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The world has gone bunking mad. The bespoke security industry is burying bunkers stocked with arsenals of automatic rifles and surrounded by flaming moats. Is there a better way to prepare for the polycrisis, the zombie apocalypse, or whatever hard times are on the horizon? Jason, Rob, and Asher have some fun at the expense of the bunker builders before examining the positive aspects of peasanthood and stressing the need to build community.

Originally recorded on 5/5/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Coralie Kraft, "The 'Panic Industry' Boom," New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2025.
• The SAFE company offers "bespoke, fortified residences" and other silly signs of our times.
• Aaron Gell, "'All of his guns will do nothing for him': lefty preppers are taking a different approach to doomsday," The Guardian, April 17, 2025.
• Will Petersen, "Nuggets star Nikola Jokic is again living a good life back in Serbia," Denver Sports, June 20, 2023.

Related Episodes of Crazy Town:

• Episode 73. How Longtermism Became the Most Dangerous Philosophy You’ve Never Heard of
• Episode 34. Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom
• Episode 100. A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out of Love with Modernity

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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. After pinpointing the problem, Thomas explains what can be done, especially at the local level, to reach sustainable and just outcomes that provide wellbeing for people and ecosystems.

Originally recorded on 4/2/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Bio for Thomas Linzey
• Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights
• Matt Wuerker's cartoon: "The Closed-Door Constitutional Convention"

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Happy Earth Day! There are two concepts that every person should understand to be a better Earthling: entropy and self-organization. It seems like a paradox, but systems on Earth are simultaneously breaking down into disorder and arranging themselves into complex superorganisms. Everything on Earth (well, really in the whole universe) is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, which means it all dies and decays. But with access to steady flows of energy, organisms, ecosystems, and human societies can hold back the death and decay for a spell. After dropping the kids off at the pool, Asher, Rob, and Jason cover the interplay of entropy and self-organization and contemplate how to manage the inevitability of entropy with elegance (beyond morphing into a lizard person).

Originally recorded on 4/8/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, Penguin Books, 2018.
• Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Scribner, 2024.
• William Rees, “End game: the economy as eco-catastrophe and what needs to change,” Real-World Economics Review, 2019.
• The laws of thermodynamics, as explained by the website “Physics for Idiots"
• "Telegraph Road" - song by Dire Straits
• David Owen, "Green Manhattan," The New Yorker, October 10, 2004.

Other Crazy Town episodes you might like:

• Crazy Town 100 - A Temporary Techno Stunt: Tom Murphy on Falling out or Love with Modernity
• Crazy Town 35 - Self Domestication and Overshoot, or… the Story of Foxes and Russian Melodrama
• Crazy Town Bonus Riff - Vanilla Andreessen, Pygmy Marmosets, and Hi-Tech Delusions

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