Copyright Resilience
Asher Miller 00:00 Hi, I'm Asher Miller. Rob Dietz 00:02 I'm Rob Dietz. Jason Bradford 00:03 And I'm Jason Bradford. Welcome to Crazy Town, where "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice has been declared the new national anthem. Rob Dietz 00:13 Some key understandings here in Crazy Town: the Earth is finite. The economy cannot grow forever. Physics, chemistry and biology are real. Healthy humans need community. And it's more fun to laugh than to cry. But where did principles like these originate? Today, we're using the format of a fantasy football draft to pick the pundits who most influenced our thinking. Like starry-eyed fan boys we gush over our heroes and tell behind-the-scenes stories about how they influenced us. Rob Dietz 00:54 Hey, Jason, hey Asher. How's it going today? Asher Miller 00:56 It's raining a little bit. I feel like the weather is finally starting to move into autumn, which I have mixed feelings about. Jason Bradford 01:04 I have mixed feelings. I really like the rain. I really like the fact that I'm not gonna have to, like, do as much farm work. Asher Miller 01:09 Lazy ass. Rob Dietz 01:12 That's good. I mean, if you don't have to do as much farm work, you can spend more time following influencers Asher Miller 01:18 Or becoming an influencer. Jason Bradford 01:19 There we go. Asher Miller 01:20 I mean, you've got all the ingredients for it. Jason Bradford 01:23 I wonder what category of influencer I would be. Rob Dietz 01:26 Golf cart farming I thought. Jason Bradford 01:27 There we go. Asher Miller 01:28 You have that TikTok account, right? Jason Bradford 01:30 I don't even have a TikTok. I don't. I should get that. Rob Dietz 01:33 Well, so our discussion today is about influencers, kind of the good kind. But as usual, I want to start us off with something bad. Okay? So I found a website called Social Pilot that ranks the world's biggest influencers, and I would like you guys to open a tab on your little laptop there so you can see who the top social media influencers in the world are. Asher Miller 01:59 I can just tell you that the picture that they chose for, like, the headline, just makes me want to close this. Jason Bradford 02:04 Yeah, and I just accepted all the cookies. Rob Dietz 02:09 Yep, you're gonna be getting all kinds of awesome ads. So let me just read you guys some of the tops. Here we'vce got Cristiano Ronaldo. Jason Bradford 02:16 Soccer player. Rob Dietz 02:17 Yeah, footballer. We've got Selena Gomez. Asher Miller 02:19 Wait, you gotta tell us how many. Rob Dietz 02:21 Oh, how many followers? Yeah, 836 million followers for Christiano. Asher Miller 02:27 And the total global human population is what? Jason Bradford 02:30 8 billion Asher Miller 02:31 So like a 10th of - Jason Bradford 02:33 What? Rob Dietz 02:34 Yeah, 10% of the population is influenced by by Mr. Ronaldo. Rob Dietz 02:39 Hope he's a good guy. Asher Miller 02:41 He played soccer for the Saudis. Okay, go ahead. Rob Dietz 02:43 Yeah, you've got Selena Gomez. Rob Dietz 02:45 Singer. Rob Dietz 02:45 You've got Mr. Beast. Jason Bradford 02:47 YouTube personality. Rob Dietz 02:48 His real name I guess is Jimmy Donaldson. Still with half a billion followers. Number four, Lionel Messi. Jason Bradford 02:56 Another soccer player. Rob Dietz 02:58 Yeah, footballer. Asher Miller 02:58 This is inverted because Messi is a better soccer player, but apparently we're not - Asher Miller 03:03 Not as good of an influencer. Rob Dietz 03:05 Yeah, exactly. So who's the better human? Asher Miller 03:07 Okay, fair enough. Rob Dietz 03:09 You've got Justin Bieber, Jason Bradford 03:11 Canadian singer. He's really good. Asher Miller 03:13 Has he put anything out? Rob Dietz 03:15 I think he's still active. Kylie Jenner, The Rock - Jason Bradford 03:20 Wait, wait, wait, Kylie Jenner is - Asher Miller 03:22 She's one of the Kardashians. Jason Bradford 03:24 She's a Kardashian. Rob Dietz 03:25 If you were gonna, like, say, what Kylie Jenner does for a living, you'd say influencer. Jason Bradford 03:30 Well, that's the thing. Like, I didn't know who she was because she has nothing going for her except influization. Asher Miller 03:36 So a lot going for her then. Rob Dietz 03:39 Then you've got The Rock, you've got Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian . . . Asher Miller 03:45 I'm seeing athletes, I'm seeing people who are famous for being famous, I'm seeing some musicians. Rob Dietz 03:52 Well, that is, to me, the best part of this. It's like, yeah - Asher Miller 03:56 No politicians, interesting. Rob Dietz 03:57 Like why we're following footballers, other than to watch him kick soccer balls. Do I really care what Ronaldo's opinion is? Jason Bradford 04:05 Right. Okay, this is kind of depressing, actually. Rob Dietz 04:08 Yeah. And as you said, Asher, the ones who are famous for being famous are probably the best category. Jason Bradford 04:14 There's two Kardashians on this. Rob Dietz 04:16 Well, I wanted to turn - Asher Miller 04:18 I love this website talking about brand collaborations. Like it lists all the corporations that they're in bed with in their influencing. There's a lot of, like, cosmetics stuff in here. Rob Dietz 04:30 You have to get paid to be doing influential things. Asher Miller 04:34 I don't see like any environmental like World Wildlife Fund. I'm not seeing a collaboration there. Are you? Rob Dietz 04:41 No, no. Well, you're pointing out the way that these people haven't been real influential on the whole Crazy Town vibe, the whole ethos, the sustainability ethics. Asher Miller 04:51 Well they have been influential. They're helping us, you know, go deeper and deeper into Crazy Town I would say. Rob Dietz 04:57 Well, I thought it would be cool to turn this around and talk about the actual influencers of Crazy Town. Jason Bradford 05:03 Oh, and we can look up what they rank. Asher Miller 05:06 300 followers. Rob Dietz 05:08 Your top sustainability influencer, which corporations they're in bed with. Which ones are selling John Deere tractors and Coca Cola? Jason Bradford 05:16 Well they're green. They're green tractors. Asher Miller 05:18 They are green. They paint them green, yeah. Rob Dietz 05:21 So let me explain the rules of how we're doing this. We had a museum of Crazy Town episode a while back. We're kind of going to emulate that. It's a fantasy football draft. We're going to go round robin. Each of us gets to pick an influencer that's shaped the way we view the world. However, we've set it up here where there's a rule for each round. So round one has to be somebody that you know, or knew, or have worked with in your life. Jason Bradford 05:51 Yep. Rob Dietz 05:51 Round two can be a pundit who you've never met, so somebody that you've read or read about. You know, this could be like somebody really old like Marcus Aurelius in stoic philosophy, right? Asher Miller 06:04 I've met him. Rob Dietz 06:05 Or it could be someone - You've met him? I'm starting to wonder about what's going on here. So round three, then is somebody could be real or fictitious from pop culture, okay? So you could get Snoop Dogg, or you could get Snoopy, Charlie Brown's dog. Jason Bradford 06:23 Ariana Grande - Asher Miller 06:25 Or Ariana Grande dog? It probably has its own influencer account. Rob Dietz 06:30 Okay, a couple more rules. If someone steals your draft pick, tough shit. You've got to get another draft pick, just like a real draft. Asher Miller 06:38 Got it. Rob Dietz 06:38 And we've determined, or predetermined, the order of today's selection with Rock Paper Scissors, which, of course, I dominated. Jason, you're a decent Rock Paper Scissors player, and Asher, you're terrible Asher Miller 06:52 I don't know what rocks are, or scissors, or paper. Rob Dietz 06:56 He just throws paper every time. Asher Miller 07:00 Actually, I throw a middle finger every time. Rob Dietz 07:05 Okay, let's dive into our pundits draft round one. Somebody you've worked or met with, and since I'm going first, anybody who's listened to this podcast, this won't be a big surprise, but my number one pick here is Herman Daily. Asher Miller 07:19 We all knew that. Jason Bradford 07:20 We're shocked. Rob Dietz 07:21 Just a little bit about Herman. He had a long career in which you could kind of sum it up as the father of ecological economics. I would say that among his many insights, the key idea that he put out there was the idea of a steady state economy, right? So instead of having a continuously growing economy, consuming more shit, instead of growing throughput forever, you would stop the growth of the economy at a sustainable scale. And of course, that's going to require that we think about how we distribute resources, preferably in a fair way, rather than exploiting the hell out of each other. Herman's idea of uneconomic growth has always stuck with me. This idea that you can grow the economy to where it's costing you more than it's worth. I actually worked with him back when I worked at the Fish and Wildlife Service. I knew a guy named Brian Czech who is probably the agitator in chief for promoting Herman's ideas. He started an organization called the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy, and I was the first Executive Director of this organization. Asher Miller 08:30 That's when we met, when you were doing that. Rob Dietz 08:33 Yeah. Well, before taking that job, I went with Brian to a conference. We went to the U.S. Society of Ecological Economics. We were presenting a paper that he and I had worked on together, and Herman was there, and I met him, and it turned out he had a book for sale in the lobby of that conference. Jason Bradford 08:54 Did you get an autograph? Rob Dietz 08:55 Well, I did not. The textbook on ecological economics. Asher Miller 09:00 You are a nerd. You bought a textbook, not because you were going to your class. Rob Dietz 09:03 It's the weirdest thing. So I bought it, and I read it cover to freaking cover. It's written by Herman and also Josh Farley. He's a friend of ours, and it kinda actually hit my heart because I had taken economics in college. That was my major. And it never made much sense, and I wasn't smart enough to put my finger on why. But then I get that book and I read it, and I'm like, where was this? Jason Bradford 09:28 I'm sure it's on my shelf here. It came out in like 2002 I think. I'm pretty close to the right year. Rob Dietz 09:33 Yeah yeah, that's right. Sometime around then I remember that conference, I think, was in '05 or '04, or something like that. So I read Ecological Economics, and two years later, I quit my job at the Fish and Wildlife Service, took over this unfunded nonprofit, Cassie, and got Herman on the board. And my biggest triumph with him is I convinced him to let us use his name for our blog, which we called the Daly News. D-a-l-y. Jason Bradford 10:04 Oh, that's so clever. Rob Dietz 10:05 Yeah, I mean, brilliant. But see, he didn't want to because he was such a humble person. Jason Bradford 10:10 Humble guy. Rob Dietz 10:11 I really think meeting and learning about his work just changed my career completely. Jason Bradford 10:19 Yes. Rob Dietz 10:19 Like a totally different way to go. Asher Miller 10:21 Now Rob, you were just involved in this new podcast series that's been produced, so maybe you could just tell our listeners about that. Because, you know, hearing about Herman's life, to me, was really interesting. His origin story and his work. I thought they did a good job of it. Rob Dietz 10:36 Yeah, yeah, for sure. The podcast is called Cities 1.5. It's kind of about how cities are dealing with climate and trying to change things. But they recorded a five-part mini series called "Going Steady with Herman Daly. Jason Bradford 10:50 That's so cute. Holding hands. Rob Dietz 10:54 And I actually appear on it. So try to avoid those episodes, or those parts of episodes. But what's really cool is a colleague of ours, Peter Victor, actually wrote a kind of a biographical book about Herman called "Herman Daly's Economics for a Full World." And before Herman passed away, he sat down to do a bunch of interviews with him, and so Peter's got bunches of tape on Herman, and you get to hear his voice in this podcast, which is really cool. It's kind of from beyond the grave, and learning about what he came to. And one of the key points there that you know, besides the economics and the logical stuff, is he was really a person of character, willing to stand up for the truth, to keep speaking truth to power even though it was beating on him and messing up his career. But he really questioned himself. I was listening to an episode and he's like, "Yeah, you know, everybody seemed to not buy into this idea that that you can't grow the economy forever. So I kept asking myself, am I wrong or am I right?" And he was looking for himself to be wrong, but he just wasn't. Asher Miller 12:03 I could totally relate to that. Rob Dietz 12:05 Yeah. Okay, so Herman is my number one draft pick, so let's move on to you Jason. Who's your top pundit that you've ever worked with? Jason Bradford 12:16 I'm going back in time. Like this is when I was young and impressionable, and I wasn't completely jaded. So I'm deciding I want to go to grad school and I found this guy in St Louis. His name is Alwyn Gentry. And Alwyn Gentry was probably the most renowned botanist in the world at the time, and this is we're talking the early 90s. I ended up being his student, and he invented what's called the Gentry Forest Transects. And what he was renowned for was being able to go into like these super diverse tropical forests. And so here, if you go to like a forest in Missouri, like an oak hickory forest, and you were to, like, say, "Well, how many species of trees are in this forest?" You might get 35, okay? You go down to like the Amazon, you're going to get 350. And the problem was is that botanists were typically collecting specimens that were flowering or fruiting, called fertile. And Gentry realized that most of the time I'm out here, most things are not in flower or fruit. How do I even know what's here, right? So understanding, on a local level, what's going on with diversity. So he developed this whole system for identifying plants without the reproductive characteristics, and published books on this, and developed the techniques. And so, we ended up getting a picture of the diversity of tropical forests that we never had before. He revolutionized how we look at tropical forests and understand the patterns of diversity. I geeked out about this and was his student and really wanted to kind of do this kind of work. He unfortunately died in a plane crash. Asher Miller 13:51 Oh boy Jason Bradford 13:52 - with some other wonderful scientists, and it was really heartbreaking, because these guys were phenomenal biologists, and they were transforming the way we understood the world. So that was quite a loss, but he made me want to do this kind of work. It was very exciting. Rob Dietz 14:10 gotta say, I love - I had never heard of Al Gentry other than you mentioning him in passing, but, you know, I would have been mildly interested in his work. Probably like, okay, yeah cool, doing conservation biology in the Amazon. Jason Bradford 14:25 Yeah. Rob Dietz 14:26 But the fact that you became geek number one - Like really jonesin' to go out and figure out, okay, yeah, let me go down to the Amazon and figure this out. Jason Bradford 14:38 Well, he did this all over. So he sort of started in the Amazon, but he would go in the Andes. He would like go latitudinal. So he tried to make these transects a standard method where you could sample vegetation anywhere in the world. It was a forest and he could compare them. He had this great publication where he was comparing forests from around the world. He went to Africa, he went to Southeast Asia, he went to Australia. He would go down to - He would do stuff in North America. So he had all these transects, and it was rapid. In a couple days he could get a sense of things. Rob Dietz 15:05 And like Ronaldo, like Gomez, like Messi, probably what? Half a billion people have read that publication. Jason Bradford 15:14 Yeah. What's interesting is he died before all this, you know, the internet even got big, and a lot of people don't know about him unless you are in this sort of realm. Asher Miller 15:22 Well, I appreciate hearing about him, but it also just it's like a poignant reminder to me that there are all these unsung people who are advancing science or an understanding out there whose names we will never recognize. I think we see this more and more, I think recently, where we're going back in time and realizing, like, oh, the wife of this person that we herald is actually, you know, hugely involved in this discovery or this invention or whatever, you know? And I think it's just important for us to try to name some of those people who are largely invisible to us. Rob Dietz 15:57 Okay, let's get to you Asher. Your first round. Asher Miller 16:01 You guys are both describing people that you worked with. This is a person that I did not work with but have met so technically, fits in the category, and that's Naomi Klein. So Naomi is a Canadian writer. She's a professor. She's been an activist. She's probably best known for her book "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which was published in 2007. She's published a lot of books on climate change, systems change politics, including the book. "This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate" in 2014. Naomi comes from a family, a multi-generational family with ties to progressive and feminist movements. Her grandparents were actually card-carrying members of the American Communist Party. Her parents emigrated to Canada in 1967 as part of the Vietnam War protest resistance movement. Her father was active with Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her mother was a filmmaker, a very publicly outspoken feminist. So Naomi comes from this, like, multi-generational family of rabble rouser activist types, you know, on the on the progressive end. I will say, I think the last time I spoke with Naomi was, you know, I reached out to her because I was dismayed that she was basically touting these plans that Mark Jacobson, who we've talked before, had put out around his vision of electrifying everything and.... Jason Bradford 17:24 But McKibben's into that now too. Asher Miller 17:25 Right, so we actually did an episode on Mark Jacobson during our false prophet season. It was Episode 72: Sucking CO2 and Electrifying Everything: The climate movements desperate dependence on tenuous technologies. And, you know, Naomi was really kind of touting that vision and the idea that we could basically transition the entire system to renewable energy. And I found that concerning, you know, and I had a conversation with her about that. Sadly, she and Bill McKibben, who you just mentioned, Jason, who we were also close with for a long time, you know, he went into deep ecomodernist territory with his most recent book. That's been a little disappointing. But the reason I wanted to pick her was because people at PCI used to joke that I had, like, a literary crush on her. I would talk about her all the time because she's a fantastic writer and I really appreciated that at least to me, she brought a new way of understanding dynamics that I had never considered before. And she was fearless in her naming of, like, the need for systems change. So for example, with the book, "This Changes Everything" she was basically going after capitalism and trying to say, yes, this is actually systems change. We can't address the climate crisis without addressing the overall economic system. Which is why I was dismayed by her kind of, like touting of the Marc Jacobson stuff. But it was the shock doctrine that really, really had an impact on my thinking. And in that book, she exposes the neoliberal playbook, right? That basically was never let a good crisis go to waste. You know, in their case, they oftentimes would engender crises, but it was taking a moment of crisis to advance their unregulated markets vision of how the economy should be organized. And it was encapsulated by this quote from Milton Friedman, who was kind of like the guru of neoliberalism that she wrote about in her book, which is actually half of PCI theory of change, okay? And that quote is, "Only crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When the crisis occurs, actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That I believe is our basic function to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." So that idea is kind of like half of our theory change, in the sense that if we recognize that crises are going to happen, are happening, then there's an opportunity there. The Overton window has shifted. There's an opportunity there to advance things that are totally marginal, like Ecological Economics, for example right? Rob Dietz 19:59 Or the opposite. Privatize the shit out of everything. Asher Miller 20:02 And course, what we're seeing right now is the shock doctrine, disaster capitalism running on steroids, because they actually have their hands on levers of power. We don't, but we could still apply that lens to recognizing that crises are opportunities for change. Jason Bradford 20:15 We need to talk to Ronaldo. Asher Miller 20:17 Right. Get him to create a crisis for us? Jason Bradford 20:20 Promote our side. Yes. Jason Bradford 20:27 God may smite heathens and rapture the faithful, but he is not without mercy and wants his followers to provide care for the left behind. 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Rob Dietz 21:35 Okay, our second round in this draft is name a pundit who you haven't met, somebody from history, whatnot, I get to go first again. I am picking Donella Meadows, affectionately known as Dana. Asher Miller 21:49 Rob is just going for like the Mount Rushmore types. Rob Dietz 21:53 I've got to go with the influencers who influenced me. I find them influential. Jason Bradford 21:58 That's true. They are. Rob Dietz 21:59 Dana Meadows. People in our world know her work on the Limits to Growth, so I'm still in this economy can't grow forever. Limits to Growth was a 1972 study that modeled the world and questioned what would happen if we keep consuming and growing the way that we are. I would say to our listeners, there's an awesome podcast called "Tipping Point: The true story of the limits to growth" that I would go listen to if you're interested. Jason Bradford 22:24 I agree with that. Rob Dietz 22:26 But I want to tell you guys, you know, that's how most people know Dana Meadows, lead author of that study. I've read that book. It's really kind of wonky. Like it's, I'm amazed it's such a best seller of an environment - Rob Dietz 22:38 It wasn't really a study, right? It was a report in a sense. Rob Dietz 22:40 Yeah, yeah. And it's very much like trying to explain exponential growth and computer modeling and stuff like that. But what really got me with Dana Meadows was her column that she wrote for years, she actually died young so I was reading these after she had already passed. She lived from 1941 to 2001, so 60 years. But this column she wrote, "The Global Citizen," is outstanding. And I guess there's a Donella Meadows organization that sort of keeps her stories and her ideas alive. And I went through that entire archive while I was working at the Fish and Wildlife Service. I just said, okay each day I'm going to read one of her articles as if it's new. Asher Miller 23:24 Wow, that's really cool. Jason Bradford 23:25 Wow. Rob Dietz 23:25 And it was kind of like you were saying, Asher, with Naomi Klein. It was sort of mind blowing for me because of the systems thinking. And that's, you know, the kind of thinking she's become famous for. And there's a book called, of course, "Thinking in Systems." Also recommend you take a look at that. But I didn't feel like I had this in any sort of training in school, or anybody teaching me about systems thinking. And that book that she wrote and her columns sort of do it over the course of them, changed the way I look at the world. I see relationships more. I understand how parts of systems affect one another more. Asher Miller 24:01 You're like Nemo, right, in the - Jason Bradford 24:03 Yes, finally. The Matrix. Asher Miller 24:05 In the Matrix. Rob Dietz 24:06 Neo not Nemo. Jason Bradford 24:07 Nemo is a fish. I think that's a great one, and I agree. Asher Miller 24:12 The look on your face. Rob Dietz 24:13 Clown fish? What the hell. Asher Miller 24:15 I wish listeners could see the look on Rob's face when I said Nemo. Rob Dietz 24:22 You're like Nemo. You're like Leonard Nimoy. Jason Bradford 24:27 I think that's a great one, Rob, and I was likewise influenced by her quite a bit. Rob Dietz 24:33 I got some bonuses with her. She also walked the walk. She started, or at least helped start an intentional co-housing community and lived in it. Rob Dietz 24:43 Yeah, with a lot of students, actually from the college. Rob Dietz 24:45 Yeah. And that's another bonus. We hang out with Elizabeth Sawin, who runs the Multi Solving Institute and has a book called "Multi Solving." Direct lineage. She was a student of Dana Meadows. Asher Miller 24:57 Then she worked with Dana for a long time. Rob Dietz 24:59 Yeah. So, anyway. Hugely influential. I think reading "The Global Citizen," actually, along with Herman stuff, kind of gave me some courage to leave the Fish and Wildlife Service, and then I went and joined an intentional community and ecovillage. I'm like basically trying to follow in the footsteps of these people. Jason Bradford 25:19 They're pretty heavy hitters, and I knew I couldn't pick either of those, his first two, because I knew he was going to pick them. My round two pick is an author, Ursula Le Guin. Rob Dietz 25:31 Oh, nice one. Jason Bradford 25:32 I read her a lot when I was like in high school and college, I'd say was when I was really into reading. Rob Dietz 25:37 She's a good flex pick because she could have been in the pop culture as a sci-fi novelist, but as also a historical figure. Jason Bradford 25:44 Yes. I mean, what's interesting in her background is that her, I think her parents were academics and into anthropology. And my favorite, she had the "Earth Sea" books, but she also had this group of books they call the "Hainish Series," or the "Hainish Cycle." And my two most memorable books from that were, "The Left Hand of Darkness." And in that book, there's like human, humanoid beings on various planets. And there was an empire fall, they got isolated, so they kind of evolved independently. And then in these series, they're sort of reconnecting, like technology is being rebuilt. And on this one planet, the people are hermaphrodites, and they don't know when they get into the relationship, what form they're going to take. If they're going to be the one bearing the child or not. And the ecology of the planet was very different. And so there's some thought that they evolved this hermaphrodism to deal with this unique ecology. But then it gets into what does this mean for the culture? What does it mean, you know, for family dynamics, and roles, and the politics of a place. And so that book, plus the book, "The Dispossessed," which has a moon, an inhabited moon, and an Earth like planet that's very rich. And the moon is sort of stark, and like, you know, there's not much productivity ecologically. And the earth-like planet is lush, and the different cultures that develop on the two and the way she interwove, you know, evolution and ecology and power dynamics and technology was really unique. And it made me sort of like see these connections much better than I would have otherwise. Rob Dietz 27:21 Yeah, I got a couple bonus thoughts on Ursula Le Guin. One, she's a Portlander, so kind of from our neck of the woods. The other is, I got to see her as a keynote speaker at a conference here in Corvallis. Like any good sci-fi writer, it's all kind of based on her reality and understanding of how the world works, and she's clearly in our camp. Yeah, I gotta say an alternate of mine is Margaret Atwood, oh yeah, who is kind of similar. Jason Bradford 27:49 That's a good one. Rob Dietz 27:50 Yep. Alright, Asher. Asher Miller 27:52 My third, okay. I chose Viktor Frankl. You guys familiar with Vik Frankl? Rob Dietz 28:00 Oh yeah, yeah. A "Man's Search for Meaning?" Asher Miller 28:02 Yeah. Jason Bradford 28:02 Not so much. Asher Miller 28:03 So he was a neuroscientist, a psychiatrist, who born 1905. He's best known for that book, "Man's Search for Meaning," and also known for having been a Holocaust survivor. A lot of people assume that his book and philosophy about meaning were really born out of his experience being in concentration camps for three years, but in fact, he had developed his school of psychology, which he called Logotherapy, and that's Greek for healing through meaning, before the war actually even started. And he was so passionate about this new field, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, he basically stopped going to school. He was a good student, but then got really caught up in the stuff. He was taking classes in this when he was in like junior high. When he was 25 he actually organized free youth counseling centers across Vienna that successfully, basically took what had been an epidemic of teen suicides that tended to happen around the time report cards came out, and he basically, within a year, he got suicide to drop to zero. So a lot of his work was really focused on suicidal populations, basically. And he kind of argued, and I think he believed this before the war and certainly after the war, that having meaning and purpose in life was key and fundamental in people's happiness and their wellbeing, and without that, they were kind of lost. He wrote, "Man's Search for Meaning" in like nine days right after the war. It was published in 1946 in German. He published it originally anonymously, but then he was convinced to put his name on it. It was translated into English, you know, about 10 years later. And it has sold 10s of millions of copies, it has been on top 100 book lists. You know, he wrote over 30 books in his lifetime, but that is obviously the book that he's most remembered for. I read "Man's Search for Meaning" when I was living in LA working for the Shoah Foundation. So I was, like, deeply immersed in - Rob Dietz 29:55 Tell our listeners about the Shoah Foundation. Asher Miller 29:57 Yeah, I'll try to be brief. So Shoah Foundation was started by Steven Spielberg, who was somebody I was actually considering putting on my list in the third bucket. Rob Dietz 30:06 I almost put him on my list, you know, ET, Indiana Jones, JAWS. Are you kidding me? Totally influential. Asher Miller 30:12 But for me, after Spielberg made "Schindler's List," he was getting Holocaust survivors asking him to tell their story, and he was telling them, well send me, you know, record yourself. And they would set themselves up and their kid would set up a video camera, and it was like pointing in the other direction and the sound quality is terrible. He's like, you know, what we've got to do, we've just got to go and capture these stories. So he set up this project, and we were doing digital recording of interviews before digital cameras existed. We had had professional photographers do this on beta tapes, very expensive, and over the course of just a number of years, we recorded interviews with over 50,000 Holocaust survivors around the world in 35 to 40 languages. So I was working there when I read "Man's Search for Meaning," and I've tended to kind of revisit it every five years, five to 10 years. It's that and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Douglas Adams, another guy has been hugely influencer on my thinking. And you know, I think the key thing here is that one of the things that Frankl said was that suffering ceases to be suffering the moment it finds meaning, right? And he stated that, in his view, he noticed that some of the people that were able to survive the horrors of the concentration camps and the Holocaust were the ones who had a purpose, a reason to live for. Jason Bradford 31:28 Every day, every day. Jason Bradford 31:30 I think that's great. Asher Miller 31:30 There was a lot of indiscriminate stuff that happened that obviously that wasn't in people's hands completely, but those who had lost hope, those who lost a purpose, a meaning to survive for were the ones that he saw basically not make it. And the ones that did, did, right? And another thing that I think is interesting, you know, he coined the term existential vacuum to describe kind of the meaningless that people were experiencing in their lives. I think that this is far worse now, honestly, than when he was writing about this. But he talked a lot about American culture and American consumerism, the sort of industrial, you know, production model, basically politics and government on large scales taking away people's agency and how important it was for people to find that meaning and purpose in their lives. And he actually argued for us erecting a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast, you know, on the Pacific coast, to sort of be a balancing act to the Statue of Liberty, which is all espousing, you know, people's individual pursuit of freedom. Anyway. So Viktor, Viktor Frankl is my guy. Rob Dietz 31:57 I'm gonna go on Amazon and see if I can buy an existential vacuum and clean things up around here. Jason Bradford 32:44 That's a great thing to get. Asher Miller 32:45 We'd suck up all the people who are feeling existential dread. Jason Bradford 32:48 I think this also, you know, you have both our culture removing a lot of like ways that people have found meaning, and then you have the idea, like, if you get into sort of the great unraveling of modernity going away. And so I think people are getting a double whammy, right? Even the pathetic thing we have now that gives us some meaning is even maybe going away, and what culture is left? I think people are really struggling with this who are also kind of in our camp. So, yeah, I think that's a good one. Asher Miller 33:20 It's really why I certainly brought it into my thinking about our work together, right? Is that I think part of you know, people ask us, like, is there any hope? Sometimes people fall into fatalism, you know, nihilism or whatever, and what we try to do is not give people false hope. But I think giving people a sense that you do have some agency in this is the thing that can keep you going. It's the thing that keeps me going. Rob Dietz 33:49 There's always resistance. There's always little projects to work on to make things better. Jason Bradford 33:54 There's always like just finding the people you love and the place that you can feel at home at and just enjoy what life you have, you know and not being always dragged down by the threats you see. You know, if you can find your place of sanity and coherence even when there's a lot of craziness around you. Asher Miller 34:13 And people have survived the most unspeakable things, you know? Jason Bradford 34:16 Right. Rob Dietz 34:16 We love hearing from listeners who are doing good work out there in the world, and we hope that maybe you'll find some inspiration in examples like this one. Liza got in touch with us to let us know that she actually uses Crazy Town episodes as a sort of magical antidote to buying stuff. Jason Bradford 34:41 Oh, neat. Asher Miller 34:41 Because she just gets nauseous when she hears our voices and then she's like, I just can't. Jason Bradford 34:45 I can't leave the house. I can't turn on the computer. Asher Miller 34:48 She just like, curls up in a ball. Rob Dietz 34:50 It's like one of those Clockwork Orange remedies, like, you get sick to your stomach when you hear us. She said she was kind of stuck in a consumerist mindset and just buying stuff. And she she said she had some like rationalizations for it, even like, "Oh, if I'm thrifting or if I'm buying secondhand, then that's not harmful," but she kind of realized she was overdoing it. And she was listening to things like our friend Alex's "Last Human Nature Odyssey," Nate Hagans, "Great Simplification," and of course, us here in Crazy Town. And she said when she would get the urge to buy stuff, she would put on an episode and it would kind of like, stop her from going. Jason Bradford 35:32 That's great. Asher Miller 35:33 I don't know how I feel about this. Jason Bradford 35:36 It's fantastic. Asher Miller 35:36 Okay, so you see it as a positive. I just think like, she's just so horrified, and - Rob Dietz 35:42 I was amazed. I actually wrote her an email, and we got in touch with each other, and she's thinking about maybe trying to write about this a little bit. And so, yeah, that's really, really awesome. Asher Miller 35:52 I appreciate the honesty, the self honesty, but then also like being able to share that. Because I think we all deal with these - I don't know it's like none of us are purists in what we're experiencing, right, and the choices that we make. I mean, I came here in my Hummer. Jason Bradford 36:09 Of course you did. Rob Dietz 36:10 I thought you came here in like a flexible flyer, sort of red wagon with two blowers pointed out the back. Asher Miller 36:17 That'd be kind of fun to drive. Jason Bradford 36:19 This weekend I was riding my jet ski up and down the Mary's River. Rob Dietz 36:24 Alright, that's enough of that. So please, listeners, let us know if you're doing something in service of people and planet, and leave a comment in your podcast app, or get in touch with us directly by emailing [email protected]. Rob Dietz 36:45 Okay, thanks for round two. Round three. Jason Bradford 36:48 Dingdingdingding. Rob Dietz 36:49 Wow, we got a ding ding effect there. Jason Bradford 36:53 It's come out from your corner. Rob Dietz 36:55 Outstanding. Yeah, you should take your shirt off, put on a bikini and walk around the ring with a three, Jason. Jason Bradford 37:02 That would be great. Rob Dietz 37:03 Round three is someone real or fictitious from pop culture. Rob Dietz 37:16 I thought about this quite a bit, and I knew I had to go comedian. Okay so in the past, I've called George - Asher Miller 37:24 Gallagher. Rob Dietz 37:24 Yeah, Gallagher. Jason Bradford 37:25 Gallagher. Rob Dietz 37:26 Carrot Top, Jason Bradford 37:27 Yeah, I've got a watermelon downstairs. Rob Dietz 37:29 I'm gonna smash it with a very big hammer. I called George Carlin the patron saint of Crazy Town, mostly for his classic bit about stuff and where to put it all. Asher Miller 37:41 I was thinking about George Carlin for mine. Rob Dietz 37:43 Well, he's not mine, and it's not Bill Burr either who's got some some classic bits like the one where he sees a family portrait and it's got the generations, and he calls it an environmental disaster. Asher Miller 37:57 Or his solution to overpopulation is sinking cruise ships. Rob Dietz 38:00 Right. Blowing up cruise ships like no one's gonna miss them. We'll just put fake plastic ones out there on the sea. Jason Bradford 38:07 Icon of the Seas, baby. That's a good one. Rob Dietz 38:09 I'm gonna go with another Bill, the late, great Bill Hicks. Asher Miller 38:13 Oh, yeah. Rob Dietz 38:14 You guys know him? Asher Miller 38:15 I do. Jason Bradford 38:15 I don't know him that well, honestly. Rob Dietz 38:17 So one of the reasons you don't know him well is he died really young. This is kind of like a sad trend in my picks here. Herman lived a long, full life. Dana was kind of cut short while she still had many productive years. And Bill Hicks died at 32 years old. Jason Bradford 38:34 Oh wow. Rob Dietz 38:34 The main thing about - I'm not going to do bits of his, but he questioned the American dream. He really questioned marketing and advertising. He had a whole bit about, if you're in marketing or advertising, kill yourself. It's not a joke. Asher Miller 38:51 You should just send him to Viktor Frankl. Rob Dietz 38:56 Yeah, I think even more important for me is that he was a truth seeker and a truth teller, and just was not afraid to get up there on stage by his lonesome and tell the truth and do it with humor, but also force. And I realize in going back to it no as a 50-year-old person looking at clips of him doing his routines at the time that I would have been in college, roughly. I was like, I think a lot of this really seeped into my brain and how I think and, of course, the humor piece is huge. I've always thought, if you're going to address difficult topics, if you can do so with humor, it's just so much better. Rob Dietz 39:39 What is he doing? Jason Bradford 39:39 It's interesting to think about how, you know, it's the comedians that are really pushing back right now on what's going on in the U.S. is better than almost anybody. And also look at what, like Governor Newsom is doing and how that's becoming like the thing where it's suddenly like, oh, we've got something to get behind. Jason Bradford 39:52 Oh, he's got his social media account trolling Trump by actually mimicking Trump. So he's talking about how - Asher Miller 40:07 Writing in all caps and . . . Jason Bradford 40:09 How he's best governor of all time, the most popular and handsome, you know, statesman in the United States. And just mimicking exactly what Trump is doing, but pretending like I Gavin Newsom and the greatest, you know. And he's got red hats that say, you know, "Newsom was right about everything." Rob Dietz 40:25 Well, you know, Bill Hicks saw all of this coming and was railing on all of this. And I can't even imagine, had he survived, he'd be kind of like what Carlin became, the elder statesman in the comedy world. He would be spinning around in his grave right now. But if he were still alive, the commentaries on all this would have been . . . Asher Miller 40:46 Oh yeah, for sure. It reminds me of Steve Cutts, who wasn't on my list, but is worth a mention too. And you know, he's an animator, right? He does illustrations, he does animated videos, some dark, dark shit, but they're very very pointed about what he sees in, you know, consumer culture and technology and politics. He has this great, this is before, you know, Trump, I think. He had this great like illustration he created with portraits of presidents in future years. He had Donald Trump in there. He had Kanye in there. He had a brick. He had a sandwich. It's just like just the devolution of our politics. We need those people. We really do. Rob Dietz 41:30 I would personally prefer a sandwich to Trump. That would be awesome. Asher Miller 41:34 Yeah even one I couldn't eat. Rob Dietz 41:37 Alright, Jason, your round three pick Jason Bradford 41:40 Okay, so mine is not a real person. It's a fictional. And actually, it's not even a human. It's a halfling. Frodo Baggins. Asher Miller 41:54 Frodo. Jason Bradford 41:55 Yes, Frodo Baggins, I know everyone's like, "ahhh." Asher Miller 41:58 Frodo, not Bilbo? Jason Bradford 41:59 No, Frodo. I mean, Bilbo is great too, of course, you know. But Frodo was the one that did a better job than Bilbo, actually, of not succumbing to the power. Like, the big deal about - Rob Dietz 42:13 Spoiler alert. Jason Bradford 42:16 The big deal about Frodo was that you have this ring of power, and he doesn't want it. And it's like the Wizard, the elves that are really powerful, they're terrified of this ring because they know if they get it, they could turn them into monsters. But Frodo as a halfling, they know that the characteristics of these humble creatures who are adorable, they're less likely to go power crazy, and so they trusted this, the halfling, to carry that ring and then to throw the power away. So just this story of somebody who understands that one of the most important things we can do is actually dismiss this urge to get more for ourselves, to be more powerful, to be the center of attention. Rob Dietz 43:05 That's a really good point, Jason. I thought about putting JRR Tolkien. Asher Miller 43:12 How many R's? Rob Dietz 43:12 But really, I didn't read those books until quite a bit later in life. I was probably 30 years old the first time I read them. Jason Bradford 43:22 I was probably too. Rob Dietz 43:23 But you're hitting the point exactly. And the reason that I almost included is this, I don't have to grab so much power. And actually, our colleague Richard Heinberg wrote a whole book about this, and it's all about the different forms of power, and how if we want to get to a sustainable society, we've got to be willing to give up that power. And it always amazes me how these professors and writers of old kind of got these concepts even before this modernity shit show of too much energy, too much consumption, too much throughput. Jason Bradford 43:56 And I think, you know, there's also the idea that, and I, it's a little trope with me right now that the Shire, like the fact that he's living this life in Hobbiton where they're this sort of, you know, peaceful agrarian folks in the contrast to, you know, the industrial maw of Sauron and Modor that is felling the forests and mining and creating all the swords. So once again, it's not just the individual, but that story represents like beings with one way of life that is peaceful and cares for the earth and this other way of life that is highly destructive and war like. And what society would you rather be part of? I also like that in his journey, his friends help him along, and there's humor in it too. So it's fun to read because you go between them talking about these things that are rather mundane, but able to joke around and observe the beauty of nature. And then there's some trauma and crisis, and then they have to console each other and figure out how to move on in the face of these terrible fears they have. So I think all of that is really, of course, applies to today. Asher Miller 45:07 Not to be a Debbie Downer here for a second, but I want to just point out that - Rob Dietz 45:12 Debbie Downer is Asher's third pick in his draft. Asher Miller 45:18 The most influential character on my life, for sure. No, it s just an observation, which is that that series, right, so powerful and I think so influential for many people. Our friend Phil, for example, I know it's deeply meaningful for him, that book series. And also, Peter Thiel. Jason Bradford 45:38 Oh, yeah. Interesting right. Asher Miller 45:38 You know what I mean? Like Peter Thiel named his company Palantir after, you know - Rob Dietz 45:45 Oh, because he wants to be Sauron. Jason Bradford 45:47 But that's the irony. They don't get it. Asher Miller 45:49 That's my point, yeah. Jason Bradford 45:51 They don't get it. Asher Miller 45:52 The either don't get it or, I don't know what it is. But it's interesting that that art can influence people in surprising ways, and maybe they get different lessons from it, but I agree with what your takeaways are, obviously. Rob Dietz 46:03 I also have to say, when I read the book, I thought of Samwise Gamgee as the head hero, you know, even more of the sort of servant and nature guy. Asher? Asher Miller 46:17 Okay, I'm going a little different here, and I didn't even write any notes for myself because I'm actually channeling one of the reasons I'm picking this. Jason Bradford 46:28 I don't have any notes for Frodo. Look at that. Asher Miller 46:30 Look at you. Rob Dietz 46:30 Wow. Asher Miller 46:31 On the one level, you're not going to be surprised. On another level, just be patient while I explain why. So I'm picking the Grateful Dead. Jason Bradford 46:39 Yeah, I know. I get it. Asher Miller 46:45 But the reason is, so here I am improvising this, my little explanation. There are aspects, you don't even have to like the music. If you're interested in learning about the music, just reach out [email protected] Jason Bradford 47:02 I'll talk about tennis any time too. Rob Dietz 47:03 You know, our actual topics need the boosting, not the Grateful Dead. They have plenty of fans. Jason Bradford 47:10 For me, it's birds and tennis. If you want to talk to me about that, go ahead. Rob Dietz 47:14 Who wants to discuss 80s movies? Asher Miller 47:16 Is this going to be a popularity contest? Here's the reason. Okay, so the whole spirit of the Grateful Dead was, it was six, sometimes it was seven musicians who would improvise together. It's not like traditional jazz where you improvise where somebody would take a solo, you know, and the rest of the band was basically playing off, you know, playing the tune and supporting that role. For the Grateful Dead, in a lot of moments, it was literally an improvisation of six or seven people making music together at the same time. Jason Bradford 47:47 And sometimes it didn't even seem like music. Asher Miller 47:51 Sometimes it didn't work. Jason Bradford 47:53 Right. Asher Miller 47:53 And that's part of the beauty. I'm serious about the lessons here. There are moments that they would chase, you know, of like being perfectly in sync with one another. And people talked about this as a flow state, but try to imagine doing a flow state with six other people at the same time, right? And that they had an audience that was there for it. They were there for them to like, sound like shit sometimes. They were there for the moments, right? And they were with them and the band was responding to the energy, you know, which is why they played live all the time. They had a spirit of generosity and giving. They let people record their shows from the early 70s. Just do it, put it out there, right? And there was like, something about the flow of the music, which would go from light to darkness back to light, where it would feel like every show, in some ways, was its own story that was being woven there. Never the same show twice. And you go through these highs and lows emotionally that to me is about is what life is, right? So you have these people creating this life journey in front of other people and you don't know where you're gonna go. And there's also the spirit of generosity that went into the culture of the Grateful Dead fans. Where, like I was saying about a journey, I had people take me on a journey of learning the music, you know. And I would do that for other people. And so when I think about something like the values that we need to carry us forward - I'm gonna sound hopey dopey here, but - Jason Bradford 49:20 You're not Debbie Downer. Asher Miller 49:22 It s a spirit of improvisation. It's collaboration and community. It's a spirit of giving, right? And it's about embracing the light and darkness at the same time, you know? And so I obviously love the Grateful Dead because I love the music, but I also love what the Grateful Dead represented, and an amalgamation and a mash up of all these different forms of music that they brought in together. Anyways, that's my spiel. Jason Bradford 49:43 That's great. And also, you know, what I think is like, you know, they were truly an incredible set of American artists that emerged from this amazing period in history. Asher Miller 49:54 Totally. Jason Bradford 49:54 I find that, you know, this is what also I find amazing to be in our culture. We're so down on our culture a lot, like all three of us. And there's so much to like, feel like shitty about our culture. But then you've got like Steven Spielberg and ET, right? Okay. And you've got the Grateful Dead. You've got things that you can still go, "Wow, look what we did as a culture. It's not all horrible." Like, there's some things we can still like love and appreciate. Rob Dietz 50:19 Yeah, Viktor Frankl would have found meaning in ET and in the Grateful Dead. Okay well, three rounds in the book, but I was wondering if we could also bring up a few folks that maybe you were considering, and just some other ideas, maybe. And listeners, please. If you have people that influenced you and your way of thinking, let us know. Send us a note at [email protected], or put it in your podcast app, in the comments there. We'd love to see it and share it. But let me just say one person that I almost had for round two on the sort of historical, Martin Luther King, Jr. I was so in love with that man as a child. I loved listening to his speeches. I didn't realize so, you know, I was born in 1971, some of those civil rights type legislation laws were just passed a few years before I was born. Jason Bradford 51:19 Incredible. Rob Dietz 51:20 I was living in Georgia. We've had episodes where I've talked about how I was born in Stone Mountain, basically right under that carving on stone mountain of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and what's the other, Stonewall Jackson - These Confederate dudes. And I just remember reading and hearing about MLK and just thinking how courageous but in service of just something so fair, you know, so obvious. Jason Bradford 51:46 And I mean, you know, you notice how we didn't have a lot of - we didn't have African Americans until this honorable mention, we had fewer women than men. And I think, you know, this is a hard thing to do. We have to acknowledge that we grew up in a time where, you know, in 70s and 80s America there was a lot less diversity celebrated. There was a lot less of that taught in schools. And I think if you were to look at school history books nowadays, at least in certain states, I don't know. Asher Miller 52:19 We're making America great again by going back to having textbooks and things that are only about white men. Don't worry. Rob Dietz 52:26 I really appreciate you bringing that up, Jason, because I was actually thinking about how much of late I've been really into the mash up between indigenous culture and modern ecological science and just thinking about, like, who's the indigenous influencer? It's like, oh we lost them all to history. I'm sure there are some I could find today. Jason Bradford 52:49 But they don't just pop into our head, as opposed to - Rob Dietz 52:52 I didn't work study them as a kid, right. So do you guys have some? Jason Bradford 52:56 I have another old white guy. Colin Campbell. Asher Miller 53:01 Yeah, Colin. Jason Bradford 53:02 Well, Colin was actually a petroleum geologist. Can you believe this? Why would a petroleum geologist? Because he was also a follower of M. King Hubbard, another petroleum geologist. The whole like idea of peak oil, Colin Campbell kind of resurrected that in the 90s and continued on into the early 2000s. He died probably 20 years ago. Rob Dietz 53:21 So just looking at the societal consequences of - Jason Bradford 53:25 Running out of resources. It's kind of like take limits to growth, but hone in on maybe what you might call a key resource. And Colin was very good about talking about this and why oil was like a linchpin, and very much influenced me, I would say early, 2000s. And seemed like a gentle, humble person. Just like his demeanor and the way he talked about it. And he essentially was very calmly sort of explaining like, we're probably going to go back to a society based on biomass. These fossil fuels are going to run out. And he kind of had this old man sort of persona of, like, late in my life, I can just say these things, very matter of factly without much drama. And it really hit well, you know. Rob Dietz 54:13 Yeah, I, you know, was in my limits to growth realm, and did not list EF or Fritz Schumacher as one of mine, but he's an obvious choice, having written "Small is Beautiful" and being incredibly influential. Jason, little disappointed that you haven't mentioned the duo of Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson as the farm guy over here. Jason Bradford 54:38 I know. Yes. I would say we Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson would be the two like elder statesmen of that that definitely were on my mind a little bit. But I think I found them a little bit later than some of these other influencers. Asher Miller 54:52 I just, rather than naming other people, I want to I guess second what you had said, Jason, around folks that maybe we're not mentioning or we're not even aware of. And I just think about like, the wisdom and the influences that are in other cultures and other parts of the world that we're not aware of. Jason Bradford 55:12 Like Ronaldo. Asher Miller 55:13 Like Ronaldo. That was the person that was coming to mind, or Jason Bradford 55:17 Or Messi, if you're Argentinian. Asher Miller 55:19 This is your form of diversity. I just, it makes me hungry to want to be exposed, you know, to other - Thinking about like some Indian writers, Amitav Ghosh, for example, and some others that I've gotten to become aware of more recently. But I'm sure there's so many out there that I wish had the light shined on them a bit. Rob Dietz 55:46 Yeah, that would have been sweet. Asher Miller 55:47 It'd be interesting to hear from our listeners. You know, if there are folks that - I'm sure there are folks that we didn't mention. Rob Dietz 55:53 Oh my god. Dr Seuss, the Lorax, Star Bellied Sneetches, the Yes Men. Jim Henson, for crying out loud. Asher Miller 56:00 Richard Heinberg. Rob Dietz 56:01 Yeah, so many, so many good, influential people. And Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez, of course. Alright well, thank you guys for sharing. I really actually am kind of touched by some of the things you said today. Jason Bradford 56:15 I thought this is gonna be like another lousy idea when you came up with it, but then I realized we actually did alright. It was alright. Rob Dietz 56:24 Don't let the good be the enemy of the mediocre. Asher Miller 56:29 Exactly. Set the bar low. Melody Allison 56:33 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 Crazy Town.
