Episode 5: Belly Up

Last Seen

WBUR

True Crime, Missing, Mystery, Boston, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 22 February 2022

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When three friends went on a rum-fueled rampage one night deep in the Nevada desert, they never expected the trouble they would find themselves in a week later.

The men broke into a remote unit of Death Valley National Park known as Devil's Hole — a mysterious flooded cave that happens to be home to the one of the rarest fish on Earth, and one that's critically endangered too.

This episode, based on Paige Blankenbuehler's High Country News feature, is a bite-size crime story starring an obscure species of tiny fish, and some hedonistic humans who stepped a little too far over the line, and suffered some big consequences.

Last Seen host Nora Saks dives into the fraught relationship between humans and nature, and the long arm of the law intended to protect our most vulnerable species.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Last scene is made at a public radio station, WBUR in Boston, which means it's made possible
0:06.0	by you, the listener.
0:07.9	If you want the show to keep going, support it.
0:10.5	Give in any amount at WBUR.org slash pod power.
0:14.5	That's WBUR.org slash pod power.
0:18.2	Thank you.
0:19.2	And here's the show.
0:21.6	WBUR Podcasts.
0:24.2	I love Boston.
0:36.3	Recently I was lucky enough to meet a kindred spirit.
0:39.5	Another journalist who shares my fascination with our species' infinite capacity for access.
0:44.9	I love the sort of like heathenistic side of people.
0:49.6	I love people who accidentally step too far over the line.
0:55.8	That's Paige Blanken-Bueller.
0:57.4	She writes in edits for High Country News, an independent magazine that covers the Western
1:01.9	United States.
1:03.4	The story we're telling today was originally reported out by her.
1:07.2	Unlike me, Paige gravitates towards conflict.
1:10.2	If I had to define a beat for myself, I think I'm really drawn to stories where wild people
1:16.4	and wild things collide and are sort of at odds with one another.
1:21.0	For decades, one considerable source of that tension has been endangered species, and
1:25.8	the Burley Federal Law that protects them.
	...

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