Three Climate Podcasts Return for Earth Day Week

This week, independent investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt is bringing back not one but three of her climate podcasts: Drilled, Damages, and Hot Take. Drilled launches today, Damages on Thursday, and Hot Take on Friday, Earth Day.

Drilled’s new batch of episodes, part two of its season about the gas industry which began last fall, focuses on the industry's role as the "New Climate Villains." For decades, gas was accepted as a part of the solution on climate, a "bridge fuel," but in recent years advocates and policymakers have remembered that gas is also a fossil fuel and that its primary emission, methane, is a potent greenhouse gas. It's a new role for gas--part of the problem--and the companies that stand to lose as gas becomes less preferable are not taking it lying down. The series takes an investigative look at the largest gas utility in the country, SoCal Gas, and the lengths it has gone to try to maintain gas's grip on the energy industry, from hiring actors to protest at city council meetings to threatening to deliberately cause Covid superspreader events.

Damages, Westervelt’s new podcast about climate lawsuits, digs into some of the big legal ideas shaking up climate action in Season 2, from the new international crime of “ecocide” to the secret tribunals corporations use to try to block environmental laws. Additional topics explored in this season’s six episodes include: What can the United Nations actually do to force climate action; the legal right to a healthy environment; and why, outside the U.S., most climate cases focus on holding governments accountable, while in America they mostly go after private companies.

Hot Take, which Westervelt co-hosts with Mary Annaïse Heglar, returns for the first time since its acquisition by Crooked Media in February. Episode One, “The Real Fuckbois of Fossil Fuel” rages against the fossil fuel machine and advocates getting Earth Day back to its Civil Rights-inspired roots. Forthcoming episodes also explore the fall of democracy and how it intersects with climate change with Adam Serwer (The Atlantic), toxic masculinity and climate with Rebecca Solnit (The Guardian), and looking at the Covid-climate intersections two years later with David Wallace-Wells (New York Times).

All three podcasts are available on all podcast platforms.

ABOUT AMY WESTERVELT

Amy Westervelt is the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, and an award-winning print and audio journalist. She contributes to The Guardian, The Nation, and Rolling Stone, and has previously contributed to The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, KQED, The California Report, Capital Public Radio, and many other outlets. In 2007, she won a Folio for her feature on the potential of algae as a feedstock for biofuel. In 2015 she was awarded a Rachel Carson award for "women greening journalism", in 2016 she won an Edward R. Murrow award for her series on the impacts of the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, in 2019 she won the Online News Association award for “Excellence in Audio Storytelling,” and in 2021 she won Covering Climate Now’s audio award. As the head of Critical Frequency, she has executive produced more than a dozen podcasts, including projects with Stitcher’s Witness Docs and Crooked Media. Her book Forget Having It All: How America Messed Up Motherhood, and How to Fix It was published in November 2018 by Seal Press.

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For more information regarding Amy Westervelt, contact Ray Padgett (raypadgett@shorefire.com) or Mark Satlof (msatlof@shorefire.com) at Shore Fire Media.