Crazy Town
With equal parts humor and in-depth analysis, Asher, Rob, and Jason safeguard their sanity while probing crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we’re all deluding ourselves.
Crazy Town
Going #2: The Dueling Rules of Nature That Every Good Earthling Needs to Know
Happy Earth Day! There are two concepts that every person should understand to be a better Earthling: entropy and self-organization. It seems like a paradox, but systems on Earth are simultaneously breaking down into disorder and arranging themselves into complex superorganisms. Everything on Earth (well, really in the whole universe) is subject to the second law of thermodynamics, which means it all dies and decays. But with access to steady flows of energy, organisms, ecosystems, and human societies can hold back the death and decay for a spell. After dropping the kids off at the pool, Asher, Rob, and Jason cover the interplay of entropy and self-organization and contemplate how to manage the inevitability of entropy with elegance (beyond morphing into a lizard person).
Originally recorded on 4/8/25.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
- Geoffrey West, Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies, Penguin Books, 2018.
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Scribner, 2024.
- William Rees, “End game: the economy as eco-catastrophe and what needs to change,” Real-World Economics Review, 2019.
- The laws of thermodynamics, as explained by the website “Physics for Idiots"
- "Telegraph Road" - song by Dire Straits
- David Owen, "Green Manhattan," The New Yorker, October 10, 2004.
Other Crazy Town episodes you might like:
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford.
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Rob Dietz
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town, where Trump and Musk just declared that Earth Day will be renamed Mars Day.
Asher Miller
Are you sure it's not going to be Uranus day?
Melody Allison
Hi. This is producer Melody Allison. Thanks for joining us in Crazy Town where Jason, Rob, and Asher tackle crazy-making topics like climate change, overshoot, runaway capitalism, and why we're all deluding ourselves. Here's a quick warning: sometimes this podcast uses swear words (Language!). Now onto the show
Rob Dietz
Hey Jason. Hey Asher. Happy Earth Day guys.
Asher Miller
Gee, thanks.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, this is very nice that we get one day.
Rob Dietz
It's the one day where we take a break from throwing all of our shit away and dumping tires into the river.
Asher Miller
I take no breaks from doing those things.
Jason Bradford
There's not going to be a break. What are you talking about?
Rob Dietz
Sorry. Sorry, yeah.
Jason Bradford
Anyway, I think we should celebrate and admire the Earth, at least. You know, those of us who do care.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, I want to tell our listeners that, Jason, you're heroically podcasting one armed today. That's incredible.
Asher Miller
He just sat there, dude. I had to set up everything for him.
Jason Bradford
I know. I get waited on now. It's great. Well, thanks for commenting on my --
Asher Miller
I was like wiping his mouth a little bit from all the drool, you know
Jason Bradford
Yeah, yeah. Sometimes it dries on the corners. It gets uncomfortable.
Asher Miller
Don't talk about him as a hero.
Rob Dietz
I mean, that's a thing in podcasting. You know, some of us have to act like nurses for a chunk of the time.
Jason Bradford
Well, I did have shoulder surgery. I've got, you know, stainless steel, titanium, plastic joint.
Rob Dietz
Nice.
Asher Miller
So, you just lift this table if you wanted to?
Jason Bradford
Not yet. Months of rehab.
Asher Miller
Oh, okay.
Jason Bradford
Sorry.
Asher Miller
So what happened, dude?
Jason Bradford
Oh, I was chainsawing.
Asher Miller
You chainsawed your shoulder?
Jason Bradford
Not quite.
Asher Miller
Oh.
Jason Bradford
Alright, so there was an ice storm about a year and a half ago.
Asher Miller
Oh yeah, I remember that.
Jason Bradford
A bunch of weak limbs came down. And I was with a pole saw trying to clear off the fence line. And I got a defect on my shoulder. It was a weak joint. And it just -- the joint just wore out. I didn't even know this was gonna happen, but it just like, ouch. I lost it.
Asher Miller
So like a tree limb or something fell on it?
Jason Bradford
A whole bunch. We're talking like hours and hours over a period of weeks. And my shoulder hurt and hurt, and then suddenly, like, it screamed at me. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
So if you had been using a hand saw instead of a chainsaw, you could have worn it out much faster.
Asher Miller
Way sooner.
Jason Bradford
That's a good question. I don't know, because the chainsaw allowed me to, the pull saw made me reach up. So I could have been -- It would have been terrible either way.
Rob Dietz
Well, I feel like we got to get you off of fence duty. I mean, why not have like a blackberry fence or some kind of hedgerow or something instead?
Jason Bradford
Well, you know, this is what I think about. There are parts of the farm where there's, like, a naturalized hedgerow, where the birds have been pooping over, you know, I don't know, 100 years. And all these seed things grow and turn into saplings. And there are places where, yeah, the livestock couldn't get out. And I look at that, and I go, we should just do that.
Asher Miller
So it's almost like a fence that just kind of grew on its own basically?
Jason Bradford
A living fence. And, you know, historically, they would call these hedgerows, and there was traditions in Europe to make them. But of course, no one knows how to do this, because we all put in metal fences.
Rob Dietz
And think if a limb falls on it, it just becomes part of the fence.
Asher Miller
Yeah, it helps make the fence stronger.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, in some ways. I mean, they can. They still need maintenance, but they grow on their own, right, and they're alive. So I really admire that. I'm thinking to myself, I need to learn how to do that instead.
Rob Dietz
This story of yours, Jason, the story of the fence, is going to help us talk about the Earth today, which is what I want to do.
Jason Bradford
I'm glad I can be somewhat helpful. I'm kinda useless in many ways.
Asher Miller
Yeah, that's true.
Rob Dietz
I wanna talk about two underlying principles that are part of your fence situation. One is entropy.
Jason Bradford
It's like an allegory.
Rob Dietz
And the other is self organization. We're kind of going to wonk out here a little bit on how the Earth works.
Jason Bradford
I'm disorganizing right now, but . . .
Asher Miller
Ok, Rob, can you just define entropy for me, or en-tropy?
Rob Dietz
Entropy, yes. I will give it a shot. I did look up a definition on Physics for Idiots.
Jason Bradford
That's a good place to go. It is.
Asher Miller
That's like your homepage, right?
Rob Dietz
This is its definition: The entropy of an isolated system, not in equilibrium, will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium. So there we go. Done.
Jason Bradford
You basically defined entropy using the term entropy, but what you were doing was you were defining the second law of thermodynamics, which unhelpfully uses the term entropy, which also has to be defined.
Rob Dietz
That is true.
Asher Miller
Okay, then you do it, Jason. You give us a definition.
Jason Bradford
In plain language, t's a general tendency for homogeneity and evenness. Right?
Rob Dietz
Homogeneity, how many syllables are there in that word?
Jason Bradford
I'm trying my best.
Asher Miller
Just plain language.
Jason Bradford
Well, okay, so you often recognize it from things spontaneously, kind of, going from order to disorder, or
Asher Miller
Like your shoulder?
Jason Bradford
Exactly. Or concentrated to disperse, let's say. So anyway, entropy is always increasing at a large enough scale.
Asher Miller
Wait a second. I think we need to give some examples, right? So maybe the typical example is you hear to describe entropy is like ice melting at room temperature in a glass of water, or like a cup of coffee that loses its heat over time. You know, same principle applies to my cup of coffee right now because as I'm sitting here talking, it is getting colder. I should be drinking it.
Jason Bradford
That's what I meant by homogeneity and evenness. If there's a differential between different environments, it'll even out.
Rob Dietz
And that's what I meant by approaching a maximum at equilibrium.
Asher Miller
Now, can I just say something about this like heat dissipating thing?
Jason Bradford
Oh, sure. Why not? So a little technical explanation of what you just said is that whenever you convert energy from one form to another, and try to use that transition for work, which is what you're doing, like in a coal fired power plant, internal combustion engine, electricity, that there is an imperfect conversion. So not all of the energy that you're converting is actually usable for work. A certain proportion of it goes to waste heat. The example that everyone knows now is that when you charge your phone, it can get warm. Have you ever noticed that?
Asher Miller
We talk a lot on this podcast about energy, you know, and the energy transition, getting away from fossil fuels. And we know that one of the issues, one of the many issues with fossil fuels is, like, the conversion of energy, right, of useful energy, is not great, right. So you have an internal combustion engine, the amount of energy that actually goes into moving you, you know, is pretty minimal. The amount of energy that goes into, like, you know, creating electricity and coal fired power plant is at best 50% or whatever. But you actually have this dynamic that happens with energy across the board, right? Because we're talking about the laws of physics. Even if we substitute everything to be renewable energy, if we keep growing our energy use, we're going to run into this waste heat issue, you know, eventually. Like our friend Tom Murphy who we've had on the podcast kind of did some numbers on this. And I think he basically projected if we keep growing like 2.3% per year, which is a fairly low, it's lower than the historical rate of growth in terms of energy demand over time, we'll get the temperature of the planet to a boiling point in 400 years. Yeah, I've noticed that.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Okay, so that's the waste heat of the battery being charged. It's inperfect conversion from the electricity to chemical storage in your battery. So now everyone knows what I'm talking about because I used a phone example.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, thanks for that. All I know is that if the earth reaches the boiling point 400 years, we'll still be denying that climate change is a problem.
Asher Miller
Well, climate change won't be the problem anymore.
Jason Bradford
But this is sort of an interesting thing. Like Tom's thing was like, yeah, let's say everything is PV --
Rob Dietz
Photovoltaics.
Jason Bradford
Photovoltaics.
Rob Dietz
So it's solar panels,
Jason Bradford
Yeah, so you have the sun hitting panels, and then there's electricity generated. And everyone thinks that's clean and stuff, but just the act of running a car on a road produces waste heat. Just the friction of the car moving. And so if you get the economy big enough, you don't have to be burning coal, it's just moving, the economy being moving and action is going to create heat.
Rob Dietz
Okay, so that's a quick primer on entropy and waste heat and all that. But what about the other side of this coin of how the earth works?
Asher Miller
Oh, self organization?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I thought this would be like the opposite almost.
Asher Miller
Okay. You want me to define it?
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Let's see. Go to physics for idiots and see what they say.
Asher Miller
Self organization is the spontaneous emergence of order, or global coordination within the system arising from the interactions of its individual components without external intervention or central authority.
Rob Dietz
Well, that's better than my entropy definition.
Asher Miller
It's still a little wonky.
Rob Dietz
Still chaos.
Jason Bradford
It's still a little tough.
Rob Dietz
It takes me back to high school or college. Yeah.
Jason Bradford
Well, I think there's some great examples that people are familiar with, like schools of fish or murmurations of birds. And I think you know, life is the ultimate example of this. And at different scales, you can think about life being self organizing. And there was a really good description of life and how unique it is by Jeffrey West in his book "Scale." He says, quote, "Life is probably the most complex and diverse phenomenon the universe, manifesting an extraordinary variety of forms, functions and behaviors over an enormous range of scales." So yeah, you think about all of us, any living creature, it's an assembly of incredible complexity, an organization with amazing coordination and control of parts. Especially big, multi-cellular organisms, or even a bacteria for gosh sakes from the raw materials of the environment, right? You know, taking in atoms and molecules and assembling to them in these complex ways. And the key thing is, without having a central authority. It's not like there's a big boss man that's like -- Yes. Unless you're a creationist or something like that.
Rob Dietz
I was going to say, says you . . .
Asher Miller
Oopsies
Jason Bradford
Life was just evolved on its own.
Rob Dietz
Well, this has always completely amazed me because I've known about the -- I couldn't define it, but I knew about the idea of entropy, that things tend to get disordered. You have all this organization of life that happens on the planet all on its own. I read that there's something like 8.7 million species of organisms on Earth.
Jason Bradford
We don't really know.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that's just some kind of estimate. But you know what we do know?
Jason Bradford
I could tell you how it's estimated if you want.
Rob Dietz
No, I don't think I care.
Asher Miller
Somebody's out there with and they've got a clipboard, or . . .
Rob Dietz
One, two, three . . .
Jason Bradford
I'm not allowed to tell you.
Asher Miller
We got it right.
Rob Dietz
I do know there are more than 60 species of rats. That one is known.
Jason Bradford
Oh.
Asher Miller
Look, if we're solving this problem, this whole thing about like that we don't really have an exact number, we're on this.
Jason Bradford
We'll narrow it down.
Asher Miller
Every year, more and more species go extinct, thanks to us, right? So we'll get it, you know, so that it's a nice number.
Rob Dietz
Simplified.
Asher Miller
Like a Noah's Arc kind of size.
Jason Bradford
I have a sad face now.
Asher Miller
Sorry.
Rob Dietz
Let me help you. I'll make your face happy by telling you some of the 60 species of rats that I looked up. There's the black rat, you've got the Australian swamp rat, you've got the kangaroo rat.
Jason Bradford
Yep.
Rob Dietz
The Himalayan field rat, the naked mole rat, the pack rat, the ratatouille, and the dirty rat bastard.
Jason Bradford
Okay, okay.
Asher Miller
Tou sound like the guy from Best in Show listings all the nuts.
Rob Dietz
Peanut, pistachio nut, red and white.
Jason Bradford
Okay. Well, the other thing that happens is that, you know, beyond just individuals in a species, like an individual ratatouille, you get what are called super organisms. This is the idea that
Asher Miller
Me, you mean?
Jason Bradford
Well, yeah. I mean, of course, the Marvel Universe, DC, yeah, sure. Or alternatively, in a serious way, you could talk about the idea that individuals within a species are not standalone in a sense, but they are part of a greater whole that is coordinated. And the prime example or this is in ants, right? So you've got ants, and termites are also pretty good, and naked mole rats, actually, but these new social creatures that have divisions of labor. And my favorite example are the leaf cutter ants. Have you ever guys ever seen leaf cutter ants?
Rob Dietz
Oh yeah. I mean, I haven't seen them in real life, but many videos.
Jason Bradford
This is one of these things that is only on the American continent in the tropics
Asher Miller
Make America great again.
Jason Bradford
Yes. So you go to the lowland Americas, and you'll be walking through lowland tropical forest, and you'll see this, like, area that's kind of denuded of the understory foliage. And when you see that, you're like, "Oh, I'm coming up on a leaf cutter ant nest," which is like the size of a typical living room, maybe. Like they're big, and they're kind of a mound of dirt. There's all these holes and the ants are going in and out with leaves, and they're marching with leaves on their back that they're carrying, and they're soldiers protecting, they're guarding. And what the ants are doing is they're going into their underground lair and they're feeding the leaves to a particular species of fungus, which has co-evolved now. And the ants and the fungi are completely co-dependent. And so what you have is, you have a sense of all these ants have different little castes, the ants have different, you know, roles in society.
Asher Miller
Right. And they're even different sizes, right?
Jason Bradford
Very different sizes, yes. And then the fungus itself, right, is now part of this super organism in a sense. It's a mutualism where neither of them survive without each other.
Asher Miller
So I think I read that happened like 15 million years ago, right? We talk about us domesticating animals, and we've talked about this on this podcast, right? The domestication of animals, you know, 10's of 1000s of years ago. 15 million years ago,
Jason Bradford
Or more. Yeah, no one really sure. I can tell you how they try to figure out --
Asher Miller
Oh no.
Jason Bradford
Using phylogenetic methods.
Rob Dietz
One year ago, two years ago. . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Anyway, it's a kind of mutualism. You know, everyone's mutual co-dependency. So, anyway, it's great. It's great. It's very exciting.
Asher Miller
So we're talking about life as an example of self organization, life coming into existence. Now we're talking about life working together in ways, like these leaf cutter ants as a super organism as a form of self organization. But we also have ecosystems, right? Like ecosystems also, in a sense, act in a self organized way. There's a lot of interactions between different species within an ecosystem. You guys have traveled a bit, right? You've gone, I think, Rob, you've gotten out to California. That's been extent of it for you, right? Jason, you've hopped all over the world burning God knows how much--
Jason Bradford
Amazing, kerosene.
Asher Miller
I'm just curious, like, what ecosystem stand out for you guys in terms of things that you've spent time in?
Rob Dietz
Well my favorite, just nostalgia wise, the Blue Ridge Mountains . . .
Asher Miller
You gonna break out in song?
Rob Dietz
. . . in Appalachia. Yeah, bring in John Denver.
Asher Miller
Da da ding ding ding (Dueling Banjos).
Rob Dietz
That's not the song I was thinking of. Okay?
Jason Bradford
West Virginia . . .
Rob Dietz
Although I have been on the Chattooga River where that was filmed. That was The Deliverance theme song.
Asher Miller
Did you squeal like a pig?
Rob Dietz
Okay, we're taking another turn here of darkness in this podcast. But no, it's a beautiful ecosystem. You have these hardwood forests. The leaves turn all kinds of beautiful colors in the fall. What's really neat, though, is the mountains are so old, and all of the critters have adapted to this habitat really well. So you have the greatest diversity of freshwater mussels in the world. You have incredible amphibian diversity. I feel like there's tons of mammals and birds when I'm there. Seems almost like it's much more densely populated and diversely populated than the forests we have here in the Pacific Northwest.
Jason Bradford
It really is. Yes.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we almost have a kind of monoculture.
Jason Bradford
It's a little depauperate here because of how dry and isolated we are.
Rob Dietz
What we have that's amazing is the the amount of biomass from the tree growth, the Douglas Firs and the Cedars. I mean, just incredible amounts of you know, fiber and wood.
Asher Miller
We'll take care of that too. We're putting that on a diet also, Rob. I'm dark today.
Rob Dietz
You're keeping us on the Happy Earth Day theme here. Mow it down, cut it down, throw it in the river.
Asher Miller
What about you, Jason? You've been to a lot of cooler ecosystems.
Jason Bradford
I became a big fan of what are called Tropical Montane Forests, also known as Cloud Forest. When I was an undergrad, I decided I'm going to grad school, I'm going to study these. I didn't know exactly how or why, but I ended up finding a way to do that. And I traveled and saw them. I saw the representative forest of this sort of ecosystem all through the Americas to Madagascar, Malaysia, the South Pacific, Australia region. So I love these and just amazing places. Really mossy, right? And the gnarly trees and the topography, you know, is really interesting, these watersheds and the misting clouds, and the views you get when the sun comes out, and you can kind of look over the valleys. And the fact that they change so dramatically as you go from sort of lower elevation versions of cloud forest to higher elevations. And sometimes you break above tree line and you get these Alpine habitats as well. So, yeah, no, I just loved exploring those places.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that's cool. That's awesome when you can hike above the clouds and you're looking down on all that.
Asher Miller
That was my, you know, my people come from not this kind of climate that you're talking about at all. But when I went to Costa Rica and was in the Cloud Forest there, it's like, I wouldn't say I necessarily felt at home, but it was just incredible. An immersive experience --
Jason Bradford
Yeah, yeah. That got you too?
Asher Miller
Oh yeah. All the birds and the monkeys and the -- just the life.
Jason Bradford
And it's sometimes, because of the topography, you can be sort of, you can look into the canopies there. Because sometimes you're on like a little ridge, and you're looking down in the forest. Where, in the lowland forest, you're often just looking up all the time, and you can't really see the canopy as well. So I felt it was in some ways more accessible.
Rob Dietz
That's cool. La di da, you guys get to go to Costa Rica. I just go to . . . the Southeast
Asher Miller
You go to Eureka.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, Well, you know you're talking about the rise of self organization through ecosystems, but I want to turn us towards human systems. You have all kinds of social institutions that arise kind of the same way. They just self organize. You could say that what we've done with the economy and business is an example of that, but I want to turn to kind of like the informal economy, or the black markets that arise to meet some kind of need.
Asher Miller
Which you know well, right? I mean, you operate lots of black market businesses.
Rob Dietz
It's the only place where I get goods and services. You know, examples of this would be drug trafficking, right? People want to take drugs, black Market emerges.
Asher Miller
Pot heads in a drum circle. That's a great example of self organization. You just, you know, you go to one of these, I mean for me it was back in the day going to Grateful Dead shows, you know. You get a bunch of these people with their little bongo drums and they're all banging, it sounds cacophonous and terrible. But all of a sudden, you know, they start coming together and they get this beat. It's beautiful.
Jason Bradford
Amazing. The resonance.
Rob Dietz
All of a sudden when your LSD kicks in it comes together, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah. No, I've see some big ones at UC Davis, the whole Earth Festival there. Oh my God. I'd go for 24 hours. I'm not kidding. Unbelievable.
Asher Miller
It's the height of self organization.
Jason Bradford
It is. It's wonderful.
Rob Dietz
Well besides drum circles and illegal drug trades, it happens in legitimate circles as well. Like, there's this woman in the neighborhood who sells tamales, and maybe that's also illegal . . .
Asher Miller
I don't know, dude. Not with this administration.
Rob Dietz
But it's awesome. Like, you know, people have a need for tamales and this self organization happens and I get a tamale.
Jason Bradford
I support this informal economy that's not about illicit drugs, but people figure out how to get by.
Asher Miller
We're gonna have lots of more of it, dude. When these tariffs kick in. What about cities?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
I mean, cities are probably the most recognizable way of like seeing how humans self organize, right? You have especially ancient cities that were probably little tiny villages to begin with and then slowly grow over time. And you look at London, for example, one of the largest cities, you know, in the world. And it really started as a very small, you know, I think it was a Roman outpost or whatever, and it grew from there. So you don't have any, like . . . It's not like well planned, organized, rectangular, you know, urban planning, design, right? It just kind of grew overtime.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, evolved.
Rob Dietz
is funny to think about, like, a couple people just met up by the river, like, eh let's make a hut here. And then next thing you know, you've got London.
Jason Bradford
Well there's a Dire Straits song, a great one called "Telegraph Road." Oh yeah. Okay, and it goes, "And that's a long time ago came a man on a track walking 30 miles with a pack on his back, and he put down a load where he thought it was best, made a home in the wilderness." And then it gets to freeways, and it's just as talked about, someone makes a settlement and then they attract another person. Great song, oh my gosh. Ah, album oriented rock in the 70s. Unbelievable. Anyhow.
Asher Miller
We are so old. All of our references.
Jason Bradford
Hey kids, listen to that. Dire Straits.
Rob Dietz
I don't know what you guys are talking about. I know who Dire Straits is, but I've never heard that song.
Jason Bradford
Oh you have. It's one of their best. Anyhow.
Rob Dietz
Nope.
Jason Bradford
So this is interesting. You talk about cities, because cities, you know, we've talked about the leaf cutter ants, right? And what's interesting about leaf cutter ants is the dynamic that happens in cities as well, where you've got this center place, where you have the nests, and you have, like, the feeding grounds and the fungus and everything. But guess what? They have to get leaves. Leaves are the resources that they have to go get. And they have to scavenge for leaves. And as the nest grows bigger and bigger, they have to go farther and farther to get leaves.
Asher Miller
Right, yeah.
Jason Bradford
And so it takes more and more energy for them to get their leaves. And this is what cities have done, if you have a giant city . . . And Bill Reese has done really good work on this with the ecological footprint.
Rob Dietz
Yah, he's our ecological guru friend who came up with that whole idea of the ecological footprint.
Jason Bradford
You know, you understand that these the bigger the city is, the larger the territory it has to draw from. And right now, this giant human super organism of cities is drawing from the global economy with incredible complex flows of energy resources and trade.
Asher Miller
So beyond the city, I mean, you're talking about as a super organism, humans kind of act, it's a coordination between all these cities, right?
Jason Bradford
Exactly. And all the small towns and all the all the industrial farms like this entire network has to function, right, for resources to flow into the cities.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we're all now kind of locked into that super organism.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I think these two principles that we're describing, entropy and self organization, describe a lot of what you see when you go out, walk the earth, and what's in front of your face is some derivative of those principles. And I used to think that self organization was some way of overcoming or fighting against the disorder or chaos of entropy, but I'm starting to see that it doesn't work that way. I mean, self organizing systems like a human body, right, or the leaf cutter ants, or the city, or any of them, they're entirely subject to entropy, right? Even though my body isn't immediately falling apart and scattering into molecules, it's doing it slowly over time. But even though that's not happening immediately, it's still subject to entropy, right?
Jason Bradford
Yes. Yeah.
Asher Miller
Does that explain why our hair keeps falling out?
Jason Bradford
Your hair is fine. What are you talking about?
Asher Miller
I lose some hair
Jason Bradford
Geez.
Rob Dietz
The thing about the body is it requires constant maintenance. So I have to take in what we would call low entropy fuels, or highly ordered fuels. You know, pork bellies, Slim Jims, cake, Jolly Ranchers, Coco Puffs.
Jason Bradford
Jolly Ranchers, ha. Do those exist still?
Asher Miller
So full of nutrition, dude.
Rob Dietz
Well, so my body uses the energy and the nutrients from --
Jason Bradford
Pork bellies are bacon. Why did you say pork bellies? It's just bacon.
Asher Miller
It's a new recommended diet from the --
Rob Dietz
That's the Crazy Town diet.
Asher Miller
From the Trump administration. Get your Slim Jims. Get your Jolly Ranchers and Cocoa Puffs.
Rob Dietz
No, no. We're going to make America healthy again, okay? This is gonna be illegal soon. So assuming I can scrape a nutrient or two out of my bowl of Cocoa Puffs, I am able to then build and maintain cells and tissues.
Jason Bradford
Barely.
Rob Dietz
But the Entropy Law still holds and so in that process, I have to excrete high entropy waste.
Asher Miller
Oh, here we go.
Rob Dietz
Otherwise known as going #2.
Jason Bradford
Why is it number two?
Asher Miller
I don't know.
Jason Bradford
I think it's because you go #1 first. At least I always do. Why are we talking about this?
Asher Miller
Why does it always come back to this on this podcast? #2 is terrible. Can we come up with a better euphemism?
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Rob Dietz
Oh, we can come up with an incredible list. If we're opening the door, I mean.
Asher Miller
Back to the rats and nuts.
Rob Dietz
One my favorites is taking the Browns to the Super Bowl.
Asher Miller
I always liked dropping the kids off of the pool.
Rob Dietz
That is a good one. Dirty bombing, cutting rope, baking brownies.
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
Oh my god.
Jason Bradford
I'm not gonna join in this. You've done enough. Enough damage.
Asher Miller
Well, ultimately, I hate to be -- I'm the downer in today's podcast.
Jason Bradford
You've been horrible today. Here's the thing, like you said, you can't escape entropy. Ultimately living organisms, they succumb to entropy through death, right? Yes.
Asher Miller
And that's it, folks. We're done with our podcast today. I hope everyone enjoyed it.
Jason Bradford
But wait a second.
Rob Dietz
Don't economists say, in the long run, we're all dead. It's dismal science.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. But life goes on. You know? Life goes on. There's something else ready.
Asher Miller
Ob-la-di, ob-la-da. Life goes on, brah.
Rob Dietz
So what does this all mean for humanity, for society? This is the real question I have when we're talking about entropy and self organization. And the thing that I notice is that humanity is ramping up the complex systems. We're building out, the cities we're making a more and more complex global economy. The thing is, it's all this -- I'm putting air quotes around the term "progress." All this industrial progress has this really heavy load of entropy that comes along with it and it's almost always at the expense of ecosystems.
Asher Miller
Yeah, and we keep it at a distance from us. Especially those of us who live in, like, urban environments, right? Like you were talking earlier about bringing in resources from the outside, Jason, and sending our waste out. So we don't actually see the result of the entropy of that industrial system. But, you know, ecosystems, they haven't escaped entropy either, right? They just have figured out ways to deal with it more elegantly than humans have, you know. They tend towards more complexity and diversity, more productivity and efficiency and resilience. They have processes that create high entropy outputs. But these get like, they get reused. They're composted, they're recycled, they're, you know . . . You see the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle -- These are examples of this. You know, we haven't done that. And ecosystems, if you think about it, even if a species disappears in an ecosystem, they adjust somehow, right?
Jason Bradford
That's why the diversity is so great. It's sort of like it gives them flexibility. So if one species disappears, there's something else there that's similar enough, right? And that's why that diversity is so important. It provides the resilience. Because it's like having, when you have an actor, there's a second, right? Like an important actor and a Broadway player, whatever, in case someone gets sick. Okay, but in ecosystems, it's not just a second, there's a third, there's a fourth, there's all these backups to play that same role, okay?
Asher Miller
And the play changes a bit.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, just a little bit. But it doesn't --
Asher Miller
Brittish to Scottish accent.
Jason Bradford
Correct.
Rob Dietz
It took me like five minutes to come up with the word understudy, which is what you're talking about.
Jason Bradford
Understudy. I couldn't --
Asher Miller
Understudy like undergrowth in the forest.
Jason Bradford
Oh my god, yeah. We should have a drum circle after this.
Rob Dietz
You just used a human system to talk about the elegance of an ecosystem. Just want to point that out.
Jason Bradford
I messed up, but I'm trying to help humans understand.
Asher Miller
Let's give him a minute going off on a rant about cities, okay?
Jason Bradford
Well, okay. So contrast -- this is an important point -- that the ecosystems are running off of contemporary sunlight and the waste products are reusable completely. Alright. Wonderful.
Asher Miller
The death of an organism turns into nutrients for other life.
Jason Bradford
Exactly. So that's why you say it's graceful, it's elegant, it can self organize in perpetuity. Contrast that with urbanization. And Bill Reese, again, we mentioned before ecological footprint, he called cities the emergent but dissipative structures that increase entropy in enormous ways. They're entropy engines in a sense, there's this myth out there that the modern cities, the bigger modern cities we have, are more efficient somehow. Because there's these things called allometric scaling laws, Kleiber's law, and it says that as organisms get larger, they actually become slightly more metabolically efficient. And so, you know -- Bigger is better, baby. The problem is that none of these things are running off of sunlight or producing waste that is elegantly recycled.
Asher Miller
Bigger is better, baby.
Rob Dietz
What are you talking about? All that plastic in the ocean -- is that not elegant? I mean, we're feeding sea turtles and dolphins. We're plugging up blowholes with . . .
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
So when you say engines, you're talking about fossil fuels. We're basically taking old energy, right, that was stored in the ground, and we're burning it. So we're not living off of the energy that's coming, that's landing on the Earth every day or every year.
Jason Bradford
And there was this article in New Yorker, I think, called "The Green Manhattan." And there's this really good writer who lived in Manhattan, had some kids, they wanted to get out where the kids had more space, they were in a little place. And they said, "I was much more ecologically sane when I was living in Manhattan. My heating bill was lower. I didn't drive as much. And as much as I love the suburbs and all the nature I'm exposed to, I'm a hazard to nature. I'm like destructive. I drive to the Blockbuster video store." Kids, you may not know what that means. But the problem is, it doesn't matter that he's less energy and resource efficient in the suburbs as he was in Manhattan. Neither place is sane at all because it's all running on ancient sunlight and it doesn't self organize. It requires industrial processes to rebuild. It's madness, to apply any sort of ecological laws and say, "Oh, cities that are bigger are somehow -- "
Asher Miller
They're greener or more efficient.
Jason Bradford
It's the whole system, that's ridiculous.
Rob Dietz
I'll pile on the city critique for a second. The thing that I noticed when I was at a friend's place and he had a he lived in a high rise and had a nice balcony that looked out over the city of Portland, and I remember standing up there and just being like, look at all the glass and asphalt and concrete and steel and just the hard scape. And I think about how sterilized that becomes from the perspective of being able to produce lif. You know, you don't have a nice oak tree growing out of the middle of the highway.
Jason Bradford
You have dandelions in the cracks.
Asher Miller
I see some weeds in the sidewalk.
Jason Bradford
We spray those if we can.
Asher Miller
Oh right, sure
Rob Dietz
We take refuge in a few dandelions, yeah. But the idea is that the city can't really act by composting or reabsorbing waste in any kind of elegant way, like you were saying. We built all this stuff, and we've kind of locked ourselves into this entropy. Think about the difference between a tree that falls in the woods or falls, I guess, on a fence line in your case, Jason. And let's say it fell on the living fence, like we were kind of joking around, but it really could become part of it, right? You just have a tree limb that starts growing fungus, you know, the insects then break it down, and the nutrients get reabsorbed. Now, think of a building falling in a city. You just have a cracked up mess of steel and concrete and the only way that that gets reabsorbed is, you know, you have to drive a fossil fuel bulldozer to scrape it all up.
Asher Miller
And is it reabsorbed?
Jason Bradford
No, it goes to some landfill.
Asher Miller
Yeah, it gets dumped somewhere, right?
Jason Bradford
It's just awful.
Asher Miller
And now, here we are shitting on what humans have done in cities.
Rob Dietz
You mean we're dropping the kids off at the pool.
Asher Miller
That doesn't work as well.
Rob Dietz
Yeah.
Asher Miller
But I think we need to name this. This is a particular manifestation of how certain human societies have organized themselves because of this one time lottery winning of tapping into ancient sunlight fossil fuels, right? Humans have been around for a lot longer than, you know, than these modern cities have, right? And if you look at indigenous cultures, they have figured out elegant ways of living within ecosystems, right?
Jason Bradford
I'm aware that there were cities prior to the fossil fuel area.
Asher Miller
I'm not just talking about cities. I'm talking about, you know, other ways that humans have lived on this planet in interaction and actually as part of ecosystems. And in fact, you look at a lot of -- I think there's a lot of ideas that some environmentalists have that we need to preserve nature and have it be untouched or unspoiled by human hands. But the truth is that humans in many places around the world have been living as part of ecosystems and interacting with them like other species have, right? So it doesn't mean that we are incapable of both self organization and doing self organization in a way where we're in some kind of relationship with the rest of the natural world.
Jason Bradford
Yes, I agree with that. It's possible. There are some very fascinating examples. And it's interesting, if you go to some of these places where there's really examples of this, we love it. We go to these Italian villages and go, "Wow, they built this by hand, and it's beautiful," right? And so you can imagine people living that way. But eventually, right, entropy wins. And if we really grok that, you know, the big aha is, is to put our energy into systems, objects, and structures that can experience this entropy well. Like so, building something where you can maintain it with natural materials in your area that you can pick up, you can move, you can manipulate, and that can be composted if they have to, right.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Like you. Composting you.
Jason Bradford
Yes, although I have some industrial waste now in my left shoulder.
Rob Dietz
Your old shoulder parts are growing a garden somewhere.
Asher Miller
We just have to lop off that one shoulder, discard that in the in --
Jason Bradford
And the rest goes in a shallow grave.
Asher Miller
The rest, we just toss you into the ground.
Jason Bradford
Thank you.
Rob Dietz
So whether we like it or not, we're all playing this grand game of entropy and self organization. And I find it fascinating to think about. But besides just understanding it, I think we have to ask, what do we do when we know that that's how the Earth works? So here around Earth Day, I want to think about, how can you be a better Earthling in light of this understanding of entropy and self organization?
Jason Bradford
Well I mean, I think the first thing to realize is how out of whack we are power wise. Like how much power we use, and the idea that we need to dramatically shrink power demand we have. And so I had a proposal for this, which was to turn humans into sort of marmoset-like creatures.
Asher Miller
Oh right, they actually shrink us. Literally, physically shrink us.
Jason Bradford
Yes, but that's gonna take a long time.
Rob Dietz
Now, I love marmosets. I remember visiting a zoo where they were allowed to run free in the ape house. There were little marmosets just hanging out in the trees and you could get like eye to eye with this tiny little creature.
Asher Miller
Do the marmoset look like Mark Andreessen? We talked about marmosets --
Jason Bradford
That's right.
Asher Miller
-- when we did this episode about Mark Andreessen.
Jason Bradford
So we've gone over this before.
Asher Miller
We have.
Jason Bradford
I think it's a little impractical, however. So the other idea I have, which I haven't expressed before, is that we need to modify our metabolism to be reptilian. So, you ever feed a cat and it's like, that cat needs to eat twice a day, right, or it's gonna go berserk? You ever have a snake that's about the same size? You just give it a little treat like once every week or two.
Asher Miller
You feed it the cat.
Jason Bradford
Sure. Yeah. Or that.
Rob Dietz
That's a big snake.
Jason Bradford
So reptiles just aren't demanding --They don't. They're cold blooded. And so they don't have this baseline metabolism that is demanding constant energy. I like this analogy because it's the idea that what we've done with industrialism is we've sort of become addicted to constant, constant energy, right? You can't shut it down, right? You can't shut the sewage system down, or it all backs up, right?
Rob Dietz
Talk about entropy.
Jason Bradford
You can't shut the trucks down, or --
Asher Miller
We'll starve.
Jason Bradford
We'll stave. We can't shut the tractors down or it doesn't get harvested.
Asher Miller
We can't turn off the AC, or else --
Jason Bradford
Can't turn off the AC or else we die of wet bulb temperatures. So this is the problem we have, is that we've locked in this power demand. We've got to back out of that. Now, if we can't become a reptile --
Asher Miller
I mean, physically you can't.
Jason Bradford
We have to think of it more as, how do we organize a society to be more able to sort of adjust to, okay, I've got a lot of energy now. I'm going to make hay when the sun shines, and now I'm going to chill out. I'm not demanding constant energy. Sort of like a lizard can. A lizard can rest and then go feed and then rest. The way to think about is maybe more like a hobbit. Become a Hobbit and live in a Shire. Does that make sense? Instead of an orc in an industrial kiln, making weapons, right? Does that make sense? You know, composting toilets instead of like Toto? Is it Toto or Toro?
Rob Dietz
I don't know.
Asher Miller
Oh, the ones that like --
Jason Bradford
Yeah, heat your butt.
Asher Miller
They heat your butt. Yeah, they check your temperature rectally, yeah. Those ones.
Rob Dietz
It make sense, although I'm kind of stuck on your, go reptile. I think this is how the whole lizard people conspiracy theory started.
Jason Bradford
Probably, yes.
Asher Miller
Don't you look at me like that, Jason.
Rob Dietz
Jason's advocating that. They should all become lizard people.
Asher Miller
It's tricky. And I think part of it is actually a mind shift a little bit, right? It's like, and this is -- Welcome to Crazy Town, right? This is what we experience. Which is when you look at the world, and when you understand that this high energy modernity that we created, the denying entropy, basically not having systems that can compost themselves, or whatever. It's like, when you start realizing that we live in that kind of a world, right, it's hard to go back. But that's part of the step is to sort of look around you and realize, what of these things, if we couldn't get all those constant inputs coming in to maintain it or to rebuild the way, you know, things were, the roads start falling apart, and you get potholes. So what do we do?
Jason Bradford
I have an interesting story about this. I was in Willits like 20 years ago.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we repave them again, right? So we say we can't keep doing that. Well, what would that entail? You know. So and sometimes in the pas I've joked about, like, well you look at some of the technology that we have in cities, and you say, you know, the elevator, not really ready for the future. The escalator, you know, the escalator if the electricity stops running, you could still take the stairs, right? So can we redesign a little bit in a way where if the roads are starting to fall apart, we actually let them fall apart. We decide, let's turn these into walking or biking paths instead.
Jason Bradford
Asphalt.
Asher Miller
Willitsm California.
Jason Bradford
Willits, California. And they were working on a new hospital, like a beautiful new hospital, modern new hospital. And they put me on some committee to like talk about it. I said, "You've got to make sure that the windows can open and the doors aren't on these automatic like -- You have to make stuff manual." And everyone looked at me like I was a lizard person. Which you are. Yeah. And they're like, "No, we can't do that. We can't do any of that. That's illegal."
Asher Miller
That's illegal, hah,
Jason Bradford
Pretty much.
Asher Miller
And you know, there's other ways of doing this. You're long, you know. There's ways of practicing, even if you're in a situation where you're living in a suburban environment, for example. You could create your ecosystem on your own property, in a sense, that can maintain itself, rather than one that's going to need all these inputs that we put into it.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. I like where you're going with that, Asher. You talked about it's a need to change the mindset. And I've been working on my own demented mind a little bit by reading the works of Robin Wall Kimmerer, who we've talked about before. She wrote this incredible book called "Braiding Sweet Grass," which looks at how do you combine the latest science in ecology and kind of stuff we're talking about how the world works with indigenous life ways and worldviews, and really fascinating stuff. And her follow up to that book is a really slim, cool little book called "The Serviceberry." And it's about how a serviceberry, how it creates sort of an economy of its own. And it's an economy that's all about reciprocity, and the exchanges have this elegance that we've been talking about. And one of the things that she talks about in that book that really struck me and is staying with me is she talked about how she was giving this talk at a department of natural resources . . .
Asher Miller
Well, we're getting rid of that, so . . .
Rob Dietz
We are getting rid of it, but she also kind of wanted to get rid of it.
Jason Bradford
Oh.
Asher Miller
Interesting.
Rob Dietz
Not do away with it, but to rename it. And rename it the Department of Earthly Gifts.
Asher Miller
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Bradford
I hate that term natural resources. I always have.
Rob Dietz
She said some of the students, there was almost like a palpable sense of, yeah, relief. And the whole idea is, if you're talking about natural resources, objects, entities, to be used in our economy, it's easy to chew them up, treat them like nothing. If you see it as gifts from nature, then you have to have gratitude for having received this gift.
Asher Miller
And reciprocate, probably. Unless you're an asshole.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. How do I give back? And I think small changes in worldview like that -- That if you can really start looking around at everything as earthly gifts, you know that can add up to the kinds of things you were talking about, Asher of like, hey, instead of building out some infrastructure that has no elegance when it decays, how about having something that works within the context of the place that you are. Or just let the lizard people run it. I don't know. So okay, we've talked about how we can maybe be a little bit better Earthlings knowing about entropy and self organization. So to kind of conclude with our Earth Day theme here, I was wondering if you guys, maybe each one of us, could have a do and don't to celebrate Earth Day.
Jason Bradford
Okay. I'm gonna go. I have an idea. Do find a wild growing plant where you live that you can safely forage, and eat it. Okay, that's my do.
Asher Miller
That's pretty fun.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, don't pick any hemlock.
Asher Miller
Does it have to be a plant? It can't be like an animal>
Jason Bradford
Well, no. Go ahead. Whatever, fungus, but you know, make sure you know what you're doing, especially with the fungi.
Rob Dietz
You know, just an aside on this. I was really confused about Hemlock because you know Hemlock trees. People make tea out of the hemlock needles, right?
Jason Bradford
Hemlock is an invasive species in the carrot family, and some people mistake it for things like fennel, or because it looks like that. But you will die if you div too much. If you have just the right amount, you'll just have a big nap.
Rob Dietz
Well, let's just stick with your original don't eat hemlock.
Jason Bradford
Don't eat hemlock.
Rob Dietz
What's yours, Asher?
Asher Miller
Before I do that, I want to say something else, which is, you know, we were just talking about kind of embracing entropy in a sense, or designing for it. But there's the self organization piece I want to bring up again, because we're actually in a situation now where we've created these complex -- At very large scale we talked about the human super organism, right? So we're now all very dependent upon these large scale very complex systems to deliver our essential needs. And we're going through a situation right now where that's breaking down, right? And so self organizing, if you think about trying to practice self organizing, the great place to do that is in your local community, right? I think we're gonna need more of that. So now the ideal would be self organizing to embrace entropy in your local community, right? So designing together things that can compost themselves elegantly or be repurposed in more natural ways. So I just want to mention that because I think there are lots of opportunities.
Rob Dietz
It gives me a job too. I can go on the worldwide circuit telling people the definition of entropy from physics for idiots so that they know how to act on what you're talking about.
Asher Miller
Right, Okay, so the do's and don'ts. I mean, this is a very simple thing, but I think it gets to what we're talking about, the practice of observation and sitting. And that is on the next lovely weather day, go outside, sit in a place where you can observe the interaction of life around you, and that can include human life, right? So you don't have to go deep into the woods, somewhere away from all people. But if you sit still in a space, in a place, and you observe those interactions, you'll discover, I mean, you start attuning to for example, to bird life around you, even in a city. And you start realizing there's actually thriving life all around. We just tend not to stop to observe it or listen to it. On the don't side, maybe don't be in, you know, the very top of a skyscraper when the power runs out.
Jason Bradford
I know.
Rob Dietz
Sorry, anybody that lives up high like that. Okay, I'm gonna give my do and don't, but I'm going to flip it around because I want to be a rebel, like a lizard person. So I'm going to give my don't first, which is, don't get sucked into empire building. And what I mean by that is, you know, maybe you figured out how to play the current economic game that's happening in high energy modernity, and you've accumulated a lot of money, or you've been successful on the black market trafficking and drugs, or whatever. Don't try to expand your empire because it'll only be subject to entropy. And you're going to find that your time is just sucked up by trying to maintain your empire.
Jason Bradford
You see that in all the movies about this, "The Godfather," etc.
Rob Dietz
And I don't feel like Empire has to be that big. It could just be I want to get a second home somewhere. Maybe I want to buy another piece of property. And you're either doing all that maintenance yourself, which is, like I said, sucking up your time, or you're subjugating a bunch of other people, exploiting them, or whatever, and having them deal with it. And that's the pathway to being a super villain. What you could do instead, the do -- And it's funny, because it doesn't sound like an Earth Day thing, like, go plant a tree, but it's to simplify and be nimble. You know, the small creatures are the ones that survive the disaster, not the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Asher Miller
That's how mammals came.
Jason Bradford
That's right. Little shrew-like creatures.
Rob Dietz
So be simpler. You know, declutter. Take down your empire, even just a little bit, maybe just declutter one item.
Asher Miller
Cool. I'm gonna start with you. I'm gonna get rid of you, Rob.
Rob Dietz
How am I part of your community in helping with your self organization?
Asher Miller
Well you're a lizard!
Jason Bradford
Are you tired of the bloated, impersonal, ecologically ruinous and ultimately unresilient projects that have characterized housing and land development for the past century? Are you looking to reside in affordable, beautiful, and cleverly designed dwelling and communities where you can self provision from a bio-diverse landscape and disconnect from the globalized flow of industrial goods and services? If this is your dream, then join us at Shire Property Development and Realty Group as an investor in our properties. You will be comforted to know that our team has vast and deep expertise in all aspects of living without high energy modernity, and can select and build infrastructure with better odds of persisting through the bottlenecks of the great unraveling. And as an owner resident, you'll enjoy the challenge of, we like to half jokingly say living like a hobbit, while appreciating the security this brings as the proverbial quote, "Doo-doo strikes the blower." Shire Property Development and Realty Group, isn't it about time people with capital expertise did something useful for everyone else.
Rob Dietz
First come, first serve, but preference will be given to short people with big furry feet. .
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
