Tapir Caper

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2026

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a Smithsonian archaeology intern opened a dusty box of bones in a Panamanian warehouse, she didn't expect to find a mystery, let alone a potential crime scene. But Nina Hirai’s discovery of a tapir skull riddled with what appeared to be bullet holes sparked an investigation that would lead her several miles up the Panama Canal and nearly forty years into the past. Join us as we unspool the strange, unresolved story of a tapir named Alice, and ask what it means to live with uncertainty when the past refuses to explain itself.

Guests:

Nina Hirai, former archeology intern at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Nicole Smith-Guzmán, archeology curator at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Ashley Sharpe, research archeologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Aureliano Valencia (“Yeyo”), archeological research technician at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Phyllis (Lissy) Coley, professor emerita in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Utah and research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Monica Brenes Lynan, former veterinarian at Parque Municipal Summit in Panama

Andres Ramos, lider de guardabosques del Monumento Natural Barro Colorado / head park ranger at Barro Colorado Island

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:14.4	Nina Harai had just graduated from college when she did what many recent grads do.
0:28.6	She got an internship.
0:30.0	But unlike many interns, she wasn't sitting at a corporate desk and fetching coffee.
0:34.9	Oh no.
0:36.0	She was at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama,
0:40.0	also known as Strye, and she was in deep storage. I mean, it's a pretty big warehouse,
0:46.1	but these collections were in this one big room where it's sort of really like wall-to-wall boxes
0:52.9	of just bones.
0:54.8	Animal bones.
0:57.2	So I'm picturing you like looking at the shelf, grabbing a box, opening it up, and it's
1:02.5	like, what will I find in here?
1:04.7	Is that kind of what it was like?
1:06.5	Yes.
1:07.5	Nina's job as an archaeology intern was to photograph and digitize the contents of these boxes, which was a big job.
1:14.7	At her fingertips were thousands of skeletons of all kinds, going back decades.
1:21.0	So one morning, Nina went to work as usual.
1:24.8	So, okay, so it was actually September 18th, 2023.
1:28.1	You remember the actual date?
1:30.2	Yes.
1:31.7	Nina goes to the wall of boxes, and she sees a big box.
1:35.1	It's pretty beaten up, has some watermarks on it, and as she pulls it off the shelf,
	...

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