The Disconnect: Power, Politics and the Texas Blackout
Mose Buchele
May 14, 2025
Fumed is a new podcast from Public Health Watch that takes place in Channelview, an unincorporated community outside Houston in the heart of America’s petrochemical industry. It follows two stubborn Texans who, almost by accident, end up challenging the powerful companies that are taking over their once-peaceful neighborhood.
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April 30, 2025
Introducing the Energy Capital Podcast
The Energy Capital Podcast focuses on Texas energy and power grid issues, featuring interviews with energy professionals, academics, policymakers, and advocates.
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April 16, 2025
Sea Change, from WWNO and WRKF, is a podcast that dives deep into the environmental issues facing coastal communities on the Gulf Coast and beyond.
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April 2, 2025
Texas leaders would have you believe there are two options: a reliable grid or a sustainable grid. In our season finale, we explore how those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. And how — if left alone — the Texas electricity market might make the decision on its own. Written, reported, produced and co-hosted by Mose […]
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March 12, 2025
The Greater Force: A Spaghetti Bowl Story
When the 2021 blackout struck, the finger-pointing began. Electric utilities versus pipeline companies. But finding out exactly what happened is one of the most frustrating parts oil and gas regulation in Texas: getting a clear picture of who did what isn’t really possible. But there’s one man who says he can see exactly what happened. […]
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February 26, 2025
As the Texas Railroad Commission falls from global oil dominance, the energy crisis of the 1970s strikes and one gas company cuts power to millions. What comes next brings plenty of political intrigue, and sets up a divided system of energy regulation in Texas unlike anywhere else in the country.
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February 19, 2025
The Bar Fight That Changed the World
We tell the story of how the National Guard descended on the East Texas oilfield, the chaos that followed, and how a bar fight in Austin helped establish a new system of energy regulation.
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February 12, 2025
Hear the story of a con man and a group of hardscrabble East Texas farmers who uncovered the biggest oilfield in U.S. history — and how that discovery forced an obscure state agency to confront the destructive forces of unrestrained oil drilling.
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About
Millions of Texans lost power during a winter storm in February. Hundreds may have died. And people wondered: “how could this happen in the energy capital of the U.S.?” To understand how we got the electric grid we have in Texas today, you have to understand the electric grid we had up until a little more than 20 years ago — and how a group of power companies, environmentalists, cities and state lawmakers hatched a plan to completely remake it. Did the experiment fail?
Host
Mose Buchele is the Austin-based broadcast reporter for KUT’s NPR partnership StateImpact Texas. He has been on staff at KUT 90.5 since 2009, covering local and state issues. Mose has also worked as a blogger on politics and an education reporter at his hometown paper in Western Massachusetts. He holds masters degrees in Latin American Studies and Journalism from UT Austin.
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