A Service of UA Little Rock
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Episode 775: The Pigweed Killer

Marianne McCune
/
NPR

The border of Arkansas and Missouri is a land of open skies and long stretches of farmland. It's also the scene for a fight against a weed – specifically the pigweed, which will overwhelm a crop in a season.

Farmers are in constant conflict with the weed. Some have turned to a powerful pesticide called Dicamba. Dicamba kills the pigweed, but it also kills the neighbors' plants, including farmer Mike Wallace's crops. The conflict was no longer farmer versus weed, but also farmer versus farmer. When his neighbors illegally sprayed the pesticide, Wallace reported it. After harvest, Wallace was shot and killed.

On today's show, a murder mystery – about how a weed divided neighbors and led to Mike Wallace's death.

Music: "Devil Ridge" and "Bootstrap Blues." Find us: Twitter/ Facebook.

Subscribe to our show onApple Podcasts or PocketCast.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Marianne McCune
Marianne McCune is a reporter and producer for Embedded: Buffalo Extreme who has more than two decades of experience making award-winning audio stories. She has produced narrative podcast series for New York Magazine (Cover Story), helped start, produce and edit long-form narrative shows for NPR and public radio affiliates (Rough Translation; United States of Anxiety, Season Four), reported locally and internationally (NPR News, NPR's Planet Money and WNYC News) and produced groundbreaking narrative audio tours (SF MOMA, Detour). She is also the founder of Radio Rookies, a narrative youth radio series, that is still thriving at WNYC.