Jason Bradford

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.

Jason, Rob, and Asher try not to other one another as they explore the roots and consequences of othering, and the ins and outs of belonging as a key organizing principle of society.

The forces of media, technology, and even the wiring of our own brains seem aligned to draw people toward extremism. But never fear: Asher, Jason, and Rob unpack why we’re so susceptible to wackadoodle viewpoints and offer ways to tamp down extremist thinking and behavior in ourselves, our communities, and across society.

The myth of human dominion and exceptionalism is as old as the Bible and as unquestioned as gravity, at least in “modern” society. Rob, Asher, and Jason explore the ways that humanocentrism has come to dominate the planet and our minds, while pointing to ancient and newly emerging ways that the more-than-human world is respected and protected, even the dung beetle.

The epidemic of loneliness isn’t just a product of technology or even capitalism — it has its roots in the same fertile ground as the founding of the United States. And it may just be the most important “ism” of all to escape as we enter the Great Unraveling of social and environmental systems.