Exploiting Scientists' Kryptonite: How Oil Companies Weaponized Uncertainty

Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, coined the term "public relations" when propaganda started to become a negative term. His specialty was using psychological know-how to manipulate the masses an...

25 Helmi 202026min

We'll be back with more Mad Men tales next week, we promise! While we're out chasing leads, listen to this great interview from Emily Atkin with The Guardian's interim CEO Anna Bateson about that publ...

18 Helmi 202022min

In part two of our episode on former Mobil VP Herb Schmertz, we dig into how Schmertz's approach bred false equivalence, and why he pushed so hard for the extension of First Amendment rights to corpor...

11 Helmi 202015min

Mobil Oil's Herb Schmertz humanized the oil company, creating the "corporate persona," fighting for First Amendment rights to extend to corporations, and laying the groundwork for decades of aggressiv...

4 Helmi 202019min

Daniel Edelman learned the tools of his trade combating Nazi propaganda in WWII, then came home and put his psychological warfare training to work for American industry, including tobacco and Big Oil....

28 Tammi 202020min

Ivy Lee worked with Standard Oil and the Rockefellers to establish the American Petroleum Institute in 1919, as well as a petrochemicals partnership with German chemical giant IG Farben. That job took...

21 Tammi 202021min

In order to understand Big Oil's propaganda machine, and why it's been so effective, we have to go back more than 100 years to Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller and his son, a bloody miners' strike, a...

21 Tammi 202014min

Big Oil gave Hitler propaganda tips decades ago and their PR machine has only grown from there. Explore the history of fossil fuel propaganda and the "Mad Men of climate denial" PR strategists that sh...

5 Joulu 20193min