This is Planet Money from NPR.

Hey everyone, Stacey here from Planet Money's Daily Podcast, The Indicator.

So a few years back, I went on this kind of race against time with a truffle hunter.

So truffles, those are the things that grow underground, like mushrooms and restaurants

pay huge amounts of money for tiny amounts of truffles.

Well, we got back in touch with our truffle hunter again recently, and white truffle prices

have hit in all time high this year, making the notoriously rare and already expensive delicacy

even harder to come by.

And changing the truffle to table industry, maybe forever.

So here's our episode from 2016, and be sure to stick around for an update at the end.

Ian Praskaya, that tasted his first truffle when he was 15 years old.

He was out at a fancy restaurant with a friend's family.

The server came over and said, okay, we have a special for tonight, and it's a black

truffle ravioli with a fwagra sauce, and it was music to my ears.

So I should explain why a 15 year old boy was this excited by black truffle, Rabioli.

Ian's family had moved to the country, and Ian had started learning to forage for mushrooms.

And for foragers, truffles are almost mythical. They're really hard to find.

They grow underground.

They're only found in the wild.

Nobody has ever figured out how to cultivate them.

And nobody has figured out how to make anything else taste or smell quite like that.

There's only one thing that tastes and smells like a truffle.

...