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Now, welcome to the award-winning BestOfAleft podcast with Hubsiday from the Young Turks,

the David Pakman show, Star Talk Radio with Neilte Grass Tyson, on the media, activism

today from 350.org and a TED Talk by Al Gore.

Oftentimes we talk about how money corrupts politics and the media here in the United States,

but it also has an impact on education and scientific research.

Case in point, Harold Ham.

He is the CEO of Continental Resources.

He's this big oil tycoon here in the US.

And lately, he's been very, very upset with the Oklahoma Geological Survey because it turns out

that those damn researchers are putting out information that goes against his oil drilling.

Now, fracking has had a huge impact on Oklahoma and some other states that aren't likely to have earthquakes.

Of course, Oklahoma, time to time does have small quakes, but nothing big.

But ever since fracking began, it turns out that things have changed.

There have been more and more earthquakes.

In fact, just last year there were almost 500 or over 500.

And so these, the Geological Survey just needs to give us the information we need to know

about what's happening with the oil and gas industry and what kind of impact it's having on the environment.

Well, Harold Ham was so upset about this that he actually sends an email to Oklahoma University

threatening to basically go after the university in an implied way.

But he definitely indicated that he wanted to have some role in the way that these scientific studies are done.

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