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I’m extremely excited to share something I’ve been working on for the last few months: A new weekly video podcast for HEATED.
To make it happen, I’m teaming up with one of television’s most experienced climate journalists. She recently lost her job because a centibillionaire’s son took control of a major news network and decided that climate change reporting was “no longer aligned with our evolving priorities.”
To him I say: Your loss is our gain.
Meet our new producer in episode one, linked at the top of this newsletter and available on all your podcast apps and YouTube. (Subscribe to our channel!)
But Emily, why are you doing this?
Great question. For almost seven years now, HEATED has been a text-only operation—minus that one six-episode podcast mini series we did in 2020 on coronavirus. (Only OGs will remember).
But most people don’t actually get their news by reading it. They get it by consuming it via social media, mostly in video form. And loads of people prefer listening to their news rather than reading it, so they can multitask while driving, cooking, or peddling on the bike. (It’s me. I’m loads of people).
I’ve wanted to bring HEATED into the audio/visual space for a while, I just didn’t have the right person to help me. I needed someone who knows the climate beat inside and out, who understands video production, who gets my personality, and—crucially—who is super Type A. Now I have that person. Thank you, David Ellison.
I’ve also been feeling lots of pressure from the climate news environment crumbling around me. This felt like the right moment to try and expand.
Am I about to become a master of short-form TikTok get-ready-with-me climate explainers? Probably not. (Although never say never, I guess.) But I do believe journalists have a responsibility to meet audiences where they are, without dumbing down the reporting. So that’s what we’re going to try and do.
What will this podcast be like?
I recommend listening to our introductory episode to find out! Did I mention it’s at the top of this newsletter?
But basically, we’re going to investigate and explain the powerful, systemic forces driving inaction on climate change. We’re going to debunk polluter-funded propaganda; call out media complicity; and press people seeking power on what they’ll actually do about the crisis. And that’s just what we have planned for our first few episodes!
We also want this to be a two-way street. So please let us know if there’s anyone in particular you’d like us to interview, or any subject you’d like to us to tackle.