Ghost Herd

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Introducing: Let the Kids Dance! Apr 29, 2024

You know that Kevin Bacon movie where a small town outlaws dancing and the teens fight back? What if I told you that happened in Seattle. In the 90s.

Let the Kids Dance is a new podcast telling an untold story from a famous moment in music history – the rise and fall of Seattle’s teen dance ordinance. A story of moral panic, grassroots activism, and an unstoppable music community that fought for its freedom.

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Part 6: The Reckonin' Feb 14, 2023

Native Americans once owned these lands, and they still treat the Columbia Basin as their sacred home. We’ve all benefited from that taken land, but now corporations are the West’s new settlers. Meanwhile, Cody faces a federal judge and his tight-knit rural community. His sons start taking over what remains of the family’s vast operation and beat-up reputation.

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Part 5: The Bidding War Feb 07, 2023

The Easterday empire is being broken apart. Some of the most valuable farmland in America is up for sale, and the billionaires are coming to town. The bidding war over water-rich lands shows the shift in how America farms.

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Part 4: The Crash Jan 31, 2023

Cody's swindle comes crashing down, and it’s all thanks to Covid. When a giant meat operation discovers the truth about his ghost herd, they take aim at Cody.

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Part 3: The Gamble Jan 24, 2023

Why would someone create a ghost herd? Behind Cody Easterday’s swindle was an even-bigger gambling habit on the futures market. That vice may have changed the price of American beef slapping down on your kitchen table. We also look at how all farmin’ is a gamble.

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Part 2: The Swindle Jan 17, 2023

Cowboy Cody Easterday lies big, creating a “ghost herd” of 265,000 cattle that only exist on paper and bringing in hundreds of millions of investment dollars from companies including a meat-packing giant. It’s fraud on a massive scale. We examine how he carried it out.

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Part 1: The Empire Builders Jan 10, 2023

Meet the Easterdays – ranching royalty rooted in the Columbia Basin in southeast Washington state. But behind the well-known family name hides a dark secret, concealed in spreadsheets and bum invoices, that’s eating away at their vast empire.

Correction, 4:25 p.m., 2/27/2023: An earlier version of this story misstated when the Ice Age megafloods occurred. Most of the Missoula floods happened between 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, and some may have occurred as long as a million years ago.

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Introducing Ghost Herd, coming January 10 Nov 23, 2022

It started as an American success story. The Easterday family took a couple hundred acres of farmland in Eastern Washington and grew it into a farming and ranching empire worth millions. Then, it all came crashing down.

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