Drilled Podcast Host Amy Westervelt: No Is Not In Her Vocabulary

Drilled Podcast Host and Critical Frequency Podcast Network Founder Amy Westervelt will tell you that she’s not afraid of hearing the word “No” in response to her questions, requests, ideas, and innovations.

“I want to start a podcast about climate change.” NO.

Drilled, her climate change podcast, is in its sixth season, with more than a million downloads.

“I want to publish an investigative series on the serious safety and environmental issues surrounding the Tesla Gigfactory in Nevada.’ NO.

Westervelt won the 2016 prestigious Edward R. Murrow award for her series.

“I want to start a podcast network by women and for women and men.” NO.

Westervelt’s successful podcast network, Critical Frequency, produces more than a dozen podcasts.

 Amy Westervelt was kind enough to sit down with Ear Worthy and answer some questions about her life, career, and refusal to accept NO.

Drilled Podcast Host / Critical Frequency Founder Amy Westervelt

 

  Q. You've been writing about the environment for many years, including GreenBiz, Forbes, and others. When did you first develop a strong interest in the environment and climate change specifically?

 Amy: When I was about 23, I was freelancing...badly. I was about not to make rent, and a friend of mine who worked at an engineering firm threw me a life raft. They needed some case studies written up about various projects they'd done. It was straightforward, paid well, and paid weekly. Most of the stuff was about as dry as you'd imagine an engineering case study to be, but one of them was about re-engineering Shell's offshore oil platforms, and I saw that part of the client brief dealt with sea-level rise. We're talking early 2000s here, and I thought, "huh. This seems like way more acknowledgment of climate change than I've seen from oil companies." That got me digging into how oil companies talk about climate change versus how they act, and I've been chipping away at that topic off and on ever since.

Q. What was the reaction of established podcast networks when you first pitched them the concept for Drilled?

Amy: That there was no audience for climate podcasts, and that they didn't see how a climate podcast could really be narrative in form and scope. At the time, the only shows tackling the topic were talk shows focused on science or policy, and no one really understood that I was pitching something different.

 Q. Was the challenge for you that your idea about a climate change podcast was ahead of its time? Or that being a woman blunted offers from podcast networks? Or both? Was the politicization of climate change a factor in rejection?

Amy: I think it was mainly that no one had done it. They needed a proof of concept.

 Q.  When did you decide to begin Critical Frequency? How complicated was the entire birthing process of a new network?

 Amy: Honestly, it was sort of by accident at first. I worked at Reno Public Radio and a colleague there, Julia Ritchey, and I wanted to start a narrative podcast focused on stories of the West. Reno is a *fascinating* place to report, and you know when you're gathering tape for a newscast, you wind up with like eight hours of tape for a four-minute feature, which leaves very little room for colorful characters.

So we started a show called Range. We talked to our station about picking it up, but they wanted more control and ownership than we wanted to give up. We built a pretty good-sized audience early on, and so a few friends and acquaintances started asking for help with their podcasts, plus we had other ideas, and then a website I'd been working for (Dame) wanted to get into podcasts, so we made a couple of shows for them. It was easier to get attention from the podcast apps at the time as a network than as one-off shows, so we pulled all the shows into a network.

 At first, it was only in name only, but I quickly realized a need for an indie network focused on marginalized voices and launched Critical Frequency more seriously. At the same time, I was trying to pitch Drilled to other places, and no one wanted to go for it, so I thought fuck it, I'll just make it. I got a small grant to help fund the first season and did it on a total shoestring, primarily working through the night, so my kids wouldn't interrupt me.

 Since then, Critical Frequency has really evolved to focus on reported narrative shows, mostly climate-focused for our original shows but all over the map for other folks.

 Q. Your network hosts two other climate change podcasts -- Hot Take & No Place Like Home. How do the three podcasts complement each other?

 Amy: It's actually three other ones— Hot Take, No Place Like Home, and Inherited—and we're about to launch another one this fall, Damages (focused on climate court cases). We also put out the podcast version of the documentary Generation Green New Deal. I don't think there's any reason there can't be just as many types of climate shows as there are economics, politics, or history shows. Each of ours does something different and reaches a different sort of audience. Drilled is investigative journalism, Hot Take is media criticism focused on framing and talking about the climate crisis. 

No Place Like Home tackles the climate crisis's mental, emotional, and spiritual side. Inherited is storytelling by, for, and about the youth climate movement, and Generation Green New Deal (GND) is a docuseries about the evolution of the Sunrise Movement and the GND. They all complement each other, but each takes its own unique approach to the topic 

  Q.  Now that iHeart just created a genre category for climate change in its podcast universe, do you feel the category will become even more crowded?

 Amy: I don't think so -- it will be interesting to see if other apps follow suit and what impact that has. In my experience in other forms of media, putting climate into a category tends to narrow the audience for it, but we'll see what happens here.

 Q. Do you believe that there is a greater consensus about climate change today among people across the political spectrum?

 Amy: It's not about whether I believe it. That's what the polling data shows. The latest Pew research shows that 60 percent of the U.S. public now views climate change as a “major” threat — up from 44 percent about a decade ago—and two-thirds of Americans say they think the government should do something about climate change. That includes more than half of Republicans and an overwhelming majority of Democrats.

 Yale opinion polls show that 72 percent of Americans believe climate change is real (although 32 percent still believe it's caused mainly by natural cycles), and 75 percent support regulating CO2 as a pollutant, again across the political spectrum. 

 Q. There is an excellent USA Today podcast called The City. In season 2, they covered Reno and the battle between its checkered past and its aspirational future. One key topic was the Tesla Gigafactory, with a bonus episode on how Tesla battled state safety officials over egregious safety violations and employee injuries at the plant. I know you've reported at length on the same or similar issue. Any thoughts on reporting on the Gigafactory on Drilled from the viewpoint of renewable energy development and its potential negative impact when companies ignore safety regulations and environmental impact on manufacturing?

 Amy: I listened to that season because I used to work in Reno! Actually I won a Murrow award back in 2016 for the series I did for Reno public radio on the potentially negative impacts of the gigafactory, environmental and otherwise. I absolutely think there could be a Drilled season on the potentially negative impacts of renewable energy development--right now, I'm particularly concerned about lithium mining and what happens when the same colonist mindset that drove oil development gets applied to that resource.

 Q.  Finally, I've written about Earios, a women-run podcast network with some excellent shows. Do you know them? Work in concert with them to support opportunities for women in podcasting?

Amy: I don't know them, but I remember being at Werk It when they launched! There are many women-run podcast networks these days — Wonder Media Network launched shortly after us, Lantigua Williams, Limonada, and the O.G. was Mignon Fogarty and her Quick & Dirty Tips network — I've always worked to support opportunities for women in podcasting and always will. 

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The status quo doesn’t get much respect from Amy Westervelt. And rightly so. In her career, she’s battled sexism, climate change deniers, Tesla uber-fans, podcast snobs, and even media misogynists.

But unlike some visionaries, she doesn't relish tearing the walls down of the establishment without having a capable replacement. When climate change deniers brought snowballs into Congress, Amy started a climate change podcast. When established podcast networks doubted her media savvy, Amy started a successful podcast network.

 When Amy grew tired of the messaging society delivered to new mothers, she wrote a book -- Forget "Having It All": How America Messed Up Motherhood—and How to Fix It – in 2018.

Speaking about the genesis of the book, Amy explains: “You may have noticed lately that American mothers are stressed out. A couple of years ago, I went looking for a book that would tell me why. I didn’t find it, so I decided to write it.

“After hundreds of interviews and a lot of hours spent researching through the archives in the Library of Congress, it’s finally here. The book examines our cultural notions of motherhood, how they impact all women, whether they decide to have kids, and what we can do to improve matters.”

 So the next time you encounter closed minds, narrow-minded thinking, racism, sexism, and bigotry disguised as traditional values, do what Amy Westervelt has done.

 Don’t take NO for an answer. And say YES to participating in change.

 Photo Credit: Isabella Reyes-Klein