From Drilled: The Carbon Gold Rush
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Pushkin. Hello, Tim Harford here, briefly stepping aside from my usual role of documenting failures of the past, to point you towards someone who's uncovering spectacular failures as they happen. Her name is Amy Westerveldt, and her show is called Drilled. It's an investigative podcast about climate change. Not the science of it, but the politics and the money and the spin. This season, Carbon Cowboys follows a new type of clean energy project in Brazil, one that promises to turn the country into the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuels.
What is the premise of Drilled’s “Carbon Cowboys” season?
What could possibly go wrong? It's the kind of story cautionary tales listeners will recognise. Powerful people, a compelling vision, and some uncomfortable questions lurking just beneath the surface. Enjoy the episode, and if you want to hear more, find Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. And hear episodes early and ad-free with Pushkin Plus. Available on Drilled's Apple Podcasts show page or pushkin.com. dot fm slash plus
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On August 4th, 1962, Marilyn Monroe died. Then the rumors started, and she died again. And now we're going to set the record straight and learn about the way Marilyn Monroe actually died. The third way. I'm Jake Brennan, and on my podcast Hollywood Land, I revisit some of the biggest stories from Hollywood history, separating the myths people want to believe from the reality underneath them. Hollywoodland is part of the exactly right network. Listen to new episodes every Monday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
They're hunting down immigrants to deport them.
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In early September 2025, a handful of Brazilian government officials headed to North Dakota on a mission. was a technical mission. They were there to see a shiny new green technology in action. The idea behind this new technology was simple. When you turn corn into ethanol, it generates carbon dioxide. And that's a problem if you're trying to be a green fuel. But now people from Iowa to North Dakota were capturing that carbon dioxide, storing it, and selling it. Never mind that they were selling it to people who would inject it underground to get more oil out. Some of it would surely still stay underground, and if you tilted your head and squinted a bit, that made it a climate solution. The American company selling the Brazilians on this idea had a lot writing on these officials believing that carbon capture connected to ethanol was a great green success story.
Win-win for industry and the environment. An American dream they could take home to Brazil. But had the visiting bureaucrats scanned the local newspapers, they might have found a different story.
If you live in Iowa, your land, your water, and your voice could all be at risk thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter. Uh you know, essentially paying him. to capture CO two at ethanol plants and then shipping it across private land and public land and then disposing of it somewhere many states away.
On September 2nd, the Brazilian contingent met with an Iowa company called Summit Carbon Solutions. Summit has been trying for years to build a carbon capture pipeline to connect dozens of ethanol plants from Iowa to North Dakota. It's called the Midwest Carbon Express Project.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–0:51
2
What is the premise of Drilled’s “Carbon Cowboys” season?
0:51–17:04
3
Why did Brazilian ministers travel to North Dakota to see a clean‑energy project?
17:04–19:06
4
How does the Midwest Carbon Express pipeline aim to capture ethanol CO₂?
19:06–23:27
5
Who is Bruce Rastetter and why is he called the “ethanol kingpin” of Iowa?
23:27–33:21