Universities have grown increasingly close with the fossil fuel industry. Oil and gas money is flowing into universities around the world, shaping everything from students’ careers to climate research that can influence global energy policy.
Some professors and students are sounding the alarm. They worry this influx of fossil fuel money could compromise the credibility of research institutions, tainting the information produced. That they are even being used as pawns in a fossil fuel propaganda campaign.
These ties go way back. To understand this relationship, and what's at stake, we zoom in on the oil-and-gas-branded campus of Louisiana’s flagship university–LSU. Where, after digging through hundreds of archival documents, we learn this relationship dates back nearly a century, evolving into the deep ties we see today. In the first episode of our two-part series, Fueling Knowledge, we investigate how this bond between fossil fuels and one university began.
This series was reported in partnership with the Louisiana Illuminator and Floodlight News.
To read more about the evolution of this relationship, check out this article.
This episode is the first in our two-part series: Fueling Knowledge. This episode is hosted by the Louisiana Illuminator’s Piper Hutchinson and Halle Parker. This episode was reported by Piper Hutchinson, Halle Parker, and Pam Radtke of Floodlight News. It was edited by Johanna Zorn and Carlyle Calhoun, with additional help from Ryan Vasquez, Rosemary Westwood, Greg Larose and Dee Hall. The episode was fact-checked by Garrett Hazelwood. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste and our sound designer is Emily Jankowski. Carlyle Calhoun is our managing producer.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
_____________________________________
TRANSCRIPT
<<quad ambi>>
HALLE: I’m in Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana, and home to the state’s flagship college – Louisiana State University. With nearly 40,000 students, LSU is pretty big. But in this state, you don't have to go to LSU to be a fan of their football team, the mascot Mike the Tiger or purple and gold. It’s in the water.
HALLE: So where are we?
PIPER: We are in Central Campus, uh, a very old, very beautiful part of campus that everybody loves.
HALLE: I’m on my own personal tour of campus with a special LSU alum, Piper Hutchinson. She graduated just two years ago, and now reports on LSU and the rest of the state’s higher education for a nonprofit news outlet called the Louisiana Illuminator — she’s the perfect guide.
PIPER: You'll find parties here, tailgates. When college game day comes to town, they're going to set up right there in the middle.
HALLE: We’re standing in the heart of campus, tucked between stone-faced buildings in a square. The limbs of live oak trees stretch over us.
HALLE: This place is called // the Quad, right?
PIPER: This is the Quad, the ExxonMobil Quad.
HALLE: The ExxonMobil Quad. You don’t hear that at every school. The stately 150-year-old university is branded… by oil and gas money. And it’s not just here in this quad, it’s all over campus.
PIPER: you go about 15 minutes that way, it's the Patrick F. Taylor Engineering Building. Patrick F. Taylor, that's another big oil and gas name. // There's like a Dow Chemical Study Center. // and the tutoring is named after Shell. // There's not really any avoiding it, and If you're here, it just kind of becomes normal.
HALLE: And, it turns out, this oil and gas connection has deep roots. Piper takes me to one of the performing arts theaters on campus, people call it the Swine Palace. The building itself is only about 25 years old. But, way back when, Piper says the area was used for something else.
PIPER: Louisiana State University rests on deep oil reserves, and I talked to a geographer friend who told me that when he was doing his research, he found examples of oil wells drilled here on this part of campus.
HALLE: Oil wells drilled right here, not far from where students were going to class. Those wells aren’t active now, but it’s crazy to think that if we were here 80 years ago, oil was being extracted just across the street from where we’re standing.
PIPER: There's no escaping oil at L.S.U. It is literally beneath the ground we stand on. It was literally drilled right here.
HALLE: Like the towering live oak trees on campus, fossil fuels and LSU have grown up together, intertwined and interdependent for over a century.
INTRO
HALLE: I’m Halle Parker, and you’re listening to Sea Change. … This is the first episode in a two-part series looking at the tight-knit relationship between oil and gas money and LSU.
We wanted to know how much fossil fuel money is flowing into this school and other elite universities across the country. And how that might be shaping everything from students’ career choices to what research is funded and even the country's energy policy.
To tell a story this far-reaching — we needed help. So we enlisted two other reporters, one with the investigative, climate news nonprofit, Floodlight, who we’ll meet in the second part of the series. But, today, we’re here with Piper Hutchinson, our LSU insider, who you were just on a tour with.
Hi Piper.
PIPER: Hey Halle.
HALLE: So what got you interested in this story?
PIPER: So I became curious about the impact of all this oil and gas money on schools when I was editor-in-chief of the Reveille, LSU’s student newspaper.
I actually tried to do a story about the university’s ties to the fossil fuel industry before I graduated. As students and journalists, we saw these big dollar donations coming in and it raised red flags for us. But we didn’t have the time or the money that it would take to investigate, I’ve wanted to dig back in ever since.
HALLE: I think a lot of us journalists here in Louisiana have had that alarm go off. It happened to me too. You know, I’ve been covering climate change in Louisiana for a few years, and that means going to A LOT of government committee hearings. And at those meetings, college professors are usually there to give expert testimony. But I was surprised when some of these professors would talk up unproven climate solutions backed by the industry… basically saying what I’d expect from someone working for the industry. And when it came to talking about the risks of the new technology, they didn’t say much.
PIPER: Yep, I’ve seen that too. And that’s why I wanted to hold my alma mater’s feet to the fire. That’s part of the responsibility I feel to LSU because (honestly) the school means so much to me.
HALLE: What about LSU is so special for you?
PIPER: It’s the oak trees, the architecture, there’s so much rich history here. And it feels like a lot of my own history is here too. I moved around a lot as a kid – military family – but my dad would always take us to LSU football games. It gave me a bit of stability, and that’s why I chose to go to school here.
HALLE: The school has a lot going for it. The AgCenter, for example, is a boon to the state’s economy, breeding climate-resistant crops. And because of its proximity to the oil and gas industry, LSU’s engineering school is a big draw for students who want careers in that field.
PIPER: Yeah in fact, we met an engineering student when we took our campus tour. He was running late to his lab but he still stopped to talk. He asked us not to use his name. He was afraid that it would hurt his future job opportunities.
LSU STUDENT: it's definitely, like, good in some ways for opportunity. // but it is a little worrisome
HALLE: He says he’s benefited from the engineering school’s close connection to oil and gas with internships. But he also worries about how much the industry shapes what he learns. The chemical engineering department is advised by a committee made up mostly of employees of fossil fuel and petrochemical companies.
PIPER: He feels that relationship might be a bit too close. And it might explain why, for example, there’s not enough talk in his classes about the environmental impact of the industry. Including how it affects the health of people who live near oil and gas plants.
LSU STUDENT: students are able to get well paying jobs and stay in Louisiana, but there's very much like a sweeping under the rug of what is actually happening in these surrounding communities. // there’s still these overarching environmental concerns that need to be addressed.
HALLE: In reporting on this story, I've been thinking about this student a lot. He’s conflicted — and there’s a reason he’s uneasy. Because in this state, big investments don’t come without tradeoffs. Drive 10 minutes up the road from LSU and you reach one of the largest refineries in the world. It’s worth billions… but it's also known for releasing toxic chemicals into the water. So it makes you wonder, as more and more private money flows into universities like LSU, is all that money truly free? No strings? That question is what this whole series is about.
PIPER: This conversation isn't just happening in Louisiana. Around the world, oil and gas companies are paying for new research centers, funding professors, sponsoring student scholarships and field trips. And they’re embedded on the boards governing universities. And this money and influence hasn’t gone unnoticed. Globally, researchers are documenting how intertwined the fossil fuel industry and universities have become.
SUPRAN: All the research that we've done to date indicates a deep and widespread infiltration of fossil fuel interests into universities in much of the global north.
HALLE: That’s Dr. Geoffrey Supran. He was among the researchers who recently took a comprehensive look at the rise of fossil fuel partnerships. He says universities were created to help solve the world’s biggest problems. Independently and objectively. Supran and other researchers fear this outside influence threatens this core mission. And that could prevent the world from finding the real climate solutions it needs.
PIPER: We’ll hear a lot more from Dr. Supran in part 2 of our investigation. First, we wanted to understand how a bond like this… even starts. So in this episode, we’re going on a journey through time to learn how this one university — LSU — built such a strong relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
We start in a library with an archivist and his tomes. Stay with us.
PIPER: We’re in LSU’s Hill Memorial Library. When we walk in, we’re greeted by display tables, scattered with ancient papers. Taxidermied animals are propped on top of shelves, next to exhibits of early 20th-century clothing.
ZACH: Interested in rare books? Do you have time for this?
PIPER: That’s Zach Thompkins, the university’s archivist. He doesn’t look like the stereotype of an archivist, no glasses, and instead of tweed, he’s wearing a jean jacket. Zach’s in his 30’s. There’s only a little silver in his dark brown hair. Yet he loves scouring records and sorting through artifacts that date back to long before he was born. He shows me a tiny, worn book. It fits in the palm of my hand.
ZACH: this is our oldest printed Bible.
PIPER: Okay.
ZACH: It is from France, 1482. <<duck under>>
PIPER: Zach is my go-to guy for diving deep into the university’s history. I asked him to search as far back as possible for anything related to oil and gas money at LSU… and he found plenty of material. Five large boxes sit on a table.
ZACH: I think that there are about a thousand pages in each, in each box.
PIPER: So we've got 5,000 pages of documents here spanning multiple decades. Um, well, why don't we just dig in and see what we got here?
ZACH: Okay.
PIPER: We sift through handwritten meeting minutes, reports, memos – all sorts of records to start piecing together when LSU started flirting with fossil fuels. Turns out, oil and gas money was vital to the university from the beginning, without it… we wouldn’t have the LSU we see today.
HALLE: Let’s go back to the early years of the university. LSU began as a humble seminary and military academy in the mid-1800s. It started with just five professors.
ZACH: We think of LSU now as, we can't really, picture a world in which LSU does not exist. It is this kind of monolith, but going back, you know, the first hundred years of its existence, there were a lot of fits and starts.
HALLE: You can think of LSU’s history as a roller coaster ride, with periods of great growth, followed by huge crises. The first big boom took place after Congress decided to get into funding higher ed.
ARCHIVAL POP: On July 2nd 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Land Grant Act
PIPER: The Land Grant Act. Lawmakers wanted schools to focus on practical subjects: like architecture, engineering and agriculture. So, they gave every state huge tracts of land to create this new kind of college. They were called land-grant universities. The money from that land helped fund the colleges.
HALLE: Over time, LSU also gained land of its own. In all, LSU controlled thousands of acres. And some of this land came with rich mineral rights.
ARCHIVAL: the spectacle of oil coming from a well like water the event had historical significance
HALLE: Jackpot. So, in this first era, the relationship between oil and gas and the University was pretty straightforward… the school leased some of its rich land for oil and gas drilling. It was a business deal, giving LSU the cash it needed to grow.
PIPER: And that continued for decades. Some years, LSU would make about 1 million dollars according to the school’s records. It was substantial.
HALLE: But it wasn’t enough to match the ambitions of a brand new governor who had just taken office. They called him the Kingfish.
HUEY ARCHIVAL (singing): <<music>> Every man a king, every man a king for you can be a millionaire.
HALLE: Louisiana’s infamous Gov. Huey P. Long. Despite the start of the Great Depression, Long modernized the entire state. He paved thousands of miles of dirt and gravel roads. Provided free textbooks to children. And gave LSU historic levels of state investment.
LONG ARCHIVAL: The kingfish loved the parade like this one on the way to an LSU football game. Huey had built the famous University and it was his pride and joy
PIPER: Ok, Long didn’t literally build LSU, but he had big dreams for this small-time university.
HALLE: He poured millions into the school, fantasizing about a day when it would become the “Harvard of the South.” That quad we were in earlier? Long pushed for the construction of many of the buildings that sit in the heart of campus to this day. Under his watch, enrollment at LSU tripled. But Long’s fantasy had a high price tag.
PIPER: The Kingfish was spending state money recklessly, giving kickbacks to his friends. Including LSU's top administrators. Eventually, the university was engulfed in scandals. In the archives, Zach told us:
ZACH: He's doing what he had to do to sort of beg, borrow and steal to cement his own legacy. // Several of those administrators went to prison for their misdeeds. And some of their names were removed from buildings on this campus because of that.
PIPER: The scandals meant LSU had to repair its reputation. But a seed had been planted. Long’s dream of turning this low-ranked, country school into one of the most prestigious public universities in the country. LSU’s new leaders had the same ambition. And that ambition began to send LSU closer and closer to oil and gas companies... and into the deep pockets of the wealthy men who led the industry.
ZACH: That box right there. <<box moving>>
PIPER: This one? <<document ruffling>>
PIPER: Let’s skip ahead a couple of decades. While searching through the documents Zach found for us in the archive, we spot a yellowed copy of a 1955 report.
<<page turning ambi>>
PIPER: It’s a pitch from the university's dean to the board of supervisors to establish a separate arm to bring money to the college.
HALLE: To create… a foundation. And so begins the era of wooing big dollars from the titans of industry. Several elite universities at the time already had foundations. Schools like Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago. In creating the foundation, the leaders at LSU invoked the words of Huey Long, that LSU should be “the Harvard of the South.” And limited state funding wasn’t going to cut it. Here’s Zach reading from the report:
ZACH: legislative appropriations can be relied upon to furnish the bread and meat of a university's program, but the sauce, which represents the difference between the great and the mediocre institutions, will come from benefactors.
PIPER: To pay for that rich sauce, LSU’s leaders knew they needed private money. Five years later, in 1960, the LSU Foundation was born. A nonprofit organization, separate from the university.
HALLE: So, a century after the university first opened its doors, the LSU Foundation started searching for big donors.
PIPER: And they knew there was one industry they could count on: oil and gas. According to the board’s minutes, these early foundation meetings were all about appealing to these companies for more money.
<<flipping through paper ambi>>
PIPER: I found one document with two columns that showed the foundation had a game plan. In one of their meetings, the foundation had drawn up a corporate funder wish list.
ZACH: they had typed names for some of them, they had blank spaces, they had handwritten notes. It was almost as if it was passed around at the meeting to say: who do you know?
PIPER: And they knew the right people. Look no further than their first executive committee.
ZACH: The executive committee Theo F. Cangellozzi, Troy H. Middleton, Daniel Borth, Murphy J. Foster, <<start ducking>> W. H. Lobaugh, Jr.
PIPER: Murphy J. Foster Jr. was a big name in Louisiana oil and gas. He even ended up serving as the foundation’s first leader.
HALLE: At first, small pledges and donations trickled in. Then, the organization’s board had a breakthrough.
ZACH: President Middleton reported that only recently Standard Oil of New Jersey had pledged a $10, 000 contribution.
PIPER: For the baby foundation, $10,000 was a huge deal. Its first major donation. It basically doubled the foundation’s funds.
HALLE: And Standard Oil was one of the biggest oil companies in the state. It was among the first companies to discover oil here, and now we know it by another name: Exxon-Mobil.
PIPER: In the early days, when it came to relying on oil and gas for revenue, there were no real signs of hesitation. Whether it was leasing land for actual drilling or schmoozing for donations. And the foundation was ready to offer things in return… like buildings bearing their names.
HALLE: And, as we found in our research, that pattern of exchanging money for visibility has repeated itself over the decades of LSU’s growing relationship with the industry.
Next up.. A new era begins… the oil and gas industry realizes it can get even more for its money… influence
<<archival drilling ambi>>
HALLE: In the middle of the 20th century, the industry was rolling in oil and gas. Drilling on land and in the sea expanded rapidly. Industry insiders were calling it the Golden Age:
ARCHIVAL: we have a feeling that petroleum in the south is definitely on the upswing, the picture is very bright. The reserves are increasing every day, and we have a feeling that the best is yet to come.
HALLE: Profits were sky high — and LSU wasn’t the only one asking for a piece. Louisiana relied on the extraction of this so-called black gold. By the 1960s, tax revenue from oil and gas made up more than half the state budget.
PIPER: This boom helped LSU grow, too. In a way that hadn’t been seen since Huey Long. The university opened up more campuses around the state and put more money into developing its research chops.
HALLE: But relying on oil and gas has always been fraught. When times are good, they’re great. But when they’re not…
ARCHIVAL: The oil millions can be pumped out as fast as they can be pumped in. In an economy with no other means of support can turn good times into hard times.
PIPER: The glut of oil in the late 70s and early 80s tanked prices and marked the beginning of the end for the industry’s booming contributions to the state.
HALLE: Remember at this point, both the state and LSU were hooked on oil and gas money. They needed the wells to keep flowing.
So, how could the state retain its energy dominance, and boost its beloved economic engine? The legislators turned to LSU to discover the solution.
PIPER: In 1982, lawmakers funded a new Center for Energy Studies at the university. Though the Center worked independently of the legislature, its work was intended to inform policy decisions… And to try to figure out how to keep pulling as much oil and gas from the ground as possible.
HALLE: The Center gained more researchers, adding to LSU’s growing list of experts who testified in the legislature and shaped policy through government task forces. Overall LSU was gaining a lot of prestige during this time… becoming recognized as a leader in research on everything from energy to medicine to even space exploration — the dream of turning into a high-profile research institution was becoming reality.
PIPER: But here’s where, the historical record shows … that the oil and gas industry started to figure out that they weren't just a piggy bank for universities. In this era of growing influence, they realize they could get more than just their names on buildings.
HALLE: Working with universities like LSU could help these companies seem more credible. Virtuous even. The industry started hiring professors to conduct studies. Often, those studies ended up making the industry look good, helping them get their way with lawmakers.
Here’s one example in Louisiana’s legislature. Around this time, a group of lawmakers started pushing for a new state tax on oil and gas.
MCPHERSON: We had a dwindling revenue base from the production of oil and gas as a percent of the state revenue, but we had tremendous amounts of, of imported oil coming in.
HALLE: Joe McPherson served in the state senate for 24 years, starting in 1984. He’s from central Louisiana, and was one of the few legislators willing to challenge the oil and gas industry. With the new tax, his allies were angling for a share of the profit made from all the foreign fossil fuels refined and processed in Louisiana.
MCPHERSON: it would be gas passing through pipelines. It would be all processed in our refineries. All of that would be subject to this processing tax.
PIPER: As you can imagine, the bill faced steep opposition from Big Oil. McPherson says their lobbyists packed the statehouse.
HALLE: And some of the people speaking against the tax were LSU professors. Including a prominent economist. Loren Scott. He was known for opposing any move that could add more cost to the industry’s operations.
MCPHERSON: What would frustrate me is. // He would come to the mic and identify himself as the chair of the Department of Economics at LSU. And he would never mention that he had been paid to do the study that he was testifying on.
HALLE: Paid for, by the oil and gas companies. And those companies won in the end. The tax was defeated this time and every time it came up for a vote. McPherson says that Scott, the LSU economist, would present study after study promoting the benefits of the industry.
MCPHERSON: I've never seen an economist that was hired to do an economic study that the analysis came out in opposition to the group that had hired him.
PIPER: Finally - before he left the senate in 2012 - McPherson was so tired of the lack of transparency that he pushed through a new law. It required any state or local employee who weighed in on public policy to disclose who paid for their work.
HALLE: He saw firsthand how industry money can shape government decision-making. This is exactly what people are worried about today. And, at the very least, McPherson wanted that conflict of interest on record.
PIPER: Even though I’d been covering politics and higher education for several years, I had never heard of this law until we started reporting this story. I reached out to the agency tasked with enforcing it … and they had no record of any disclosures being filed. Not a single one.
HALLE: So, remember that roller coaster ride we talked about, we’re still on it. We’ve already experienced a lot of the steep rises – LSU growing in both size and national reputation – and plummets – when the school was in dire need of money. And at each crisis point, the state looked to oil and gas to cushion the fall.
Get ready for another dip. Which means, as we’ve learned, LSU will pull the oil and gas industry even closer.
PIPER: About the same time that Senator McPherson called for more transparency, a new governor entered office in Louisiana. He promised to shrink the government.
ARCHIVAL: I, Bobby Jindal, do solemnly swear, do solemnly swear I'll support the constitution and laws of the United States. I'll support the constitution and laws of the United…
PIPER: Governor Bobby Jindal took office in 2008. The young Republican star was hugely popular. He was easily re-elected to two terms as governor. Jindal was deeply conservative, and within his first year, passed steep tax cuts.
HALLE: Those tax cuts had a devastating effect on the state. With far less money coming in – and oil prices tumbling AGAIN - he faced a shortfall every year. So the next thing he slashed was the budget.
And higher education took some of the worst blows.
ARCHIVAL: The state budget crisis has Gov Bobby Jindal looking to make BIG CUTS to higher education…
PIPER: Spending was frozen and hundreds of millions of dollars were cut across Louisiana’s colleges. Over 10 years, LSU lost almost one-fifth of its budget. It was so bad it made national news. Students from across the state marched through LSU’s campus in protest.
ARCHIVAL: Save our schools, save our schools.
HALLE: LSU was again scrambling for cash. To figure out how to deal with the losses, LSU created a budget committee, made of faculty and staff. We met with one of the people who was in the room. His name is Dr. Kevin Cope. He’s a professor of British literature.
KEVIN: I have been at LSU since 1983 as of August that would be 41 years.
PIPER: Dr. Cope spoke with us over the summer from his cabin in Maine. He's wearing a shirt covered in airplanes. Including one called a Piper aircraft, my namesake.
PIPER: Did you know I’m named after the Piper, Dr. Cope?
KEVIN: Piper is the theme of the day, so I think the Piper aircraft is probably the best on the shirt.
PIPER: Dr. Cope is one of my favorite people to talk to. He’s funny, but he also knows his stuff. He led the faculty senate for 10 long, worrisome years, spanning all of the Jindal budget cuts.
HALLE: There were around a dozen people on the budget committee, meeting in the same room for hours on end around a big oak table. They worked feverishly on backup plans, plotting out worst-case scenarios, like giving the pink slip to a lot of professors. And because these discussions were so sensitive, they took extra precautions.
KEVIN: We even lowered the shades because of concern that distressed faculty members or distressed persons might want to intrude. We also met under a veil of complete confidentiality.
PIPER: It was a scary time for everyone who worked at LSU. When all was said and done, the university had lost a quarter of its faculty. Nothing was spared. Not student support, or maintenance. The school’s technology was completely out of date.
KEVIN: we used to speculate whether the old mainframe computer and IT services under the load of modern commuting demands would at some point meltdown and find its way to the center of the earth.
PIPER: That meltdown never happened of course. But the budget meltdown, that was for real. And since those dark years under Jindal, LSU’s bottom line has never recovered. More revenue has come in over the years with increased enrollment and higher tuition, but the gap persists.
KEVIN: So nature abhors a vacuum. When there is a space in the budget, in influence, in governance, somebody will rush in to fill it.
PIPER: Like from the deep pockets of oil and gas. But Dr. Cope says the thing about donors is they tend to have their own agendas:
KEVIN: You don't use find a donor that says, I would like to pay the electric bill. They always want to build a building or fund some kind of program for the youth of Louisiana or something that gets attention or where you can attach your name to whatever it is that you've produced.
HALLE: Think the Patrick F. Taylor engineering building, Dow study center and the Shell tutoring center. Which brings us back to the leafy, yet oil and gas branded LSU campus, to the present.
TATE: We are now in this generation's Sputnik moment.
HALLE: That’s LSU President William Tate addressing a room of reporters in Baton Rouge. He was there to share his vision for the future of LSU. And it’s big, like Huey Long big. To be among THE tip-top research institutions, the most exclusive group of universities. To do that, he needs to increase LSU’s research spending by a LOT.
So.… he’s going after more money from the oil and gas industry than ever before. That $10,000 donation from Standard Oil back in the 60s is pennies compared to the dollars flowing in today.
PIPER: These days, the industry is funneling tens of millions of dollars to the university. And LSU’s leadership will take as much as it can get. With the industry’s help, LSU could finally reach the pinnacle of higher education. But at what cost?
HALLE: In part two of this series, we investigate exactly how much fossil fuel money is coming into LSU. And where it's going.
PIPER: And we take a close look at the stakes. Not just at LSU, but nationwide. Knowledge is power. For all universities, trust and credibility are on the line.
SUPRAN: Universities are at risk of being pawns in a climate propaganda scheme devised and implemented by fossil fuel interests for decades.
HALLE: What does all this industry money buy? That’s next time on Sea Change.
OUTRO
HALLE: Thanks for listening to Sea Change! This episode was the first in our two-part series: Fueling Knowledge. This episode was hosted by the Louisiana Illuminator’s Piper Hutchinson and me, Halle Parker. Piper and I also reported this episode with Pam Radtke of Floodlight News. It was edited by Johanna Zorn and Carlyle Calhoun, with additional help from Ryan Vasquez, Rosemary Westwood, Greg Larose and Dee Hall. The episode was fact-checked by Garrett Hazelwood. Our theme music is by Jon Batiste and our sound designer is Emily Jankowski.
Sea Change is a WWNO and WRKF production. We are part of the NPR Podcast Network and distributed by PRX. To see more of our reporting on this topic, check out our show notes. And to help others find our podcast, hit subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
WWNO’s Coastal Desk is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, the Meraux Foundation, and the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
We’ll be out with the second and final episode next week. Thanks for being here.
