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Flashback: Unforeseen Consequences Throughout History: Part 2 · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. It's uh, it's some of your
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: favorite Quentin Quarantine nos back again, live and somewhat direct
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to you. My name is Ben Boland, my writer die
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: co host Noel Brown is off on an adventure, and
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we are off on an adventure all our own. This
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: is part two of our exploration of Unintended Consequences, which,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: as super producer Casey Pegram mentioned in our first part
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: of this series, is one of the easiest ways to
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: define history. I'm still I'm still tripping out about that one, Casey.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I thought that was a great definition. I'm I'm loving
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the the unintended consequences so far, especially the political ramifications
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: of air conditioning. That is not one that I had
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: thought of even in the least so um, I'm really
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: excited to hear where we go in part two. Yes, likewise, now,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: because this is a two part series, folks, if you
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: haven't heard part one, you're still you're still going to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: enjoy this, but it will make you know you should
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: listen to part one, is what I'm saying. It will
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: make way more sense. So we're just gonna pause for
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: a second and then come back after you listen to
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: part one. Casyqun get like some waiting room music. Perfect,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: welcome back. All right. So, now that we're all caught up,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: as as we said in part one of this series,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Casey and Noel and Spirit and I are not are
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: not adventuring into this wild territory alone, we contacted an expert,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the creator and host of the new I Heart podcast Flashback,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: who himself is and I promises the last time I'll
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: say it, Sean who himself is a polly math Sean Braswell,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: thank you again for coming on the show. Thanks for
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: having me back then. I had such a good time
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: last time through the magic of podcast entity. You're a
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: natural charge. Yes, likewise, I think this has been um
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: this has already been a pretty revelatory learning experience for
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: me and I think for you as well. Casey right, absolutely,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: like I said, I'm all years I am. I am
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: fascinated by this topic. So in our previous episode, we
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: learned that the Y m c A, with the best
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of intention, had done some somewhat villainous things to America's
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: military forces. Uh. We also learned, as you said, casey Uh,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: that air conditioning has affected the world and society in
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: ways that we we didn't fully understand until Sean cluded
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: us in. But Sean, you had mentioned earlier that there
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: was more to this story of cigarettes, and I think
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I think we got so excited when it was like,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: tell me more about air conditioning, tell me more about
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah uh that that we didn't We didn't
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: fully explore the unintended consequences of cigarettes. No, when we
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: had left off in part one, you had made this
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: brilliant connection between the loss of tax revenue during prohibition
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and the way that Uncle Sam searched to make up
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: for it, which ultimately became cigarette taxes. You said at
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the beginning it wasn't stuff you would really notice unless
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: you were literally a penny pincher. Right, It's right. And
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it wasn't just Uncle Sam that got into the bonanza
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: that was cigarette taxes. A lot of states started to
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: follow suit. I think I was the first one in
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: nineteen one that they enacted a state level cigarette tax,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: and and you know, by the nineteen thirties more than
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: thirty states had done the same. But of course, not
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: all states tax at the same rate, but like we
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: talked about, it was mostly pennies on the dollar, and
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: so they were really just small time criminals and smugglers
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: that would take advantage of this different rate between states,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: and they might you know, smuggle a few cartons of
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: cigarettes from New Jersey over the river into New York
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and and UH and likewise. Um, but it was it
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: was not something that was a huge money making venture
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: for criminals yet, right, you know, I surely I'm not
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: the only person in the audience thinking this, but one
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: one of the things that mystified me when I moved
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: to UH Cities for the first time, you know, was
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that in cities people could buy a single cigarette, a
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: square or a lucy, which I didn't understand for a
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: long time. I think I had like I knew that
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: cigarettes were a big business, but I had no idea
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: just how much money they were making across various, um like,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: various parts of the world, various parts of the US,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and in various levels of society. You know, I was
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: one of those people. It was super naive when I
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: learned about cigarettes smuggling. It seems so strange to me,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: you know that what that one would smuggle something that
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: was legal, but apparently it was kind of profitable at
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: some point, absolutely, and it became really profitable after nine
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: And that was when another well intentioned act. We talked
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: about the y m C a last time, when they're
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: well intentioned provision of cigarettes during World War One. Well,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: nineteen s four, the U. S. Surgeon General comes out
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: with his famous Smoking Report, which links cigarette smoking too,
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: you know, lung cancer and other causes of death. And
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it's at that point a lot of the states say,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: we've got to do something about this. We have this
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: major disincentive we can put on smoking, which is to
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: increase the taxes we impose upon it, and so a
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: lot of very progressive states like New York start to
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: do that. Rights, right, some of this is a you know,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: it might be called a syntax right in some parts
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: of the world. Um, clearly, this is an economic lever
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: that is is pretty old and has been proven to work.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: You'll any New Yorkers in the audience will recognize this.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: This attempt in various other products, right, like the idea
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that should pay more in taxes for things like alcohol
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: when probition was repealed, or that one should. Maybe I'm
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: thinking like there was a silly example a few years ago,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: I want to say, New York with the idea of
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: taxing sugary drinks like soda, pop right and this stuff.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: These moves were almost universally reviled by a lot of
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: people who are fans of booze or fans of cigarettes,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: or fans of you know, fanta. I'm just you know,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: we're based here in atlantishn It's it's really difficult for
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: us to think of a soda that's not Coca cola,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: but we're giving it. We're giving the college go. So
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: how much of a difference though? Are are we talking?
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: And how would this kind of operation? How would it work?
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Is it something that people started doing on a regular
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: basis like organized crime level involvement? Absolutely? Um And to
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: give you a sense for the profit margins involved here,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: So for ample, I think in New York, if you
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: add in the state tax and in the city tax,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: it costs about five dollars and eighty five cents for
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: a pack of cigarettes or about sixty dollars for a
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: carton of cigarettes. Uh. Whereas in North Carolina where I live,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: which very tobacco friendly state, because we produce a lot
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: of tobacco. It's it's more like five dollars in tax
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  Speaker 1: per carton. So you can make fifty five dollars per
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: carton of cigarettes by selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And if you think about that, they're about fifty thousand
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: cartons that can fit on a truck. So if you're
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: making about five dollars in tax per carton, I mean
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: you're you're talking more than two million dollars in potential
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: profit per truck of cigarettes. I think we got into
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: the wrong business casey like, uh, you know, ethically, there
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: are I admit a couple of problems, but we could
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: have been smoked tycoons. Man. We missed our calling them,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: we miss we missed our colleague, and now now we
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: are we missed our calling. We found our podcasting. But
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: this might surprise people to realize that millions of dollars
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: are on the line. And when we get to when
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: we get to the idea of tax fraud, because that's
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: what this is, tax fraud on this level, then I
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: imagine this is something that the government is not going
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: to take laying down right, No, not at all. I
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: think the estimate is that that New York State loses
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  Speaker 1: something like one billion dollars in tax revenue because of
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: black market cigarettes each year. Wow. And and I mean
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: clearly they're they're trying to catch people. They have to
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: have some successful bust because how else would they get
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: that estimate right exactly? And they are pursuing cigarettes smuggling
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: cases all the time. Just last year here in North Carolina,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: down in Fayetteville, they busted up an operation that I
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: think was about an eight million dollar operation involved fifty
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: to sixty people. It was basically an unmarked candy store,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: a gray candy store building in Fayetteville that was basically
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: the hideout for an enormous cigarette smuggling operation I did. Okay,
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: before I say this, I want to be very clear,
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  Speaker 1: I'm not condoning the actions of this cigarette smuggling ring,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: and we're certainly not advocating that anybody break the law.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: But honestly, you guys, it feels like those folks have
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: lives there are so much more interesting than my own.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: You know, they're they're they're cigarette tycoons. Uh, They're going
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: on cool road trips all the time. So I imagine
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: they're probably quite stressful do you see this problem, uh
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: continuing into the future. Sean. Do you think this is
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: like this illegal industry is going to be, you know,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: historically a flash in the pan or is the money
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: just too compelling? Absolutely? I mean it's not just small
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: crime syndicates in the US, it's terrorist groups. The Irish
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: Repel book An Army back in its heyday was smuggling cigarettes.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein's son U Day was a cigarette smuggler. Um.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember the first bombing of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: the World Trade Center back in New York. The terrorists
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: who places that truck bomb in the parking garage were
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: funded thanks to cigarette smuggling. And you see it with
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: terrorist training camps in Afghanistan Hezbollah constantly they're breaking up
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: cigarette rings that that that lead to terrorists funding. And
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I think as long as there is a tax differential
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: that creates an arbitrage opportunity for criminals, that sort of
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: crime is going to continue. Um. One of the the
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: silver lines, one of the bright patches to that and
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: which may eventually lead to a decline because I don't
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: think you can probably ever expect every state in the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: US to get together and uniformly choose the same level
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: of taxes. Is that cigarette use is going down n steadily,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: and I think ultimately that might be what kills cigarettes smuggling,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: just the use of cigarettes overall, but even that is
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: obviously a long term venture. Wait a second, though, I
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: feel like we buried the lead terrorism, So so you know,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: everybody knew one of the one of the bad effects
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: of cigarette smoking is is cancer. But I think many
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: of us are going to be surprised to learn that
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: smoking cigarettes may actually be supporting terrorism. That's just not
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: like my go to conclusion now, And that's kind of
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: what we do in the podcast episode on Flashback that
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: we do. We we sort of trace how this magnanimous
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: gesture by the y m c A a hundred years
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: ago in World War One eventually leads to billions of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: dollars in revenue for terrorists. And if you'd like to
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: learn more, I certainly encourage you to do so. Do
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: check out Flashback because this this is not the entirety
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: of the Twisted Tail, and I think it's a it's
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: a journey worth taking. There was one case Seun that
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you had investigated on Flashback that spoke to me in
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: casey maybe spoke to you in particular, being that we
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: reside like you in the American South, and that is
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the concept of one of the most successful invasive species
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: in this part of the world. Uh, folks, you know it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: You might love it, you might hate it, you know,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: but you are definitely aware of the monster known as kudzu.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: That's right. Anyone who has spent any amount of time
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: in the South, particularly on highways, has seen kad zoo,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: the invasive vian climbing everywhere. I think the most famous
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: nickname for it is the vine that ate the South. Yeah. Yeah,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: And while that might sound riddled with hyperbole, it makes
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: sense if you drive and where, you know, through the Carolinas, anywhere,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: through Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, kad Zoo is a huge success
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: story biologically speaking. Now, I believe that the vine originally
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: came from China. Is that correct? It was actually a
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: Japanese ornamental vine, and it first appeared in the US,
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: actually at the World's Fair in in eighteen seventy six.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: So if you can imagine there's this centennial international exhibition
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, You've got things like Henry Hines's Catchup, Graham
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Bell's first telephone, Thomas Edison's telegraph. And then you've got
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: a Japanese pavilion that it basically has kud zoo in
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: it as an ornamental vine, and it was popular for
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: for a few decades as as an ornamental vine, and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: especially in New England. In the US. Yeah, like a
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: porch decoration, I think, which which might surprise a lot
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of us in the audience today to learn that, yes,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: once upon a time people purposefully put kad zoo up
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: in their house on the sides of their of their domicile,
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: and they additionally paid for it. But this, you know,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: kad zoo was not gonna settle for being a nifty
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: uh a nifty porch decoration. How did it? How did
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: it go from you know, something that would be in
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: an eighteen hundreds addition of like home and garden to
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: this uh to this thing that spans miles across the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: south Well, kadzu, as prolific as it is, got a
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: big boost in the nineteen thirties. And and that was
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: during the Desk Bowl and the Great Depression. And as
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: you as you know, during the Desk Bowl, a severe
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: drought over the American planes caused sort of winds and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: choking dust to sweep this broad swath of America from
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Texas to Nebraska. And uh, so there's a real problem
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: with soil erosion. And uh President Franklin Roosevelt had a
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: pretty good idea when he when he took office, he
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: decided he was going to solve two problems at once,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: basically a labor shortage and this soil erosion by creating
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: this new organization he called the Civilian Conservation Core. And
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: one of the things he had this army of new
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: government employees do, and in the Despol area, was to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: plant what they called a miracle vine, kut zoo, And
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: they planted more than seventy million kud zoo seedlings during
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties in government run nurseries and farmers were
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: paid and I think it was something like eight dollars
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: an acre to plant the vine. So the government was
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: paying people to plant kut zoo as a as a
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: soil erosion measure. Okay, And ostensibly, you know, on the surface,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: that makes sense, right. We want something to hold the
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: ground where the ground is supposed to be. And of
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: course during the dust bowl, we are looking at a
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: tremendous ecological disaster. Uh. You know, famine is on the
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: rise in the US at this time. Uh. This is
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: also you know, from from a long term position, this
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: could spell agricultural doom if if something is not done.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: So it's not as if uh this was an idea
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: that they undertook lightly, but it is probably an idea
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: they undertook out of desperation. As you said, they also
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: wanted to give people jobs exactly. And you know, desperate
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: situations call for for desperate measures, but sometimes that in
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: turn creates even more desperate situations. Yeah, that's that's what
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about. You know, as we're talking about Kudzoo,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm thinking about the various places here in our
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: fair metropolis of Atlanta where human beings appear to have
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: just lost lost a battle against this vine. You know. Uh,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: we're we're so familiar with descriptions of hungry ecosystems, right
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: like jungles that due to their humidity and due to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the flora and fauna, uh, they seem to literally eat
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: buildings and the works of man. But this is occurring
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: in in a city near you, if you live in
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: the in the American South. No, it also reminds me
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of Fantasia in Casey Sorry, I know I used this
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: example all the time where Mickey Mouse is the sorcerer's apprentice,
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: decides to automate the mop process right because he doesn't
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: want to mop his boss's castle or whatever, and then
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: the mops get out of control. The next thing you know,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: he is literally and figuratively in over his head. Was
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: there a point like that with kadzu? Was there a
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: point where the Workers Program said like, hey, we should stop. No,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: I don't think there was any real inkling in the
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: just how invasive this vine would eventually be. I mean,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: in fact, even after the thirties, people who were building
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: the railroads and the highways across the South, when we
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: started having a you know, an interstate highway system, they
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: chose kad zoo as a vegetation they could use to
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: cover causeways and embankments to you know, make things look
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a little nicer on these interstate roads. And kad zoo,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: you know, there were no cows there to eat it.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: On the highway, there were no horses to eat it,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: so once you planted it, it didn't really have any
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: natural enemy, so it could just grow and grow and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: grow along highways and railways, which is still predominantly where
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you see it today. Yeah, and it's taken over, you know,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: entire lots, maybe where development of a neighborhood stalled or
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: a building was condemned. Because quickly, you know, when you
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: get into reconstruction and you get into development, it becomes
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: apparent that cleaning up kad zoo is uh an enormously
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: difficult task because of its growth rate, but it can
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: also be an enormously expensive task, also partially because of
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: its growth rate. One thing I think would be pretty
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: familiar to you in North Carolina, there is the way,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the creative way that various human institutions have tried to
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: combat kad zoo or to live with it. Everybody in
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: the South has at least once heard about a recipe
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: using kad zoo. Have you ever have you, guys, ever
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: tried anything with kudzoo. I've never tried it. I I
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: know that a lot of people consider it to be
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: something on the lines of spin it. You can eat
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: it cooked or raw in keisha's or salads um, but
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: I've never done it personally. What about you, Casey, No,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: I cannot I cannot speak to you having consumed kudzo before. Um,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: this is all just reminding me like personal experience growing
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: up in Georgia. We had terrible problems in our backyard
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: with a neighbor who had planted bamboo next door, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the bamboo would just find its way underneath the fence
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: and shoot up into our back art and you cut
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: some down and it just regrows again. And I'm seeing
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: here online the kud zoo and bamboo have a very
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: similar effect when they're when they're introduced into an environment,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: they tend to be very difficult to to get out. Yeah.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Interesting story. Uh with our city, bamboo grows pretty well
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: here because of our climate. And for a while I
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: had a dream job when I learned about this in college.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: For years and years, the Atlanta Zoo had a crack
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: team of nine guys whose entire job was to go
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: around the city and gather bamboo for the pandas at
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the zoo. That's all they did. They woke up in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the morning, they went to various people's houses and little
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: hidden you know, areas of the wild. They gathered bamboo,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and they showed up to meet some very excited pandas.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: That is that is a dream job. I mean, maybe
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: even better than cigarette Ycoon. I don't know. I do
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: have to ask the I do have to ask what
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: is your take on kad Zoo? Now, Sean, do you
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: feel like people should just make peace with it? Should
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the war continue? Is it? Should we just take it
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: as a as a lesson in the unforeseen consequences of
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: our actions? Well, I think the most interesting thing I
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: learned about kad Zoo is that, and as you could
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: probably tell from hearing the three of us who have
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: had Southern experiences for it, is that it captured kind
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: of a mythic imagination of sorts. It was something that
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: took over that was invasive, that was kind of the
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: you know, the bad boy of invasive plant species. But
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: it's not actually the most invasive specie in the US.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: There are others that are far worse. And one of
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the interesting things I learned was basically that it's not
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: as bad as we think. Um, the Kadzuo, you know,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: it's not really the vine that ate the South. It's
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the vine that ate the part of the South that
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: we could see, like, it's the vine that's on the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: highways and the railways, and so it had a much
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: bigger impact on our imagination than on reality. So, for example,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: in the U. S. Forest Service finally did a survey
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: of how widespread kad zoo was in fact, And for
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: a long time you had heard something like nine ten
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: million acres of it in the southeastern US. But they
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: surveys turned up that there were less than two hundred
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: thousand acres of kad zoo, which is less than one
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: tenth of one percent of the forest land in the
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: in the southern United States. So it's not as big
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: a problem as we think it is. It feels like
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: it is, but it's something that has kind of just
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: captured our collective imaginations. So wait, this whole time, I've
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: been unfairly detigrading kad Zoo. I feel like a real pill. Uh,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: you know, I've been unfair. I think you know what.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I feel like one of the lower tier villains in
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: a Captain Planet episode. Right now. I mean, what can
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: we do to to make things right with kad Zoo?
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: What what are the more invasive species that people don't
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: think about? Let me turn my opprobrium to them. I
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: think Asian wis theory is the one that I heard
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: them come up the most as as being far more
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: invasive than kud Zoo. But then you're certainly not alone
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: in in feeling like you, oh, Kudzoo an apology. It's
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: it's something that is just widespread in the South, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: in some ways it's a myth that's grown up alongside
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: American history. You know. It grew at the same time
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: the interstate highway system was growing, and so as we
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: became more mobile, as we saw more of the countryside
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: than we've ever seen before, we saw more Kudzoo because
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: that's where it was, and it felt like it was
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: a much worse problem than it really is. It was.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: It was really the king of the forest. It was
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the king of the roadside. And if you grew up
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: in the South looking out the car window, that's what
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: you thought. Yeah, this is an excellent point, and I think,
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: you know, I think there's so much more to this story.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: If you want to hear it firsthand, folks, then get
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the to your podcast platform of choice. And joined Sean
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Braswell on Flashback, the one of the newest podcasts. From
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: my Heart, We're just scratching the surface, not just of Kadzu,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: not just of the apparently booming a legal cigarette trade. Um,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: we're air conditioning, but we're touching on the vast unintended
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: consequences of so many different periods, places, and events in
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: US history and in the history of the world overall.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Uh Sean, first off, thank you so much for taking
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the time to explore this with us today. For people
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: who would like to learn more, where can they find Flashback?
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Absolutely thanks for having me. You can find Flashback History
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: is Unintended Consequences on on Apple Podcasts or I Heart
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Radio podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts each
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: week on AUSI dot com, oz Y dot com slash Flashback.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: I have lecture notes that I published the go along
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: with the series, which are just some other in just
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: some kidbits, cutting room floor interviews, and and other things
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: related to the subjects that we talked about in the podcast. Folks,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: this is a fantastic show. Don't take my word for it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Check it out for yourself today and let us know
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: what you think. Also, also, don't don't hesitate to uh Sean,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna volunteer you here for some stuff. Uh don't
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: hesitate to reach out to Sean and the team with
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: your to us with your own stories. Of unintended consequences
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: throughout history. We would love to hear them. You can
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: tell us on you know, Ridiculous History somewhere on the internet.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: We're all over the place. Where on Twitter, We're on Facebook,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: We're on Instagram. Shout out to our Facebook community page,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, Uh, Sean. If someone would like to contact
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: you directly on social where should they go? Yeah, I
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: think the best way to reach me with regard to
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: the podcast is by emailing Flashback at Aussi dot com.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: That's flashback at oz y dot com. We've been inviting
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: people to share with us uh their own stories of
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: unintended consequences from their life or just stories from history
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that we might want to do a future episode about.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: So check it out. That's Flashback at Aussie dot com.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Thank you again so much, Sean braswell. We look forward
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: to explore it some more strange stories of history with
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you in the future. Thanks as always to Alex Williams,
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: who composed that banging track you here at the beginning
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: of every Ridiculous History episode. Thanks of course to the
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: usual the Ridiculous Historian regulars, uh, Christopher Aciotis, eve's Jeff Coote,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: our research guru Gabelusier, who refuses to tell us the
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: correct way to pronounce his last name. That is a fact.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: And of course thanks to my palinoell here in spirit
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: casey Pegram. Thanks to you also. What do you think
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: should we ask people to send some kudzoo recipes? If
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: they If they send them, do you guys want to
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: try them? I'll mail something to you Sean. Yeah. When when, uh,
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: when we're all together again, I think we should cook
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: up some kud zoo and uh and see what it's
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: all about. Thanks so much, folks, We'll see you next week.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: your favorite shows.