Ecocide Podcast Mon, 15 Jun 2026 19:15:55 -0700 https://ecocidepod.com/ en-us © 2026 Ecocide Podcast yes e54156e0-5bdb-5277-9bc5-25806d1ce18f Ecocide Media episodic false Every environmental disaster starts the same way. Not with an explosion, a spill, or a cloud of gas, but with a decision. Sometimes the decision to cut a corner. Sometimes to ignore a warning. Sometimes to let a known risk sit until it became someone else's problem.

Ecocide is a narrative podcast about environmental destruction and the many forms it can take. Each episode investigates a moment when human activity collided with the natural world, and follows what happened next and who was left to deal with the fallout.

The stories fall into four categories:

First, infamous cases. Disasters you've heard of but may not know the full story. Think the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or the Cuyahoga River catching fire. We’ll document ignored warnings, the calculations made by people who understood exactly what they were doing, and the long trail of consequences that followed to humans, wildlife, and ecosystems.

Second, local and regional cases that rarely make national news. A small community's drinking water quietly contaminated while regulators looked the other way. Or a mine operating illegally in a protected landscape. These are the cases that show how the system actually works because they show what happens when nobody's watching. There are thousands of these stories touching every corner of America and the globe.

Third, historical cases that explain how ecosystems function, how they break, and—sometimes—how they recover. Stories like the capture of wild orcas for entertainment, or the widespread use of DDT. Moments that changed how we understand the natural world, often too late.

Fourth, real-time episodes. Stories unfolding right now—tied to specific decisions, specific timelines, and, in some cases, specific actions listeners can take. These episodes close the gap between awareness and action.

You won't find a show like this anywhere else.

Environmental stories typically get covered in one of two ways: either as fast-and-thin breaking news—gone before the consequences arrived—or as advocacy, with a conclusion already built in. What's missing are stories told in enough depth to establish the facts, examine the tradeoffs, name the people who made the decisions, and learn about the communities left behind. And to do it all without telling listeners what to think. That's what this show is.

Every episode is built on primary sources. We use court documents and legal filings, agency records, and the investigative journalism produced by reporters who were there when it happened. Our research also draws on peer-reviewed science, academic literature, and nonfiction books. We don't start with a conclusion and work backward. We start with the record.

When the facts are damning, they'll be presented without editorializing. And when the story is complicated, it'll stay complicated. The goal isn't to tell you how to feel. It's to make sure you know what happened.

Because the earth doesn't forget. And neither can we.

]]> Buzzsprout (https://www.buzzsprout.com) environmental podcast, investigative journalism, true crime, accountability journalism, climate change, environmental justice, narrative podcast, pollution, conservation, environmental law, corporate accountability, documentary podcast Ecocide Media https://storage.buzzsprout.com/sq1dbmq33osk0clzfdze49vxbwr8?.jpg Ecocide Podcast https://ecocidepod.com/ Ep. 06: The Lagoon Ep. 06: The Lagoon The story of what concentrated animal feeding operations—CAFOs—do to the people who live beside, downstream, and downwind of them | In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, the water coming out of the tap turned the color of rust. In Bladen County, North Carolina, the air grew so thick with gases from hog waste lagoons that families couldn't sit on their own porches. In the Lower Yakima Valley in Washington State, the water looked clean. It wasn't. Sixty percent of the wells nearest the dairy operations that had been running there for decades exceeded the federal safety standard for nitrate.

None of these communities were the victims of an accident. The permits were followed. The lagoons worked as designed. The waste went exactly where the system allowed it to go.

This story is told from three states, across five decades, through the people who got sick, the scientists who proved it, the lawyers who fought it, and the family that built one of the operations at the center of it all. It's a story about a regulatory system that was never designed to protect the communities it was supposed to serve, and about the people fighting back.


]]> The story of what concentrated animal feeding operations—CAFOs—do to the people who live beside, downstream, and downwind of them | In Kewaunee County, Wisconsin, the water coming out of the tap turned the color of rust. In Bladen County, North Carolina, the air grew so thick with gases from hog waste lagoons that families couldn't sit on their own porches. In the Lower Yakima Valley in Washington State, the water looked clean. It wasn't. Sixty percent of the wells nearest the dairy operations that had been running there for decades exceeded the federal safety standard for nitrate.

None of these communities were the victims of an accident. The permits were followed. The lagoons worked as designed. The waste went exactly where the system allowed it to go.

This story is told from three states, across five decades, through the people who got sick, the scientists who proved it, the lawyers who fought it, and the family that built one of the operations at the center of it all. It's a story about a regulatory system that was never designed to protect the communities it was supposed to serve, and about the people fighting back.


]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19349483 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0700 3585 1 6 full false Ep. 05: The Galapagoats Islands Ep. 05: The Galapagoats Islands The story of how feral goats nearly destroyed the Galápagos Islands | For centuries, goats in the Galapagos were a living pantry, released on islands by pirates and whalers who needed a reliable food source waiting for them when they returned. When permanent settlers arrived in the late 1800s and started releasing them by the hundreds, they became a catastrophe. By the late 20th century, 250,000 feral goats were stripping the archipelago bare—destroying the cactus forests, collapsing the soil, and pushing the famous giant tortoises toward extinction.

What followed was one of the most ambitious conservation campaigns ever attempted: 9 years, $10.5 million, 150,000 goats killed, and a technique called the Judas Goat that turned the animals' own social instincts against them.

This is the story of how the Galápagos Islands nearly lost everything.



]]> The story of how feral goats nearly destroyed the Galápagos Islands | For centuries, goats in the Galapagos were a living pantry, released on islands by pirates and whalers who needed a reliable food source waiting for them when they returned. When permanent settlers arrived in the late 1800s and started releasing them by the hundreds, they became a catastrophe. By the late 20th century, 250,000 feral goats were stripping the archipelago bare—destroying the cactus forests, collapsing the soil, and pushing the famous giant tortoises toward extinction.

What followed was one of the most ambitious conservation campaigns ever attempted: 9 years, $10.5 million, 150,000 goats killed, and a technique called the Judas Goat that turned the animals' own social instincts against them.

This is the story of how the Galápagos Islands nearly lost everything.



]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19349453 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0700 2670 1 5 full false Ep. 04: The Color of Poison Ep. 04: The Color of Poison The story of the Gold King Mine spill | On the morning of August 5, 2015, an EPA contractor working at an abandoned mine in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado punched through a plug of debris and released 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into Cement Creek—a tributary of the Animas River. Within hours, the river had turned a vivid orange. By the time the plume reached New Mexico, water intakes serving the Navajo Nation had been shut off. Farmers watched their irrigation systems go dry. Crops died in the ground.

The Gold King Mine hadn't been active in decades. But abandoned hard-rock mines don't stop producing acid.

This is the story of how a cleanup operation became a catastrophe, why no one was ever held criminally accountable, and what it means when the agency charged with protecting America's waterways is the one that poisons them.



]]> The story of the Gold King Mine spill | On the morning of August 5, 2015, an EPA contractor working at an abandoned mine in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado punched through a plug of debris and released 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater into Cement Creek—a tributary of the Animas River. Within hours, the river had turned a vivid orange. By the time the plume reached New Mexico, water intakes serving the Navajo Nation had been shut off. Farmers watched their irrigation systems go dry. Crops died in the ground.

The Gold King Mine hadn't been active in decades. But abandoned hard-rock mines don't stop producing acid.

This is the story of how a cleanup operation became a catastrophe, why no one was ever held criminally accountable, and what it means when the agency charged with protecting America's waterways is the one that poisons them.



]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19349433 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0700 2723 1 4 full false Ep. 03: Penn Cove Ep. 03: Penn Cove The story of the capture of wild orcas for human entertainment | For thousands of years, the Southern Resident killer whales lived in the inland waters of the Pacific Northwest, following salmon runs through the Salish Sea in tight-knit family pods that passed knowledge, dialect, and culture from one generation to the next.

Then, in August 1970, a commercial whale-catching operation drove more than 80 of them into Penn Cove on Washington's Puget Sound. Seven calves were taken and sold to aquariums around the world. Five whales died. The bodies were weighted and sunk in an effort to hide them from the public. Three months later, they washed ashore anyway.

What followed was a decades-long reckoning: landmark federal legislation, the end of live orca captures in Washington waters, and a cultural shift so drastic that SeaWorld—the company that built its brand on the back of captive orcas—announced in 2016 that it would phase out its theatrical killer whale shows. But the Southern Residents themselves have never recovered the numbers they had before the hunters arrived. One of the seven calves taken that day—named Tokitae—spent 53 years in a tank in Miami before coming home as ashes. 



]]> The story of the capture of wild orcas for human entertainment | For thousands of years, the Southern Resident killer whales lived in the inland waters of the Pacific Northwest, following salmon runs through the Salish Sea in tight-knit family pods that passed knowledge, dialect, and culture from one generation to the next.

Then, in August 1970, a commercial whale-catching operation drove more than 80 of them into Penn Cove on Washington's Puget Sound. Seven calves were taken and sold to aquariums around the world. Five whales died. The bodies were weighted and sunk in an effort to hide them from the public. Three months later, they washed ashore anyway.

What followed was a decades-long reckoning: landmark federal legislation, the end of live orca captures in Washington waters, and a cultural shift so drastic that SeaWorld—the company that built its brand on the back of captive orcas—announced in 2016 that it would phase out its theatrical killer whale shows. But the Southern Residents themselves have never recovered the numbers they had before the hunters arrived. One of the seven calves taken that day—named Tokitae—spent 53 years in a tank in Miami before coming home as ashes. 



]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19349372 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 09:00:00 -0700 3341 1 3 full false Ep. 02: Fallout Ep. 02: Fallout The story of the Hanford Nuclear Site | In 1942, the U.S. government chose a remote stretch of desert along the Columbia River in eastern Washington to build the reactors that would produce the plutonium for America's nuclear arsenal. What they left behind may be uncontainable.

177 underground tanks, some of which are leaking, hold 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste, making it the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere. Some of that waste moves through the soil toward the Columbia River, the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.

“Fallout” traces the decisions that created the Hanford Nuclear Site, the decades of cover-ups, and the cleanup project that has consumed billions of dollars and produced very little success.



]]> The story of the Hanford Nuclear Site | In 1942, the U.S. government chose a remote stretch of desert along the Columbia River in eastern Washington to build the reactors that would produce the plutonium for America's nuclear arsenal. What they left behind may be uncontainable.

177 underground tanks, some of which are leaking, hold 56 million gallons of radioactive and chemical waste, making it the most contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere. Some of that waste moves through the soil toward the Columbia River, the lifeblood of the Pacific Northwest.

“Fallout” traces the decisions that created the Hanford Nuclear Site, the decades of cover-ups, and the cleanup project that has consumed billions of dollars and produced very little success.



]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19351458 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0700 4142 1 2 full false Ep. 00: Trailer Ep. 00: Trailer A brief introduction to Ecocide, a new narrative documentary podcast about environmental destruction, those who cause it, and those who fight back. This trailer introduces the series and the stories we'll be telling in Season 1, including environmental disasters, cover-ups, court battles, and the communities still living with the consequences.

]]> A brief introduction to Ecocide, a new narrative documentary podcast about environmental destruction, those who cause it, and those who fight back. This trailer introduces the series and the stories we'll be telling in Season 1, including environmental disasters, cover-ups, court battles, and the communities still living with the consequences.

]]> Ecocide Media Buzzsprout-19349216 Mon, 15 Jun 2026 07:00:00 -0700 215 1 full false