The Problem Of The Root (2018)

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2020

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wild ginseng sells for thousands. We go to a farm hidden in the Appalachian mountains to find out why. | Subscribe to our weekly newsletter here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Nick found in here.
0:02.0	I'm a producer here at Planet Money, and I'm just stepping in to tell you that today's
0:06.3	show was originally reported back in 2018.
0:10.4	One of my faves.
0:11.4	Hope you enjoy it.
0:13.6	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:19.0	Last week, Elsa and I found ourselves in a store down in Chinatown, here in New York.
0:23.3	Oh yeah.
0:24.3	Whoa, this ginseng.
0:29.7	This small light brown sort of bumpy route.
0:32.9	You can find it in pretty much any Chinatown anywhere in the country.
0:36.8	Just on this one street alone, there are tons of places like this one, stocked with this
0:41.4	route.
0:42.4	Whoa.
0:43.4	$798 per pound.
0:44.4	Wait, look on the right here.
0:47.2	$998 of how many?
0:50.4	And Julie and I are staring at this locked glass case displaying different trays of
0:55.2	jinseng.
0:56.2	Is this $1,184 per pound or per ounce?
1:00.2	Per ounce?
1:02.2	Seems like a lot of money.
	...

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