HEATED

Emily Atkin
  • 5.0 (7)
  • Politics
  • Updated Weekly

A podcast for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis. heated.world

  1. Jun 4

    Why Sheldon Whitehouse keeps calling out Big Oil

    For years, Senator Sheldon has been one of Congress’s most relentless climate voices, delivering more than 300 “Time to Wake Up” speeches on the Senate floor about climate change and the fossil fuel industry’s political power. Lately, that persistence has taken a more targeted form: pressing the Trump administration over its extraordinary new favors to the oil and gas industry; investigating its decision to exempt Gulf drilling from endangered species protections; and pushing a windfall profits tax on oil companies at a time when Republicans control Congress and the White House. Whitehouse knows none of it is likely to move through Washington right now. So why does this gentleman from Rhode Island continue this brutal exercise of self-flagellation in the Senate? What is he trying to accomplish? And does he really think that if Democrats were in power, things would be any different? That’s what we wanted to know, and what Emily asked him. So let’s hear from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    31 min

  2. May 28

    Why Kate Marvel left NASA

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit heated.world Kate Marvel spent more than a decade at NASA studying the future of life on Earth. Then the Trump administration made that job feel impossible. Marvel, a prominent climate scientist, resigned from NASA last month amid the Trump administration’s sweeping attacks on federal science. Since Trump’s second term started, more than 10,000 federal employees with STEM Ph.D.s have left the government—mostly through layoffs, firings and buyouts—and more than 7,800 research grants were terminated or frozen. In her resignation letter—a masterclass in principled dissent—Marvel wrote that she never expected to voluntarily leave her dream job. However, she wrote, "I’m leaving because I want to tell the truth." In our conversation today, Marvel tells the truth about what’s happening to federal science under the Trump administration. We talk about the work she was doing at NASA before Trump, and why the administration would want to make that work difficult to accomplish. We also talk about one side-effect of Trump’s attack on science that no one is talking about: The loss of nerd culture, and why that culture is important to democracy. Then, for paid subscribers, we keep going into one of the most controversial questions in climate science: geoengineering. We talk about what it means to study technologies that could intentionally alter the climate system, and why the collapse of trusted public science makes those future decisions even more dangerous. We also get into our feelings about the state of federal science, and the strategies we’re deploying to not just cope, but fight back.

    29 min

  3. May 21

    Why Shein bought Everlane

    Tracy and I go deep about Shein’s purchase of Everlane, fashion industry greenwashing, and what true sustainable fashion looks like. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    42 min

  4. May 14

    Hantavirus is a climate story

    What is coming when it comes to hantaviruses and climate change? How are they connected? And how could the rapidly approaching Super El Nino—a phenomenon worsened by climate change—affect the spread of hantavirus and other infectious diseases? That’s what we’re going to explore today. Special thanks to Drs. Kirk Osmond Douglas, James Shepherd, and Angel Desai for sharing their expertise that informed this story. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    14 min

  5. May 7

    Trump’s NOAA cuts would save less than a day and a half of Iran War spending

    Our good friends at the Popular Information newsletter have calculated the real cost of the Iran War so far: $72 billion for the first 60 days, or about $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars per day. The numbers are revealing, in that they show the Trump administration is perfectly capable of finding money when the goal is destruction. But when it comes to protecting Americans from fossil-fueled extreme weather, suddenly we’re told the cupboard is bare. The Trump administration recently released a proposed budget that would cut NOAA by 26 percent. This proposed $1.6 billion cut—equivalent to about 1.3 days of the war in Iran—would eliminate NOAA climate, weather, and ocean research labs, zero out grants that help improve rainfall and flood prediction, and cut the Integrated Ocean Observing System—our national system for monitoring what is happening in the ocean, where hurricanes strengthen, and where coastal flooding begins. And this comes on top of DOGE-driven layoffs last year that eliminated roughly 880 NOAA jobs, including staff at the National Weather Service. The stupidity of this is almost difficult to overstate. Because Trump is not proposing to gut NOAA during some calm, stable weather period. He’s doing it at the very moment forecasters are warning that a potentially dangerous El Niño may be on the way.In today's episode, we talk to Craig McLean, the former acting chief scientist of NOAA, who spent more than 40 years at the agency. McLean recently wrote that the NOAA budget request “is not streamlining. It’s sabotage.” McLean knows what it looks like when politics corrupts weather science. You might recall, McLean was the NOAA official at the center of “Sharpiegate,” the infamous Trump-era scandal in which the president falsely claimed Hurricane Dorian was threatening Alabama, then displayed a forecast map that appeared to have been altered with a Sharpie to make him look right. McLean pushed back after NOAA leadership rebuked its own forecasters for correcting the president, calling for an investigation into whether the agency’s scientific integrity policy had been violated. McLean was then relieved of his position. In our interview, McLean speaks about what these cuts would actually do, why NOAA research matters far beyond “the weather,” what Sharpiegate revealed about scientific integrity under Trump, and why attacking climate science is so dangerous at the exact moment Americans need it most. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    40 min

  6. May 5

    UPDATE: Trump’s DOJ swoops in to save Big Oil

    This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit heated.world In our full, subscribers-only interview with Mike Meno, the communications director for the Center for Climate Integrity, we discuss the ins and outs of Big Oil's push for legal immunity, both in and outside the court.

    10 min

  7. Apr 30

    Plastic detox update #1

    I’ve been trying to “detox my life” from plastic for a few weeks now. In today's episode, we talk about all the ups and downs. I’ll update you all again when I get the results of my pee test back. Make sure you’re subscribed to get it. In related recent news… * Now may actually be a good time to start shifting away from plastic. The American Prospect reports: Petrochemical prices are spiking to four-year highs as the key ingredients, known as feedstocks, cannot get out of the Persian Gulf. Roughly $20 billion to $25 billion worth of petrochemical products moves through the strait annually, and about 40 percent of exports of polyethylene, used mostly in packaging and containers, came from the Middle East last year. Polyethylene prices are up 37 percent since February, and polypropylene prices are up 38 percent. * Oregon passed a law to shift more of the costs of plastic onto producers. But producers are fighting back. Central Oregon Daily reports: The future of Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act is up in the air after a federal judge said portions of the law may be illegal, and can’t be enforced without full argument. On Feb. 6, Judge Michael Simon issued his initial order in the lawsuit that aimed to overturn the law meant to reform Oregon’s recycling system. * Millions of pre-term births and thousands of infant deaths linked to phthalates: From NYU Langone: Exposure to a chemical commonly used to make plastic more flexible may have contributed to about 1.97 million preterm births in 2018 alone, or more than 8 percent of the world’s total, a new analysis of population surveys shows. The chemical was also linked to the deaths of 74,000 newborns, the researchers further estimate…. According to the new work, [phthalate] exposure may have contributed to 1.2 million years lived with disability, a measure of all the years that people have lived or will live with illnesses, injuries, and other health issues caused by being born prematurely. * New study shows changing your personal care products actually does make a difference. From U.S. Right to Know: The findings, published in the May issue of Environment International, indicate that switching from conventional personal care products to nontoxic alternatives can rapidly and significantly reduce exposure to harmful chemicals. Even a few changes in only a few days can lower body levels of substances linked to hormone disruption, cancer, developmental problems, and reproductive toxicity, the study shows. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    40 min

  8. Apr 23

    Republicans introduce extreme bill to ban lawsuits against Big Oil forever

    Last week, Big Oil’s top-funded Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Harriet Hageman (R-WY) introduced a bill called the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026. They framed it as a way to “protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity.” What it actually does is give the fossil fuel industry a permanent shield against lawsuits and state laws that seek to hold the industry financially accountable for climate change, and for misleading the public about the catastrophic health, economic and environmental consequences of using their products. In this episode, I break down what this bill actually does, how it would shut down climate lawsuits across the country, and why the fossil fuel industry is pushing for blanket legal immunity right now. I also walk through the legal arguments their lawyers are using to try to kill these cases—and why those arguments only work if people don’t actually read the lawsuits. Read more and support my work at http://heated.world, or search HEATED in Substack. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit heated.world/subscribe

    19 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

A podcast for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis. heated.world

Information

  • Creator
    Emily Atkin
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Emily Atkin
  • Show Website
    HEATED

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