Herb: New Podcast Series From Drilled's Amy Westervelt

You have to hand it to podcaster Amy Westervelt. She apparently never sleeps, running her own podcast network, Critical Frequency, and creating/producing/hosting multiple podcasts about climate change.

So this week, award-winning climate podcaster Amy Westervelt has launched a new three-episode miniseries called Herb.

The podcast investigates the history of how fossil fuel companies quietly, insidiously, created the concept of "corporate free speech" (as seen in Supreme Court cases like Citizens United) through the story of its titular character: Herb Schmertz, the Mobil Oil VP who got the oil guys into the corporate free speech business in the 1970s.

I've listened to the first episode, and don't let his first name -- Herb -- fool you into thinking he's some mindless suit working in the C-suite of a large corporation.

No. Herb Schmertz is an evil genius, who uses the Cold War tactics of brainwashing people without their knowledge of being so influenced.

If you've ever seen a feel-good TV ad about the power of teachers or female athletes or saving the environment, and then it weirdly ends with the incongruous logo of, say, ExxonMobil or BP, and you wondered what the story was there…this is the story.

As with so much of Westervelt's work, the miniseries takes a historical subject that may sound dry or homeworky and makes it lively and brisk. People have called her podcast Drilled "climate stories through a true-crime lens" and there's some of that here.

Why do companies—oil companies especially—spend so much money producing feel-good ads that seem unrelated to what the companies actually do? Inspiring messages about female athletes from Chevron, an ode to the power of teachers from crude oil producer Conoco Philips, Aramco’s multi-million-dollar purchase of a professional soccer team in the UK. These (real) marketing programs, and many more like them, are not so much about being a good corporate citizen as they are about seeming like a citizen, period. Someone with ideas and policy positions, morals and ethics. A philosophy. A reputation. And, most importantly, a personality.

Host Amy Westervelt uncovers how Herb's work influences all this nefarious feel-good messaging from oil companies today and explores Mobil's (and then ExxonMobil's) role in setting the legal foundation for the expansion of corporate free speech in Supreme Court cases from Bellotti to Citizens United.

Today, oil company lawyers are looking to further expand corporate free speech protections, making the argument in more than two dozen climate cases that everything oil companies have ever said about climate change is protected speech, including statements they knew were misleading. Legal analysts familiar with these cases have begun echoing what Westervelt has said all along: the next Citizens United will probably be a climate case.

“As soon as I saw that oil companies had appointed First Amendment experts, not liability experts, as lead counsel in the climate cases, I figured these cases would ultimately hinge on a free speech argument,” Westervelt says. “What I did not know, and few did, was that fossil fuel companies had played an integral role in creating the whole idea of corporate free speech in the first place.”

Listen to Episode 1, “The Panic,” wherever you get podcasts. Episode 2, “A Legal Victory,” will be out July 25 and Episode 3, “Moving the Goalposts,” will be out August 1.