King of the Herbs

Sidedoor

Smithsonian Institution

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4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2021

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It’s a wild herb that countless cultures have used for centuries as a wonder drug to cure any ailment. It's so rare and valuable that it’s been dug to extinction nearly everywhere, except a small area of the United States. This time on Sidedoor, we go searching for the elusive wild American ginseng — and find that scientists, conservationists, and criminals are also on the hunt.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Side Door, a podcast from the Smithsonian with support from PRX, I'm Lizzie Peabody.
0:24.8	Deep in the hills of West Virginia, Ed and Carol Daniels are growing a secret garden
0:29.9	well a secret farm really and it has to be secret because the plants they're
0:36.1	growing are worth a lot of money. How many cameras do you have? I'm just curious
0:41.0	like two. There's multiples. There's a lot more. I mean there's there's cameras
0:46.4	in hidden areas that how many cameras are watching us right now. Don't pin the
0:51.1	woods. This herb only grows in a very small band of the United States. Mostly the
0:59.0	Appalachian Mountains from Canada down to Alabama. That's part of what makes it
1:03.5	so valuable. Another part is how it makes you feel when you eat it. It gives you
1:09.7	more energy than most energy drinks. Actually I have friends that race mountain bikes
1:14.0	professionally and they got in trouble they consider this doping. Really? Because it
1:19.7	gives them so much energy but it's all natural. Ed's not talking about any
1:24.6	illegal drug. He's talking about American Jinsang, a small plant with a precious
1:30.5	root that people have been using as medicine since well before Europeans set
1:34.7	foot on American soil. It's so valuable that even with all this security a few
1:40.4	months back a couple of people drove deep into the forest. Snuck into Ed's farm
1:45.5	with ski masks and headlamps and dug up his Jinsang plants under the cloak of
1:50.9	night. Carol estimates the thieves stole more than $50,000 worth of roots. What
1:57.7	did it feel like to discover that? I was that your male. That was stating. I mean to plant
2:06.3	every single plant one by one on our knees with her hands you know it's it's a
2:14.7	lot of time but it just goes to show that people were ruthless. If they think
2:20.0	they can get ahead but still I'm from it they will.
	...

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