Stuff You Should Know - Truffles: Underground Treasures

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

Truffles are rare, expensive and apparently delicious. Learn all about these earthy fungi today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and we're the Gastro Boys. This is Stuff You Should Know. That's probably a podcast.

The Gastro Boys? With a Z. Why Z? Oh man, Chuck, it's like we share a mind sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly it. You ever eaten truffles? Sure. I had some popcorn once with truffles and parmesan cheese. I'm sure it was a real truffle. I was trying to think if I had and I think, I mean, I'm a dummy because I didn't even know if you're like, yeah, I've had truffle oil. I know what it tastes like. Spoiler alert, that's not made from real truffles. Right? It would be so expensive. You could never do that. So I thought I had had truffles through that, but then I think I remember at a staple house here in Atlanta. I think one of the things on their tasting menu

you had truffle, shaved truffle on it, but it wasn't like an extra hundred dollars to cover your pizza. It was like the tiniest little shaving on top of a mousse-bouche type of thing. Right, which is apparently the way that you're supposed to eat it. Let it shine. You're supposed to eat it with a very, yeah, a very simple dish where the truffle is this star and just sit there and cry. Maybe take your clothes off so you can get the full experience and not leave your house for three days afterward, at least according to all of the people who have ever been interviewed about truffles, meaning foodies who talk about this kind of stuff and use words like celestial

and life-changing and things like that when it comes to talking about truffles. So the truffles are one of the finer things in life and another thing that I'd never had either here at my ripe old age was caviar until a listener recently who runs the California Caviar Company sent some caviar and I had gone my whole life without trying it and I didn't know what to expect. I had no idea what it would taste like. It was awesome. I get it now. It's really good. I was calling it ocean butter. That's kind of what it reminded me of. It's briny but just buttery and it tastes like a rich person's food and I totally got it after I had some. I was like, this is really good and I get it now. I also want to shout out a couple of

people since we're talking about the finer things and people who've sent stuff in. One more time we should shout out Togue over at Down East Dayboats.com for the scallops. Amazing scallops. Our buddy Addison Rex who's Jurassic Wines. He likes to send those once in a while and they're amazing too. I think I've talked about him before. He has the company Wine Spies which is a really kind of a unique take on a wine club membership and I am constantly buying wines and adding them to my little locker and then once you get 12 bottles in your locker you get it shipped all at once. Yeah, he's just a cool dude all around too. He's awesome. Lastly, do you remember we talked about in the Groundhog Day episode pig whistle? No, whistle pig. Yes, yes. Pig whistle.

I'm so dumb. Whistle pig makes rye and they heard us talking about them or somebody told them we talked about them and they sent us like a whole bunch of rye, like really, really good rye and I'm here to tell you whistle pig is really good stuff I have to say after now having experienced it firsthand. I haven't been in the office in forever. Is there whistle pig on my desk? Yes, there's two bottles remember. I don't remember it was a while ago. Yeah, it should be still there if not we got problems. Yeah, boy. We need to look at the security cam. But we're talking truffles and we're not talking chocolate truffles. I didn't even look this up but I assume they're named so because they kind of look like truffles, right? That's what I gathered

as well. They're kind of that coated in like a cocoa dust. Like a bumpy kind of like spores a little bit and yeah, they're bumpy and just kind of ugly. They do kind of resemble black truffles in a lot of ways. Let me ask you this. Did you read the Atlantic article? No, I did not actually. Well, it's I skimmed it and I'm going to read it in full later. There's this writer. His name is Ryan Jacobs who wrote an article in the Atlantic. He was he was basically on a mushroom story about porcini mushroom foragers in Germany and people that weren't, you know, sort of in not an illegal trade, but they were foraging where they shouldn't be. One of them ran over a forestry guard with a car and they got away with it. He called his friend in the UK. It was like,

hey, is there a story here? And he was like, not really. He said, but if you really want a crime story, look at truffles. So this guy looked at the truffle underground truffle market and wrote this article that turned into a book called the truffle underground colon, a tale of mystery mayhem and manipulation in the shadowy market of the world's most expensive fungus. And I kind of quickly scanned it and it is like anything else in the world, like fine art or rare wines, anything that's sort of scarce and rare, there will be crime surrounding it, whether it's poisoning truffle dogs or blowing up someone's car or heisting and robbing people of their truffle take or selling fraudulent fake stuff, selling fraudulent fake

stuff. I saw one thing they would do is try and cram dirt into crevices to make them heavier, trying to sell diseased, like warmed out truffles and stuff like that. So just like anything else rare and expensive, there is a dark side to it and truffles are no exception. No, none. And truffles are really amazing little creatures that I had no idea. I mean, I figured that they were like, I think just about everybody else who's never really looked into truffles that much that they were very much like mushrooms. And they are related to mushrooms only in that they are both part of the same kingdom fungi. So to say like truffles are related to mushrooms is basically the same thing as saying that human beings are related to starfish

because we're both part of the kingdom. That's how distantly related mushrooms and truffles are. They diverged at the division level, which is right under kingdom. So they're only related in the most basic way that something can be related, not in any kind of complex or even close way whatsoever. Yeah. I mean, one of the biggest differences between mushrooms and truffles are mushrooms grow above ground and truffles, as most people know, grow underground, which is why you need to hunt and it's called hunting. It's not technically it's not called foraging or collecting. It's called truffle hunting that you used to do with pigs because pigs, you know, don't need to be trained. They know where to go to get those truffles.

Now they use dogs for a few reasons. One is because dogs don't want to eat the truffles and pigs do. So a pig finds that truffle and you got to get it away from that pig. Yeah. Like really quick. Dogs don't want to eat those things. Dogs just want to make master happy. And so you can kind of train a dog to do this and turn it into a game. And then, you know, the other reason listed here was like you truffle hunt three months out of the year and then you got a pig for the other nine months, which I say is great. But other people are like, these are hundreds of pounds and dogs are better pets and easier to care for. Right. Exactly. The reason people use pigs in the first place, which seems kind of weird on its face, but truffles produce a kind of volatile organic compound

called Andrastenol or Androsenol. And that is actually the same thing as a sex hormone scent that male pigs put out. So if you go truffle hunting, you want to take a female pig because they're actually rooting out a sex scent. I guess they think that a male pig and his junk are buried just, you know, between two and 15 inches underground. And so they start rooting through the ground and end up finding truffles. And then like you said, try to eat it. So you have to wrestle it away from them. Sweet pigs. They are sweet. But yeah, so dogs make a lot more sense. So it's pretty rare from what I understand to see somebody hunting with a pig these days, unless they're just like some old world hipster purists who also like butchers the pig after

the truffle hunt too, you know, just out of respect, man. And then there's another thing you can do if you're like, well, I can't afford a pig or I can't afford a dog because I've never found a truffle and sold one. I'm saving up. You can get yourself just a little, a little, there's a kind of truffle spade called a sapon. You can dig them up with. And there's actually other natural signs that you can look for when you look for a truffle. One is the Suwilia fly, which likes to plant itself, its burrows just above truffles. So you see this specific kind of fly. If you learn to identify that fly, you can find truffles. There might be a truffle down there. Yep. And then also, there's something called the brulee,

like crème brulee, but it means burned in French. And it's a dark patch of earth around the base of the tree where the truffle's growing. And we'll talk about why they grow there in a second. But this dark patch of earth is actually basically antibiotics that the truffle itself or the fungi that the truffle grows from puts out to poison the ground above it, because it doesn't do very well if there's a lot of vegetation growing around it. It does really well growing among the roots of trees. It doesn't like a very clear or it doesn't like a very thick underbrush. It likes it to be nice and clear and airy. So it kills off any potential seeds or weeds or grass or anything that might be growing right above it. Isn't that amazing?

So the truffle says, I shall scorch the earth above me. Exactly. So that I can live. Yes, exactly. That's amazing. So you see those signs? You probably have a truffle down there. So you don't need a dog or a pig. You just need to be good at that. Yeah, a true hipster, the kind with the pointy chin beard. They just look for truffles by hunting for brulee. All right, well, let's take a break. That's a good setup. Are hipsters still a thing? I don't know. I haven't been out of my house in a year or so. So I can't tell if they're still around or not. Maybe they all went away during the pandemic. They rethought their lives and they're going to come out as sincere non-Iranic humans. All right, which is what we're going

to do. We're going to take a break and come back as that right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different

hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been

trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. So truffles are these underground things that you eat. I don't even think we said that. We talked about eating truffles at the beginning, I guess. Surely. Now I'm all paranoid that we're not explaining things soon enough. Why? Because the foodies are listening? Well, because people are like, you waited 15 minutes before you even said what X was. I think those people are joking. They're making fun of our paranoia. That's how I've been taking it. I'm 13 years in. It really doesn't matter, right? No, not at all. As long as people are still listening, we're doing okay. Truffles are these things that are very rare. They're hard to find. They're hard to get. They're very expensive, which we'll get to. And there are many different

kinds. There are thousands of varieties of truffle. But if you're talking on a macro level, sort of the basics of truffles that you would hunt and eat. You've got black truffles and white truffles and burgundy truffles and then some other lesser known truffles. But you really want to talk about black and white truffles as the two leading truffles that you're going to find on a plate if you have a lot of money. Right. And if you're actually specifically talking about the black French truffle, the tuber melanosporum from Paragore, France, the Southwest France. And then that's like the prized black truffle. The prized white truffle, which is actually even rarer and even more expensive than the Paragord truffle, is the tuber magnatum picot,

the albed truffle from the Piedmont area of Italy. And then like you said, the burgundy one. Right. The black ones, if you look at it, it's sort of like a lumpy. It sort of looks like has the texture of like a leachy, but it's not colorful. It's black and it's sort of lumpy. Oh, I know what you mean. Yeah. And it looks like a clump of dirt, maybe. Some people say it looks like poop. If you slice it open, it looks like it's very has that dense marbling, like a really nice cut of beef might have. Yeah. Like wagyu beef. Yeah. Which is just amazing to see. Have you ever seen that stuff raw? The beef or the truffle? The beef. Well, I've seen both. Yes. Okay. Yeah. So why'd you even ask? I don't know, but they do look alike. That

really, really dense, veiny marbling. The white truffle, on the other hand, it looks sort of like a little, you know, the little round white potatoes. It looks like those, not like a baker potato, but it looks sort of like a white potato. Yeah. Like Yukon Gold, but white. Sure. I like the Yukon Gold. Those are good. They're both pungent and the odor apparently is really hard to describe. I've seen so many different creative kind of fun and goofy ways to describe the aroma of a truffle. I've heard a lot of people say they're stinky. Some people say like locker room-like. Funky, earthy. Yeah. Funky and earthy. It's almost as much fun as describing what a theremin sounds like. Exactly. I think burgundy truffles are a little more aromatic,

but, you know, it's a very unique smell, and I think they're kind of stinky, supposedly. Yeah. One of the reasons they're stinky is because truffles, so the truffle you're eating is the fruiting body, just like when you eat a mushroom, like a button mushroom. That's not the fungi. That's the fruit that grows off of the fungi, and it has the spores, and the spores spread everywhere. And truffles have spores as well, but they're sequestered inside of it. They're not on the outside, all hanging out, letting its junk hang around like some common mushroom. They keep theirs inside until marriage. And by marriage, I mean until an animal roots them up and eats them and then poops it out somewhere else. So in that sense,

they're different from mushrooms as well, but they have that funky smell because on the outside, when they're in the dirt, they're actually colonized by all sorts of bacteria and yeast and all sorts of weird little things that help create the symbiotic relationship that the fungi has with the tree roots that it grows within. So yeah, you mentioned trees. This is really interesting. I didn't know much about truffles at all, and my whole thought was like, why are these things so rare? Why can't people just plant truffles like any other vegetable you might grow? And the reason why is you can't really, there is a process, but it's not like planting any other plant. I think they've been doing it for 35 years in the

United States at a 98% failure rate. So it's really hard to grow, and I don't even know if that's the right word, a truffle. Yeah, because they're like, they're a miracle of nature in a certain way. They're a mycorrhizae, which means that they're a fungi that has a symbiotic relationship with the tree that they grow at, right? And usually in Europe, you usually find them growing around the roots of oak trees or hazel trees. In the US, they grow at the base of pecan trees, and then oak trees here too. In Oregon, they grow at the base of Douglas fir trees. So certain species of truffles grow at the bases of certain trees, because they have these relationships where the truffle or the mycorrhizae, the fungus that gives rise to the truffle that we eat,

it has its own symbiotic relationship with a bunch of bacteria and yeast, like I said, that it colonized it. And those things take nutrients from the soil like nitrates and phosphates and convert them into nitrogen and phosphorus, which is usable for the tree. So the tree is growing around all these different forms of nitrogen and phosphorus, but it can't do anything with it. This mycorrhizae, this fungi converts it into usable form for the tree and pumps it into the tree's roots, feeds the tree nutrients. And in exchange, the tree says, here, have some carbohydrates. I'll trade you. And the mycorrhizae, the fungi says, thank you very much. Yeah. So if you're going to try and cultivate, I guess that's what I'm looking for,

a truffle is you inject the special fungi spores into this oak or this hazelnut tree when they're just little seedlings. And then you plant that tree and then cross your fingers, basically, that that tree is going to grow up and be healthy, because that's the first step, you got to have a tree that works. And then those truffles are going to attach to those tree roots underground. And you can't, you know, I imagine it's frustrating in that you can't look at your harvest and just see it growing on top of the ground. You just have to have a lot of patience because I think it takes like four years on average for this to work out to where you're yielding a truffle 2% of the time in the United States. We're trying here is just, you know,

apparently, we have the right climate like on the West Coast, where you're talking about some mid-Atlantic states, Carolinas, Virginias, Southern Kentucky, Northern Alabama, and I think New Mexico and Arizona are only where it's possible to get a 98% failure rate. Right. And we should say this is where they're trying to grow like perigore truffles or alba truffles, like the really highly prized ones. The United States has its own indigenous truffles. There's something like 4,000 or 5,000 species of truffles. Yeah, we got garbage truffles. Right. They're garbage truffles. It's just that there's like three species that are genuinely prized and that can go for like

a thousand dollars a pound depending on how bad or good the harvest was that year. But the United States has indigenous ones, like there's the Oregon truffle, which grows at the base of Douglas firs. There's pecan truffles, which grow basically everywhere from Florida up to Nova Scotia, west of the rock, or east of the Rockies in North America. And there's a couple of other kinds too. From what I saw James Beard, the revered chef and food guy, he said that you could substitute a Oregon truffle for a white alba truffle in a pinch, and it would do. Yeah. If he signed off on it, that means it's definitely okay. Well, they're not cheap either. I mean, I think these American varieties can go for like a hundred

bucks a pound, which is a lot of money for a pound of something. Yeah. But it's not like, you know, we'll get to the crazy prices at these auctions later on, but it's nothing like European truffles, namely Italian and French, like you said. I think Spain is the largest producer of truffles. Then you have UK, Australia, Chile, South Africa, Sweden, New Zealand, and then China apparently is really involved in the truffle market and kind of undercutting price wise. Right. Yes. I actually saw that Australia is killing it in the truffle cultivating game. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They started in 1991, and that was when they first inoculated their saplings. I also saw another way to do it, Chuck, is even easier. You just take a bunch of truffle,

puree it up, dip the oak sapling roots into this puree, and just grow those. No injection necessary? No injection necessary. I'm sure the oak prefers that way too. It's just a little baby. But Australia got their first harvest in 1998, and they are growing Paragor truffles, which Paragor truffles are less rare, maybe because of Australia, than the white Alba truffles from the Piedmont of Italy and Croatia. The Alba truffles are far more expensive, but a lot of people prefer the Paragor black truffle from France, just taste in general. A lot of people prefer the black truffle. That's the one that the Australians are growing, and they now rival in the harvest by weight, what France harvests every year.

And they're good. Paragor region. Yes, it's the same thing. It's that truffle, and they're supposedly amazing. Well, I'm sure there are some people that the French would probably say, no, no, no, the terroir is not the same. Of course. That's exactly what they would say, and the Australians would say, forget that, mate. How is that, Australia? Truffle season is short, depending on the truffle. I mean, they're all short seasons, but you're going to get your white and burgundies from September to December, and then winter blacks from December to March, bianchetes in February and March, and then summer black and white truffles from May to August.

And the reason why we are mentioning just when truffle season comes around is because truffles, they do freeze them, and they do can them, but it's not the same. You want to eat a truffle within four to six days after you take it out of the ground. Yeah, the truffle market is one of those rare ones where there's a lot of hype, and there's a lot of like Frasier and Niles crane types running around buying this stuff up and caring about it and talking about it to their friends and all that, but it's not a bloated market in that respect. It is genuinely scarce in supply, and in the United States, it's even scarcer because like you said, we've got a 98% failure rate in growing them here ourselves, and they have such a short shelf life,

10 days tops if you're doing everything right and storing them, that to get them here in the U.S. in any kind of quick way from a place where they're already scarce, where they're growing over like in say Europe, you can understand it actually makes sense why they're so ridiculously expensive. Yeah, and you know, I went online today because I was like, can you even buy truffles online? Not right now. I mean, yeah, yeah, they're just all out of stock, right? Well, no, I found some that were in a jar, and it's not like the whole truffle, it's just a piece of a truffle. And the price I found for the black French one was, and this one website was 100 bucks for 0.8 ounces. So less than an ounce was 100 bucks.

So I saw some, some, they were all out of stock, but some like gourmet sites said they can get them and they're more like $48 an ounce for like the small size, medium size. And I looked, I was like, is that right? And that seemed kind of in line with it. But you also see like crazy prices all over the place. Like all these things are, you know, $2,000 a pound or $4,000 a pound or $7,000 a pound. Those typically are the white Alba truffles and the black Paragord truffles are maybe a quarter of that, but it all depends on how the harvest was that year. And apparently the harvest has been going down, which is another reason that's so expensive, has been going down steadily for the

last century or so. Well, climate change. That's a big one. Apparently, do you remember when I said that truffles like to grow in light, airy regions, even though they grow underground, they like the above ground to be a certain way, they're real high maintenance in that sense, right? And controlling that there's so many people have moved from the Paragora region or the Piedmont of Italy into the cities. And since like the 1880s, 1890s, when they really started harvesting these for the international market, that these areas have become kind of unkempt and grown over. And that in addition to climate change is affecting the yields, like dramatically, I think there was something. Do you have the statistics for the yields between

the 19th century and today? I do not. Chuck, get ready for your socks to be knocked off. Oh boy. Are they on right now? They're on. I just put socks on so you could knock them off. So in 1890, a total harvest, and I'm not quite sure, maybe this was all commercial truffles, but there was a total of 2,200 tons that were harvested in 1890 around the world. That's still pretty scarce if you think about it for an annual harvest globally. Oh yeah. In 1914, it was down to 300 tons from 2200 tons. Wow. These days, it can be anywhere from 25 tons to 150 tons a year. That is scarce. And that's why they cost this kind of money. And like you said,

it's not an artificial market. There's one that sold in 2016 at auction a 4.16 pound white truffle for $61,000. Yeah. It doesn't make sense to me because it's just a big giant truffle. That seems way more than it would be if you bought that same amount, just the same weight, but in multiple truffles. It just seemed really exorbitant. I don't know if somebody was like, I want the world's biggest truffle kind of thing. I think that's absolutely it. Like were they bidding using like a giant foam number one hand? Is that kind of guy? Maybe. He paid a million dollars for that foam, the largest foam rubber number one hand. That's right. You got to use it. One of the things I was seeing also about climate change

affecting truffles is that so truffles like it wet, they like it somewhat cool, and they like it kempt. And like I said, the regions that they normally grow are getting unkempt and they're getting hotter and they're getting drier. Like climate change is bringing more extreme weather, like droughts kind of thing. And they're also bringing hotter weather to regions like the Southwest of France or the Piedmont of Spain or Italy, I'm sorry, where it didn't used to be that hot back in like say 1890 when you're getting like 2200 tons annually. So all of these combined on top of the idea that even under the best of circumstances, the normal life cycle for a particular mycorrhizae that produces truffles that you want like an alba or a perigore, maybe produces truffles for 15 to

30 years in the wild. And then after that, it says good night forever. And the French and the Spanish and a lot of the traditionalists in Europe say, well, then that's that, we just need to move on and find another tree. Well, they're finding that they're not growing under other trees. And so there's kind of this push to start inoculating trees there in Spain and in the Southwest of France and Europe has long been pushing back on the idea of kind of introducing man's hand to this humankind's hand, I should say. And I think they're starting to kind of rethink that kind of thing these days. Should we take another break? Sure. All right, we'll take another break and we'll talk a little bit more about the flavor and the trade and what these things are even used for right after

this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get

messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in

and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So the truffle trade, like we said, check out that Atlantic article. I'm going to read it closer after this because it's just really interesting. There is a dark side, of course,

to this trade. People poison each other's dogs. It's awful. The guy who wrote that article said that he anecdotally talked to different veterinarians. It said that they've got two or three a week, dogs being poisoned. And there were a lot of vets in the area that were saying the same thing. So that's horrific on its surface. Slashing tires, of course, robberies, heists, fake truffle. Well, not fake, but just inflated truffles with the weight like we were talking about. And you might hear all this and just be like, why? I know they're rare, but is this caviar to chuck? Is it this thing that is so delicious that you must have it? And you know, I don't know because I've never had it. I do like the taste of truffle oil.

And this fake truffle, I think in the 70s, an Italian chemist isolated one of the flavor producing compounds and recreated it. So we do have the asymptotic truffly taste, but apparently that's like they isolated one of these compounds. That is not what a real truffle tastes like, is what people say that have had real truffles. No, it's like so complicated and complex because again, at least some of the smells and tastes that are coming off of the truffle you're eating are coming from the colonizing bacteria and yeast that are growing all over it too. And as they're exposed to air, they start to kind of die off and that's where the smell in the odor goes, at least in part. So to just kind of nail one particular flavor compound and say,

that's truffle flavor, I think it's 2,4-dithiapentane. Yeah, just to say that that's, thank you, just to say that that's truffle flavor, not only misses all of the nuance of truffles apparently, I'm speaking from just somebody who's only been exposed to 2,4-dithiapentane pretty much. But that also, if you eat enough of that, if you eat too much truffle popcorn with Parmesan shavings at the nice movie theater in town, you are going to kind of desensitize yourself to actual truffle. So if you actually say, I'm going to get some truffles this season and try it, it might be lost on you because you're just used to that kind of the clunkiest version of the truffle flavor. I'm taking that risk, I guess.

I mean, it is good. Like truffle flavor at anything is pretty great. I like it. It is even hard to describe with just that one compound. It's hard to kind of, you know, it's sort of a new mommy richness. It is earthy. I like the flavor and I'm not going to be, you know, eating many real truffles in my life, if any, so I'm not really worried about ruining my truffle palate. So I'm happy to have that stuff. It's fine. Sure. For this guy. It's truffles for the rest of us. That's right. So if you do come upon some truffles that you want to, if you just say, okay, I've got a hundred bucks I'm going to spend on truffles, I'm just going to do it. Uncle Joe Biden sent me a check and I'm going to use a hundred dollars

of it on truffles. I'm going to help you. I'm going to stimulate the economy. You trickle down. So what would you do, Chuck? What's your first move? Well, you want them within five to six days after they've been harvested. You want to keep them in a closed container wrapped in a paper towel because you really want to keep them dry. Wet truffle is no good, despite the fact that they love wetness to grow. You want to keep that thing dry. If you want to get a little more bang for your buck and not actually use any of the truffle, but impart that flavor. You want to douse it in two, four, die thigh a pentane. Okay. Store it in a closed glass tupperware. It's not tupperware if it's glass, but you know what

I mean. Sure. Glass dish with some cheese, open cheese, or even eggs that have not, just eggs in their shell. Yeah. And it will actually somehow, by way of magic, the cheese makes sense, but it will actually penetrate that egg and flavor that egg somehow. Isn't that nuts? That is nuts. That's how potent those things smell, that they actually make it through eggs, shells inside, and then just inculcates them. But like you said, you want to keep it simple. I mean, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say bland, but they say like shaving truffle on a very simple risotto dish or just plain parmesan. Yes, scrambled eggs, plain parmesan pasta. Pizza is a big one, like a, you know, just sort of a cheese pizza, like a really nice one,

wood-fired pizza with shaved truffle on top. Supposed to be great. Yeah, that's the thing. You don't have to do anything with it. You just shave it raw. You don't have to cook it. It's not like some hard thing to use. You just, you shave it on to something and let it shine. Apparently, the ancient Romans used to cook it and eat it with honey, but they also thought that truffles were created when lightning struck damp earth. So don't put a lot of stock into their thoughts. Like just use it, you know, shaved fresh truffles onto a very nice dish. Yeah. And you know, if you want to go to a nice steakhouse and get truffle butter on your steak, it's not going to be real truffle, but who cares? I don't know. I could see Kevin Rathbone using real truffle.

You think? How about this? If you are getting that steak and it's outside of truffle season, it's not real truffle. But if you know when truffle season is, right? So say you're going between November and the end of March to a really nice steakhouse. It's possible that they are using real truffles that night. Yeah. And it's shaved super, super thin. Like when you see it on a food item, it's, you know, they have these razor sharp, well, I guess they're razors. And it always reminds me of good fellas. I cannot think of shaving something with a razor blade and not think of the scene in Goodfellas in prison where Polly had his technique where he would shave it so thin, it would, what would you say? Liquefy in the pan. It's so great, man. I love

that part when they were in prison and just like living high on the hog. Yep. Have, do you ever eat roasted garlic like on toast? Not on toast, but I roast garlic plenty. Sure. Okay. But yeah, just like spread it on toast. I bet that's good. Yeah. Just take a whole bulb, spread it on some toast and thank me later. It's really good for your guts. You know what I've been doing lately is the, I don't know why I didn't know it existed. Everything bagel is my favorite bagel and they make everything bagel shakers. Trader Joe's? No, but I'm sure that's good too. But just at a regular store. And so I just keep that, I put that on a lot of stuff like just avocado toast with that, that stuff. My buddy Eddie turned me on to that with shaking that stuff on some avocado toast.

I know you can put it on just chunks of avocado and it sounds, it tastes very good too. You can put it on anything. Let's be honest. You can put it on an old shoe. Sure. What else you got? I got nothing else. That's it. I want to eat, I want to eat a real truffle. If you eat a real truffle, it'll probably taste so good it'll make you do the truffle shuffle. All right. Very nice. Well, since I said truffle shuffle everybody, I think it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this Titanic role play. Did you see this one? No. This is really neat. This is not kinky. No, no. I mean, it doesn't even cross my mind just on its face. It's hilarious. Okay.

Hey guys, my name is Annika and I've been listening since about 2018. Really love learning from you guys and listening to your episodes. Last year, during the beginning of quarantine, many of my family members, including myself, were quarantining at my mom's house. And as you and everyone else knows, we hit a point in our house where everyone got a little loopy. Not really sure how it got started, but we decided to have a Titanic party on the anniversary of the ship sinking. Everyone was assigned a real passenger crew member on the Titanic and had to act out the part for the evening, including dressing up. Even dogs got parts too. By the way, they sent in pictures of them dressed up with their animals dressed up and it

was pretty great. That is adorable. We had a meal based off one of the menus recovered from the ship and we had to eat in certain areas according to our class. Wow. This is so great. After dinner, we read a short memorial and with my friends, my friend playing near my god to be on the cello took it and this was all in video. It's fantastic. It took a five minute plunge in the freezing pool to commemorate the sinking. Then to finish out the night, we found out if our passenger crew member had lived or died and then watched the movie from 1997. I want to go to this party, man. Yeah. How much fun is that? It's pretty cool. Your episode was more than perfect because we decided to make this an annual party. Oh, there you go. They held it a few weekends ago. Well,

Annika, send me the invite. I don't know where you live, but your family looks awesome and I want to go to that thing. Yeah, totally. I can't find that listener mail anywhere. I want to see these pictures, but okay. I'll try and find it and send it to you. Her name was Annika. Maybe you could search that way. Annika, that was an amazing listener mail and we appreciate it. That does sound like a lot of fun. We need to go on the cowboy weekend with the black cowboy who went in. Yes, all over that. Then go to the Titanic role play party and then in between we'll maybe cross the country and marry a few couples, officiate at some weddings. That sounds great. I just found the email and sent it to you and I'm looking at that picture that dog dressed up gets me every time.

It's going to be the summer of stuff you should know, Chuck. I love it. I still don't have it, Chuck. I don't know what's going on. Oh, there it is. Do you have anything else to talk about while I look at these? No, let's just sign off. Okay. Well, since we're signing off, everybody, if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email like Annika did. Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everybody, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never,

ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.