Original subtitles

Sam: You see this little guy?

That's a shrimp. It's friendly right?

Not cute necessarily, but harmless.

Just wait.

According to author mike tidwell,

These tasty morsels reproduce at an exponential rate,

Which means if 3 successive generations survive

To adulthood, the resulting shrimp mass would be equal to

The volume of the sun.

Just a few more generations survive,

And every inch of the known universe is filled with shrimp,

A mass of crustaceans expanding outward at

The speed of light.

If mike's math holds up, the shrimp apocalypse would

Be upon us.

So what does all this have to do with cursed places?

Well, the thing that keeps events like the

Shrimp apocalypse from happening is the natural balance of things.

And in the louisiana swamps,

Things are savagely out of whack.

Gary: The swamp is really in trouble and

Everything is gonna die.

Sam: The land is vanishing faster here than

Almost anywhere else on earth.

Man: It's hard to imagine but all this was farmland.

Sam: 25 square miles disappear every year into the ocean and

Some point to a curse from 100 years ago.

A curse that would make all the land wash away.

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Sam: Just outside of new orleans,

There's a place called manchac swamp and

Here in the bayou, there's a story of a local priestess

Who cursed the land and the people living on it.

Sam: Hey guys. Man: Hey sam.

Have a beer, my man. Have a cold beer.

Sam: Alright, alright, I'll take it, I'll take it.

Man: Sit down. Glad to have you.

Sam: So you guys know why I'm here, right?

It's easy to read about a legend on the internet and

Dismiss it as folklore.

As we search for the intersection point between

Myth and science, where do you start?

Well, you start with the myth.

Only a nerd would start with the science.

Anybody got anything on the curse of aunt julia?

Man: She practiced a lot of magic.

Sam: Right.

Man: And she died in September 29th, 1915,

Which just happened to be when the big storm of 1915,

The hurricane hit.

When she died, she put a curse on this place where the swamp

Would die and bring devastation to all the people here.

Sam: So here's how the story goes.

In the early 1900's there wasn't much in the way

Of hospitals or doctors around here.

So if you got sick, you went to aunt julia brown and

She used folk medicine and hoodoo magic to cure you.

For years, everything was great,

There were satisfied customers all around and she helped

Anybody who needed it.

But something changed. Julia's world view went dark.

And some say she cursed the land with her dying breath.

Man: 30 years ago, the swamp was so thick you

Couldn't walk through it.

Now, you can see for a mile in any direction.

Sam: Do you guys feel like the swamp is getting killed?

Woman: Choking to death. Sam: It's choking to death?

Man: Yeah, it's deteriorating at a rate we can never stop.

Sam: So you could say aunt julia's curse kinda

Is coming true, huh?

Woman: I believe it. I do.

It's too much of a coincidence.

Man: No, well one thing can be certain here,

Everything is getting worse.

It's not getting better.

Everything that she predicted is now here.

Sam: I'm a sucker for a good story.

Can I get another beer? Anybody else want a beer?

And when I sit and have one, or you know,

Two or I don't know, five beers with a group of people,

I wanna believe the stories I hear.

But still, the locals from manchac swamp blame

Aunt julia's curse for any number of strange

Tragedies and catastrophes.

Hurricanes, bridge collapses, unexplained disappearances and

Rampant crime that's lasted for 30 years.

That's a lot to credit to just one person no matter

How nasty her curse.

So who was aunt julia brown and

Why would she have cursed her homeland?

What made her so furious that people still believe to this

Day that her rage transcends the grave?

And where could she have gotten this power from?

So tell me about julia brown.

Sam: Right.

Sam: Aunt julia was born into slavery and this entire region

Was built on the exploitation of enslaved labor,

Just like the white house.

But then, after the civil war, slavery was abolished in 1865,

And julia managed to get a plot of land,

Here in the paradise of manchac swamp.

With the death of the cotton plantation industry,

Turns out they can't turn a profit without free labor,

A new business takes center stage in louisiana.

The lumber boom.

Suddenly, everyone wants cypress and these towns

Have an endless supply.

Money's flowing, things are good.

But of course, that's really only if you're white.

Aunt julia saw the destruction of the natural world around

Her and virtually none of the profit going to

Her or her community.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

So, aunt julia didn't live here specifically but this was

The kind of place she would have lived.

Man: Right.

Sam: And this is what everybody lived in at that time,

There's this little tin roof and everything like that.

Man: Yeah.

Sam: So you had this world you're building and then now

The loggers are coming through and they're tearing everything down.

Sam: Right.

The logging is actually stealing the land right out

From under the people.

Man: Yeah.

Helen (over tape): Aunt julia brown, she's a hoodoo lady.

She's angry about the way them loggers was tearing up the swamp.

She'd be out on her porch, playing her guitar.

I remember, she was always singing the same words.

"one day I'm gonna die and everything's gonna die with me."

This was a good place to live, good place to be.

Until she cursed it.

Never been the same after that old woman died.

Sam: This audio is recreated from an interview conducted

With helen schlosser burg who lived a few houses down

From aunt julia.

She recounts how aunt julia cast a dark spell on the land

Before she died.

And the moment aunt julia was being lowered into the ground,

The curse became real for the people who lived through that fateful night.

Helen (over tape): She died end of September.

Only remember that 'cause it was while they was putting her

In the ground that the hurricane hit.

Sam: So this hurricane, it came through as she

Was being buried, right?

Man: Yep.

Helen (over tape): Lots of people from frenier and napton and ruddock

Were all there for the funeral and they found themselves in a

Real bad place when the winds picked up and

The water started rising.

Sam: That's what makes her curse feel so real is 'cause.

Sam: Whether you believe in curses or not,

You gotta give aunt julia credit for her impeccable timing.

Helen (over tape): I remember the water rising.

I remember thinking, "this is it. We're gonna die."

But the train was blowing I's whistle at the station in ruddock.

Sam: And the only people that survived are the ones who made it to the train?

Sam: Swimming in pitch black water at night is already a nightmare.

Add in huge waves, howling winds and the screams of

Your friends and neighbors echoing around you,

And that feels like an act of god.

Now you start to feel like you're cursed.

I can't imagine how scary it would have been with the

Waters rising, it's the middle of the night and

The train blew its whistle.

Sam: And if you couldn't make it.

Sam: Swimming through this in the dark.

Sam: You would definitely go,

"oh, that's a curse, that's old auntie coming to get us."

Sam: She's been singing that song her whole life.

Sam: Oh my god, and here it comes.

Sam: You'd be like, holy (bleep).

In the louisiana bayou.

And on the day of her funeral, a hurricane obliterated the

Logging towns and most of the people who lived there.

Since then, over 40 named storms have

Ravaged southern louisiana.

But the locals say that the hurricane of 1915 was different,

Almost supernatural.

Not only in the timing but in its unmatched destruction.

That hurricane gave aunt julia's curse the

Gravitas to survive 100 years.

I'm meeting professor brian haus at a hurricane simulation lab

In miami to see if science and legend align.

The storm I'm interested in is a hurricane in 1915 that hit

New orleans where, you know, ostensibly there's a curse around it.

Do you know anything about 1915?

Brian: Of course, 1915, you know, no satellites.

They didn't have nearly the information,

You had to rely on shipping.

It was known that a storm was coming but they didn't

Appreciate how strong it could be.

When it came into the gulf,

That's when they started to realize, too late, really.

Sam: Yeah, I mean that storm came ashore and wiped out

Three whole towns, just wiped 'em off the map.

This is one of the things you study here is the loading, right?

Brian: We study the loading on structures, yes.

Sam: Right, right.

Brian: This is the biggest wind over water tank,

Where we have a controlled wind field going over the water.

Sam: This indoor lab can recreate the forces of a

Category five hurricane with huge waves and

Winds over 215 miles an hour.

Since the hurricane of 1915 is the event that solidified the

Locals' belief in the curse, I wanna know exactly

What it was they experienced.

So we're gonna use a simulation to find out if it

Was just the eerie timing of the event,

Or was there something else that made that particular

Hurricane feel supernatural.

We're ready.

Brian: Alright, talk us through this.

Sam: Okay, alright, so this is the mockup of

Aunt julia's house or a typical kind of shack.

Brian: See a lot of, all the waves are breaking.

Sam: Just for fun, or you know,

Not really fun, but for the hell of it,

Pretend you're in this house.

It's 100 years ago and you knew this woman,

Aunt julia, and she's furious about her swamp getting destroyed.

And you knew about her song and about the curse

She said was coming.

And now on the day of her funeral,

The most violent storm in living memory destroys

Nearly everything in its path.

Would it turn you into a believer?

Sam: This is the perfect visualization of the

Destruction that storm wrought 100 years ago.

But how does that storm compare to the one

We all know about?

Brian: That storm had a surge similar to katrina,

Up to like 20 feet.

Big waves would be hitting building structures,

Everything, delivering that load.

Sam: Both katrina and the 1915 storm nailed the

Southern louisiana coast and they both caused

Lake pontchartrain to flood.

But katrina hit east of new orleans and

Surged closer to mississippi.

While the eye of julia's storm hit manchac swamp and

New orleans more directly.

Brian: At this 1915 storm struck today,

The impacts would be way worse because of the

Degradation of louisiana's wetlands.

So a lot more of that area is vulnerable to flooding.

So this would be a really catastrophic event had the

1915 hurricane occurred now or.

Sam: Yeah, it's hard to think of katrina as being worse but

It could have been a lot worse.

Brian: Could have been a lot worse for new orleans,

That's for sure.

Sam: Right.

So looking at the power of that wind and that storm and

In that tank, you sort of begin to understand,

Particularly if, you know, that hurricane blew up,

You know, the day you're putting aunt julia in the ground.

You would definitely be feeling like her curse was coming true.

Not to be ageist but that was then,

And this is now, so does the curse still somehow have teeth

Here in the 21st century?

Man: The same every time you turn the news on, something bad.

Sam: For some people in the bayou,

The curse permeates all aspects of their life.

Man: It's got to the point where you could be robbed or

Killed at any place, at any time.

Sam: To some, crime and a string of mysterious

Disappearances are just part and parcel of aunt julia's doom.

Man: And then we've had several people go off in the

Big swamp never to be seen.

Sam: Never to be seen again.

Man: Yeah.

Woman: Bones are being found and things like that.

Sam: Right, alright.

So is this just local lore?

Or do the men and women who deal with these issues every day

Have a more logical explanation?

Officer ervin reid.

Ervin: Yes sir.

Sam: I wanna say thanks for having us out tonight.

Ervin: Thank y'all for having me.

Sam: Yeah, what do you see most of in terms of crime out here?

Ervin: Mostly murders over the past six months.

Disappearances, kids and women being taken.

Sam: But where are they taken to?

Ervin: We're, their still trying to figure it out now.

Sam: In the new orleans metropolitan

Area there are 87 current missing person cases.

That's over 30% higher than the national average.

Where are we gonna go to?

Ervin: We'll be going to old highway 51.

Sam: The swamps around here have a reputation for

Swallowing things up, never to be seen again.

Can we get in there, do you think?

You guys want to try to go in there or what?

Ervin: Watch your step.

Sam: This'd be a good place to get rid of a body.

Sam: The swamp really can swallow things up and

Make 'em disappear.

Ervin: Oh yeah.

Alright, given enough time, what goes down must come up, so.

Sam: Have you ever heard of the curse of aunt julia brown?

Ervin: Yes sir. I'm pretty sure it exists in some way, shape or form.

Sam: Mm-hm.

Sam: Yeah.

Yeah, so don't tell anybody, I don't wanna put 'em on the spot.

But the truth is, when the camera stopped rolling,

I cracked his hardest case and then I sprained my hand from

All the high fives down at the precinct.

But I am definitely clocking the fact that a police officer

Claims to have seen the effects of a curse.

But still, I feel like there has to be another explanation,

One that maybe has some grounding in science and data,

One that I'm hoping to get from jeff asher,

An ex-cia analyst who studies crime data for a living.

As us mass-holes say, he's wicked smart.

Is there anything mysterious about the high crime rate?

Jeff: Murder's the one stat that you can't juke and so

It's the kind of statistic that most people find more reliable.

And louisiana has led the nation in murder rate for

30 straight years.

Sam: Wow.

Jeff: So this is a bar chart race,

I don't know if you've ever seen one of these before?

Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah, these are great.

Jeff: So these are the top 10 murder rates per year,

Each year since 1960.

You would expect variation but it's depressingly stable.

Sam: For 60 years, louisiana has ranked in the

Top 10 in murders per capital in the us.

And for the last 30 years, the new orleans area has had

One of the highest murder rates in the entire country.

That all makes sense but what's special about louisiana?

Jeff: There's not a lot.

Louisiana is generally a poor state but not the poorest in the nation.

Firearms are generally easy to come by but not the easiest in the country.

I'm trying to describe what's happening but it's depressing

And it's mysterious.

Kinda like the mississippi river,

It does what it wants to do and there's not a lot that we

Can do to interrupt it.

At least in my opinion.

Sam: Right.

A curse can be the language of those trying to explain the unexplainable.

But while we might want to blame a curse for the

Long-lasting scourge of crime in the area,

The truth is there are too many confounding variables to be sure.

Still, there's an inherent human need to have concrete

Explanations for why things happen.

And when events occur that are so odd,

Like a mysterious string of deadly bridge collapses that

Keep happening in this tiny area of southern louisiana,

Well, even I start to wonder.

Sam: In the louisiana bayou, I've been talking to the

Locals and they believe a healer,

A hoodoo practitioner named aunt julia brown is

Responsible for a slew of tragedies that have ravaged

Their community since her death in 1915.

All the terrible things happening in louisiana over

The past 100 years, from hurricanes to the destruction

Of the swamp, is because of aunt julia.

But my new best friends think the curse goes even deeper.

Man: In '76, a barge hit the bridge and took out

Two sections of the bridge there.

Sam: Mm-hm.

Man: The causeway has been hit,

What, three, four times and knocked sections out of it alsos.

Sam: Right.

Taking a scientific approach to a curse is hard but

I have to start somewhere.

So I'm looking for statistical anomalies,

Things that stand out, things that help me understand why a

Group of people might believe they're cursed.

Man: Every ten years, it was '64, '74, '84.

Sam: Right, pretty regular.

The murder and crime data is one thing.

There's plausible explanations for that.

But there's another piece of data,

Something that pops out of the noise.

There's an unseemly amount of catastrophic ship strikes and

Bridge collapses in this region.

More than anywhere else in the us.

Much more.

Sam: Keeps happening?

That's an understatement.

If you look at the bridge collapses in the

Entire united states because of ship collisions,

One in four happens in this area.

That means an area that takes up less than 1/2% of the

United states is responsible for 25% of the bridge collapses

Caused by ship strikes.

Now strangely, the exact same math works when computing

Williamsburg, brooklyn's contribution to the

Man bun pandemic.

So that's an anomaly but is it evidence of aunt julia's curse?

Or is there a more logical explanation?

Chris: We're just cruising on down the river,

We got about 40 miles to go.

We're headed down into the main port

In the harbor of new orleans.

Sam: Yeah, great.

Yeah, how we do speed up? Here?

Chris: Alright john.

Sam: Full speed ahead.

Chris rieder is a retired skipper who oversees a

Simulator that trains ship captains to navigate the local waterways.

How does he explain the deadly tragedies that keep happening here?

Chris: This is the greater new orleans twin bridges.

And this is where that ship the bright field,

He lost his engine right here.

I was coming up the river when he was coming down.

That's when he called, he was about right here.

He said, "chris, I just lost my engine."

Sam: Wow.

Chris: And we knew where he was going.

It turned into the bridge.

It had 50 people on it board and between myself and

Another tug boat, we managed to rescue half of the crew.

(beeping)

Sam: I would not make a good pilot, sorry.

So now you just give 'em a wave.

My bad.

Chris: Oh my word. We are in deep doo-doo here.

Sam: I just work here, man, you're the pilot.

Chris: Oh no, you're bailing out.

Sam: No, you're the pilot.

Let's keep going 'cause I don't wanna see,

We'll leave this in our, pretend it didn't happen.

We leave this poor guy in the water,

Yeah, we'll just keep going and.

So, just let me get this straight.

These waters are so dangerous because?

Chris: Certain time of year when the river's rising,

It picks up all of the debris off the riverbanks.

Logs and trees.

When it gets bad, it gets real bad.

Sam: Right.

Chris: It's mesmerizing, it's an optically illusion so you

Gotta really get up, shape yourself.

And when you get the lake on a black night and you get

Driftwood stuck in your propellers or your rudders.

Sam: Logs and trees in the water?

Now what does that remind me of?

Man: They logged the cypress.

And there's a lot of cypress logs that they left that

Are still just as solid today as the day they cut 'em because

They've been in the mud.

Sam: So ships are ramming into bridges in part because

They're dodging a maze of floating trees.

So could it all come back to the logging industry?

The same thing that pissed aunt julia off in the first place?

What happened here, man?

Sam: And it just makes a big trail of. Smashing through.

Sam: Whether or not you believe in aunt julia's curse,

Her vision of the future seems to be shockingly accurate.

Know what they look like.

Man: It's a giant rat with a long tail.

As soon as y'all see 'em, y'all can start shooting.

Sam: If I told you that a business tycoon of a certain

Famous hot sauce that goes really well on eggs bought a

Bunch of giant south american rodents to

Create a new fur trade in louisiana,

Man: 1957 they brought the nutrias from

South america to avery islands where

They produce tabasco hot sauce.

Sam: Oh yeah?

And that invader has single handedly destroyed

Tens of thousands of acres of the bayou,

Would you believe me?

Man: Nutria is a rodent that grows up to 26 pounds.

They're big, big rats.

Sam: Oh that was one right in that grass.

Man: Boy, that's a big son of a.

Sam: Got him. That was a good shot.

Man: That's what we're after, boys.

That's good size nutria there.

Sam: That's my idea of a nightmare.

Man: That animal eats a quarter of its bodyweight each day.

You can look at the teeth on these things.

They burrow the root out so when the root's exposed and

Then obviously the mud's exposed and that's when you

Get the erosion.

They'll completely take a 20 yard diameter island,

In a week it's under water.

Just completely.

Sam: In a week it's underwater?

Man: Absolutely.

Hard to imagine but all this was farmland.

Sam: So they're just literally sinking the bayou by themselves?

Man: Yep.

Sam: The damage that's been done by these

Creatures is overwhelming.

And the residents of southern louisiana are fighting a hopeless,

Rear guard battle against something like

20 million invaders.

So they've started a bounty program.

Man: Let's go get some more.

Sam: $6 to any man, woman or child who turns in

A nutria tail, dead or alive.

Man: In my bank, in my bank.

Man: Good job.

Sam: That's two big ones.

Man: Oh, good deal man.

Sam: Yeah, nice.

Man: Thanks for saving the marsh.

Sam: Yeah, hey. $12, dinner's on me.

Aunt julia said she was going to take the swamp with her

When she died.

And between the devastating logging and the insane

Destruction caused by the rodents of unusual size,

It seems like aunt julia's curse is coming true.

The swamp is disappearing.

This whole area used to be full of cypress?

Gary: This was a massive cypress swamp.

You can still see some of the stumps.

Some of those stumps are so big you could park a

Pickup truck on 'em, so they're very similar to redwoods,

That's the closest cousin to bald cypress is the redwood tree.

Sam: Okay.

So tell me the factors that are going into

The destruction of the bayou.

What's destroying the swamp?

Gary: Well, too much flooding, not enough nutrients.

And one of the main constraints for this whole ecosystem,

Hundreds of thousands of acres,

Is saltwater intrusion, that's probably the number issue.

Sam: So you're saying that salinity is destroying the swamp?

Gary: Yeah and everything's gonna die at some point.

No one believes me though, so.

Sam: Dr. Shaffer says that millions of nutria rats eat

The saplings of the trees.

And the old logging canals have destroyed the natural levies

Which allow salty ocean water to run backwards up

Into the swamp, killing the old trees.

So it's the perfect storm.

Gary: This is a great example.

.2 instead of 1.3.

So the soil we're seeing an order of magnitude more

Salt in the water.

And that will actually kill at tupelo,

It'll kill a maple.

And it would kill all the other species in the swamp.

Sam: Okay.

Gary: The swamp is really in trouble.

It's in big trouble.

Sam: Logging began the destruction of the swamp but

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and one

Terrible decision led to an absolute catastrophe.

The army corps of engineers started building walls along

The mississippi river in 1930.

It seemed like a great idea at the time,

Stop the constant flooding, the destruction.

The problem is, the river used to bring 85 million tons of soil

And spread it over the bayou each year.

It was an incredible act.

The earth healed its own scars,

Whatever the hurricanes or logging channels or

Erosion washed away.

But we've locked the river up and that soil now dumps out

Into deep water instead of rebuilding the delta.

Combine that with rising sea levels and 25 square miles of

Coastal louisiana falls into the ocean every year.

But because the causation's complex and multiple,

People throw up their hands and cry "curse!"

But really, it all comes back to one factor.

To us.

Gary: Cypress. They live about 3,000 years.

Sam: Oh wow.

Gary: And unlike other trees, a cypress does not fall over in hurricanes.

It's got a massive root system.

It's only about this deep but it goes for 200 feet in both

Directions and so it forms a tapestry with all the other trees.

Sam: Right, so they interlock and they.

Gary: To blow one tree over you gotta blow 100,000 trees over.

Sam: Right, so it doesn't happen.

Gary: And so hurricane katrina,

We modeled a cypress swamp, below new orleans, 12,000 acres,

Brought katrina back in, flooding was reduced by 82%.

Sam: Right, just the swamp there.

Gary: It would have completely protected new orleans.

You know, if I had it my way, we would plant at least

10 million cypress.

We can probably save two thirds of coastal louisiana if, if

We're smart enough.

Sam: Look, I hate easy answers because they're usually wrong.

Life is complicated and nothing is simple.

That's on my coat of arms.

So I'd love to tell you there's nothing to the curse

But everything aunt julia said seems to be coming true.

So let's go a little further down the rabbit hole,

Just in case.

Did aunt julia really use hoodoo to unleash

100 years of pain and destruction on the swamp?

Or did hoodoo somehow give her the ability to see into the future?

Ty: Ai, papa legba.

Sang a song and her neighbors thought it was a curse.

She threatened to take all of the land with her when she died.

So far, it seems like it's coming true.

But was it a curse or just a coincidence?

Or could it have been a profound warning from someone

Who could sense that there was trouble on the road ahead.

But how could she know?

And what is hoodoo anyway?

Ty: Just imagine being on a cotton field or on a

Plantation and being brutalized and your spouse and

Children being brutalized and the idea that a god or a power

Or a spirit can seek revenge in masse.

It was the one thing that the enslaved african had

That gave them power.

Sam: Hoodoo originated in west africa and adapted under

The chains of slavery.

Whispered on ships and plantations.

It manifested in the desperate desires of the powerless,

Stripped from their homes, lives shattered,

Brought to a hell they did not understand.

Hoodoo is also called root work,

Using the power of tree roots to conjure spells,

To heal and even to curse.

So tell me about root work.

Ty: So at the root level of what root work and hoodoo is,

It's about nature and using nature,

Plants, mosses to heal and then the supernatural aspects

Of it do carry from a ancient west african perspective that

Trees carry spirit, wood carries a spirit,

The ground that it grows in carries a spirit.

Sam: Wow.

Ty: So it's more than just healing, ingestion,

Using the botanical nature of what these plants are.

But there's that spirit power.

Ty: Ai, papa legba. Ai.

Sam: The energy is infectious.

Whether someone from the spirit world,

Or purely human in nature, prince ty and his friends

Believe the power to connect with the other realm was

Unlocked by the roots.

There's magic in the roots, magic strong enough to unleash

A 100-year curse.

But it raises a question.

Is there any kind of scientific explanation to the

Magic of the roots?

Demetra: The more people look, the more we

Realize that plants actually work like a community.

Research is showing that the plant-fungal relationship

Is a symbiotic one.

So we know plants in an ecosystem divert some of their

Resources to other species, it's not just their own species.

Sam: So a plant from a totally different species will help

Other struggling plants?

Demetra: Absolutely. Sam: That's amazing.

And what kind of things would it send?

Demetra: Nutrient, so the fungal network

Could tap into another root system

And distribute those nutrients throughout.

Sam: Distribute the nutrients.

So it would be interacting with these grasses.

Demetra: Mm-hm.

Sam: And communicating with basically every plant.

Demetra: Right. Sam: Anything with roots.

Demetra: And that's kind of important because the system

Around here is pretty much starved of nutrients.

Sam: Prince ty said, "the trees carry a spirit."

Ty: Trees carry a spirit, wood carries a spirit,

The ground that it grows in carries a spirit.

Sam: Turns out cutting edge science is basically saying

The same thing.

Dr. Demetra and other scientists around the world

Are only beginning to understand these fungal networks

Called mycorrhizae, which allow trees to

Communicate through the roots.

In parts of british columbia, this root network is literally

The difference between life and death.

Young saplings in deeply shaded areas of the forest

Don't get enough sunlight to survive.

So other big trees, often hundreds of feet away,

Pump sugar into their roots and keep them alive.

If the cypress roots in the swamp have this network,

Then the roots are, in a way, magical,

Just like aunt julia said.

And it could be the key to restoring balance and the

Swamp saving itself.

So there could be a massive spiderweb network of fungi

That's spread out from this tree.

Demetra: That's right.

Any of these plants could potentially harbor mycorrhizae.

So really, what we wanna do is take these back to the lab,

Take a look.

And if they're present, then we know that they're out here,

Benefiting the ecosystem.

Sam: So if we can find that fungus,

This tree will have a much better chance?

Demetra: The only hope is these little roots right here.

Sam: How far across the swamp could it stretch?

Demetra: Potentially forever.

Sam: And that may not be the only magic hiding in these roots.

What are we hoping to find in the roots?

Demetra: It's called a dark septate endophyte and they're enzymes.

There have been experiments that have shown that you can

Convert plants that cannot tolerate salt into plants that

Can tolerate salt.

Sam: Wow.

Demetra: Just by adding endophytes or introducing

Endophytes to those plants.

Sam: And that's worked?

Demetra: That has worked, yes, just by adding an endophyte

From a plant that lives on the coast,

They were able to convert rice plants into plants that

Are able to tolerate salt.

So we know it can be done.

Sam: Right.

Demetra: And our hope is that that is one way to counteract

The stressors that cypress are experiencing.

Sam: Although more research is needed,

If the microscope shows that endophytes have colonized

Inside the cypress roots, these super tiny organisms

Could hold the key to saving the wetlands.

Well, let's take a look.

Demetra: As you can see, this is a long process.

Sam: We're gonna figure it out right now, doc.

Demetra: Sometimes, it's like, yeah, finding a needle in a haystack.

Sam: No, sure. Demetra: Oh.

That's what you're looking for.

We've just taken root samples from cypress trees in the

Nearby manchac swamp.

We're now back at her lab looking for fungi,

Which would be evidence of some sort of crazy magical

Symbiosis that allows trees to communicate and share nutrients.

And this could be the swamp's only chance of survival.

So what are you looking for now, again?

Demetra: You wanna find structures of the mutualistic fungi.

For dark septate endophyte,

You're looking for the microsclerocia.

They look like little balls inside the cell.

Little dark balls.

Oh yeah.

That's what you're looking for.

If you look at the thick strands.

Sam: Mm-hm.

Demetra: You'll see the darker structure sort of near

The top of that root, yeah.

Sam: That ball there?

Demetra: Yeah, well, it looks like balls have been

Stuffed into a cell.

Sam: Oh yeah.

Demetra: Those are dark septate endophyte.

Sam: Wow.

Demetra: Those are so finely branched that it's really easy

To absorb anything and distribute those nutrients.

Sam: How does that happen?

Demetra: I wish I knew, I wish I knew.

Sam: Is that, then we'd be all set, right?

Demetra: It's a big question, how do they do it?

Evolution works all random and it's accidental.

If there's something out there that happens to make that

Environment advantageous to it,

Then that'll perpetuate.

Sam: Right.

This successful lab test is proof that the key to saving

Louisiana's bayou might lie in the cypress roots themselves.

Demetra: We know that all of the flooding and all of that

Destruction that happened with hurricane katrina could have

Been avoided if that swamp was still in place.

Sam: Right.

Demetra: The cypress trees also are able to sequester carbon,

So if that tree is pulling carbon out of the

Atmosphere and it's burying it in its roots,

All of that carbon is coming out of the air and

Not perpetuating the cycle of um, climate change.

Sam: So the thing that could save the world is these roots, basically?

Demetra: Yes, cypress can save the world.

Sam: Cypress can save the world.

Long before aunt julia ever practiced her hoodoo,

Before even the american slave trade,

The people in west africa believed the roots held power

Beyond our understanding.

It's taken science hundreds of years to catch up and confirm that,

In a way, they were right.

Ty: There's a lot that's been said about aunt julia's curse.

It said that she cursed the swamp.

I don't necessarily agree with that.

Sam: Oh really?

Ty: That could have been a prediction to get across to

These people, live right, get it together or all of this

Could be gone.

Sam: The interesting part of it to me is a curse

Comes from transgression, right?

Like you've done something to offend the gods,

You've done something wrong.

And all the ills that are assailing louisiana,

All the things that are destroying the wetlands,

Comes from things we've created,

Come from problems that mankind has made,

You know, the land is cursed, absolutely.

And it's a curse brought on by the very thing aunt julia was

Railing against, you know?

You're destroying her forest, you are destroying her land.

And it was all gonna get washed away.

And that's exactly what happened.

Ty: Papa legba, ai.

Sam: So the curse of aunt julia wasn't a curse at all.

Maybe it was the wise words of a woman whose connection to

The earth far exceeded any understanding science could

Offer at the time.

The louisiana bayou is in trouble but not because

Of magic, but because of mankind's short sightedness

And the laws of unintended consequences.

The accelerated effects of the hurricanes are because

Of all of it: Logging, canals, the vanishing swamp land,

Climate change and even the invasive rodent that destroys

Everything in its path.

These are all man-made maladies.

We created imbalances in the natural order and as for the

Possibility of a shrimp apocalypse,

I got some good news. Shrimp are delicious.

But in the connectedness in our ecosystem

We can find balance.

There are hundreds of people who are dedicated to restoring

Order in the bayou.

And maybe the best hope of all is in the roots,

The very thing that gave aunt julia her power.

It could ultimately be the key to ending the curse.

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