Drilled
A true-crime podcast about climate change. Reported and hosted by a team of investigative climate journalists, Drilled examines the various obstacles that have kept the world from adequately responding to climate change.
Episodes
S14, Ep8 | Climate Obstruction in the Global South
The U.S. is a global leader on climate obstruction, but they’re not the only ones. In this episode, M. Omar Faruque, from Queen’s University in Canada and Ruth E. McKie from De Montfort University join us to take a look at why and how thos…
The Black Thread, Ep 3: Challenging the Narratives
In the third episode of The Black Thread, we explore where the facts do and don’t match up to the stories being told by Norway’s fossil fuel industry, amplified by it’s government, and legitimised through a wealth of public outreach. We he…
Drilling Deep: Karen House on How Saudi Arabia Has Changed Under MBS and What Those Changes Mean for the World
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House, author of the new book The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia, talks to Adam Lowenstein about how S…
Carbon Bros: Abdul El-Sayed on Climate Complexities and Benevolent Masculinity
We heard a little bit from El-Sayed in the final episode of our Carbon Bros miniseries, and today we're bringing you the full conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Black Thread, Ep 2 | Petroganda
In the second episode of The Black Thread, we drill into “petroganda” – the pervasive phenomenon of oil industry manipulation that a growing number of experts and commentators suggest is at work in Norway – shaping support for the country’s…
S14, Ep7 | How the Animal Ag Industry Obstructs Climate Policy
For decades, the meat and dairy industries managed to successfully avoid any attention for the planet-heating emissions they pump into the atmosphere; once governments started talking about regulating methane, though, they started working o…
S14, Ep 6 | How the Coal, Utilities and Transportation Industries Obstruct Climate Policy
The coal, utilities, and transportation industries have all mounted efforts to stop governments from regulating emissions or transitioning to cleaner energy. In this episode we look at how those efforts took shape around the world, and what…
The Black Thread, Ep 1 | Meet the Norwegians
In this first episode of The Black Thread, we meet the Norwegians and explore how social norms and cultural values shape their identity as a good, caring, and nature-loving people. We also learn what happens when those values come into conf…
What Should You Do With Climate Despair? A Conversation with Wen Stephenson
There’s no avoiding it: Things feel pretty bleak. To witness venture-capital-fueled AI domination, democracy’s steady drift toward authoritarianism, state-sanctioned genocide, and, of course, the collapse of one climate boundary after anoth…
S14, Ep5 | How the Fossil Fuel Industry Sabotages Climate Action
Climate obstruction isn’t just something the fossil fuel industry does, but they’ve certainly spearheaded and masterminded a lot of efforts. In this ep, an academic (Kristoffer Ekberg, from the University of Lund in Sweden), a nonprofit res…
S14, Ep4 | The Media As a Tool of Climate Obstruction
Obstruction would never have been as effective as it has been without the help of the PR industry and the willful ignorance of the media. Today, Melissa Aronczyk, of Rutgers University, and Max Boykoff, of the University of Colorado, join u…
S14, Ep 3 | The Psychology of Misinformation: Why Does It Work So Well?
If you want to understand how misinformation works in general…and anyone who cares about democracy should right now…there’s no one better to talk to than researchers who have been studying climate misinformation for years. In today's episod…
S14, Ep2 | Welcome to the Rapture! How Rightwing Populism and Accelerationism Intersect with Climate
Jesse Bryant (Yale) and Dieter Plehwe (University of Kassel) join us for a look at the intersection between the rise of rightwing populism and increasing resistance to acting on climate, with a particular focus on rising authoritarianism in…
S14, Ep1 | Welcome to the World of Obstruction
For at least a decade now, there’s been growing agreement around the fact that what’s stopping the world from addressing the climate crisis is not a lack of data or scientific certainty, or a lack of technological or policy measures availab…
Drilling Deep: The Golden Age of Oil-Funded Influence, with Casey Michel
Thanks to reporter Adam Lowenstein, we'll be bringing you lots more interviews with smart authors writing about climate, policy, democracy, and power. This week, Adam talks to Casey Michel, author of Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists …
The "Carbon Dominance" Strategy Driving Trump's Anti-Renewables Spree
Killing an offshore wind farm that's nearly complete makes no sense, even for a climate denier who thinks windmills kill whales. In this episode, political economist Mark Blyth walks Drilled reporter Royce Kurmelovs through the strategy beh…
Carbon Bros, Ep 4: Integration
The kings of the manosphere love to talk about “integrating” a man’s warrior and civilized self, but how about integrating men, and new ideas of masculinity, into the climate movement instead? What does that look like, who’s doing it, and w…
Why Is the Fossil Fuel Industry Funding Anti-Trans Politics?
In this eye-opening episode of Carbon Bros, we hear from special guest Vivian Taylor, a researcher on both trans rights and climate policy, on the shocking connections between fossil billionaires and anti-trans campaigns. Turns out, it’s ea…
S12, Ep6 | The SLAPP Heard 'Round the World
The verdict comes through, more than doubling the damages, at a time when repression of protest is accelerating in the U.S., but somehow Energy Transfer's lawyers claim it is a victory for free speech. As the trial and our season wrap up, w…
Carbon Bros, Ep 3: Climate Hysteria, Doomers, and Boy Math Solutions
Stop listening to hysterical Swedish teenagers and start listening to reasonable men! Some dudes do have solutions to the climate crisis; they just don’t involve messy interpersonal stuff, changing their lifestyles, or reorganizing the glob…
S12, Ep5: Sacred Sites
One of the charges Energy Transfer has made against Greenpeace is that the organization "defamed" the pipeline company by saying that construction of the pipeline was disturbing sites the tribe views as sacred. But the Standing Rock Sioux T…
Carbon Bros, Ep 2: Energy Dominance
When it comes to powering the US, “energy dominance” has become a favorite phrase of the Trump administration. But who or what are they trying to dominate with all that oil and gas? In this episode, we zoom out from climate change to trace …
Carbon Bros, Ep 1: The Testosterone Pipeline
Manosphere figures like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson aren’t just telling men how to treat their girlfriends or train for MMA fights; they’re also blasting their listeners with climate denial talking points. Which isn’t a coinc…
S12, Ep4: Back to the Water
Energy Transfer has successfully kept a lot of stuff out of the court, including the tribe's concerns about the pipeline's impact on their water source and how very valid that concern turned out to be. We learn about the spills and water…
Introducing: The Outlaw Ocean | A war on migration, funded by the EU (Libya Pt. 1)
Where the law of the land ends, the story begins. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ian Urbina returns with a new season of his riveting podcast anthology, The Outlaw Ocean, which explores the most lawless place on earth — the vast unpolice…
Hanna E. Morris on Apocalyptic Authoritarianism.
In her new book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power, University of Toronto media scholar Hanna E. Morris argues that whether they realize it or not, some climate journalists, obsessed with preserving a self-determ…
Coming Soon: Carbon Bros
Coming at you July 25th, Carbon Bros, a cross-over miniseries from Drilled and Non-Toxic. You’ve heard it from cable news pundits, Democratic strategists, and your favorite YouTuber: young men swung the last U.S. election for Trump. Unders…
S12, Ep3: The Charge
By this point, Energy Transfer has quietly dropped both Cody Hall and the other Indigenous activist initially named in the suit, Krystal Two Bulls, from the case and is focused solely on Greenpeace. So what exactly is Energy Transfer acc…
S12, Ep2: The Trial Begins
Alleen arrives in North Dakota for jury selection and is shocked watching it play out. The judge won't allow recording in the court, jurors who flat-out say they are biased against activists or are directly involved in the fossil fuel indus…
S12, Ep1: How did we get here?
Greenpeace, which was only tangentially involved in the Standing Rock protests, has been slapped with a $666 million bill for damages...despite the fact that the Dakota Access Pipeline was built, and has been making Energy Transfer millions…
“All Hell Breaks Loose”: How Big Oil Ruined a Small Texas Town
This week we're thrilled to be re-publishing a series on our site from The Xylom about a small town in Texas that happens to be the country's top oil export hub. But it wasn't always that way. About 10 years ago, residents bought houses nex…
New Season: SLAPP'd
This season on Drilled, investigative reporter Alleen Brown brings us the story of an Indigenous nation fighting for its water, an international environmental movement finding its voice, and an industry attempting to crush its political opp…
Malcolm Harris on the Radical, Liberating Possibilities of Realism
In his latest book, What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, Malcolm Harris encourages us to see the climate crisis for the complicated and terrifying problem that it is and tackle it at the scale it deserves. Here, he speaks …
Damages: New Evidence and an Update on Climate Liability Cases
A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists compiles in one place all the documentary evidence on the role of fossil fuel companies in obstructing climate policy. We walk through the latest, and get an update on climate cases in the…
How the U.S. Got the World to View Environmentalists as "Terrorists"
In the finale of our Real Free Speech Threat season, we look at how the U.S. military and its national security agencies have helped stoke a global crackdown on environmental protest, and bring you the inspiring story of one Filipino land d…
Coming Soon: The Man-o-Sphere
Introducing…our first podcast crossover season! Later this year we’ll be bringing you a season in collaboration with the podcast Non-Toxic, hosted by journalist and culture critic Daniel Penny, about the intersection between masculinity and…
New Research: The Advertorials Many Media Outlets Make for Oil Companies Are Misleading, But They Don't Have to Be
We have covered before how the fossil fuel industry created the advertorial and how it continues work with media on the modern incarnation: sponsored content, created by the media outlets themselves. To be clear, it’s outlets’ internal bran…
The Massive Climate Case that Shell Both Won and Lost, and What It Means for the Future of Global Climate Litigation
In November, a Dutch court ruled in Shell's favor on an appeal in a big international climate case. It got loads of headlines around the world, but it wasn't quite the win for Shell that a lot of media coverage has made it out to be. Althou…
Fuel to Fork: The Role the Oil and Gas Industry Plays in Food-based Emissions
From October-December 2024, Fuel to Fork is taking over the Feed podcast with a 7-episode series exposing the hidden role fossil fuels play in the food we eat. Today, Fuel to Fork co-hosts Anna Lappé and Matthew Kessler join us to talk thro…
Genevieve Guenther on the Language of Climate Politics
In her new book, The Language of Climate Politics, Guenther digs into six key rhetorical devices that are being used to slow or block climate action. For an academic book, it's made some folks on the Internet awfully mad. In this episode we…