Ghost Herd

New KUOW docuseries: Adults in the Room

"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 — name

Introducing: Let the Kids Dance!

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

Part 6: The Reckonin'

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

Part 5: The Bidding War

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 wa

Part 4: The Crash

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.Support the

Part 3: The Gamble

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 Am

Part 2: The Swindle

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 compani

Part 1: The Empire Builders

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

Introducing Ghost Herd, coming January 10

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