Crazy Town

What if the story we tell ourselves about progress is wrong?
In Part 4 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues his investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following clues from the Crazy Town archives, Alex begins questioning one of the most deeply held assumptions of modern society: that history is a story of continual progress.
From rising life expectancy and GDP to expanding material wealth and technological innovation, there are plenty of reasons to believe things are getting better. But where did this idea of progress come from? And what happens when the energy and resources required to keep progressing begin to run up against the limits of the natural world?
Along the way, Alex follows the trail from the Enlightenment and fossil fuels to techno-optimism, Jeff Bezos, cargo cults, and the dangerous belief that technology will always come to the rescue. Maybe the problem isn't that we're failing to make progress. Maybe it's that we're asking the wrong question altogether.
And if Jason, Rob, and Asher aren't looking for a ladder to the future, where exactly could they have gone?
The search continues.
Originally recorded on 8/19/26 with archival episodes.

Related Episodes
Episode 9, “They’ll Think of Somethingisms”
Episode 39, “The Myth of Progress and Limits to Growth, or… the Story of the World’s Largest Shovel”

Credits
Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.
Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.
Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

Can our economy keep growing forever on a finite planet?
In this third installment of Finding Crazy Town, we explore the idea of exponential economic growth, why economists and politicians have become so committed to it, and what happens when our economic models fail to account for the environmental systems that make the economy possible.
Along the way, Jason, Rob, and Asher revisit the problems they see in conventional economics, Jason recounts the experience that sent him down the rabbit hole of Limits to Growth and ecological economics, and the trio asks whether growth and progress really mean the same thing.
From Robert Wadlow to Ronald Reagan, Donella Meadows to Julian Simon, the IPCC to the three musketeers, we follow the clues—and discover that sometimes limits aren't the enemy of creativity. They’re what make creativity possible.
Originally recorded on 7/21/26 with archival episodes.

Related Episodes
Episode 2, “Punching Ronnie in the Mouth”
Episode 8, “Mosquito-Flavored Popcorn, or What Climate Scientists Are Getting Wrong”

Credits
Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.
Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.
Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.

What if the greatest strength of modern civilization—its incredible complexity—is also its greatest weakness?
In Part 2 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues investigating the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following the trail leads from a simple podcast microphone into the astonishing complexity of modern techno-industrial civilization, where every solution creates new layers of coordination, specialization, and dependence.
We'll revisit one of Crazy Town's core ideas: that complexity creates complexity. As societies become more interconnected, they also become more fragile—raising difficult questions about resilience, simplification, and what it would take to build a civilization that's durable enough to weather the challenges ahead.
Originally recorded on 7/15/26 with archival episodes.

The world has lost a voice of clear, truth-telling wisdom—a man whose work reached millions of people and fundamentally changed the lives of thousands.
Richard Heinberg was regarded as one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels. He was Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute for nearly twenty years. Richard was the author of fourteen books, including some of the seminal works on society’s current energy and environmental sustainability crisis.
Crazy Town producers Alex Leff and Melody Traverse discuss Richard's legacy and play episode one of The Power Podcast.
We'll resume our regular programming of the Finding Crazy Town series next week.

What happens when the global economy depends on fish traveling 10,000 miles, oil flowing through a single strait, and enough cheap fossil fuel energy to build civilizations that previous generations couldn't even imagine?
In Part 1 of our six-part summer series, producer Alex Leff begins investigating the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following the clues leads to international shipping, global trade, and the hidden energy that powers modern civilization. Along the way, we'll revisit some of Crazy Town's foundational ideas—and begin asking how our modern techno-industrial world came to be, why it's so fragile, and what it would take to build something more resilient.
Originally recorded on 7/1/26 with archival episodes.
Related Episodes
Episode 11, “My Dinner Is Stuck in Traffic”
Episode 16, “The 10,000-Mile Cod and Insane Global Trade”
Episode 23, “Mayor McCheese & Modern Medicine: the Good & Bad of High Energy”

Credits
Production and editing by Alex Leff. Editorial assistance and transcripts by Taylor Antal.
Theme music is “Way Huge” and “Don’t Give Up” by Midnight Shipwrecks, used with permission.
Thanks to all the Crazy Townies, our listeners who are trying to understand humanity's overshoot predicament and do something about it.