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Speaker 1: Com slash as. Welcome to Flashback, a podcast about history's
Speaker 1: unintended consequences. I'm Sean Braswell. In today's episode, a Tale
Speaker 1: of twin invasions, one by vine and one by Caterpillar. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: eight seventy six. Welcome to the first World's Fair to
Speaker 1: be held in the United States. It's called the Centennial
Speaker 1: International Exhibition, and it's the celebration of America's on birthday,
Speaker 1: and it is one hell of a history making affair.
Speaker 1: It's exhibits read like a who's who of American inventions.
Speaker 1: Alexander Graham, Bell's first telephone, Thomas Edison's automatic telegraph, Henry J.
Speaker 1: Hyness catchup the first typewriter. Nearly ten million visitors will
Speaker 1: attend the exposition, but two lesser known exhibits were also
Speaker 1: present at the fair, ones that are at the center
Speaker 1: of today's episode. For the first we enter into the
Speaker 1: Japanese pavilion. When the World's Fair came to the United States,
Speaker 1: there was an effort to build relationships between Japan and
Speaker 1: the United States. This is Bill Finch, the historian, horticulturalist,
Speaker 1: and a conservation advisor for the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation.
Speaker 1: A classic Japanese vine was on display inside that pavilion,
Speaker 1: one hailed as the ideal shading plant for porches or courtyards.
Speaker 1: It didn't really catch on. It was just a sort
Speaker 1: of another one of many plants from Japan, like as
Speaker 1: a is and comills and other things uh T plants
Speaker 1: that that they thought might be of interest to Americans.
Speaker 1: The vine was kud zoo, and while it wasn't a
Speaker 1: hit at the eighteen seventy six World's Fair, kud zoo
Speaker 1: is now perhaps America's most infamous weed, the poster child
Speaker 1: for an invasive species. We'll get back to that. If
Speaker 1: you walked around the World's Fair long enough, you would
Speaker 1: also come across something else, some stunning pencil and pastel drawings,
Speaker 1: gorgeous pictures of planets, stars, nebulas, the northern lights. They
Speaker 1: were the work of an eccentric French artist and astronomer
Speaker 1: named at the end Leopold Trouvelo. Thanks to Trouvolo, another
Speaker 1: species every bit as invasive as kud zoo, would begin
Speaker 1: its own assault on the United States, the gypsy moth.
Speaker 1: Ye first though, we turned to that pesky invasive vine
Speaker 1: cut suit. So that's a funny story. We we moved
Speaker 1: to Florida tight years ago from New York City. This
Speaker 1: is Dr Susanna Valente and my husband, he was an architect,
Speaker 1: and he said, so today, no, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: a farmer from now on. And it was quite of
Speaker 1: a change. And so we bought this land and it's
Speaker 1: in a very nice area of Florida, in the area
Speaker 1: of West Palm Beach, and he wants to grow an
Speaker 1: organic farm, and so we have animals with cows, chicken, turkeys, geese, ducks.
Speaker 1: Volente and her husband found that running a farm can
Speaker 1: be a challenging endeavor, and so one day we had
Speaker 1: a an infection in the turkeys. It was a respiratory
Speaker 1: infection in turkeys. Valenta and her husband wanted to find
Speaker 1: a natural cure for the ailment, and they came up
Speaker 1: with a regane oil, so we used it actually in
Speaker 1: the water in the turkeys, and in within two weeks
Speaker 1: we cleared the infections in the animals. And we got
Speaker 1: interested in these natural products, and we're reading about a
Speaker 1: lot of things and we tumble upon kudzu as well.
Speaker 1: Kudzu was not just in the books that Valente and
Speaker 1: her husband read. It was all over their farm pretty
Speaker 1: much everywhere. It covers up a lot of the trees
Speaker 1: around here. But I actually think it's a pretty thing,
Speaker 1: and she soon learned that the invasive vine was more
Speaker 1: than just pretty. So kudzu head is very interesting anti inflammatory,
Speaker 1: anti microbial properties as well. So we started got interested
Speaker 1: in it. In one day, my husband said, hey, why
Speaker 1: don't you look into HIV as well. Valente's husband wasn't
Speaker 1: worried about the turkeys getting HIV. You see, his wife, Susannah,
Speaker 1: is not just an organic farmer. She's an immunologist at
Speaker 1: the Script's Research Institute, one of several trying to find
Speaker 1: new ways to combat HIV. And so, thanks to her
Speaker 1: husband's suggestion, Valente started to investigate kad Zoo each spring
Speaker 1: and summer. Across the American South, you hear a lot
Speaker 1: of stories like this one from Channel thirteen w m
Speaker 1: a Z News in Macon, Georgia. Right over here is
Speaker 1: where it gets the most out of hand. Ginger Hudson
Speaker 1: has overcome a lot of battles. She lost her first
Speaker 1: husband and survived breast cancer, but now she's at war
Speaker 1: with kad Zoo just choking everything out, is covering them.
Speaker 1: You can't see anything like there. There was a tree
Speaker 1: underneath that big bush right there, but it's no longer
Speaker 1: they are because the killed him. It sometimes called the
Speaker 1: vine that ate the South. Kud Zoo now blankets large
Speaker 1: portions of the southeastern US. If you grew up in
Speaker 1: the South like I did, and spend any amount of
Speaker 1: time driving on the highways, it felt like Kudzoo was everywhere.
Speaker 1: Kazoo is a trailing and climbing semi woody vine. It
Speaker 1: can't get um woody stems up to you know, thick
Speaker 1: as your arm, sometimes even up to ten inches or
Speaker 1: so in diameter. Nancy Loewenstein is the executive director of
Speaker 1: the Alabama Invasive Plant Council. The leaves are trifoliate, so
Speaker 1: there's three leaflets um. The flowers are lavender to purple
Speaker 1: colored with a yellow center. And the flowers smell like grapes.
Speaker 1: So sometimes when we're walking around in the summertime and
Speaker 1: just in the middle of nowhere and needs smell what
Speaker 1: kind of smells like great kool aid or great bubblegum?
Speaker 1: Start looking around and you're likely to find some Kudzoo
Speaker 1: flowers in the area. And where does the vine grow best?
Speaker 1: Might be easier to say where it does not grow well,
Speaker 1: and that is it does not grow well in really
Speaker 1: wet areas or very high pH sools. It does also
Speaker 1: doesn't do well in the shade, so you don't see
Speaker 1: it too often in dense forests. See it more often
Speaker 1: in open areas and kad zoo has already started to
Speaker 1: eat parts of America beyond the South. Well, it's already
Speaker 1: spread all the way up into um southern New England.
Speaker 1: It's up into Illinois, Indiana, western West, into Missouri and Arkansas.
Speaker 1: It's even pushing into Kansas and Oklahoma, Texas, and then
Speaker 1: there's a few disc junct populations over in Oregon in Arizona.
Speaker 1: It's estimated that kud zoo costs up to half a
Speaker 1: billion dollars in lost crop, land and control costs each year.
Speaker 1: So how did the invasive plant go from being a
Speaker 1: World's Fair novelty to a catastrophic nuisance in the years
Speaker 1: after the World's Fair? If you found kud zoo in
Speaker 1: the US, it was usually for ornamental purposes. Bill Finch again,
Speaker 1: So if you were in New England in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century and you had a bit of money, and you
Speaker 1: were a bit of a horticultural experiment, or somebody would
Speaker 1: like to trying new plants in the garden, you might
Speaker 1: have tried using kud zoo as an ornamental vine, and
Speaker 1: a few people did. It was pleasant, kind of like wistaria,
Speaker 1: but not as nice, and it might have stayed that
Speaker 1: way if weather and the US government hadn't intervened, and
Speaker 1: the dust Bowl transformed the way people saw the American landscape.
Speaker 1: It it struck the fear of God and the people everywhere.
Speaker 1: During the early nineteen thirties, a severe drought over the
Speaker 1: American Plains caused winds and choking dust to sweep the
Speaker 1: region from the south up to Nebraska. Farmers were having
Speaker 1: a real struggle. They were moving all over the place
Speaker 1: trying to find some new land that worked. Georgia's fields
Speaker 1: had been farmed so hard, the Carolinas had been farmed
Speaker 1: so hard. Alabama was just being whipped again and again.
Speaker 1: People were desperate. They were looking for solutions anywhere, and
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a good one when he became
Speaker 1: president in nree When Roosevelt came into office, one of
Speaker 1: his big campaigns was to was to overcome the problems
Speaker 1: of the dust bowl UH and the barrenness of the
Speaker 1: dust Bowl, to stop erosion at all costs. Roosevelt and
Speaker 1: Congress created a new organization, the Civilian Conservation Corps. Five
Speaker 1: days after the law was signed, twenty five thousand men
Speaker 1: signed up to work for the c c C. Young
Speaker 1: Gun citizen who arrived at Camp Flaby of arm and
Speaker 1: copy of mine is now tough of the hickory nut.
Speaker 1: The c CC eventually employed more than three million. It
Speaker 1: was Roosevelt's most popular New Deal program. I wish that
Speaker 1: I could take a couple of months off from the
Speaker 1: White House and come down here and live with them,
Speaker 1: because I know I get full of health the whare
Speaker 1: they have. The c c C started a massive plan
Speaker 1: to stabilize American soil, and they had a secret weapon,
Speaker 1: a plant they called the miracle vine. Because of its
Speaker 1: ability to flourish in difficult environments and to grow rapidly
Speaker 1: kad zoo. Some of their folks realized, well, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it is a great fodder. It can cover ground fairly
Speaker 1: well once it gets established, And so the US government
Speaker 1: started producing millions, literally millions of starts of kad zoo.
Speaker 1: More than seventy million kud zoo seedlings were grown in
Speaker 1: government run nurseries. Farmers were paid as much as eight
Speaker 1: dollars per acre to plant the vine. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the dust Bowl where kad zoo came in Handy
Speaker 1: railroads and highways were being built all across the United
Speaker 1: States at the time, and the railroads and the highway builders,
Speaker 1: we're creating their own kind of barren landscapes as they
Speaker 1: built these railroads and highways through the middle of the
Speaker 1: woods that were no vegetation covering the causeways and the
Speaker 1: and the embankments that they were creating along these highways,
Speaker 1: and they needed something to cover it quickly, and so
Speaker 1: they planted kud zoo all along the highways and railways,
Speaker 1: especially in the South, and Kudzoo finally finally came into
Speaker 1: its own along those highways and railroads because there were
Speaker 1: no cows to eat it, there were no horses to
Speaker 1: eat it. So once you planted it, it continued growing
Speaker 1: and grew and grew and grew, and alongside that growth
Speaker 1: something else sprouted a legend. So many of the South
Speaker 1: highways and so many of the railroads were planted in
Speaker 1: kud Zoo and h that had a really interesting effect
Speaker 1: because suddenly people's view of the Southern landscape it was
Speaker 1: what they saw at their car windows. It seemed like
Speaker 1: Kudzoo was everywhere, and that's when the myth making began.
Speaker 1: In Kudzoo really did grab hold of the popular imagination
Speaker 1: but by the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: a new generation of Southern riders they actually began writing
Speaker 1: about kutzoo. James Dickey, Um, who wrote the novel Deliverance,
Speaker 1: had a very famous form about kut Zoo. Yes that Deliverance.
Speaker 1: Seven years before he wrote Deliverance, Dickie published a poem
Speaker 1: in The New Yorker called Kudzoo. It reads like a
Speaker 1: Southern version of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land in Georgia.
Speaker 1: The legend says that you must close your windows at
Speaker 1: night to keep it out of the house. The glass
Speaker 1: is tinged with green, even so as the tendrils crawl
Speaker 1: over the fields the night, the kud zoo has your pasture,
Speaker 1: you sleep like the dead. And it's clearly meant to
Speaker 1: be outrageous, but people took it seriously. It was about
Speaker 1: kad zoo covering houses and and kad zoo invading people's lives,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of caught the essence of of of
Speaker 1: of how people feared kud zoo and what it was
Speaker 1: going to do the landscape. James Dickey called kud zoo
Speaker 1: quote a vegetal form of cancer. Some of his invaded
Speaker 1: Southern compatriots. On the other hand, they began to identify
Speaker 1: with their captor, and eventually Southerners adopted kad Zoo is
Speaker 1: kind of a pet idea. They would come up with
Speaker 1: ideas for let's name our restaurant after Kudzoo, let's name's
Speaker 1: let's name our our website after Kudzoo. There there businesses
Speaker 1: all across the South named for kud Zoo. Because of
Speaker 1: this outgrowth of popularity, in some ways, the mythic reach
Speaker 1: of kad Zoo became more important to the South than
Speaker 1: the vine itself. It was far more part of our
Speaker 1: social culture. Sure, it was far more part of our
Speaker 1: speech in our language than it was part of the landscape.
Speaker 1: But while the mystic version of kud Zoo has indeed
Speaker 1: swallowed the South, the actual Vian script is far more
Speaker 1: tenuous and more complicated. Do you have an interesting tale
Speaker 1: about unintended consequences from history or your own life. Please
Speaker 1: share with us by emailing flashback at Aussie dot com.
Speaker 1: That's flashback at o z y dot com. We'll return
Speaker 1: in a moment to kud Zoo and our tale of
Speaker 1: vegetal cancer. But first I want to tell you about
Speaker 1: another invasive species deflowering America, one that is also tied
Speaker 1: to the eight seventy six World's Fair. Seemed to be
Speaker 1: everywhere moths taking over backyards and front doors. The problem
Speaker 1: is so bad that a swarm of moths actually delayed
Speaker 1: a Jet Blue flight yesterday. So that's right. A few
Speaker 1: years ago, a flight at Logan International Airport in Boston
Speaker 1: was delayed for more than twenty minutes for an unusual reason,
Speaker 1: a swarm of gypsy moths. The problem went well beyond
Speaker 1: the airport. They're kind of like, really nasty and clothes.
Speaker 1: Never seen as many moths as I've seen in the
Speaker 1: last couple of days. Moths. A plague of gypsy moths
Speaker 1: already afflicts many parts of the northeastern US during the
Speaker 1: summer months, and it's only going to get worse as
Speaker 1: they continue to spread to new places and in greater numbers.
Speaker 1: So why this moth invasion, Well, the head of the
Speaker 1: state's forestry health program blames several years of unusually dry weather.
Speaker 1: That's true about the dry weather, But do you know
Speaker 1: who I blame at Tienne Leopold Trouvolo. One fifty years
Speaker 1: ago there wasn't a single gypsy moth in North America,
Speaker 1: not one. But it only took a single man and
Speaker 1: an unfortunate accident to change all that forever. Just the
Speaker 1: side of them can make your skin crawl. They're gypsy
Speaker 1: moth caterpillars and they're chopping through tree foliage in forest backyards.
Speaker 1: I jumped off my bike. I was covered from head
Speaker 1: to toe. Even on college campuses, gypsy moth caterpillars show
Speaker 1: up in late April, about the time that oak trees
Speaker 1: start to butt out. They can decimate trees and foliage,
Speaker 1: and in some areas of the country they're slimy droppings,
Speaker 1: coat roofs, decks, and sheds. It's a mess one that
Speaker 1: really started back in the eighteen sixties with the blowback
Speaker 1: from the pursuit of another smooth substance, silk. Silk was
Speaker 1: a hot commodity in the nineteenth century. The aristocracy of
Speaker 1: Europe couldn't get enough of it, and so silkworms were
Speaker 1: in hide manned with silkworms. If you reel the silk
Speaker 1: and wolve the silk and sold the silk uh you
Speaker 1: would have literally a gold mine. Because silk was so valuable.
Speaker 1: This guy knows all about unintended consequences. By the way,
Speaker 1: my name is Edward Tenor. I'm a historian of technology.
Speaker 1: I study unintended consequences, and since more than fifty of
Speaker 1: reality consists of unintended consequences, I have a lot of
Speaker 1: work to do. Tennor wrote a book called Why Things
Speaker 1: Bite Back, and the story of the Gypsy moth is
Speaker 1: a good example of why they do. One of the
Speaker 1: big fads in America in the nineteenth century was the
Speaker 1: search for an American silk industry. People believe that the
Speaker 1: Republic should not be spending all this money importing silk
Speaker 1: from Europe and from China. We really should be cultivating
Speaker 1: it here. After a great silkworm plague, yes that was
Speaker 1: a thing, ravaged Europe in the mid eighteen hundreds, the
Speaker 1: search for a silkworm alternative in America heated up. Some
Speaker 1: of the nation's greatest minds took up the potentially lucrative challenge.
Speaker 1: Chen Leopold Trouvalo was a French astronomer who became a
Speaker 1: political exile. And if Trouvelo had not become infamous as
Speaker 1: the man who would introduced the gypsy molets, he would
Speaker 1: be really famous as an astronomer, and Truvalu was mostly
Speaker 1: an astronomer and a World's Fair caliber artist, But he
Speaker 1: had a sideline that proved faithful for the American forest.
Speaker 1: He was experimenting with uh organisms that could replace the silkworm.
Speaker 1: Trouvelo had a million caterpillars of various species feeding behind
Speaker 1: his house in Medford, Massachusetts. To keep them contained, his
Speaker 1: property was encircled by an eight foot wooden fence and
Speaker 1: covered by net. It was hard work raising caterpillars. They
Speaker 1: required constant feedings, Their platforms had to be swept three
Speaker 1: times a day. Birds had to be constantly fought off,
Speaker 1: but Trouvelo continued his quest for the next silkworm. Trouvelo
Speaker 1: believed that the gypsy moss might be a good candidate,
Speaker 1: even though it was already recognized in Europe as something
Speaker 1: of a pest. Trouvelo started raising gypsy moth caterpillars in
Speaker 1: eight sixty eight, but even their best silk was coarse
Speaker 1: and ragged. It was disappointing, but a severe windstorm made
Speaker 1: things much worse. The storm knocked over some of Trouvelou's
Speaker 1: netting in cages scattering gypsy moth eggs into the countryside.
Speaker 1: There were some mots that uh that escaped, and there
Speaker 1: was a growing road traffic. This was before the automobile,
Speaker 1: but America had had an awful lot of road traffic
Speaker 1: before automobiles. Americans were taking many more crips in the
Speaker 1: horse and buggy days too, and these wagons, especially in
Speaker 1: the suburbs of Boston, were carrying the these moths all
Speaker 1: around New England, from buggies to trolley cars, to trains
Speaker 1: and automobiles. Gypsy moth eggs spread across the nation as
Speaker 1: Americans themselves grew more mobile. It proved impossible to eradicate them.
Speaker 1: The problem was recognized, but it was really too late,
Speaker 1: and so the spread just continue a decade after decade,
Speaker 1: and the caterpillar still blaze the destructive path today. This
Speaker 1: is Denise dot She's a database manager for the Gypsy
Speaker 1: moth Slow the Spread program. They are defoliators of oak
Speaker 1: and hardwood forests. The caterpillars, if they are in a
Speaker 1: high enough population density, will actually eat all of the
Speaker 1: leaves off of a tree. Since nineteen seventy, the gypsy
Speaker 1: moths defoliated more than eighty million acres in the United States,
Speaker 1: not at all what Truvillo or anyone else intended, but
Speaker 1: it's a consequence millions live with today. Up next, how
Speaker 1: bad are the kud Zoo and gypsy moth epidemics really
Speaker 1: and what can we learn from them? We also talk
Speaker 1: to a researcher who believes that one of kud Zoo's
Speaker 1: greatest unintended consequences might still be yet to come. Enjoying
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Speaker 1: It's an excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a
Speaker 1: variety of subjects. In researching this episode of Flashback, I
Speaker 1: dove deep into the lectures understanding cultural and human geography
Speaker 1: and anthropology and the studea of humanity. With the Great
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Speaker 1: slash Aussi kat zoo has become the bad boy of
Speaker 1: invasive plant species, the one that makes local news stories
Speaker 1: and inspires poetry. Back Congress officially listed the vine as
Speaker 1: a noxious weed, and it is still illegal to plant
Speaker 1: in some states. But how pervasive is kad zoo really?
Speaker 1: It's a funny thing. Vines in the South all grow
Speaker 1: very fast, and that's an important context. That's our kud
Speaker 1: zoo expert Bill Finch. Again, the rate of growth of
Speaker 1: kud zoo is nothing compared to the right of growth
Speaker 1: of a lot of other vines, Asian wistaria probably is
Speaker 1: uh is this bigger problem, if not a much bigger
Speaker 1: problem than kudzoo itself. For a long time, says Finch.
Speaker 1: Scientists and the media claim that kud zoo might cover
Speaker 1: as many as nine million acres of the southeastern United States,
Speaker 1: but more recent research by the U. S. Forest Service
Speaker 1: finds otherwise. And it wasn't nine million acres, it wasn't
Speaker 1: eight million acres, it wasn't seven million acres. Turns out,
Speaker 1: when they actually did an inventory out of two hundred
Speaker 1: million acres of forest land in the Southeast, kud zoo
Speaker 1: only covered a little more than two hundred thousand acres.
Speaker 1: That's less than one tenth of one per cent of
Speaker 1: the forest land in the southeast. So why does kat
Speaker 1: zoo feel so much worse than it is. Finch claims
Speaker 1: that kudzu is not so much the king of the
Speaker 1: forest but of the roadside. And that is why so
Speaker 1: many Southerners like myself, who grew up looking at a
Speaker 1: car window, became so enamored by and concerned with the vine.
Speaker 1: We began spending all of our loss driving along roadsides.
Speaker 1: It was how we understood the landscape. It was how
Speaker 1: most of us were exposed to the landscape was was
Speaker 1: framed in our car windows. So kut zoo seemed like
Speaker 1: a much bigger threat than it actually was. In other words,
Speaker 1: kudzu was not the vine that ate the South. It
Speaker 1: was the vine that ate the part of the South
Speaker 1: that we could see. Still, the desk Bowl Air decision
Speaker 1: to plant kut zoo, the so called miracle vine and
Speaker 1: massive numbers, continues to impact us in other ways today.
Speaker 1: But here's the other problem with kutzo. There's a thing
Speaker 1: called the kudzu bug. Have you seen these? They're creepy
Speaker 1: Crawley downright annoying, and some folks in the Upstates say
Speaker 1: they are overwhelmed by kazoo bugs. Kudzoo bugs look like
Speaker 1: dark brown beetles with a round shell, like stink bugs.
Speaker 1: They're harmless to people, but they travel in large packs.
Speaker 1: Tavis Graham says when he walked out of his house Monday,
Speaker 1: kudzoo bugs swarmed him. The entire house is covered. Everything
Speaker 1: this white, you know of our white siding, The doors, windows,
Speaker 1: they're covered. They're going inside the windows. Kudzoo bugs also
Speaker 1: come from Asia, but far more recently. It's believed they
Speaker 1: arrived not at the World's Fair but via the Atlanta
Speaker 1: Airport about a decade ago, without a ticket or any bags.
Speaker 1: But they are already overstaying there welcome. While kudzu bugs
Speaker 1: helped keep kat zoo in check, they also like to
Speaker 1: eat soybeans, which could have some serious consequences in the
Speaker 1: future for soybean farmers across the South. Speaking of creepy bugs,
Speaker 1: the gypsy moth caterpillar also promises to be a problem
Speaker 1: in the future as it continues to colonize North America.
Speaker 1: The niece Dot again is currently moving south and West,
Speaker 1: uh there are parts of Canada that the winters are
Speaker 1: just too cold for it to survive. Likewise, it will,
Speaker 1: we think, reach a point in the south and so
Speaker 1: where Georgia Florida, where the summers are just too hot,
Speaker 1: and that will also affect survival. Programs like dogs have
Speaker 1: indeed slowed that spread and helped manage caterpillar outbreaks. But
Speaker 1: the best way of slowing the gypsy moth might be
Speaker 1: a natural predator, a fungus known as the caterpillar killer.
Speaker 1: Almost the entire trunk of this tree, from bottom to top,
Speaker 1: is covered with thousands of now dead gypsy moth caterpillars.
Speaker 1: The fungus created by the may rains killed them as
Speaker 1: they entered adulthood. The spores of this fungus, also a
Speaker 1: native of Japan, use the gypsy moth larvae to reproduce,
Speaker 1: killing the larvae in the process. But as with the
Speaker 1: katzoo bug, the long term concert points is of the
Speaker 1: spread of this caterpillar killing fungus are unknown, and that's
Speaker 1: really the moral of the story when it comes to
Speaker 1: kud zoo, gypsy moths, or countless other plant and insects species.
Speaker 1: When you introduce them into a new setting. You don't
Speaker 1: know what is going to happen, and in some cases
Speaker 1: it might be the exact opposite of what you expect.
Speaker 1: Edward Tenner calls this species an unintended consequence, a revenge effect.
Speaker 1: A revenge effect is something that isn't just the price
Speaker 1: of something. It cancels out your your reasons for introducing
Speaker 1: it or for using it. And that's what distinguishes a
Speaker 1: revenge effect from a trade over side effect. And when
Speaker 1: it comes to the introduction of species to new environments,
Speaker 1: sometimes that species will thrive in new conditions. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: will backfire and become a monumental pest like kud zoo
Speaker 1: or gypsy moths. It can be hard to tell. Biological
Speaker 1: science has no good way to predict how these things happen.
Speaker 1: It's it's very good at explaining after the fact why
Speaker 1: they happened, but it is not so good yet in
Speaker 1: predicting just what's going to be dangerous and what's going
Speaker 1: to be harmless or beneficial. So what should we do?
Speaker 1: Maybe the lesson there is that whenever there's a question
Speaker 1: of introducing any new organism, it has to be done
Speaker 1: under extremely strict controls, and the experiment has to last
Speaker 1: longer than most people would like. Nancy Lowenstein agrees, essentially,
Speaker 1: we just need to be wary of quick fixes and
Speaker 1: silver bullets. They rarely work out like we think they will.
Speaker 1: We now use risk assessments to evaluate the potential for
Speaker 1: invasiveness of new plants, but it's still an imperfect process,
Speaker 1: and it's really difficult to predict how a new species
Speaker 1: will grow in a new environment. And what should we
Speaker 1: tell Enterprising amateur ecologists like Etienne Leopold Trouvelo. Denise Dodd
Speaker 1: has some advice. Oh, I don't know, maybe a nice try,
Speaker 1: but you should stick with astronomy. And I think that
Speaker 1: one ended up doing a little bit less damage to
Speaker 1: before us. It can be easy to get hung up
Speaker 1: on the negative effects of something as invasive as kudzu,
Speaker 1: but the vine actually has a number of other uses
Speaker 1: and some surprising benefits. For one thing, kudzoo leaves can
Speaker 1: be eaten like spinach, cooked or raw in kichha's and
Speaker 1: in salads. If you cook with kudzu, though, just be
Speaker 1: sure you choose only the smallest, most tender leaves that
Speaker 1: are free of discolorations and critter bites. Ancient Chinese medicine
Speaker 1: has also long used the kudzoo route to relieve hangovers,
Speaker 1: upset stomachs, headaches, and flu symptoms, and modern researchers are
Speaker 1: learning about some further potential benefits. Researchers that you ab
Speaker 1: have uncovered new medical benefits from kudzoo, the fast growing
Speaker 1: vine that covers many southern hillsides. New research suggests that
Speaker 1: kad zoo might help lower cholesterol, blood pressure, and insulin levels,
Speaker 1: which could be beneficial for fighting a number of conditions.
Speaker 1: The root of kud zoo may help patients suffering from
Speaker 1: metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions that increase your risk
Speaker 1: for heart disease and diabetes. The kudzoo root has also
Speaker 1: been shown to help alcoholics lower their consumption of alcohol.
Speaker 1: And that's not all, which brings us back to our
Speaker 1: organic farmer and researcher Susanna Valente. Thanks to her husband's suggestion,
Speaker 1: she started to study the kudzoo root to see if
Speaker 1: it could help with any of the anti retroviral therapies
Speaker 1: being developed to treat HIV, and, much to the surprise
Speaker 1: of Valenta and her colleagues in the lab, it did
Speaker 1: so for cluz. We found that it was preventing a
Speaker 1: staff that is actually not even targeted by other compounds
Speaker 1: in clinical use, which is attachment. In other words, the
Speaker 1: kudzoo helped prevent the HIV virus from attaching to the
Speaker 1: human cell surface and beginning its harmful process of replication. Finally,
Speaker 1: a surface that all of us can rejoice in kud
Speaker 1: zoos swallowing up the outside of an HIV virus. Valentia
Speaker 1: and her colleagues have not been able to isolate the
Speaker 1: particular compound in kud zoo responsible for the inhibiting effects,
Speaker 1: but she's's great potential in discovering or rediscovering some of
Speaker 1: the beneficial effects of natural compounds like the kad zoo root.
Speaker 1: They have immense power, and they are original compounds and
Speaker 1: if very interesting structures, and uh there's I think definitely
Speaker 1: we should there should be more interaction between classic academics
Speaker 1: and some of these um less classic medicine like Chinese
Speaker 1: medicine or or tribal medicine in Africa, or you know,
Speaker 1: there are parts of the world. What did we learn
Speaker 1: from our tangled vine of history today? One not everything
Speaker 1: you see at a World's Fair is a groundbreaking effort
Speaker 1: in human progress. Two it's possible to treat one calamity
Speaker 1: like the dust boll by introducing another, so be careful
Speaker 1: you don't make the problem worse with your soul oushan.
Speaker 1: Three there's more to the world around us than what
Speaker 1: you can see out your car window. For a lot
Speaker 1: of things, from kudzu to fun guy to anime, seem
Speaker 1: to work far better in Japan than they do elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Five Kudzu is useful for treating everything from alcoholism to HIV.
Speaker 1: And Finally, if your backyard is overrun with something creepy
Speaker 1: and crawley and disgusting, it might not be an act
Speaker 1: of God so much as the act of some misguided
Speaker 1: man decades ago. Flashback is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Sean Braswell, Senior writer and executive producer at Aussie. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Robert Coulos, Tracy Moran, Diorio Di Giziwa,
Speaker 1: and Shannon Williamson. Chris Hoff engineered our show special thanks
Speaker 1: to the crew at I Heart Radio podcast Networks, especially
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichtman and Jack O'Brien. Make sure to subscribe to
Speaker 1: Flashback on the I Heart radio app or listen wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Flashback is the latest podcast from Ozzie,
Speaker 1: a modern media company producing original TV series, festivals, news
Speaker 1: and podcasts for curious people. Ozzie's unique storytelling focuses on
Speaker 1: the new and the next, whether that's forward looking news
Speaker 1: and features, bold new perspectives on TV or brand new
Speaker 1: ways of looking at history. What is that sound do
Speaker 1: you hear? That's the sound of pest control looking for
Speaker 1: an all natural and effective way for getting rid of
Speaker 1: the kudzoo on your property. There's a new method that's
Speaker 1: all the rage where I live in North Carolina. Are
Speaker 1: some new contract employees for the City of Winston Salem.
Speaker 1: They're efficient, they're hard working, and they're pretty cute. Do
Speaker 1: you know who these employees are? Cities experien minting with
Speaker 1: goat escaping for the first time. City officials hired a
Speaker 1: heard of about thirty goats to go in and help
Speaker 1: clear a plot of land there the Dixie Classic fair
Speaker 1: Grounds that had been overrun with kud zoo. Officials say
Speaker 1: the goats are quicker and cheaper than your standard methods,
Speaker 1: and they are better equipped to navigate the plot of land.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's also good for the goats and the goalkeepers say.
Speaker 1: The goats were just fine with their new job. Kud
Speaker 1: Zoo very healthy for them because it contains a lot
Speaker 1: of protein. It looks like they're hard workers too, and
Speaker 1: they don't complain short lunch hours. Back to her. To
Speaker 1: dive deeper, head to AUSI dot com slash flashback. That's
Speaker 1: oz Y dot com slash flashback. There you can find
Speaker 1: my other lecture notes from today's episode, featuring extended interviews,
Speaker 1: links to further reading and more information on the invasive
Speaker 1: history of kud zoo and gypsy moths, as well as
Speaker 1: links to other hidden stories from history. I'm covered by
Speaker 1: me and reporters at AUSIE. We all need a break
Speaker 1: from the constant cycle to learn something new, to gain
Speaker 1: new perspectives. The Great Courses Plus streaming service is an
Speaker 1: excellent resource to expand our knowledge on a variety of
Speaker 1: subjects or pick up a new hobby. I've been enjoying
Speaker 1: the Great Courses Plus while researching this season of flashback
Speaker 1: lectures like Playball, the rise of Baseball is America's pastime,
Speaker 1: History of the Supreme Court and Battlefield Europe have helped
Speaker 1: me connect the dots on several stories from history. Right now,
Speaker 1: they're giving our listeners a special, limited time offer, a
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