Hot Money: Agent of Chaos

Drilled is a true-crime climate change podcast exposing how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate denial and delay. Hosted and reported by award-winning investigative climate journalists, led by Amy Westervelt, each season unravels new evidence of deception, disinformation, and the power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach.
In September 2025, a group of Brazilian ministers trekked all the way to chilly North Dakota to see a presentation on a new type of clean energy project, one that promised to help them deliver Brazilian President Lula’s dream of turning Brazil into "the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuels." It was the latest in a string of projects from Midwest Republican kingmaker and corn ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, whose investments in Brazil might just transform him into a global carbon czar, even as his Summit pipeline carbon project faces fierce opposition from Iowa to North Dakota. The problem? It all requires loads of land and none of it does a thing about climate change.
Here's episode 1 of Drilled: Carbon Cowboys. Find Drilled wherever you get podcasts.
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Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy, Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister, a special limited series from RTÉ. The story of Elizabeth Plunkett – a 23 year old woman from Dublin who was murdered by Ireland’s first serial killers. On the last weekend of summer in 1976 Elizabeth Plunkett went on a night away with friends, to Brittas Bay in county Wicklow before she was abducted by John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans. Now, almost 50 years later, Elizabeth’s family are finally trying to get their sister some justice.
Binge all episodes of Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up at pushkin.fm/plus or on the Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister show page on Apple Podcasts.
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In this special bonus episode from The Financial Times, "The Broker" tells the story of how a failed baseball hopeful and disgraced stockbroker reinvented himself as one of America’s most consequential modern arms dealers.
From a family-run warehouse in Virginia Beach, Will Somerindyke built his company into a crucial conduit in the Pentagon’s covert supply chains — sourcing Soviet-era weapons for wars in Syria and Yemen before emerging as a central player in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.
As artillery shells became the most sought-after commodity of the war, he placed a multimillion-dollar bet on reviving crumbling Cold War factories in the Balkans, transforming himself from middleman to manufacturer.
Based on months of reporting, The Broker traces Somerindyke’s rise through the shadow world of privatized warfare — where geopolitics, profit and personal ambition collide — and reveals how modern conflicts are sustained not only by soldiers on the front lines, but by entrepreneurs who move the weapons behind the scenes.
This piece, written by the FT’s Miles Johnson, host of Hot Money Season 2: The New Narcos, was originally printed in FT Weekend.
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How did a quasi-fictional novel about Vladimir Putin’s spin doctor become an international bestselling sensation and now, a political thriller starring Jude Law and Paul Dano? Filled with real political insight and intrigue, The Wizard of the Kremlin is a riveting look at the nature of power and the inner workings of Putin’s regime at a time when the Russian leader’s decisions are reverberating across the world.
Here's a preview of The Wizard of the Kremlin (01:00). If you like what you hear, get the audiobook now on Audible, Spotify, Apple Books, pushkin.fm/audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold.
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Valley of Shadows is a new Pushkin true crime podcast that digs into a nearly 30-year old secret buried in the California desert. On June 11, 1998, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputy Jon Aujay went for a run in California’s Devil’s Punchbowl park...and never came back. Nearly 30 years later, the mystery surrounding his disappearance has only deepened. Some say Aujay is just another missing hiker, claimed by the inhospitable landscape of the Southern California desert. Some say he took his own life out there. But there’s another theory that many of Aujay’s friends and LASD colleagues are convinced is true—that he was the victim of foul play, and that his own department is covering it up. Through exclusive interviews, revealing wiretaps, and buried police files, investigative reporters Hayley Fox and Betsy Shepherd uncover vestiges of the Wild West in a small California town, where outlaw biker gangs crank out methamphetamine and local cops operate on both sides of the law.
(00:01:04) Find Valley of Shadows wherever you get podcasts. Binge the entire season of Valley of Shadows, ad-free, by subscribing to Pushkin+. Sign up on the Valley of Shadows show page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin.fm/plus.
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