It Could Happen Here - The Coming Flood

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

In Part Two of our series on The Wall and the Wilderness, James talks about the cultural and ecological damage done by the border wall and continues his interview with Dr. Christina Aiello about the P...eninsular Bighorn ram that was killed by razor wire in the Jacumba mountains. Sources: https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=29de9d51905bd175a701b04c24176b46  https://www-jstor-org.sdmesa.idm.oclc.org/stable/3636811?seq=5 https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?contributor_employer=Atkore https://tucson.com/news/local/border/article_a11265b0-17c3-5bed-b50a-72e5d17e1369.html https://www.blm.gov/visit/jacumba-wilderness https://www.usaspending.gov/search?hash=29de9d51905bd175a701b04c24176b46 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/08/2025-05992/determination-pursuant-to-section-102-of-the-illegal-immigration-reform-and-immigrant-responsibility https://www.enr.com/articles/54215-us-settles-border-wall-suit-against-contractor-fisher-sand-gravel https://www.atkore.com/about-us https://desertreport.org/a-border-wall-in-the-jacumba-wilderness-area/ https://gizmodo.com/trumps-border-wall-torn-apart-by-arizona-monsoon-rains-1847535174 https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70B01C25F00001112_7014_70B01C23D00000010_7014 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1666138/000166613826000010/atkr-20260429.htm  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart.
Starting point is 00:00:14 And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman.
Starting point is 00:00:37 Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhain. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up?
Starting point is 00:00:56 He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week, I bring on an amazing guest.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So by age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone.
Starting point is 00:01:50 I'm Dr. Joy, and this is therapy for black girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into what's happening inside your kid's brain, the group chat, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose. That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling from the psychologists and psychiatrists who studied this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone, and maybe ask, why am I like this? I'm Jemisbeg, host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming, from setting boundaries and navigating
Starting point is 00:02:33 friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions, without us even realizing it, aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. a man named Scott Macklam was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him.
Starting point is 00:03:07 But now, almost 40 years later, I'm re-examining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to examined the backfire effect on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, for wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an epidemic against literature?
Starting point is 00:03:38 More specifically, black literature. I'm Jack Quist-Pice Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lits podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little elevators, Michael Rexes and Martin with the Kings running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from.
Starting point is 00:03:54 And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. On Labor Day, while you all listen to a delightful conversation I have Molly Conger on the subject of Buffalo and Pronghorns and the many other megafauna we get to share the land with, I was up on a summit whose name I didn't know. Sometimes I call it names, but they aren't words I can broadcast. It's steep and loose and at the top the primary foliage is joya. You can get to the top. And the view is worth it.
Starting point is 00:04:43 But more likely than not, you're going to have to bleed for it. Anyway, there it was just after dawn, bleeding on the top of this prominence, looking around with my binoculars. It's a good time to look for animals, to look at the land in general, and to think about where I might explore before it gets too hot. Looking out ahead of me, I could see peaks in Mexico and in the US. And until a few years ago, that's all I would have seen. An unbroken flow of land, across which the mountain lines I hear in these hills could roam,
Starting point is 00:05:12 and the mule deer those mountain lions hunt could wander. Now, though, through my binoculars, I can make out a giant scar on the landscape. The border wall stands out as a wound and a beautiful landscape. The state marking its territory in a most ugly and crude way possible. A forest of metal and rust amidst a chaparral and sagebrush. Since 1848, the border here has gone from being a thing on the map to a thing on the ground,
Starting point is 00:05:43 and that has meant that everything that lives on this ground now has to live with the border it didn't consent to, and that makes no sense when it's projected onto the topography of our deserts and mountains. Much of that wall is built on land that was previously accessible to everybody, and now it's accessible to nobody. Not far from where I'm sitting, almost exactly six years ago, I was out in the mountains with some Kumai folks, the walls cut across their land, dividing them from each other,
Starting point is 00:06:11 in the name of two states that have arrived in the blink of an eye when we compare the timescale of the state to the timescale of indigenous history. The Kumai people I was with were in ceremony, using legal protections for the practice of their faith to put themselves in between the huge construction vehicles and their ancestors.
Starting point is 00:06:29 In the soil, where the first Trump administration wanted to blast, Kumai ancestors had been laid to rest. The physical evidence of their remains have been found by tribal monitors in countless border sites. In 2020, through court cases in direct action, some of the wall building was stopped. By using ceremonies to slow down construction
Starting point is 00:06:48 and their court cases to challenge it, folks from across Sukumia Nation and from other tribes were able to stall out the Trump administration. The damage done to their homeland was still profound, but it could have been worse. In 2025, with Trump back in office, most of the laws that have protected this land, including the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,
Starting point is 00:07:13 were waived by Secretary Nome. That wasn't the only law waived. I want to read a list of all the laws she waived, because I think it gives a good impression of things that matter less to these people than building a giant monument to grift and hatred. The National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act,
Starting point is 00:07:34 the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, the Paleontological Resources Protection Act, the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988,
Starting point is 00:07:52 the National Trail System Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Noise Control Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, as amended by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Comprehensive Environment Response Compensation Liability Act, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act, the Antiquities Act,
Starting point is 00:08:11 the Historic Sites, Buildings and Antiquities Act, the Eagle Protection Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, Section 438 of the Energy Independence and Security Act, the National Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956, the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act, the Farmland Policy Protection Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the Wild Horse and Burrow Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Otai Mountain Wilderness Act of 1999. Each of these laws was passed for a reason. It's not easy in this country to restrain capitalism through the law.
Starting point is 00:08:53 We have in fact manifestly failed to do so to an extent that this state has facilitated a massive and remarkable extinction of the animals on the land it now lays claim to. But now, at the border, decades of effort to protect our animals, plants and land have all been undone. What we have instead is ruled by decree. In the case of the Big Bend sector, where war construction is destroying a unique and beautiful national park in Texas, we got this instead. I just landed in Texas, headed to Big Bend National Park. Last night, I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes, until I can get down there and do a personal evaluation, talk to some stakeholders,
Starting point is 00:09:34 talks to local law enforcement in that area, and more to follow this week. In case you're not familiar with that voice, that is a commissioner of Border Patrol, Rodney Scott. He also served in leadership position in the First Trump administration. During the Biden administration, he went to work for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank, and in December of 2021, a San Diego court judge found that Scott had made a rape threat to former patrol agent and outspoken critic of Border Patrol sexual assaults Jen Budd when he posted on Twitter,
Starting point is 00:10:09 quote, lean back. close your eyes and just enjoy the show. That was in a court case about a restraining order. Decades of legislation and debate. Expert input and work to preserve what we have left. All tossed away. Instead, we have a guy who generously could not possibly have expertise in all these areas and most likely has insight into none of them,
Starting point is 00:10:32 making a decision that impacts the land and the people, animals and plants living there forever. Let's talk about what that impact means. and begin by returning to where we left off last week, with the decaying remains of a peninsula big horn ram in the border wire. Many of you would have thought it's just one sheep, and yeah, it's just one sheep, but we don't have that many big horns. And sometimes in particular these rams can act as dispersers, spreading genetic diversity and growing the species range.
Starting point is 00:11:01 If you're looking for an example of a disperser, check out the wolves that have colonized California of their own free will, on their own paws, without the releases and voter initiatives that we saw in Colorado. But there's more to it than that. I did want to just comment on this idea that a single individual dying doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. And I think, you know, I'm a biologist. I'm kind of of a similar mindset where we're used to seeing animals die. I mean, that's part of wildlife.
Starting point is 00:11:32 It's part of natural communities. But I think these anthropogenic cause deaths, these human cause deaths, which I expect to occur. I think there's going to be more of them. This one ram caught in this razor wire is not going to be the end of this. But I think what people don't appreciate is that single individuals, in Bitcoin populations in particular, when I talked about them having all this knowledge of the landscape
Starting point is 00:11:59 and living up to 18, 20 years old, that single individual, if it happens to be that 20-year-old you that has the most knowledge in that population of all the research, sources accumulated over those multiple generations and that individual is the one that dies, what else is lost with that one death? There's a culture. You know, we feel uncomfortable saying something like culture in wildlife, but that's what it is. It's a passing on of knowledge and information that helps that population survive. The longer that's retained, the more it's spread and shared. I think we lose that. I think we also lose the potential for those long,
Starting point is 00:12:40 rare migration events that can cause that gene flow that's so necessary to keep these isolated populations from suffering those effects of inbreeding. So that single individual that died could have been a ram that was, you know, this sometimes happens once in 10 years where a ram's traveling up to 100 miles, like crazy distances on these dispersal. We call them walkabout sometimes. And so I think we, as humans, we can kind of just ignore single deaths. But I think if you really understand these wildlife populations that they matter more than we give them credit for.
Starting point is 00:13:30 This record is on. Miley is having a moment. New name's exclusive shows. So IHeart Radio is sending you to experience it all. Life at the Hollywood Polites, hotel, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Listen to Iheart new music for 10 minutes a day on the IHart. Heart Radio app and click enter. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Stream Miley's new album, Bass Persuades, today.
Starting point is 00:14:02 Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi You Wanto. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today.
Starting point is 00:14:30 Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. And I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight.
Starting point is 00:14:57 Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman.
Starting point is 00:15:13 Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane, Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists, on artist podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.
Starting point is 00:15:25 Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading.
Starting point is 00:15:35 So we don't like to use that word anymore. A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Gross's Peloton class? No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th.
Starting point is 00:15:53 That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes here. each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween.
Starting point is 00:16:24 Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists on the IHeard Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it. Each week I bring on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamorne Morris, and Nicole Byer. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour.
Starting point is 00:16:51 You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents. Tell your parents to stop clicking on links, please. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:17:13 If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you. And I'm also here to laugh with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Self-care September is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be in everything shower. It can be putting your phone on Do Not Disturb.
Starting point is 00:17:42 But sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable. stuff and understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Spag, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter life crisis, which is depicted as the collapse, the quarter life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you.
Starting point is 00:18:20 So this self-care September, don't just take care of yourself, get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. By age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone. Middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is therapy for black girls. We spend real time on it in our surviving middle school run. bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological and psychological chaos happening all of the same time.
Starting point is 00:18:59 We got into group chats and gaming, friendships and bullying, and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. There's belonging. You could think of belonging as I can be myself and I can still be accepted. and then there's fitting in. Spitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapists, Keir Gaines on Black fatherhood
Starting point is 00:19:25 and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. You don't have more shorts, so you can't do flips, you have on the dress, so you can't cross your legs. That's the range of this run, from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. You have to get off her device, but the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as your adult,
Starting point is 00:19:43 in their lives to miss out on. This has been our surviving middle school run. Brought to you by the people who spend their careers thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians asking them your
Starting point is 00:20:13 or burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia. And the other one is, do I have ADHD? date. There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better, to have
Starting point is 00:20:45 less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. On a Sunday morning, in early June, my watch woke me up just before 3 a.m. I hadn't got to sleep until midnight, nervous about how much water I'd need to pack. Despite years of traveling through deserts and mountains, they still scare me just a little bit. That's part of what I love about them. I just had time to make a pot of coffee before my friend arrived, and we set off for a pre-dorn trip into the canyons. Stepping off into the desert always gives me a sense of feeling small. And the plan we had that day was no different. In the desert, you can stand in a place
Starting point is 00:21:44 that has not changed a great deal, despite the rise and fall of states and empires, that has resisted the ruthless exploitation of capitalism in a country, that has delivered Bitfistam and its historic consequences to so much of the world. You can also run out of water and die. So, packing a full hydration bladder, a couple of Naljeans, and the podcast recorder is self-sealed with gasket maker, we set off. Further eastern valley of the moon, after a steep 3,500 foot drop-off,
Starting point is 00:22:22 Limea and Davis valleys. These vast washes cut through the desert, and bloom in the springtime when the arrowweed and osoteo's come to life. In the summer, they'll hit temperatures that make the canyons feel like ovens. And in the spring, the wind here had been so strong they caught my backpack and not me clean off my feet, if I scrambled from one valley into another. Deep in these canyons, you'll find desert palm oases, little islands of green and the sea of brown and beige.
Starting point is 00:22:51 There used to be big lakes out here and much more water. Now it's all gone. but some kind of spring or see keeps these lush little pockets alive and offers priceless shade. The West was never really wild. It's been someone's home for thousands of years, but it's certainly rugged out here. On my topo map, there are three mountains in one of these valleys, named Kirk, Benny, and Glenn. Those are official names, as far as the government is concerned. I'm guessing whoever gave them that didn't ask the Kumai folks who have lived here for millennia for suggestions.
Starting point is 00:23:23 Like much of the California border, the 60 feet north of the actual border in these valleys is a national defence area now, an extension of the naval air facility in El Centro that means we can't go there, and the Marines now patrol the desert, protecting us from people who, in many cases, are making the same journey their parents or grandparents did. But to get to where I'm recording, outside of that area, you follow these valleys south for a long time, then step The clamber over some boulders, and he'll slide down a sandy slope covered with rocks. Right in the asshole. I would suggest not making that slide on your butt.
Starting point is 00:24:12 After that, you'll find the mouth of a canyon. That's all I'll say about exactly where this canyon is, because you probably shouldn't go. I want to take a moment to reinforce that. I don't think you should try and go here. It's a special place, and it's a dangerous place. I want to tell you about it, but I don't want to encourage you to visit you. After slogging through thick sand in the canyon mouth, my friend and I clambered over some boulders, I looked down upon the start of the canyon proper. The sun hadn't come up over the canyon walls yet,
Starting point is 00:24:43 where he wanted to be back to our car before the day hit the triple-digit high as we expected. Framed by the walls, as we slid down a sandy rock slope, there's a first of many little white crosses that dot this landscape. This one's for Martine. At least he had the fortune of being identified, of getting a name. Further down the canyon, a little blue cross sits on a hillside, where a friend found a child's remains. The plaque on it just reads Deskornosidix. Unknown. To get there from here, one must pass at least three more memorial markers.
Starting point is 00:25:21 On our way through the canyon, we stopped for a moment at each to pay our respects to them. There are buckets out here as well. Each of them with a threaded lid, sealed, and full of water. food and supply to keep people alive out here. Completely full. The buckets are working really good out here. Nothing else is really. You can see the orange caps for the gatories scattered about the animals.
Starting point is 00:25:52 Must know how to... Yeah. I've seen them go through even tin cans out here. One of those buckets is deep in the canyon, just a short walk from where friends found the remains of a child. This one has a message written on it. I'm recording something's been written on the bucket. means I believe in you. We're humans. We will be maibers. Listen. We hope you have a good day.
Starting point is 00:26:17 I hope you have a peaceful walk. I hope you continue with respect. But there are things much older than those buckets here. On our journey through the canyon, we find mortars and pieces of Kumai art that are hundreds of not thousands of years old. So many more. Look more over there too. more more taros wow so many you can't even count them
Starting point is 00:26:45 yeah what animals have been here look at this so many these are deeper I mean there are maybe more than generations of people that were here
Starting point is 00:27:02 here's an oval yeah someone's dug into this more over here and these wrong The whole canyon is filled with pots, Lific debitage, and other cultural resources. I don't want to describe what these things mean to Kumiyai people
Starting point is 00:27:20 without having Kumiyai people explain that themselves and I wasn't able to find anybody to join me on this show. What I will say is that this canyon is also now filled in in several spots with a road that DHS appears to have cut through the canyon floor. It's big enough to see from space and I've tracked its progress for months before stepping off into the desert.
Starting point is 00:27:40 Before dawn to confirm with my own eyes that this beautiful place has been forever changed. Just approaching a little kind of oasis here, palm trees. And we can see, yeah, beautiful palm trees. It's funny to think about this path. It seems such an obvious path, you know, because it is, because people have been taking it for millennia. It just sort of meanders through the canyon. So does this road now. With our superelmenio winter on the way, this road, which sits about eight foot above the
Starting point is 00:28:19 Florida Canyon, will act like a dam. DHS has ignored hydrology before. Several sections of the wall were built without floodgates, a wall that divides Nogales, Arizona, from Nogales Sonora, has caused flooding for more than a decade. In 2021, when sections of the wall were destroyed by monsoon rains in Arizona, they found out that ignoring best practices and laws doesn't really work, and that you can waive a law, but a state can't simply sign a document and make flood water any less powerful. The desert here floods fast.
Starting point is 00:28:48 That's why you don't camp in these washes. They fill up quickly, and the water moves with tremendous force. Every year, somewhere in the southwest, hikers will get stranded or killed by the power of the water flowing through the desert. But now these roads will change how that water flows. And before the road gets washed away, they'll create deep eddies that will churn up the canyon floor,
Starting point is 00:29:09 churning through all the potchards we were so careful not to touch or disturb moving them around and breaking them up and taking them from where they may have been for centuries. This stuff is incredible that people have been walking by foot along this path
Starting point is 00:29:25 for thousands, of thousands and thousands of years. And now there's a road 150 metres away. Incredible to pull those the road through here. Holy shit. I take a moment to just enjoy being in their presence, I think. I cannot believe the road is right fucking here. It's wild, isn't it?
Starting point is 00:30:06 We are now 150 yards from a dirt road, I would say. You know, this place has been this place since before Cortez, before Columbus, before, you know, Washington and through the secure fence, and through the Operation Gatekeeper and through the first Trump admin and now there's a road here and they'll never go away.
Starting point is 00:30:33 That piece of desert will never go back. Any human remains or Kumaei belongings that were there and gone now forever. I know, it kind of it's very sad to reflect on. This record is on. Miley is having a moment.
Starting point is 00:31:00 New name, new house, close of shows. So IHR Radio is sending you to experience it all. Life at the Hollywood Ports, hotel, tickets, and $1,000 cash. Listen to Iheart new music for 10 minutes a day on the IHart Radio app. And click enter. Every day you listen is another chance to win. Stream Miley's new album, Bass Persuades, today.
Starting point is 00:31:28 Lisa, we should tell them about our new show. Oh my God, Lexi. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me. I'm Lexi Youan. We're two best friends, 22 years apart. but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one,
Starting point is 00:31:44 which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. I'm not going to get anyone fighting. That is wild. I learned that about you today. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business,
Starting point is 00:32:02 and I've always got something to say. If men were just honest about this, there would be so much more peace in the world. We're going to talk about dating, relationships, beauty, getting older, and a little wiser. We're best friends, but we don't always agree. Because you told us how accommodating you are. Obviously, I would do what I think I could do to fight the fight, but there's only so much fight I can fight. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me.
Starting point is 00:32:27 Don't lie to me. Don't lie to me. Liar. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't really care. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana. Jeremy Colhane. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The Improvised Character Comedy Podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft.
Starting point is 00:32:52 Join us for a panel of wellness influencers. What I try to do is faux journal. I don't know. Have you guys heard of faux journaling? Yeah, it's reading. It's called reading. So we don't like to use that word anymore. Okay.
Starting point is 00:33:04 A panel of New Yorker cartoonists. Have you guys done Terry Greer? Rosas Peloton class. No! I've been dying too. I'm so sorry. I'm seeing a reading of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Audra McDonald's at the Wonderland Bookstore on 14th.
Starting point is 00:33:20 That's crazy. I went to the Wonderland Bookstore yesterday and I heard Nora Jones do a reading of Zero Dark 30. No way. You have to come to the last bookstore though. Kim Cottrell is reading the guitar tabs of yesterday. A panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up?
Starting point is 00:33:39 He winks on Halloween. He gets right up next to the microphone. I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to artists on artists on artists on artists on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud, and the... who practice it. Each week I bring
Starting point is 00:34:09 on incredible guests like Conan O'Brien, Iowa Debris, Lamorne Morris, and Nicole Byer. Oh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And the scams run the gamut. I'm talking about scams from the 1800s
Starting point is 00:34:26 all the way up to today. I also warn you and keep you safe against scammers. Call your grandparents. Tell your parents to stop clicking on links. please. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. If there's a scam, I'm here to protect you. And I'm also here to laugh with you. So if you like fun, if you like comedy and you like learning and protecting yourself from criminals, start listening to scam goddess on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Starting point is 00:34:58 Self-care September is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be in everything shower. It can be putting your phone or do not disturb, but sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff, and understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out while you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Spag, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are. Unlike the quarter-life crisis, which is depicted as the collapse,
Starting point is 00:35:37 The quarter life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something. When we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves, nobody else can take that from you. So this self-care September, don't just take care of yourself. Get to know yourself as well. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. By age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone. Middle school is a different world than the one we grew up in. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is Therapy for Black.
Starting point is 00:36:07 We spent real time on it in our surviving middle school run, bringing in a child psychologist and a psychiatrist who's raising two black girls of his own to talk about what's really going on with our kids right now. So it's literally physiological and neurological and psychological and psychological chaos happening all this same job. We got into group chats and gaming, friendships and bullying, and how to tell the difference between healthy monitoring and the kind of surveillance that erodes trust. There's belonging.
Starting point is 00:36:35 You could think of belonging as, I can. can be myself and I can still be accepted. And then there's fitting in. Spitting in says I have to change who I am in order to avoid rejection. Then we turn the conversation toward the fathers, sitting down with therapist Keir Gaines on Black fatherhood and what it means to raise a daughter through this stage. You don't have on shorts, so you can't do flips,
Starting point is 00:36:56 you have on the dressy, up across your legs. That's the range of this run, from screen time to identity to the fathers doing the work at home. We have to get off her device, but the reality is there's a lot of life out there that we don't want you as your adults in their lives to miss out on. This has been our surviving middle school run. Brought to you by the people who spend their careers thinking about exactly this. I'm Dr. Joy.
Starting point is 00:37:19 Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers, and top clinicians asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. A hundred percent of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget
Starting point is 00:37:59 things. They're concerned that one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? state. There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids, to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to decoding women's health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now. In this place where life has fought for so long to survive, the state is spending millions to make survival impossible. And in California, especially in California, that moment is being met with a profound and remarkable cowardice by our politicians. I think right now what we've been seeing is a complete lack of politicians
Starting point is 00:39:00 speaking to this issue, especially in California. It's been a lot of silence and reluctance to engage on this, although I will point to and show the good example of Texas. Were there politicians at local and county and, you know, even state and federal levels are engaging and saying that they don't think this is the right way to approach border security. I'm just impressed and grateful that those political entities are speaking up because we're not seeing that in California.
Starting point is 00:39:35 And so I encourage everyone to call up at varying levels, you know, your representatives and say that you want them to like speak to this issue. Republicans in Big Ben and ecological groups up and down the border have made state about the ecological impact of what's going on. But too many of our California politicians remain silent. The only comment I got on the topic was from the CDFW, where Communications Manager Steve Gonzalez said, quote,
Starting point is 00:40:04 CDFW has been clear with the federal government that border wall construction poses serious risks to protected wildlife, including bighorn sheep. This is another tragic reminder of those concerns. Of course, there's money to be made destroying what should be preserved for all of us. just like the hide hunters who killed the buffalo to sell their robes, or the fur traders who pursued the wolf to near extinction in much of the West. Some people today are choosing to line their pockets at the expense of all our future.
Starting point is 00:40:32 The wall in Acumba is being built by Fisher's sand and gravel, the same company that built the crowdfunded wall in Texas, which is an imminent danger of collapsing into the Rio Grande. The same company whose founder, Tommy Fisher, pitched his wall proposal directly to the president using the most direct method going on for the first. Thomas News. Tommy Fisher is the president and CEO of the Fisher Sand and Gravel Company. He submitted a proposal to build a portion of the wall. He joins us live to explain.
Starting point is 00:40:59 Thank you for your time this morning. One can assume if you want to get involved in this, you back the president and what he's trying to do. Is that the case and why? That is. Anyone who's been to the border knows that there's a crisis on both sides. And we possess the technology and the vertical integration to get this done. So when Homeland Security requested from the DoD another 218 miles or strategically placed fence. We wanted to rise to the occasion so we basically put a price to not only build the fence but the roads and the technology and get it done so they know exactly what it's going to cost and how long it will take and we can do that under a year. It will shock you to
Starting point is 00:41:42 hear that he did not accurately estimate the cost and that the Hukumba contract is ballooning to more than twice the initial budget estimate. The initial project was budgeted at $574 million. Today, the contract sits at $1.2 billion. It has also ballooned in scope, but a secondary barrier now being added. This isn't Fisher's first rodeo was causing flooding. In fact, they were sued by the last Trump administration for building the wall that would cause flooding in Texas. How about that wire that killed the ram? There are packing receipts left out in the desert for Allied tube and conduit. They make the wire. The parent company actually got a sustainability award last year, which I think is a very nice encapsulation of exactly what
Starting point is 00:42:26 greenwashing looks like. That parent company is called ACORRA International. Government contract data showed they've made tens of millions of dollars since 2025. An FEC data shows their CEO making some donations to Republicans. Not massive ones, I noticed one of them was to one of the sponsors of the entirely inappropriate named Dignad Act, which pretends to be immigration reform but aims to create a migrant underclass with no path to equality. The company was sued last year for securities fraud, and settled this year in a class action, alleging the fixing of prices for PVC pipes. This rogue gallery of contractors, a massive scale of destruction, can be stopped by one thing, though. The only thing the government respects out here, private property.
Starting point is 00:43:10 Look at my map as we tried through those canyons. I noticed something odd on the land ownership filter which I must have accidentally left on. Everything else out here is coloured yellow, for wilderness, but I noticed some boundary lines. It turns out that several plots of private land sit in the middle of the wilderness. They were never incorporated in 1994 when this particular wilderness was created by an act of Congress. The wall construction I could see seemed very close to, if not on, some of that land on satellite images. So I called the listed landowners to see if they were aware. They never got back to me. But since then, the CVP Smart Wall map shows the wall going around their land, to the north, effectively sealing off their property and seating hundreds of acres to
Starting point is 00:43:51 Mexico. By the time you hear this, the war will be longer and the destruction greater. It'll be late summer or early fall, and perhaps the super elenio we have been promised will have already begun. Perhaps that road is already gone and the canyon is already flooded. Perhaps it hasn't yet. Till things cool off, I can't walk out there to find out. I want the rain to begin, it's not safe to be out there. For most people listening, the things we will all lose will be things that they have never seen. But perhaps for many of you, knowing they were there, still has a value. It's impossible for the state in capitalism to put a value on things like this. On knowing we share this land with amazing animals, on art being present in a place it has existed for millennia,
Starting point is 00:44:35 on uninterrupted landscapes, on water and animals being able to flow across them. On wilderness, and on knowing our tax dollars are not being spent by the billion to make it more likely that children will die in the desert. I think we can all understand that has value even when we can't calculate it. And if you value our wildlife, our wild places, our history, and our land at all, then you can't support this wall. Before I go, I want to address an argument that I hear raised against the wall, or in favour of not building it in wild places, because I think that argument sucks. People like to cite CBP data and say that places like the Big Bend National Park have very low crossing numbers, so they don't need war. I think this is spineless. We shouldn't be opposed to the
Starting point is 00:45:19 wall because we don't need it in some places. We should be opposed to the wall because we don't need it anywhere. The wall is a monument to hate. It is a machine for killing people who come here to ask us for help. People I care about deeply have suffered life-altering injuries falling off the wall. People I never got to meet have died falling off the wall. There is no CBP encounter threshold that would make that okay. There is no DHS data that will persuade me to sell my wild places to the state
Starting point is 00:45:49 or to sign away our big horns for the false promise of a social contract with the state that would keep me safe. If there was only one migrant at the border, or if there were one million, I wouldn't accept the destruction of that Kumea heritage, and you shouldn't either. Building new wall will change crossing dynamics.
Starting point is 00:46:07 It will force people into harder, more remote and lower traffic areas, and by doing that, it will kill them. Border traffic can change, but it won't stop. If the desert has taught me anything, It's that life finds a way. What can stop and what has to stop is this destruction of the land we all share, to make a few construction contractors rich and a few politicians happy. We shouldn't be retiring about this.
Starting point is 00:46:31 I'll couch our arguments in cowardly language like I care about border security, but. This is all native land. The border came far after the sheep and the people who are this land's traditional and current custodians. We should build bridges, not walls. We shouldn't be afraid to speak up for the land and the animals when they cannot speak for themselves. I hope you've enjoyed listening this week. If you'd like to get in touch,
Starting point is 00:46:52 you can contact us. Natural CausesPod at proton.com. It's a proton mail address. If you want your message to be encrypted, you'll have to send it from a proton mail address as well. And I hope you join us next week when we're talking about eggs. Natural Causes the production of Coolzone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media,
Starting point is 00:47:13 visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for natural causes listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Lisa, tell them about our new show. We have a new podcast. It's called Don't Lie to Me.
Starting point is 00:47:34 I'm Lexi Youanu. We're two best friends, 22 years apart, but so close at heart. And I'm Lisa Di Giulio, the old one, which means we have wildly different references, occasionally different opinions, and at this point in my 50s, I've lived it all. Now in my 30s, being the founder of new shoes, good taste is my business. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Kylie Breakman. Angel Geratana.
Starting point is 00:48:02 Jeremy Colhain. Patrick McDonald. And we're the hosts of the Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists Podcast. The improvised character comedy podcast where each week a new panel of artists discuss their craft. Join us for a panel of Eurovision participants. And we do a little Halloween sometimes. Does the Pope dress up? He winks on Halloween. It's right up next to the microphone.
Starting point is 00:48:24 I hear you can almost hear the eyelashes hit each other. You never seen Italy so quiet as when the Pope gets up to wink on Halloween. Listen to Artists on Artists on Artists every Thursday on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lacey Mosley, author, actor, stand-up comedian, creator, and host of Scam Goddess Podcast. The True Crime Comedy Podcasts, all about robbery, fraud, and those who practice it.
Starting point is 00:48:50 Each week I bring on an amazing guest. Ooh, I scammed them. What? I can talk to you for an hour. You're a generational yapper like me. That's why I had to make yapping a job. And now you can catch full episodes of my show on YouTube. Start listening to Scam Goddess on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Starting point is 00:49:10 So by age 11 or so, at least 70% have a phone. I'm Dr. Joy, and this is therapy for black girls. We spend our surviving middle school run getting into. what's happening inside your kids' brain, the group chats, and their friendships, and what you can do about it. Your child is not doing this on purpose. That's the kind of perspective we've been pulling
Starting point is 00:49:30 from the psychologists and psychiatrists who studied this for a living. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Self-care September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone, and maybe ask,
Starting point is 00:49:47 why am I like this? I'm Jemisbeg, host of the psychologist of your 20s podcast and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming from setting boundaries and navigating friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions without us even realizing it aren't driven by what we truly want but by what will prevent us from feeling lonely or being alone. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get, podcasts. In 1986, a man named Scott Macklam was killed in broad daylight. Police quickly found
Starting point is 00:50:28 their suspect. Prosecutors convicted him. But now, almost 40 years later, I'm reexamining this case. I really didn't believe any of it was real. And I was like, well, they're going to figure out this is not me. They're going to do their police job. Has the wrong man been in prison this whole time? Listen to examined the backfire effect on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there an epidemic against literature? More specifically, black literature. I'm Jack Quist Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit podcast, we're outside asking why. They don't want a whole bunch of little Ella bakers, Malcolm Waxes and Martin Luther King's
Starting point is 00:51:14 running around. And when you look at a lot of different cultures, they're like, we need to know where you came from. And considering this is Black reading. month, the only real question is, what are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

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