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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One of the worst industrial disasters in our nation’s history occurred in West Virginia in the 1930s. Not in a coal mine – but in a tunnel chiseled out of a mountain for a hydroelectric power plant. Hundreds of workers, most of them poor and Black, quietly died from breathing in silica dust. For decades, the true scale of the devastation was buried by the companies behind the project.

Featured in this episode:

Catherine Venable Moore

Dr. Martin Cherniack

Sources:

Dr. Martin Cherniack’s book The Hawk’s Nest Incident: America’s Worst Industrial Disaster 

Catherine Venable Moore’s “The Book of the Dead” in Oxford American:

https://oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-94-fall-2016/the-book-of-the-dead

Muriel Rukeyser's Book of the Dead

George Robinson’s Congressional Testimony

NPR’s reporting on the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/20/685821214/before-black-lung-the-hawks-nest-tunnel-disaster-killed-hundreds

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The device you’re using to listen to this podcast almost certainly contains cobalt. It’s a vital component of rechargeable batteries, which are essential to electric vehicles, laptops, and smartphones. But most of the world’s known cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mines are plagued by child labor, human trafficking, and deadly working conditions.

Featured in this episode:

Siddharth Kara

Sources:

Siddharth Kara’s book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives and his report “Blood Batteries” https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/beacons-of-excellence/rights-lab/resources/reports-and-briefings/2025/august/blood-batteries.pdf 

Nicolas Niarchos’ reporting in The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/31/the-dark-side-of-congos-cobalt-rush 

Amnesty International’s report “This is What We Die For” https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/this_what_we_die_for_-_report.pdf

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In the late 1980s, Judi Bari was a fearless activist building an alliance between loggers and environmentalists to save the last of California's old growth redwoods. The same traits that attracted followers to her movement, also made her a lot of enemies. In 1990, a bomb exploded in Judi’s car while she was driving. Somehow she survived – but then the FBI showed up and told her she was under arrest.

Featured in this episode: 

Darryl Cherney

Sources: 

Darryl Cherney’s documentary Who Bombed Judi Bari? 

Josh Richman’s reporting in High Country News: https://www.hcn.org/issues/issue-229/earth-firster-judi-bari-avenged-at-last/ 

Judi Bari’s book Timber Wars

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