Climate Podcast ‘Drilled’ Season 6 Leaks About Gas That Isn't Natural

 A thousand-year flood in Europe. Forest fires in the western U.S. that are larger in area than four states. A heat dome that has killed hundreds. A major city in southern Florida under siege from sea level rise. 

There can be no doubt that climate change is a hot topic.

That's why it's especially timely that on July 16, the most listened-to podcast on climate change Drilled launched its sixth season “Bridge to Nowhere” exploring the rise of the natural gas industry. The first episode just came out, with a new episode every Friday.

 

Broken into three parts, the season will use muckraking host Amy Westervelt’s new research and reporting to explore the connection between fracking and plastics in Part 1 (“Pipelines to Plastic,” July 16 - August 6), how the natural gas industry fooled everyone into thinking it was a safe alternative to fossil fuels in Part 2 (“Gas Bubble,” September 17 – October 8), and the story of an Ohio community ravaged by the petrochemical industry in Part 3 (“Frackalachia,” dates TBA).

 

“We’re at this moment once again where the fossil fuel industry is pushing the idea of natural gas as a ‘low carbon’ alternative fuel, a bridge to renewables, an integral part of the clean energy transition,” Westervelt explains. “So it’s really important that people understand the immediate environmental concerns and long-term climate impacts of this stuff. To highlight the issue from all sides, instead of telling one long story this season, we’ve broken it into three parts, each looking at a different side of the problem.”

 

 Drilled is one of the few narrative podcasts about climate change. In 2018 when journalist Amy Westervelt was covering multiple climate lawsuits, she had the idea to put the story of climate change, and climate denial, into a true-crime framework. Season 1 (November 2018) focused on the climate research conducted by oil companies and when and how they shifted from studying the problem to denying it. 

 

Season 2 (April 2019) followed a community of crab fishermen as they became the first industry to sue Big Oil. Season 3 (January 2020) chronicled the 100-year history of fossil fuel P.R. campaigns and ties them to the propaganda we still see today. Season 4 looked at how the fossil fuel industry used the Covid-19 pandemic to roll back regulation, and Season 5 chronicled the decades-long legal battle between indigenous groups in the Ecuadorian Amazon and Chevron. 

 

Multiple future seasons are already in the works for the year to come. What began as a limited-run 8-part series has become the most listened-to podcast on climate change.

 

 In 2020, Drilled won the iHeartRadio Podcast Award for "Best Green Podcast” and in 2019, it won the Online News Association award for “Excellence in Audio Storytelling." In addition, Westervelt won an Edward R. Murrow award in 2016 and a Rachel Carson award for "women greening journalism" in 2015.

 

 Amy Westervelt is the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, and an award-winning print and audio journalist. In 2016 she won an Edward R. Murrow award for her series on the impacts of the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, and in 2019 she won the Online News Association award for “Excellence in Audio Storytelling”. 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.

 

Drilled Season 6 is only the beginning of an ambitious slate of projects from Westervelt this year. This fall, she will launch Rigged, a new web project and companion podcast focused on the history and functionality of disinformation, and Damages, a new legal-drama podcast focused on climate lawsuits.