Lawless Planet
Episodes
Tim DeChristopher’s Lonely Battle for the Planet
11 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When you hear the term “civil disobedience,” most people think about mass demonstrations. But sometimes, the most effective protest involves a sin...
How Trump’s EPA Chief Is Dismantling Climate Regulation
04 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
With the arrival of the second Trump administration, many employees at the Environmental Protection Agency have felt like they’re under attack – f...
The Mining Disaster That Brought Down the 'Dark Lord of Coal'
27 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Don Blankenship grew up poor in the heart of West Virginia coal country, but rose to become a union-busting CEO with a track record prioritizing profi...
Church Rock: America's Forgotten Nuclear Disaster
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In July 1979, just months after a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island gripped the nation, the largest radioactive spill in U.S. history quietly unfo...
Who's to Blame for L.A.'s ‘Zombie Fire’?
13 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On New Year’s Eve 2024, an Uber driver named Jonathan Rinderknecht allegedly started a fire in the Pacific Palisades. The fire was quickly contained...
The Small Towns That Exposed the Dangers of Forever Chemicals
06 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Chemical manufacturers like DuPont and 3M have invented nearly 15,000 synthetic compounds called PFAS, better known as “forever chemicals” because...
Disaster Capitalism Makes Landfall in Puerto Rico
30 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 2017, Hurricane Maria, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, battered the island of Puerto Rico. In the aftermath, big banks, crypto bros ...
The People vs. Big Oil, Part 2: Chevron Strikes Back
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 2011, the people of Ecuador shocked the world by winning a multibillion judgment against Chevron for failing to clean up its oil operations in the ...
The People vs. Big Oil, Part 1: 'Amazon Chernobyl'
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
After Texaco (now Chevron) discovered oil in Ecuador, they left behind an ecological and public health disaster so severe that experts have dubbed it ...
When Elon Musk’s Data Center Came to Town
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Elon Musk’s xAI opened a data center called Colossus in South Memphis for its chatbot, Grok, local politicians and business leaders hailed it a...
'Field of Schemes': Organic Farming’s Epic Fraud
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When it comes to organic food, can we really trust what’s on our plate? Do we understand how it was grown or raised? The organic food industry is la...
The Battle Over Burn Pits, a Military Practice That’s Making Veterans Sick
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Jessey Baca returned from Balad Air Base in Iraq, he began experiencing strange health symptoms: fevers, chills, headaches, difficulty breathing....
The Bundy Family’s Bloody War over Federal Land
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The tug-of-war over undeveloped land in the U.S. is nothing new, but in 2014 Cliven and Ammon Bundy escalated their dispute over cattle grazing permit...
Who Hired Hackers to Target Climate Activists?
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In 2015, news broke that Exxon’s own scientists had known for decades that burning fossil fuels was causing global warming. To raise awareness, clim...
How America’s Deadliest Industrial Disaster Was Almost Erased
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
One of the worst industrial disasters in our nation’s history occurred in West Virginia in the 1930s. Not in a coal mine – but in a tunnel chisele...
Clean Energy, Dirty Mines: The Dark Story of Congo Cobalt
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The device you’re using to listen to this podcast almost certainly contains cobalt. It’s a vital component of rechargeable batteries, which are es...
The Unsolved Bombing of an Earth First! Activist
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1980s, Judi Bari was a fearless activist building an alliance between loggers and environmentalists to save the last of California's old g...
Inside the Sting Operation to Catch Florida’s Alligator Thieves
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When Florida state wildlife officials begin to suspect that someone is illegally harvesting alligator eggs, they launch Operation Alligator Thief. At ...
The Trash Ship That Became a Symbol of America’s Toxic Waste Problem
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980s, Philadelphia was in the midst of a trash crisis. A sanitation workers’ strike had left the city with an immense backlog of garbage. Th...
Drilled: How Greenpeace Got Sued for the Standing Rock Protests
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today, Lawless Planet brings you an episode from our friends at Drilled Media. Season 12 of their flagship podcast is called SLAPP’d, and it tells a...
Scamfluencers: The Solar Powered Scammer
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We’re doing something different on Lawless Planet this week. We’re sharing an episode from our friends Scamfluencers — a show that unpacks the w...
Europe Had a Plan to Reduce Carbon Emissions. Scammers Fleeced It for Billions
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When scam artist Gregory Zaoui got out of prison in 2004, he had a plan to go straight – by selling solar panels. But when he learned about a new ca...
Shipbreaking: Inside the World’s Most Dangerous Job
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When oil tankers, freighters and cruise ships reach the end of their lives, nearly all wind up on just three beaches in South Asia. There, unskilled w...
Is Russia Training Dolphin Soldiers? (Are We?)
01 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have a long history of deploying wild beasts in wartime, from horse-mounted cavalry to Hannibal riding into Rome on an elephant. After Russia i...
ENCORE: Coal, Con Men and a Kidnapping Scheme
24 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a Montana coal mine executive goes missing it exposes the dirty underbelly of one of America’s largest coal mines. Now, with the help of Presid...
Bhopal: The World’s Worst Industrial Disaster
17 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What occurred shortly after midnight in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984 is still being felt – and fought over – four decades later. The sca...
Deepwater Horizon, Part 2: BP’s Disaster
10 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On April 20, 2010, the crew aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was in the final stages of sealing up an exploratory well off the coast of Louisiana....
Deepwater Horizon, Part 1: “Operate to Failure”
03 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and leading to the biggest oil spill in U.S. ...
The Amateur Sleuth Who Solved an Oil Worker's Disappearance
27 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a young oil worker goes missing on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, an indigenous amateur detective named Lissa Yellow Bird-Chas...
In Rural Alabama, a Hidden Sanitation Crisis
20 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The daughter of civil rights activists, Catherine Coleman Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, one of the poorest parts of the Deep South. When...
The Bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
13 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Greenpeace has a long history of successful direct action protest, but their work has made a lot of enemies. Recently, the U.S. arm of the environment...
The Long Fight to Keep the Lights on in Gaza
06 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two years after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, 2023, Israel continues its brutal military assault in Gaza. But long before the current conflict...
A Killing Exposes the Dirty Side of Clean Energy
29 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the aftermath of a right-wing coup in 2009, Honduras invested in several new clean energy projects, including a hydroelectric dam on a river sacred...
Who Blew Up the Nord Stream Pipeline?
22 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Less than a year after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a series of undersea explosions rocked the Baltic Sea. The target: the Nord Stream pipelines, ...
The Green Tech Savior That Fooled Wall Street
15 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The urgency of solving the climate crisis makes finding a quick fix very tempting. So a few years ago when Nikola CEO Trevor Milton unveiled a hydroge...
A Gorilla Massacre in Africa's Oldest National Park
08 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a massacre of gorillas in Virunga National Park highlights the constant threat of violence from militias, poa...
Operation Wasteland
01 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For nearly 40 years, New York’s private waste removal industry was the domain of the mob, until an undercover cop risked everything to take it down....
A Polygamist Cult-Leader’s Billion-Dollar Biofuel Scam
25 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The biggest biofuel scam in U.S. history was committed by the unlikeliest of duos — a polygamist cult-leader and an Armenian mobster. They took one ...
The Activist Who Defied Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, oil companies like Shell operated with impunity in the Niger River Delta, supported by a string of dictators. Then, an Ogoni activist nam...
Surveillance and Sabotage on the Dakota Access Pipeline
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When activists Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya take drastic measures to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, they have no idea that a sh...
A Murder in the Amazon
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the 1980s, an unlikely champion for protecting the Amazon rainforest emerges: Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and labor organizer from the remote Bra...
The “Bomb Train” That Devastated an Ohio Town
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Massive, poorly regulated trains carrying hazardous chemicals travel through American towns, cities and suburbs every day. It’s only a matter of tim...
Coal, Con Men and a Kidnapping Scheme
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When a Montana coal mine executive goes missing it exposes the dirty underbelly of one of America’s largest coal mines. Now, with the help of Presid...
Introducing: Lawless Planet
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen everywhere and watch on YouTube on July 28th! To listen ad-fre...