June 4, 2020 • 28 mins
How did air conditioning fundamentally change the course of U.S. politics? What does the Y.M.C.A. have to do with cigarettes? Join Ben and Casey as they welcome special guest, Sean Braswell, to learn more about the strange stories of everything from air conditioning to kudzu in part two of this two-part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. It's uh, it's some of your
favorite Quentin Quarantine nos back again, live and somewhat direct
to you. My name is Ben Boland, my writer die
co host Noel Brown is off on an adventure, and
we are off on an adventure all our own. This
(00:51):
is part two of our exploration of Unintended Consequences, which,
as super producer Casey Pegram mentioned in our first part
of this series, is one of the easiest ways to
define history. I'm still I'm still tripping out about that one, Casey.
I thought that was a great definition. I'm I'm loving
(01:13):
the the unintended consequences so far, especially the political ramifications
of air conditioning. That is not one that I had
thought of even in the least so um, I'm really
excited to hear where we go in part two. Yes, likewise, now,
because this is a two part series, folks, if you
haven't heard part one, you're still you're still going to
enjoy this, but it will make you know you should
(01:36):
listen to part one, is what I'm saying. It will
make way more sense. So we're just gonna pause for
a second and then come back after you listen to
part one. Casyqun get like some waiting room music. Perfect,
welcome back. All right. So, now that we're all caught up,
(01:57):
as as we said in part one of this series,
Casey and Noel and Spirit and I are not are
not adventuring into this wild territory alone, we contacted an expert,
the creator and host of the new I Heart podcast Flashback,
(02:18):
who himself is and I promises the last time I'll
say it, Sean who himself is a polly math Sean Braswell,
thank you again for coming on the show. Thanks for
having me back then. I had such a good time
last time through the magic of podcast entity. You're a
natural charge. Yes, likewise, I think this has been um
(02:40):
this has already been a pretty revelatory learning experience for
me and I think for you as well. Casey right, absolutely,
like I said, I'm all years I am. I am
fascinated by this topic. So in our previous episode, we
learned that the Y m c A, with the best
of intention, had done some somewhat villainous things to America's
(03:05):
military forces. Uh. We also learned, as you said, casey Uh,
that air conditioning has affected the world and society in
ways that we we didn't fully understand until Sean cluded
us in. But Sean, you had mentioned earlier that there
was more to this story of cigarettes, and I think
(03:27):
I think we got so excited when it was like,
tell me more about air conditioning, tell me more about
blah blah blah uh that that we didn't We didn't
fully explore the unintended consequences of cigarettes. No, when we
had left off in part one, you had made this
brilliant connection between the loss of tax revenue during prohibition
(03:48):
and the way that Uncle Sam searched to make up
for it, which ultimately became cigarette taxes. You said at
the beginning it wasn't stuff you would really notice unless
you were literally a penny pincher. Right, It's right. And
it wasn't just Uncle Sam that got into the bonanza
that was cigarette taxes. A lot of states started to
follow suit. I think I was the first one in
(04:09):
nineteen one that they enacted a state level cigarette tax,
and and you know, by the nineteen thirties more than
thirty states had done the same. But of course, not
all states tax at the same rate, but like we
talked about, it was mostly pennies on the dollar, and
so they were really just small time criminals and smugglers
(04:29):
that would take advantage of this different rate between states,
and they might you know, smuggle a few cartons of
cigarettes from New Jersey over the river into New York
and and UH and likewise. Um, but it was it
was not something that was a huge money making venture
for criminals yet, right, you know, I surely I'm not
(04:50):
the only person in the audience thinking this, but one
one of the things that mystified me when I moved
to UH Cities for the first time, you know, was
that in cities people could buy a single cigarette, a
square or a lucy, which I didn't understand for a
(05:12):
long time. I think I had like I knew that
cigarettes were a big business, but I had no idea
just how much money they were making across various, um like,
various parts of the world, various parts of the US,
and in various levels of society. You know, I was
(05:34):
one of those people. It was super naive when I
learned about cigarettes smuggling. It seems so strange to me,
you know that what that one would smuggle something that
was legal, but apparently it was kind of profitable at
some point, absolutely, and it became really profitable after nine
(05:58):
And that was when another well intentioned act. We talked
about the y m C a last time, when they're
well intentioned provision of cigarettes during World War One. Well,
nineteen s four, the U. S. Surgeon General comes out
with his famous Smoking Report, which links cigarette smoking too,
you know, lung cancer and other causes of death. And
(06:19):
it's at that point a lot of the states say,
we've got to do something about this. We have this
major disincentive we can put on smoking, which is to
increase the taxes we impose upon it, and so a
lot of very progressive states like New York start to
do that. Rights, right, some of this is a you know,
it might be called a syntax right in some parts
(06:41):
of the world. Um, clearly, this is an economic lever
that is is pretty old and has been proven to work.
You'll any New Yorkers in the audience will recognize this.
This attempt in various other products, right, like the idea
that should pay more in taxes for things like alcohol
(07:04):
when probition was repealed, or that one should. Maybe I'm
thinking like there was a silly example a few years ago,
I want to say, New York with the idea of
taxing sugary drinks like soda, pop right and this stuff.
These moves were almost universally reviled by a lot of
people who are fans of booze or fans of cigarettes,
(07:26):
or fans of you know, fanta. I'm just you know,
we're based here in atlantishn It's it's really difficult for
us to think of a soda that's not Coca cola,
but we're giving it. We're giving the college go. So
how much of a difference though? Are are we talking?
And how would this kind of operation? How would it work?
(07:48):
Is it something that people started doing on a regular
basis like organized crime level involvement? Absolutely? Um And to
give you a sense for the profit margins involved here,
So for ample, I think in New York, if you
add in the state tax and in the city tax,
it costs about five dollars and eighty five cents for
a pack of cigarettes or about sixty dollars for a
(08:10):
carton of cigarettes. Uh. Whereas in North Carolina where I live,
which very tobacco friendly state, because we produce a lot
of tobacco. It's it's more like five dollars in tax
per carton. So you can make fifty five dollars per
carton of cigarettes by selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York.
And if you think about that, they're about fifty thousand
cartons that can fit on a truck. So if you're
(08:33):
making about five dollars in tax per carton, I mean
you're you're talking more than two million dollars in potential
profit per truck of cigarettes. I think we got into
the wrong business casey like, uh, you know, ethically, there
are I admit a couple of problems, but we could
have been smoked tycoons. Man. We missed our calling them,
(08:54):
we miss we missed our colleague, and now now we
are we missed our calling. We found our podcasting. But
this might surprise people to realize that millions of dollars
are on the line. And when we get to when
we get to the idea of tax fraud, because that's
what this is, tax fraud on this level, then I
(09:15):
imagine this is something that the government is not going
to take laying down right, No, not at all. I
think the estimate is that that New York State loses
something like one billion dollars in tax revenue because of
black market cigarettes each year. Wow. And and I mean
clearly they're they're trying to catch people. They have to
have some successful bust because how else would they get
(09:38):
that estimate right exactly? And they are pursuing cigarettes smuggling
cases all the time. Just last year here in North Carolina,
down in Fayetteville, they busted up an operation that I
think was about an eight million dollar operation involved fifty
to sixty people. It was basically an unmarked candy store,
a gray candy store building in Fayetteville that was basically
(10:01):
the hideout for an enormous cigarette smuggling operation I did. Okay,
before I say this, I want to be very clear,
I'm not condoning the actions of this cigarette smuggling ring,
and we're certainly not advocating that anybody break the law.
But honestly, you guys, it feels like those folks have
(10:25):
lives there are so much more interesting than my own.
You know, they're they're they're cigarette tycoons. Uh, They're going
on cool road trips all the time. So I imagine
they're probably quite stressful do you see this problem, uh
continuing into the future. Sean. Do you think this is
like this illegal industry is going to be, you know,
(10:50):
historically a flash in the pan or is the money
just too compelling? Absolutely? I mean it's not just small
crime syndicates in the US, it's terrorist groups. The Irish
Repel book An Army back in its heyday was smuggling cigarettes.
Saddam Hussein's son U Day was a cigarette smuggler. Um.
I don't know if you remember the first bombing of
the World Trade Center back in New York. The terrorists
(11:12):
who places that truck bomb in the parking garage were
funded thanks to cigarette smuggling. And you see it with
terrorist training camps in Afghanistan Hezbollah constantly they're breaking up
cigarette rings that that that lead to terrorists funding. And
I think as long as there is a tax differential
that creates an arbitrage opportunity for criminals, that sort of
(11:37):
crime is going to continue. Um. One of the the
silver lines, one of the bright patches to that and
which may eventually lead to a decline because I don't
think you can probably ever expect every state in the
US to get together and uniformly choose the same level
of taxes. Is that cigarette use is going down n steadily,
(12:00):
and I think ultimately that might be what kills cigarettes smuggling,
just the use of cigarettes overall, but even that is
obviously a long term venture. Wait a second, though, I
feel like we buried the lead terrorism, So so you know,
(12:22):
everybody knew one of the one of the bad effects
of cigarette smoking is is cancer. But I think many
of us are going to be surprised to learn that
smoking cigarettes may actually be supporting terrorism. That's just not
like my go to conclusion now, And that's kind of
what we do in the podcast episode on Flashback that
(12:43):
we do. We we sort of trace how this magnanimous
gesture by the y m c A a hundred years
ago in World War One eventually leads to billions of
dollars in revenue for terrorists. And if you'd like to
learn more, I certainly encourage you to do so. Do
check out Flashback because this this is not the entirety
(13:05):
of the Twisted Tail, and I think it's a it's
a journey worth taking. There was one case Seun that
you had investigated on Flashback that spoke to me in
casey maybe spoke to you in particular, being that we
reside like you in the American South, and that is
the concept of one of the most successful invasive species
(13:28):
in this part of the world. Uh, folks, you know it.
You might love it, you might hate it, you know,
but you are definitely aware of the monster known as kudzu.
That's right. Anyone who has spent any amount of time
in the South, particularly on highways, has seen kad zoo,
the invasive vian climbing everywhere. I think the most famous
(13:49):
nickname for it is the vine that ate the South. Yeah. Yeah,
And while that might sound riddled with hyperbole, it makes
sense if you drive and where, you know, through the Carolinas, anywhere,
through Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, kad Zoo is a huge success
(14:11):
story biologically speaking. Now, I believe that the vine originally
came from China. Is that correct? It was actually a
Japanese ornamental vine, and it first appeared in the US,
actually at the World's Fair in in eighteen seventy six.
So if you can imagine there's this centennial international exhibition
(14:31):
in Philadelphia, You've got things like Henry Hines's Catchup, Graham
Bell's first telephone, Thomas Edison's telegraph. And then you've got
a Japanese pavilion that it basically has kud zoo in
it as an ornamental vine, and it was popular for
for a few decades as as an ornamental vine, and
especially in New England. In the US. Yeah, like a
(14:52):
porch decoration, I think, which which might surprise a lot
of us in the audience today to learn that, yes,
once upon a time people purposefully put kad zoo up
in their house on the sides of their of their domicile,
and they additionally paid for it. But this, you know,
(15:13):
kad zoo was not gonna settle for being a nifty
uh a nifty porch decoration. How did it? How did
it go from you know, something that would be in
an eighteen hundreds addition of like home and garden to
this uh to this thing that spans miles across the
(15:35):
south Well, kadzu, as prolific as it is, got a
big boost in the nineteen thirties. And and that was
during the Desk Bowl and the Great Depression. And as
you as you know, during the Desk Bowl, a severe
drought over the American planes caused sort of winds and
choking dust to sweep this broad swath of America from
(15:55):
Texas to Nebraska. And uh, so there's a real problem
with soil erosion. And uh President Franklin Roosevelt had a
pretty good idea when he when he took office, he
decided he was going to solve two problems at once,
basically a labor shortage and this soil erosion by creating
this new organization he called the Civilian Conservation Core. And
(16:19):
one of the things he had this army of new
government employees do, and in the Despol area, was to
plant what they called a miracle vine, kut zoo, And
they planted more than seventy million kud zoo seedlings during
the nineteen thirties in government run nurseries and farmers were
paid and I think it was something like eight dollars
(16:40):
an acre to plant the vine. So the government was
paying people to plant kut zoo as a as a
soil erosion measure. Okay, And ostensibly, you know, on the surface,
that makes sense, right. We want something to hold the
ground where the ground is supposed to be. And of
course during the dust bowl, we are looking at a
(17:01):
tremendous ecological disaster. Uh. You know, famine is on the
rise in the US at this time. Uh. This is
also you know, from from a long term position, this
could spell agricultural doom if if something is not done.
So it's not as if uh this was an idea
(17:24):
that they undertook lightly, but it is probably an idea
they undertook out of desperation. As you said, they also
wanted to give people jobs exactly. And you know, desperate
situations call for for desperate measures, but sometimes that in
turn creates even more desperate situations. Yeah, that's that's what
I'm thinking about. You know, as we're talking about Kudzoo,
(17:44):
I'm I'm thinking about the various places here in our
fair metropolis of Atlanta where human beings appear to have
just lost lost a battle against this vine. You know. Uh,
we're we're so familiar with descriptions of hungry ecosystems, right
like jungles that due to their humidity and due to
(18:07):
the flora and fauna, uh, they seem to literally eat
buildings and the works of man. But this is occurring
in in a city near you, if you live in
the in the American South. No, it also reminds me
of Fantasia in Casey Sorry, I know I used this
(18:28):
example all the time where Mickey Mouse is the sorcerer's apprentice,
decides to automate the mop process right because he doesn't
want to mop his boss's castle or whatever, and then
the mops get out of control. The next thing you know,
he is literally and figuratively in over his head. Was
(18:48):
there a point like that with kadzu? Was there a
point where the Workers Program said like, hey, we should stop. No,
I don't think there was any real inkling in the
just how invasive this vine would eventually be. I mean,
in fact, even after the thirties, people who were building
the railroads and the highways across the South, when we
(19:08):
started having a you know, an interstate highway system, they
chose kad zoo as a vegetation they could use to
cover causeways and embankments to you know, make things look
a little nicer on these interstate roads. And kad zoo,
you know, there were no cows there to eat it.
On the highway, there were no horses to eat it,
so once you planted it, it didn't really have any
natural enemy, so it could just grow and grow and
(19:30):
grow along highways and railways, which is still predominantly where
you see it today. Yeah, and it's taken over, you know,
entire lots, maybe where development of a neighborhood stalled or
a building was condemned. Because quickly, you know, when you
get into reconstruction and you get into development, it becomes
(19:51):
apparent that cleaning up kad zoo is uh an enormously
difficult task because of its growth rate, but it can
also be an enormously expensive task, also partially because of
its growth rate. One thing I think would be pretty
familiar to you in North Carolina, there is the way,
(20:12):
the creative way that various human institutions have tried to
combat kad zoo or to live with it. Everybody in
the South has at least once heard about a recipe
using kad zoo. Have you ever have you, guys, ever
tried anything with kudzoo. I've never tried it. I I
know that a lot of people consider it to be
(20:32):
something on the lines of spin it. You can eat
it cooked or raw in keisha's or salads um, but
I've never done it personally. What about you, Casey, No,
I cannot I cannot speak to you having consumed kudzo before. Um,
this is all just reminding me like personal experience growing
up in Georgia. We had terrible problems in our backyard
with a neighbor who had planted bamboo next door, and
(20:56):
the bamboo would just find its way underneath the fence
and shoot up into our back art and you cut
some down and it just regrows again. And I'm seeing
here online the kud zoo and bamboo have a very
similar effect when they're when they're introduced into an environment,
they tend to be very difficult to to get out. Yeah.
Interesting story. Uh with our city, bamboo grows pretty well
(21:17):
here because of our climate. And for a while I
had a dream job when I learned about this in college.
For years and years, the Atlanta Zoo had a crack
team of nine guys whose entire job was to go
around the city and gather bamboo for the pandas at
the zoo. That's all they did. They woke up in
(21:39):
the morning, they went to various people's houses and little
hidden you know, areas of the wild. They gathered bamboo,
and they showed up to meet some very excited pandas.
That is that is a dream job. I mean, maybe
even better than cigarette Ycoon. I don't know. I do
have to ask the I do have to ask what
(22:01):
is your take on kad Zoo? Now, Sean, do you
feel like people should just make peace with it? Should
the war continue? Is it? Should we just take it
as a as a lesson in the unforeseen consequences of
our actions? Well, I think the most interesting thing I
learned about kad Zoo is that, and as you could
probably tell from hearing the three of us who have
had Southern experiences for it, is that it captured kind
(22:25):
of a mythic imagination of sorts. It was something that
took over that was invasive, that was kind of the
you know, the bad boy of invasive plant species. But
it's not actually the most invasive specie in the US.
There are others that are far worse. And one of
the interesting things I learned was basically that it's not
as bad as we think. Um, the Kadzuo, you know,
(22:47):
it's not really the vine that ate the South. It's
the vine that ate the part of the South that
we could see, like, it's the vine that's on the
highways and the railways, and so it had a much
bigger impact on our imagination than on reality. So, for example,
in the U. S. Forest Service finally did a survey
of how widespread kad zoo was in fact, And for
a long time you had heard something like nine ten
(23:09):
million acres of it in the southeastern US. But they
surveys turned up that there were less than two hundred
thousand acres of kad zoo, which is less than one
tenth of one percent of the forest land in the
in the southern United States. So it's not as big
a problem as we think it is. It feels like
it is, but it's something that has kind of just
(23:30):
captured our collective imaginations. So wait, this whole time, I've
been unfairly detigrading kad Zoo. I feel like a real pill. Uh,
you know, I've been unfair. I think you know what.
I feel like one of the lower tier villains in
a Captain Planet episode. Right now. I mean, what can
we do to to make things right with kad Zoo?
(23:53):
What what are the more invasive species that people don't
think about? Let me turn my opprobrium to them. I
think Asian wis theory is the one that I heard
them come up the most as as being far more
invasive than kud Zoo. But then you're certainly not alone
in in feeling like you, oh, Kudzoo an apology. It's
it's something that is just widespread in the South, and
(24:15):
in some ways it's a myth that's grown up alongside
American history. You know. It grew at the same time
the interstate highway system was growing, and so as we
became more mobile, as we saw more of the countryside
than we've ever seen before, we saw more Kudzoo because
that's where it was, and it felt like it was
a much worse problem than it really is. It was.
(24:36):
It was really the king of the forest. It was
the king of the roadside. And if you grew up
in the South looking out the car window, that's what
you thought. Yeah, this is an excellent point, and I think,
you know, I think there's so much more to this story.
If you want to hear it firsthand, folks, then get
the to your podcast platform of choice. And joined Sean
(24:57):
Braswell on Flashback, the one of the newest podcasts. From
my Heart, We're just scratching the surface, not just of Kadzu,
not just of the apparently booming a legal cigarette trade. Um,
we're air conditioning, but we're touching on the vast unintended
consequences of so many different periods, places, and events in
(25:23):
US history and in the history of the world overall.
Uh Sean, first off, thank you so much for taking
the time to explore this with us today. For people
who would like to learn more, where can they find Flashback?
Absolutely thanks for having me. You can find Flashback History
is Unintended Consequences on on Apple Podcasts or I Heart
(25:46):
Radio podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts each
week on AUSI dot com, oz Y dot com slash Flashback.
I have lecture notes that I published the go along
with the series, which are just some other in just
some kidbits, cutting room floor interviews, and and other things
related to the subjects that we talked about in the podcast. Folks,
(26:07):
this is a fantastic show. Don't take my word for it.
Check it out for yourself today and let us know
what you think. Also, also, don't don't hesitate to uh Sean,
I'm gonna volunteer you here for some stuff. Uh don't
hesitate to reach out to Sean and the team with
your to us with your own stories. Of unintended consequences
(26:31):
throughout history. We would love to hear them. You can
tell us on you know, Ridiculous History somewhere on the internet.
We're all over the place. Where on Twitter, We're on Facebook,
We're on Instagram. Shout out to our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, Uh, Sean. If someone would like to contact
you directly on social where should they go? Yeah, I
think the best way to reach me with regard to
(26:53):
the podcast is by emailing Flashback at Aussi dot com.
That's flashback at oz y dot com. We've been inviting
people to share with us uh their own stories of
unintended consequences from their life or just stories from history
that we might want to do a future episode about.
So check it out. That's Flashback at Aussie dot com.
(27:15):
Thank you again so much, Sean braswell. We look forward
to explore it some more strange stories of history with
you in the future. Thanks as always to Alex Williams,
who composed that banging track you here at the beginning
of every Ridiculous History episode. Thanks of course to the
usual the Ridiculous Historian regulars, uh, Christopher Aciotis, eve's Jeff Coote,
(27:40):
our research guru Gabelusier, who refuses to tell us the
correct way to pronounce his last name. That is a fact.
And of course thanks to my palinoell here in spirit
casey Pegram. Thanks to you also. What do you think
should we ask people to send some kudzoo recipes? If
(28:00):
they If they send them, do you guys want to
try them? I'll mail something to you Sean. Yeah. When when, uh,
when we're all together again, I think we should cook
up some kud zoo and uh and see what it's
all about. Thanks so much, folks, We'll see you next week.
(28:21):
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
much for tuning in. It's uh, it's some of your
favorite Quentin Quarantine nos back again, live and somewhat direct
to you. My name is Ben Boland, my writer die
co host Noel Brown is off on an adventure, and
we are off on an adventure all our own. This
(00:51):
is part two of our exploration of Unintended Consequences, which,
as super producer Casey Pegram mentioned in our first part
of this series, is one of the easiest ways to
define history. I'm still I'm still tripping out about that one, Casey.
I thought that was a great definition. I'm I'm loving
(01:13):
the the unintended consequences so far, especially the political ramifications
of air conditioning. That is not one that I had
thought of even in the least so um, I'm really
excited to hear where we go in part two. Yes, likewise, now,
because this is a two part series, folks, if you
haven't heard part one, you're still you're still going to
enjoy this, but it will make you know you should
(01:36):
listen to part one, is what I'm saying. It will
make way more sense. So we're just gonna pause for
a second and then come back after you listen to
part one. Casyqun get like some waiting room music. Perfect,
welcome back. All right. So, now that we're all caught up,
(01:57):
as as we said in part one of this series,
Casey and Noel and Spirit and I are not are
not adventuring into this wild territory alone, we contacted an expert,
the creator and host of the new I Heart podcast Flashback,
(02:18):
who himself is and I promises the last time I'll
say it, Sean who himself is a polly math Sean Braswell,
thank you again for coming on the show. Thanks for
having me back then. I had such a good time
last time through the magic of podcast entity. You're a
natural charge. Yes, likewise, I think this has been um
(02:40):
this has already been a pretty revelatory learning experience for
me and I think for you as well. Casey right, absolutely,
like I said, I'm all years I am. I am
fascinated by this topic. So in our previous episode, we
learned that the Y m c A, with the best
of intention, had done some somewhat villainous things to America's
(03:05):
military forces. Uh. We also learned, as you said, casey Uh,
that air conditioning has affected the world and society in
ways that we we didn't fully understand until Sean cluded
us in. But Sean, you had mentioned earlier that there
was more to this story of cigarettes, and I think
(03:27):
I think we got so excited when it was like,
tell me more about air conditioning, tell me more about
blah blah blah uh that that we didn't We didn't
fully explore the unintended consequences of cigarettes. No, when we
had left off in part one, you had made this
brilliant connection between the loss of tax revenue during prohibition
(03:48):
and the way that Uncle Sam searched to make up
for it, which ultimately became cigarette taxes. You said at
the beginning it wasn't stuff you would really notice unless
you were literally a penny pincher. Right, It's right. And
it wasn't just Uncle Sam that got into the bonanza
that was cigarette taxes. A lot of states started to
follow suit. I think I was the first one in
(04:09):
nineteen one that they enacted a state level cigarette tax,
and and you know, by the nineteen thirties more than
thirty states had done the same. But of course, not
all states tax at the same rate, but like we
talked about, it was mostly pennies on the dollar, and
so they were really just small time criminals and smugglers
(04:29):
that would take advantage of this different rate between states,
and they might you know, smuggle a few cartons of
cigarettes from New Jersey over the river into New York
and and UH and likewise. Um, but it was it
was not something that was a huge money making venture
for criminals yet, right, you know, I surely I'm not
(04:50):
the only person in the audience thinking this, but one
one of the things that mystified me when I moved
to UH Cities for the first time, you know, was
that in cities people could buy a single cigarette, a
square or a lucy, which I didn't understand for a
(05:12):
long time. I think I had like I knew that
cigarettes were a big business, but I had no idea
just how much money they were making across various, um like,
various parts of the world, various parts of the US,
and in various levels of society. You know, I was
(05:34):
one of those people. It was super naive when I
learned about cigarettes smuggling. It seems so strange to me,
you know that what that one would smuggle something that
was legal, but apparently it was kind of profitable at
some point, absolutely, and it became really profitable after nine
(05:58):
And that was when another well intentioned act. We talked
about the y m C a last time, when they're
well intentioned provision of cigarettes during World War One. Well,
nineteen s four, the U. S. Surgeon General comes out
with his famous Smoking Report, which links cigarette smoking too,
you know, lung cancer and other causes of death. And
(06:19):
it's at that point a lot of the states say,
we've got to do something about this. We have this
major disincentive we can put on smoking, which is to
increase the taxes we impose upon it, and so a
lot of very progressive states like New York start to
do that. Rights, right, some of this is a you know,
it might be called a syntax right in some parts
(06:41):
of the world. Um, clearly, this is an economic lever
that is is pretty old and has been proven to work.
You'll any New Yorkers in the audience will recognize this.
This attempt in various other products, right, like the idea
that should pay more in taxes for things like alcohol
(07:04):
when probition was repealed, or that one should. Maybe I'm
thinking like there was a silly example a few years ago,
I want to say, New York with the idea of
taxing sugary drinks like soda, pop right and this stuff.
These moves were almost universally reviled by a lot of
people who are fans of booze or fans of cigarettes,
(07:26):
or fans of you know, fanta. I'm just you know,
we're based here in atlantishn It's it's really difficult for
us to think of a soda that's not Coca cola,
but we're giving it. We're giving the college go. So
how much of a difference though? Are are we talking?
And how would this kind of operation? How would it work?
(07:48):
Is it something that people started doing on a regular
basis like organized crime level involvement? Absolutely? Um And to
give you a sense for the profit margins involved here,
So for ample, I think in New York, if you
add in the state tax and in the city tax,
it costs about five dollars and eighty five cents for
a pack of cigarettes or about sixty dollars for a
(08:10):
carton of cigarettes. Uh. Whereas in North Carolina where I live,
which very tobacco friendly state, because we produce a lot
of tobacco. It's it's more like five dollars in tax
per carton. So you can make fifty five dollars per
carton of cigarettes by selling North Carolina cigarettes in New York.
And if you think about that, they're about fifty thousand
cartons that can fit on a truck. So if you're
(08:33):
making about five dollars in tax per carton, I mean
you're you're talking more than two million dollars in potential
profit per truck of cigarettes. I think we got into
the wrong business casey like, uh, you know, ethically, there
are I admit a couple of problems, but we could
have been smoked tycoons. Man. We missed our calling them,
(08:54):
we miss we missed our colleague, and now now we
are we missed our calling. We found our podcasting. But
this might surprise people to realize that millions of dollars
are on the line. And when we get to when
we get to the idea of tax fraud, because that's
what this is, tax fraud on this level, then I
(09:15):
imagine this is something that the government is not going
to take laying down right, No, not at all. I
think the estimate is that that New York State loses
something like one billion dollars in tax revenue because of
black market cigarettes each year. Wow. And and I mean
clearly they're they're trying to catch people. They have to
have some successful bust because how else would they get
(09:38):
that estimate right exactly? And they are pursuing cigarettes smuggling
cases all the time. Just last year here in North Carolina,
down in Fayetteville, they busted up an operation that I
think was about an eight million dollar operation involved fifty
to sixty people. It was basically an unmarked candy store,
a gray candy store building in Fayetteville that was basically
(10:01):
the hideout for an enormous cigarette smuggling operation I did. Okay,
before I say this, I want to be very clear,
I'm not condoning the actions of this cigarette smuggling ring,
and we're certainly not advocating that anybody break the law.
But honestly, you guys, it feels like those folks have
(10:25):
lives there are so much more interesting than my own.
You know, they're they're they're cigarette tycoons. Uh, They're going
on cool road trips all the time. So I imagine
they're probably quite stressful do you see this problem, uh
continuing into the future. Sean. Do you think this is
like this illegal industry is going to be, you know,
(10:50):
historically a flash in the pan or is the money
just too compelling? Absolutely? I mean it's not just small
crime syndicates in the US, it's terrorist groups. The Irish
Repel book An Army back in its heyday was smuggling cigarettes.
Saddam Hussein's son U Day was a cigarette smuggler. Um.
I don't know if you remember the first bombing of
the World Trade Center back in New York. The terrorists
(11:12):
who places that truck bomb in the parking garage were
funded thanks to cigarette smuggling. And you see it with
terrorist training camps in Afghanistan Hezbollah constantly they're breaking up
cigarette rings that that that lead to terrorists funding. And
I think as long as there is a tax differential
that creates an arbitrage opportunity for criminals, that sort of
(11:37):
crime is going to continue. Um. One of the the
silver lines, one of the bright patches to that and
which may eventually lead to a decline because I don't
think you can probably ever expect every state in the
US to get together and uniformly choose the same level
of taxes. Is that cigarette use is going down n steadily,
(12:00):
and I think ultimately that might be what kills cigarettes smuggling,
just the use of cigarettes overall, but even that is
obviously a long term venture. Wait a second, though, I
feel like we buried the lead terrorism, So so you know,
(12:22):
everybody knew one of the one of the bad effects
of cigarette smoking is is cancer. But I think many
of us are going to be surprised to learn that
smoking cigarettes may actually be supporting terrorism. That's just not
like my go to conclusion now, And that's kind of
what we do in the podcast episode on Flashback that
(12:43):
we do. We we sort of trace how this magnanimous
gesture by the y m c A a hundred years
ago in World War One eventually leads to billions of
dollars in revenue for terrorists. And if you'd like to
learn more, I certainly encourage you to do so. Do
check out Flashback because this this is not the entirety
(13:05):
of the Twisted Tail, and I think it's a it's
a journey worth taking. There was one case Seun that
you had investigated on Flashback that spoke to me in
casey maybe spoke to you in particular, being that we
reside like you in the American South, and that is
the concept of one of the most successful invasive species
(13:28):
in this part of the world. Uh, folks, you know it.
You might love it, you might hate it, you know,
but you are definitely aware of the monster known as kudzu.
That's right. Anyone who has spent any amount of time
in the South, particularly on highways, has seen kad zoo,
the invasive vian climbing everywhere. I think the most famous
(13:49):
nickname for it is the vine that ate the South. Yeah. Yeah,
And while that might sound riddled with hyperbole, it makes
sense if you drive and where, you know, through the Carolinas, anywhere,
through Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, kad Zoo is a huge success
(14:11):
story biologically speaking. Now, I believe that the vine originally
came from China. Is that correct? It was actually a
Japanese ornamental vine, and it first appeared in the US,
actually at the World's Fair in in eighteen seventy six.
So if you can imagine there's this centennial international exhibition
(14:31):
in Philadelphia, You've got things like Henry Hines's Catchup, Graham
Bell's first telephone, Thomas Edison's telegraph. And then you've got
a Japanese pavilion that it basically has kud zoo in
it as an ornamental vine, and it was popular for
for a few decades as as an ornamental vine, and
especially in New England. In the US. Yeah, like a
(14:52):
porch decoration, I think, which which might surprise a lot
of us in the audience today to learn that, yes,
once upon a time people purposefully put kad zoo up
in their house on the sides of their of their domicile,
and they additionally paid for it. But this, you know,
(15:13):
kad zoo was not gonna settle for being a nifty
uh a nifty porch decoration. How did it? How did
it go from you know, something that would be in
an eighteen hundreds addition of like home and garden to
this uh to this thing that spans miles across the
(15:35):
south Well, kadzu, as prolific as it is, got a
big boost in the nineteen thirties. And and that was
during the Desk Bowl and the Great Depression. And as
you as you know, during the Desk Bowl, a severe
drought over the American planes caused sort of winds and
choking dust to sweep this broad swath of America from
(15:55):
Texas to Nebraska. And uh, so there's a real problem
with soil erosion. And uh President Franklin Roosevelt had a
pretty good idea when he when he took office, he
decided he was going to solve two problems at once,
basically a labor shortage and this soil erosion by creating
this new organization he called the Civilian Conservation Core. And
(16:19):
one of the things he had this army of new
government employees do, and in the Despol area, was to
plant what they called a miracle vine, kut zoo, And
they planted more than seventy million kud zoo seedlings during
the nineteen thirties in government run nurseries and farmers were
paid and I think it was something like eight dollars
(16:40):
an acre to plant the vine. So the government was
paying people to plant kut zoo as a as a
soil erosion measure. Okay, And ostensibly, you know, on the surface,
that makes sense, right. We want something to hold the
ground where the ground is supposed to be. And of
course during the dust bowl, we are looking at a
(17:01):
tremendous ecological disaster. Uh. You know, famine is on the
rise in the US at this time. Uh. This is
also you know, from from a long term position, this
could spell agricultural doom if if something is not done.
So it's not as if uh this was an idea
(17:24):
that they undertook lightly, but it is probably an idea
they undertook out of desperation. As you said, they also
wanted to give people jobs exactly. And you know, desperate
situations call for for desperate measures, but sometimes that in
turn creates even more desperate situations. Yeah, that's that's what
I'm thinking about. You know, as we're talking about Kudzoo,
(17:44):
I'm I'm thinking about the various places here in our
fair metropolis of Atlanta where human beings appear to have
just lost lost a battle against this vine. You know. Uh,
we're we're so familiar with descriptions of hungry ecosystems, right
like jungles that due to their humidity and due to
(18:07):
the flora and fauna, uh, they seem to literally eat
buildings and the works of man. But this is occurring
in in a city near you, if you live in
the in the American South. No, it also reminds me
of Fantasia in Casey Sorry, I know I used this
(18:28):
example all the time where Mickey Mouse is the sorcerer's apprentice,
decides to automate the mop process right because he doesn't
want to mop his boss's castle or whatever, and then
the mops get out of control. The next thing you know,
he is literally and figuratively in over his head. Was
(18:48):
there a point like that with kadzu? Was there a
point where the Workers Program said like, hey, we should stop. No,
I don't think there was any real inkling in the
just how invasive this vine would eventually be. I mean,
in fact, even after the thirties, people who were building
the railroads and the highways across the South, when we
(19:08):
started having a you know, an interstate highway system, they
chose kad zoo as a vegetation they could use to
cover causeways and embankments to you know, make things look
a little nicer on these interstate roads. And kad zoo,
you know, there were no cows there to eat it.
On the highway, there were no horses to eat it,
so once you planted it, it didn't really have any
natural enemy, so it could just grow and grow and
(19:30):
grow along highways and railways, which is still predominantly where
you see it today. Yeah, and it's taken over, you know,
entire lots, maybe where development of a neighborhood stalled or
a building was condemned. Because quickly, you know, when you
get into reconstruction and you get into development, it becomes
(19:51):
apparent that cleaning up kad zoo is uh an enormously
difficult task because of its growth rate, but it can
also be an enormously expensive task, also partially because of
its growth rate. One thing I think would be pretty
familiar to you in North Carolina, there is the way,
(20:12):
the creative way that various human institutions have tried to
combat kad zoo or to live with it. Everybody in
the South has at least once heard about a recipe
using kad zoo. Have you ever have you, guys, ever
tried anything with kudzoo. I've never tried it. I I
know that a lot of people consider it to be
(20:32):
something on the lines of spin it. You can eat
it cooked or raw in keisha's or salads um, but
I've never done it personally. What about you, Casey, No,
I cannot I cannot speak to you having consumed kudzo before. Um,
this is all just reminding me like personal experience growing
up in Georgia. We had terrible problems in our backyard
with a neighbor who had planted bamboo next door, and
(20:56):
the bamboo would just find its way underneath the fence
and shoot up into our back art and you cut
some down and it just regrows again. And I'm seeing
here online the kud zoo and bamboo have a very
similar effect when they're when they're introduced into an environment,
they tend to be very difficult to to get out. Yeah.
Interesting story. Uh with our city, bamboo grows pretty well
(21:17):
here because of our climate. And for a while I
had a dream job when I learned about this in college.
For years and years, the Atlanta Zoo had a crack
team of nine guys whose entire job was to go
around the city and gather bamboo for the pandas at
the zoo. That's all they did. They woke up in
(21:39):
the morning, they went to various people's houses and little
hidden you know, areas of the wild. They gathered bamboo,
and they showed up to meet some very excited pandas.
That is that is a dream job. I mean, maybe
even better than cigarette Ycoon. I don't know. I do
have to ask the I do have to ask what
(22:01):
is your take on kad Zoo? Now, Sean, do you
feel like people should just make peace with it? Should
the war continue? Is it? Should we just take it
as a as a lesson in the unforeseen consequences of
our actions? Well, I think the most interesting thing I
learned about kad Zoo is that, and as you could
probably tell from hearing the three of us who have
had Southern experiences for it, is that it captured kind
(22:25):
of a mythic imagination of sorts. It was something that
took over that was invasive, that was kind of the
you know, the bad boy of invasive plant species. But
it's not actually the most invasive specie in the US.
There are others that are far worse. And one of
the interesting things I learned was basically that it's not
as bad as we think. Um, the Kadzuo, you know,
(22:47):
it's not really the vine that ate the South. It's
the vine that ate the part of the South that
we could see, like, it's the vine that's on the
highways and the railways, and so it had a much
bigger impact on our imagination than on reality. So, for example,
in the U. S. Forest Service finally did a survey
of how widespread kad zoo was in fact, And for
a long time you had heard something like nine ten
(23:09):
million acres of it in the southeastern US. But they
surveys turned up that there were less than two hundred
thousand acres of kad zoo, which is less than one
tenth of one percent of the forest land in the
in the southern United States. So it's not as big
a problem as we think it is. It feels like
it is, but it's something that has kind of just
(23:30):
captured our collective imaginations. So wait, this whole time, I've
been unfairly detigrading kad Zoo. I feel like a real pill. Uh,
you know, I've been unfair. I think you know what.
I feel like one of the lower tier villains in
a Captain Planet episode. Right now. I mean, what can
we do to to make things right with kad Zoo?
(23:53):
What what are the more invasive species that people don't
think about? Let me turn my opprobrium to them. I
think Asian wis theory is the one that I heard
them come up the most as as being far more
invasive than kud Zoo. But then you're certainly not alone
in in feeling like you, oh, Kudzoo an apology. It's
it's something that is just widespread in the South, and
(24:15):
in some ways it's a myth that's grown up alongside
American history. You know. It grew at the same time
the interstate highway system was growing, and so as we
became more mobile, as we saw more of the countryside
than we've ever seen before, we saw more Kudzoo because
that's where it was, and it felt like it was
a much worse problem than it really is. It was.
(24:36):
It was really the king of the forest. It was
the king of the roadside. And if you grew up
in the South looking out the car window, that's what
you thought. Yeah, this is an excellent point, and I think,
you know, I think there's so much more to this story.
If you want to hear it firsthand, folks, then get
the to your podcast platform of choice. And joined Sean
(24:57):
Braswell on Flashback, the one of the newest podcasts. From
my Heart, We're just scratching the surface, not just of Kadzu,
not just of the apparently booming a legal cigarette trade. Um,
we're air conditioning, but we're touching on the vast unintended
consequences of so many different periods, places, and events in
(25:23):
US history and in the history of the world overall.
Uh Sean, first off, thank you so much for taking
the time to explore this with us today. For people
who would like to learn more, where can they find Flashback?
Absolutely thanks for having me. You can find Flashback History
is Unintended Consequences on on Apple Podcasts or I Heart
(25:46):
Radio podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts each
week on AUSI dot com, oz Y dot com slash Flashback.
I have lecture notes that I published the go along
with the series, which are just some other in just
some kidbits, cutting room floor interviews, and and other things
related to the subjects that we talked about in the podcast. Folks,
(26:07):
this is a fantastic show. Don't take my word for it.
Check it out for yourself today and let us know
what you think. Also, also, don't don't hesitate to uh Sean,
I'm gonna volunteer you here for some stuff. Uh don't
hesitate to reach out to Sean and the team with
your to us with your own stories. Of unintended consequences
(26:31):
throughout history. We would love to hear them. You can
tell us on you know, Ridiculous History somewhere on the internet.
We're all over the place. Where on Twitter, We're on Facebook,
We're on Instagram. Shout out to our Facebook community page,
Ridiculous Historians, Uh, Sean. If someone would like to contact
you directly on social where should they go? Yeah, I
think the best way to reach me with regard to
(26:53):
the podcast is by emailing Flashback at Aussi dot com.
That's flashback at oz y dot com. We've been inviting
people to share with us uh their own stories of
unintended consequences from their life or just stories from history
that we might want to do a future episode about.
So check it out. That's Flashback at Aussie dot com.
(27:15):
Thank you again so much, Sean braswell. We look forward
to explore it some more strange stories of history with
you in the future. Thanks as always to Alex Williams,
who composed that banging track you here at the beginning
of every Ridiculous History episode. Thanks of course to the
usual the Ridiculous Historian regulars, uh, Christopher Aciotis, eve's Jeff Coote,
(27:40):
our research guru Gabelusier, who refuses to tell us the
correct way to pronounce his last name. That is a fact.
And of course thanks to my palinoell here in spirit
casey Pegram. Thanks to you also. What do you think
should we ask people to send some kudzoo recipes? If
(28:00):
they If they send them, do you guys want to
try them? I'll mail something to you Sean. Yeah. When when, uh,
when we're all together again, I think we should cook
up some kud zoo and uh and see what it's
all about. Thanks so much, folks, We'll see you next week.
(28:21):
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