Choose Your AI Adventure: Immiseration or Extinction

Choose Your AI Adventure: Immiseration or Extinction

Author: Post Carbon Institute January 28, 2026 Duration: 34:09

Jason and Asher replace Rob with a much more humane and humble co-host, Elon Musk, to explore the feasibility of harnessing the entire sun to power AI superintelligence. We come away perplexed that not much of the excellent reporting on the environmental, energy, and financial risks of the AI boom address the googleplex-sized elephant in the room – that both AI success and failure lead to immiseration. Originally recorded on 12/3/25.

Sources/Links/Notes:

  1. Colossus 1” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
  2. Colossus 2” Search Engine podcast, November 21, 2025
  3. Episode 77, "The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk", Crazy Town podcast, June 14, 2023
  4. Elon Musk on DOGE, Optimus, Starlink Smartphones, Evolving with AI, Why the West is Imploding” All In podcast, September 9, 2025
  5. “Is there an A.I. Bubble? And What if It Pops?” The Daily, November 20, 2025
  6. Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic, “What If AI Is a Bubble?The Atlantic, November 13, 2025


Related episode(s) of Crazy Town:

  1. Episode 77, “The Elon Musk Episode about Elon Musk Brought to You by Elon Musk
  2. Episode 84, “Escaping Technologyism: Dreams of AI Sheep and the Deadliest Word in Film History
  3. Episode 101 “Even AI Chatbots Hate Us: The Rise of the New Luddites, with Brian Merchant


Trying to make sense of a world that often feels like it's lost the plot? That's the space where Crazy Town lives. Hosted by Asher, Rob, and Jason from the Post Carbon Institute, this fortnightly conversation navigates the disorienting headlines and deeper systemic crises-from climate chaos and ecological overshoot to the relentless engine of runaway capitalism-with a necessary blend of sharp analysis and dark humor. They’re not just diagnosing the "Great Unraveling" of our social and environmental fabric; they’re actively exploring what a transition to a genuinely sustainable and equitable society could look like, all while trying to keep their own wits about them. This podcast is for anyone who looks at the status quo and senses the profound delusions holding it together, offering listeners a mix of grounded understanding and candid discussion that’s as engaging as it is urgent. Tune in for conversations that are both a reality check and a search for a viable path forward.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 165

Crazy Town
Podcast Episodes
Announcement: Power Podcast with Richard Heinberg [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:41
Please check out our newest podcast, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival featuring Richard Heinberg. How have humans become powerful enough to disrupt the world's climate, trigger the sixth mass extinction, an…
Bonus: Boys and Oil with Taylor Brorby [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:16
Taylor Brorby has written one hell of a memoir. It covers many critical topics that come up in Crazy Town, from fracking to civil disobedience to that most inept of policies: aiming for infinite economic growth on a fini…
Bonus: The Stench of Neoliberalism with Noam Chomsky [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:29
As a follow-up to Episode 61 of the Crazy Town podcast, Noam Chomsky, the well-known linguist, author, and social critic, joins Asher Miller in Crazy Town to discuss the failures and dominance of neoliberalism -- which C…
Skyrocketing Population and Carbon Dioxide: Watershed Moments Wrap-up [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:37
The astute listener will recognize the trends in population and greenhouse gas emissions over the course of our chronologically arranged episodes on watershed moments in history. Describing these trends in one word: grow…