How Oil Propaganda Sneaks Into TV Shows

Special thanks to Travis Bradford and Scott Fisher for their knowledge and help on this episode.

If you want to learn more about oil & gas propaganda, you have to check out Drilled from Amy Westervelt and her team:    / @drilledmedia  

And if you want to learn more about the oil industry in the Permian Basin, check out Boomtown from Christian Wallace and Texas Monthly: https://www.texasmonthly.com/podcasts...

Here’s a list of some climate journalists/publications/writers we highly recommend:

• Center for Climate Integrity: https://climateintegrity.org/

• Hiroko Tabuchi (at the New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/by/hiroko-tab...

• Oliver Milman (at the Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/profile/o...

• Grist: https://grist.org/

• Heated (from Emily Atkin): https://heated.world/

• Canary Media: https://www.canarymedia.com/

• Hannah Ritchie: https://hannahritchie.com/

• The Climate Brink: https://www.theclimatebrink.com/

Sources & Citations

Citations reference first appearance, without repeating for subsequent usage:

• NPR: ‘The Sideways Effect’: How A Wine-Obsessed Film Reshaped The Industry (2017)

• X (@bonchieredstate): “Every left-winger should have their eyes held open and be forced to watch this on repeat until it sinks in.” (2024)

• OutKick: Hit TV Show Crushes Woke Snowflakes With Incredible Ran: WATCH (2025)

• Fox News: ‘Landman’ clip goes viral smalling renewable energy: ‘There is nothing clean about this’ (2024)

• The Western Journal: Scene from Billy Bob Thorton’s New Show Goes Viral as His ‘Landman’ Character Savages Green Energy (2024)

• Paramount Plus: Landman | Tommy Explains Why Even Wind Turbines Depend on the Oil Industry (S1, E3) (2024)

• Karl R. Haapala and Preedanood Prempreeda: Comparative life cycle assessment of 2.0 MW wind turbines (2014)

• Environmental Science & Technology: Space, Time, and Size Dependencies of Greenhouse Gas Payback Times of Wind Turbines in Northwestern Europe (2019)

• ScienceDaily: Wind farms can offset their emissions within two years (2024)

• Yale Climate Connections: What’s the carbon footprint of a wind turbine? (2021)

• ScienceDirect: Life cycle assessment of two different 2MW class wind turbines (2012)

• Plastic Pollution Coalition: Fracked Gas is Now a Growing Share of the Fossil Fuels Being Turned Into Plastics (2024)

• Yale Environment 360: The Plastics Pipeline: A Surge of New Production Is on the Way (2019)

• SF Chronicle: Your socks are made with plastic and could be loaded with dangerous BPA (2021)

• EIA: FAQ: How much oil is consumed in the United States? (Accessed 2025)

• Oilprice.com: U.S. Oil Production Shattered Records Again in 2024 (2024)

• EIA: United States produces more crude oil than any country, ever (2024)

• PB Oil & Gas: The Well That Launched the Permian (2017)

• Journal of Petroleum Technology: Shale Wells Producing More Early On, Then Declining Faster Than Ever (2023)

• Stockholm Environment Institute: How subsidies aided the US shale oil and gas boom (2021)

• Fox News Insider: 'That Was Me, People': Obama Takes Credit for Oil Production Boom (Uploaded 2018)

• IEA: World Energy Investment 2024 (2024)

• Greenpeace Unearthed: Inside Exxon’s playbook: How America’s biggest oil company continues to oppose action on climate change (2021)
  Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts: Energy is Good for Texas (accessed 2025)

• bp: Wind Energy (accessed 2025)

• NY Times: Shell, the Oil Giant, Will Sell Renewable Energy to Texans (2022)

• Total Energies: Wind, Solar and Hydro Power: Our Renewable Energy Activities in France at a Glance (2024)

• Reuters: Exxon says its decarbonization business could outgrow oil, in multi-trillion market (2023)

• Forbes: The McDonald’s Grimace Shake’s Viral (And Gruesome) TikTok Trend, Explained (2023)

• OERB Homeroom: Petro Pete’s Adventure – Big Bad Dream (accessed 2025)

• Open Secrets: Industry Profile: Oil & Gas (accessed 2025)

• Drilled: Weaponizing False Equivalence (2018)

• Guardian News: ‘I never understood wind’: Trump goes on bizarre tirade against windmills (2019)

• Statista: Wind Turbines Are Not Killing Fields for Birds (2019)

• Wikipedia: Stephens, Arkansas (accessed 2025)

• Paramount Plus: Landman | Q&A with Billy Bob Thornton (2024)

• Texas Monthly: The Permian Basin Is Booming With Oil. But at What Cost to West Texans? (2019)

• Texas Monthly: Boomtown (2019/2020)

• The Joe Rogan Experience: #892 - Greg Fitzsimmons (2016)

• The Joe Rogan Experience: #2083 - Taylor Sheridan (2024)

• California Energy Commission: 2023 Total System Electric Generation (accessed 2025)

• Natural Gas Intelligence: Vistra Eyeing Natural Gas-Fueled Expansion Across Texas to Bolster ERCOT Grid (2024)

• NBC News: How Zuckerberg’s fact-checking rollback could usher in a new, chaotic era for social media (2025)

Episode Credits

Creator/Host: Rollie Williams

Writers: Rollie Williams & Matt Nelsen

Director: Matt Nelsen

Editor: Rollie Williams

Executive Producers: Rollie Williams, Matt Nelsen, Ben Boult, & Daniella Philipson

Cinematography: Ben Boult

Producers: Miranda Manganaro & Daniella Philipson

Assistant Editor: Laura Conte

Colorist: Nicholas Lareau

Production Assistants: Adrian Ruvalcaba

Additional Research: Miranda Manganaro

Intro Animator: Ian MK Cessna (https://ianhasawebsite.com/) 

Theme music by: Gratis (https://www.youtube.com/@gratis3241)

Special thanks: Travis Bradford, Scott Fisher, and Gavin Good for pointing out the McSpaghetti is available in the Philippines.

Special thanks to the Civil Liberties Defense Center (https://cldc.org/) for their continued support.