S12, Ep4: Back to the Water

Where the law of the land ends, the story begins. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ian Urbina returns with a new season of his riveting podcast anthology, The Outlaw Ocean, which explores the most lawless place on earth — the vast unpoliceable ocean.  In this episode, the Libyan Coast Guard is doing the European Union’s dirty work, capturing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and throwing them in secretive prisons. There, they are extorted, abused and sometimes killed. An investigation into the death of Aliou Candé, a young farmer and father from Gineau-Bisseau, puts the Outlaw Ocean team in the cross-hairs of Libya’s violent and repressive regime. In this stunning three-part series, we take you inside the walls of one of the most dangerous prisons, in a lawless regime where the world’s forgotten migrants languish. More episodes of The Outlaw Ocean are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/drilled Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her new book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power, University of Toronto media scholar Hanna E. Morris argues that whether they realize it or not, some climate journalists, obsessed with preserving a self-determined “moderate center,” are deploying some of the same tropes and reinforcing some of the same narratives as the extreme right. Even as they see themselves defending democracy and confronting the climate crisis, these media elites might be contributing to a prize sought by both the MAGA right and the fossil fuel industry: Preventing the emergence of a hopeful, democratic, and class-defying movement against climate change. Earlier this month, Morris spoke with Drilled about the who gets to choose which climate solutions are “right” and which ones are “wrong,” what the media’s divergent treatment of the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act reveals about its entrenched biases, and why a sense of fatalism and inevitability seems to pervade so much mainstream climate coverage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Energy Transfer has successfully kept a lot of stuff out of the court, including the tribe's concerns about the pipeline's impact on their water source and how very valid that concern turned out to be. We learn about the spills and water issues the pipeline has already caused. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Coming at you July 25th, Carbon Bros, a cross-over miniseries from Drilled and Non-Toxic. You’ve heard it from cable news pundits, Democratic strategists, and your favorite YouTuber: young men swung the last U.S. election for Trump. Understanding what’s driving “the manosphere” and how to reach the young men in its grips is on everyone’s mind right now, but we’re zooming in on a different corner of it: the intersection between male grievance culture and climate denial. Why are American men less likely than women to believe in climate change, or take personal or political actions against it? What does their reluctance to deal with the climate crisis have to do with men’s shift to the right in general? And what can be done to reverse it? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By this point, Energy Transfer has quietly dropped both Cody Hall and the other Indigenous activist initially named in the suit, Krystal Two Bulls, from the case and is focused solely on Greenpeace. So what exactly is Energy Transfer accusing them of? And what evidence do they have? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Alleen arrives in North Dakota for jury selection and is shocked watching it play out. The judge won't allow recording in the court, jurors who flat-out say they are biased against activists or are directly involved in the fossil fuel industry are put on the jury. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greenpeace, which was only tangentially involved in the Standing Rock protests, has been slapped with a $666 million bill for damages...despite the fact that the Dakota Access Pipeline was built, and has been making Energy Transfer millions of dollars for years. How did we get here? Cody Hall, an Indigenous water protector who was a key figure during the Standing Rock protests and was initially also targeted in Energy Transfer's suit, walks us through how things went down back in 2016 and 2017, and where this suit began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we're thrilled to be re-publishing a series on our site from The Xylom about a small town in Texas that happens to be the country's top oil export hub. But it wasn't always that way. About 10 years ago, residents bought houses next to a naval base -- maybe not ideal, but they could get a house near the ocean in an affluent, sleepy community. Then the naval base shut down, the export terminals took over and this predominantly white, conservative affluent town became a fenceline community. Alex Ip, who reported and wrote the series, joins the podcast this week to tell us more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This season on Drilled, investigative reporter Alleen Brown brings us the story of an Indigenous nation fighting for its water, an international environmental movement finding its voice, and an industry attempting to crush its political opposition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his latest book, What's Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis, Malcolm Harris encourages us to see the climate crisis for the complicated and terrifying problem that it is and tackle it at the scale it deserves. Here, he speaks to reporter Adam Lowenstein about what that looks like and how surprisingly good it can feel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices