Amy Westervelt

Julie Suk is the Leonard F. Manning Professor of Law at Fordham University and the author of The Shadow Court, Rescuing Democracy from the Supreme Court.

Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Amy Westervelt.

She's an award-winning investigative climate journalist and the host of Drilled, a true crime podcast about climate change.

And she has a new book out called Brought to You By, How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy.

Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Real Organic Podcast, where we interview policymakers, journalists, farmers, professors, activists, chefs, and more, all working to reinvigorate the organic movement and bring integrity back to our label.

You just heard from climate journalist Amy Westervelt, host of the true crime climate change podcast called Drilled.

Amy's podcast exposes how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate deli- denial and delay in action.

Although Amy's focus is greatly centered on the oil industry, the knowledge she shares in this interview about the high art of crafting intentionally misleading corporate PR campaigns, otherwise known as disinformation or greenwashing.

Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to Examined: The Backfire Effect wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to The Real Organic Podcast.

I'm talking today with Amy Westervelt, and, um, Amy, I'm so glad that you're here.

We, we tried to do this four years ago-

[upbeat music] Hello, welcome to Drilled.

I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is a new segment we're doing, hopefully every week in between narrative seasons, called The Spill.

Um, Aline and Nina, introduce yourselves.

Hi, I'm Nina Lakhani.

Okay, let's get into it.

[upbeat music] I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is Drilled.

Over the past couple episodes, you've heard in detail how TigerSwan, the private security firm hired by Energy Transfer to deal with the Standing Rock protests, mounted a propaganda campaign aimed at fanning the flames of division in the community and turning people against the protesters as much as possible.

Today, we're gonna do something a little bit different.

We are proud members of Reporter Shield, who provided legal risk assessment for this series.

Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project.

Drilled was created by me, Amy Westervelt.

The show is distributed by Pushkin Industries.

We will talk with you next week.

Big thanks to our producer, Sammy Junio, our network Critical Frequency and its founder, Amy Westervelt, for helping us launch this show so quickly.

Additional thanks to collaborators Lucy Little, Julie Carley and Todd Wiseman.

Music in this episode is by APM Music and Blue Dot Sessions.

First America is produced by Critical Frequency and distributed by Pushkin Industries.

Our managing producer is Amy Westervelt.

Senior producer and sound designer is Brendan Baker.

Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.

And I think when we start to think about how big medicine is, how much is going on right now, that is so antithetical to health and humanity and being human and taking care of our planet, which is the source of our life.

In my episodes that I did previously with award-winning investigative climate journalist and dear friend of mine, Amy Westervelt, I mean, she shared with us that climate scientists say the planet is going to be fine.

It's human beings that are not going to be fine.

And when you sit with how wild it is that We might think that we could poison our soil and our water and our air and dam our rivers and fish animals to their extinction and forcibly move people from their ancestral land and dig into our earth to take out all the precious minerals and log it and decimate it.

But somehow, details of the pipeline company's efforts to undermine the movement are still coming to light.

I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is Drilled.

Last year, we brought you Slapped, from reporter Aline Brown, the story of the pipeline company Energy Transfer's massive lawsuit blaming Greenpeace for the Standing Rock movement.

Energy Transfer won that suit, and the judgment was so large it puts the future of Greenpeace in the US at risk.

We are proud members of Reporter Shield, who provided legal risk assessment for this series.

Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project.

Drilled was created by me, Amy Westervelt.

The show is distributed by Pushkin Industries.