Sep 15, 2026 · 1 hr 21 min · 24 segments
This week we’re sharing a special episode from our friends at the Real Organic Podcast, the Anthem-award-winning “Best Sustainability, Environment & Climate Podcast” produced by the Real Organic…
Amy WesterveltGuestDave ChapmanHostLinley DixonHostSo y- you do a lot of work around, hmm, the influence of large corporate entities-
... and how they have done really an amazing job of sculpting America into being a world that works for them better than it used to.
When, when did that really take off? I mean, when, when did things, when did things change?
Well, I mean, in a way, I think from an information perspective, I would say that things changed really at the turn of the 20th century, [chuckles] you know? Um, because you start to get...
You know? You have, at the, the first, you know, 50 to 100 years, like, they're doing pretty well.
Most of the people who have the right to vote, their interests align with the people that are running the big companies, so there's not a huge amount of pushback against what the large, um, industrialists wanna do.
And all of a sudden, right at the turn of the century, really, like, you get some of the first laws are passed on corporations in the US.
You have investigative journalists starting to do these big exposés, you know, like Upton Sinclair and the food industry, or Ida Tarbell and Standard Oil, um, to show that, you know, these companies aren't ma- maybe aren't the, the great pioneers that we might have been told they were.
And then you also have the vote extending to more and more groups of people that don't necessarily share the interests of the Rockefellers and, um, and their colleagues, you know? [chuckles] And so into that kind of situation, you have the, the birth of corporate PR, um, because these companies need a way to shape the information that voters are getting in a way that will make them more likely to vote against their own interests and in the interests of the corporations that have a lot at stake at this point.
Specific industries like the, um, tobacco industry, coal, oil, rail actually was a really early one as well, chemicals right there at the beginning as well, um, they all start to use these tactics and techniques to try to shape the context that they're operating in and to, to deal with, I call it creeping democracy.
[chuckles] Um, they, they're like, they're concerned about how much, um, control is getting away from them, and they need to, um, kind of wrestle that back in a way, and corporate PR really helps them do that because they can do things that really shift the context in which people are voting.
My, my, like, favorite example of this is Edward Bernays, 'cause I just think he was such a, a genius.
Sigmund Freud's nephew, so he grew up, like- ... learning about psychoanalysis around the dinner table, you know? And he had this in mind as he went to work for different companies, and people would hire him to do...
Like when, when we think about PR it's like, oh, you know, they're, they want their executive to be interviewed in The New York Times, or they are doing a press conference, or they wanna sell more cars or whatever, but he would get hired to change social norms.
So like, you know, when the tobacco companies hired him, they wanted him to help them get rid of the taboo on women smoking, because they-
So y- you do a lot of work around, hmm, the influence of large corporate entities-
... and how they have done really an amazing job of sculpting America into being a world that works for them better than it used to.
When, when did that really take off? I mean, when, when did things, when did things change?
Well, I mean, in a way, I think from an information perspective, I would say that things changed really at the turn of the 20th century, [chuckles] you know? Um, because you start to get...
You know? You have, at the, the first, you know, 50 to 100 years, like, they're doing pretty well.
Most of the people who have the right to vote, their interests align with the people that are running the big companies, so there's not a huge amount of pushback against what the large, um, industrialists wanna do.
And all of a sudden, right at the turn of the century, really, like, you get some of the first laws are passed on corporations in the US.
You have investigative journalists starting to do these big exposés, you know, like Upton Sinclair and the food industry, or Ida Tarbell and Standard Oil, um, to show that, you know, these companies aren't ma- maybe aren't the, the great pioneers that we might have been told they were.
And then you also have the vote extending to more and more groups of people that don't necessarily share the interests of the Rockefellers and, um, and their colleagues, you know? [chuckles] And so into that kind of situation, you have the, the birth of corporate PR, um, because these companies need a way to shape the information that voters are getting in a way that will make them more likely to vote against their own interests and in the interests of the corporations that have a lot at stake at this point.
Specific industries like the, um, tobacco industry, coal, oil, rail actually was a really early one as well, chemicals right there at the beginning as well, um, they all start to use these tactics and techniques to try to shape the context that they're operating in and to, to deal with, I call it creeping democracy.
[chuckles] Um, they, they're like, they're concerned about how much, um, control is getting away from them, and they need to, um, kind of wrestle that back in a way, and corporate PR really helps them do that because they can do things that really shift the context in which people are voting.
My, my, like, favorite example of this is Edward Bernays, 'cause I just think he was such a, a genius.
Sigmund Freud's nephew, so he grew up, like- ... learning about psychoanalysis around the dinner table, you know? And he had this in mind as he went to work for different companies, and people would hire him to do...
Like when, when we think about PR it's like, oh, you know, they're, they want their executive to be interviewed in The New York Times, or they are doing a press conference, or they wanna sell more cars or whatever, but he would get hired to change social norms.
So like, you know, when the tobacco companies hired him, they wanted him to help them get rid of the taboo on women smoking, because they-
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
3 of 10
The Corporate Information Machine
Corporate power operates through coordinated information systems
Oil Knew Climate Danger
Oil companies knew climate danger decades ago
When Funding Silences Research
Research funding can silence inconvenient health questions
+7 more clips · 16 min 15 sec of audio in all
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 10 clips — the highlight moments, each cut as its own audio, with a title and a speaker
All 24 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 25 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.
