Drive through the Deep South and you'll see it everywhere. A thick green blanket smothering trees, swallowing abandoned houses, consuming telephone poles, and creeping across hillsides like something from a horror movie. This is kudzu, the invasive Japanese vine that grows up to a foot per day and covers over 7 million acres of the American South. And we invited it here on purpose.

In the 1930s and 40s, the US government actually paid farmers to plant kudzu, promoting it as a miracle crop that would prevent erosion and feed livestock. The Civilian Conservation Corps planted it across the South. There were kudzu festivals, kudzu queens, and even a Kudzu Club of America. Then the nightmare began. Kudzu doesn't just grow. It conquers. It kills trees by blocking their sunlight, pulls down power lines with its weight, and costs the economy hundreds of millions in damages every year. Southerners call it "the vine that ate the South."

Join us as we explore how America's worst ecological mistake went from government miracle solution to unstoppable green monster, why kudzu is nearly impossible to kill, and how this invasive species became a symbol of good intentions gone catastrophically wrong. It's still growing. And it's winning.

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