Ghost Herd

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New KUOW docuseries: Adults in the Room Feb 25, 2026

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"Adults in the Room" is a new limited series on "Focus," KUOW's dedicated documentary podcast feed.
In 1998, a popular teacher at Garfield High School in Seattle — named Tom Hudson — falls into a crevasse while mountain-climbing in Olympic National Park with six of his teenage students. The students pull off a daring rescue, saving their mentor with techniques he taught them. Isolde Raftery, a reporter for the school paper, initially plans to write about the rescue as a hero story validating Hudson’s leadership. But she learns he cut corners during the climb... and it wasn't the first time he'd done so. This discovery leads to a confrontation between Isolde and Hudson, and is the first crack in the teacher's legendary reputation at Garfield — which shatters months later.

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Introducing: Let the Kids Dance! Apr 29, 2024

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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.

Listen and subscribe here.

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Part 6: The Reckonin' Feb 14, 2023

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

Show notes

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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