Return of the Kiwi Apocalypse: 10 years of Outside/In

I've been feeling old Nate. Yeah? How so? The other day I was eating a bagel and I asked my son if I had any cream cheese in my beard. He was like, ah, it's hard to tell. There's so much gray. Ooh. But burn, right? Yeah. This is outside in a show where curiosity in the natural world collide. I am Nate Hedgie in the studio with our esteemed executive producer, Taylor Quimby, TQ. So I've been thinking about Seinfeld a lot lately. Were you a fan? Were? Are? Are you a fan? Yes, it's syndication. I watch it a lot. I love it. To that point, Seinfeld is one of those shows that, you know, to me it's practically timeless. Like there is A, an episode for virtually every situation that you could reference and B, because of the reruns and streaming, it just, it goes on forever. And here's the thing, Nate, outside in has officially been a podcast for longer than Seinfeld's original TV run. Nice. That's awesome. So Seinfeld was on for nine seasons, nine years. This month, Outside In just hit our 10th anniversary. Our first episode came out on December 1st, 2015. Wow. You know that Jerry Seinfeld only ended the show because he was told like, you got to end it on a high note. Here at Outside In, we're not going to end it on a high note. We're just going to keep going. The high note is now. We're still in the high note. We're going more for the Simpsons. Yeah. Yeah. We are South Park. We are Simpsons. We are Family Guy. Today on Outside In, we are celebrating a special milestone. Yeah. 10 years is long enough to give you a little bit of vertigo. I couldn't have imagined we'd still be working on the show. And so we wanted to listen back to that very first episode that went out on the podcast feed. Yeah. And afterwards, we'll talk a little bit more about the past, present, and future of Outside In. Just talking? What's the show about? It's about nothing. No stories? Oh, forget the story. You got to have a story. Who says you got to have a story? Oh. Kitty. A great story like Monsters Inc. stays with you forever. And Disney Class is where you'll find your next great story from the return of the award-winning hit series, Rivals. Welcome to the naughtiest show on television. To the unmissable crime drama, High Potential. Gotta dead body. Gotta go. The lifetime of great stories awaits. This spring on Disney Plus, 18 Plus, subscription required. T's and C's apply. Are you ready for an open world driving adventure in breathtaking Japan? Race and discover in Forza Horizon 6 with over 550 real world cars. Solo all with friends. Explore a world of stunning contrasts, diverse biomes, and Japanese culture. Get early access and play Forza Horizon 6 Now on Xbox and PC with the Premium Edition. Is that outside in? I am Nate Hedge in the studio with executive producer Taylor Quimby. And today, in celebration of 10 years as a podcast, we're going to replay our very first episode, the Kiwi Apocalypse. And for newer listeners, the story was produced by our first host, your predecessor, Nate, Sam Evans Brown. It came out in December of 2015. And a quick disclaimer, a few years ago, Sam hung up his hat as a journalist and became executive director of Clean Energy, New Hampshire. So now you'll occasionally hear him as a source in the news, advocating about renewable energy. I actually just heard him on Marketplace the other day. But back then, he was just a humble podcaster. But I got to tell you, the reason I'm so excited to play this is because it feels like something we might have produced today in 2025. It hits a lot of the same big themes that have stayed with us now for 10 years. All right, let's hear it. I love Kiwis. If I could, I would plant a Kiwi vine right in my backyard. Ripe Kiwis, when you cut them in half and spoon out that sweet green fruit from the fuzzy brown skin, definitely my favorite. But most Kiwi are being grown in places like Italy, France, New Zealand, places that don't have the bitter cold winters that we have here in New England. But and this is something that I'm almost positive you did not know. There are 50 species of Kiwi, including some from Siberia, but the ones that can handle the cold, you can't buy them in stores, at least for now. But the people who do know about them seem to love them. Instructor was saying, yeah, these are Kiwis. Oh my God, Kiwis, I've never seen anything like that and popped one in my mouth. And it was just, you just wonder, like, how can you be on a planet for three decades and no one just ever tell you that there's something like that out there. It was really upsetting. Because it's not like you can go in a market and buy them. This is Iago Hale. He's at the University of New Hampshire and he's trying to bring these new Kiwis to the state. Kiwis, you probably wouldn't even recognize them as Kiwis. They're tiny and the skin is hairless and edible. So what would you call them? I personally like Wiwis, just because, you know, but I've been told by our bad novice that that's not an acceptable name. Welcome to Outside In, a show about the natural world and how we use it. I'm Sam Evans-Brown. And today we're talking about Wiwis, which actually go by the name Kiwi Berries, or as I shall call them henceforth, hardy Kiwi. They sound totally harmless and adorable, but we're talking to two people with very different visions for this fruit. One thinks it could be the next big thing, which could save the economy in places that are struggling to make it work. The other is terrified. We're going to talk about how this sweet little fruit figures in a surprisingly complex debate. And we'll hear both sides, both sweet and unsavory. OK, so what you're looking at right now is just about one acre of the UNH Experiment Station Kiwi Vineyard. This is our research. Down in Durham, there are these posts about six feet tall with wires in between them. And every few feet, there's a vine that grows up to the wire and then sends out shoots sideways along it. You might mistake them for grapevines, like at a winery, but they're a little different. Kiwis grow like a canopy that stretches out over your head instead of like a wall in front of you. Regular Kiwis, the ones you can get at the grocery store, come from China and are also grown commercially in New Zealand, Italy, Chile, Greece, and its big business. We're talking millions of tons of Kiwis grown and sold. The species of Kiwi Iago is trying to bring to market come from places way up north in the Asian continent, places where it's really, really cold. Cold like New Hampshire's North Country, where Iago thinks these hardy Kiwi could grow even in the lousy soils up there. The Kiwis aren't that fussy, you know, kind of average pH. They don't need particularly fertile soils. So there's a lot of things about them that I think fit New Hampshire quite well. A bit about the North Country. We're talking about a part of the state that used to be a real economic center in New Hampshire about a hundred years ago. But slowly the mills have been shutting down. People started leaving. Businesses were boarded up. Factories were left behind empty. The median income is $23,000 a year less than in the rest of New Hampshire and 4% of the population moved away between 2010 and 2014. Times are tough up there. And when you stroll through towns, you feel it. Which is why Iago wants to bring them something great. Like a fruit that nobody else is growing. And to hear him tell it is way better. Hale says regular Kiwi is something like 5% or 6% sugar. Whereas hardy Kiwi are closer to 25% or even 30% sugar. Sweet. It also has a lot of acid to it. So it has this really complex flavor to it. A lot of tropical kind of flavors. Pineapple, mango, papaya. I mean, they're amazing. You're really still. I know, they're really amazing. But this plant is still kind of wild. It does all sorts of things that are pretty inconvenient for farmers. Its vines grow so quickly that it has to be pruned constantly. Many species don't put out a ton of fruit. And the species that do don't handle the winter as well. So Iago is trying to breed the various varieties together to come up with something that he can take to market. But I think as soon as we make the headway that I expect we will, this is going to be huge. And there is some precedent for this. You know the blueberry story, right? No, it's not a blueberry story. So most things we know. Here's the blueberry story. In the early 1900s, a USDA researcher teamed up with a farm in New Jersey to start finding and planting wild blueberry bushes that had nice, big, uniformly sized berries. In the span of just six years, they came up with a variety that eventually turned into a huge success commercially. So really almost in living memory, the blueberry has gone from a totally wild, un-farmable plant to what it is today. These days, North American farmers earn almost a billion dollars a year producing blueberries. My long-term vision here is, A, we're going to create an industry where one doesn't exist. You know, and I kind of take the blueberry as a nice story there that this could be big and this can create a lot of jobs. But I also see this, particularly for the North country where soils are terrible, pastures are depleted, you know, the environment is quite harsh. If you can get a high-value crop up in Coloss County, that could be really transformative. Transformative is an interesting word to choose in this situation. There's another group of people who also think cold-hearted kiwis could be transformative. Here, Tom. Morning, Sam. Morning. This is Tom Lautzenheiser. He's a botanist with Massachusetts Audubon. So I feel like my objective today is to blow your mind. Because you're going to look at that in a whole new way when you see what's out here. And it's really, it's like walking into a different world. Tom is studying a park in Lenox, Massachusetts over in the Berkshires. It's a very pretty spot. There's over a thousand acres of forests with miles of trails. And the park used to be a well-manicured estate. There was, Aspenwall Hotel was a luxury hotel at the top of the hill about maybe three-quarters of a mile from where we are now. And how long ago was that there? That was around 1910. And I think the hotel burned down shortly thereafter. And if you Google the hotel Aspenwall, the image that comes up is this hand-tinted photo that shows the front of the hotel. And on some of the trees in front of the entrance, you can just see this foliage kind of draping over the lower part of these tree trunks. And it's like, huh, I swear there's hardy kiwi. This is Loutzenheiser's theory as to where the hardy kiwi in this park came from. They were planted by some gardener at an old fancy hotel. If that's right, they've been left on their own for about a hundred years. And the result is pretty jaw-dropping. Wow. Okay. So, okay, so. That is all hardy kiwi. Can you describe? Can you describe this? Well, what you're seeing is essentially a patch of forest that has been completely overwhelmed by hardy kiwi. You come up a hill in this park and the vines are just everywhere. It's like a scene from some movie that's set in a jungle somewhere. Kiwi vines carpet the ground and they're climbing up every tree and cover them in this shaggy jacket of leaves. There's a space about the size of a football field where whole trees have been pulled down by the weight of the vines. Tom says this part happens during ice storms when the kiwis freeze up and get really heavy. So out of control, you can see it in satellite photos. You can see it clearly when you know what to look for. You know, a normal forest canopy on an aerial photo is a nice smooth appearance and then this is like little holes kind of like drops of acid or, you know, caterpillars eating your sweaters or something and just... The kiwi vines are probably three or four feet thick on the ground and you can walk around on top of them and it feels kind of like you're walking around in one of those inflatable bouncy houses. Except sometimes the bounce house trips you. This is one kiwi plant. It has spread by putting down new roots every time the vine touches the ground again. There are about 20 acres in the park that have been totally covered in kiwi vines and if you add in the areas that aren't quite that bad, there's somewhere between 50 and 100 acres that are infested. Okay. But that's only part of the story. Little bit on the tree there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh it is. There it is. Sneaking. All over this park, there are kiwi seedlings. That delicious fruit has been picked up by birds or raccoons and the seeds are making their way outward from the site of the old hotel. Sneaking into the sub canopy. Those seedlings are sprouting and even though they're completely shaded by the other trees in this park, they're surviving and starting to climb toward the light. Even in spots where at first glance, you might not notice them. Tom and his team have surveyed about 500 acres around the worst infestations and found kiwi sprouts in 40% of that space. Tom is afraid. He's afraid that there's some sort of kiwi apocalypse poised to sweep over New England. I don't want that happening across New England. That seems like a bad outcome for what I view as a novelty. Tom says he's seen hardy kiwi berries on sale before and he shudders every time he does because he's seen what they can do. He does not like Iago's vision of kiwi as a cash crop. He does not think this fruit should be the next blueberry. The thing is, for me, it's like I'm trying to not get emotional about it because it's like I mean this is the evidence that we have a potential problem here and it's frustrating to show people this who then really just don't make the connection that if they put this vine out on a landscape, this is a potential consequence. This is a familiar story. A guy finds a plant on some other continent and because it's pretty or tasty or useful, he brings it home with him. Then it escapes from control and it's incredibly invasive and it runs rampant across a landscape for decades before people finally start to notice and spend tons of money to try to keep it in check. That's what's happened with Oriental Bitter Suite with glossy buckthorn and the Himalayan Blackberry, which is absolutely everywhere in the Pacific Northwest. My brother-in-law lives in Portland and it's the same thing, like every vacant lot. This is Brian Connolly, a botanist at the University of Framingham in Massachusetts. There's the blackberry, you know, what do I do? I was there with my son who was two or three at the time and we were going around picking them, eating them, enjoying them, you know. Delicious though they may be, they are clearly invasive and incredibly disruptive of native ecosystems. But invasiveness is not a black or white or yes or no question. There is no silver bullet to say this plant is invasive or not invasive and we also don't have a crystal ball predicting what these species can actually do. The problem with the Kiwi Apocalypse scenario is while they may be going crazy in Lenox Mass, there are lots of places where Kiwi have been planted and have been ignored for years or decades even and all that happens is you wind up with a few big, dreadlocky looking vines but they don't spread like crazy. That's a crux of the matter with the Kiwi is, you know, we have one beastly site where this plant is dominating hundreds to maybe, you know, thousands of acres but it's basically the only place in the world that it's really acting this aggressive. And so is this, you know, a peek into the future or is this some sort of unique situation? So this brings up another possibility for Yago's Kiwi. We could wind up denying ourselves a useful plant because it's problematic in just a few places. For instance, there's this tree called the Black Locust. It makes great firewood, it's rot resistant so it's excellent for fence posts. Great wonderful smelling flowers that, you know, are fantastic for honey, the flowers are actually edible. In some habitats, like in prairies or out on Cape Cod, it can cause problems but it's just another tree in the forest, it's not so bad. Regardless, it was put onto the Massachusetts list. Some folks from the committee that made that decision still aren't sure it was a good call. In other words, we don't know the end of this story yet. We just know the beginning and we have to guess what the end will be. Yago, for the record, has been to Lenox, Massachusetts and has seen the Kiwi apocalypse. In the words of Tom Lautzenheiser, Yago has even lifted his loppers in solidarity and helped to cut down some of the vines down there. But he's also been to other places like Mount Desert Island in Maine where he's seen Kiwi plants that were abandoned 30 years ago and never went crazy like the one in Lenox. A lot of the things he's trying to breed into hardy kiwis are the kind of things that could actually make this problem go away. He wants the plants to put out less vine and to need to be babied and an orchard in order to put out large amounts of fruit. So will hardy kiwi be like the black lotus, promising but still shut down, or like the Himalayan blackberry, a scourge across the whole region? Or will this wind up being more like the blueberry, ubiquitous, delicious, profitable, and above all, tame? Well, it's sort of grapey. I kind of like it because it's bitter in the back. There's a little bit of bitterness, but it's also sweet. I do not like the texture. The texture and consistency freaks me out. But that's like you. That's totally me and I'm a weirdo. I thought that was like for the first episode. We had the original theme song in there. It was awesome. It was pretty fully formed, I got to say. The other thing though is that in those early days, we didn't have a regular publishing schedule. I know. I was going to say I wonder how long that 17 minute piece took to produce compared to the turnaround we have for half an hour pieces nowadays. But what I love listening back to this story is how in a lot of ways we have been telling versions of it for 10 years. Many environmental issues are just not that clear cut. Whether we're hearing from scientists or conservationists or just regular folks, again and again, it's people who are often trying to make the best decisions with limited information in a world where the impact of our decisions are really, really hard to predict. That is such a perfect segue because we just heard Sam say, we don't know the end of the story, but a decade later, we do. To commemorate this 10 year anniversary, this week I gave Iago Hale a call. That's the guy who was championing the Hardy Kiwi. I just made a big mistake back then. Oh boy. So turns out the varieties of Kiwi berries that Iago was using back in 2015 were not hard enough to thrive in the North Country's tough winters. I had taken those early growers and that early enthusiasm and threw a lot of materials at them that just weren't very good. Huh. Iago has since shifted his focus a little bit more south where he's having better luck and he's developing some different varieties that might do better in colder conditions. But the salvation of the North Country, he said, did not happen. It's interesting though because on the flip side, the idea of a Kiwi apocalypse in New England also hasn't really borne out in part because scientists have discovered that these berries rely on dung beetles to really propagate in the wild. So back when that park in Massachusetts was a hotel estate, they had a lot of dairy cows, which means a lot of poop, which means a lot of dung beetles. Oh wow. We can see through historical layers that where we're seeing these naturalized vines, they're right on the pasture forest edge of these historic dairy production. So Iago says we're just not seeing a big invasion of Kiwi berries outside of these areas that were once cattle farms. And we should say that a couple of years after this episode originally aired, Massachusetts decided not to list the Kiwi berry as an invasive species. It's so funny that this first episode was kind of proposed as this either or vision of the future. It's either terrible or it's other incredible. And as is often the case, the answer is like neither. Yeah, exactly. It was like high stakes and nothing seemed to really materialize. We've got to take a break, but when we come back, we're going to dive down, nostalgia the lane a little bit and talk more about what it means to hit 10 years as a show. The Life Changing Partnership. It's more than a donation. It's the start of a life changing story. Search, sponsor a guide dog puppy and be part of a story you'll be proud to share. Wait, wait, wait, don't skip this. Don't skip this. Don't skip this. This is not an ad. This is me, Nate, and I'm here to tell you that it is yet again time to open up the outside inbox to listener questions. We have been getting the most random submissions lately. Can Bobcats get hairballs? Or why does warm dirt smell so good? But we need more questions, so please send us the weirdest, wackiest questions about science and the natural world that you can think of. It is super easy. You can call our hotline at 1-844-GO-AUTER. Or even better, send us a voice memo to outsideinradio.org. Okay, back to the show. All right, welcome back. This is Outside In. I'm Nate Hedgie celebrating 10 years of the show with Taylor Quimby. And by the way, we're going to keep this party going. We are doing a special live event on February 6th here in New Hampshire. So obviously, this is for listeners mostly in the New England region. But hey, if you feel like flying out, we will be extra glad to see you. It's going to be kind of a moth-style storytelling event, but you'll get a chance to meet the team and hang out and remember all the good times. The theme of the night, I'm very fond of this, is metamorphosis. Ooh, and we've got a link to more about it in the show notes, so get your tickets now. Yeah. Okay, so Taylor, you are officially the only current Outside In staffer who was around when we first started the show. How does it feel to be looking back at 10 years of Outside In? It feels really weird. Personally, when the show first came out, my son was just over toddler age. And I have over my career occasionally exploited his cuteness for radio and podcast. For example, I think in 2019, he would have been eight. We had him on to talk about fishing. Well, when you're driving there, you're very exciting because you're like, oh, I really want to put that worm on the hook and start fishing. My Lord, Finn sounds so young there. Which is all to say, he is now in high school. So 10 years is a crazy time. I was just thinking, my dog was born three months before the show was born. And now he's old. He's got gray hair. Yeah. When you were creating Outside In, did you guys know exactly what you were trying to do? What the philosophy of the show was? I mean, we had an idea. The tagline used to be different. It was a show. God, what was it? It was about the natural world and how we use it. And I think Sam was particularly interested in really making it clear that there isn't this clear distinction between wilderness and nature and us. Although we got a lot of complaints about the tagline over the years because a lot of people thought it was sort of like exploitative. And it's like promoting the exploitation of nature for human purposes, which was not the idea. I think the other thing that we knew we wanted to do was we wanted to have a really welcoming and accessible show that understands like everybody has a relationship to the outdoors in different ways. This doesn't need to be a show that's for people who consider themselves green or environmentalists. So we had this exercise early on where we were supposed to identify who our sort of mental picture of a listener is. And we all kind of had a similar thing, which was like somebody who maybe does some hiking or does some stuff outside, maybe recycles is interested in, but sometimes intimidated by environmental coverage. Yeah. And I kind of still feel like that's the philosophy of the show today. We're making it for people who maybe their experience with the outdoors is just their backyard. And that's wonderful and great. And we want them to listen to the show. When we did eventually change the tagline, we had gotten advice early on that like the word curious is kind of a four letter word. It's not descriptive. There's too many shows that do that. And eventually I was like, screw that. That is a main value of outside it. And so being curious, which to me also says like having fun, being non-judgmental about learning about things, tapping into all the things that get us excited about nature when we're kids, whether it's like weird bugs or space, that that's not a bad thing. And that we can cover serious issues without losing that same curious perspective. And I think that's something that we've probably struggled with here and there over the years as like news has changed and politics of environmentalism and climate have changed. But we've held onto it. And I still, it's really, really important to me as an executive producer that that's something the show does. How do you think the show has changed though? Well, technically, like we put out a weekly podcast now and so like the episodes are a little bit shorter. I do think for all I just said about keeping that curiosity, like we were pretty silly in the early days. Yeah. Like if you listen back to the old Ask Sam theme, which is what is now the outside inbox, I mean, I made that and it is ridiculous. You've heard it, right? I don't think I've heard it. Why do geese make feet? Does a bumblebee sneeze? Can a person eat tree? Can a polar bear freeze? Is a kitty stone kind of like a pearl in a clam? I don't know Ask Sam. Oh my God. That's a great one. I like that. I vote for more of Taylor making our theme music. I'm down in theory. Do you feel like the show has changed just in the years that you've been here? Which like, what is now like four years? Four years. Yes, I think that the show has changed. I mean, our editing process, a lot of behind the curtain things that have changed to make it a smooth, well oiled machine. You're referring to when I introduced the outside inversion of squid games, right? Make you all face off against each other. Exactly. Exactly. You know, only the strongest survive. Yeah. No, I think I think like, you know, our scope. I love the fact that we send our producers to places that are not New England, out West, California, Ireland, St. Louis, St. Louis. Yeah, exactly. Like doing that, I think is really exciting. That's the biggest one, I would say. It's just the breadth of our reporting has expanded. Do you think it will still be around in 2035? I don't know. If we're not replaced by robots, like let's talk about five years and then and then we'll come back to 10. It's really cool. I feel incredibly lucky to work for the show every day because, you know, 10 years is a really long time for a podcast and for a public radio show. And I really hope that we, we have many years to go after this. Yeah, me too. Well, that is it folks. But if you have been a longtime fan and are as absolutely shocked as we are, that we've survived this long, we'd love to hear from you. I mean, what episodes have stuck with you? How do you think the show has changed over the years? As usual, you can email us at outsidein at NHPR.org. We love getting voice memos, but you can also call us at the trusty hot line. 1-844-GO-AUTER. You know it. I am the Empire Strikes Back of Hosts. I'm Nate Hedgie. Kiwi Apocalypse was reported and produced by the new Hope Host, number one original Sam Evans Brown with help from the show's first executive producer, Marine McMurray, as well as Taylor Quimby, Logan Shannon and Megan Tan. Our current staff includes Marina Hanky, Justin Parody, Felix Boone and Jessica Hunt. And since we're just naming lots of people, I think we should shout out some of the other people who have helped make Outside In what it is today, Erica Janek, Molly Donikiu, Jimmy Gutierrez. There's a whole bunch of other people who have contributed. Including Rebecca LaVoy, who is NHPR's director of On Demand Audio. Music in this episode was by Blue Dot Sessions, Sarah, the instrumentalist and OTE. The old theme music that you heard there and don't hear very much anymore is by Breakmaster Cylinder. And Outside In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Music in the background. Man, I'd still like to taste a kiwi berry. They sound delicious. Oh, I have, I'm allergic to kiwis. What am I saying? You're allergic to kiwis. Yeah. When I eat kiwis, my, my mouth gets itchy. So I wonder if that, that would happen if I ate a kiwi berry. Who knows? Let's not try. We can't, we can't suffer the loss of another host. We all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask. Even in 2026, Enter How To, the longstanding advice show and Ambia Ward nominated best personal growth podcast that's back with new episodes and a new host who, me, Mike Peska. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond with help from a world class expert. You know, someone who actually very much knows what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silences. You've got questions. We'll find the experts and the answers. So follow How To with Mike Peska wherever you get podcasts. Have you ever asked yourself, can the president really do that? Or wondered if there was too much money in political campaigns? Then check out the new season of You Might Be Right hosted by us, former Tennessee governors Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam. We're back for a brand new season now. And you might be right. Cements the idea that constructive disagreement can lead to real problem solved this season. We're going to dig into the role of the National Guard, AI regulation and a lot more. New episodes drop every other week. Follow You Might Be Right wherever you get your podcasts.