A Masterclass In How To Create A Narrative Style...with Amy Westervelt

Bingeworthy sits down with Amy Westervelt, to talk about Drilled, how to create a sub-genre, and what it has taken to stick with it

When I graduated with my undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies (with a focus on oral storytelling), I swiftly returned to Toronto from my small university town, excited to find work in the media.

With an exuberant fin-de-siècle vibe, I was sure that I was sure I’d locked my place in the world of journalism with a solid gold beat, the environment. The UN Earth Summit which was held in Brazil in 1992 set the agenda for all climate negotiations since, and it was about to get its 5-year review in 1997. ‘Greenhouse gases’ were on the rise. I was hot ready.

After an internship at This Magazine, a small lefty magazine in Toronto that back then had people like Naomi Klein, Margaret Atwood and Clive Thompson on the masthead, I exited (stumbled?) into the world of freelance writing. I imagined it would be hard. But what I quickly learned was that my vision was factually flawed.

After I sent one of my first pitches for some sort of environment-themed story to The Globe and Mail newspaper, the short response was: “We already have a guy who writes about that. Find something that’s actually interesting.”

It would actually be decades, not years, before the world would be as interested in narrative stories about the environment as I was.

I eventually gave up on my beat, but one of my contemporaries stuck it out and cracked the code. While working as a print reporter, Amy Westervelt sat and listened as two environment-themed lawyers squared off to explain climate science to a Judge.

In the age of Law & Order, I guess it was hard not to see the courtroom also as a stage, “straight out of central casting,” as Westervelt says. And it was here that she discovered the secret sauce to get people to listen to stories about the environment:

Mash up true-crime with environmental reporting...that’s Amy Westervelt’s secret sauce for enviro-themed narrative podcasting.

Her discovery is part of what would make her series, Drilled, now just wrapping its 8th season, stick.

Narrative podcasts need to have something pressing that’s under investigation

But that’s about the only rule book that exists. It could be a history, an experience, a crime, a murder, a history, a science question, some kind of emotional terrain….whatever it is, the chase must be as satisfying as the kill.

This is equally true of all genres and storytelling formats; but more so when you’re talking about dense and science-based stories.

The environmental beat is a tricky beat to cover:

• There’s a mountain of science to conscientiously explain

• There are hearts and minds to change

• The story itself keeps changing

• The lingo cycles every decade

• There are unreasonable levels of misinformation to crack.

Without great writing, action, suspense, high stakes and great characters, it risks falling into a university lecture format trap.

And then at every turn, there are believers, haters, converts, and wannabees; not to mention all the rest of the folks. But the realization that Westervelt had, to cross-pollinate true crime with another subject, allowed all that required nerdy information to come out in a satisfying way. Once you wade into these waters, you’ll get a mikvah vibe to it all. There are shades of religious tensions in every direction.

But what Westervelt did was build a place and a space for these stories to be shared. And what’s even more, she built a community around it.

Season 8 of Drilled is a co-production with another one of her podcasts, Damages, which dives headlong into a particular court case, with real-life implications for all the players involved. The way that she’s able to weave the story around the competing arguments of the environment, the economy, culture, tourism and hood-wink marketing tactics will keep you engaged.

I had the distinct pleasure to actually have a long chat with Amy…which you can listen to here on her podcast feed for Drilled…or read an except from the same interview below.

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The following is an excerpt from a Zoom interview with Amy Westervelt. This has been condensed for length and clarity.

[Samantha Hodder]:  I just want to say it's exciting to speak to an OG person who's worked in the climate news podcast and narrative journalism feed. You have been out there literally shaking these branches for a long time.

[Amy Westervelt]: Thank you. It's true! And I'm excited to talk to you…I'm a reader of your newsletter and find it very helpful.

[SH]: Well, it's the mutual love society here…

I started listening to Season 8, and after I got two or three episodes in, and I was like…I feel like [I’m missing] backstory here. There's a language that's developed. And I need to understand it.

So I just stopped and went back to Season 1. It was, truly, a lot of scrolling to get back [there]! It helped to make more sense of the work that you do in this space, the tone that you [have] set.

Now my question is: Do you see it the same way? [Do you wonder if you] should really tell my people to go back to the beginning to understand what you're doing here?

[AW]: It's sofunny because I have not been thinking about that (probably I should a little bit more). But I see this in the listening trends. Every time when we put a new season out, we have an enormous spike in in downloads for season one through whatever season we're on. We have a couple of more foundational seasons.

Season 1 and Season 3 are [sic] the origin story of climate denial. [They tell] the foundation of propaganda that the whole industry has been based on for a long time.

It’s kind of good backstory prep for any future season we're doing.

[SH]: Yeah, it's true. I felt like in Season 8 I dropped into a grad school seminar, but I was missing the 101. Where's the origin of climate denial? It was shocking to go back to Season 1 and feel how insidious it is. And, weirdly, to think of Exxon as both good and then bad [and to learn how] the Genesis story of Exxon was supposed to be good. And man, did it go wrong.

[AW]: In the 1970s and 80s [Exxon] was doing this big research and development initiatives around all kinds of alternative energy sources. They had this research center that a lot of people described as like the “Bell Labs” of energy…Bell Labs gave us like the cell phone and the TV satellite and comms technology that a lot of people depend on…Exxon wanted to do that [for energy].

They had people working on lithium batteries, solar [energy], geothermal and nuclear…and then market forces shifted. They kind of dropped it and dramatically changed their approach, especially [with regards to] the question of what was then called “the greenhouse effect.” 

It's actually kind of similar to what a lot of oil companies are doing now…[they’re] part of the transition and research [for things like] biofuels, hydrogen and carbon capture.  

The more I've looked at it [the more] I think that people have a tendency to look at that past and [say] “Oh! Exxon was a was on the path to solving climate change…and then turned.”

But more and more I feel [like what] they’re doing [is avoiding the] potential regulatory risk that’s coming.  [Instead they] make [themselves] part of the solution.

[So they] do a bunch of voluntary stuff that makes it seem like we're already on top of [it, which could mean] there's no need for government regulation.

[SH]: When I listened, I couldn't help but feel what an alternative future might have been had Exxon taken the left turn instead of the right turn, quite literally. We really could be potentially living on a different planet if they hadn't done that.

[AW]: The one thing I think is good is that stories like that help people realize that these big and seemingly impossible entrenched problems are often traceable to some pretty specific individuals or groups of individuals.

For me it feel more possible to tackle. [The narrative is that it’s just human nature and] we're not good at making short-term sacrifices for long term benefit…which is not untrue.

But if it all gets chalked up to human nature, it's pretty hard for people to feel like there's anything they can do.  Whereas, there were some pretty specific people who weaponized human nature.

[SH]: I couldn't help but kind of draw some parallels between Elon Musk and Exxon…

[AW]: Yeah, exactly. I think there is this desire to want to see [his] efforts as being…you know…Elon Musk was trying to address climate change. Elon Musk was trying to make money. And he's still trying to make money. The the circumstances by which he can make money may have shifted, and therefore, his approach has shifted.

But he’s not fundamentally different now than he was 20 years ago. This is a guy whose money [and generational wealth] came from apartheid South Africa, from gem mining. It doesn't get any dirtier.

[SH]: You've been doing so tell you've been doing this for a long time. When did you start your podcast? When did it launch?

[AW]: Drilled launched in either late 2017 or early 2018 around there. So five-ish years.

I was a print reporter for a long time. In 2015, 2016, I was driving around listening to NPR and [I had] FOMO. It sounded so cool. And then I thought…I could probably find a member station nearby and learn the basics. So I emailed my local member station, which was in Reno Nevada at the time, subject line: Would you like an over-aged intern? 

[They said], actually it takes us a lot longer to teach people reporting than it does to teach reporters like how to use audio equipment. So yeah, come on down. I did a one month internship for them, and then became a staff reporter there.

I had noticed that most of the climate podcasts were interview shows or chat shows between a couple of policy experts, or maybe like, tech-focused experts.

I didn't understand why there weren't any narrative podcasts on climate, because it seemed to me like that [here] was an area full of stories. But the more I started to think of something, that would be a good story, I was like, Oh, actually, it's harder than I thought!

It took me a good couple of years to have the idea for Drilled. It came when I was reporting a print story on a bunch of climate lawsuits. I was sitting in a courtroom, in San Francisco, this judge had requested a climate science tutorial, and asked both sides to present what was known about climate change, scientifically.

They walked him through what people had done with that information….and I was like, Oh, this is it! That's the the idea. I'm going to do a true crime podcast about climate change, because the lawyers on both sides that the oil company lawyers were out of Central Casting.

I caught them making fun of the environmental lawyers for staying at a cheap hotel….I was like, wow, like you have this whole cast here! And this allows you to get into all of the documentary evidence that came out [from] the reporting, [which] is collectively referred to as the “Exxon news story.”

[SH]: ​​Your slug: True crime about climate change…Tell me what were some of the true crime series that you learned from to build your series? What were some of the narrative conventions, or narrative structures, that you built on?

[AW]: Well, I loved In The Dark.

For the first few seasons of Drilled, I really struggled to do the kind of classic “True Crime” thing of like finding one main character to follow through a story. It's still something that I struggle with in climate stories. It's hard to find any one person or any one story that can hit all of those points.

Sometimes I’m worried about making sure people have all of the information, although we're [also] starting to expand our website a little bit more, which will free the podcast from having to kind of be the public record of all of this stuff.

[SH]: Yeah, kind of trying to wear all the hats of being the journalist and the investigative journalist and the host and the storyteller. You're sort of feeling the burden of being all of those things when, in the end, there's just a lot of pressing information, not to mention misinformation, that you've got to push through to get the facts out.

Does storytelling suffer or get a little off-track when you're when you've got all those other requirements?

[AW]: It definitely can. I feel like there are definitely times when I am so intent on getting certain types of information out. The one [hat] that I probably wear the most is the investigative journalist.

I have a tendency to prioritize that stuff versus stories sometimes. And that's when I need my editor, or producer, to kind of bring me back in.

[SH]: When I contrast Season 1 to Season 8, I feel like in the beginning, it was a bit more storytelling. You'd have done maybe six interviews, but condensed them down, narrated them, and put them together; Whereas Season 8 is a little more direct. Would you agree with that?

[AW]: I'm not sure I would agree with that.

In the case of Season 8, in particular, we definitely had a couple of episodes within the season that were one conversation. But the overall story is kind of following two specific people through the growth of an oil industry.

[SH]: I don't mean that in a derisive way. [More that] you condense more information into a smaller pipeline in Season 1, and now you've expanded…my working hypothesis here is that your community and your listeners are educated and they're going along with you….in some ways they want the unedited version. 

[AW]: Yeah, although I do have to be careful, because sometimes the number one piece of critical feedback that we get is: There's a baked-in assumption that people already know the background of some particular thing. A lot of times that's not intentional. It's me! I know so much.

I've been on the same beat for so long that it is definitely hard sometimes for me to see what is new information to people, or that haven't been listening to the podcast for a long time?

I will often try to find someone who's a fresh set of ears from a cultural perspective. If we're doing a story in a different place, for example, the Chevron Ecuador case, I [had] someone who is from Ecuador, Alyssa, make sure that we were getting the story from their side as well, and also telling it in a way that people there could access [it].

SH: You did that well with Season 8, when you talked about it from a Guyanese perspective [and had] the person share their opinion about it. It’s challenging from the different frameworks that you look at it if you're looking at it from a climate perspective, or an industry perspective, or a jobs perspective…. there are a lot of different and challenging ways to see this.

[AW]: Yeah. In Guyana, [similar to] a lot of global south countries, or less developed countries, this is a very complicated topic to think through.

[SH]: Is there a way that you've changed the way you structure your seasons since you started? From the 30,000-foot view, year over year, or season over season?

[AW]: I [wouldn’t] say that I have. I've worked on a few narrative shows outside of the climate realm, and I think that has really helped me…for example: How should we shift the approach on Drilled? Or, How might we structure it?

Although I will also say that I don't think I have ever put as much effort into Drilled as I have into other people's shows! The whole Cobbler’s wife has no shoes thing. 

I [also like to], maybe once a year or every other year, work on a show that's completely outside of my subject matter expertise, because I feel like it helps me think about narrative more. 

I would say the main thing is that I am always trying to find more character-driven stories on climate. It's tough though, because sometimes I feel like I let a lot of things get in the way of the narrative.

Right now we're working on a season where there's a great main character, but my hang up is this: she's not from the community that's directly impacted by the story. I'm [trying to figure out] how are we going to deal with that.

[SH]: Tell me a little bit more about the community that you've built around your work. [They] ultimately help to fund your work and make it a viable option.

[AW]: I think that's been sort of like the most gratifying thing to me. [Before when] I was working in print, I had this idea for this true crime climate podcast. I pitched it around to all of the big podcast companies. They all told me that there was just not an audience for narrative climate shows. I just was convinced that they were wrong.

[So I decided that] I'm going to just make it on a shoestring and prove that there is an audience. I made the first season at night in my car, with one sound designer and me, and that's it. And I feel like we did prove that there was an audience and not only was there an audience, but also, it was a pretty engaged audience. And it has continued to grow over time. 

I feel like folks come in from all sorts of directions. We've got academic researchers who focus on this [area]. There are also those who are interested to find new and related [topics]. And new-to-climate folks.

I get a lot of emails from academics who are not at all in the climate realm [for example from] history or social sciences, and [they] want to get more involved in climate [who say they] find the podcast helpful.

From there we have a lot of lawyers to who are either finding other lawyers to partner with through the show, or are finding new information that they think could be helpful in cases.

And then other journalists, activists…it's like a really big group of people.

I still hear from people that have sent the first season to their skeptical uncle, which I find really gratifying.

[SH]: Do you have any rules about how many episodes per season now?

[AW]: My soapbox is…I hate it when you can feel that they've stretched a story to be eight episodes are more because they wanted to sell that many ads, or whatever it is, if that story would have been awesome at four episodes.

I really try to start storyboarding without an idea of how many episodes there are. I try not to be afraid to cut it short, [especially] if it doesn't really need any more episodes.

[SH]: I think that's a brave and honest answer. It's true, a story needs to be the length that it needs to be; and yes, there are always other factors at play. And to not listen to the number of ad minutes is a tricky one.

What can the listeners of Drilled be excited about as we look ahead?

[AW]: I'm kind of working on three or four seasons at a time, [each at] different phases.

[Next season will be] another kind of legal drama…we’ve got some some fun character-driven stories. And it is set in Puerto Rico. That's, that's all I can say for now.

[SH]: It's been a pleasure to connect today.

[AW]: Yeah, awesome. Thank you.