WEBVTT - Inside the industry that made climate denial work 0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:05.960 Welcome to zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week oil origins and 0:00:06.040 --> 0:00:21.840 old tapes. A critical part of any good story is 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:26.000 the antagonist, the villain. In stories about climate change, the 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.080 villain can be something as abstract as human nature, the 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:32.600 short term thinking that stops systemic changes, our love of 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:37.240 comfort and convenience. Or the villain can be specific China, 0:00:37.520 --> 0:00:41.120 the US, or oil companies. But the problem with that 0:00:41.280 --> 0:00:44.000 is it's not always compelling to tell a story about 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.159 a country or a company doing something wrong. You've got 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:51.400 to find the people doing it. And my guest today, 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:54.880 Amy Vesterwald, has spent a lot of time in identifying 0:00:54.880 --> 0:00:59.279 individuals who have made outsized contributions to climate change, in 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.880 particular the men who founded the public relations industry and 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:04.760 their connection to big oil. 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:08.840 It helps to understand that, oh, there were specific companies 0:01:08.880 --> 0:01:13.080 that hired specific people to really convince the public to 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.440 think about things a certain way. It's not like impossible 0:01:17.480 --> 0:01:19.360 for us to think about things differently. 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:24.000 Amy has produced nine seasons of Drill, what she calls 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.840 a true crime podcast about climate change. The oil industry 0:01:27.880 --> 0:01:32.440 and its lackeys appear frequently. Amy's scrutiny of the pr guys, 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:34.679 has opened my eyes to just how long the oil 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:38.200 industry has got to tell its story with very little interruption. 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.760 This week in our Climate Storytelling series, I talked to 0:01:41.800 --> 0:01:45.280 Amy about how she researches Drilled, why she chose to 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.520 style it as a true crime podcast, and how storytelling 0:01:48.560 --> 0:01:51.800 around climate has changed. If you're joining the series for 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:54.280 the first time, I recommend going back to the feed 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:57.639 and adding my interview with climate fiction writer Kim Stanley 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:00.680 Robinson to your list. Subscribe to make sure you get 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:03.640 next week's episode where I talk about climate on TV 0:02:04.000 --> 0:02:13.320 with Dorothy Futenberry, an executive producer of the show Extra Relations, Amy, 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:14.160 Welcome to the show. 0:02:14.440 --> 0:02:16.520 Thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to 0:02:16.520 --> 0:02:16.880 be here. 0:02:17.040 --> 0:02:19.760 You've been an environment journalist for a long time, and 0:02:19.840 --> 0:02:24.079 you focused on storytelling that gets reporting outside the green 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:27.639 echo chamber. When did you see the need for this? 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:30.760 I almost feel like that's kind of how I got 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:33.720 into clem reporting in the first place, because I had 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.560 this weird little job that I just took to pay 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:40.480 rent one month where I got asked to write some 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:45.639 case studies for an engineering firm that was like updating 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.200 its marketing materials. And one of the case studies that 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:53.440 they had was they had been asked to re engineer 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:58.600 some offshore oil platforms for Shell to make them adaptable 0:02:58.600 --> 0:03:02.040 and resilient to see level rise. And this was work 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:04.240 that they had done in the nineties, and I thought, 0:03:05.040 --> 0:03:09.720 I'm pretty sure Shelle was not even acknowledging climate change 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.799 much in the nineties, and so I looked into it 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:15.760 and I wrote a little story about it. But that 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.960 kind of got me really obsessed with how the fossil 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:24.720 fuel industry has framed the story on climate, and I've 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.320 kind of just been obsessed with it ever since. But 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:30.560 in terms of my own work, I'd been in print 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.480 for a really long time, and then I decided I 0:03:33.480 --> 0:03:36.160 wanted to learn how to do audio. I got a 0:03:36.280 --> 0:03:40.080 job at an NPR station, and I was doing various things, 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:42.200 and I kept trying to come up with an idea 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:46.320 for a climate podcast that could be narrative. Because this 0:03:46.560 --> 0:03:51.640 was like, you know, around the time that cereal was exploding, 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.920 and everybody was like, oh, this is such an interesting format, 0:03:54.960 --> 0:03:57.120 and it was. It took me like a while to 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:00.320 figure out what story would lend itself to that, which 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.880 got me thinking about kind of storytelling and climate more generally, 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:10.000 and just how the framing of a story can really 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.080 actually help people understand the information better. 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:17.200 Right, And this is we are talking about Drilled, the 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:21.200 podcast that you launched almost a decade ago and still run. 0:04:21.640 --> 0:04:24.800 And of course there is a series out this year, 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:29.360 season eight, that focuses on Guyana Country in South America, 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:35.560 where Exonmobil discovered oil in twenty fifteen. What made you 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:41.200 interested in that story as a way of telling what 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.159 you call Drill to be, which is true crime about 0:04:44.160 --> 0:04:44.839 the environment. 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.920 Yeah. I got a press release about a lawsuit that 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:53.800 had been launched in Guyana that was invoking the country's 0:04:54.000 --> 0:04:57.440 constitutional right to a healthy environment, and that kind of 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.800 got me first looking into it because I had not 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:04.679 been actually following the development of an oil and gas 0:05:04.720 --> 0:05:10.720 industry there, and the format of this lawsuit was interesting 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:12.960 to me. So that got me down a whole rabbit 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:17.120 hole of looking into what was going on in Guyana. 0:05:16.400 --> 0:05:22.200 And then I got even more interested because Exon discovered 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.840 oil in twenty fifteen, They actually started drilling in twenty 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.520 seventeen and then shipped their first barrel in twenty nineteen, 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:33.960 and was already projecting that Guyana would be responsible for 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.840 around a quarter of their global volume by twenty twenty five, 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:40.400 which is a lot. I mean that A, it's just 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:43.799 so rapid for a country to go from no oil 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:48.279 production at all to that level of volume, and then 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.160 B that would put it even above Exon's Texas operations. 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:56.160 And then as I started to talk to people there, 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:01.640 I found out that Exon had very quickly moved to 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:06.080 sort of capture various aspects of civil society. So the 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.839 first investment that they made outside of oil and gas 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:15.080 in Guyana was to become the sponsor of the cricket 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:19.359 league and the Guyana team. They paid to get cricket 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:25.680 games broadcast on television, and then they started hiring journalists 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:28.159 that were working on the oil and gas beat to 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.760 work for Exxon's comms department. So there were all these 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:35.760 things that they were doing to really kind of make 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.080 sure that there weren't a lot of critics of the project. 0:06:39.880 --> 0:06:44.160 Sports washing, as it's come to be known, where gas 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:48.800 companies but also other kinds of polluters use sponsorships of 0:06:49.040 --> 0:06:53.440 big sports is a growing phenomenon. We have a wonderful 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:55.720 article that we linked to in the show notes about 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.920 it until you spot it. You don't notice how many 0:07:00.279 --> 0:07:01.719 places it's happening. 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:05.479 It's so prevalent, it's just wild. Actually, I was just 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.839 looking at some of the advertising data for the oil companies, 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:13.440 and for all of them, their top five advis are 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:18.360 always in sports related programming. So it's a big, big 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:19.520 area for them. 0:07:19.720 --> 0:07:22.880 Yeah, and we've also just learned that, you know, Saudi Arabia, 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:26.840 which was trying to create its own golf championship and 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:31.640 was fighting with the global leader, the PGA, has kind 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.960 of won because the PGA has now agreed to merge 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.760 with the Saudi Arabian Golf League, and so it's just 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:42.520 one more place where this continues to grow. But anyway, 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:46.640 coming back to the series, South America in general is 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:49.720 a place that's difficult to report in. I mean, we 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.800 know of stories where journalists have been killed, not just 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:57.720 jailed or harmed. What was it like working in that environment, 0:07:57.800 --> 0:07:59.920 because I know you travel to Guyana to tell this. 0:08:00.600 --> 0:08:03.600 Yeah, it's the first time in a while that I 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:09.720 have felt a significant level of relief. On my flight out, 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:15.440 I would say there was definitely some just some you know, intimidation, 0:08:16.640 --> 0:08:20.520 getting followed. My hotel room was broken into I had 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:26.880 some interesting surprise run ins with police and a lot 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:30.880 of trouble with customs agents getting out of the country, 0:08:30.920 --> 0:08:34.079 one of whom I don't know, was sort of holding 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:36.600 onto my baggage and wouldn't give it back to me 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:42.680 until I promised that I wouldn't write anything negative about Guyana. 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:47.120 So that was it was interesting, but I'm mostly like 0:08:47.200 --> 0:08:51.160 the biggest thing was working with our reporter on the 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.520 ground there named Keana Wilberg, who writes for one of 0:08:54.559 --> 0:08:59.560 the local papers, so really talking through risk mitigation and 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:03.400 secure with her and having a lot of contingency plans 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.400 in place in case anything became just went beyond the 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:08.679 level of intimidation. 0:09:09.559 --> 0:09:11.480 Did you find out who broke in? 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:15.959 I did not know, but it was just it was weird. 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:17.760 It was one of those where you know, I had 0:09:17.840 --> 0:09:22.920 cash out on the on the nightstand that was left untouched. 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.120 Nothing was taken. It was just my laptop was open 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:30.120 to you know, some files related to the story. Nothing 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:32.520 that was that big of a deal because I don't, 0:09:32.760 --> 0:09:35.720 you know, keep sensitive files on my laptop and then 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.800 leave it in hotel rooms. It was clearly just sort 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:41.960 of an intimidation kind of thing. 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.720 One of my favorite seasons off Drill is The mad 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:51.199 Men of Climate Denial. It's about how the oil industry 0:09:51.640 --> 0:09:56.839 promoted climate denial over the past many decades, and that 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.360 form of storytelling has been very much created by the 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.880 oil industry going back almost a century, and you document 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:08.280 that history in the most interesting way. What got you 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:09.960 onto that story in the first place. 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.680 Well, actually, when I first started Drilled, the intention was 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.280 for it to be like a limited run series, and 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:20.520 you know, the first season was about the origins of 0:10:20.559 --> 0:10:24.640 climate denil the Exon news story, tracking down a bunch 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.600 of Exon scientists who talked to me about the research 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:31.080 they'd been doing for for Exon on Climate back in 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.120 the seventies and eighties, all of that. And then as 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:37.320 I got to sort of the end of researching that season, 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.199 I got to thinking there just had to be more 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:42.920 to the story. Like, the climate denial strategy is a 0:10:42.920 --> 0:10:48.760 pretty doman, straightforward strategy, and yes, it's appealing to sort 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.960 of tell people that this big scary thing is actually 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:55.920 not happening and they don't have to change. But it 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:01.440 worked so well and so quickly to turn public sentiment 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.000 away from climate action that I felt like there had 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.360 to have been something that came before it, And so 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:09.560 the more I started looking into it, the more I 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:13.079 realized that, oh, the fossil fuel industry sort of laid 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:19.480 down this foundation that really shaped how people thought about 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:24.120 the industry, how people thought about the environment, how people 0:11:24.160 --> 0:11:28.520 thought about solutions to environmental problems, and the waves that 0:11:28.520 --> 0:11:33.160 those solutions could or couldn't intersect with the economy. All 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.720 of these things that really kind of laid the groundwork 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:38.880 for climate denial to work as well as it did. 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:41.760 And I've continued to be really obsessed with the PR 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:46.000 industry in general and the fossil fuel industry's role as 0:11:46.080 --> 0:11:48.000 one of its first clients. 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:51.440 And storytelling has been used very effectively by the fossil 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:55.360 fuel companies. You know, you document that the PR industry 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:59.680 has an idea itself was created by the oil industry, 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:03.320 so the fact that they can wield it to that 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:09.760 effect is not surprising, but it is still worth examining. Now, 0:12:11.000 --> 0:12:14.280 we are journalists. We deal in facts, we report on stories, 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:17.880 we go to experts, we go to the ground, we 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.760 look at what is happening. But at the end of 0:12:21.080 --> 0:12:24.480 doing all that work, we also have to then take 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:26.560 account of what we have in front of us, and 0:12:26.679 --> 0:12:29.280 what's the best way in which we can build a 0:12:29.320 --> 0:12:34.120 story together and tell somebody who may be not interested 0:12:34.160 --> 0:12:37.440 in this subject at all, but should really know about it. 0:12:37.960 --> 0:12:43.240 And stories are the currency we use. So when you 0:12:43.360 --> 0:12:46.319 do this work and when you look at how effective 0:12:46.440 --> 0:12:50.800 the PR industry is at storytelling, what have you found 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:54.040 in your toolkit the best counter. 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:58.960 It sounds strange because I work mostly in audio, but 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:03.840 I think that the best counter is often primary documents, 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:08.880 and I just don't think that people necessarily look at 0:13:08.920 --> 0:13:12.320 those documents when they're in print stories. So I think 0:13:12.400 --> 0:13:16.160 having an audio component is helpful. And by documents, I 0:13:16.240 --> 0:13:18.640 mean things like like, I'll give you a really concrete example. 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:21.800 I did a story a while ago on the crab 0:13:21.920 --> 0:13:25.320 fishermen that sued the oil companies. So this was a 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:30.160 fishing trade group that represented crab fishermen on the west 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:33.520 coast of the US and Canada, and they had filed 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.800 a lawsuit against the top thirty oil companies for their 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:42.120 role in delaying action on climate which the industry group 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.360 was arguing and it had effectively led to the impending 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:49.720 death of their industry, and you know, caused all kinds 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.600 of economic damage and whatnot. And several of the people 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:58.720 who were named plaintiffs in that lawsuit were total climate deniers. 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:01.880 They were like, I don't know if humans have anything 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:05.840 to do with it, ice ages, all of the usual things. 0:14:06.360 --> 0:14:08.440 And I thought that was really interesting. I was just like, 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:10.920 how do you sign on to a lawsuit about climate 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.360 change if you don't believe the climate change? And what 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:17.200 they told me was that they'd been shown applications for 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:22.080 patents by all of the oil majors in the seventies 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:25.120 and eighties for kind of all of the infrastructure that 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:28.880 they would need to deal with climate change, so like 0:14:29.320 --> 0:14:33.640 the tankers that could navigate a melting Arctic and these 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:38.280 offshore platforms I mentioned being re engineered for sea level rise. 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:43.720 And so their conclusion was, it doesn't matter what's causing 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.520 climate change. They knew that it was definitely happening, that 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.120 it was going to be a problem, and they prepared 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.920 their industry for it, and they didn't give us the 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.800 opportunity to do the same. And that's just not fair. 0:14:56.880 --> 0:14:58.720 It was like a real penny drop moment for me 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:04.760 because I thought, oh, that's a much simpler story, you know, Fairness, 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:09.040 equal access, to information then trying to argue the finer 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:13.360 points of the science, which, like, especially in places where 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.160 there's not a real high science literacy, including the US, 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:20.080 I would say like, I don't know how you're ever 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:23.080 going to use that as your big selling point to people, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:26.720 or your you know, proof that this thing is happening. 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.480 Or willingness to engage exactly exactly. If there isn't none, 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.720 then how much can you really explain the science exactly? 0:15:35.240 --> 0:15:38.960 Now this might be naval gayzy, but from one podcast 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:41.800 host to another, why did you choose podcasts as the 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:45.040 medium for your storytelling? What does it offer that other 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:45.840 mediums don't. 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:49.760 The main thing that I always look for in stories 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:51.680 where I'm trying to decide like is this, you know, 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:53.960 better for print or for audio? Because I still do 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:59.280 print stories too, is like, will people understand this information 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:04.600 better if they can hear it from someone who was involved, 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.000 or if they can hear you know, the emotion behind it. 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:11.280 Will that help people to understand the information. And when 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:14.160 it comes to a lot of documents, I think the 0:16:14.240 --> 0:16:18.240 answer is yes, which is strange and maybe counterintuitive. You know, 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.480 you'd think it's a it's a physical print document, it's 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:24.560 more helpful to see it. But what I found was 0:16:24.560 --> 0:16:28.000 that people really clicked into it more when they heard, 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:32.080 you know, like a former excen researcher actually reading their 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.200 own memo that they wrote to you know, the executive 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:40.000 board about this problem of climate change, or you know, 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:43.960 I talked to one researcher who you could really hear 0:16:44.040 --> 0:16:47.480 like a catch in his throat about how he felt 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:52.160 seeing the industry go from being part of the research 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:56.600 and looking for solutions to pretending that this thing didn't exist, 0:16:56.880 --> 0:16:59.960 or you know, talking to these folks in the crowd 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:03.960 industry about what were these specific patterns that they saw 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:08.040 that really convinced them that this was an unfair situation. 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:13.000 There are times when hearing the emotional side of these 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:18.600 stories can actually really help people understand them and kind 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:20.720 of access the information easier. 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.320 Now, you relied a lot on newspapers and advertising and 0:17:24.440 --> 0:17:27.679 articles of that time for the series on Madmen of 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:32.200 Climate Denial. How much of that was your original reporting, 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:34.240 which was stuff sitting in the archive you had to 0:17:34.240 --> 0:17:38.600 go and find it, versus contextualizing what was sort of 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:43.119 like boring history somebody had thought about or worked on, Yeah, 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:46.720 but really putting it in the modern context of what 0:17:46.960 --> 0:17:51.680 this industry is doing to our understanding of the world today. Yeah. 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:57.240 Yeah, The Madman series was heavily my own research. It 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:00.680 was about like eighty percent of my own and then 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:05.520 definitely drew also from some academic works, but a lot 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.480 of archival research. I went to I don't know, like 0:18:08.600 --> 0:18:12.199 four different archives, and fortunately for me, because I'm a 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:14.760 giant library nerd and I love nothing more than like 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:18.920 sitting by myself in an archive for weeks, but also 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:22.680 because these PR guys loved to donate all of their 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:29.359 files to libraries, so there's a significant amount of archival 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:33.760 stuff out there where you really get a good understanding 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:38.760 of their pasts and how they thought about messaging for 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:42.600 different companies. And the big thing that I realized researching 0:18:42.640 --> 0:18:45.840 that season was that, in my opinion, I think a 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:50.120 lot of the sort of accepted wisdom on climate denial 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.480 is not quite right. So there's this really persistent story 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:57.679 that the tobacco industry came up with this playbook and 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:00.600 then the oil industry just copied it. And what you 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:04.639 see in all of these guys' history that were the 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:09.880 big kind of early fathers of PR is that they 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:14.480 were working for oil, tobacco, and chemicals at the same time, 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:18.240 all the time, since forever. So the reason that there's 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:22.640 crossover between the ways that different industries kind of approach 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:29.080 storytelling and narrative framing and disinformation, it's because they literally 0:19:29.119 --> 0:19:33.080 had the same PR guy doing it for them. For example, 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.719 there's a guy named Earl Newsome who was doing PR 0:19:35.840 --> 0:19:39.359 for Standard Oil New Jersey, which is now Exon, from 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.400 like nineteen twenty to nineteen sixty nine, and in several 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:48.520 cases he's saying, Hey, Standard, I did this one thing 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:51.399 for GM that worked really well. I think we should 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:55.280 do it for you guys too. That's happening constantly throughout history. 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:57.639 Yeah, as part of our series, we are talking to 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:02.720 a few climate fiction writers. We're imagining how the future 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:04.920 is going to play out. But a lot of your 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:08.000 series is focused on what happened in the past and 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:10.840 what that tells us about today. So why do you 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:13.359 think it's important to look back and tell those stories 0:20:13.480 --> 0:20:14.159 of the past. 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.600 I am a big believer in the idea that you 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:20.879 can't effectively solve a problem if you don't really know 0:20:20.920 --> 0:20:24.399 where it came from, you know, And so for me, 0:20:24.520 --> 0:20:28.680 I look at a lot of the technical solutions and 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:31.439 sort of future casting stuff. And I see a lot 0:20:31.480 --> 0:20:35.000 of holes in people's understanding of history, and I think 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:39.320 it's really important to fill in those gaps so that 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:44.439 as we craft solutions, they're not repeating the mistakes of 0:20:44.480 --> 0:20:45.000 the past. 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.440 After the break more from Amy about the people pushing 0:20:50.480 --> 0:21:02.479 climate denialism, how much of a challenge was it to 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:07.320 find and be able to put that much load of 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:10.960 a story on a particular individual, And is that the 0:21:11.320 --> 0:21:14.720 only way in which we can tell these complex stories 0:21:14.840 --> 0:21:18.720 having to have individuals be the load bearers. 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.439 It's such an interesting question because I think there's a 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:24.359 few layers to it for me. So one is that 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:30.040 there's a real problem and sort of the storytelling industrial 0:21:30.080 --> 0:21:32.960 complex in general, in that it's very dominated by kind 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:36.560 of a Western narrative framework that requires a real focus 0:21:36.600 --> 0:21:39.840 on individual characters. Right, It's like the hero's journey and 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.719 all of that stuff, and reality doesn't map to that, 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:47.439 you know, And in some ways, I feel like, you know, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:50.760 how much of that narrative structure was actually created by 0:21:50.840 --> 0:21:54.280 these same forces that I'm looking at. So there's a 0:21:54.320 --> 0:21:56.920 part of me that really wants to reject the whole thing. 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.240 But I also am sort of well, you know, I 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:02.800 have I want people to listen, and I want to 0:22:02.880 --> 0:22:06.639 reach as many people as possible, and having specific people 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:10.520 does help. And in the case of certain stories, like 0:22:10.600 --> 0:22:15.199 if we're talking about propaganda, there really were specific individuals 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:19.600 who or a large percentage of the responsibility for how 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:24.199 that industry evolved. And in some ways to me, it 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:30.040 helps kind of feel like it's not such an overwhelming 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:35.440 challenge to rethink some of those narratives. You know that 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:38.960 it helps to understand that, oh, there were specific companies 0:22:39.000 --> 0:22:43.199 that hired specific people to really convince the public to 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:47.560 think about things a certain way. It's not like impossible 0:22:47.600 --> 0:22:50.640 for us to think about things differently, So it makes 0:22:50.680 --> 0:22:53.720 it feel more achievable to actually shift it. 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:54.399 You. 0:22:55.119 --> 0:22:59.199 Yeah, one of your characters is Ivy Lee, who is 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:03.760 a PR guy you worked for John d. Rockefeller in 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:07.879 Standard Oil Times. One lesson that we take away from 0:23:07.960 --> 0:23:11.560 him is words matter. So how much of your own 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:16.680 storytelling changed as a result of learning about the PR 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:19.640 industry and its roots and how much do you think 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:23.439 about your own writing and the words you use in 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:24.680 telling your stories? 0:23:25.320 --> 0:23:29.159 Oh, constantly. I feel like it made me hyper aware, 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:32.200 maybe not in a good way, because you know, it's 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:35.679 hard to write when you're being that sort of self 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:38.560 aware of what every single word or phrase could mean. 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:41.719 But it also got me really thinking about is it 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:45.439 okay for a journalist, for example, to use some of 0:23:45.480 --> 0:23:48.119 those same techniques, or to think about storytelling in the 0:23:48.160 --> 0:23:50.960 same way. I'm not sure where I shake out on that. 0:23:51.240 --> 0:23:55.560 I think I am constantly grappling with wanting a story 0:23:55.600 --> 0:24:00.480 to be compelling and informative and also wanting to break 0:24:00.560 --> 0:24:02.520 the pattern of propaganda. 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:05.840 Well, tell me about some of the techniques that you 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:08.840 do admire, even if you don't end up using them. 0:24:08.960 --> 0:24:14.119 Okay, there's one example from Edward Burneze, who was Freud's 0:24:14.160 --> 0:24:16.920 double nephew. Think on that one for a minute. 0:24:17.200 --> 0:24:19.480 He was his double nephew, which is he was his 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:22.920 nephew from two different sites. My goodness. 0:24:23.280 --> 0:24:29.879 Yeah, it was like his dad was Freud's wife's brother 0:24:30.280 --> 0:24:33.200 and his mom was Freud's sister. I think something like that. 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:36.119 So anyway, there was no incest happening, but it was 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:40.960 still a very weird sort of situation. Edward Bernese was 0:24:41.720 --> 0:24:48.400 such a brilliant guy, really like brought Freud's thinking into 0:24:49.040 --> 0:24:54.800 advertising and pr in the US, and he worked for everyone. 0:24:54.840 --> 0:24:59.040 I mean, he worked for the API, he worked for tobacco. 0:24:59.000 --> 0:25:02.040 That's the American Petroleum Institute. 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:04.439 Yeah, he kind of took over all of Ivy Lee's 0:25:04.480 --> 0:25:09.080 clients when ivy Lee died quite young, and he sort 0:25:09.119 --> 0:25:12.360 of handed his clients over to Edward Brenees. And Brenees 0:25:12.440 --> 0:25:15.000 did this thing that I think about all the time 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:19.439 where he was contacted by a watchmaker who wanted to 0:25:19.880 --> 0:25:24.720 break the taboo against men wearing wristwatches. So at the time, 0:25:24.840 --> 0:25:28.400 it was considered feminine for men to wear wristwatch because 0:25:28.440 --> 0:25:30.920 it was like a bracelet, and you know, real men 0:25:31.520 --> 0:25:35.680