Crazy Town

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.

Do you contemplate topics like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the risk of civilizational collapse? If so, then you probably understand something about bargaining – a psychological defense mechanism that’s one of the five stages of grief.

Peter Kalmus, climate scientist and returning friend of Crazy Town, used to live in Altadena, California, where one of the disastrous Los Angeles wildfires struck on January 7th. Get Peter’s take on this historic wildfire, what nature is trying to teach us, and how to think about unnatural disasters now and in the future.

In the world of college sports, money talks and the volleyball team walks, er, flies 33,000 miles to play games. Who cares, as long as we can wring a few more dollars out of the TV deals — am I right?!? Jason, Rob, and Asher propose a new plan for college sports and for taking the climate emergency seriously.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service decided to “manage” barred owls by shooting half a million of them over the next three decades. Jason, Rob, and Asher (along with the postal workers at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry) are upset about this plan for addressing the predicament of invasive species.

Rob, Jason, and Asher talk about joining the new Trump Administration, at least until Elon Musk eradicates it. They explore the implications of Trump 2.0 through three reality-bending lenses – shifting baselines, entropy, and the upside of down – and three ways of responding: resistance, resilience, and regeneration. They decided they couldn’t stomach a fourth R – respect.

Sometimes you just wanna hear from someone else. In this bonus episode, Alex Leff enters Crazy Town to introduce his podcast, Human Nature Odyssey. Before playing the first episode of the podcast, Jason, Rob, and Asher find lots of laughs with Alex as they contemplate environmental destruction, gorilla suits, the fate of civilization, tandem bike rides, imaginary games, and how to make a podcast.

After a full season of trying to escape more than a dozen evil -isms (fun things like capitalism, industrialism, extremism, and otherism), Rob, Jason, and Asher come to one conclusion: there is no true escape — at least not for those of us who want to help their communities collapse and re-emerge gracefully.