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Speaker 1: School of humans.

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Speaker 2: Deep in the mountainous rainforests of southeastern Brazil, not far

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Speaker 2: from the village of Domingos Marchings, grows a plant. Its

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Speaker 2: stalks are long and narrow, a crown of dangling green.

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Speaker 2: It grows out of the mist below the canopy, slowly

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Speaker 2: creeping up the trunks of trees. As it matures. It

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Speaker 2: hangs above the ground like a chandelier. The blades of

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Speaker 2: each leaf splayed like the wings of an angel. The

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Speaker 2: plant's name is philodendron. Spirit is sancty Latin for holy ghost.

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Speaker 2: It is one of the rarest plants in the world.

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Speaker 2: Only a few specimens grow in the wild. To plant collectors,

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Speaker 2: the words spirit is sancty illicit goosebumps. The plant's name

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Speaker 2: is spoken with hushed religious reverence. Many call it the

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Speaker 2: holy Grail of philodendrons.

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Speaker 3: It's only found in the wild in one small town

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Speaker 3: in Brazil at this point, as far.

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Speaker 2: As we know, that's doctor Arinovi. He's the president and

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Speaker 2: CEO of the San Diego Botanic Garden.

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Speaker 3: A big part about why it has such value to

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Speaker 3: collectors is it has very beautiful long leaves. It looks

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Speaker 3: fantastic and it's incredibly hard to propagate.

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Speaker 2: A botched cutting, for example, could kill the entire plant,

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Speaker 2: and that's why captive Spirit of Sancty specimens are best

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Speaker 2: handled by professionals, people like doctor Novi and the folks

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Speaker 2: at the garden in San Diego.

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Speaker 3: We have about five thousand a little over five thousand

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Speaker 3: individual plant taxa or species that are represented within our collections.

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Speaker 3: It is an ungodly diversity of plants.

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Speaker 2: This collection includes rare and endangered species like the Hawaiian

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Speaker 2: Hibiscus aka Hibiscus rosa sinensis, the Bastard quivertree or Alliodendron pilancie,

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Speaker 2: and of course the Holy Relic of southern Brazil. For years,

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Speaker 2: the Spirit of Sancty was one of San Diego's centerpieces.

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Speaker 2: It hangs high above the ground, delicately suspended from the

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Speaker 2: greenhouse's ceiling, far out of reach of passers by. At

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Speaker 2: least that's what they thought. One morning in May twenty twenty,

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Speaker 2: a garden employee stepped into the greenhouse, peered up and

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Speaker 2: witnessed a blasphemy.

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Speaker 3: Our director of porta Culture at the time was in

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Speaker 3: the garden and he felt like that basket looked a

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Speaker 3: little less who eventually got out a ladder and climbed

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Speaker 3: up and saw that this plant had been kind of

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Speaker 3: hacked off.

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Speaker 2: It became clear what had happened, and the dead of

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Speaker 2: night somebody had broken into the garden, grabbed a pole

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Speaker 2: saw or a long pair of lappers, and hacked off

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Speaker 2: pieces of the treasured plant. The heist seemed meticulously planned.

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Speaker 4: There were no signs of breaking or entering.

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Speaker 3: There are other valuable plants in that space that they

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Speaker 3: were not targeted, but it certainly seems like somebody was

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Speaker 3: aware of our habits, you know, somebody was, for lack

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Speaker 3: of a better term, kind of tasting the joint.

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Speaker 4: For a while.

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Speaker 2: The reason they targeted the spiritus money.

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Speaker 3: That was probably the single highest value plant in the

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Speaker 3: collection of the Botanic Garden in terms of what you

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Speaker 3: could get for resale value. This plant could sell for

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Speaker 3: between ten and fifteen thousand dollars on the open market.

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Speaker 2: Fifteen thousand dollars. A Spirit of Sancty is more than

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Speaker 2: a plant. It's a status symbol, an investment, a limited

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Speaker 2: edition Rolex that knows photosynthesis, and that price tag has

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Speaker 2: done much more than simply drained the pockets of rich

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Speaker 2: plant lovers it's fueled a spree of crime and lies

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Speaker 2: and deceit. I'm Summer rain Oaks. On this episode, a

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Speaker 2: look inside a booming craze for house plans and how

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Speaker 2: a cultural obsession and the human instinct to keep up

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Speaker 2: with the joneses might be killing the things we love

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Speaker 2: the most. From School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. This

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Speaker 2: is Bad Seeds. It's twenty twelve and a small crowd

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Speaker 2: is gathered for the International Alloyd Society Fall Show and

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Speaker 2: Sale in Florida. It's an annual banquet and this year

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Speaker 2: doctor Tom Crowet of the Missouri Botanical Garden and Tom Moore,

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Speaker 2: founder of the Tropical Fern and Exotic Plant Society, are

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Speaker 2: holding a plant they call the Piece de Resistance.

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Speaker 4: Mortgage your house, Tell your children on this plant. It's

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Speaker 4: been a little stock market.

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Speaker 2: It's a spiritus sancty, a small one, but a spirit

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Speaker 2: is nonetheless. And then the bidding begins.

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Speaker 4: World works your money tonight.

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Speaker 5: You have fifty dollars opening bed. Come.

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Speaker 1: I got two hundred, three hundred three, I got four hundred,

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Speaker 1: I got four hundred back.

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Speaker 4: I got four hundred back.

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Speaker 5: You're gonna let this go for four hundred.

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Speaker 2: Dollars, of course not. The bids keep rising. Five hundred

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Speaker 2: seven hundred, nine hundred nine.

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Speaker 6: Fifty I got nine fifty nine seventy seven to got money.

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Speaker 7: I got what.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna go.

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Speaker 4: One thousand, once, one thousand, twice.

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Speaker 7: So.

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Speaker 2: One thousand dollars for a potted plant with just six leaves.

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Speaker 2: This again, was twenty twelve, just over a decade later.

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Speaker 2: That price seems quaint now. I remember when I first

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Speaker 2: learned about the Spirit of Sancty. It was five years

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Speaker 2: ago and I was doing a tour with a popular

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Speaker 2: arroid grower, end A Falter. During that tour, I got

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Speaker 2: to see the plant for the first time.

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Speaker 6: This is the awesome Spirit of Sancty, one of the

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Speaker 6: most rare philodendrons in the world. It's not in a

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Speaker 6: lot of collections, and it's hard to get a hold

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Speaker 6: of one.

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Speaker 2: Actually, she tried to convey just how rare this plant was,

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Speaker 2: but to be honest, I didn't really grasp it at

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Speaker 2: the time.

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Speaker 6: Well, they're first, they're expensive, and they're hard to get.

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Speaker 6: There's only a few people that even wouldever have one

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Speaker 6: to sell.

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Speaker 2: You've got few would ever loan you at cutting either.

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Speaker 2: That scarcity however, drives an aggressive market for the rare plants.

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Speaker 2: It keeps prices high. In fact, if you bought and

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Speaker 2: held onto that plant auctioned off in Florida, its value

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Speaker 2: would have yielded an annual rate of return of about

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Speaker 2: twenty eight percent, beating out gold. Prices have been turbocharged

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Speaker 2: in the past few years, so much so that it's

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Speaker 2: taken experts like doctor Arinovi by surprise.

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Speaker 3: We knew that that plant prices were going up, and

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Speaker 3: that during the pandemic, you know, people were getting more

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Speaker 3: enthusiastic about house plants and even some rare plants, which

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Speaker 3: mostly we looked at as a wonderful thing. But you know,

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Speaker 3: we started looking at eBay and other things and being like,

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Speaker 3: oh my god. We didn't realize that the same plant

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Speaker 3: that you used to be able to buy for fifteen

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Speaker 3: dollars at home depot now goes for.

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Speaker 4: Three four hundred dollars.

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Speaker 2: Driving this boom is classic supply and demand. There aren't

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Speaker 2: many plants, but there are a ton of people who

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Speaker 2: want them, so prices go up. In fact, one online

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Speaker 2: plant store in Britain saw sales surge five hundred percent

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Speaker 2: during lockdown. But who are these people driving up prices.

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Speaker 2: If you read the headlines, it seems pretty obvious.

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Speaker 3: California hipster plants at the center of smuggling crisis.

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Speaker 4: What is it with millennials and cactuses?

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Speaker 1: If only hipsters had stuck to their handlebar, mustaches and

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Speaker 1: craft beer, this never would have happened.

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Speaker 2: Yep, the same people who got blamed for killing the

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Speaker 2: napkin industry, mayonnaise, the nine to five workday, and lately,

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Speaker 2: well pretty much everything else. Millennials.

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Speaker 3: We saw a whole generation of young people who previously

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Speaker 3: weren't that engaged in house plans get excited about it,

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Speaker 3: and again, that is ninety nine percent awesome. The only

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Speaker 3: thing about it that's not awesome is that it did

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Speaker 3: lead to a market that encouraged theft den poachings.

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Speaker 2: The pandemic, of course, deserves a lot of blame too.

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Speaker 2: Millions of us, trapped inside and craving something to do,

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Speaker 2: began transforming our homes into sanctuaries, and it wasn't long

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Speaker 2: before viral posts on TikTok began touting the plant mom

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Speaker 2: and plant dad lifestyle. But the question I keep coming

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Speaker 2: back to is is that the real reason this plant

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Speaker 2: craze is happening? Or is there something about human nature,

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Speaker 2: something dark, that just makes us crazy for plants. Here's

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Speaker 2: the thing about our recent plant obsession. It's nothing new.

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Speaker 2: Just ask Charles Mackay. In the eighteen forties, Mackay, a

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Speaker 2: Scottish journalist, became fascinated with herd behavior, how certain interests

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Speaker 2: or beliefs grew to overtake entire cultures. So in eighteen

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Speaker 2: forty one, Mackay published the first volume of his book

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Speaker 2: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, witch Hunts, Alchemy,

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Speaker 2: the Crusades. The book plum the Darkest Recesses of the

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Speaker 2: Human Mind, and in it Mackay concluded that these trends

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Speaker 2: and obsessions are just part of a cultural cycle.

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Speaker 5: Millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one delusion and

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Speaker 5: drawn after it till their tension is caughked by some

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Speaker 5: new folly more captivating.

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Speaker 4: Than the first.

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Speaker 2: One. Such folly, he wrote, was an irrational mania for plants,

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Speaker 2: specifically tulips. It's the sixteen thirties, Holland. New trade routes

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Speaker 2: just opened to the Ottoman Empire, leading the Dutch to

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Speaker 2: quote unquote discover new foods, new spices, new ideas, and

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Speaker 2: of course new plants. It's an exciting time and people

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Speaker 2: are positively enchanted with everything coming out of the Far East,

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Speaker 2: including a vibrant flower native to the lush valleys of

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Speaker 2: my China and Afghanistan, the tulip. Within years, everybody in

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Speaker 2: Holland wanted to get their hands on some tulips. According

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Speaker 2: to Mackay, speculators began buying up bulbs, not with the

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Speaker 2: intent of planting them, but in the hopes of just

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Speaker 2: reselling them for a profit. And this rich scheme it worked.

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Speaker 2: The cost of tulip skyrocketed, with some bulbs fetching more

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Speaker 2: than a single year's wage. One bulb was valued to

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Speaker 2: cost as much as twelve acres of corn. But then

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Speaker 2: the craze stopped. People came to their senses the bubble burst,

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Speaker 2: Speculators panicked and prices, according to some estimates, collapsed as

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Speaker 2: much as ninety nine percent, and some people lost everything.

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Speaker 2: Now it's important to note that Mackay had a habit

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Speaker 2: of bending the truth a bit. His reports that this

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Speaker 2: tulip mania plunged Holland into economic ruin are exaggerated, but

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Speaker 2: the obsession was very real, as was another plant madness

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Speaker 2: growing right outside Mackay's front door. This time it was ferns.

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Speaker 2: In nineteenth century Britain, ferns were inescapable botanic gardens overflowed

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Speaker 2: with fern specimens. Readers gobbled up literature on the subject

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Speaker 2: and turned niche fern collecting books into best sellers. People

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Speaker 2: subscribed to fern magazines and joined fern societies, with fern

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Speaker 2: loving propagandists arguing that owning ferns was proof of intelligence

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Speaker 2: that improved virility and mental health. But beyond all that,

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Speaker 2: they were just another way to show off well to do.

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Speaker 2: Collectors hired explorers to trot around Panama, Honduras and Tasmania

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Speaker 2: to find rare ferns. Meanwhile, the middle class trekked towards

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Speaker 2: coastal hillsides and dug up the plants themselves. It was

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Speaker 2: like a treasure hunt, and it wasn't always fun in games.

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Speaker 2: According to the September eighteen sixty seven Floral World and

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Speaker 2: Garden Guide, one British woman, Miss Jane Myers, plunged off

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Speaker 2: a cliff one hundred and seventy feet to her death

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Speaker 2: while trying to pick a fern like tulips. The price

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Speaker 2: of foreign ferns exploded, with some selling for more than

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Speaker 2: one thousand dollars in today's money. Crook's cut wind pretty fast.

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Speaker 2: Knowing they could earn an easy shilling, they started poaching ferns.

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Speaker 2: It got so bad that botanists started to worry about

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Speaker 2: the plant's survival. In his book The Flora of Cornwall,

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Speaker 2: the botanist H. Davy wrote, it's.

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Speaker 6: A shameful plundering has gone on that I now hesitate

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Speaker 6: to speak or write about localities where the royal fern grows.

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Speaker 2: As the naturalist Peter da Boyd tells us, it wasn't epidemic,

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Speaker 2: with careless poachers catering to the demand of fern enthusiasts.

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Speaker 5: The search for wild species led to the plundering of

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Speaker 5: woodlands and hillsides, stream sides and whole woodlands would be

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Speaker 5: effectively destroyed as regards their ferns by collecting literally tons

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Speaker 5: of fern plants where unscrupulous collectors didn't think about what

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Speaker 5: effect it might have on the environment. For most of

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Speaker 5: the nineteenth century, there was no law against collecting ferns, but.

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Speaker 2: That changed in February eighteen ninety six, a periodical called

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Speaker 2: The Gardener's Chronicle documented the punishment for a pair of

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Speaker 2: fern thieves.

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Speaker 8: Fern stealers William Moby and Charles Williams of Bexley, Kent,

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Speaker 8: were engaged with the horse and cart and the wholesale

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Speaker 8: removal of ferns. Moby was sentenced to six weeks hard

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Speaker 8: labor and Williams to one month.

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Speaker 2: The wholesale plunder of ferns would turn the whole British

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Speaker 2: countryside into one big crime scene, and that sparked the

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Speaker 2: conservation movement.

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Speaker 5: Such damage led to the first legal plant protection in Britain.

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Speaker 2: Some of those laws, however, would arrive too late. The

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Speaker 2: Killarney fern or Trichomani's speciosum, admired for its lacy, almost

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Speaker 2: translucent leaves, nearly went extinct in Scotland. And that brings

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Speaker 2: us back to the present day and our pandemic induced

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Speaker 2: plant mania. It reminds me of something that doctor Arinovi

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Speaker 2: told us.

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Speaker 3: But you buy it illegal plants, you may be financing

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Speaker 3: the destruction of an irreplaceable ecosystem that cannot come back.

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Speaker 3: So the stakes are kind of high, and like I said,

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Speaker 3: we unfortunately now have evidence that this big plant craze

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Speaker 3: during the pandemic may have wiped out several species around

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Speaker 3: the world just just from poaching.

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Speaker 4: So it's it's not trivial.

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Speaker 2: But who is really to blame? Is that boom and

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Speaker 2: prices and the surgeon poaching really driven by millennials. To

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Speaker 2: find the answer, we had to go to the coastal

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Speaker 2: cliffs of northern California. High above crashing waves and not

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Speaker 2: far from the meandering curves of Highway One, rose Dudleya Farinosa,

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Speaker 2: a small cliff dwelling succulent nicknamed bluff lettuce. Around twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 2: succulent poachers started plaguing these coasts, plucking thousands of Dudleya

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Speaker 2: from the cliff side. Many of the people who were

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Speaker 2: caught were Korean. One stole six hundred thousand dollars worth

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Speaker 2: of succulents. Headline writers pounced. Soon news agencies were claiming

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Speaker 2: that these thieves were motivated by quote, housewives and hipsters,

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Speaker 2: people who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for

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Speaker 2: a single succulent. You might remember our friend doctor Jared

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Speaker 2: margolis So.

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Speaker 7: The obvious sort of narratives emerged that every housewife and

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Speaker 7: hipster in South Korea wanted one of these Dudleia, and

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Speaker 7: that there was this succulent mania happening in East Asia

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Speaker 7: that was driving this trade, and that people just saw

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Speaker 7: an opportunity to steal the plants and make a huge

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Speaker 7: profit off of it.

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Speaker 2: In other words, the madness of crowds was just working

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Speaker 2: its magic again. But something about that narrative didn't sit

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Speaker 2: right with doctor Margulis, Like, why would somebody steal Dudleya.

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Speaker 7: These plants were legally available for purchase from a variety

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Speaker 7: of outlets in California, and they sort of looked like

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Speaker 7: a commonplace succulent, you know, they have a nice, pretty

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Speaker 7: rosette shape, and they put out a lovely sort of

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Speaker 7: inflorescence in flower. They're not a rare species, and so

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Speaker 7: people were pretty confused why suddenly it looked like people

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Speaker 7: were stealing them by the thousands from their habitat.

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Speaker 2: Not to mention that bluff lettuce, it's not a beginner's plant.

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Speaker 7: Dudley As are really hard to grow as houseplants, and

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Speaker 7: they really require an enormous amount of specialized care to

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Speaker 7: keep them alive outside of their native habitat. On the

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Speaker 7: West coast of California. So these were not plants that

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Speaker 7: were being bought and sold by our typical succulent consumer.

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Speaker 2: This didn't sound like the madness of crowds at work.

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Speaker 2: This sounded like something else. Doctor Margulis needed to know more.

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Speaker 7: I decided I had to go spend some time in

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Speaker 7: South Korea to try to really understand and do my

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Speaker 7: best to analyze these narratives and what was really happening

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Speaker 7: in the trade there.

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Speaker 2: So Margoulis flew to Korea. He visited nurseries and garden

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Speaker 2: centers and talked to shop owners about dudley A sales.

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Speaker 2: He discovered they were not a widely popular succulent plant

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Speaker 2: amongst mainstream consumers in Seoul. Margulis popped into three of

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Speaker 2: the city's largest succulent markets. Only one was selling the

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Speaker 2: California Succulent. The vendor complained about a lack of demand.

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Speaker 2: This didn't fit the narrative played out back home.

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Speaker 7: These plants are really were only being sought by highly

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Speaker 7: specialized collectors with a typically with a lot of skill

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Speaker 7: and capacity to care for them, owning and maintaining either

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Speaker 7: professional greenhouses or renting space in someone else's greenhouse in

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Speaker 7: order to keep them alive. This was not sort of

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Speaker 7: being driven by mainstream consumer culture.

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Speaker 2: One plant dealer told Markulla's point blank, this isn't about

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Speaker 2: Chinese collectors, or Japanese collectors or Korean collectors. This is

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Speaker 2: about individual collectors and what they want. Millennial plant moms

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Speaker 2: and plant dads weren't driving the crime spree in California.

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Speaker 2: It was a small group of collectors, hardcore hobbyists, demanding

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Speaker 2: that the plant be ripped from the ground, and as

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Speaker 2: it turns out, they'd do just about anything to have it.

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Speaker 2: You can hear the pain in doctor Novi's voice when

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Speaker 2: he thinks back to the spirit of sancty heist.

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Speaker 3: It would almost have been better if, like somebody was

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Speaker 3: trying to steal our computers and like ruin the plants incidentally,

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Speaker 3: because you know, you should have understand petty theft. But

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Speaker 3: this is like premeditated, Let's find the rarest plant around

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Speaker 3: here and steal it, taking it away from public usage.

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Speaker 2: After the initial shock of the robbery, the botanic Garden

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Speaker 2: notified police, who at first didn't really understand the magnitude

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Speaker 2: of the crime.

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Speaker 3: Probably the first second we were talking to law enforcement

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Speaker 3: they probably were like, you know, this is some person

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Speaker 3: in a neighborhood, and like, you know, some neighbors stole

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Speaker 3: their prizes. But like, you know, as soon as we

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Speaker 3: said here's who we are, this plant could sell for

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Speaker 3: between ten and fifteen thousand dollars on the open market.

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Speaker 3: Like they're like, oh, and I think they treated it

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Speaker 3: like any object you know of that level value, if

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Speaker 3: you know, if somebody called up and said, you know,

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Speaker 3: someone stole my car.

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Speaker 2: But the Botanic Garden was already at a disadvantage when

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Speaker 2: it comes to high level plant crimes. Most local law

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Speaker 2: enforcement officers are extremely inexperienced.

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Speaker 3: Back in the nineteen nineties, when the Garden did have

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Speaker 3: the theft of psychic heads, the garden benefited from the

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Speaker 3: fact that the Sheriff's office in San Diego had an

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Speaker 3: Agricultural Crimes division.

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Speaker 2: That's right, an entire unit dedicated to plant crimes, which

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Speaker 2: is not super common, especially these days.

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Speaker 3: So there are no longer, to our knowledge, detectives within

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Speaker 3: the San Diego law enforcement community that are specifically trained

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Speaker 3: on and or daily dealing with agricultural, plant and animal theft.

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Speaker 4: Law enforcement doesn't get to practice it as much.

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Speaker 3: It means a certain kind of expertise is not present

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Speaker 3: when it does happen.

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Speaker 2: So to say the least, the police did not turn

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Speaker 2: up many promising leads. At one point, they suggested the

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Speaker 2: possibility of an inside job. The idea had merit. One

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Speaker 2: prominent plant influencer online bragged that whenever he volunteered at

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Speaker 2: botanic gardens, he'd steal rare clippings. The practice called proplifting,

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Speaker 2: a portmanteau of propagate and shoplifting, is increasingly common. A

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Speaker 2: Reddit page dedicated to legal and I Stress legal proplifting

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Speaker 2: has more than two hundred thousand members. But in San Diego,

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Speaker 2: the theft of the Spirit of Sancty went beyond simple proplifting.

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Speaker 2: This was the work of an obsessive who knew what

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Speaker 2: they were doing, and it would only be solved with

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Speaker 2: the help of other obsessives. And that is when the

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Speaker 2: gardens started getting tips from other plant lovers. People began

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Speaker 2: trawling forums and social media looking for somebody, anybody trying

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Speaker 2: to sell the famed plant.

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Speaker 3: We started to get from the online aroid community saying, hey,

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Speaker 3: we're seeing some chatter, you know, in some of the

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Speaker 3: you know, blogs and social media. So that there might

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Speaker 3: be a plant for sale that sounds like it might

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Speaker 3: potentially be yours. The timing is right, the size and

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Speaker 3: this and that.

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Speaker 2: Pictures of the plant in question began turning up in

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Speaker 2: the San Diego botanist inbox. One of them caught Novi's eye.

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Speaker 3: Plant people are like dog people, and you know, we

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Speaker 3: look at the plants in the same way that dog

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Speaker 3: people or other pet owners, you know, or pet parents,

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Speaker 3: you know, look at their pets. And so, you know,

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Speaker 3: we know how many leaves that were on that one,

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Speaker 3: We know the color differences between young leaves and old leaves,

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Speaker 3: and so we told law enforcement and others that the

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Speaker 3: plant in question looked a heck of a lot like

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Speaker 3: our plant.

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Speaker 2: So the police did their investigation.

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Speaker 3: Law enforcement actually went to see one of the individuals

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Speaker 3: who some people in the community thought either may have

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Speaker 3: stolen it or somehow acquired it, you know, maybe they

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Speaker 3: thought it was legal and was reselling it. Law enforcement

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Speaker 3: told us that the person had an all buy or

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Speaker 3: just there wasn't enough evidence.

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Speaker 4: They couldn't move any further.

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Speaker 2: So the investigation stalled, and Novena's colleagues resigned themselves to

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Speaker 2: the fact that the plant was probably lost forever.

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Speaker 3: I would put money on the fact that this plant died.

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Speaker 3: I mean, this thing was so hacked up, like you know,

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Speaker 3: they're very hard to root. I think somebody sold this

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Speaker 3: plant for fifteen thousand dollars and the person who bought

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Speaker 3: it didn't really know what they're doing, and.

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Speaker 4: I think it died.

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Speaker 5: You know.

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Speaker 3: That's like for us, you know, and when you've cared

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Speaker 3: for that plant for ten or more years and it's

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Speaker 3: it's pretty devastating, you know. But I think, like everything else,

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Speaker 3: you know, you try to build resilience from tragedy.

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Speaker 2: But that's tough. Because the theft at the San Diego

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Speaker 2: Botanic Garden, it's not uncommon. The list of thefts from

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Speaker 2: institutions to community gardens stretches from Jerusalem to Sydney to

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Speaker 2: Penang Church, New Zealand. A single plant where three thousand

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Speaker 2: New Zealand dollars was pilford in Coral Gables, Florida, robbers

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Speaker 2: ran off with two thousand dollars worth of greenery in

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Speaker 2: Brooklyn five thousand dollars and because of these thieves, the

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Speaker 2: public has lost priceless bonzize, rare orchids, and the world's

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Speaker 2: smallest water lily. The basic fact is, if you know

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Speaker 2: a botanic garden, somebody has probably stolen from.

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Speaker 3: This is not someone's stealing a loaf of bread because

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Speaker 3: they're hungry, right, I mean, this is somebody very clearly

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Speaker 3: taking something that's not theirs, that's being maintained by a public,

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Speaker 3: nonprofit institution to benefit the public and posterity, and deciding

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Speaker 3: to try to create personal value and wealth gain out

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Speaker 3: of that theft.

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Speaker 4: So, I mean, I.

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Speaker 3: Don't think we have to dance around whether or not

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Speaker 3: it's evil. Is it, you know, evil on a high level.

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Speaker 3: That's a different.

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Speaker 2: Question, and it's a question we're going to grapple with

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Speaker 2: for the rest of this show because rhymes like this

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Speaker 2: go far beyond questions of whether it's right or wrong

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Speaker 2: to steal. It shows how a passionate hobby or obsession

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Speaker 2: could put the planet end people's lives at risk. Next episode,

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Speaker 2: we dive deeper into the shadows following a team of

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Speaker 2: poachers and join the detectives who are hot on their tail.

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Speaker 9: Ended up going to this really kind of sketchy pot

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Speaker 9: of just flown cattail knocker territory in Mexico. I'm just

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Speaker 9: gone met us on the side of the highway on

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Speaker 9: his Marta black and he was departure.

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Speaker 2: I'm Summer rain Oaks. Join us again next time for

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Speaker 2: Bad Seeds. Bad Seeds is a production of School of

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00:26:50,765 --> 00:26:54,925
Speaker 2: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your Host Summer rain Oaks.

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00:26:55,605 --> 00:26:59,005
Speaker 2: Lucas Riley is our writer, Gabby Watts is our producer,

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Speaker 2: and Amelia Brock is our senior producer. Fact Checking is

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Speaker 2: by Savannah Hugely and Zoe Farrow. Music is by Claire Campbell.

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Speaker 2: Sound design and score is by Jesse Niswanger. Development was

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Speaker 2: by Brian Lavin and Jacob Selzer. Special thanks to our

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Speaker 2: voice actors Etily's Perez, Frank Swain, Reuben wu and Paul Feiffe.

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Speaker 2: Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr, Virginia

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Speaker 2: Prescott and Jacob Selzer.

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Speaker 1: School of Humans