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Who knew that the breakthrough moment of AI sentience would come from interacting with an annoying neo-Luddite?

After failing to raise a single dollar for PCI’s newest initiative — the $350 billion Transdisciplinary Institute for Phalse Prophet Studies and Education (TIPPSE) — Jason, Rob, and Asher devise the only profitable pitch for raising capital: using AI technology to cure the loneliness that technology itself causes. The only problem is that AI chatbots won’t talk to us, as evidenced by Asher’s experience of being blocked by an AI “friend.” So Asher turns to the flesh-and-blood author of Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant, to discuss the rise of the neo-Luddite movement — the only people who might be able to stand your humble Crazy Town hosts.

Brian Merchant is a writer, reporter, and author. He is currently reporter in residence at the AI Now Institute and publishes his own newsletter, Blood in the Machine, which has the same title as his 2023 book. Previously, Brian was the technology columnist at the Los Angeles Times and a senior editor at Motherboard.

Originally recorded on 1/3/25 (warm-up conversation) and 3/24/25 (interview with Brian).

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Press Release announcing closure of TIPPSE
• Funding for Friend
• Screenshot of Asher’s conversation with Friend’s bot, Faith
• Lyrics to “Not Going to Mars” by Pyrrhon
• Brian Merchant’s Substack, Blood in the Machine
• Brian’s book, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech
• New York Times article on the Luddite Club: “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes”
• Crazy Town Episode 72: Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The Climate Movement’s Desperate Dependence on Tenuous Technologies
• Brian’s essay in The Atlantic, “The New Luddites Aren’t Backing Down”

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Recovering technology booster Tom Murphy visits Crazy Town to discuss his journey from shooting lasers at the moon, to trying to "solve" the energy predicament, to falling out of love with modernity itself. Asher, Jason, Rob, and Tom discuss the roots and short-lived nature of modernity, which has not only shaped the world we inhabit but conquered our very imaginations. They reminisce about aspects of hi-tech society that have already fallen away in its hubristic march towards mastering (or should we say undermining?) nature. They close by contemplating what it means to detach from humanocentric delusions of grandeur and make peace with living with one foot in and one foot out of the modern world. Originally recorded on 3/4/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• "Acceptance and Agency at the End of Modernity," a live online Resilience event on April 1, 2025 featuring Vanessa Andreotti and Dougald Hine
• Tom Murphy's Do the Math

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How will we feed people living in the megacities of the 21st century, especially while confronting climate chaos and the depletion of fossil fuels and fossil water? According to the mainstream media: ecomodernism! Massive deployment of technology on factory farms and an extreme ramp-up of industrialization will save the day – right? RIGHT?!? If you read the New York Times, you might think that supermarket shelves will forever overflow with 3D-printed fish sticks, mylar bags full of genetically modified cheesy poofs, and faux corn dogs that ooze out of laboratory vats. Jason, Rob, and Asher question the wisdom of doubling down on industrialization in food and farming. It’s no surprise they recommend paying attention to nature and ecological limits. Stick around for ideas you can use in your community to support a healthy, regenerative food system (and keep on eating). Originally recorded on 1/21/25.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Jason Bradford, The Future Is Rural, 2/19/19.
• Eliza Barclay, "What to Eat on a Burning Planet," The New York Times, 7/29/24.
• David Wallace-Wells, "Food as You Know It Is About to Change," The New York Times, 7/28/24.
• Andrew Nikiforuk, "A Reality Check on Our 'Energy Transition'," Resilience, 1/6/25.
• Michael Grunwald, "Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food," The New York Times, 12/13/24.
• "Changing How We Grow Our Food: Readers disagree with an essay about factory farms," The New York Times, 1/4/25.
• Jay Famiglietti, "Will We Have to Pump the Great Lakes to California to Feed the Nation?" The New York Times, 8/5/24.
• Clip of the Hydrologist in Chief "explaining" the oh-so-simple solution to water shortages.

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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. With just a wee bit of embarrassment, Asher, Jason, and Rob reveal damning episodes of bargaining from their personal histories (involving green consumerism and cult-like devotion to technology). Having admitted their sins, they discuss the allure of false solutions to our environmental predicaments and how even veteran environmental journalists can be susceptible to it. Stay to the end for thoughts on how to avoid getting hoodwinked by the horde of ecomodernist tech bros who continuously shove unworkable "solutions" down our throats. Originally recorded on January 16, 2025.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Julia Musto, "The end of the world as we know it? Theorist warns humanity is teetering between collapse and advancement," Independent, January 13, 2025 (about Nahfeez Ahmed's take on superabundance versus collapse).
• Rob Dietz, "Chris Smaje Vs. George Monbiot and the Debate on the Future of Farming," Resilience, October 27, 2023.
• Crazy Town episode 32 on cognitive bias
• Megan Phelps-Roper's six questions
• Crazy Town episode 45 on feedback loops, featuring an interview with Beth Sawin
• Post Carbon Institute's Deep Dive on building emotional resilience

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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. Having learned that his former house had burned, Peter penned an emotional article for the New York Times about his family's decision to leave LA two years prior, out of safety concerns about frequent heat waves, drought, and just the sort of tragic conflagration that has reduced parts of LA to ashes. 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. Note: this interview was recorded on January 24, 2025.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Peter Kalmus’s article in the New York Times from January 10, 2025: “As a Climate Scientist, I Knew It Was Time to Leave Los Angeles”
• Peter’s book, Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution
• News story about the huge Bobcat Fire that struck Los Angeles County in 2020
• Article in Science about the damage from Hurricanes Helene and Milton
• Peter mentioned the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, which relates vapor pressure to temperature.

FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.

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In the world of college sports, money talks and the volleyball team walks, er, flies 33,000 miles to play games. The NCAA, like almost everyone else, is playing games with Mother Nature. What do we expect student-athletes to gain from ignoring the climate emergency (not to mention putting their health at risk)? 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.

On a happy note: FeedSpot ranked Crazy Town as the #1 environmental economics podcast.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Jeff Eisenberg, "Conference realignment has redefined 'travel ball'," yahoo!sports, September 11, 2024.
• Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment and Doerr School of Sustainability
• Stanford has the most winning NCAA program, counting all sports. (2nd and 3rd are UCLA and USC, by far!)

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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. Surely there's a finer tool than a double-barreled shotgun for conserving ecosystems and protecting the species that inhabit them.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Bill Lucia, "Plan Finalized to Kill Thousands of Barred Owls around Northwest," Washington State Standard, August 28, 2024.
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Final Barred Owl Management Strategy, August 2024.
• "Killing barred owls to save northern spotted owls: Rethinking American wildlife conservation," On Point, WBUR, 9/5/2024.
• Avram Hiller, Jay Odenbaugh, and Yasha Rohwer, "A Dystopian Effort Is Underway in the Pacific Northwest to Pick Ecological Winners and Losers," New York Times, August 8, 2024.
• Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, "Northern Pikeminnow Sport Reward Program."
• Robert Dietz and Brian Czech, "Conservation Deficits for the Continental United States: an Ecosystem Gap Analysis," Conservation Biology, August 16, 2005.
• Tom Murphy, "Metastatic Modernity #12: Human Supremacy," Metastatic Modernity Video Series, August 9, 2024.

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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.

We’ve added something new to this and future episodes: VIDEO! If you’d like to feel even more like you’re in the room with the Crazy Town gang, please check out the video and let us know what you think.

Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.

Sources/Links/Notes:

• Daniel Pauly’s 1995 article, Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries
• Randy Olson’s op-ed in the LA Times, Slow-Motion Disaster Below the Waves
• Video of Howard Dean’s speech with the infamous “Dean Scream”
• NASA’s description of the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy law (Be sure to read it before the incoming US administration repeals the laws of thermodynamics!)
• Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book The Upside of Down

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