On Point presents: 'Belly Up' from Last Seen
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2022
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi everyone, it's Magna Chocro Barriety. |
| 0:02.0 | It's Sunday, I know, but we're dropping into your feed again today to bring you a story |
| 0:07.3 | from one of WBUR's other podcasts, Last Scene. |
| 0:11.9 | Last Scene is an anthology about people, places, and things that have gone missing. |
| 0:17.2 | And today's Last Scene episode is brought to us by WBUR Podcasts producer Noris Sachs. |
| 0:22.7 | It's about a rare species of fish that was almost wiped from the face of the planet |
| 0:29.8 | thanks to some drunken bathers near Las Vegas. |
| 0:34.6 | So please take a listen. |
| 0:35.9 | And if you like the show, subscribe to or follow Last Scene the same way you get the |
| 0:40.1 | on point podcast. |
| 0:41.5 | Alright, I'll hand it off to Nora and this episode of Last Scene. |
| 0:45.5 | It's called Belly Up. |
| 1:03.2 | Recently I was lucky enough to meet a kindred spirit. |
| 1:06.5 | Another journalist who shares my fascination with our species' infinite capacity for |
| 1:11.0 | excess. |
| 1:12.0 | I love the sort of like heathenistic side of people. |
| 1:16.6 | I love people who just accidentally step a little bit too far over the line. |
| 1:22.8 | That's Paige Blankkenbueller. |
| 1:24.5 | She writes in edits for High Country News, an independent magazine that covers the Western |
| 1:29.0 | United States. |
| 1:30.0 | And the story we're telling today was originally reported out by her. |
| 1:34.2 | Unlike me, Paige gravitates towards conflict. |
... |
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