Editor鈥檚 Note: Transcriptions of episodes of the 国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast are created with a mix of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain some grammatical errors or slight deviations from the audio.
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EPISODE BEGINS聽
国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast Theme: From 国产吃瓜黑料 Magazine and PRX, this is the 国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast.
Michael Roberts (host): Hello 国产吃瓜黑料 Podcast listeners, this is your host, Michael Roberts. Before we get started today, I wanted to let you know that while the coronavirus is massively impacting the lives and job of everyone who works at 国产吃瓜黑料, here at the podcast, we鈥檙e going to continue to bring you the unique mix of great stories that you鈥檝e enjoyed over the last four years. We believe that in this incredibly difficult moment, these stories, which aren鈥檛 directly about the pandemic, very much matter, and that they鈥檙e worth listening to. That includes today鈥檚 episode, by an old friend many of you know well.
Peter Frick-Wright: Hey everybody, this is Peter Frick-Wright, former 国产吃瓜黑料 podcast host, now off doing big, deep-dive longform projects. Now, when I stepped away from this show back in January, I promised I'd be back to share those big deep-dive projects, right here in the 国产吃瓜黑料 feed. So here I am. It's a story I've been doing with the website Longreads and the writer Rachel Nuwer, about a problem that鈥檚 gone from being a conservation issue, to one of public safety.
And that problem is the fact that, thanks to some legal loopholes, there are more tigers in captivity in the United States, right now, than all of the wild tigers combined, anywhere in the world. You鈥檒l hear us say that in the series, too. It鈥檚 kind of mind boggling.
And that鈥檚 just tigers. It doesn鈥檛 count the lions, cougars, leopards, and other big cats that people keep in cages. It鈥檚 not great for the cats in those cages, but it鈥檚 really not great for the people nearby when, inevitably, those cats get out. Cause then what do you do?
Today, we have the story of what one group of police officers were forced to do when a man named Terry Thompson let loose 18 tigers, 17 lions, 8 bears, and a handful of other animals, and then shot himself in the head.
It鈥檚 the first episode of a four-part series called Cat People, and it gets crazier from there. Search for "Cat People" in your podcast app to get the rest of the series. Here it is.
[Listen to Cat People here: ]
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Roberts: That鈥檚 the first episode of Cat People, the new series from Longreads with Rachel Nuwer and Peter Frick-Wright. It was produced by Peter, Rachel and Audrey Quinn, with music and sound design by Robbie Carver and editing by Mike Dang. You can listen to the rest of this series by searching for Cat People wherever you get your podcasts. You can read an accompanying feature story by Rachel Nuwer at Longreads.com/catpeople.
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