{"id":3494779,"date":"2023-03-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3494779"},"modified":"2023-04-07T01:02:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T01:02:37","slug":"crazy-town-new-season-new-theme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2023-03-15\/crazy-town-new-season-new-theme\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Town: Episode 64. What the Ph*ck Is a Phalse Prophet?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-spacer\" style=\"height: 15px;\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\u00a0<\/div><div id=\"buzzsprout-player-12245829\">\u00a0<\/div>\r\n<p><script src=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/244372\/12245829-what-the-phuck-is-a-phalse-prophet.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-12245829&amp;player=small\" type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><div class=\"gb-button-wrapper gb-button-wrapper-af35d9a5\">\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-736fa41c gb-button-text btn res-btn-blue\" href=\"https:\/\/lnk.to\/crazytownWB\">Listen on your favorite app<\/a>\n\n<a class=\"gb-button gb-button-f8db5292 gb-button-text res-btn-yellow\" href=\"\/crazy-town-podcast\/episodes\">See all episodes<\/a>\n<\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-b18365bc\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-show-notes\"><strong>Show Notes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n<p>Season 5 of Crazy Town launches today! The podcast continues to expose ecomodernist techno-fantasies, neoliberal nonsense, fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of progress, and other follies of high-energy modernity. But we have a new theme to help us address these topics while maintaining our laugh-so-you-don\u2019t-cry sensibility: <strong>Phalse Prophets<sup>TM<\/sup><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n<p><p>Now you may be wondering: what the ph*ck is a Phalse Prophet? For an in-depth understanding, you MUST READ the (surprisingly entertaining) definitive, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/RSIC-Journal\">peer-reviewed taxonomic analysis<\/a> from our cohost Jason Bradford, PhD. But in a nutshell: we\u2019ve selected fourteen merchants of doom, fourteen real-life, modern-day gurus who manage to be unbelievably influential while pitching all the wrong ideas. Their ideas are dangerous because (at best) they convince people to ignore the social and environmental crises of our times, and (at worst) they push us deeper into crisis. The first episode of the season is available now, and it previews what\u2019s to come over the next 15 weeks.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sources\/Links\/Notes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/longreads.com\/bundyville\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Bundyville: The Remnant&#8221;<\/a>&nbsp;&#8212; long-form article and podcast by Leah Sottile.<\/li>\n<li>Five topic categories of the Phalse Prophets season: progress myth, neoliberalism, ecomodernism, effective altruism, and doomerism.<\/li>\n<li>Story of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/01\/03\/us\/bruces-beach-los-angeles-county-sale-reaj\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bruce&#8217;s Beach<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><em>Yes! Magazine<\/em>&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.yesmagazine.org\/social-justice\/2022\/11\/22\/community-indigenous-colonization-reparations\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">article on land justice<\/a>. &nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div><p><em>How would you rate this episode&#8217;s Phalse Prophet on the Insufferability Index?<\/em> Tell us in the comments below!<\/p><figure class=\"gb-block-image gb-block-image-eadc0d2d\"><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1300\" height=\"801\" class=\"gb-image gb-image-eadc0d2d\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"CT-insufferability-index-1\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1.jpg 1300w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-600x370.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-304x187.jpg 304w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-1024x631.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/CT-insufferability-index-1-768x473.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1300px) 100vw, 1300px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-spacer\" style=\"height: 50px;\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\u00a0<\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-d7c3aa7a\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h2 id=\"at-34947790\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Episode Sponsor<\/h2><div id=\"ac-34947790\" class=\"c-accordion__content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/share.descript.com\/embed\/GrrFLr53Xzf\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><div style=\"height:25px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-ebc14cda\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-pb-accordion-item c-accordion__item js-accordion-item no-js\" data-initially-open=\"false\" data-click-to-close=\"true\" data-auto-close=\"true\" data-scroll=\"false\" data-scroll-offset=\"0\"><h2 id=\"at-34947791\" class=\"c-accordion__title js-accordion-controller\" role=\"button\">Transcript<\/h2><div id=\"ac-34947791\" class=\"c-accordion__content\"><div class=\"gb-container gb-container-840bf9a0 podcast-transcript-container\">\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I&#8217;m Rob Dietz.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I&#8217;m Jason Bradford.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And I&#8217;m Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town where Marjorie Taylor Greene is the voice of reason.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Guys, we are doing it, aren&#8217;t we? This is Season 5. Is that a big season?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>What is it in anniversaries? Like when you&#8217;re married? Is it tin?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Is 5 a big deal?<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I have no idea. It feels like a big deal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Cubic zirconium.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. Okay. We gotta we all get a cubic zirconium at the end of the season if we make it through.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>If we make it through.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes, well, so I&#8217;m pretty excited about this season. And I&#8217;m also excited to talk about, as a way of introducing this season, this episode, a wonderful experience that myself and my family had at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Oh, yeah. Over in southeastern Oregon there.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Oregon is amazing. The Central Oregon, the southeast, the dry part of the state. . . Geological wonders abound. You know, it&#8217;s not as vegetated so you an see the rocks\/ Oh, like cubic zirconium cliffs?&nbsp; Yeah, there&#8217;s like mountains of the stuff.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It&#8217;s funny because when people think of Oregon they think of, I remember that joke from Jim Gaffigan. Like people in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest are dressed like a hike is about to break out. They imagine rain and people like huddled and, you know, drinking coffee or whatever. . . Smoking closed cigarettes. . . Eastern Oregon is not like that.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>No. This is high desert. It&#8217;s the northern end of the Basin and Range area part of North America. And so you&#8217;ve got basically these big escarpments, these mountains, and then almost cliff-like faces to them. But in between these mountain ranges, there are all these basically, you know, lake systems and rivers feeding into them that never make it to the ocean. So a lot of our alkaline and there&#8217;s just weird biodiversity everywhere. But the place I want to talk about is a National Wildlife Refuge and is famous in the birding community. So, I wasn&#8217;t really into &#8211;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Birding or burning?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Bird-ing. Yeah, tweeter tweets and stuff like that. Cackle, cackle, whatever. I&#8217;m not really an experienced birder yet, so I don&#8217;t do the sounds. I listened for the sounds. But this is where I got into it, where I suddenly like brought binoculars. We were there during the May, you know, migration pattern, important places. And you realize what&#8217;s happened is that a lot of these national wildlife refuges are like remnant wetlands that have now been augmented because you know, a lot of wetlands have been lost. And so they try to make the wetlands that remain extra productive and special.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You know, you&#8217;re talking my language now. I used to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service in the National Wildlife Refuge System. So yeah, all the biologists at the refuges, they&#8217;re trying to mimic historical condition and you know, they&#8217;re often pumping water here and there to supply the migratory birds with the ponds and wetlands that they need.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So you&#8217;re driving through this place, and there&#8217;s incredible vistas of mountains and rock formations, and then these flat areas that have various levels of water. And different birds are attracted to different levels of water. And it&#8217;s crazy, because all thesebirds are moving through and they&#8217;re in just giant numbers, and they&#8217;re super colorful. And so, I was just absolutely thrilled by the place. And it was interesting, because it was so peaceful there and wonderful and everyone was having a good time. But then I also knew that a few years before, it was kind of a shitshow.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, so we&#8217;re gonna talk about Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. I mean, it&#8217;s nice that you had this experience and I can attest you become a super birder nerder. Is that a word?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes. I admit.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Just unbelievable.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t have the highest-end binoculars set yet.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You don&#8217;t have the spotting scope or whatever? You haven&#8217;t spent 1000&#8217;s of dollars? But you&#8217;ll get there. You&#8217;ll get there. Yeah. Well, but if we&#8217;re going to talk about that particular refuge, you gotta go back to January 2, 2016.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I was there. It was amazing. Incredible experience. One of the highlights of my life.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So we didn&#8217;t know this, but Asher, your middle name is actually Bundy, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It&#8217;s it&#8217;s Ammon Bundy Jr.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So, back then, at the beginning of 2016 . . . Of course, you may be familiar that this group of right wing nut jobs with lots of guns showed up at the refuge.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>They were freedom loving Patriots, excuse me.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Right. You know, tomato tomahto.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s agree to disagree.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>They held this refuge hostage, I guess. Can you hold a refuge hostage?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>That&#8217;s what they did.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>They did this for over a month. It was February 11 when the police finally arrested them. And their leader, as you said, was this guy, Ammon . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Ammon Bundy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And he had experience with this sort of thing. His dad had a ranch in Nevada and they had a big standoff there against the BLM over grazing fees. Essentially, they took over this refuge because they wanted the federal government to give the land back to the states and really to the people so they could do whatever the hell they wanted on it with their cow.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8220;The people.&#8221; Not the not the historic, you know, indigenous people.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>No, silly.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Just to be clear.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, the history of the places it was a big like cattle ranch back in the day, you know.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, but before that, there might have been &#8211;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, some other things going on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8211; some other stuff going on.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Can we have a little aside here? What&#8217;s the name, Bundy? I mean, if your name Bundy does that automatically make you some kind of very scary criminal type? Or at the very least, Al Bundy, from &#8220;Married With Children&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I think of Al Bundy. Exactly. He was a great philosopher.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So if you want your kid to grow up to be a serial killer, just name them Bundy. Sorry to all of our Bundy listeners out there.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Half of our listenership just dropped off.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, so one of the things about Ammon Bundy is that the philosophy went way beyond this kind of dispute over who has rights to the land. There&#8217;s this entire undercurrent in that family of wackadoodle religious beliefs. And I don&#8217;t want to bore everybody with my take on it because somebody&#8217;s already done a really outstanding job of kind of going through this, and that&#8217;s Leah Sottile. She has this long read article and a podcast called &#8220;Bundyville: The Remnant&#8221; which I highly recommend, so check those out. But this guy, they&#8217;re coming from a pretty weird, kind of a philosophical religious angle, and, you know, kind of like a prophet off the mountain.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. And actually, in that podcast, she traces back to the origins of not only that whole, sort of, like war with the federal government thing, but the religious undertones that does go back to these prophets that were part of this cult or sect of Christianity. And, you know, we could talk about Cliven Bundy and the Bundy clan or whatever.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Great name, by the way, Cliven.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. You know, and it&#8217;s easy to sort of, make fun of them or think about them as sort of like these very extreme fringe voices out there in the wilderness, so to speak. But the truth is that at least I suspect that as we get deeper and deeper into like, environmental unraveling and social unraveling, as all the issues that we at Post Carbon Institute &#8211;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Fincancial.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;Yeah &#8211; talk about, you know, with energy issues, and the economy and socio political problems, and all that stuff coming together, we&#8217;re gonna probably see more people like the Bundys. Because I think the real story of what happened there at the refuge was all of these people coming in from across the country that were drawn to this cause, right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t just the birds anymore.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t just the birds anymore. Well, and it wasn&#8217;t just a Bundy clan, right?<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, and the aftermath is pretty crazy, too. I mean, they were prosecuted, but then they they serve no jail time. And they&#8217;re basically let off.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. So I just, you know, I think that we&#8217;re going to be seeing more of these. And it&#8217;s not just people on this quasi white nationalists religious that we&#8217;ll see as false prophets. We&#8217;re going to see all kinds of different folks coming out. And that&#8217;s why we wanted to talk about false prophets in this season, season five, of Crazy Town.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I think the false prophets, it&#8217;s pretty easy to pull an Ammon Bundy out and say, &#8220;Look at this guy!&#8221; But there are a lot of other flavors of false prophets that are not quite so easy to pick out of the lineup, not quite so extreme. And I think we want to focus on those &#8211; the ones that, I mean, you kind of agree with a lot of what they&#8217;re saying, but they get it wrong in one way or another, or they&#8217;re sort of oversimplifying, providing an answer that doesn&#8217;t really solve something as complex as climate change.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I think we want to talk about people that maybe are more in the mainstream, that are more kind of influential and not ridiculed in maybe quite the way that the Bundy clan has been, but the mainstream. And even people who are trying to maintain the status quo<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, in preparation for this season, my background was in systematics taxonomy. I developed classification systems for plants.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, and look at you. You&#8217;ve just turned that right into birds and you know . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, it is a similar tickle you get like searching for the novelty of seeking the species out in nature. I did that for plants and I switched to birds, but I&#8217;m not a bird taxonomist. But I am a false prophet taxonomist. Yes.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Sweet.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes. You&#8217;re gonna be in high demand.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes, I am. So I have devised a schema of nine false prophet typologies. Now, it&#8217;s kind of fun, you know, but I actually think it&#8217;s useful. And the reason it&#8217;s useful is because when you have terminology for something, it&#8217;s easier to see it. You know, the example they give is if you live where there&#8217;s a lot of snow, you have more terms for snow than if you live like in Florida.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So, if you live among the false prophets, you&#8217;re gonna have at least nine different kinds.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, I think it&#8217;s important because a lot &#8211; Like what Asher was getting at &#8211; A lot of times you&#8217;re going to agree with much of what these folks are saying. But there&#8217;s some key ways you can if you have this sort of schema, if you understand where they&#8217;re coming from, their philosophy and you have a name for it, it&#8217;s easier to sort of say, &#8220;Oh, this is what they&#8217;re doing. They seem to come in different species.:<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It&#8217;s almost like the episode we did on cognitive biases and all the different flavors of that that you have out there. Like once you know the types of cognitive bias, you can actually identify them and realize&nbsp; which ones you&#8217;re susceptible to.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And it makes it easier to ridicule them. Let&#8217;s be honest.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Okay, Well we&#8217;re just gonna go through &#8211; There&#8217;s nine we&#8217;re gonna go through. We&#8217;re gonna have examples of at least nine of these folks in the season and there will be overlaps a little bit. It&#8217;s complicated by schema. But just to give you an example, we&#8217;re talking about these Bundy crowd. They are a classic what is now termed out there, A Molotov Mixologist.&nbsp; Yeah, Molotov Mixologist. And that is basically you know &#8211; Their motto is essentially, &#8220;This baby is irredeemable. Let&#8217;s blow it up&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>A Molotov Mixologist, okay.&nbsp; In that case, they&#8217;re talking about the federal government probably right?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. They are.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It could apply to any big system, basically.&nbsp; Like the civilization that we&#8217;ve got now, we&#8217;re gonna throw Molotov cocktails at it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, bring it down. Something better will rise out of it &#8211; You know, out of the ashes kind of thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. Well, let me give an example of somebody who&#8217;s near and dear to my heart. Somebody I wish I could be more like.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I&#8217;m sorry I didn&#8217;t give this name to you earlier in life. It&#8217;s a recent find.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And we&#8217;re not doing this guy as a false prophet this season. He&#8217;s just an example.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>No, he&#8217;s just an appetizer. It&#8217;s an hors d&#8217;oeuvre.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yea. A little cheese on a cracker.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Fellow Jew, unfortunately. His name is Alex Epstein. You guys heard of this guy?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Oh, yeah.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I have not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Okay. So he&#8217;s a classic man shiller. Which you know, according to Jason&#8217;s very elaborate taxonomy is a high status professional who is well paid to gaslight you into believing the shitcakes you see everywhere are actually made out of chocolate. So our good buddy Alex, right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You have some good quotes from him?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not gonna pull out any quotes because I might throw up. That&#8217;d be problematic.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It&#8217;d ruin the whole studio.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, I&#8217;d get it all over the microphone. But Alex, you know, he&#8217;s the founder and president of I would say, a real doppelganger nonprofit thinktank to Post Carbon Institute called the Center for Industrial Progress. He&#8217;s author of several books. You know, he wrote a book called, &#8220;The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels.&#8221; And his latest book is called &#8220;Fossil Future&#8221; which makes a case for &#8211;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8211; A case for how we&#8217;re all going to be fossils pretty darn quick.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>No, no, no. We need to expand the use of fossil fuels in the future. Now, of course, and Rob, you&#8217;ll really appreciate this, he used to be an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Oh, sweet.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Your favorite place.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I always wanted to work at the Cato Institute, right?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And he was a former fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. So I mean, he&#8217;s got all the credentials you possibly need to go out there &#8211; I&#8217;m sure he gets no funding from the fossil fuel industry whatsoever. He just happens to be saying . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>What you said, his place is called The Center for Indoctrinated Turd Tucket.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Close. Yeah. Very Close.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>What&#8217;s interesting about his stuff, though, when you read it&#8217;s over the top, but he talks about how important fossil fuels are to our modern way of life in ways that are very akin to what Richard Heinberg might say.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, that&#8217;s why I said doppelganger organization. I mean, saying very similar things, right?<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, speaking of some similarities and shared ideas, I&#8217;ve got a typology that you shared with me Jason, called the Premature Cassandralator.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes. I used to have that problem when I was young.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to go into how you came up with these names. But the Cassandra part I understand. Sort of a doom saying. But anyway, The Premature Cassandralator is about, you&#8217;re sort of getting the story, right, ust not at the correct time, not in the right decade. And the example, there could be somebody like Paul Ehrlich, who I think all three of us would say, we really respect him as a scholar. And he&#8217;s gotten a lot of things right, but prematurely predicted kind of the end of human wellbeing and progress.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Population growth.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, and he had that bet., famous bet with Julian Simon about the prices of commodities. And you know, he bet that price would go up as commodities became more scarce. Julian Simon bet that price would go down because we&#8217;d just magically figure this stuff out. Ehrlich would have won if they put the timeframe a little more into the future, but he didn&#8217;t. He prematurely Cassandralatored<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And it&#8217;s been a problem. I mean, I think he&#8217;s made our job a lot harder basically.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, and he&#8217;s not alone. I mean, let&#8217;s go back to Malthus. He got it a little bit wrong there in terms of timing. We&#8217;ve had that in the peak oil community.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I mean, Richard had a mea culpa, like, Hey, I didn&#8217;t see the shale boom happening so fast and at such scale, right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, and then the three of us talk about this a lot, you can get into a very doomy or pessimistic mindset, but that&#8217;s what we want to avoid. We&#8217;re trying to avoid either optimism or despair. What you&#8217;re looking for is what&#8217;s the reality out there? And then what&#8217;s the proper response?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And being open to new data points, or the fact that things might play out in more complex ways than you might imagine? Looking at the shale example, right? You know, the growth of shale, gas, and oil production really had to do with the the overall economy tanking and suddenly there&#8217;s a bunch of money pumped into the system with no interest. That&#8217;s not part of the energy system, but it had a huge impact on that system.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, I think this typology is pretty cool. I can&#8217;t wait to see what the other what other six or more that might end up. But I know, Jason, you&#8217;ve also dug a little deeper and created another scale with this.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Right. You know, unlike last season, when we covered mostly dead people, we&#8217;re mostly covering people who are still alive. And so in that sense, when people are still alive, you can really get a sense of them as humans. You can get a sense of their personalities, and . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Especially in this day and age there&#8217;s lots of video, people out there . . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Tweets and YouTubes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You run into them at Whole Foods.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, some of our false prophets seem like decent chaps actually, you know? You might not mind having a beer with them.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;You&#8217;re saying chaps . . . just come out straight and say we&#8217;re only doing men this season.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It seems like that&#8217;s probably what&#8217;s going to happen.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, they&#8217;re so much easier to find, you know. These frickin&#8217; men who have unfounded confidence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>How many female cult leaders have there been actually?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>That&#8217;s a great question. We&#8217;ll ask the chat GTP, GPT, or whatever it&#8217;s called. But anyway, others are clear wackadoodles or sociopaths, and you wouldn&#8217;t want to get in near them in a room. And so we have what&#8217;s called the insufferable douchebag coefficient. So this is a very clear scoring system. And the three of us will for each episode, give our score on a scale of 1 to 10. It&#8217;s completely objective.&nbsp; Yes. Like a Nelson Mandela would be very low, near the bottom, a 1.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Meaning he&#8217;s sufferable. You would want to hang with him.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Exactly, exactly. And of course, Tucker Carlson is gonna be at the far like, I would vomit if I got near the guy probably.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I invited him to your birthday party, but he didn&#8217;t show.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Oh, no.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>&nbsp;Yeah. So anyway, we&#8217;ll get into that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Most people don&#8217;t know that Tucker&#8217;s middle name is Bundy. Just like Asher. Tucker Bundy Carlson.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And I guess I should just come out and say, Tucker and I are pretty close. We&#8217;re, we&#8217;re buds. I don&#8217;t find him insufferable at all.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, he&#8217;s gonna score low for you then. I don&#8217;t think we&#8217;re doing him. But you know what I mean.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. So look, hopefully we&#8217;ll have fun this season talking about some of these false prophets. But there&#8217;s a reason why we wanted to explore some of these people. And it wasn&#8217;t just talking about their influence. It was also an opportunity to kind of dig into certain topics, And what we found, actually, is that there were some sort of themes around the folks that we identified. So one of them is a progress myth and we&#8217;re gonna get into that. People who are sort of pushing that belief system, you know, which we&#8217;ve talked about in previous episodes, as being deeply entrenched, at least in the modern view of the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, and always without attribution to the lottery of energy resources that we have.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Of course, yeah. We&#8217;ve got neoliberalism, something else we&#8217;ve talked about before. But there&#8217;s a clear, you know, thread there. Eco modernism. . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So basically, what you&#8217;re saying is you don&#8217;t like freedom.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>No, I don&#8217;t like isms. I don&#8217;t like any isms. We&#8217;ve got Effective Altruism, and we&#8217;ve got Doomerism, which I think, you know, we were very mindful of looking at some of the edges, you know, in our own &#8211;&nbsp; The Venn diagram.&nbsp; Yeah, I mean, and in kind of the circles that we inhabit sometimes people tend to resort more in that direction. And I think it&#8217;s worth shining a light on that as well.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And I&#8217;ll also say, we all know, I&#8217;m the least well read of the three of us. I try not to pay attention to the news. This Effective Altruism was a totally new topic to me, but I know it just drives you absolutely insane Asher.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. Well, it&#8217;s a good thing that one of the leading champions of Effective Altruism his entire company just blew up and he&#8217;s going to prison. So that&#8217;ll help.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>That is good. That made you happy.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Ah, it&#8217;s the little things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Kittle chef&#8217;s kiss on that. Mwuah.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>So I just wanted to point out that there&#8217;s a difference between the really easy targets, like the Ammon Bundys, and the people that we&#8217;re covering. So you know, I really appreciate the topics you just laid out, Asher. I think that&#8217;s kind of why we settled in on the folks we did and some of them are not who you would expect, right? There are left wingers, some would be considered progressives. And it might be a little bit surprising. I mean, maybe not to our highly intelligent audience, but we&#8217;re not picking these just super easy. . .&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>They&#8217;re not all Alex Epstein and Ammon Bundys.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, it&#8217;s not a Donald Trump. That would be too easy.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. And we&#8217;re gonna try to keep the personal attacks to a minimum. Sometimes, you know, I might get a little worked up which is maybe where the insufferable douchebag coefficient comes in. You know, these are living beings who are out there in the world, you know.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>They deserve something.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And in many cases, well intentioned.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You know, we&#8217;re gonna have to score ourselves on the insufferable douche bag coefficient.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Actually, maybe our listeners can do it. We should not have invited them to do that.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>It only goes to 10, I thought you were an 11.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>The last thing I&#8217;ll just say about this season is we are going to keep the &#8220;Do the Opposite&#8221; segment. It&#8217;s fun to complain and point out all these dangerous trends out there and influences out there, but we want to be talking about what directions we want to be going in. So, we&#8217;re going to be sticking with that and look&nbsp; forward to hopefully some inspiring examples of doing the opposite..<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Okay, it&#8217;d be cool if there was an actual person, like a demon qngel thing, like there was the literal opposite. But I don&#8217;t think that exists, does it?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, what would it be? What would it be if we stick with Ammon Bundy as an example? What would be the opposite? And I guess, you know, this is a good way to look at this &#8211; Like there&#8217;s the opposite person, but also the opposite ideas might be more critical.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yes, and in that case, like trying to claim federal government land for personal gain.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. What&#8217;s the opposite of saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m going to take over federal land and make it my own?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I recently read a story that&#8217;s gotten some pretty good press near Los Angeles &#8211; Bruce&#8217;s Beach. That I think is maybe a good counter-Bundy. The story is that about 100 years ago -Willa aand Charles Bruce, this couple who happened to be black, they owned some beachfront property near Los Angeles. And this is back in the Jim Crow era. So the place had come to be known as Bruce&#8217;s Geach and they got harassed a lot by their white neighbors and then the KKK got involved. And then in 1924, the city actually took the property through eminent domain. So they&#8217;re like, &#8220;This is ours.&#8221; And recently, fast forward many many years and skip past all the suffering and unfairness that came with that, the Los Angeles County gave the land back to the family \u2013 kind of a reparations.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>That&#8217;s going from public back to private?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Kinda, but then the family decided, &#8220;Well, this has a become kind of a public area.&#8221; &#8220;It has become a park.&#8221; Yeah, so they&#8217;re like, we&#8217;re gonna just sell it right back to LA County because we want people to be able to experience this place. So it&#8217;s kind of a cool story of like getting some reparations to the family, but also still keeping it as a park space.&nbsp; It had been a park, right?<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah, and along those lines, there&#8217;s the land back movement, which is trying to bring land back into the hands of indigenous communities. And they often use land trust to purchase traditional stolen land, take it out of the private market, and put it into collective care. There are also some really inspiring, innovative, black led projects that aim to reclaim land stolen from African Americans. Like you were just talking about including something called the Acres of Ancestry Initiative, or the Black Agrarian TRust. So it&#8217;s not just about putting in the hands of private owners, but they&#8217;re also really innovative experiments of looking at how to do that using cooperative models. And we&#8217;ll provide some examples in the show notes.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. So we&#8217;ll try to give you guys examples of these anti false prophet\/true prophets.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, let&#8217;s avoid prophets in general.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Anyway, smart people doing cool stuff out there. And maybe some ideas of how you can get involved throughout the season.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And you know, I&#8217;ve got a number of publications that are out there. You can go find them if you ever care to read any of them. No one has, but a few, a few people have.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I read them daily.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Is this going to go into part of your academic literature?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I&#8217;m hoping it will. You know, there&#8217;s stuff from Madagascar and South America and New Caledonia, and the South Pacific. I&#8217;ve got a lot of good taxonomic work, but I think this may be my finest, the false prophet taxonomy. I&#8217;m very proud of it. It&#8217;ll probably get read more than anything else I&#8217;ve done. And so, we&#8217;re going to publish it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Two readers instead of one, right? That&#8217;s double man.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Yeah. So if you go to postcarbon.org\/crazy town, we&#8217;ll have some linksin there and you can look at the False Prophet, taxonomic work, but also drop us a line. Do you have suggestions of characters that would fit under these top typologies, these species? Let us know.<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And it could be a bit of a cheat code, cheat sheet for you if you&#8217;re trying to anticipate who we might cover later. So you know, that might ring some bells for you.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>We could have a betting pool or something like that set up, maybe\/<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I really can&#8217;t wait to cover some of these false prophets. I learn so much every time we do a season. I can&#8217;t wait to go through this with you guys.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And let me just say really fast, we should thank Alana Zuber, our stellar, incredible volunteer who&#8217;s been working behind the scenes for months to pull together information about all of these folks. You know, talking about vomit inducing things. She&#8217;s got a strong gut.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I think we almost broke her brain with some of the people we had her looking into. Yeah, but she&#8217;s, she&#8217;s got some strength. So yeah, she&#8217;s still with us. Well, one of the things that got me thinking in this episode is this whole Ammon Bundy stuff. You know, we&#8217;re calling him a false prophet, but I think he&#8217;s maybe on to something. You guys know the William L. Finley National Refuge?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, it&#8217;s about eight miles south, Muddy Creek, which is right out here. It goes right to it. So I know it pretty darn well. I love that place.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, I mean, there probably aren&#8217;t that many people working there. You think we could go take it over for a month or so?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>I bet we can do two months there. I bet we get two months.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Before anyone notices?<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, no, I mean, it&#8217;s a pretty nice place.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>Asher Miller&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>A lot of people go there.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>A lot of people go there, but I think we can hold it for twice as long as the Bundys.&nbsp; Yeah, screw those guys.&nbsp; And I think we will get so much publicity. This will be perfect.<\/p>\n\n<p>Rob Dietz&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>And we will rename it Crazy Town National Wildlife Refuge.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>This is a way to make us go viral.<\/p>\n\n<p>Melody Allison&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>That&#8217;s our show. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button on 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.<\/p>\n\n<p>Jason Bradford&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<p>You know, becoming a cult leader may be one of the best ways to survive the coming apocalypse. Just think about the security of having easily hundreds of totally devoted people all with their accumulated wealth, knowledge, security and provisioning skills at your disposal. But getting a cult together is a lot of work, often requiring years of development to hone speeches, fine tune entrancing facial expressions, perfect coercion tactics, and trial painful binding rituals. Well now, the time to develop your cult can be shortened from years to seconds using the AI Cult Generator. Answer questions about your political leanings, geography, religious background, gender identity, comfort with firearms, favorite movie and Kool-Aid flavor, and a full blown personally customized cult manual will be created. AI Cult Generator &#8211; Finding the evil genius in all of us.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n<p class=\"has-contrast-2-color has-text-color\" style=\"font-size:16px\">(Click on &#8216;+&#8217; to open\/close)<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Season 5 of the Crazy Town podcast launches today, with a new theme to help maintain its laugh-so-you-don\u2019t-cry sensibility: Phalse Prophets(TM).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128248,"featured_media":3496361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[251744,251746,79720],"tags":[217820],"class_list":["post-3494779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crazy-town","category-podcasts","category-society","tag-crazy-town"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128248"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3494779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3496361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3494779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3494779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}