Unfinished: Stories on the end of the world

On the final chapter, we discuss what does it mean to think about the end of the world with the help of mycelia: Indeterminacy, adaptation and renovation.

Could the disappearance of matsutake have something to do with their surprisingly appearance in the Eastern Cascades, state of Oregon? The 20th century was the place for different stories of matsutake in Japan and in Oregon. These stories with opposite outcomes can have more links than we would assume at first. 

In the first part of the fourth chapter, we will get to know a little more of the story of how matsutake disappeared in Japan - where they have once been abundant. What happened naturally and culturally for this outcome? 

Why are anthropologists interested in mushrooms? Encounters creates difference. In this chapter we discuss how Anna Tsing encountered matsutake mushrooms, and how the Brazilian group LABFICC created a project called Thinking with Fungi, affected by Anna Tsing's book. 

In this chapter, we discuss a brief overview of the biology of mushrooms and the nature of the relationship between fungi and some coniferous trees. What is in this relationship that make possible for trees to grow on very unpromising, dry and rocky soils?

Matsutake are punk mushrooms. They refuse to be cultivated, one of the reasons that make them the most expensive mushroom in the world. How are we suppose to find them, then?----more----

This short introduction describes a little about this podcast and the series of chapters that compose the first episode, called The Mushroom at the End of World  after Anna Tsing's book.