Have We Reached Peak Sand

Humanosity says…We have reached peak sand. This excellent podcast from NPR follows a sand detective on a quest to find a stolen beach. There’s a helicopter chase, death threats, even a little sand forensics. The Queen of England is involved. But stolen sand is very hard to find and even harder to get back.

Listen below or click on the link at the bottom of the page to go to the podcast homepage

Summary

Sand is one of the most precious commodities in the world. Yet most people are blissfully unaware of just how valuable it is and that there is a growing global problem as there isn’t enough of it to go round. So people are stealing it, smuggling it, and getting killed over it.

A few years ago, an entire beach in a remote area of Jamaica vanished. Thieves dug up hundreds of tons of sand and hauled it away in dump trucks in the middle of the night. The sand–white, powdery, Caribbean sand–was worth about a million dollars.

Today on the show, we follow a sand detective on a quest to find a stolen beach. There’s a helicopter chase, death threats, even a little sand forensics. The Queen of England is involved. But stolen sand is very hard to find and even harder to get back.

Click here to listen to the podcast at www.npr.org

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