How Corporations Warped the Truth, with Amy Westervelt

Investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt, host of Drilled, joins The Lonely Liberal to talk about her new book *Brought to You By: How Corporations Warped the Truth, Conned the Public, and Broke Democracy*, and the century-long corporate propaganda machine behind today’s disinformation. Amy argues disinformation isn’t a social media problem. It’s the result of more than 100 years of PR men, think tanks, and oil companies working to shape what we believe so they could avoid regulation, taxes, and accountability. We get into the PR pioneer who pushed the “crisis actor” myth in 1914, the oil industry money that paid a Catholic priest to preach free-market capitalism, how Mobil invented the advertorial, and where the “offshore wind kills whales” story really came from. We also talk about Michael Shellenberger, Elon Musk and X, whether the left needs its own propaganda machine, AI and data centers, and whether we can still have a Silent Spring moment. 📖 *Brought to You By* (Bloomsbury): https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/brought-to-you-by-9781639736331/ 🎧 Drilled: https://drilled.media/ Chapters 0:00 Intro +00:00 Michigan's Upper Peninsula +02:32 From online-shopping magazine to managing editor at 23 +05:22 The Gavin Newsom story (remove if not airing) +10:51 How a Shell case study started her climate reporting +13:27 Big Oil money paid a Catholic priest +14:56 The "offshore wind kills whales" myth +20:40 Disinformation is a symptom, not the disease +24:43 Ivy Lee and the 1914 crisis-actor myth +26:53 Herb Schmertz, Mobil, and the invention of the advertorial +34:37 Today's propagandists: Michael Shellenberger +39:48 Does the left need its own propaganda machine? +43:19 How the Atlas Network builds a movement +45:54 Why radical flanks work +47:49 AI, data centers, and climate +50:51 Can we still have a Silent Spring moment? +56:46 Mamdani, El-Sayed, and the hunger for moral clarity