Crazy Town

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 we’re 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 you’re 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, you’ll 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 Schwarzenegger’s 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-month supply of scientific esoterica and embarrassing anecdotes. These guys are the Three Stooges of sustainability podcasting, although they tend toward scientific analysis, righteous outrage, and self-deprecation rather than beating each other up with hand tools. How can they have this much fun while contemplating collapse and navigating the Great Unraveling? Heartfelt thanks to the team at Post Carbon Institute, our volunteers, and all our fellow Crazy Townies out there who help bring this podcast to life.

  1. -13 H

    Take Me to the River: Getting Rid of Deadbeat Dams

    People REALLY love their impervious surfaces. Concrete structures practically permeate human-built landscapes. Rather than layering ever more concrete on top of living soils, in waterways, and all over the countryside, what if we re-established our connection with natural ecosystems and put a stop to the concrete madness? One of the most inspiring developments of environmental and cultural restoration involves the cleanup of tons and tons of concrete. We’re talking dam removal today. So grab a sledge hammer, a few sticks of dynamite, and a wrecking ball, and come along as we explore the battle between concrete placement and concrete removal. And don’t miss our interview with Tara Lohan, author of Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life. Originally recorded on 3/17/26. Sources/Links/Notes: The Reef Line“Underwater ‘traffic jam’ off Miami beach, CBS News, November 3, 2025Miami Beach’s New Traffic Jam Frolics With the Fishes, New York Times, December 1, 2025We Finally Know Why Ancient Roman Concrete Stood The Test of Time, Science Alert by Michelle Starr, October 29, 2025L“Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future” by Mary Soderstrom. University of Regina Press, 2020. “Concrete: From the Ground Up” by Larissa Theule. Candlewick Press, 2022.“This is the total weight of everything humans have created since 1990” World Economic Forum, December 6, 2021“Global human-made mass exceeds all living biomass” Nature.com, December 9, 2020“Undammed: Freeing Rivers and Bringing Communities to Life” by Tara Lohan. Princeton University Press, 2025Map of U.S. Dams Removed Since 1912“Ten years after Oregon’s largest dam removal” Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2017“‘Salmon Everywhere’ One Year After Klamath Dam Removal” California Department of Fish and Wildlife, 2025Undammed: The Klamath River Story podcast“First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath River after the largest dam removal in U.S. history” Oregon Public BroadcastingCar Free AllianceAuto MatTransportation Action Network“Stop this destructive, car-centric development” Hindustan Times, December 22, 2025Ridges to RifflesRivernetwork Member DirectoryDepave.org Related episode(s) of Crazy Town: Episode 48, “The Taming of the Slough: Humanity’s History of Trying to Control Water”Episode 123, “Mailbag: The Crazy Townies Speak!”

    58 min
  2. 11 MARS

    You Ain’t Gonna Live Forever: The Dos and Don’ts of Legacy Building

    Immortality projects represent an often irrational, and sometimes even unconscious, way to tamp down anxiety about death. There are some shocking examples of people, especially those with lots and lots of money, who try to leave some sort of mark in a futile attempt to keep from facing death. In this episode, we run a special fantasy-football style draft to take a look at immortality projects, some horrendous, but some with positive effects. Originally recorded on February 6, 2026. Sources/Links/Notes: Adam McCay, The Big Short, 2015 filmHenry VIIIGabriella Angeleti, “Two men sentenced to prison time for vandalising Nevada petroglyphs,” The Art Newspaper, November 10, 2022Owen Clarke, “A Utah Woman Must Pay $15,000 in Fines for Vandalizing Ancient Petroglyphs,” Outside Magazine, November 20, 2025Lehman’s CatalogJohn Prine, “Paradise” 1971 songX post on Brian Johnson’s erections, February 11, 2024Epic of GilgameshTompkins Conservancy and Patagonia National ParkInstituto TerraEric Grundhauser, “Visit a Beard That Killed Its Owner,” Atlas Obscura, January 26, 2018Raoul Wallenberg Related episode(s) of Crazy Town: Crazy Town Classics “Terror Management Theory”Episode 51, “A Load of Papal Bull: Greenlighting Colonization and the Mindset of Extraction”Episode 54, “Colonizing the Sky: The Untold Environmental Toll of Skyscrapers”Episode 92, “Escaping Otherism: Why Dr. Seuss Could Never Find a Rhyme for Genocide”

    41 min

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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 we’re 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 you’re 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, you’ll 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 Schwarzenegger’s 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-month supply of scientific esoterica and embarrassing anecdotes. These guys are the Three Stooges of sustainability podcasting, although they tend toward scientific analysis, righteous outrage, and self-deprecation rather than beating each other up with hand tools. How can they have this much fun while contemplating collapse and navigating the Great Unraveling? Heartfelt thanks to the team at Post Carbon Institute, our volunteers, and all our fellow Crazy Townies out there who help bring this podcast to life.

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