On New Year’s Eve 2024, an Uber driver named Jonathan Rinderknecht allegedly started a fire in the Pacific Palisades. The fire was quickly contained, but it lingered on underground as a “zombie fire.” Days later, fueled by Santa Ana Winds, it exploded into the Palisades Fire, the most destructive conflagration in Los Angeles history. A second fire, ignited just hours later, destroyed much of neighboring Altadena. In the aftermath, angry residents wanted accountability – but who is to blame for a fire when the earth is now a tinderbox?

Featured in this episode:

Brad Weisshaupt, LA County Fire Department

Traci Park, LA City Council

India Bradley

Nic Arnzen, Altadena Town Council

Daniel Swain, University of California

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

KTLA 5 News

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Chemical manufacturers like DuPont and 3M have invented nearly 15,000 synthetic compounds called PFAS, better known as “forever chemicals” because of how slowly they break down. They’re in the soil, our food, even our bodies. When the towns of Parkersburg, West Virginia and Hoosick Falls, New York found PFAS in their water supply, they fought to hold the chemical companies accountable – and exposed just how long DuPont scientists had known about the risks.

Featured in this episode:

Mariah Blake

Sources:

This episode relied heavily on the new book, They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals, by Mariah Blake

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/554198/they-poisoned-the-world-by-mariah-blake/  

And Ms. Blake’s 2015 article in the HuffPost Highline, “Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia: Home to one of the most brazen, deadly corporate gambits in U.S. history”

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/welcome-to-beautiful-parkersburg/ 

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In 2017, Hurricane Maria, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, battered the island of Puerto Rico. In the aftermath, big banks, crypto bros and other ‘disaster capitalists’ swooped in to take advantage of the crisis. No one realized the full scope of death and destruction until a scrappy team of journalists started to investigate. They exposed a corrupt system that continues to threaten Puerto Rico’s power grid, its people and the environment.

Featured in this episode:

Carla Minet

Sources:

The investigative journalism of Carla Minet and her team at the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo

https://periodismoinvestigativo.com/ 

Naomi Klein’s book The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists 

and her Intercept article “There’s Nothing Natural About Puerto Rico’s Disaster”

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/puerto-rico-hurricane-maria-disaster-capitalism/ 

Yalixa Rivera and Jonathan Levin’s Bloomberg article “Can Crypto, Cannabis, and Nicolas Cage Boost Puerto Rico’s Economy?”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/can-crypto-cannabis-and-nicolas-cage-boost-puerto-rico-s-economy 

David Yaffe-Bellany and Laura N. Pérez Sánchez’s New York Times article “The Unraveling of a Crypto Dream”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/13/technology/brock-pierce-crypto-puerto-rico.html 

Fernando Tormos-Aponte’s In These Times “How an Investigative Journalism Center Helped Oust Puerto Rican Gov. Rosselló”

https://inthesetimes.com/article/investigative-journalism-rossello-puerto-rico-protests

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In 2011, the people of Ecuador shocked the world by winning a multibillion judgment against Chevron for failing to clean up its oil operations in the Amazon. But back in the U.S., Chevron responded by suing their most prominent legal adversary, Steven Donziger. And as the oil giant challenged the Ecuadorian verdict, Donziger found himself trapped in his own Kafkaesque legal nightmare, one that threatened to overshadow the plight of the people he was trying to help.

Featured in this episode:

Steven Donziger

Pablo Fajardo

Sources:

William Langewiesche’s Vanity Fair profile “Jungle Law” https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2007/5/jungle-law

Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker article “Reversal of Fortune” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe

Joe Berlinger’s documentary “Crude”

Paul M. Barrett’s book Law of the Jungle

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After Texaco (now Chevron) discovered oil in Ecuador, they left behind an ecological and public health disaster so severe that experts have dubbed it the "Amazon Chernobyl.” The local population then sued the company sparking an epic courtroom drama spanning multiple decades and costing billions of dollars. Leading that fight are two outspoken attorneys: an American outsider not afraid to make enemies, and an Ecuadorian lawyer who risked his life to stand up for his people.

Featured in this episode:

Pablo Fajardo

Steven Donziger

Sources:

William Langewiesche’s Vanity Fair profile “Jungle Law” https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2007/5/jungle-law 

Patrick Radden Keefe’s New Yorker article “Reversal of Fortune” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/01/09/reversal-of-fortune-patrick-radden-keefe 

Joe Berlinger’s documentary “Crude” 

Paul M. Barrett’s book Law of the Jungle

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When Elon Musk’s xAI opened a data center called Colossus in South Memphis for its chatbot, Grok, local politicians and business leaders hailed it as the first step towards turning Greater Memphis into “America’s Digital Delta.” But residents soon noticed they were getting sick – and blamed the data center’s methane gas turbines, installed without permits to support the center’s massive electricity needs. Now South Memphis has become a flashpoint in the growing debate over the human and environmental costs of powering AI.

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Featured in this episode:

KeShaun Pearson

Sources:

Reporting by the Memphis Commercial Appeal

Time’s “We Are the Last of the Forgotten: Inside the Memphis Community Battling Elon Musk’s xAI” 

https://time.com/7308925/elon-musk-memphis-ai-data-center/ 

The Wall Street Journal’s “Elon Musk Gambles Billions in Memphis to Catch Up on AI”

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musk-xai-memphis-tennessee-power-dec4c70d 

The Natural Resources Defense Council’s “The AI Boom Is Stressing the Grid—But It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way”

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ai-boom-stressing-grid-it-doesnt-have-be-way

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When it comes to organic food, can we really trust what’s on our plate? Do we understand how it was grown or raised? The organic food industry is largely built on the honor system. More than a decade ago, a mild-mannered Missouri farmer exploited that system, raking in millions of dollars and leading a double life in Las Vegas. As it turns out, that wasn’t the only secret he was hiding.

Featured in this episode: 

Glen Borgerding

Jacob Schunk

Tony Morfitt 

Sources:

Ian Parker’s reporting in The New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/15/the-great-organic-food-fraud

Mike Hendricks’ reporting in The Kansas City Star https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article239079858.html

Trial documents from the Department of Justice’s case U.S. v. Randy Constant

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndia/pr/field-schemes-fraud-results-over-decade-federal-prison-leader-largest-organic-fraud

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When Jessey Baca returned from Balad Air Base in Iraq, he began experiencing strange health symptoms: fevers, chills, headaches, difficulty breathing. The VA tried to write off his condition as PTSD, but Jessey and his wife Maria would eventually learn that the likely cause was exposure to burn pits, where the military was incinerating trash with jet fuel. And they weren’t alone. Thousands of veterans were sick and dying from burn pit exposure. 

Featured in this episode:

Kelly Kennedy

Jessey and Maria Baca

Sources:

Kelly Kennedy’s reporting for The Military Times (https://www.militarytimes.com/) and The War Horse (https://thewarhorse.org/)

The New Republic’s “The Things They Burned”: https://newrepublic.com/article/138058/things-burned 

The New York Times’ “The Soldiers Came Home Sick. The Government Denied It Was Responsible”: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/11/magazine/military-burn-pits.html

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The tug-of-war over undeveloped land in the U.S. is nothing new, but in 2014 Cliven and Ammon Bundy escalated their dispute over cattle grazing permits in Nevada to another level. Their clash against the federal Bureau of Land Management would galvanize a movement – and set the stage for one of the largest armed uprisings against the government in American history, with lasting consequences for the environment.

Featured in this episode: 

Betsy Gaines Quammen

Sources:

Betsy Gaines Quammen's book American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West

PBS’s Frontline’s documentary American Patriot.

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In 2015, news broke that Exxon’s own scientists had known for decades that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming. To raise awareness, climate activists launched a campaign called “Exxon Knew.” But almost immediately, they noticed something strange: their private emails seemed to be getting leaked to the press. They were getting hacked – but by who?  

Featured in this episode:

Kert Davies, Center for Climate Integrity

John Scott Railton, The Citizen Lab

Sources:

The Citzen Lab’s “Dark Basin: Uncovering a Massive Hack-for-Hire Operation”: https://citizenlab.ca/research/dark-basin-uncovering-a-massive-hack-for-hire-operation/ 

Inside Climate News’s “Exxon: The Road Not Taken”: https://insideclimatenews.org/project/exxon-the-road-not-taken/

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