Here Comes Truffle

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode, join us on a hunt for buried treasure at a super-secret location in North Carolina. We follow a million-dollar dog wearing adorable slippers, and then get down on our knees, butts in the air and noses in the dirt, on the trail of a fungus that drives both pigs and people wild. The smell's been described many different ways—cheesy, earthy, garlicky, even sweaty—but there’s only one thing in nature that can make it: truffles. So, how did this knobbly, brown, potato-shaped fungus come to be one of the world's most expensive foods—and is there any science behind its reputation as an aphrodisiac? Listen in this episode as we get down and dirty hunting truffles, exposing truffle fraud, and getting the scoop on one of the world's oldest and most equal partnerships. Just what you wanted for Valentine’s Day! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey guys, so this is Lattie and this is WC.
0:08.0	Hi.
0:09.0	So Cynthia and I had driven into the middle of nowhere in North Carolina with Jeffrey
0:15.7	Coker and then he introduced us to WC Painter who's a farm manager and Lattie.
0:21.0	Who is a dog?
0:22.0	Lattie has been in, we found two pounds this morning and we got another half a pound this
0:29.4	afternoon so far.
0:30.4	That would be two pounds of truffles.
0:33.0	Lattie is an expert truffle finding dog and we were there to follow him around a truffle
0:37.3	orchard.
0:38.3	Get your boots back on.
0:40.3	Get the boy.
0:41.3	I mean his foot.
0:43.8	I have to put his boots on so he won't damage the truffle with his claws.
0:47.9	Yep, this was as adorable as it sounds and Lattie is basically the new star of Gastropod.
0:54.1	He's a yellow Labrador, he's four years old and his boots are just the standard truffle
0:58.8	dog slippers, stylish little slip on leather booties with a Velcro cuff.
1:03.9	Perfect for the fashion board pup.
1:05.5	But of course as you listeners already know, Lattie wasn't wearing them as a fashion statement.
1:10.2	He needed them to protect the precious truffles.
1:12.9	Now that truffle orchard we were wandering around with him, we can't tell you exactly
1:17.0	where it is or else we'd have to kill you.
	...

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