John Cage, Man of Music—and Mushrooms

In February 1959, John Cage appeared on the Italian television program “Lascia o Raddoppio” (Double or Nothing), a popular game show on which contestants had to answer obscure trivia questions about a subject of their choice: in Cage’s case, not music or art, but mushrooms. In the final round, he was asked to list the twenty-four white-spored agarics contained in the field guide Studies of American Fungi. Not only did Cage name all twenty-four correctly, he named them in alphab