WEBVTT - The ABCs of Big Oil | Ep 3: High School 0:00:13.520 --> 0:00:14.680 My name is William Shatner. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.280 In this film, I play a successful American farmer, Eric Pearson. 0:00:21.600 --> 0:00:25.040 There are many opinions about America's rapid growth. Some say 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.760 the character of our people cause it, some say our 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:32.159 gift for organization. Eric Pearson believes there is one main reason, 0:00:32.720 --> 0:00:36.400 the land. In this program, he tries to prove that 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.880 the ground we stand on inspired, even dictated America's pattern 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:41.360 of growth. 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:52.360 Welcome to high school, Meet your teacher, William Shatner. This 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.520 is from that series you mentioned in episode one. It's 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:59.760 called American Enterprise and it was commissioned by Phillips Petroleum 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.960 and in nineteen seventies they got William Shatner to host 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:06.360 the whole thing. And in each of five vignettes, he 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:09.720 plays a different character, each with a different take on 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.119 why the American economy grew the way it. 0:01:12.080 --> 0:01:18.560 Did so right off the bat, unshocked economic growth. His 0:01:18.640 --> 0:01:22.200 position does a good thing, There's no questioning that. And 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.759 the series was created for high school civics and economics 0:01:25.760 --> 0:01:29.679 classes to help teach American teens about how the American 0:01:29.680 --> 0:01:32.160 economy was shaped and how it's supposed to work. 0:01:32.400 --> 0:01:32.880 That's right. 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:35.800 It was distributed to schools and community groups through a 0:01:35.800 --> 0:01:40.280 company called Modern Talking Pictures. Their distribution plan for the 0:01:40.319 --> 0:01:45.080 series had it reaching twelve million people a year. Darna, 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.600 Let's take a listen to the one liberal character that 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:50.600 Shatner plays in this series. 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:53.080 My name is William Shatner. 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:57.240 In this film, I played Tom Novak, a community college 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:01.120 professor who was field as ethnic studies. Tom's the third 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:03.920 generation American and the first member of his family to 0:02:03.960 --> 0:02:07.640 graduate from college. He has some strong ideas about what, 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:13.880 or rather who made America happen for him. Our economic 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.120 growth is rooted in the special character of the American people. 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:24.359 Alice Island America's immigration gateway. 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:27.000 God, I love it. 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.839 What so immigrants make America great, but only because their 0:02:30.880 --> 0:02:33.920 hard work grows the American economy, right, got it? 0:02:34.040 --> 0:02:36.359 Got it? And you'll notice that. 0:02:36.520 --> 0:02:40.200 So far there's been no mention of petroleum, and later 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.000 references to it do show up here and there, But 0:02:43.360 --> 0:02:47.440 mostly this series is actually focused on these two broader ideas. 0:02:47.760 --> 0:02:50.840 The first one is that capitalism is great, and the 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:53.720 second one is that nature is a resource that's basically 0:02:53.760 --> 0:02:57.639 to be used for economic benefit. Only that totally sums 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.600 it up, and that's the focus of all lot. 0:03:00.480 --> 0:03:05.160 Of oil funded educational materials. Again, this idea goes way 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:09.160 back to way before anyone was talking about climate change. 0:03:09.320 --> 0:03:13.120 American industrialists were really invested in pushing a particular approach 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.400 to nature, really from the early days of America's founding. 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:23.280 Melissa Roncik, a media studies professor at Rutgers University, has 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:25.560 spent a ton of time digging into how this very 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:29.880 particular approach to nature came about in America. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.280 So essentially, if we want to look at the beginning 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:38.240 of a twentieth century national awareness about the need to 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:41.360 protect the natural environment, we have to look at the 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:46.560 naturalist John Muir and the forester different Pinchot, and we 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.680 especially have to look at how they interacted, because each 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:54.200 of them came to stand for very different idea of 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:57.800 what nature and forests in the environment meant in the 0:03:57.880 --> 0:03:58.600 United States. 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.280 So, okay, Melissa mentioned John Muir, who I think most 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:05.960 of us have probably heard of, but Gifford Pinchot maybe 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.120 not so much. He was the country's first forester, the 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:13.000 very first head of the US Forestry Service, And while 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:16.080 mirror really pushed this idea of conservation and nature for 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.000 nature's sake, like this pristine nature idea that the fossil 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.240 fuel industry has been trying to pin on environmentalists ever 0:04:23.320 --> 0:04:23.760 since then. 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:26.680 Pinchot viewed it as a resource. 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:30.000 He viewed nature as a resource, or more specifically, as 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:31.279 an economic resource. 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:36.640 For Gifford Pinchot, natural resources were just that resources. It 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:40.839 was lumber that Americans needed for development. It was water 0:04:40.960 --> 0:04:45.640 that may be needed for serving cities that didn't have 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:50.159 enough natural water resources. And there was an economic benefit 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:53.680 to protecting forests, but you had to protect them for 0:04:53.800 --> 0:04:57.560 the service of American enterprise in the American economy. 0:04:57.839 --> 0:04:59.800 And we all know who went out in the debate 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:03.960 between Mirror and Pincho. Merr's name may be remembered, but 0:05:04.040 --> 0:05:07.560 it's Pincho's ideas about nature that underpin the American approach 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:08.440 to the environment. 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.400 This, of course, leaves out the approach. 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.320 Of the many nations of people who were already living 0:05:14.360 --> 0:05:17.160 on this land before the colonizers showed up. 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:21.480 But it's really important to just mention that neither John 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:26.080 Muir's nor different Pinchot's visions included the indigenous people who 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.320 were living on this land long before either of them 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:34.160 came along, and that entire story of what the indigenous 0:05:34.200 --> 0:05:38.119 people's on the land, did with nature, how they viewed nature, 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:41.200 their relationship with nature, that was completely ignored in this 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:42.039 American story. 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:43.840 Yeah, and it's wild. 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:45.839 I mean, so many people I think are just realizing 0:05:45.960 --> 0:05:50.279 now that maybe indigenous approaches to environmental management actually hold 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.400 some wisdom at any rate. This turn toward nature as 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.520 an economic resource happened in the late eighteen hundreds, and 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:00.800 Pinchot actually pushed the idea through tech books way back 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:01.240 then too. 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:05.200 He was very aware of the value of public support 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:10.040 for his vision of forestry, and he used every means 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:16.400 at his disposal to accomplish that. He wrote textbooks that 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:21.479 he expected would be taught from kindergarten on up about forestry, 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:23.839 and indeed they were. There were thousands of copies of 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:28.120 his book sold. He created what we would today call 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:28.679 I guess. 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.719 Press events, you know, pr events, sometimes with Teddy Roosevelt, 0:06:32.800 --> 0:06:35.160 where he would be sure to invite all of the 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:38.039 news media of the time to cover the event when 0:06:38.040 --> 0:06:41.599 he appeared to announce a new policy or in front 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.920 of an important natural resource. And he also made very 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:51.200 close behind the scenes connections with lumber operators and others 0:06:51.360 --> 0:06:54.760 who would then of course end up supporting Pincho whenever 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.120 he wanted a new policy to be put forward. 0:07:01.640 --> 0:07:04.920 So yeah, starting in the late eighteen hundreds, this idea 0:07:05.040 --> 0:07:06.200 is already being. 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:07.200 Pushed in schools. 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:10.840 Then the oil industry gets in on the education game 0:07:10.920 --> 0:07:15.160 in the nineteen twenties and really continually pushes that idea 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.480 from then until now. Beginning in the nineteen fifties, they 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:22.480 start to lean on the free enterprise story more and 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:23.920 more so by the. 0:07:23.880 --> 0:07:26.800 Time the public really starts talking about global warming in 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.119 the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties, the groundwork to limit 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.880 the conversation had basically already been laid for decades. There's 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.360 this very clear idea in American's minds about how you 0:07:37.520 --> 0:07:40.400 can and can't address environmental problems. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:40.920 YEP. 0:07:40.960 --> 0:07:43.720 And for high school kids, the industry's focus is all 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.640 things economy, from stuff like the American Enterprise series that 0:07:47.720 --> 0:07:51.160 show kids how the economy works, to stun programs that 0:07:51.320 --> 0:07:55.400 highlight all the job opportunities in the energy industry. That's 0:07:55.440 --> 0:08:06.360 our focus today. I'm Darna Noor from Earth and I'm 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:10.200 Amy Westerveldt. In this series The Abcs of Big Oil. 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:14.080 We're digging into the fossil fuel industry's involvement in shaping 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.720 how Americans think about the economy and policy and how 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:21.280 those things intersect with environmental issues. 0:08:21.720 --> 0:08:24.320 And last time we looked at how the industry has 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:28.400 used comic books and coloring books and cartoon characters to 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.400 start shaping the minds of little kids in elementary school. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.440 But today we're headed to high school, where big oil's 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:36.920 efforts get a little more sophisticated. 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:39.160 Certainly, we get marketed to a lot. 0:08:39.240 --> 0:08:43.679 I get emails pretty frequently from different companies trying to 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:51.319 either sell us like textbooks, textbook licensing, supplemental like online resources. 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:53.160 There's tons of that all the time. 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.040 This is William Van Doren. He's a high school science 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:59.880 and math teacher in Oakland, California. He works at a 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:02.400 private school, but he says that just like a lot 0:09:02.440 --> 0:09:05.200 of public school teachers, he's often on the lookout for 0:09:05.320 --> 0:09:10.239 supplemental materials and maybe more to the point, educational publishers 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:15.000 are constantly trying to market stuff to him. So if 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:21.600 you saw something from Discovery Education, what would that say 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:21.800 to you? 0:09:21.880 --> 0:09:24.280 Like, what does that brand kind of signify to you? 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:26.600 I would want to take a look at it, But Yeah, 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:28.040 I wouldn't be too suspicious. 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.840 I mean ideally, like, no matter where. 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.120 It's from, you kind of screen it before you turn 0:09:33.160 --> 0:09:34.439 it loose on your students. 0:09:34.720 --> 0:09:35.360 I wouldn't be. 0:09:35.640 --> 0:09:37.760 Particularly suspicious about it, but I would want to look 0:09:37.760 --> 0:09:40.280 closely at it, just to see what it's actually about. 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:44.040 So this one that we were looking at recently is 0:09:44.200 --> 0:09:50.720 Discovery Education STEM Careers Portal, and they offer all kinds 0:09:50.800 --> 0:09:54.439 of stuff for like, you know, high school guidance counselors, 0:09:54.600 --> 0:09:57.840 but also for teachers to do like a science fair 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:00.800 or like a career fair around STEM. And then they 0:10:00.840 --> 0:10:05.200 have some activities and things that are around particularly encouraging 0:10:05.280 --> 0:10:07.840 women in STEM and people of color and staff, all. 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.960 Of these kinds of things. And then you go to 0:10:10.000 --> 0:10:13.280 the partner page and it's entire and it's funded by 0:10:13.400 --> 0:10:18.280 like Chevron, the American Petroleum Institute, and you know a 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.520 handful of other sort of oil and gas companies. 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:25.719 Wow, that's really interesting. I would not have guessed that 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.760 or been suspicious of that. Oh, it's like back to 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:30.679 our propaganda. 0:10:31.720 --> 0:10:32.080 Wow. 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.400 And you were asking him about this new program from 0:10:35.520 --> 0:10:39.600 Discovery Education called the STEM Careers Coalition, And if you 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.200 go to their homepage it kind of looks like any 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.240 other part of the Discovery Universe. It's well designed, it 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.840 seems super legit, and it says connecting stem from k 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:52.280 through careers. But then if you go to the about 0:10:52.360 --> 0:10:54.880 us page and you click on partners, and then you 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:55.600 scroll down. 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:57.840 A little bit, you'll find a lot of oil and 0:10:57.920 --> 0:10:58.640 gas folks. 0:10:58.880 --> 0:11:04.000 There's as the Power and Energy Distribution Company, There's Chevron, 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:08.439 there's the American Petroleum Institute, of course, and then under 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:13.520 content partners you find this philanthropy initiative called IF then Philanthropies. 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:15.680 And if you dug around a little bit on them, 0:11:16.040 --> 0:11:18.200 like I did, you'll find that they're connected to this 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:20.480 oil heiress in Dallas, Texas. 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:22.920 Her name is Lyda Hill. Yeah, that's right. 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:25.720 And then if you scroll all the way down to 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:29.959 the bottom of the page where the association partners are listed, 0:11:30.320 --> 0:11:34.800 they're described as trusted advisors and subject matter experts, and 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:40.120 there you'll find the Manufacturing Institute. Manufacturing Institute is the 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:44.800 education partner of the National Association of Manufacturers, a manufacturing 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:48.880 trade group that was key to orchestrating climate denial campaigns 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:50.880 throughout the nineties and two thousands. 0:11:51.200 --> 0:11:54.040 And this doesn't actually seem to be unusual for discovery 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.319 education at all. Like if you go to the main 0:11:56.440 --> 0:11:59.520 discovery education site and look for a curricula related to 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:02.520 the environ One of the two main options that pop 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:05.400 up is called to Dig into Mining and it's funded 0:12:05.480 --> 0:12:09.199 by Freeport McMoRan, which is one of the largest mining 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:12.840 companies in the world. Here's a snippet from the virtual 0:12:12.880 --> 0:12:14.320 field trip they provide there. 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:17.840 Hi, I'm Lynn LANDI I am a geologist and a 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:22.240 reclamation specialist. Reclamation is the process of restoring the land 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:25.920 that has been disturbed by mining adam mine. Large amounts 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:28.920 material is moved every day, but only a small percent 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.800 of that material is copper bearing. Therefore, we have to 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.280 understand how to store the rest of that material. That 0:12:36.360 --> 0:12:41.000 material is stored in piles that we call stockpiles or 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:45.120 tailing dams. When they are filled to capacity, we can 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:49.520 reclaim them. The goals of reclamation are threefold. We want stability, 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:51.719 we want to manage the water, and we want to 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.360 create a self sustaining ecosystem. We bring together a group 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:59.920 of engineers, geotechnical engineers, civil engineers, and a kind societ 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:07.600 that work on reclamation are environmental scientists, biologists, geologists, soil 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:11.080 scientists do this work for us. First we reshape these 0:13:11.160 --> 0:13:14.680 large facilities and that helps reduce erosion, and then we 0:13:14.720 --> 0:13:17.920 add water drainage systems. This will allow us to take 0:13:18.040 --> 0:13:23.160 the precipitation or stormwater off the facility, reducing infiltration. Then 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:26.840 we could posit cover material and we spread that all 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:28.319 over these facilities. 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:32.640 So in this video, this woman who works on reclamation 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:37.200 with Freeport McMoRan keeps saying the word facilities, but what 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:40.800 she's actually talking about is land, and by disturbed she 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:45.439 means turned into a giant open pit mine. Reclamation is 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:47.760 where they put all the dirt and rocks back on 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.679 that land and try to engineer it to approximate nature. 0:13:52.040 --> 0:13:55.079 There's zero discussion here of the impact that copper mining 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:56.840 has on water or soil. 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:00.680 It's just, hey, we take the copper, it's. 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:02.440 In a bunch of stuff you use, and then we 0:14:02.480 --> 0:14:05.679 put the earth back together again, no problem. 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:06.160 Yeah. 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:09.079 God, that whole video is wild, and it's also just 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.560 wild how similar it is to that chocolate chip cookie 0:14:11.559 --> 0:14:14.680 experiment that Kurt Davies told us about in episode two. 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:17.120 But I want to pause here and dig a little 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.760 bit more into that STEM Careers coalition because there's actually 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:24.760 this section of the Discovery education site called social Impact, 0:14:25.120 --> 0:14:27.440 and it lists that STEM project as one of the 0:14:27.520 --> 0:14:30.480 three areas where a Discovery says it's having like a 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:32.760 social effect, and all of them. 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:34.320 Have corporate sponsors. 0:14:34.640 --> 0:14:36.360 Here's one of the videos that you'll find on the 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.400 STEM Careers Coalition site. 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:41.320 One of the things I really love is every day 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.600 there's a new challenge and I find myself learning constantly 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:48.880 or on the edge of technology. We're able to come 0:14:48.960 --> 0:14:52.840 up with new ways of solving problems, and Chevron backs 0:14:52.960 --> 0:14:56.520 those initiatives, and we're able to use technology to help 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.800 us succeed. I'm Jessica Holly, a drilling engineered with Shevron. 0:15:01.600 --> 0:15:05.880 At one point, this Chevron drilling engineer describes flying out 0:15:05.920 --> 0:15:08.520 to an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico 0:15:08.760 --> 0:15:12.000 in this weirdly glamorous way, like the way you would 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.560 hear the Kardashians talk about going to a concert or something. 0:15:16.040 --> 0:15:20.000 Our locations, our well sites are about two hundred miles 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:23.920 off the coast of Louisiana, and so we'll take helicopters 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.320 from the shore of Louisiana two hundred miles out and 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.520 we'll actually land a little heliped on pretty much what 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:32.680 looks like a cruise ship in the middle of the 0:15:32.680 --> 0:15:33.400 Gulf of Mexico. 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.200 Not sure I've ever heard an offshore oil platform described 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:38.320 as being remolely like a cruise ship before. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:40.160 Yeah, I have to. 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:44.360 Say I was pretty surprised at just how much corporate 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:48.520 sponsored content Discovery Education has on offer, not just from 0:15:48.520 --> 0:15:50.720 oil companies, but just you know, across the board. There 0:15:50.720 --> 0:15:53.960 are so many examples of like you know, Procter and 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.880 Gamble is there and Campbell Soup and all of these 0:15:56.880 --> 0:16:00.400 different companies. But then I thought about it more and 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:02.720 I was like, well, my husband is kind of a 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.400 Discovery TV addict, and I feel like every time I 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.840 walk by him watching a show on there, it's either about. 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.000 Like some kind of mining or like treasure hunting. 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.280 There's like a lot of weird trutive stuff on there, 0:16:15.960 --> 0:16:20.600 you know, Or it's like about nature, but in this 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:23.720 way where nature is this thing over there for us 0:16:23.800 --> 0:16:27.920 to admire sometimes. But you found kind of a weird 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.440 corporate connection between Discovery's TV content recently too. 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:33.640 Right, Yeah, I did. 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:38.440 It was for a pretty different Discovery project than the 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.720 education stuff. It was for a new TV show that 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:45.200 they have called six Degrees, which is hosted by Micro. 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:50.880 Like Micro, the reality TV host best known for hosting 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:54.280 Dirty Jobs. So the whole conceit of this new show, 0:16:54.360 --> 0:16:58.760 Six Degrees is basically like tying things that are seemingly 0:16:59.000 --> 0:17:03.000 unrelated together. So like in the first episode, Micro connects 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.239 the history of Tinder, like the dating app to the 0:17:06.280 --> 0:17:08.159 invention of the horseshoe. 0:17:08.359 --> 0:17:11.360 Well, when the dust settles, you will see the undeniable 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:15.639 to a controvertible truth of exactly how welk we're shooting 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:17.440 and find your soul mate. 0:17:18.520 --> 0:17:21.960 But the show also connects everything to the fossil fuel 0:17:22.000 --> 0:17:27.520 industry is Surprise Surprize. Like in that first episode, Mike says, 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.600 this inventor who created the precursor to Wi Fi used 0:17:31.640 --> 0:17:34.439 money that her boyfriend made in the oil fields to 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:38.520 fund her work. Every episode of this Micro show is 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:42.200 sponsored by the oil and gas industry, specifically the American 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.720 Petroleum Institute and Distribution Contractors Association, which is like a 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:50.760 lobbying group for fossil fuel pipeline contractors. Mike says that 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.159 this is who's funding the show himself. At the end 0:17:53.240 --> 0:17:55.159 of every single episode. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:58.280 Sixth agree is sponsored by the oil and natural gas industry. Why, 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:01.399 because oil and natural gas connects everything. 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:06.880 He says that in every single episode, like every episode 0:18:06.960 --> 0:18:10.639 has something like and the crazy thing is like sometimes 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.159 it's just you know, six degrees is sponsored by the 0:18:13.160 --> 0:18:15.120 oil and gas industry because we need oil and gas 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.200 for everything whatever. But other times, like in this episode, 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:21.199 he actually goes back through the story and it's like, 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:25.119 here's why the existence of Tinder is also like connected 0:18:25.160 --> 0:18:29.040 to the oil industry because like this random inventor who 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:33.280 invented a precursor to Wi Fi, her boyfriend made a 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:34.960 whole bunch of money in the oil fields, and so 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:37.440 we would have no Internet if it weren't for oil 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.080 and gas. Like you know, we need oil and gas 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:41.959 for everything to run, and we need the money from 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:43.240 oil and gas for everything to run. 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:44.199 It's really wild. 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:46.280 It is wild because like the whole conceit of the 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:49.040 show is very much a thing that the industry likes 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:51.359 to push a lot too, which is like we are 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:52.719 the center of everything. 0:18:53.040 --> 0:18:55.600 You cannot live without us. Yeah, yeah, definitely. 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.320 This feels like a good moment to note that we 0:18:59.359 --> 0:19:02.600 did reach out to Discovery to ask them about their 0:19:02.720 --> 0:19:08.120 various corporate partnerships, specifically with respect to these education initiatives. 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:11.160 No one has gotten back to us yet, but we're 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.680 still very interested in talking to them and we're still 0:19:13.720 --> 0:19:17.159 trying to reach them. So if you have any information 0:19:17.480 --> 0:19:22.239 on Discovery Education's relationships with its various corporate partners, hit 0:19:22.320 --> 0:19:25.239 us up at tips at gizmoto dot com. Or if 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.399 you want to submit something anonymously, you can do that 0:19:27.440 --> 0:19:30.240 through drilled secure drop link which will stick in the 0:19:30.280 --> 0:19:30.920 show notes. 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:32.639 Yes, please do. 0:19:33.359 --> 0:19:36.159 And Discovery Education is kind of known as a major 0:19:36.280 --> 0:19:39.840 player in schools worldwide. My mom was a teacher for 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:43.879 like twenty eight years and she's definitely used their materials. Yeah, 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:47.440 And on their website they claim to serve approximately four 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:52.160 point five million educators and forty five million students worldwide. 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.000 Their resources are accessed in over one hundred and forty countries, 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:57.199 which is wild. 0:19:57.560 --> 0:19:58.359 It's incredible. 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.800 Yeah, and that is a lot of opportunities for companies 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:06.159 to shape people's ideas about the world, how it works, 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:07.000 and how. 0:20:06.800 --> 0:20:07.800 It should work. 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.800 And Discovery doesn't just focus on science and tech. They 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:16.040 offer curricula in social studies too. They're obviously not the 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.680 only educational publisher out there or the only educational company 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:22.760 with corporate partners, but they're a really, really big one. 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:26.959 I asked that teacher we heard from earlier on William 0:20:27.080 --> 0:20:30.480 van Doren, about what he thought about this stuff and 0:20:30.560 --> 0:20:32.919 whether he thought it would be an effective way for 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:37.840 companies to message or whether you know, high school students 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:40.919 are too shrewd and too cool to fall for some 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:41.560 of this stuff. 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:43.600 If you can reach the youths, if you can reach 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.720 them in school, like, if it's in school, it lends 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.520 this credibility to it, right and is not be essing though. 0:20:50.720 --> 0:20:53.520 You know, I think if there's a speaker in the classroom, 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:55.960 the kids are generally going. 0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:58.000 To think it's pretty credible. 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:02.000 I mean, you know, teenagers can be suspicious on some level, 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:06.480 but I think fundamentally they trusted the teacher knows what 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.720 they're talking about, has some expertise and authority. I mean, 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:13.120 if I were a propagandist, I'd be wanting to get 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:14.199 into classrooms. 0:21:16.000 --> 0:21:16.639 That's major. 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:20.800 It is major, And yet people working in the fossil 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:25.360 fuel industry still really push this narrative that they're at 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:28.679 a disadvantage in schools, Like they say that kids are 0:21:28.720 --> 0:21:32.399 being brainwashed by leftist teachers who hate the oil and 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:36.479 gas industry. And we obtained this audio from this recent 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:41.080 National Association of Petroleum Engineers expo where several industry leaders 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:43.240 are actually complaining about just that our. 0:21:43.200 --> 0:21:45.119 Kids and grandkids have been taught by a bunch of 0:21:45.200 --> 0:21:49.440 Vietnam draft dodge and tenured professors, but how terrible our 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.399 country is and how terrible oil and gas is. 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:56.600 This is Wayne Christian from the Texas Railroad Commission, which 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.480 is the state agency overseeing oil gas pipeline and cool 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:05.800 not rail in Texas. It's kind of little known outside 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.200 of I think energy and climate circles, but it wields 0:22:09.200 --> 0:22:10.680 a lot of power. 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:12.280 And in this day in time, folks, it's time we 0:22:12.440 --> 0:22:14.560 get on our big boy and girl bitches and stand 0:22:14.640 --> 0:22:17.359 up and get the facts out for what's good of 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:23.080 oil and guess in the state of Texas in America period. 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:29.160 Yeah, it's really just remarkable how similar this whole narrative 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:31.800 is to one of the big messages in that industry 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:35.000 presentation that we talked about in episode one, this idea 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:37.920 that kids are like not learning enough about oil and 0:22:37.960 --> 0:22:40.720