Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover

Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and

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Today is September 13, 2021 and my guest is journalist and author Rowan Jacobson. He has written books

on apples, oysters and now his latest book on our subject for today is Truffle Hound. On the trail

of the world's most seductive scent with dreamers, schemers and some extraordinary dogs. Rowan,

welcome to econ talk. Thanks for asking to be here. So your book is the story of the world of Truffles.

And I've heard of Truffles, but I actually didn't know much about them. I now am fully educated,

remarkably so by your very entertaining book. But I think most of us, when we think of Truffles,

think of chocolate. So that's not what your book is about. So tell us what Truffles are.

You know, it's funny. Most people actually think of the chocolate truffles. When they hear the

word Truffles, but the chocolate ones are named for the real truffles, which are fruiting bodies

of a fungus that lives underground and has a partnership with trees. When the fungus wants to

reproduce, it makes these four-filled balls, which are called truffles and which the chocolate ones

were kind of inspired by. So that's crazy because the real ones, the ones that are fungus,

aren't very chocolatey most of the time. It's from what I can tell from your book,

but you're saying it's just the shape, the round little ball thing?

Yeah, basically when the first chocolate truffle came along, somebody took this round ball and

thought, what does this remind me of? Oh, I know this thing that's a mushroom that lives underground,

...