Matsutake mushroom, a beloved Japanese delicacy, grow in what Anna Tsing calls “human-disturbed” environments. They do well in places that have been intensely logged or farmed, for instance. Which makes them model organisms for adverse conditions. Matsutake mushrooms can also teach us a thing or two about ecology and market economies. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing is professor of anthropology at the University of California in Santa Cruz. She is the author of The Mushroom at the end of the world. On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins.

Host: Clara Young

Producer: Robin Allison Davis

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