Fear of Death and Climate Denial, or… the Story of Wolverine and the Screaming Mole of Doom (Episode 34 of Crazy Town)

What can we learn about death from the X-Men, small screaming rodents, and unwitting college students in psychology experiments? It turns out that the fear of death (or death anxiety) affects human behavior in all sorts of surprising and deeply troubling ways.

Relative Status and Environmental Breakdown, or… the Story of Bartenders and Bird Feathers (Episode 33 of Crazy Town)

How can the climate disaster and humanity’s overall sustainability crisis be explained by 80s sitcom characters, birdbrained hats from the late 1800s, and a dubious new use for scratch-and-sniff technology?

A Time to Speak up, but Also a Time to Shut up: White Privilege in America (Episode 30 of Crazy Town)

Is there anything crazier than the people in our towns, who are sworn to protect and serve, instead coldly taking the lives of our neighbors? Given this moment in American history marked by outrage, sadness, and massive protest, we discuss the need to address institutional racism and white privilege.

The Crazy Town Mailbag: We Heard from You, and It Wasn’t as Bad as We Thought (Episode 29 of Crazy Town)

Despite the occasional (and well deserved) insult, we love our listeners and find them to be some of the most intelligent, caring, and committed people in the world. Learn how they’re working toward sustainable transportation, healthy farms, infrastructure repurposing, and community resilience, all while keeping a good sense of humor.

Breaking the Brady Vase: Coronavirus and America’s Fault Lines (Episode 28 of Crazy Town)

Besides lessons in ethics (and in Asher’s case, lessons in the English language), the Brady Bunch offers up a metaphor about the fault lines in American politics — fault lines that include the undermining of government, extreme individualism, race and class divides, and capitalist and corporate excesses.

Poked by a Porcupine: the Politics of Contraction (Episode 27 of Crazy Town)

In this episode Asher, Rob, and Jason wonder if individualism (not to mention all those other “-isms”… capitalism, socialism, communism) is simply the product of a relatively short period of expansionism, and what of our values must be kept or discarded as we enter a new era of contraction and bureaucratic breakdown.

Banana Town: Where Michael Moore Is Censored by the Left and Promoted by the Right (Episode 24 of Crazy Town)

Asher, Rob, and Jason grapple with the cacophony, hash out the good and bad of the film and the response to it, and argue for an honest, messy-middle approach to the transition away from fossil fuels.