Kudzu: The Vine That Just Won't Stop

In this episode, Josh and Chuck explore the fascinating and often exaggerated story of kudzu, the infamous vine that supposedly ate the American South. They dig into how this plant native to China became a government-sponsored solution to soil erosion in the 1930s before spiraling into an invasive nightmare that inspired wild Southern folklore and everything from R.E.M. album covers to homegrown urban legends. But here's the twist—recent scholarship suggests the South might have been dramatically overstating the kudzu crisis all along, even as the plant remains a genuinely tricky problem for utility companies and highways.