Drilled

Drilled is a climate investigation show built around power, accountability, and the long life of fossil fuel politics. It treats climate change as a legal, historical, and democratic crisis, not just an environmental topic. The episodes move across oil history, protest repression, AI infrastructure, international law, and renewable energy policy. The range is wide, but the connective tissue is clear: industries and governments create narratives that make extraction, delay, and harm seem inevitable. The show is at its sharpest when it follows those narratives back to money and institutions. A history episode links the scramble for oil to railways, wartime treaties, British and French interests, and the company now known as BP. A Drilling Deep conversation with Karen Hao draws parallels between Big AI and the fossil fuel industry’s language of inevitability and progress. Another episode follows the danger faced by environmental activists in Honduras after Berta Caceres’s assassination. The account is concrete and disturbing, including the attack on Gustavo and the distrust of police after the shooting. Drilled also spends time on law, such as Fernanda Hopenheim’s warning that companies trading in seized Venezuelan oil may face liability even when U.S. officials claim legality. Protest is another recurring center of gravity. The Dakota Access Pipeline episode follows Ruby and Jessica, private contractors, surveillance, arrests, and the pressure around construction near the Mississippi River. The show also examines the phrase energy transition with skepticism, asking how useful it has been to industries looking for delay. Uruguay’s renewable energy shift appears as a practical counterpoint, shaped by politics, economics, and the absence of domestic fossil fuel reserves. The tone is fast, argumentative, and evidence-minded. It assumes climate listeners can handle complexity. It is best for people who want climate journalism that names the actors, follows the paperwork, and keeps the human cost in frame.