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Speaker 1: He told us, if you had caught me at my house,

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Speaker 1: it would have been shootout type of situation. The phrase

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Speaker 1: black market evoke sinister images stacks of AK forty seven's,

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Speaker 1: crates of cocaine, caged tigers, but potted succulents on a

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Speaker 1: window sill. No one is calling crime stoppers for that,

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Speaker 1: but maybe you should, because here's a secret. The biggest

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Speaker 1: black market you've never heard of might be blooming right

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Speaker 1: under your nose. Rare plants are an untapped gold mine.

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Speaker 1: Whether it's a four thousand pound cactus shoveled from the

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Speaker 1: Arizona desert or delicate orchids pinched from the tangled forests

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Speaker 1: of the uf, plants are at the center of a

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Speaker 1: rapidly growing and lucrative world of crime. This plant could

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Speaker 1: sell for between ten and fifteen thousand dollars on the

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Speaker 1: open market, and where there's big money, there are bigger risks.

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Speaker 1: One of my friends to me and said, dude, we're

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Speaker 1: being rated. We would just tied up. We won't look

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Speaker 1: like gobblin string behind now backs. These big mci stain

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Speaker 1: stop to our heads. I'm Summer rain Oaks. I'm a

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Speaker 1: plant expert and author on the Bad Seeds podcast, we

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Speaker 1: plunge straight into the underworld of plant crime, from Mexican

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Speaker 1: drug cartels to corrupt elected officials. We explore how the

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Speaker 1: black market for plants has repercussions for you, me, and

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Speaker 1: the fate of the planet. The thought process it was

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Speaker 1: just a planet. It'll grow back in many cases. On

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Speaker 1: some of these pieces, it won't and we'll never see

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Speaker 1: it again. From School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts, This

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Speaker 1: is Bad Seeds. Listen to Bad Seeds on the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Starting April twelfth,