“Deep in the forests of Piedmont, Italy, a handful of men, seventy or eighty years old, hunt for the rare and expensive white Alba truffle-which to date has resisted all of modern science’s efforts at cultivation.” (imdb)
Truffle hunters of Perigord (France) in the 19th c on a Liebig meat extract flavored with truffle aroma
This must be one of the most delightful documentaries of these last years. The imagery and the people are just a marvel. We are definitely living in a time where an omnipresent mushrooms mycelium grows unseen through books, exhibitions, documentaries and pop cultural artefacts. Mushrooms have acquired a very special place in our current dead-end situation. Fungi are showing us that even if we rather imagine the end of the world than that of capital, mushroom will continue to be part of a world that is long since post-apocalyptic. Mushroom’s unique role as both putrescientific and putrifictional organisms is well documented. In the gaming world. Just take the Super Mushroom booster (Nintendo’s Super Mario series) or indie gaming Botanicula’s Mr Mushroom character. The association of mushrooms with magic are complex and nearly limitless. There is more to mushrooms than meets the eye. There has been a growing increasing recognition of certain invisible (to the eye) presence of mushrooms called mycorrhiza mushrooms that developed over millions of years a mutualistic, symbiotic relationship with the root parts of the plants all over the planet (that under special conditions can turn parasitical). Mushrooms with their filaments and thread-like connectivity play an important role in the Wood Wide Web. The knowledge about this unseen interwebbed world under our very feet has been growing steadily. I deeply recommend an in-depth history of mutualism in the life sciences – how symbiotic theories evolved, a history written by Canadian historian of microbiology, evolutionary theory, microbiome and biology – Jan Sapp. His books have been a guiding light to me, helping me recognize the value of minor counter-currrents or redesicovered under-currents existing in parrallel (such as those employing the concept of symbiosis).
There are even SF series such as the Mycelial Network in Star Trek Discovery described as “a discrete subspace domain containing the mycelium, or roots, of the fungus Prototaxites stellaviatori” (Prototaxitesthe alien fictional mushroom is based on an actual gigantic fossil mushroom or lichen-like organism that existed once in the Devonian age).
Many species of mushrooms have acquired growing relevance, others have always been considered a rarity – to be traded, consumed or valued. The truffle (both its alba – white and black strands) stand apart as a highly treasures biocultural organism. Do not think they are protected in the sense rare species are. They stand at the center of networks linking regional traditional mushroom hunters and their companion species – and five star restaurant and conneisseurs that are willing to pay incredible prices. The truffle combines an unspectacular exterior with an ineffable strong smell (there are no known medicinal proprieties identified).
there is smell testing ritual at potential truffle auction pieces for those interested
Just this smell makes highly attractive to both humans and other animals, a lure for our desires, trophic chains and economic speculation. A smell is mostly appreciated with that most irrational organ – the nose. Truffles are also multispecies vectors, they attract both humans, yet their main carriers and spore dispersal vehicles are pigs (and because of us – dogs). Oil flavored with truffles is enough to change a whole dish. Motovun white truffle (Tuber Magnatum L.) flavored honey liquor from Croatia flavored with just a hint of a truffle (of which I had some unforgettable stinky shots) considered a local Dalmatian speciality.
there are many kinds of truffle flavored trash foods
Anything with truffle flavor (even chips or cheese) is considered a delicacy for that matter. Everything regarding truffles has become highly competitive (with a growing black market). These underground unspectacular lumps (fruiting bodies of a particular mushroom) advertise their underground existence in order to get some quality dispersal by mammals such as pigs that find it irresistible. This smell is hard to describe (and especially impossible to assess what it actually feels like for a pig) – but it turns out to be a certain bio-mimicry, imitating certain bodily odors of mammals, especially because it is quite earthy hormonal perspiration-like – musky with deep heavy notes. Although supposedly aphrodisiac it has never been proven so.
these seemingly banal clumps can garner the most egregious prices
Here is a unique humourous documentary about the lives of these incredible 70 or 80 years old Italian truffle hunters and their unique and dangerous relationship with their prized truffle hunting dogs that they would never ever part with (even when offered large sums). There is also a very sad part to this story -as everywhere the globalized capitalist expansion of markets catering to the luxury taste and high incomes have transformed truffle hunting from a hobby and pleasurable (if always profitable and slightly protective and conflictual) livelihood in northern Italy (Piemonte) into something really mortal where both companion species and the human caretakers are under threat.
There are more killings of hunters and poison baiting of dogs than ever before. It is wonderful that these people, normally weary of strangers and highly protective of their knowhow and favorite patch – have allowed the filmmakers to follow them in the field.
Italy being Italy there also lots of musical numbers
There is an increase in demand and land-grabbing of territories and lands and constant pressure to acquire truffle rich territories – as truffles become ever more popular. This is the background for this documentary – importantly it is not just about truffle hunting although this incredible obsessive activity is central to it. There is also a lot of heartfelt beauty of the surroundings, walks, friendships and a peek into lives of completely dedicated people (almost always men). What is important is that they do not make so much money, the money incentive is just something on the side giving a little spice to their lives.
in the intimacy of the bathroom
They have not only a special sense for these coveted mushroom prizes but also know a lot about their qualities, characteristics and needs. The documentary follows the entire trophic chain from the field to restaurant and parking lot deals to auction houses, from middlemen to the actual gourmet consumer.
First much appreciation for both Phil Ford and J F Martel. I do not manage to listen to them as often as I could, but when I do, it is always a blast. That is why one needs friends (not friends-bosses or friend-unfriend dynamics as talked about in this piece. Friends to recommend and catch one looses trough a web cast to widely.
What I appreciate about their heady mix is first the way they never belittle and be dissmissive with their subjects, their topics (and their public) their humility and modesty in front of such vast subjects.
No matter how diverse or dispersed things are and rabbit holes go – they always manage to follow a certain waveform, play on certain motifs. They can combine high theory (Deleuze), avant-garde (Burroughs) with the most harrowing examples of heroin addict descriptions. They can both make a sociology of taste, follow on the strictures of Bourdieu, while at the same time catching a strong whiff of spirituality in Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, while at the same time finding religious (initial sin) groundings of Marxist critique of commodification, ideology and cultural superstructure. They can talk about the merits of secular society, while at the same time pointing towards the commodification behind new religions, prosperity gospel, as well as the sort of spiritualized practices, anthropotechnical hacks that are everywhere – from Silicon Valley to self-actualization corporate seminars. They decry the anxiety of cultural appropriation, its totalizing and too large terrain – while at the same time they weigh in on all the decontextualized, fetishized spiritualism, that leaves all the burden, the suffering out. They take the critique of Buddhism by Zizek, the Buddhist apparent integration of human universal suffering, while at the same time warning about the free style of new ironic class, the distinction proffered by hipster irony-non-irony thin line and the constant hard to learn code switching. One of my favorites is the part about friends – about Buddhas (and especially Osho’s speech on friendship!) sermon about the future master transforming into friend, never so true as in today’s corporate culture. Societies of control complete changed the rule of the game that went hand in hand with a changed definition of friendship, removed from the one inherited from Aristotle.
ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded by Bhagwan Rajneesh (later called Osho) and its religious and political conflicts with its Christian neighbors, provides a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of spirituality and religion. What emerges are surprising ties between the “spiritual, not religious” attitude and class, cultural commodification, and the culture of control that pervades modern society. But they also uncover the true “wild” card at the heart of existence that spiritual movements like that of Rajneesh can never fully control, no matter how hard they try.
Apart of the current divisive populist politics in this 2020, there is this widening gap that seems to separate the past i.e. these last years of microbiome and holobiont revelations, the recognition of Lynn Margulis’s life’s work, of probiotics, craft beers, hipster sourdough homemade bread, super-bugs multi-resistance warnings – and the sudden ramping up of antibacterial soaps production and biocidal technologies. While invisible for much of mankind’s history and ultimately relegated to imaginary beings, demons, spirits – bacteria and viruses (not to talk about mushroom, molds and their kin) have been with us, in and on us since the beginning and while their profile is rising for the first time, enriching our schlock ‘blob’ B-movie repertoire (our heightened sense of contagion is already indistinguishable from general online virality). As an aside in our management-drenched culture, I might add that the very start-up culture of late capitalism, of venture capital and tech unicorns (TESLA, Google, Amazon etc) – overshadows another use of the term “starter” – maybe its initial, dirty secret embedded in its biological anb biosemiotic material sense, the one in which there is always something antecedent, some highly transmissible starter-culture, a microbial mat that has preceded all ulterior divisions, ever evolving invasions, and upon which back everything else grows, blooms, and who’s metabolic pathways and chemical chain reactions we enjoy, inherit, borrow or dread. There is scope in just having a look into the various questions raised by scientist regarding this undercover complexity that animates much of what we regard as the most basic, simple (and thence falsely simplistic) and mostly still highly disregarded (non charismatic) organisms.
With current rising ‘Pandemic Fatigue’ and governments searching for new ways to variously entice and/or enforce effective restrictions and contact tracing technologies, one should balance it out with the work of Rob Dunn (check out his classic The Wild Life of Our Bodies: Predators, Parasites, and Partners That Shape Who We Are Today), Dr. Anne A. Madden (The Kingdom documentary which I urge u to see), Sandor Katz (Wild Fermentation primer), Athena Aktipis (applying system biology and evo-devo to cancer research). They and a bunch of other wonderful people at NC State University’s Department of Applied Ecology including Lauren Nichols, Erin McKenney under self-isolation measures have organized this year’s incredible series of webinars concerning FERMENTOLOGY – the incredible shapeshifting science of fermentation, ‘umami’ taste with a motley crew honing changing practices, field research experience, trough labs and out of lab works, trough ancient history archaeology and multispecies coreographies in humans and non-humans.
As a fellow practitioner and fermentation necromancer, putrescient beginner and bacterealist I urge you to check out these free seminars below. Climate science outreach has become a caricature of struggling to reach the decision makers, an important lesson in loosing its touch with an increasingly disdainful and aggressively non-scientific (or not sufficiently scientific) crowd (including politicians) . yet microbiology and fermentology offers hope in the sense that it has became highly pop – both in bad (as every hype can witness) and good example of translatable, relatable, surprisingly material gooey way of exploring new and exciting discoveries that somehow have a two pronged way: both home kitchen and highly rated chef restaurateur, both laboratory oriented outcomes and field work, both insider talk and informing day to day people’s experiences. While heeding all the warning signs of the groomed bearded sourdough hipster (mostly male bro type) guy – and his newfound hobby in its breadtivist breadarian accusatory tinge – it is still a fact that such slimy, sticky gooey (almost in tandem with the slime – kids videos) have raised the profile of wild fermentation online around the globe. Partly industrial knowledge, partly hype, partly a blob of big pharma and wild fermentation bio hacking type of exchanges – its troublesome and meddling prospects prosper at the edge of traditional knowledge expropriation and biocapitalisation and/or speculative biological experimentation.
Deep Time Background + take it with a grain: Maybe grasslands should be seen as the first in a series of new warming earth changes at the geologic scale – that started happening roughly 20 mil yr ago (accelerating incredibly nowadays due to human herd in tow with other herds that have been replacing dwindling forests environments) and have included co-evolved multiple stomachs, specific enzymes from grass and grain digesting yeasts and bacteria). While mostly growing around bread and sourdough, these webinars have been more than diverse – encompassing cheese, milk etc You will say ahhhhhh AGAIN the grain-grass eater ecosystemic bias – well yes, grass again (!!) in an age of steppes, grasslands, lawns, dwindling forests and high yield crops – the haunt of all those Neolithic revolutionaries. Well grasses and ruminants are here to stay so we better learn and ruminate along. In spite of gluten free authoritarianism bread keeps diversifying and going in unsuspected directions. And so not any grain is on the menu, so one might also see here a Western- North /Near-Eastern/Fertile Crescent bias towards a particular kind of grain products (so not so much about rice culture and rice wine fermentation – or pickling such as jiu niang (酒酿) or miso using koji.
A few of the highlights for me (although please consider watching all of them since they are very much in tune to what I mentioned above):
Jessica (Jessie) Hendy is a lecturer in paleoproteomics at the University of York where she studies ancient proteins associated with foods in archaeological sites. Jessie will describe her research at ancient archaeological sites in Turkey, Mongolia and elsewhere to understand, using ancient protein analyses, the beginnings of milk fermentation. She will take viewers on a journey to one of her archaeological sites, describe her approach to archaeology and consider take homes from her work with regard to what anyone can do in their kitchen with milk today.
Jessie has recently made major discoveries with regard to the history of Mongolian dairying and dairy fermentation and the oldest dairy fermentation in the world. This talk is sponsored and supported by the Max Planck Institute’s ERC-funded project, Dairy Cultures. (YT description)
Margarita López-Uribe is the Lorenzo L. Langstroth Early Career Professor at Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Entomology where she studies bees of many kinds. Many bees rely on fermentation in different ways (some ferment nectar, others pollen, others still ferment leaves). Margarita will talk about the fermentation carried out by honeybees. Honeybees make bread out of pollen that they ferment (and then feed to their babies). Margarita and her student Brooke talk about what goes into making bee bread and what microbes are involved in this process. They will also share preliminary data of an ongoing project about how various biocides shape bee bread microbiome.
This talk is supported and promoted by the NC State Apiculture Program.(YT)
In many parts of the world, especially in regions with limited growing seasons and long winters, people preserve vegetables through fermentation. Learn about the illustrious history of fermented vegetables, the science behind it, and how simple it is to ferment vegetables yourself at home. This talk is hosted by Sandor Ellix Katz, a fermentation revivalist. His books Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, the New York Times calls him “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” S
andor is the recipient of a James Beard award and other honors.(YT)
How does fermentation fit into your zombie apocalypse preparation plan? Fermenting can provide a number of benefits – from enhancing the nutritional value of your food, to preserving it for the long haul, to cultivating antimicrobial compounds that might help protect you from the agents of the zombie apocalypse. Fermented foods are also an example of multi-species cooperation that might serve as a good example for us all for how we might cooperate to survive the zombie apocalypse.
Athena Aktipis is an assistant professor of psychology at Arizona State University, chair of the Zombie Apocalypse Medicine Alliance, and co-director of the Human Generosity Project. She is the author of the new book The Cheating Cell from Princeton University Press and the host of the science podcast Zombified.(YT)
Tate Paulette is an archaeologist and Assistant Professor at NC State’s Department of History. He studies agriculture, food, and fermentation in the ancient world, with a particular focus on Bronze Age Mesopotamia. He co-directs archaeological excavations at the site of Makounta-Voules-Mersinoudia in Cyprus (Makounta-Voules Archaeological Project), and he is currently working on a book about the history/archaeology of beer in Mesopotamia. In this talk, we will explore the foods and, especially, the fermented foods of ancient Mesopotamia. We will look at ancient recipes, royal inscriptions, administrative records, archaeological remains, artistic works, and more on our culinary tour through the famous “land between the rivers.” Particular attention will be devoted to bread, beer, yogurt, and cheese, the fermented cornerstones of the Mesopotamian diet.
This talk is co-sponsored by NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.(YT)
In this talk, Benjamin Wolfe will explore how microbes compete and cooperate in cheese rind microbiomes. From fungal highways on wheels of Saint Nectaire to antibiotic producing fungi in cheddar, we’ll learn about the ecology and chemistry of microbial interactions in some of your favorite stinky cheeses. We will also learn how cheesemakers can use this knowledge of microbial interactions to improve the safety and quality of their products. Benjamin Wolfe is the Aptman Family Assistant Professor of microbiology at Tufts University.
The Wolfe Lab at Tufts uses fermented foods as model systems to identify the processes that shape the diversity of microbiomes. In addition to research focused on the basic biology of microbes, the Wolfe lab has worked with chefs and food producers, including David Chang’s Momofuku Culinary Lab and Jasper Hill Farms, to understand the roles of microbes in creating the diversity of flavors in fermented foods. This talk is co-sponsored by NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. (YT)
The origins of bread have long been associated with the development of farming communities that first cultivated and domesticated cereals in the Fertile Crescent 10,000 years ago. However, most recent discoveries show that bread was not a product of farming, but perhaps something which fuelled it. Amaia and Lara will share the story of the discovery of the oldest bread and what we do and don’t know about its recipe, how it was baked and more. They will also talk about the cereal-based foodstuffs that prehistoric communities consumed in southwest Asia and how they changed with the development of new technologies such as pottery.
Amaia Arranz Otaegui is Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen. She is an archaeobotanist and investigates the use and consumption of plants by prehistoric hunter-gatherers and early farming communities in southwest Asia. Lara Gonzalez Carretero is an archaeobotanist at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) and a researcher at the Scientific Department of the British Museum. She is an expert on the study of archaeological food remains, with especial interest in cereal meals such as bread, porridge, etc. (YT)
The world’s oldest culinary recipes exist in the form of clay tablets from ancient Babylonia dating to the 18th century BCE. In this talk, Patricia Jurado, Gojko Barjamovic and Pia Sörensen from Harvard University will introduce the history and science of the recipes, as well as their team’s efforts interpreting and reproducing them. Their work follows an experimental approach and draws on expertise from their team’s collective backgrounds in assyriology, the life sciences, and culinary practice and history. Join us for this deep dive into culinary history — you may even come away knowing how to cook a 4,000 year old recipe!
Part of the 2020 BEESS seminar series: Wildlife microbiomes, the complex communities of microorganisms that inhabit virtually every body site, perform countless micro-ecosystem services for their host, profoundly affecting wildlife behavior, physiology, reproduction, health, survival and ultimately evolution.
To study these tightly co-evolved systems, I strive to build diverse and collaborative interdisciplinary research teams to (a) advance our knowledge of the eco-evolutionary factors (e.g., sex, diet, phylogeny) governing wildlife-associated microbiomes, (b) identify species-specific microbiomes that can serve as sentinels for environmental quality (i.e., biomarkers for wildlife population health), (c) evaluate the impact of environmental perturbations on wildlife microbiome functions, and (d) inform management decisions to promote long-term conservation of wildlife and their symbiotic microbes.(YT)
The world’s oldest culinary recipes exist in the form of clay tablets from ancient Babylonia dating to the 18th century BCE. In this talk, Patricia Jurado, Gojko Barjamovic and Pia Sörensen from Harvard University will introduce the history and science of the recipes, as well as their team’s efforts interpreting and reproducing them. Their work follows an experimental approach and draws on expertise from their team’s collective backgrounds in assyriology, the life sciences, and culinary practice and history. Join us for this deep dive into culinary history — you may even come away knowing how to cook a 4,000 year old recipe!
#The team that conducted this research includes: + Patricia Jurado Gonzalez (Research Scholar, Harvard University), + Gojko Barjamovic (Senior Lecturer on Assyriology, Harvard University), + Pia Sörensen (Senior Preceptor in Chemical Engineering and Applied Materials, SEAS, Harvard University), + Chelsea Alene Graham (Digital Imaging Specialist at the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Yale University), + Agnete Wisti Lassen (Associate Curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection, Yale University), + Nawal Nasrallah (Culinary historian, author, chef) (YT)
TimeSpace Warps 