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You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters. Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis hide caption

itoggle caption Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

You need keen eyesight to spot yartsa gunbu when it sprouts in spring. Kids are very good harvesters.

Michael S. Yamashita/National Geographic Society/Corbis

People live for — and die because of — the "Viagra of the Himalayas."

That's the nickname for one of the weirdest fungi around.

It starts with the larva of the ghost moth — a caterpillar that lives underground. A fungus invades the larva, kills it and consumes the body. Just the outer skeleton remains.

Eventually, a small brown stalk erupts from the dead caterpillar's head. In the spring, the pinkie-sized stalk pokes an inch or two from the earth. That's when people across the Tibetan Plateau head to the high-alpine meadows to harvest the crazy-looking creature.

It's not just for the fun of it. For centuries, people have believed that the fungus known as "yartsa gunbu," literally "summer grass, winter worm," is an aphrodisiac. According to ancient Tibetan texts, men who eat it are promised "the delights of thousands of beautiful women." That's why top quality yartsa sells for around $2,000 an ounce – more than the price of gold. In China, yartsa is a status symbol.

And in Tibet, people fight over it. They sometimes even kill each other. In 2014, a dispute between the local community and a park management committee about the right to collect fees for access to yartsa gunbu led to two deaths.

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Caterpillar Fungus: The Viagra Of The Himalayas Oct. 9, 2011

Plus there's a risk that the demand will deplete the grasslands and alpine regions of the Tibetan Plateau. "Any resource of such immense value and key relevance to rural livelihoods as the main cash source runs the risk of being overexploited," says Daniel Winkler, an expert on Himalayan caterpillar fungus.

New research by Washington University associate professor Geoff Childs and graduate student Namgyal Choedup, published in the journal Himalaya, shows how two villages have found a way to sustainably (and peacefully) harvest the precious resource.

In Nubri, village leaders set a date for the start of the harvest. In the weeks prior, residents must check in at the community meeting house four times daily.

"The roll call is designed to thwart attempts by any individual to begin collecting earlier than others," the authors say. Since the trek to the nearest gathering ground is several hours away, it's nearly impossible to sneak off and dig for yartsa gunbu. There's also a heavy fine for those who don't check in.

While all residents in Nubri have a right to collect yartsa gunbu, each household is required to register any collectors and pay a corresponding tax — $1 for the first member and $53 for each additional members. That's not just pocket change in a part of the world where the yearly income can range from $24 to $3,500. The tax money funds repairs and services, from fixing the hydroelectric system to hiring a lama to perform an empowerment ritual.

Local rituals and certain Buddhist beliefs have helped keep the harvest under control. Religious decrees prohibit harvesting on certain sacred mountain slopes. This creates a natural sanctuary, ensuring that part of the landscape will remain undisturbed and allowing fungal spores to spread for the next season.

The village of Tsum prohibits outsiders from gathering yartsa gunbu. Locals are using the profits from yartsa gunbu sales to build lodges that cater to foreign tourists and also to purchase gold as a way to hold onto their yartsa wealth.

The money has been invaluable. In some cases, it makes up 80 percent of a household's income. "Tibetans are using the cash to improve their standard of living, and in some cases are reducing dependency on agro-pastoral activities by becoming entrepreneurs," Childs and Choedup write. Profits pay for everything from school supplies and DVDs to solar panels and gold jewelry.

But then there's all that tension to deal with. One man from the Nubri Valley told Childs and Choedup that "Earlier, we only had village meetings once or twice a year. Nowadays there are frequent meetings with more arguments between people, more squabbles. People are becoming selfish."

If Tibetans follow the example of the two forward-thinking villages, then maybe fungus gatherers can learn to get along with each other — and with Mother Nature.

yartsa gunbu

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A TV comedy Bill Cosby had been developing for NBC has been canceled, after new allegations of rape have been made against the comedian. Netflix made a similar move late Tuesday, shelving a comedy special that had been slated to premiere the week of Thanksgiving.

NBC on prospective Bill Cosby show: "“We can confirm that the Cosby project is no longer in development. No comment from the network. “

— Eric Deggans at NPR (@Deggans) November 19, 2014

Cosby, 77, has not publicly addressed the claims against him, which have now been made publicly by at least six women. In an NPR interview that aired over the weekend, Cosby refused to discuss the allegations.

Update at 7:10 p.m. ET: TV Land To Cease Airing 'Cosby Show'

Reruns of The Cosby Show will no longer air on TV Land, with the AP saying the show is off the air "indefinitely." The TV Land website's page for the show is now returning no content.

NPR's Eric Deggans has confirmed the news.

We'll remind you that TV Land is owned by Viacom, while NBC is majority-owned by Comcast. Viacom has been airing Cosby Show episodes for much of the past 12 years.

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Marty Singer, Cosby's attorney, has said the comedian did nothing wrong. Responding to former model Janice Dickinson's claim that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her, Singer called the story an "outrageous defamatory lie." In a letter to website The Wrap, Singer said the version of events Dickinson relayed this week doesn't match what she wrote about the encounter in a memoir.

Dickinson spoke to Entertainment Weekly several days after former actress Barbara Bowman wrote in last Friday's Washington Post, "Cosby had drugged and raped me, too."

As NPR's Eric Deggans wrote this week, "several recent events, including the 30th anniversary of The Cosby Show and the publication of the biography, have pushed media to reconsider Cosby's legacy."

Discussing the comedian's "huge, complicated" legacy, NPR's Gene Demby wrote in September:

"Cosby's renown has become less neat in the years since the show went off the air, his squeaky-clean family image tarnished by confessions of infidelity and allegations of sexual assault. His politics have become polarizing, and his name is invoked as a shorthand for a specific strain of black conservatism."

Bill Cosby

The request was forwarded to me from a distant (fifth floor — I'm on four) division of NPR.

It came from Justin Lucas, the head of NPR's Audience and Community Relations team. He's the go-to person here for requests from listeners, for information or permissions.

He'd gotten a letter from Beth Hansen, owner of Soup and Salad, a small sandwich shop in Easton, Md., a charming old town on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.

Justin read me an excerpt of the request: "I'd love to make and sell Mama Stamberg's Cranberry Chutney. A portion of the proceeds..."

"Wait, she says chutney?" I ask.

"Yes, she says chutney."

Susan Stamberg's Cranberry Relish Tradition

Mrs. Stamberg's Relish Goes To Washington

"It's a relish," I correct.

"Fair point," says Lucas. Anyway, "a portion of the proceeds will go to either NPR or our local NPR station. Please let me know the terms under which you would allow this. Thank you very much."

Well, this is too much!

Beth Hansen is writing about a recipe, which I have read on NPR for the past 127 years: a venerable Thanksgiving recipe from my late mother-in-law for a tart relish with cranberries, sour cream, sugar, onion and horseradish — a recipe which sounds terrible, but tastes terrific (even though it does end up the color of Pepto Bismol).

Anyway, Justin says, I'm the one to give permission. So I call her.

Hansen tells me there are lots of NPR listeners in Delmarva (where Delaware, Maryland and Virginia make a pretty peninsula) who are curious about the recipe, but don't want to actually make it. She figures if she makes it, they'll want to try it.

"So can we do it?" she asks.

"Well," I say, "I'm kinda picky about that recipe. I mean, Americans can make it when I do it on the radio, but ... you're not very far from where I am in Washington, D.C. I think I'd need to come and inspect your sandwich shop and see the kind of operation you've got."

Beth Hansen's sign for Susan Stamberg when she visited the Amish Farmers Market. Jackie Judd/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Jackie Judd/NPR

"That would be fabulous!" says Beth.

She explains how to get to her food stand in the Amish Farmer's Market.

"You were asking what our terms might be," I say. "You know we have no terms, to tell you the truth, Miss Hansen. But this inspection will be very important — just to make sure it's the proper venue."

It turned out it was the weekend of the Waterfowl Festival in Easton, a lively celebration of hunting season in Delmarva. But the only geese we see in town are carved in plastic, and bleep from a boombox, hidden behind some bales of hay.

Now, like you, I have attitudes about hunting. And guns. I like big dogs and decoys and not great paintings of ducks and geese and sunny streets full of families and food stalls.

But I need to go out of town a bit, to find the would-be cranberry lady.

I was expecting some outside tents and little tables set up under it, but that's not what I found.

The Amish Country Farmers Market is supermarket-size and immaculate, with vendors in straw hats, long beards, the women in simple dresses and tidy white caps, selling everything from chicken breasts and salad dressing to knitted mittens and handmade furniture.

There are lots of eating areas all around with tables and chairs. At 9 a.m., there's quite a line at the all-you-can-eat $7 breakfast buffet.

Delmarva native Mark Weaver is fixing himself a plate. "I started with the potatoes. You gotta have your starch. And then my scrapple. Then, after that, we're gonna get a little bit of bacon," he says. "I'll grab a biscuit and I'll make a little biscuits and gravy."

At this point I am in need of Beth Hansen's Soup and Salad. Where is she? I stroll the aisles, searching.

I spot a sign: "Welcome Susan Stamberg of NPR, the relish is back here."

And there's the food stand. Beth is tall and smiling, gray hair, and friendly, if a bit nervous.

"We want to know if we're worthy to serve the cranberry relish," she says.

Susan Stamberg's Cranberry Relish Tradition

Susan Stamberg's Other Favorite Holiday Cranberry Dish

Her soup looks good: "We have potato leek, vegetable beef, crab and chicken noodle." It smells great and the salad fixings are so fresh they sparkle.

"You know, I didn't bring my white gloves for the inspection tour to see if you would be worthy to sell this time-honored recipe," I say.

But the stand is really nice and nestled carefully in a bed of ice, what's on display but containers of cranberry relish.

Pink cranberry relish. My cranberry relish.

Beth opens a container. "OK, this is the big moment," she says, "Are we worthy?"

"It's a little pale," I say. "It's supposed to be more of a Pepto Bismol color."

She hands me a spoon. Slowly and carefully I take a taste.

"This is perfect," I say. She gasps.

"Perfect! We got perfect?!"

It could use a little more horseradish, but who am I to quibble. Another bite, a grin, and Beth Hansen gets the Stamberg Family Seal of Approval.

A tangy way to say Happy Thanksgiving, to her and you.

cranberry relish

Thanksgiving

More than two dozen members of the Republican Governors Association gathered this week in Boca Raton, Fla., to talk about policy issues and bask in their success after the recent midterm election.

Under New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's chairmanship, the RGA spent $130 million and achieved remarkable success at the polls: All but two Republican governors running for re-election won. And the GOP even won governors' races in deep blue states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Their message? Republican governors are putting conservative principles into practice in their states, and they won't allow their party to be defined by what they call "the dysfunction in Washington."

Yet even before the governors held their first news conference, they found themselves once again responding to news from Washington.

In this case, it was President Obama's executive action on immigration. At news conferences, and at a Wednesday afternoon panel moderated by NBC's Chuck Todd, governors were pressed for their views on Obama's action, on immigration, and on how they would handle the millions of undocumented immigrants currently here.

Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Wisconsin's Scott Walker bristled at Todd's repeated questions on immigration. "Scott's tried. I've tried," Jindal said. "I'd like to talk about energy. I'd like to talk about education."

Walker maintains that while immigration may be important, it was not an issue that came up in his campaign or in many other states. Walker said of immigration, "If you went out on the campaign trail with us, none of us heard this issue in our races. And I dare say it probably wasn't one of the top issues in most United States Senate or House races out there."

If immigration didn't rank as a top issue in most governors' races, it does with a group that's growing in importance in the U.S. — Hispanics. A recent Gallup poll shows immigration ranks as the second most important issue among Hispanics after the economy.

At the conference in Boca Raton this week, Ohio Gov. John Kasich said, "It's a cool time to be a Republican. I think young people are back looking at us again. We lost them for a while, but I think they're back. In my state, we're seeing minorities now voting Republican."

But how Republicans respond to Obama's moves on immigration may affect how Hispanics feel about the GOP.

In Texas, California, Florida and other states where Hispanics are an important voting bloc, it's likely to continue as an important issue going into 2016 — when Jindal, Walker, Kasich and other governors are considering running for president.

republican governors

Immigration

Republicans