In his new podcast, “Obsessions: Wild Chocolate,” award-winning food and nature writer Rowan Jacobsen of Calais takes listeners into the depths of the rain forest in search of culinary gold: cacao. Jacobsen follows bean hunters as they experience ecstatic dance, financial ruination and the bliss of tasting chocolate made from the seeds (also called beans) of wild cacao trees. It’s a wild ride, so we asked Jacobsen to tell us more about his experience making the podcast. SEVEN DAYS: In “Wild Chocolate,” you refer to some of what you taste as “god-level” chocolate, which can cost up to $50 for a small bar. What makes this chocolate rare and special? ROWAN JACOBSEN: It’s a lot like wine. It’s easy to make basic wine out of grapes that grow abundantly, but certain varieties of grapes, grown on less productive hillsides and carefully harvested and fermented, can produce wine with much more complex flavors. With chocolate, certain varieties of cacao trees produce beans with much more interesting floral and fruity flavors, but the industry abandoned them for higher-yielding varieties a century ago. But these heirlooms are still out there in the Americas. And now there is a kind of treasure hunt to find them before they go extinct. (And there is a new wave of small “bean-to-bar” chocolate makers who are happy to pay more for better-tasting beans.) Eating this new chocolate can be thrilling, because it has all kinds of flavors that people don’t even associate with chocolate. SD: Many probably think of “food journalist” as a fairly safe profession, but this podcast touches on killer ants, ayahuasca ceremonies and being forced to land on an airstrip used by cocaine smugglers. Was this the most risky reporting you’ve ever done? RJ: There have been some hairy moments, for sure, but doom never felt like it was around the corner. But, yes, a lot of wet, muddy nights and ticks and low-grade tropical yuck. I did some war reporting in Myanmar a decade ago that was more dangerous, but even then, as long as you didn’t freak out and do something stupid, it would all be fine. Plus, we tend to amplify the unfamiliar risks and ignore the familiar ones. I’m certain that the biggest risk I’ve taken was simply driving down the road in India. And probably skating on ponds in Vermont is No. 2! SD: Your books are often…