Listen Now: Lawless Planet
It’s not that hard to kill a planet. All it takes is a little drilling, some mining, a generous helping of pollution and voila! Earth over. When you take stock of what’s left, it starts to look like a crime scene: decapitated mountains, poisoned rivers, oil-soaked pelicans, maybe a sun-bleached cow skull in a dried-up lake bed. The only thing missing is yellow caution tape. On each episode of Lawless Planet, host Zach Goldbaum reveals the scams, murders and cover-ups on the frontline of the climate crisis, and the life and death choices people are making to either protect our world – or destroy it.
Listen to Lawless Planet: Wondery.fm/LawlessPlanet
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Transcript
What if I told you the biggest crime story of our time is happening right under our noses, and we're all witnesses? Introducing Lawless Planet, the new podcast from Wondery that exposes the dark underbelly of the climate crisis. From the Amazon rainforest to small-town America, host Zach Goldbaum uncovers shocking tales of murder, corporate cover-ups, and greed.
You'll hear about the brave activists risking their lives for their beliefs, the corrupt tycoons destroying ecosystems for profit, and the ordinary people caught in the crossfire. This isn't some distant threat.
It's happening right now. And each episode drops you into a battle for our planet's future.
There are mysterious deaths, daring heists, and billion-dollar scams, all with the fate of our world hanging in the balance. This is Lawless Planet.
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911, where's your emergency? Yeah, I was just calling. I'm from the security area.
My heart's been missing. He's been missing for a while.
I can't figure out where he is. It's just before 2 a.m.
on April 18th, 2018. Amy Price is in her home in Bluefield, Virginia, an Appalachian coal mining town on the border of West Virginia.
Amy last spoke to her husband around 8 p.m. He said there were a few things he needed to take care of at a coal mine he does business with, but Amy hasn't heard from him since.
And now she's scared. Yeah, but he's been kind of depressed slightly, and I know there's a lot of things going on with him.
I'm just real concerned. Okay, what's his name? Larry Price Jr.
Larry Price Jr., or LJ as he's known to friends, is 38 years old, 5'10", muscular build, with a tattoo of a panther on his bicep and another of Jesus with the cross on his chest. LJ has spent his life in coal mines, and he's risen to become a bit of a power player in
the industry, involved in mines from Virginia all the way to Montana. But lately, Amy could tell
things at work were not going well. A week earlier, LJ told Amy, if something happens to me,
be thankful for the years we've had together. Also, liquidate all the
stuff and stay in one location.
On
this night in Virginia,
police officers, helicopters,
and canines fan out across the
county, looking for LJ.
Detectives contact
the last person who Amy believes has seen
him. It's his pastor, who
tells police that he and LJ had prayed together over a business decision. Amy Price doesn't sleep that night.
And as the sun begins to rise the following day, she starts to fear the worst. Then, nearly 24 hours after LJ went missing, another call comes in to 911.
This time from a driver who spotted a man walking along the side of the road, about 20 miles away from Amy's home. The man is wearing boots, jeans, and a flannel jacket.
And beneath the neckline of a blue t-shirt is a tattoo of Jesus with the cross. LJ Price is alive, but his troubles are just beginning.
L.J.'s sudden disappearance and reappearance will set off a chain of events that will expose not only L.J. Price, but the dirty underbelly of one of the country's largest coal mines.
From Wondery, I'm Zach Goldbaum, and this is Lawless Planet. From coast to coast, people are fleeing flames, wind, and water.
Nature is telling us, I can't take this anymore. Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our town.
We call things accidents. There is no accident.
This was 100% preventable. I could tell I was floating in oil.
And I remember looking under the rig and seeing the water on fire. And I thought, what have you done? Over the years, I've reported on environmental activists chaining themselves to pipelines in the swamps of Louisiana.
Butterfly conservationists in Mexico who were killed for standing up to cartels. I've met Brazilian street gangs doing illegal gold mining in the Amazon.
And I've come to realize that these are the stories about our changing planet that we need to tell. Stories about people
and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it. In other words,
the true crimes fueling the climate crisis. The crime of the century is the one being waged on our planet, and the time to listen is now.
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