This is an I-Heart podcast.

There's a vile sickness in Abbas town.

You must excise it.

Dig into the deep earth and cut it out.

From IHeart podcasts and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky,

this is Havoc Town. A new fiction podcast set in the Bridgewater Audio Universe, starring Jules State and Ray Wise.

Listen to Havoc Town on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeartRadio.

Hey, Brain Stuff.

Lauren Vogelbaum here.

The truffles, meaning the delicious fungi, not the delicious chocolate, are one of the

most expensive ingredients on the planet.

They're so sought after that the truffle hunting business

is highly competitive, shockingly cutthroat, and sometimes illicit. Because truffles are pretty much

always foraged, not farmed, and it seems that fewer are available every year. So today, let's talk truffles. First things first,

the truffles in question here are fungi. Yes, there are creamy chocolate treats that go by the same

name, but that's because whoever began rolling chocolate ganache into small balls thought that

those lumpy brown candies

looked a little bit like the fungi. Truffles the fungi are cousins of mushrooms that grow

underground instead of above ground. Thus, instead of growing a fruiting body with a wide cap so that they

can release their spores out into the air, they fold in on themselves

and develop spores inside. They wind up looking like a tuber, a sort of potato-e. One genus

...