Italian truffle hunters navigate a cutthroat underground market for rare white truffles that is so lucrative they frequently use poisoned meatballs to assassinate rival foraging dogs.

A closer look

Italian truffle hunters navigate a cutthroat underground market for rare white truffles that is so lucrative they frequently use poisoned meatballs to assassinate rival foraging dogs. Since these rare fungi cannot be reliably cultivated in a lab and command prices of up to four thousand dollars per pound, the rural economy relies entirely on secretive nighttime hunting expeditions. This has essentially created a bizarre, dirt-covered mafia where elderly men wage shadow wars in the forest over an ingredient you shave on top of a mid-tier risotto. It just goes to show that capitalism will inevitably turn literally any scarce resource into a brutal blood sport, even if that resource is just a smelly, lumpy piece of underground fungus!