneggers voice. His friends call him pessimistically hilarious. Jason Bradford - Activist farmer and former encyclopedia salesman with a PhD in plant ecology who gets genuinely excited discussing soil microbes and societal collapse in the same breath. Morally opposed to doomsday prepping, but predisposed toward sharing everything he keeps in his bunker, er root cellar, including potatoes, wine, and a 47-mo Language: en Genres: Earth Sciences, Nature, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Finding Crazy Town Part 4: The Myth of Progress - Are We There Yet?
Episode 132
Wednesday, 9 September, 2026
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.Related EpisodesEpisode 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”CreditsProduction 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.
