Crazy Town 98. Bargaining With Collapse: A Superabundance of Lab Grown Meat and Dryer Balls

Jason Bradford  

I’m Jason Bradford. 

Rob Dietz  

I’m Rob Dietz.

Asher Miller  

And I’m Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where only two things could possibly happen: We all die tomorrow, or we move to Mars next Thursday.

Melody Allison  

Hi. This is producer Melody Allison. Thanks for joining us in Crazy Town where Jason, Rob, and Asher tackle crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves. Here’s a quick warning, sometimes this podcast uses swear words (Language!). Now onto the show.

Asher Miller  

Okay, hey, Rob and Jason, nice to see you guys. We’re not in the same room together, thank God, but we’re here virtually.

Jason Bradford  

I love this technology, actually.

Asher Miller  

Well, yeah. And it’s good thing that we’re on video, because I want to do show and tell today. 

Jason Bradford  

Oh good. 

Asher Miller  

You ready? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah.

Asher Miller  

Alright. Do you guys see this?

Rob Dietz  

It’s a blue sea urchin.

Asher Miller  

Well, what do you think it is? 

Jason Bradford  

I think it’s like one of those comfort balls or something you squeeze, you know? It’s tactile thing.They kind of reduce anxiety. Is it for your dog or you?  

Asher Miller  

You’re close.

Rob Dietz  

Okay, what about you roll your back on it to hit pressure points.

Asher Miller  

You could do all those things, try to do all the things, but it’s actually a dryer ball. Have you guys heard of dryer balls before? 

Jason Bradford  

Oh yeah, sure. 

Asher Miller  

Okay, I’ve known this dryer ball longer than I’ve known either of you two guys. 

Rob Dietz  

Wow.

Jason Bradford  

What?

Asher Miller  

Yeah, we’ve had it in our family for a long time. We still use it. We toss it in the dryer when we dry our clothes. And they’re supposed to help kind of increase the efficiency of your dryer, you know, require less drying time, therefore less energy to use. And the reason I have this thing, and I’ve had it for so long is because my wife, Kirsten, who you both know. 

Jason Bradford  

Wonderful wife. 

Asher Miller  

Way back when, still in this century, but it was a long time ago. This is, you know, many, many moons ago, back in 2006. We quit our jobs and we started working on climate change. We both saw “An Inconvenient Truth,” our son Ali, who is now off to college. had just been born. You know, we were aware of climate issues, but that film really hit us hard, and we’re like, “We got to work on this stuff.” And I’ve talked about this before, maybe I’ve talked about this on this podcast before, but I often talk about that phase of my work in sustainability as the phase where I was learning to swim in the shallow end of the pool. Because what Kirsten and I wound up doing, with all the best of intentions, was trying to figure out, like, how to put together, basically a package of things that people could buy that would help them kind of green their lifestyle,

Jason Bradford  

Brilliant. Climate consumerism. This is wonderful. 

Asher Miller  

We had these canvas bags, water bottles, that kind of thing. 

Jason Bradford  

There was bamboo stuff, I’m sure, probably in there

Asher Miller  

I don’t know if we had bamboo, but I look back at it now and —

Jason Bradford  

Those things that dry your bags, like after you hand wash your plastic bags.

Asher Miller  

I don’t think we had that in there. It would have made the box too big.

Rob Dietz  

If you were swimming in the deeper end of the pool, you would have just been telling people to get one bowl, you know,like a good monk. That’s your only possession. 

Asher Miller  

That’s right. So you can see I’m blushing because I think back on those days with slight embarrassment. But you know, look, I was operating with the knowledge I had. I was swept up in the moment of the, you know, there was like a whole cottage industry that cropped up after that film came out of like, “10 things you could do to save the planet,” or whatever. And, you know, we were well intentioned. But it was definitely, I would say, the bargaining phase of my journey in grappling with climate and sustainability issues. So I’m just wondering if you guys can relate to that? 

Jason Bradford  

No, you sound like, I mean, a complete moron, of course, but actually . . . 

Asher Miller  

Thank you. This is your first source of evidence for that?

Jason Bradford  

But actually, I think we’ve all been there. This gonna be one of those sort of like painful kind of reveals.

Asher Miller  

It’s confession time. 

Rob Dietz  

It’s a little therapy session for us here. 

Jason Bradford  

I remember when I was a postdoc at UC Davis, and I remember riding my bike, you know, it was great. And I had a little trailer, and I would pull my kids around. So I was biking my kids to preschool. And I’m on campus, and for some reason, I get in the conversation with this, I think he’s an undergrad, you know? And I’m like in my early 30s, you know, I know shit now. And we’re just, like, on the bike path, I don’t know. I don’t know how we stopped and started talking. And I had probably just read a couple issues of the Sierra Club magazine, and he’s asking me, you know, “What are we going to do about climate change. How are we going to power, you know, the society and stuff.” And I think I went through kind of a litany of, like, the technologies that would be deployed at scale. They would make Carl Pope just, you know, smile.

Asher Miller  

He got it. yeah.

Jason Bradford  

He got it. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah. 

Jason Bradford  

So I actually remember a few years later looking back on that and go, God, I wish I could meet that kid again and apologize. 

Asher Miller  

Apologize for giving him hope.

Jason Bradford  

Yeah.  Right. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. I was thinking you were talking about meeting yourself and shaking yourself, which is what you should have done.

Asher Miller  

Or run yourself over with a bike could have been the other thing you did. 

Rob Dietz  

Well, okay, if you want to pile on here… Kind of a similar time frame as you, Jason. I was coming out of graduate school in Environmental Science and Engineering, and was working for the US Geological Survey and really the Fish and Wildlife Service is who we were working for at the time, and doing all this conservation biology stuff, right. Like trying to figure out what landscapes need to be conserved. And when you start diving into that arena, you realize it’s almost all bad news. It could be incredibly sad. You know, you’re looking at the sixth mass extinction. You go to one of the conferences and it’s just a tear fest almost. And I can recall heading to one of those conferences, flying on the plane, and that exact moment I was sitting there really almost trying to meditate on, how are we going to get out of this mess? How are we going to deal with the extinction crisis and all the environmental problems? And while I’m sitting on the plane, I come to the conclusion that technology is the only way through, you know? It’s so stupid too because I’m on the plane. I feel like the bias is right there, you know, like driving me to that answer. And I think I was able to hold on to that for another two years or so. But, you know, in that time I met Herman Daly and Brian Czech and others who are  —

Asher Miller  

That’s where you went wrong, dude.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, I know. They’re in the ecological economics realm, and basically limits to growth, and there it goes. 

Asher Miller  

The woman that you met from whatever the airline was, was talking about how she’s using recyclable cups, or something.

Rob Dietz  

Oh yeah, you’re going back to another story of mine where the —

Asher Miller  

That would have been a much better path for you. 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, she was the sustainability chief at an airline, probably pulling in a pretty high six figure salary. And, you know, their big moves were, yeah, subbing out the kinds of materials that they use for coffee cups. 

Jason Bradford  

And they were, I think, they were throwing these little balls into their dryers, as well.  Yeah, on the plane.  Yeah, well, anyway . . . 

Asher Miller  

They were throwing them into the ocean from the plane, seeing if that would suck up some of the CO2.

Rob Dietz  

Oh, that’s the new way. We’ve got to put dryer balls in the ocean. That’ll solve it.

Asher Miller  

Anyways, I brought this up, you know, because I was actually thinking about this recently after reading this article that — I would say it’s a good thing that I’ve had a few days of process it because I was pretty worked up when I read it at the time. And of course, I had to share it with you guys. 

Jason Bradford  

Thank you so much. 

Asher Miller  

That’s who I am, okay?

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, I’ve complained ad infinitum that you guys keep sharing the worst stuff in the world., Like, you want to get depressed? Just have Jason and Asher give you some articles to read.

Jason Bradford  

Or listen to our podcast.

Asher Miller  

The article was published in The Independent and the title is, “The end of the world as we know it: Theorist warns humanity is teetering between collapse and advancement.” And it turns out that the the theorist that they were talking about is someone that we’ve known for a very long time, Nafeez Ahmed. I don’t know if either of you have ever interacted with Nafeez, but . . . 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. Come on, he was a visitor in Crazy Town during the pandemic. You interviewed him.

Asher Miller  

I did, yeah. And I think Richard Heinberg, who we work with, was the one who got to know him first. Nafeez reached out to us, I think, when he was starting his own journey and he was working on a film. And this was also years and years ago. After the dryer ball but before, you know, you joined us, Rob.

Rob Dietz  

I like how you can divide your life. It’s like AD is after . . . ADB – After Dryer Ball.

Asher Miller  

Exactly. So anyways, Nafeez is, you know… I’ve gotten to know Nafeez over the years, and he’s a really wonderful guy, you know. Very bright and I think very much concerned about the same issues that we’ve been concerned with, and doing all kinds of things. He actually had a column, I think, in The Guardian for a while, and has done a lot of work to, I think, spread awareness about some of the ecological crisis we’re facing, and also really looking at energy as a driver of that. Including questions about energy return on investment and all, you know… So somebody, I would say, who was very squarely in our camp. Something must’ve changed for Nafeez a couple years ago, and I don’t know what it was, other than to say that he joined Rethink X. You guys familiar Rethink X?

Jason Bradford  

That’s that guy Tony Seba’s — I don’t understand how this happened. I mean, it’s almost like he did the reverse of what we did. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah, maybe. That’s interesting. So for folks who don’t know Tony Seba is, you know, this kind of self-identified serial entrepreneur tech-dude who has, I think, been successful. You know, author of seminal classics like, “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: How Silicon Valley Will Make Oil, Nuclear, Natural Gas, Coal, Electric Utilities and Conventional Cars Obselete by 2023.”

Jason Bradford  

Well, let me see here. Let me look at my wristwatch. It’s getting close.

Asher Miller  

It’s all happening, just behind the scenes. 

Jason Bradford  

God.

Asher Miller  

So Rethink X has all been, a lot of it is very much about kind of this massive advancement. It reminds me a little bit of Jeremy Rifkin stuff, you know, like zero marginal cost society, or whatever. Like, we’re gonna have such technical advancements that, you know, like energy is going to be effectively free it’s gonna be so ubiquitous, right? 

Jason Bradford  

That’s the best thing we can do for humanity — make energy free. Wouldn’t that be great. 

Asher Miller  

Nothing could wrong there. 

Jason Bradford  

I’ll think about it.

Asher Miller  

All the other species on the planet would be thankful for us.

Rob Dietz  

Look at how wisely we’ve used the energy surplus that we’ve had. I mean, gosh, if that’s any lesson.

Asher Miller  

It seems like, you know –Nafeez just, you know, put out a paper recently, and it’s getting some media coverage. I think he’s trying to, sort of like square his, you know, the views that that he’s had as we’ve gotten to know him, with maybe the Rethink, X, you know, views of things. 

Jason Bradford  

Okay. 

Asher Miller  

I’m gonna read to you maybe kind of the key quote in this independent article.  And they’re quoting the Nafeez here, right? Okay, so here’s the quote” An amazing new possibility space is emerging where humanity could provide itself super abundant energy, transport, food, and knowledge without hurting the Earth. This could be the next giant leap in human evolution. But if we fail to genuinely evolve as humans by rewiring how we govern these emerging capabilities responsibly and for the benefit of all, they could be our undoing,” he warned. And here’s another quote continuing, “Instead of evolving, we would regress, if not collapse. The rise in authoritarian and far right governments around the world increases this grave risk of collapse. So basically, it’s like, apparently now the only barrier is authoritarianism. And if we get rid of that barrier then what we have is super abundance. If we could just, you know — Taking a deep breath. 

Jason Bradford  

Hold on just a second though. Who’s gonna be sitting together like, you know, in a row right next to each other at Trump’s inauguration?

Asher Miller  

Yeah, all the tech overlords.

Jason Bradford  

Yes. 

Asher Miller  

Right. 

Jason Bradford  

So I’m having a hard time squaring his concern about authoritarianism when they’re like, “Yeah! We got our man in. There’s no regulation. The tech’s gonna fly!” What is going on? This is all very confusing.

Rob Dietz  

It’s clear from dryer ball guy that people can go down paths, you know, and believe things that maybe aren’t quite what we need to be working on. I mean, I have an example well to follow up with someone else that I’ve held in really high regard. I got involved about a year in a half ago in a conflict between two environmentalists, Chris Smaje and George Monbiot. Just to give you a little background, people probably don’t need an introduction to George Monbiot. I mean, he’s been one of the most prolific columnist writers in the environmental space for his work. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, really respect his work. 

Rob Dietz  

Writes a regular article in The Guardian. And you know, you would say he was kind of on our side with limits to growth and and change the economy and really, really get behind conservation efforts and rewilding and all kinds of great stuff. And Chris Smaje is, he’s right in line with you, Jason, in terms of thinking that small organic farms and re-ruralization is a pathway to a good society in the future. 

Jason Bradford  

Yes, he’s probably a way better farmer and writer than I am. He has a great accent.

Asher Miller  

A given. All of these things are a given. 

Rob Dietz  

So, we’ve been publishing Chris’s stuff since 2015 at resilience.org, and basically what happened is George started becoming enamored of lab grown meat as a way to stop having to have livestock out on the on the landscape. He sees that as a really bad thing and so he wrote about this. And Chris kind of reacted saying, “Hey, wait a minute. Not all livestock is bad.” You know, “Livestock on an ecologically sound farm actually plays a really important role. And let’s, let’s look into this lab grown meat thing before we go too far.” And basically, they got in a big conflict over this. And I mean, the reason I was involved, it was decisions about whether to publish George’s stuff or not, but essentially, it was hard to see George going down this route of, yeah, our food, we can just Silicon Valley it. And it didn’t seem like he really had the energy numbers sussed out either. So you know, again, what we often see with techno solutions is, yeah, maybe they sound good on paper, and maybe some early investors are willing to throw dollars at it, and you can do a pilot project, but you try to scale this stuff and it’s like, where are we getting the energy for this?

Jason Bradford  

Well, I mean, Chris wrote an entire book about this, and the book basically, just fairly, you know, as respectfully as it could, but also pretty harshly critiqued the position of Monbiot. Because Monbiot had a whole book. So Chris wrote a book in reaction to a book. Pretty rare. Like a specific takedown book. And he says, I feel like I have to do this because, you know, Monbiot is going down such a track that is so counter to what I think is going to actually work that I need to let people be aware of how to think through these issues. Because people are so urbanized that they don’t understand how things work out on the farm. And I don’t think Monbiot does either, even though he — apparently he visits farms and stuff. But yeah, and so this tech kind of mania seems to have taken over in many ways. 

Asher Miller  

I mean, the reason I wanted to kind of hash this out is it’s not so much about the tech piece of it, and it’s not even, you know, wanting to shit on people that we’ve known and respected and are now pointing fingers at them. It’s more actually out of, to me, a place of empathy because I having gotten to known Nafeez a bit, and I think also, you know George more from a distance, but certainly, having read so much of what he’s put out, these are people that deeply, you know, care about the fate of of humanity and I think other species on this planet. And it seems to me, not that I’m, you know, I have a background in psychoanalysis or anything, but that it’s just sort of this understandable desperation. In my view, it’s desperation of grasping something that provides an escape hatch from the consequences of the reality that they see, that we see, and they also see, right? So, in I think George’s case, and he kind of accused Chris of this a bit, which is like, if we can’t figure out how to feed 8+ billion people, you know, through effectively industrial processes, then it’s going to mean massive famine. And that’s horrific. And he’s right. It’s horrific. Who wants to envision a future like that? It’s understandable to want to avoid that at all costs, but then it can lead us to grasping at things that just won’t work because we can’t live with that.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, I mean, another area that George was following the same pattern is promoting nuclear power. It’s almost like bargaining with the devil, in a way, but just trying to, you know, find some way out of this mess. And it’s a tough one. It’s hard to understand. You know, we’re talking about relocalization and simplification. You know, try running a local nuclear power plant.

Jason Bradford  

Well, let me give you my second bargaining that I had to go through. Okay, so I went through the one where I, you know, was bargaining with tech, and then I went to, you know, I was an early adopter of  — The Post Carbon Institute, had a relocalization network, and I moved to a small town, and I sort of was trying to, like, push this movement where you would try to take your locale. And it’s turned into the transition towns, you know. But that experience also where I had direct relationships with political class, business class, in this little town. I mean, these are like, you know, the mayor lives down the street. You bump into people. So it’s not like some distant DC policy situation where how are you ever going to, like, even have any relationship with the so called levers of power. But even at that scale, it was just like nothing really happened of significance, aside from what families and people working together did on their own. That moving society at large was an impossibility, in a sense. Like the system just could not handle this information. It could not handle the implications. And so, I think my bargaining phase also was like, you know, well, I’m gonna try to get enough people, enough political movement, and we’re gonna show that it can be done somewhere. When in reality, when push came to shove, everything just protected status quo, protected status quo. And all that we thought was important was essentially marginalized all the time. And there was token, you know, token representation of ideas at the level of any kind of institution. And so then, if you get to that point and you realize the implications of us not making this sort of great turning, or whatever. You know, how many wonderful environmental books have been written that have these sort of grandiose ideas of turning society from this one path into a path of sustainability. And I’m sorry, but it’s not profitable in the short term to do that, and in many ways, it’s like the fear of death prevents us from recognizing the peril we’re in, right? So I kind of think that was another bargain I went to. And this is where it’s like, we’re probably not going to do anything of significance, right, at the big level.

Rob Dietz  

I think it’s a really good point because one of the things you brought brought up is these wonderful books, great ideas. You know, I talked about ecological economics, Herman Daly — we’ve made almost zero progress, or even, you could say negative progress in getting the policies in place that are needed to simplify, to relocalize.

Jason Bradford  

I mean, you were talk about Asher watching the Al Gore movie, right? Here’s the former vice president, probably should  have been the president, right? And he has a blockbuster movie, all the attention in the world, and you know, all this kind of movement was happening. And this was paralleling what I was doing with the relocalization. I mean, complete sputter and die, as far as I can tell, right?

Asher Miller  

I think that I’m going to channel our friend Beth Solomon here. And, you know, I think we talked to her for Crazy Town actually about positive feedback loops, amplifying feedback loops. And that was part of the season we did about drivers on Crazy Town. And one of the arguments she made was that in the early phases of exponential growth of things, whether those were — positive in terms of positive feedback loops is confusing to people — but whether those feedback loops are helpful or hurtful in the early phases of them, you know, growing exponentially. You might not see. It may not look like anything, you know, and then it reaches this sort of take off point. Talk about, you know, Al Gore’s film. There’s the famous hockey stick graph, right? And I think a lot of — Here, I’m going to be the positive one here, the optimistic one here. I think a lot of these ideas that have been developed have been very marginal, right? They’ve not been implemented, or had, like, a moment in the sun temporarily and then got swamped by the status quo sort of reasserting itself. Those are seeds that are like, you know, kind of hanging out in the ground, waiting to, you know, to germinate when the conditions are right. 

Jason Bradford  

After the fire burns through everything. 

Asher Miller  

I mean, crisis is, you know, we’ve talked about this, crisis creates opportunities. And we talked about this when we were talking about Trump coming in. You know, that there might be the upside of down in all of this stuff. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah, I think so. 

Asher Miller  

So to me, it’s not, you know, maybe there’s a form of bargaining that’s happening here even to think that we have some measure of of impact. I do believe we have agency. But to me, the thing that I wanted to point out and kind of tease out with you guys was we take people, and we’ve just used two people here as examples of well intentioned, very smart people who I think, because of how dire things are and how unlikely, maybe, they are to improve through the status quo, let’s say, have decided that our only option is to have some kind of technical miracle to happen. And it’s understandable. But in our view, it’s dangerous and unhelpful. So if we recognize that people that we highly respect are susceptible to this, we talked about our own versions of kind of going through things where we’re bargaining or, you know, chasing down. Going down rabbit holes of dryer balls, or whatever. What’s the warning there, maybe, for our listeners to consider? Because we’re all going to be susceptible to this. Things are going to get worse, not better, right? 

Rob Dietz  

What it brings to mind for me is kind of vaccinating yourself, if we’re still allowed to do that. Not with an actual medicine, but, you know, making yourself a little less susceptible to the cognitive bias biases. And we covered this back in 2021 in one of our episodes. So, I’ll put that in the show notes. But like an example of a cognitive bias is the bias of prior investment. Meaning, you’ve already invested in something so even though it’s not working you keep hanging on to it. And I think that’s part of what’s happening in, sort of the tech world idea is, you know, what got us into, say, this climate mess? Well, it’s the industrialization, and the blowout of fossil fuels and in the high tech and, you know, just giant paving of all of our landscapes. All these kinds of things that you would say are part of high energy modernity. And rather than say, okay, that investment got us some good things, it’s not all bad. But, look where it’s taking us. Towards the potential of collapse. Rather than sort of pulling back from that investment, you know, going the other way, doubling down on it. So . . . 

Jason Bradford  

Well the last COP meeting was in an oil kingdom basically. So, there’s no withdrawal of those investments. They’re gonna fight tooth and nail to keep them and just have make believe with their modeling. Yeah, so . . . But yes, that’s why being institutional I have no hope in it, but as individuals, how do you let go is I guess is what we’re trying to say.

Asher Miller  

So testing our own biases?

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, so think about what you’re susceptible to. And it’s hard, but spend some time looking at how you might be biased.

Jason Bradford  

I mean, like, I’ve got to get rid of my Cabbage Patch Kids collection that I have in an air conditioned storage. And I’m just going to have cut that rope.

Asher Miller  

Is it the bias of prior investment? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. I spent so much on that.

Asher Miller  

You never know, man. When the global supply chains collapse, you’re not going to be getting your toys from China anymore. 

Jason Bradford  

Maybe my beanie baby collection, too, will be worth something.

Rob Dietz  

You know what’s really sad, Asher, is that Jason, his Cabbage Patch collection, actually has cabbages on the heads, rather than doll heads.

Jason Bradford  

They’re good storage cabbages. You can eat them. You can eat them.

Asher Miller  

They’re buried in the farm, aren’t they? 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. So we also, you know, this throwback, you know, we’re just sort of sitting here like resting on our laurels in our previous episodes, right? So, did you interview Megan Phelps-Roper, Rob?

Rob Dietz  

No, I don’t think we’ve had her on the show. 

Jason Bradford  

Okay. We just referenced her work. Got it. We referenced her work, and she talked about the questions to think about if you are caught up in something. If you’re caught up in a belief system that you hold very strongly.

Asher Miller  

She was part of the Westboro Baptist Church, and left that very dangerous and horrific . . . 

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, and the Westboro Baptist Church was known for really gnarly, nasty public stunts to try to shame people who are gay. And they would go to funerals and then disrupt them. And really, yeah, really mean spirited.

Jason Bradford  

So she got out of that, and she seems very level headed, and she had these questions. Let’s just cover a few of them. She had like six. So one of them that’s really, I think, interesting —

Asher Miller  

These are questions you’re supposed to ask yourself to test your own assumptions or beliefs, or whatever. 

Jason Bradford  

Yes. Am I capable of entertaining real doubt about my beliefs, or am I operating from a place of certainty? Right? And I think that’s true. We have to do that ourselves. Like, I’m constantly testing. That’s why we call it Crazy Town. Like, okay, am I the crazy one here, or is that nuts what’s going on? And so —

Rob Dietz  

Do you know how much I want the techno, the ecomodernist techno solution to be the way that it works? I test this assumption quite a lot. And, yeah, I haven’t seen a way through given our energy material situation. 

Jason Bradford  

Mhm. Yes. 

Asher Miller  

Yeah. Another one of her questions that you should ask yourself is, can I actually articulate my opponent’s position in a way that they would recognize and say yes, that is reflective of my position, or am I just creating like a straw person argument for their view.

Jason Bradford  

This one drives me crazy. 

Asher Miller  

And I think that’s a good one. And it’s the one I try to actually remind myself when it comes to questioning the potential technology, you know? Because, for example, I can actually state some of the arguments that people who believe the renewable energy transition is well underway and, you know, kind of like unlocked. I don’t agree with that position necessarily.

Jason Bradford  

I think our whole Season Five on Phalse Prophets, in which we referenced these at the end of it, was about that, it was about us — We kind of made fun of the false prophets, but it was also —

Asher Miller  

Just a little. 

Jason Bradford  

We learned enough about them so we could basically, you know, not represent them as straw men. And I think that was important for us to do, as painful as that was.

Asher Miller  

By the way, they were all men. So we can say strawmen.

Rob Dietz  

That leads to Megan Phelps-Roper’s third question, which is, am I attacking ideas, or attacking the people who hold them? And now, you know, in our Phalse Prophet season, we kind of fell a little and had a foot in both sides there.

Jason Bradford  

A and B.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah, so I feel a little bad about that.

Asher Miller  

Do you really? Do you feel bad about shitting on Elon Musk?

Rob Dietz  

No comment. I don’t like to shit on people. Today we’ve done a really good job. I don’t think we’ve attacked George or Nafeez. I think we’ve talked about the ideas around embracing miraculous technology that probably is not going to be a way out for us, so . . . But that’s a… you know, we should have asked ourselves that question a little harder during the Phalse Prophet season. Sorry, Megan.

Jason Bradford  

I think this is really important because, as we were saying, like, I have a lot of empathy for anybody in the position that they’re in and the position that we’ve felt ourselves in of going through the world and just being despondent and having grief. And I can’t tell you how many times, you know, I’ve been pretty low. And what’s interesting though, is as I kind of got to this point of acceptance, like, I’m also not as upset with people who are like George and Nafeez in this situation. I don’t get as upset with them. Obviously, I can read their arguments, but personally, I’m not as upset with them. I’m much more gracious with people who, you know, are in this ecomodernist space than I would have been before.

Asher Miller  

In a sense, caring for ourselves more, or processing our own grief and worry and anxiety, or whatever allows us to actually have more empathy for people who, and I’m not saying they have a process, aren’t processing, or whatever, but who are dealing maybe in ways that I would define as bargaining with reality. And ultimately, I think this is what it comes down to. It’s maybe the biggest recommendation for folks and for ourselves. Because I don’t think there’s a permanent state of being in acceptance, you know? I think there are better days and worse days for me. This reminds me of “Airplane:” I picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue. 

Jason Bradford  

Yeah. 

Asher Miller  

You know, sometimes it’s harder than other times. But building our emotional resilience and our capacity to deal with grief and suffering and uncertainty and loss is really, really important and keeps us, I think, away from grasping and reaching for these kinds of false solutions or false profits. We produced, Postcarbon Institute produced a whole deep dive on building emotional resilience last year and it’s full of lots of resources. You know, we did some events and some interviews and there’s like, a whole list of curated resources that we put together. So we’ll drop a link to that deep dive in our show notes as well.

Rob Dietz  

Yeah. That was a really good experience for me. And I do want to highlight one of the things in there that maybe listeners could go out and do. And that’s to get yourself at least six or eight dryer balls and hug them before bed each night. You just, you just hug them.

Asher Miller  

You’re right. That was part of the detail. 

Jason Bradford  

And I have an idea. I think we can carve this out of maybe, like a maple burr, and then maybe cover it in sort of like, you know, felted wool. I think we can turn this into a sustainable dryer ball probably because that looks plastic, buddy. I’m sorry.

Asher Miller  

This is totally plastic

Jason Bradford  

Asher, let’s do better. Let’s do better. 

Asher Miller  

It tastes great. 

Jason Bradford  

Okay.

Melody Allison  

That’s our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.

Rob Dietz  

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Asher Miller  

Crazy Town, doo-da-doo-doo, Crazy Town.