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Parent info: The Atlas Obscura Podcast is recommended for ages 11 plus. It's an Episodic show that can be listened to in any order. Made in the USA, it's about Geography and History for kids. Launched in 2021, it has 1 season.
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Emily Zarka is the host of the PBS digital series Monstrum, a show that tries to figure out how monster mythology was created and shaped through oral storytelling, literature, and film.
Author and Ossining town historian Caroline Curvan helps unpack the story of how a castle ended up in the upstate New York woods. And how one wealthy family’s dream home was struck by subsequent tragedies and ultimately abandoned.
Casa Cueva was completed in 1958 by artist Juan O Gorman. But in 1969, he sold the house to artist Helen Escobedo. She set off a controversy, which still sparks passion today, after she demolished parts of the house.
Host Kelly McEvers and producers Jerome and Amanda answer your questions about traveling while sick, memorable souvenirs and their best detours.
From alchemy to doomsday prophecies, we delve into the lore of Johannes Kelpius, a mystic believed to have started a cult in the Wissahickon Valley near Philadelphia.
Brad Ryan has traveled to all 63 U.S National Parks. But he’s not done it alone. He traveled with his grandmother, who was in her mid-80s when they first started. Now, he’s got a book out all about it titled Grandma Joy and Me: A Journey of Healing One Nationa…
In 2007, excavators dug 70-odd years’ worth of trash and debris from a cave in Hoboken, New Jersey. It had once been a popular recreation spot, and home to a natural spring that was supposed to have healing properties. But then in 1841 everything changed when …
We meet the robot saints – sculptures made of wood and wire, of cams and pulleys during medieval times – that might just help us understand this new AI age we all find ourselves living in.
Today, we're visiting the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami, a place that shattered the line between fine art and our deeply held taboos.
Mary Maschal set out to document women’s history, unintentionally becoming part of it herself. Learn more about the Women's Museum of History here.
For decades, people have been addressing love letters to an oak tree deep in the Dodauer Forest in Germany called the Bridegroom’s Oak. The hope is that a passerby might find their letter, write back and form a connection. Journalist Elliot Stein visited this …
“Stockholm Syndrome” is a term in pop psychology that’s come to mean situations where hostages develop emotional bonds with their captors. But it comes from an actual hostage situation back in the 1970s, when a botched bank robbery in downtown Stockholm turned…
We asked you about traveling to all 50 states, and in response got several stories about interesting quests and journeys across the U.S.
In the 1980s, a group of friends on the track team at Sul Ross State University hauled a discarded dorm room desk to the top of a mountain. They left a notebook there to keep track of their run times and leave little notes for each other. Then… other people fo…
The story of a big idea, and a big duck – and how this duck would go on to become an important architectural landmark that would influence buildings all around the world. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/big-duck
Today we visit a baklava shop in Istanbul at the intersection of autocracy, violence and urban renewal. Kelly speaks with journalist Suzy Hansen, author of the book “ From Life Itself: Turkey and Istanbul in the Age of Erdogan” about a 2019 attack on a Syrian-…
We visit the Louisiana town where the infamous – but often misunderstood – couple’s story came to an end.
Step back in time with us at the Wagner Free Institute of Science and explore how this museum defies modernity, preserving its original mission of education and inclusivity since the 19th century.
Besides the sky, blue is a color you don’t often see in nature. It often signals poison, something artificial. True blue is astonishingly rare. But today, producers Amanda McGowan and Glydel Go take you to two places on opposite ends of the earth, with blues t…
A hospital and rehab center for birds in Manhattan started with a woman who just wanted to do all she could to help an injured goose. Decades later, it has become an institution.
On the eve of the Second World War, there was one place that was the source for all good stories — the Hotel Imperial in Vienna. It exuded luxury and power, and also was the converging spot for foreign correspondents in the 1920’s and ‘30s who were warning the…
In Hastings, Nebraska, the Kool-Aid man is a bit of a local legend. Not the anthropomorphic glass pitcher with a face who yells “Oh yeah” (though he’s part of the story too) but the original Kool-Aid man, Edwin Perkins, who invented the drink almost 100 years …
This tiny island off the coast of Peru is an UNESCO World Heritage site for having the finest textile art. It’s also the place where a knitted hat represents and symbolizes a man’s code of honor, marital status, and love for life.
Dean Karnazes has visited all 50 states in the U.S. But he did it in an incredible way: In 2006, he ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days.
Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Johanna and Amanda answer a fun hypothetical, and a classic would-you-rather question.
Her image is just about everywhere in New York City. But her name and story is rarely known. This is the story of America’s first supermodel Audrey Munson
Visitors to the Truck Yard beer garden in The Colony, Texas (outside Dallas) are treated to a very unusual art collection: a sweeping array of around 1400 hand-painted toilet seats, many of which are also collaged with objects ranging from tortoise shells to Z…
We want to hear from you! Have you visited all 50 states? Or maybe you’re really close? Tell us about your 50 state journey – whether you’re a quester type, or more of an accidental type, like me. Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can als…
The story of how a former nuclear missile silo in Wamego, Kansas became the site of the largest LSD bust in US history (allegedly). Fore more information, check out author Dennis McDougal’s website and Rolling Stone’s interview with Leonard Pickard.
We head south of Miami to hear the story of a family that took a gamble on a humble roadside stand that blossomed into a fruit emporium and community staple.
Monterrey, Mexico is known for its mountains, its industry, and its close connection to the US. But Monterrey was also home to one of the first private radio stations, run by a man who would become known as the father of Mexican radio: Constantino de Tarnava. …
Beverly Gage is a Pulitzer Prize award winner and a professor of history at Yale University.
Pea Island is a wildlife refuge, and one of the most untouched parts of the Outer Banks. But a century ago, this small piece of land was the site of one of the most remarkable water rescues to date. And it was thanks to a man who, just 30 years after Reconstru…
We visit the tower of Baa-Goat, which is inhabited by a flock of goats who speak Swiss French. Along the way we hear about 19th century architectural follies, why goats like to climb, and how sometimes household projects can take on a life of their own…
This museum in John Day, Oregon, was once a Chinese general store and medicine shop that dates back to the 1800s. But these days it’s a perfectly preserved time capsule, down to the fruit – down to the orange its former owner left on the counter in the 1950s. …
We follow one man’s journey down an internet rabbit hole that becomes a search for a one-of-a-kind forest and its mysterious creator.
Kelly McEvers has visited all 50 states. But not on purpose.
James Baldwin’s former home in the South of France is a site that many visit hoping to feel the essence of the great African-American writer. But should it be?
Reporter Elah Feder ventures into one of her hometown’s biggest tourist attractions: A 98-room castle in the middle of Toronto that bankrupted a 19th century electricity multimillionaire.
In this episode, we explore Smither Park, an artistic oasis in Houston where self-taught artists transform a humble park into a mesmerizing gallery.
How did a farm in Missouri wind up with 60,000 collectible pigs? The story involves a radio DJ with a dartboard, an unsuspecting fitness-instructor-turned-farmer, and a fateful phone call.
Today, we step onto the four acres of Seattle’s Beacon Food Forest. And we learn how what started as a neighborhood project evolved into an open-source grocery store.
Natchez, Mississippi is home to one of the largest concentrations of antebellum homes, and tourists come from far and wide to see them. But Natchez was also a center of the cotton trade, and had one of the biggest slave markets in the country. Filmmakers Suzan…
Today, there are only remains of what were once these massive baths constructed by self made millionaire Adolph Sutro in San Francisco.
This experimental automotive replica of Stonehenge has become a symbol of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. But residents haven’t always been fans.
Dylan tries his hand at playing a “glass armonica,” a musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin. Its high-pitched, eerie sounds were rumored to cure all kinds of illnesses – or even, sometimes, cause them.
A tidy little story from Pocatello, Idaho, home to the Museum of Clean
Lionel Messi left Argentina and became a soccer superstar playing in Spain. But when he came back home to play for the Argentina National Team, he had a tough time. NPR reporter and The Last Cup podcast host Jasmine Garsd talks about Messi’s return to his home…
At the Mapparium® globe in Boston, visitors can step inside a giant, three-story stained glass globe…and get a glimpse of the bigger picture.
A massive California wildfire prompted author Ryan Huling to get curious about the boundaries between human civilization and a vacant wilderness. It led him on a travel quest into the world of animals, which he documented in a new book, The Hidden Nations of A…
A renegade art project in Vancouver galvanized a small community, pitted residents against city government, and ultimately resulted in a new name for a chill park.
A pay phone in Washington, D.C tells you jokes and affirmations.
Professional rainmaker Charles Hatfield was either a scientist or a con man who had a particular influence on San Diego, CA.
Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Johanna and Amanda answer questions about books where the setting is transportive, travel in the Middle East right now, and how to handle sharing an Airbnb with five friends but only one bathroom.
We visit an office building in Guadalajara, and learn how one man moved it – workers and all – exactly 40 feet.
Nestled on North Carolina’s southern shoreline, the Kindred Mailbox keeps countless secrets and confessions left in the sand. This episode tells the story of mailbox and its dedicated keepers.
Eight thousand years ago, this land’s first inhabitants built a village around a sacred spring. And today, in what is now Los Angeles, CA, their descendants still work to protect the site.
Today we visit the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is home to 10,000 bobbleheads inspired by sports, pop culture, politics, and even some niche viral Internet moments. Some even date back hundreds of years.
How do we determine the time? Believe it or not, there is an official clock. It’s located in Boulder, Colorado at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and we go there to visit.
Professional French horn player Kyra Sims tells us about a once-in-a-lifetime trip she took to Antarctica with a program called Polar STEAM, which pairs artists with scientists. She tells us about living on a research vessel, getting up close and personal with…
This stone at Emory University is a marker of one millionaire's personal vendetta against gravity.
The variety of apples we enjoy today have a common ancestor that lies in the forests of Kazakhstan, where scientists are studying the wildest version of the fruit.
It took Ross Ward more than 40 years to build Tinkertown, an indescribable array of carvings, figurines, and folk art. The project became both a source of inspiration for young artists, and an unexpected refuge for Ross himself.
We head to the Namib Desert in Africa, where the landscape is dotted with mysterious, pimple-like indents known as fairy circles. Where do these things come from? Scientist Walter Tschinkel has spent the last several years studying and experiencing a natural o…
The LA Central Library has always been unique. It doesn’t look like a typical big city library, many people didn’t want it to be built in the first place, and, in 1986, a fire affected more than one million of its books. But the library endured, and is now cel…
Candy scholar Susan Benjamin brings us to her research-based historic candy shop, and introduces us to some surprising sweets that have shaped American history … from abolitionist sugars to WWI's chocolate energy bars.
One of Mexico’s oldest shoe stores holds a collection of more than 2,000 thousand shoes in a museum called el Museo Del Calzado. From booties worn by a rescue dog to slippers owned by Queen Elizabeth II, each pair tells a story.
War of the Worlds by Orson Welles is perhaps the most famous radio play on Earth. But what’s left out of the story is where the play was set — a real, little town in New Jersey. It took decades, but the people who live in Grover’s Mill have come to embrace the…
This sculpture in Spokane, WA was created by a"welding nun" decades ago.
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a beloved place in Los Angeles, California. The theater almost closed down when its founder, Bob Baker, died in 2014. But it has managed to survive.
We visit southern Benin to hear the story of the Temple of Pythons and clear up some misconceptions about one of the world's most misunderstood spiritual systems.
Isaac Fitzgerald grew up taking long walks with his father in rural Massachusetts. And on those walks, his father told him stories about legendary figures like Johnny Appleseed. As an adult, Isaac decided to retrace his path, and learn the true story behind th…
When armed fighters captured his workplace during Syria’s civil war, Ali Shehadeh decided to pay them a visit. He was determined to save his life’s work: a massive collection of seeds.
We dive into the dirty history of the famed Paris sewer system, from its unorthodox cleaning methods, to a pneumatic postal service that ran via the sewer, to… a poop tax.
Scientists in Denver, Colorado store and conduct tests on miles of ice core samples dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
In 1891, a knot of men murdered a 1,300-year-old tree to prove it wasn’t a "tall tale." We visit the Mark Twain Stump, a 16-foot-wide wooden stage that serves as a monument to early American hubris, the cost of disbelief, and the bittersweet birth of the conse…
We go to Wilmington, Delaware, to a 4-acre garden with characters and exhibits created using castoff materials and greenery that invites kids to drop screens and rules – and instead give in to a state of play.
This amusement park in Singapore holds the Ten Courts of Hell, a series of dioramas that depict the kind of horrible fates awaiting people who behaved badly on Earth.
Producers Jerome and Johanna join co-host Kelly McEvers to answer questions about souvenir-buying stress, multigenerational travel, and what to listen to on a road trip when you don’t have the same taste as your driving buddy.
Allen Woodall’s first lunchbox was a brown paper bag. Since then, he’s amassed a collection of over 5,000 lunchboxes, all housed in a museum in Columbus, Georgia.
Producers India Rice and Morgan Johnson take you beyond this planet as they share two stories tied to the franchise Star Wars.
In Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, there was once a revolutionary community for African Americans willing to do whatever it took to maintain their own freedom – and help others achieve theirs. Learn more about planning a trip to Smith Court via the Black He…
Historians have known about the strange passageway in the Merchant’s House Museum for decades, but they never knew what it was for… until now. And now that we know, it changes everything we thought we knew about why the Merchant’s House really matters.
The townspeople of Manitou Springs, Colorado do something very interesting to celebrate the legacy.of a young woman who loved, lived and died there 130 years ago.
Co-host Kelly McEvers doesn’t usually return to places – she always wants to go somewhere new. But there’s one place that makes her break her own rule over and over again.
A listener shares a wonder from his backyard, this time in the small town of Aztec, New Mexico.
The José María Azael Franco Guerrero Cemetery in Tulcán, Ecuador is a topiary anomaly and a lush green paradise for the dead. This week, we’re celebrating the arrival of spring with classic and new stories about unusual gardens around the world.
Jason deCaires Taylor takes intentional art to another level with his sculptures that can be visited by humans and fish.
Today we visit a hidden gem of Washington, D.C.: the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, an oasis of ponds filled with lotuses and waterlilies. This unusual National Park – the only aquatic gardens that are a National Park – were first dug in the 1800s by a Civil War …
An orchard of metal poles sits on a hill overlooking Lake Washington. And when the wind blows, this musical sculpture "sings the world into existence" with its unique sound.
The Alnwick Poison Garden in England is a place where stopping and smelling the flowers could actually kill you. The garden is dedicated entirely to plants that are narcotic or deadly.
In the Soviet Union, x-rays didn’t just give you a look inside the human body. They also gave you a glimpse of the outside world, thanks to music that was imprinted onto this unassuming medical tool.
As a young adult, Paul "Barbs" Barbato gave himself perhaps the world's biggest social studies assignment: make a profile of every single one of the 193 UN-recognized countries in the world. Ten years later, he finally finished.
In a storefront in Kearney, Nebraska, Morris Press Cookbooks Store houses a massive "Google of family recipes," chronicling nearly a century of American home-style cuisine. To test the archive, producer Jerome Campbell attempts to “bake his way back home” by t…
We asked you to send us stories about a time you accidentally broke the rules while traveling… and some you really went there.
As a foreign correspondent, Kelly McEvers has found herself detained by the KGB, held up at ISIS checkpoints, and on the front line in Syria. But it was a much more mundane experience that left her feeling in over her head years later.
This little house in New Haven, Kentucky is where Thomas Merton aka profit-poet aka the rebel monk tried to get away from the world.
In 1971, five hippies made a trek through the Amazon looking for rare psychedelic drugs. One of them was Terence McKenna, who, along with his brother Dennis, would go on to change the way Americans thought about “magic mushrooms” forever. We talk to John O’Con…
Producer Manolo Morales shares a story with co-host Kelly McEvers, about a legendary place in the backyard of our Canadian northern neighbors.
We visit Jerry’s Hat Museum, where a retiree has turned to an old chapel to house a collection of thousands of hats, pens, odds, ends and other artifacts from his Illinois hometown.
Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Johanna and Jerome answer questions about whether you should experience certain places with other people, the best movies to watch on an airplane, and the delicate etiquette of traveling to places where you know people.
A producer sits down with Dylan and recounts his trip to a place referred to as “The Venice of Africa.”
Marina Marchese is a beekeeper and trained honey sommelier. She explains how honey tastes like the place where it’s made… and guides co-host Kelly McEvers through a taste test of some of the world’s most unique and unusual honeys.
Today, we are celebrating the spirit of April Fools’ Day with two stories about hoaxes. One is about a mythical creature in Fouke, Arkansas and the other about a giant sea serpent in a small town of New York.
For one sixteenth century Austrian mayor, a long, luscious beard was both his claim to fame – and the cause of his downfall.
Daren Grover was on vacation near the top of New Zealand’s South Island when he got a call: some whales needed help. Hundreds of them had stranded on a spot so notorious for whale strandings, it’s cause for celebration when a year goes by without a stranding: …
Long before Joe Exotic got the country talking about big cats, there was Joe Taft – regular guy – who began raising and rescuing these types of felines in Indiana.
What drives a person to live in isolation? Meet Sue Aikens, who thrives in the icy expanse of the Arctic. She shares stories of survival, self-discovery, and the wild encounters that continue to shape her life. Her memoir, "North of Ordinary," was just publish…
Todd Lerew has spent a decade visiting every single museum in Los Angeles. He chronicled his journey in his book Also on View: Unique and Unexpected Museums of Greater Los Angeles.
In the 1950s, a journalist doing archival research at the Staten Island Historical Society came across a collection of images that stopped him in his tracks. These photos featured women from the 1890s smoking cigarettes, dressed in men’s clothing, showing thei…
You may have heard the phrase 'third place' being used more often as the world started opening up post-pandemic. People were craving somewhere that was neither their home or work, but still a place to focus social connection. But the Barbican, in London, was W…
We wanna hear your stories about the times you’ve accidentally broken the rules somewhere foreign to you.
A producer takes a detour for a glimpse of what some call New York’s worst kept secret – a train station that’s been shut down and sealed away for nearly a century.
Cultural historian Kassia St. Clair tells the stories of two highly prized colors that are linked to specific places in the world: an exquisite, extremely expensive blue that crossed the globe and upended the European art world… and a shade of purple that poss…
Catia Lattouf has dedicated her life to nursing hummingbirds back to health – from inside her apartment in Mexico City.
Over the course of a century, the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan has grown to house over 26 million artifacts of innovative achievements. However, one quiet piece – prized by Ford above all others – curiously stands out among the collection: a seeming…
We asked you to send us stories about your unforgettable spring break trips. From a U2 concert to a tornado in 1974, you delivered.
In the early 1900s, influential psychologist Carl Jung spent more than a decade documenting the strange images that popped up in his unconscious mind and documenting them all in a beautiful illustrated manuscript. After his death, his family thought the book w…
In 1978, a team of Soviet geologists working deep in the Siberian taiga came across something they never expected to see: a house. As it turned out, they had stumbled on a family that had lived in complete isolation for decades – they weren’t even aware of Wor…
Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Jerome Campbell and Manolo Morales answer questions about places they could live permanently, how to navigate travel as a Type B person when all your friends are Type A, and appropriate airplane attire.
Marta Becket was an artist from New York City. Then in 1967, when she was on a road trip with her husband, she discovered an abandoned social hall in the California desert town of Death Valley Junction. She left New York and moved there to transform this hall …
In 2007, the beloved former mayor of Suwon, Korea, demolished the home he and his wife had lived in for 30 years and built them a new house shaped like a toilet: curved walls, a toilet seat roof, and a bowl-shaped courtyard in the middle. For many spouses, thi…
We go to Deep River, Connecticut – where the story of a botched bank robbery more than 100 years ago has taken on a life of its own as an urban legend. MORE: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-grave-of-xyz-deep-river-connecticut
There is a mirror said to reveal the truest, most precise reflection of oneself. It’s called the Aranmula Kannadi. The tradition of mirror-making has been passed down for generations by self-taught artisans in a small village in India. Journalist Eliot Stein h…
The Dutch city of Utrecht is built around an iconic canal lined with historic homes. But for the fish of the city, the view isn’t quite so picturesque. Each spring, migrating fish get trapped in the mazelike waterways of the city. Ecologist Mark van Heukelum c…
Daylight saving time is nearly upon us. Today, we’re visiting two places with very different approaches to harnessing the sun. One imposes rules on it, wreaking havoc on residents and travelers… and the other tries to physically manipulate it.
We look into the story behind a regionally famous – and controversial – beer tap in Des Moines, Iowa.
Lake Karachay in Ozersk, Russia is the site of a former secret Soviet Union nuclear facility - that’s inspired art despite the little that’s publicly known of the site.
Dylan is joined by Marisa Scheinfeld, a photographer who has dedicated years to exploring the lost and abandoned properties of the Borscht Belt: a stretch of hundreds of hotels, resorts and summer camps where Jewish Americans would go to escape. Check out more…
How far would you go to find the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the United States?
This paddleboat gave some Black children a place to learn even when they were denied formal education on land.
The world’s biggest treehouse was inspired by a message from God.
We’re willing to bet that AO listeners didn’t go on the typical spring break trips. We want to hear your off the beaten track spring break travel stories. Where did you go? What made this trip so memorable? Did everything go as planned? Or did things go wrong?…
The Old Cahawba Archeological Park is perhaps one of Alabama's most famous ghost towns. But it once was the center of life in this southern state. We unravel the surprising tale of this onetime capital city.
Maybe when you think of Los Angeles you think of mega highways, gridlock traffic, and urban sprawl. But our guest today argues that it is actually an underrated destination for enjoying the outdoors. Rosecrans Baldwin, author of Everything Now: Lessons from th…
A giant salamander has been lurking in the rivers and streams of Appalachia for more than a hundred million years. And in just the last few years – after surviving one of the worst hurricanes in decades – they've become a local symbol of pride.
We go to Tallahassee and learn the incredible civil rights history of Florida's capital city.
We asked you to send us stories about the places where you’ve stayed the night – some of you had some interesting experiences that live in your head forever.
This museum in Kentucky is either your dream place or your nightmare, depending on how you feel about dummies. Because there are more than 500 of them there, resting in peace.
As we approach Valentine’s Day, Atlas Obscura co-host Kelly McEvers shares two stories about a state that has a special place in her heart: New Mexico.
Centralia, Pennsylvania has attained a sort of cult favorite status, often discussed as a place you cannot and should not visit. But in this episode, writer and friend of the show Colin Dickey has a different take on this ghost town. He says Centralia is thriv…
Jane August has set a goal to visit every single one of NYC’s roughly 200 museums. She’s chronicling her journey on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram at @JaneAugust.
In honor of Black History Month, we are bringing you two stories about people who used nature to change their environment and communities.
Behind the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont sits a very peculiar graveyard... one dedicated to dearly departed ice cream flavors.
We visit a remarkable institution where people with Hansen's disease, or leprosy, learned to play music, had Mardi Gras parties, and published their own newspaper.
In 1930, the King of Thailand gifted a tree to the University of Hawaii in Manoa for developing a treatment for leprosy. For decades, the tree has stood as a symbol of the groundbreaking scientific achievement. However, the woman who created the solution was m…
In 1912, Piltdown, England wasn’t known for much. It was a quiet rural area with farms, winding tree-lined roads, and a pub. But then, a lawyer announced he’d made an incredible discovery in a local gravel pit: a skull that was part ape, part man. England was …
This story is about a heist that took place back in 2013 – not at a museum, or a gallery, or a royal palace, but at a garden. What these thieves were after… were Venus Fly Traps. We visit the Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden in Wilmington, North Carolin…
We're working on an episode about interesting places to lay your head -- and we'd love to hear YOUR story about the places you have stayed during your travels. Tell us why and how you picked that place, and what made the experience of staying there good, bad, …
A one-room museum located in the basement of a church-turned-community arts center is crammed with mementos from a pretty spectacular period in history. We hang with some retired dancers who recall the time when Chinatown in San Francisco was filled with late …
Decades before New York City’s subway system opened to the public, an eccentric inventor set about building his own underground system – IN SECRET – beneath Broadway. It wasn’t powered by steam engine…or electrical engine…or even horses. It was powered by pneu…
Toward the end of his life, the great inventor Thomas Edison became obsessed with one final project: finding a source of rubber that could grow in the United States. It would transform his Florida home into a bonafide botanical laboratory.
A stranger on an overnight bus ride causes a woman to contemplate her future. This essay originally appeared in Off Assignment.
Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Johanna and Amanda answer questions about places that exceeded expectations, finding yourself in dicey situations while on the road, and what to do when you have a lot of visitors but not a lot of money.
Welcome to the Judith A Basset Canid Education & Conservation Center, where a California couple has dedicated their lives to showing folks man has even more best friends than previously thought.
Today, we go on a special journey told in two parts, beginning with the world’s largest conveyor belt in the Western Sahara and ending on your dinner plate.
Have you heard of the Painted Lady butterfly?
Listeners share their travel resolutions for 2026.
We’re taking the day off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But in the meantime, we want to hear from you. Tell us about the wonders in your backyard. Is there a strange, unusual or surprising place in your city or town? What makes this place special to you? Give…
Spring is a popular time to visit Colonial Williamsburg, not least because it’s “lambing season,” the time of year when baby lambs are born and take their first steps (which is obviously very, very cute). But small as they are, these lambs have a big baaa-ckst…
The story of the Fendika Cultural Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is the story of Melaku Belay and his journey from homelessness to international acclaim as a community leader.
Dawn Anahid MacKeen’s grandfather survived the Armenian genocide, journeying nearly a thousand miles (much of it on foot) out of what is now Turkey and into the Syrian desert. Dawn chronicled his journey in her book The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey –…
Kelly McEvers spent years living and working across the globe as a foreign correspondent, reporting from across Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. Today, she shares three places that have shaped her life.
In the collection of the Lyme Regis Museum in England is a beautiful 19th century tabletop made of delicate, inset stones. The rub is that these stones are… (spoiler alert)... coprolite, or fossilized feces. Amanda and Johanna discuss the man who had this tabl…
Caroline Mazel-Carlton has visited over 1000 Atlas Obscura Places. But the project was about more than ticking off a list – she says it helped save her life.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring us two charming stories of some very special canines who have been (literally) preserved for the ages.
In July of 2024, Greg Eskridge was released from San Quentin Rehabilitation Center after 30 years in prison. We hear what it’s like to see the Bay Area with new eyes, and what places in his life have made him feel the most free.
On December 12, 1925, the first motel in America opened its doors. It had Spanish Mission style architecture, a red roof, and an orange tree outside each door. We trace the rise and fall (and second rise) of motels over the past century: the good, the bad, and…
In California, a rare specimen of sequoia produces ghostly white leaves. Reporter Alexa Lim ventures into the forest to get a look at albino redwoods.
The staff of Atlas Obscura share their new year’s travel resolutions – the things we want to change about how we travel or see the world this year.
One man in Brooklyn, New York - armed with a homemade boat and an artistic vision - helped transform one of the most polluted industrial waterways in the US.
Today, Sea View Hospital on Staten Island is largely abandoned. But it was here, in this forgotten place, staffed by people who were shunned and segregated, where medical workers eventually found a cure for a disease that had plagued humanity for nearly 500,00…
The new year is just around the corner. And the Atlas Obscura staff look back on the lessons and experiences they learned this year throughout their travels.
In 1971, a paleontologist discovered an animal graveyard in northeastern Nebraska. It was crammed with species that lived in North America millions of years ago: camels, rhinos, and three-toed horses… Excavating this site, two things immediately became clear:…
When a 180-year old bur oak tree collapsed during a rainstorm, a couple in Minnesota made a new life for it.
Travel to Penobscot, Maine, where one farmer maintains the tradition of burning his crop each year to rejuvenate it the next.
Over the course of its 200 year history, the lighthouse on Wood Island in Maine has been home to a celebrity dog, a grisly murder, some mischievous ghosts, and a monster storm that may or may not have been brought on by a pickpocket’s curse.
A couple decades ago, Jason Williams was working at a local restaurant in Portland, Maine. One day he was driving around to farmers markets looking for ingredients, when he found a special place. And it gave him a big idea…
Since settling down in the small town of Union, Maine, the Japanese-born ceramicist Hanako Nakazato has shaped her pieces around her endlessly surprising, largely untouched environment.
We meet Becky Sigwright, who captains a wind-powered boat that’s been sailing around Maine since before the invention of the telephone.
We're working on a listener-powered episode about travel resolutions and we want to hear yours!
Experience the Orfield Anechoic Chamber: a room inside a concrete bunker that was once known as the quietest place on earth.
The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Alabama bills itself as “the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage.” If you’ve ever lost a bag during air travel, it probably wound up there - along with many other treasures and oddities.
We go to the Westman Islands off the southern coast of Iceland and meet the heroes who save young birds that have wandered from their nests every summer.
We get out our passports and visit The Republic of Slowjamastan, a nation built on good vibes, good music and a dream of eliminating one very popular type of footwear.
Hear from the caretakers of a ghost town in Bolivia that was once the world's highest ski resort.
In honor of Lucia Day on December 13, we’re diving into the origins of a Swedish holiday tradition which evolved from sinister pagan lore to a celebration of light, warmth and music.
About 400 miles south of New Zealand, on the subantarctic Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku, stands a Sitka spruce whose nearest neighbor is 170 miles away.
Gastro Obscura’s senior editor Sam O’Brien returns to the podcast to go deeper with us on her strange beat – recipes etched into gravestones. We probe how food can help heal and remember those we’ve lost.
We visit the taverns of colonial America to take a frothy sip of the hot ale flip and how it helped pave the way for contemporary mixology.
Empress Anna’s Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia was the site of an incredibly strange wedding. Was it a cruel joke? A strategic power move? Or something else?
Mexico City is known for its museum and art scene. The collection at El Museo del Juguete Antiguo – The Antique Toy Museum – encourages visitors to lean into their imaginations – and reflect on the rich history and culture in this city.
This is how you do Christmas in the desert. Every year, the city of Chandler, Arizona creates a Christmas Tree made entirely of the diaspore of this Western plant.
Seltzer has been around for thousands of years. And one factory in Brooklyn, New York called the Brooklyn Seltzer Boys is preserving the history of this simple drink.
Around 60 people live full time in the town of Helvetia, West Virginia. But once a year, the population swells to 20 times its size – when masked revelers dressed as moons, suns, monsters, possums, and everything in between descend. This is Fasnacht, a Swiss-G…
In the early 1920s, walking around Orange, New Jersey at night, you might have seen young women coming out of a factory, with hair, skin and clothes softly glowing in the dark. Some called them “ghost girls.” Newspapers would later call them “radium girls” bec…
You can learn a lot about a person from their hands. In this episode, we hear the story of a doctor who made it possible for us to hold onto the stories of presidents, astronauts, musicians, artists and more… through bronze molds of their hands.
When you think of Orlando, Florida and the area around it, a certain cartoon mouse might come to mind. But in recent decades the area has also become a destination for Latin American food and culture. Today we visit Coqui Snacks, a cozy snack shop in Kissimmee…
Gastro Obscura writer Sam O’Brien takes co-host Kelly McEvers on a tour of the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous tributes to the turkey – and makes her case for why these big, beautiful birds are worth paying attention to.
Carpets are everyday objects we rarely stop to think about. But they’re far more than decoration or something soft to step on. Each one holds an origin story – threads that run through centuries of history, connecting small villages of master weavers to sprawl…
When Elliott Long’s dad started planting a forest of “bottle trees” with trunks of steel and old bottles for leaves, Elliott immediately understood that one day, it would be his job to keep his dad’s forest alive. He wanted nothing to do with it. And then his …
Atop a mountain in a picturesque Colorado town is the frozen corpse of a Norwegian grandpa. We get the tale of how this came to be, from the person who for years has trekked up and down the mountain for this unique preservation mission.
Today, we’re sharing an episode from The Detour: a show about going places, that actually goes places. Host Sam O’Brien and geologist Becky Nesel take a trip to the Shawangunk Mountains (aka the Gunks) just a couple hours north of New York City. And Becky show…
We chat with writer Alessio Perrone about what he learned from the people who hunt for Italy’s unexploded bombs, leftover from times of war.
Char Adams is the author of Black Owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore. She chronicles Black-owned bookstores in America – from David Ruggles, all the way to the stores that opened up in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter uprisings.
In 1905, a Bulgarian named Stamen Grigorov made a discovery. Inspired by a wave of researchers studying the secret to long life, he decided to put under the microscope a food that he ate daily: yogurt. Today, the Bulgarian bacteria he found is memorialized in …
Reporter Teresa de Miguel joins host Kelly McEvers to talk to her about these floating gardens called Chinapas in Xochimilco, Mexico City. Today, many of these chinampas are vanishing but efforts are being made to preserve them.
A tiny island off the coast of Brazil is known for being a dangerous place … purely because its inhabitants are, well, snakes. But we speak to a researcher who’s seen it up close and says it’s time for this place to shed its reputation.
We visit a quaint Dutch fishing village and attempt to unravel the mystery that unfolded there… a mystery that involved strange and curious letters and a voyage to the other side of the world.
In the 1920s the world was small. This was an exciting time for scientists and explorers. And among these explorers were Ted and Kemit Roosevelt who traveled to China to find a rare animal back in those days, the giant panda.
About 100 years ago, the Great Lakes were inundated with an unwelcome visitor – the leech-like, blood-sucking, creepy-looking sea lamprey. For decades, a small governmental organization has kept the lampreys (aka Vampire Fish) in check. But now, thanks to fede…
Artist and architect Danny Shaddick and the rapper Shad have known each other since high school, and they both wound up in Toronto making art together. Now, they’ve made an unusual musical robot that incorporates drums, found objects, and field recordings from…
We go to Tokyo, to a particular place that is both nemesis and best friend to all those procrastinators out there. (Yes, we’re looking at you :)
This San Francisco museum, curated by a super-fan of the Beats, is a shrine to an incredibly influential cultural movement and a destination for folks keeping it alive today.
Journalist Eliot Stein explores the tradition of the djeli – African storytellers who memorize and pass down oral histories – tracing it all the way back to the Mali Empire. Along the way, he tracked down a modern djeli, who is upholding and remixing the tradi…
A while ago, we asked you to send us stories about your collections – and we got so many great responses, that we decided to make another episode about it.
On the heels of the World Series, Kelly and Amanda discuss an unusual tradition in baseball: the fact that, before each game, every single ball is rubbed with mud sourced from a secret location in the Delaware River Basin.
Sigmund Freud’s famous psychoanalytic couch is preserved in his final office in London, England.
The Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki has been home to an infestation of Chilean recluse spiders for more than 50 years.
There’s a mansion in New Orleans with a truly horrific past. Author Colin Dickey, who has joined us every Thursday this month, reveals the real life horrors that took place here, its once sadistic owner and its haunted reputation.
When the city of Buffalo, New York invited landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted to town in the late 1860s, they were hoping he’d replicate the success of his most famous design: New York City’s Central Park. But Olmsted had other ideas. Instead of creatin…
From long flights to strenuous trips, listeners share stories about traveling with their kids for the first time.
A city in Uzbekistan used to be the site of one of the world’s largest seas. Now it’s a dusty reminder of one of the largest and most forgotten environmental disasters.
We go to the former estate of the Davies sisters, two unusually wealthy Welsh women who traveled the world, fell in love with art, served their country, and then dedicated their home to culture and community.
There’s a special tree in Portland that’s full of a city’s hopes, dreams, and wishes.
The West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia was once a home to thousands of prisoners. Today, it’s a tourist attraction. But its past continues to haunt the town of Moundsville to this day.
Over the course of 50 years, a father and son team made exquisite glass botanical models that would transform our understanding of the natural world.
Maybe you associate Las Vegas with slot machines more than with pinball machines. But what you might not know is that pinball, today found in every family friendly arcade in America, was once considered a form of gambling – and was the center of a culture war …
This archaeological dig in Phonsovan, Laos is one of the most important and dangerous prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia.
Sets from the original 1960’s Star Trek have been recreated for fans and actors alike in Ticonderoga, New York.
Colin Dickey is no stranger to dubious ghost tales. But when he went to Nevada to report at a brothel called the Mustang Ranch, he experienced something that to this day he can’t explain.
In the months leading up to Labor Day, a dedicated team of craftspeople and volunteers gather in the Santa Fe Plaza Mall to build…a puppet. Not just an ordinary puppet, but a gigantic, 50-foot tall marionette with moving arms, eyes, and legs. It looks kind of …
In 1915, a devastating fire destroyed the Chinatown in Walnut Grove, California. In its aftermath, a group of Chinese immigrant residents founded the town of Locke – not just another Chinatown, but a self-sustaining Chinese community nestled in the California …
The Atlas Places Team bring two stories - one from the campus of Gallaudet University and the other from Cornell University to tell us about usual traditions that take place in these universities.
A basketball fan goes to the hall of fame – and no, it’s not the big one in Massachusetts that you may be thinking about. Hear the story behind a Midwest state’s special link to the sport.
Deep in the Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, Colorado, a strange noise inspires a legend.
Today, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk is viewed as the founder of the modern Czech state – a George Washington-like figure. When he died in the 1930s, his final words were sealed in an envelope…which then passed from his son, who died under mysterious circumstances in…
We learn how a small town in Missouri became a world capital for a unique instrument – and how one man would go from being a down-on-his-luck furniture builder, to being known as the “zither king of Missouri.”
A girl and her father take a walk in the woods. This essay was written by Emily Lowe and edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha, and originally appeared in Off Assignment.
A small town in Texas has embraced the story of the visit and demise of an otherworldly being from the 1800s… and what many say is America’s only alien gravesite.
Probably when you think of submarine warfare, WWI or WWII comes to mind. Not… the American Civil War. But oh, they had them back then! Or rather, they had one back then, and it worked exactly one time. Dylan is joined by longtime friend of the show Caitlin Dou…
“Founding Fathers” like Washington or Jefferson have gigantic monuments in Washington, statues galore and palatial house-museums. But what about…Thomas Paine? The author of “Common Sense,” the pamphlet that brought the idea of American independence to the mass…
The Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico has a pretty unusual spiral staircase – it winds round and round like a DNA helix, and has no visible center “bar” for support. But the story of the staircase’s origins is even stranger. It was built by an itinerant c…
Listeners share stories about their most treasured collections.
We go underground in London, where there is a railway built for one purpose and one purpose only: to keep the city’s mail moving on time. All this week, we’re heading underground to discover the stories beneath our feet.
We visit northern Italy, where a mysterious religious community founded by an insurance agent–turned–spiritual leader spent 15 years constructing an underground temple.
We visit an underground chamber in Upton, Massachusetts, that’s puzzled some New Englanders – while others long knew its ancient origins. All this week, we’re heading underground to discover the stories beneath our feet.
We visit an underground oasis in Fresno, California, that’s a winding maze of rooms and passageways filled with lush citrus trees. All this week, we’re heading underground to discover the stories beneath our feet.
Jessica Leigh Hester joins us on a deep dive into the sewer, the subject of her appropriately-titled book, Sewer. She and Dylan talk about some of the interesting (and disgusting) things she found there… like fatbergs.
The story of Thomalind and Priscilla is 300 years in the making and brings listeners to Bunce Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone.
Inspired by the novel and movie Around the World in Eighty Days, Eleanor Hamby and Dr. Sandra Hazelip (Ellie and Sandy) ventured out and took the world by storm as they turned 81 years old.
The International Rose Test Garden in Portland, Oregon is a rose-lover’s paradise: there’s over 10,000 bushes and 625 varieties from all over the world. And there’s a great story about how the garden came to be: During WWI, the people of Portland reached out t…
Since his childhood, Nick Dawson has been fascinated by Cramond Island, a deserted tidal island off the coast of Edinburgh, Scotland, which became for him a symbol of mystery and untapped adventure. In today’s episode, he finally gets to explore the island, le…
As the summer travel season officially closes, we share our favorite memories of the warm months – from minor league baseball games with unique traditions, to surviving travel with kids.
A once-blacklisted Hollywood star created a magical theater in Topanga Canyon, California, that still endures and inspires today.
In Ystad, Sweden, every night at 9pm a night watchman scans the horizon for fires from the tower of St Mary’s Church, and sounds his trumpet to let the city know it is safe. This tradition goes back to the Medieval Ages. The Night Watchman of Ystad is one of t…
Utah bookseller Ken Sanders has spent his life fighting the Glen Canyon Dam. Inspired by a band of cowboy ecoterrorists in his favorite Western novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang, Ken's used his own blend of hijinks and illegal actions to free the Colorado River. F…
In the 1920s, Henry Ford decided to create a rubber plantation in the Amazon rainforest, and alongside it, a tidy little town for his workers: Fordlandia. With its classic American homes and yards, sidewalks and electric streetlights, Fordlandia was a Midweste…
Dylan and producers Amanda and Johanna take listener questions. If you have a question for our next mailbag episode, give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us at Hello@AtlasObscura.com, or simply em…
We journey into New York City’s delis and bodegas, in search of a famous – and controversial – sandwich: the chopped cheese. This sandwich has become a cultural symbol and source of debate, and is so storied that some might call it a “folk sandwich.” Plus, we …
One of the last remaining World War II Victory Gardens in the U.S is quietly growing across from Boston’s Fenway Park.
Mary Roach is an author of several books including Stiff and Fuzz. And her newest book, Replaceable You, explores the incredible advances and tough questions prompted by the human body’s failings. Mary takes us on a tour of our own anatomy – and what it takes …
Here at Atlas Obscura, we’re big on collections. From rare jerseys to popular ‘90s plush toys, our staff shares the things we collect – and what they mean to us.
A backpacker on the Inca Trail encounters a fellow hiker who is inexplicably carrying two bags. This essay was written by Maggie Downs and edited by Aube Rey Lescure, and originally appeared in Off Assignment.
The story of a woman who, in her 70s, inspired some of the biggest labor uprisings in American history.
Dylan just returned from a month-long trip with his wife and two kids, ages 8 and 10. And now, he wants to hear your stories about traveling with your own kids – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. Give us a call at (315) 992-7902 and leave us a me…
The story of a stork, a spear and a scientific mystery that led to breakthroughs in the way we understand bird migration.
Atlas Obscura’s resident food and death reporter Sam O’Brien takes us to Smithfield, Virginia, where we meet a 120-year-old ham, and the people who love it.
We visit the world’s oldest rose, which is so tough that it survived being bombed in World War II.
We explore the unexpected combination of recipes and graves through the story of Naomi Odessa Miller Dawson’s spritz cookies.
Dylan goes on a journey to examine the preserved middle finger of astronomer, physicist, and engineer Galileo Galilei.
Created by a volcanic eruption in 2015, this island in the South Pacific no longer exists… but we chat with a person who got to see it before it disappeared.
We talk with anthropologist Manvir Singh, whose research on shamanism took him from the small island of Siberut to study current practitioners, to exploring prehistoric cave art in France. It’s the subject of his new book, “Shamanism: The Timeless Religion” – …
Dylan has just returned from a month-long trip with his family, and he and the gang answer listener questions about traveling with kids and more.
Listeners share stories about how they commute to work and back home as they also reflect on how special their neighborhood is too.
Earlier this year a geologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science got a very unusual phone call. A construction crew ripping up the museum’s parking lot had found… dinosaur bones. We dig deeper and get a taste of what it would have been like to visit th…
For years, students at Bennington College snuck into a locked room for a glimpse of strange and magical instruments created by professor Gunnar Schonbeck. Today, we join his orchestra.
Henry S. Rosenthal is the owner of what is likely the world’s largest collection of two-headed taxidermied calves. The collection is in San Francisco, and you can reach out to Henry at deepgort@gmail.com to make arrangements to see it.
Ota Tofu in Portland, Oregon is the oldest tofu shop in the United States. Two brothers opened the shop in 1911 and even today their tofu is still made the old-fashioned way, using a labor-intensive process that is difficult to find (even in Japan!).
From opera singers to strange noises emitting from air conditioners, listeners share stories about their unusual neighbors.
In ancient Athens, citizens would gather at the Agora, or marketplace, for a specific purpose: to vote people off the island – er, out of the city.
There are thousands of varieties of citrus, many more than just the navel oranges. And they’re all being preserved in a collection at the University of California Riverside. Learn more here.
Rolando Pujol is an executive producer at ABC, but his true passion is for roadside attractions. And he’s got a new book all about it titled The Great American Retro Road Trip: A Celebration of Roadside Americana. He and Dylan nerd out about Muffler Men, mimet…
Counterculture icon… artist… nun? A new art center has opened up in downtown LA dedicated to the work of Corita Kent, also known as Sister Mary Corita, a nun and art teacher whose bright, colorful, and political Pop Art prints made her famous in the 1960s…and …
We remember Bill Dilworth, who took care of 280,000 pounds of dirt in an NYC loft for 35 years.
Today’s show is all about unusual dating spots. And to help, Eden Dawn, co-author of The Portland Book of Dates and The Seattle Book of Dates, joins Dylan to answer some of your questions about travel and dating.
A South Carolina ghost story is a harbinger of hurricanes and a window into history. All this week, the Atlas Obscura Podcast is hitting the sand, and taking a tour of the world’s most unusual beaches.
We follow a long set of wooden stairs deep underground to a sea cave with a mysterious and colorful past, and take in a spectacular, hidden view of the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.
Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town in South Africa is a destination where sunbathers, tourists, and penguins share both the beach and parts of the town.
This beautiful beach made of sand and worn down coral is covered in the wreckage of tanks once used by the U.S. military for target practice.
In 2006 a massive haul of Doritos was shipwrecked on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks, leaving its mark on the town forever. All this week, the Atlas Obscura Podcast is hitting the sand, and taking a tour of the world’s most unusual beaches.
A couple created what is perhaps the cutest and most filling micro-store to pop up during the pandemic. But to find it, you’ll have to trek through rural Vermont and look for the phone-booth sized box filled with baked goods.
In the 1800s, people flocked to a special gravestone in New York City’s Trinity Churchyard. They left flowers and cards and even wept. But there was one strange thing about this gravestone: No one was buried beneath it.
We share stories about our neighbors – from an unusual pet in Maryland, to an out-of-place front yard in Brooklyn, to a beekeeper with a secret.
An elite group of ravens live at the Tower of London, anxiously monitored and lovingly tended to by a professional ravenmaster. Because according to legend, if these ravens were ever to leave, the crown of England would fall. But it turns out this “ancient” le…
Today, we’re sharing an episode from our new podcast documentary series, Charlie’s Place.
A small cemetery in the grasslands of Kenya serves as a way to honor one of the most endangered animals in the world – the rhino – and elevate the plight of a species on the brink.
A French curator infiltrates a Nazi army to save masterpieces from the Jeu De Paume museum.
A map in the archives of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library in Portland, Oregon may be the key to finding buried treasure that has yet to be found. This episode was produced in partnership with Travel Portland.
In 1975, a man in Seward, Nebraska dug a gigantic hole in his yard and made the world’s largest time capsule. On July 4, 2025, the capsule was opened.
Dylan and producers Johanna and Amanda answer listener questions about solo travel. Have a question for Dylan? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us at Hello@AtlasObscura.com, or simply email yo…
A Seattle restaurant pushes diners to eat beyond their borders through its embrace of global street foods.
The Pan-American Highway is considered the longest road in the world – it stretches nearly 20,000 miles, from Alaska to Argentina. In her new docuseries Pati Jinich Explores PanAmericana, Pati talks with people along the famous route about the different ways w…
Early polar explorers faced long nights and dangerous expeditions. To entertain themselves, they wrote and published niche newspapers and periodicals. Atlas Obscura’s community editor Allegra Rosenberg reads an essay exploring this unique polar tradition. Read…
Chalet Cheese Cooperative in Monroe, Wisconsin is the last cheese plant left in America that makes the ultra-stinky Limburger cheese: a cheese that inspires equal parts loving and loathing, has been banned for its assaulting smell, and that once sparked a feud…
A few weeks ago, the Atlas Obscura staff told us where they would spend their last days before the apocalypse. Now we’re sharing your stories – from a childhood home in a small town in Illinois, to a trip in Eastern Europe, to a pizzeria in Brooklyn and a cave…
The grooves cut in this road outside Lancaster, CA play the finale of the William Tell Overture.
If you were to visit a cigar factory in Cuba, you’d hear something unexpected: the sound of the daily news report, or maybe a poem or a novel, being read aloud. The cigar “reader” is a tradition held by just a handful of people, and it came from a fundamentall…
One of the many objects that went down with the ship during the sinking of the Titanic was a beautiful, jewel-encrusted edition of a poetry book called the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” The Rubaiyat was probably the most famous work of poetry in the English-spea…
In Antarctica, researchers bid farewell to an iconic fixture: a big red bus named Ivan.
To round out Pride Month, we’re sharing one of our favorite classic episodes. For decades, a one of a kind travel guide opened up the world for gay travelers. Today, historians are using them to create an interactive map of LGBTQ spaces in midcentury America.
Let’s all go to hell. Seriously. Hell, Michigan, that is :)
In an homage to the 1995 movie Four Rooms, Dylan talks with historian Susan Wilson about how the history of Boston – and the United States at large – was influenced by events that occurred in four different rooms of the iconic Omni Parker House Hotel.
A couple months ago, we asked for your stories about traveling with a significant other for the first time. We got so many responses, that we decided to make a Part II.
In a small rural town in Colombia, one man mounts books on the backs of donkeys and takes to the hills. This is how he operates his bookmobile, aka “Biblioburro.”
The TV show Columbo, about a loveable schlub detective, is internationally beloved. But Hungary has an extra special relationship with the show, dating all the way back to the 1970s when the communist government banned most other American shows.
A majestic building in Santos, Brazil used to be the center of the coffee trade.
For decades, the Ashley House in Sheffield, Massachusetts preserved and promoted the story of Col. John Ashley, a wealthy businessman who opened his home to those fighting against British rule on the eve of America’s war for independence. But in this episode w…
The National Library of Sweden is home to the largest medieval manuscript still in existence: an enormous, three-foot-tall Bible with an unusual portrait of the devil inside (along with a calendar, some spells, and a lengthy confession of the writer’s sins and…
Fifteen years ago, drones were considered toys. Today, there’s everywhere – both in the news and physically. But before the big splashy news stories like the recent New Jersey drone panic, a much quieter – and stranger – incident took place at a highly secure …
Dylan and producers Johanna and Amanda take your questions.
We want to hear about your favorite unusual local date spots. One rule: No romantic restaurants! Where are the places that you bust out when you’re really trying to impress someone with an obscure, off the beaten track spot? And, we want to hear your questions…
A midwest city has embraced what it means to be the namesake hometown of one very famous superhero. And at its center is a museum that holds the carefully cultivated collection of one superfan.
In the 1960s, the band the Grateful Dead became consumed by a quest that would take up 10 years, cost millions of dollars, and almost break up the band. It was the quest for audio perfection – to bring crystal clear sound from the front row to the nosebleeds a…
The staff here at Atlas Obscura answered an unsettling question for this episode: Where would you spend the last day before the apocalypse? Some interesting truths come out.
An ancient book contains a controversial Greek recipe, one of the earliest examples of patent law, and answers for a perennial problem: how to make conversation at a dinner party.
The Haskell Free Library and Opera House sits half in Canada, half in the United States. For over a century, it was a symbol of friendship between the two nations. Then, the library got caught in the crossfire of a much bigger struggle.
We visit one of California’s longest-running tourist attractions: A giant stump that helped spark the movement to preserve the state’s natural places.
On a summer day in 1976, four friends had a strange experience in the Northwoods of Maine that would come back to haunt them decades later. Today, we’re exploring the hidden morbid side of the national parks system with our friends from National Park After Dar…
We visit a mysterious sinkhole in Arizona that has befuddled an exclusive group of divers who’ve gotten a glimpse of a strange world at its sandy bottom. For more unusual stories, lists, and offbeat itineraries, check out the Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to …
A 50-square-mile patch of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho might just be the perfect place to commit a crime. For more unusual stories, lists, and offbeat itineraries, check out the Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to the National Parks.
In March of 2024, a park ranger and volunteer were taking their regular walk together around Big Bend National Park. They came across a teeny tiny fuzzy little plant with unusual ribbon-like flowers bursting out of the center – something neither of them had ev…
Spring is a popular time to visit Colonial Williamsburg, not least because it’s “lambing season,” the time of year when baby lambs are born and take their first steps (which is obviously very, very cute). But small as they are, these lambs have a big baaa-ckst…
We will always love Dolly Parton, who’s installed a “dreambox” time capsule at her amusement park. In it, there’s a secret song that no one will hear until the legendary artist turns 100.
Today, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at the Sporkful. Dan Pashman goes on a tour of Los Angeles, with an Atlas Obscura guide in hand. In search of an elusive slice of coconut cake, Dan begins at the airport, takes a detour to an underground tunnel …
Producer Luz Fleming chats with the co-founders of MoF, or the Museum of Friends, about how they managed to create one of the best contemporary art museums Colorado has to offer, in one of the least likely locations you can imagine.
The roadside dinosaur has been part of the Americana cannon since the 1930s, and we’ve got theme parks and Sinclair gas station mascots as a result. Today, Places Editor Diana Hubbell and producer Johanna Mayer head to two spots on opposite ends of the United …
It’s Memorial Day, and the unofficial start of summer! To kick off the season, we hear a sampling of listener-submitted stories of summer adventure in the wild, strange, and wonderful world in which we live. Plus: Birds!
It’s almost Pride Month, and we want to hear your stories about places that celebrate lesser-known queer history, or that have a deep personal connection to you. Give us a call at (315) 992-7902, and leave us a message telling us your name and story. Or, recor…
Iconic musician Fela Kuti declared his home in Lagos, Nigeria, an independent state. He called it Kalakuta - and in 1977 it was invaded by the Nigerian Army.
In 1926, a wildly popular evangelical preacher named Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared from Venice Beach, in front of the Ocean View Hotel. When her body wasn’t found, she was presumed to have drowned. There’s just one curious thing: Over the next few weeks, …
Dystopian fiction is all the rage these days. But back in the 1800s one of the bestselling books in the United States was a work of utopian fiction, about a guy who falls asleep in 1887 and accidentally time travels to the year 2000. The book, called “Looking …
In Guyana’s Square of the Revolution, a statue honors Cuffy, an Akan man from West Africa who became a legendary figure. Captured and enslaved by the Dutch in the colony of Berbice (present-day Guyana), Cuffy rose from house slave to revolutionary leader. But …
Earlier this month, the Atlas Obscura staff shared the places we gained during the pandemic. Now, we hear your stories – from a university that is an unlikely home for a certain critter, to a private community, to an arboretum and a chance encounter.
Drawbridge operators in Chicago used to live at these specific homes nestled at the base of their bridges.
At the height of the Incan empire, a series of 200 woven suspension bridges crisscrossed the valleys of the Andes. Today, only one remains. It’s called the Q'eswachaka, and it’s rewoven every year by a continuous line of bridge builders.
You might think of The Great Gatsby as a classic New York City novel – but the events that set off the action of the story actually take place somewhere else. In Louisville, Kentucky. It’s where Daisy and Gatsby first meet, and where Daisy marries Gatsby’s ri…
For 300 years, only a handful of women in Sardinia knew how to make the “threads of God,” an exceptionally intricate pasta. But then, one woman decided to share the recipe with the outside world.
Dylan and producers Johanna and Amanda take your questions. If you have a question for Dylan, give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us at Hello@AtlasObscura.com, or simply email your question.
The history of medical clowning extends back to Ancient Greece and the time of Hippocrates and is taught in workshops throughout the world.
In the 1870s the Midwest experienced a devastating natural disaster in the form of… an enormous cloud of extremely hungry locusts. Dylan and producer Amanda discuss what happens when a cloud of locusts twice the size of Colorado descends on your town.
We get a crash course in the Chitlin' Circuit, a network of entertainment venues for Black musicians during segregation. And we take a closer look at a special stop along the way: Club Ebony. It’s a place that still thumps with the blues of the past, even as i…
In 1887, Greensburg, Kansas was a small town in a relatively new state. The town needed to come up with a way to attract visitors – and they chose to think big. Very, very big.
It’s been five years since the pandemic shutdown. So often, conversations about that time revolve around places we’ve lost. But for this episode, Atlas Obscura staffers share the places they gained during the pandemic.
Dylan sits down with podcaster Ashley Ray, who has more than a soft spot for her Midwest hometown. Hear why she thinks it may just be the best kept secret, despite its bad reputation.
As a child, Lulu Miller had a beloved dog. But one day, the dog disappeared – and in all likelihood, it was probably eaten by coyotes. Since then, Lulu has been strangely fascinated by these crepuscular creatures. Now, she heads to Graceland Cemetery in Chicag…
Toronto is home to a massive underground mall called the PATH, a labyrinth of hallways with shops, banks, and no fewer than nine Tim Hortons. At 30 kilometers long, it’s the largest underground shopping complex in the world. It's also famously dull. What wonde…
Dylan has complicated feelings about rats. On one hand, they’re amazingly resourceful creatures. On the other, they caused the bubonic plague (and other harmful situations). So when Terrestrials producer and composer Alan Goffinski went on a rat reporting spre…
From laundromats to Sacramento, listeners go to bat for places with bad reputations.
Niles, Illinois is home to an exact replica of Italy’s leaning tower of Pisa - only it’s half the size of the original structure.
Adventurer Elise Wortley retraces the footsteps of historic female explorers – and she does it all with no modern gear, no shortcuts, and no guarantees that it is going to work out.
Producer Alexa Lim travels in search of the Kolache Triangle. Along the way, she visits some of the state’s Czech communities, and hears how the kolache became the gem of the Texas roadside snack.
Two small stories about two cold nights in different parts of the world. 11:45 p.m. in Oulu was written by Anne Korkeakivi, and 2:30 a.m. in McMurdo Station was written by Elizabeth Endicott. Both essays were edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha and originall…
Dylan and producers Amanda and Johanna answer a listener question that leaves them deeply shaken, and slightly disturbed.
Thousands of kitschy lawn gnomes have taken over an Australian roundabout.
Today, if you venture into the basement of a certain clothing store in the Soho neighborhood of NYC, you’ll find an unusual sight: an old well. This well is tied to the first recorded murder trial in the United States – it’s a story of a 22-year-old woman, her…
We head to a public bathroom in Alresford, England to hear how a toilet played a key role in flushing out an infamous Cold War espionage ring.
The unusual-looking Price Tower, a 1-of-1 from starchitect Frank Lloyd Wright, has been the pride of Bartlesville, Oklahoma for more than 60 years. But the challenge of maintaining the skyscraper as a historic piece of art has made it difficult for the buildin…
Producer Johanna Mayer and Places editor Diana Hubbell tell us about two parts of the world where animals have invaded – and taken over.
Lake Natron in Tanzania can leave welts and burns on human skin but is a bit of a paradise for another animal.
Animal-human conflict expert Bethany Brookshire explains why we put cats before rats – and a lot of it has to do with where we’re encountering them.
We go on a hunt for what you might call an entomologist’s most wanted insect.
Paul Stewart’s childhood fascination with cowboys and the Wild West turned into a museum dedicated to preserving the stories of the American West’s early Black settlers.
Listeners share stories of leaving home for the first time – from a first apartment in San Francisco, to running away with a member of a famous band, to searching for a piece of Australia in the United States.
We want to hear about a place you love that has defied its bad reputation. Maybe there’s a drab local mall that’s full of chain stores and overpriced frozen yogurt that strangely gives you a sense of comfort. Maybe you love eating at chain restaurants while tr…
Travel to the world’s oldest intact pyramid in Egypt - and learn about the genius who also influenced the fields of architecture, astronomy, medicine.
In September 1991, eight people moved into Biosphere 2, a nearly airtight glass and steel complex in the Arizona desert. The half-acre farm at its centre would supply all their food. Plants, algae and photosynthesizing microorganisms would supply all their oxy…
In the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, on the tiny island of Saint Helena, sits the Longwood House. It was the final home of Napoleon Bonaparte. And while there – amidst the serenity Saint Helena has to offer – the former emperor of France became a more re…
An urban explorer ventured deep below downtown Minneapolis in search of Schieks Cave. He discovered more than he bargained for.
For a brief window in the late 1800s, America’s favorite sport was walking in circles over and over and over. The biggest sporting events in the country were “6 Day Races” – days-long tests of endurance where competitive walkers competed to see who could log t…
Producer Johanna Mayer travels to Times Square in NYC, in search of particular sound that may sometimes go overlooked.
What to do when you have 20-foot-tall busts of nearly every U.S. President and nowhere to put them?
Dylan visits a patch of Nevada desert known at times as Paradise Ranch, Dreamland Resort, or as most people know it, Area 51. His goal? To try and find out where The X-Files end, and the truth begins. And he falls deeper down the rabbit hole when he meets a ma…
Jeremy Bentham began planning for his death at a young age. He wrote a will in 1769, at the age of 21. But how did this philosopher’s dead body wind up on display in a university student center?
Two small stories about early morning, otherworldly encounters with animals. 7 a.m. in Kelso was written by Emma Jones, and 10:30 a.m. in Choteau, Montana was written by Annika Berry. Both essays were edited by Aube Rey Lescure and originally appeared in Off A…
Dylan and producer Johanna take your questions about exploring abandoned ruins, where they want to carve their initials, and whether they should feel guilt for going on multiple trips to the same location.
We want to hear your stories about the first time you left home to live somewhere else. Why did you make the move? How did you choose your new home… and how did you feel when you arrived?
One of the world’s tallest waterfalls is nestled in Northwestern Peru, right where the Amazon rainforest crashes into the Andes Mountains.
Apple TV’s Severance takes a dystopian view of the middle management office space, where the sprawling corridors, overhead fluorescent lights hide the mysterious purpose of Lumen Industries. But that terrifying imagined office space is based on the real headqu…
This ranch in Sanger, Texas trains people in jousting and sword-fighting with the goal of making them knights of the highest order - for the Medieval Times dinner theater chain.
Off the southern coast of Jamaica, there are the underwater ruins of pirate city from the 1600s – a city that could be considered the Las Vegas of its time. But its days would come to an end when it faced three disasters in a single day.
For this St. Patrick’s Day, author and friend of the show Colin Dickey joins Dylan to demystify leprechauns. Where do they come from? Is there a Leprechaunland? What’s with the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? And why are they always wearing green? Are t…
Green Bank, West Virginia is free of wifi and cell signals due to the massive telescope nearby that requires radio silence.
What happens when a real place becomes a reality TV set? Emily Nussbaum, New Yorker staff writer and author of “Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV,” tells us about the tumultuous first season of Survivor. The island where the first season was filmed, Pul…
The first time John Ringling and his brothers saw a circus come to town, it changed their lives forever. They’d go on to form their own circus company – which put them on top of the world. Today we trace John Ringling’s rise and fall, from his early days criss…
A Black American living in Korea writes a letter to a restaurant worker, reckoning with race and the meaning of home. This essay was edited by Aube Rey Lescure and originally appeared in Off Assignment. Kat Lewis' debut novel, GOOD PEOPLE, is forthcoming from …
Diana Hubbell and Roxanne Hoorn from the Places team take us to two locations on opposite sides of the world that both evoke deep reverence – and an appreciation for an architectural style not usually associated with beauty.
Producer Manolo Morales – a verified Little Monster, gallivants around the Lower East Side, via an immersive, performance-art walking tour dedicated to an iconic pop star.
James Beard award winning photographer and writer Gary He tells us about traveling to more than 50 countries across six continents, all to document and photograph one of the most popular fast food chains in the world: McDonald’s.
In the 1880s, Madrid’s most famous resident was a medium-sized black and white dog called Paco who frequented cafes, parades, and even bullfights.
In the 1960s, London Bridge was falling down – specifically, it was sinking down under the weight of modern-day traffic. London decided to put the bridge up for sale, and it attracted all kinds of buyers, from casinos to major cities to entertainers. But the w…
From a once in a lifetime natural event, to two very different Olympic experiences, to a special concert, we hear listener stories of trekking someplace for the joy of being there up close and in real life.
The story of Chef Hamissi Mamba, whose family sought asylum in the US and years later founded an East African restaurant that serves up a small slice of Burundi in the Motor City.
A couple years ago, Josh Foer, the co-founder of Atlas Obscura, took us to a remote patch of land in the Arizona desert, where he built (and later rebuilt) a museum in honor of the company’s former CEO, David Plotz. And just a few weeks ago, this patch of land…
Dylan and producers Amanda and Johanna take your questions. Have a question for Dylan? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us at Hello@AtlasObscura.com, or simply send your question via email.
The pools at Cuatro Ciénegas Basin are a portal into the ancient past – and they may soon disappear.
In cool, misty forests along the coast of New South Wales Australia, a group of lyrebirds is suspected of singing human songs they learned in the 1920s. A team of researchers sets out to investigate.
We get up close and nosey about a peculiar exhibit in Copenhagen that reveals a lot about what artists and society considered beautiful throughout the years | READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nasothek-nose-collection
Host, reporter, and podcaster Sam Sanders talks with Dylan about the places that have shaped his life – from when he was a kid in a small town in Texas secretively listening to Stevie Wonder in the bathroom, to running along the Charles River, to exploring Jos…
On May 7, 1902, a man named Ludger Sylbaris was thrown in jail – and it saved his life.
Every year, a number of snowy owls (aka Arctic owls) find their way to an unlikely haven: Boston Logan International Airport. Owl expert Norman Smith has been leading the way to study these birds and figure out why they love to land at one of the busiest airpo…
Today we’re bringing you an episode from our friends at the Women Who Travel podcast.
This week, we’re featuring unusual love stories – from couples who were introduced by a mule, to the world’s most loyal dog, to a post office sustained by the kindness of strangers. In today’s episode, we visit Post Office Bay, on the Galapagos Islands. The po…
This week, we’re featuring unusual love stories – from couples who were introduced by a mule, to the world’s most loyal dog, to a post office sustained by the kindness of strangers. In today’s episode, Dylan talks with travel writer Susan Orlean, who is an adm…
This week, we’re featuring unusual love stories – from couples who were introduced by a mule, to the world’s most loyal dog, to a post office sustained by the kindness of strangers. In today’s episode, we visit a museum in Croatia that will break your heart. A…
This week, we’re featuring unusual love stories – from couples who were introduced by a mule, to the world’s most loyal dog, to a post office sustained by the kindness of strangers. In today’s episode, we visit the symbol of loyalty for an entire nation—a dog.
This week, we’re featuring unusual love stories – from couples who were introduced by a mule, to the world’s most loyal dog, to a post office sustained by the kindness of strangers. In today’s episode, we meet back up with our pal Bernie Harberts, who trekked …
We’re looking for questions for our next mailbag episode. Maybe you’re looking for travel advice, maybe you want to hear more about a weird thing that Dylan alluded to briefly in an episode, or maybe you want him to settle some sort of travel dispute with your…
Stories of how giant monuments built for a specific site sometimes need to go on a journey to get there.
Dylan talks with actor and comedian Paul Scheer about three places that have shaped him. And to Dylan’s surprise, Paul doesn’t pick good memories. Instead he chooses three deeply embarrassing stories – because as he puts it, “trauma is the fire in which we are…
Dylan tries his hand at playing a “glass armonica,” a musical instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin. Its high-pitched, eerie sounds were rumored to cure all kinds of illnesses – or even, sometimes, cause them.
Africville was a Black-Canadian community north of Halifax, Nova Scotia. But when the Canadian government decided it wanted the land the community sat on, Africville was forcibly removed in the 1900s. We’ve covered other stories of Black displacement on the sh…
Listener stories of traveling with a significant other for the first time – for better or for worse.
This abandoned hospital outside Boston, Massachusetts was originally conceived as a place to help people with mental health issues. But it wound up doing a lot of harm.
Joe Magarac is a folk hero that allegedly was born from the stories of immigrant steelworkers in the early 20th century. He is the Paul Bunyan of Steel Country. But is the legend of Joe Magarac an American immigrant folk story or is he the product of the imagi…
Last month, we asked you for stories about your first trips abroad. That really struck a chord – we got too many great stories to fit in a single episode. So today, we’re sharing MORE of your stories from your first international trips. This time we hear about…
For half a century, horse diving was one of Atlantic City’s biggest attractions. One day in August 1964, a young girl attended one of these shows, and witnessed something that would change her life forever.
Dylan and producer Johanna take your questions.
One of Australia’s greatest stories of escape and survival centers around this rock formation in Point Lonsdale.
In 1998, a giant drawing of an Aboriginal man mysteriously appeared in the Australian Outback. Some locals were thrilled. Others wanted it destroyed. Producer Elah Feder goes looking for the culprit, and is led to a key piece of the puzzle – but not one she ex…
Every summer, along a 15 mile stretch of the Alabama coastline, an almost magical natural phenomenon washes up on the beaches. Hundreds of fish and sea creatures usually hidden in the deep swim towards the shore. Locals call it the Mobile Bay Jubilee – and the…
A traveler in Vang Vieng, Laos writes a letter to a fellow traveler. This essay was edited by Lenora Todaro and originally appeared in Off Assignment.
Sasquatch is Southern. And its cultural and economic impact in Appalachia is sizable. Today, we bring you an episode of The Broadside, a podcast produced by WUNC in Durham, NC.
This memorial marks the life of a pup who sparked riots over animal rights issues in London.
If you’ve ever wondered what it was like to run away and join the circus, this episode is for you. Dylan talks with Jack Lepiarz, also known as Jacques Ze Whipper, about how he created a life for himself on the Renaissance Festival circuit.
When Peter James first stumbled on the Lowfield Heath Windmill, it was falling apart. Determined to save it, he embarked on a years-long effort with the town that would lead to its complete deconstruction before being rebuilt somewhere new.
In the 1980s, a team of Soviet scientists dug a hole in the Earth’s crust so deep that they reached Hell… complete with high temperatures, unexplained happenings, and even the tortured screams of damned souls. At least, that’s what a popular urban legend at th…
Listener stories about traveling abroad for the first time – from a trip to Germany in 2020, to a chalet in Switzerland in 1986, to a trip to Iran just before the Shah revolution.
The Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, Missouri was founded by zoologist and wildlife TV host Marlin Perkins and was home to an extraordinary wolf who gives us hope for the future of wolf survival.
Zach Stafford found great career success at a very young age – he’s a writer, producer, and co-host of the news & culture podcast Vibe Check. His intense work schedule has taken him all over America, and each of the cities and towns he found himself in has sha…
In the year 1329, a woman named Christine Carpenter was enclosed in a tiny cell in the walls of a church in Shere, England. She was expected to spend the rest of her life praying in almost complete isolation. But the reason we know her name is that she did som…
Dylan and producer Gabby Gladney dive into the colorful world of art cars, from Houston’s epic parades to DIY creations in Minneapolis.
Writer Joshua Rigsby takes a very strange journey into the birthplace of Cabbage Patch Kids. After he returns, he can never look at the dolls the same way again.
We’re (almost) back! And we want to hear your New Year’s travel resolutions.
For a brief period the small frontier city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota drew in socialites and celebrities who were desperate to end their marriages.
Ultimate slow travel adventurer (and friend of the show) Bernie Harberts returns to tell us what happened when he spent months floating alone at sea. Bernie is also an author and filmmaker.
The 1980s birthed a gleaming creature that spread its wings of scrap wood and glass over the intersection of two iconic Brooklyn, NY neighborhoods for thirty years.
On the tiny Kinmen Island, a bow-tie-shape strip of land between China and Taiwan, sits a giant weaponized wall of sound that still stands--and still broadcasts--today.
This garden in Lynchburg, Virginia is the key to unlocking the writing and mind of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer.
Just a little check in. Plus: We want to hear your stories of traveling with a significant other for the first time – the good, the bad, and the strange.
A listener in Lawrence, Kansas takes us on his journey of discovering the secrets of his hometown.
Dylan sits down with guest Blake Pfeil about what inspired him to begin exploring abandoned spots, what those spaces have taught him about escapism, sobriety and the sometimes blurry line between real and unreal that he finds there.
We visit a park in Palo Alto, California, home of the world’s most famous donkey.
An industrial water tank-turned-concert hall in the high deserts of Colorado is nothing less than a sonic wonder of the world.
These documents highlight the intellectual legacy of an ancient civilization based in Timbuktu, Mali.
A small bit of news, and a request. To ask Dylan your question, send an email or voice memo to hello@atlasobscura.com.
A map in the archives of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library in Portland, OR may be the key to finding buried treasure that has yet to be found.
Today, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at Terrestrials, a Radiolab spinoff show for families that explores strangeness on Earth. In this episode, host Lulu Miller visits some of our planet’s most magical tree stumps – which are anything but dead.
Writer and friend of the show Colin Dickey tries to destroy Dylan’s holiday cheer with arguments about why Christmas is actually full of monsters from around the world.
Places editors Michelle Cassidy and Diana Hubbell take us on a tour of two mildly disturbing yet lovable works of art.
Dylans answers a slew of questions from staff and listeners.
Our first international trips can be hugely influential. We want to hear your stories about leaving your home country for the first time. Where did you go? How did you prepare? What memories do you have from the trip? Maybe you loved it… or maybe you hated it…
Larry Spring’s Museum of Common Sense Physics in Fort Bragg, California begs the question: What do you do with a science museum where the science preserved inside is a kind of folk art?
As the winter solstice and Yule are upon us, we are celebrating these Pagan holidays by talking about the iconic image of the witch, with Pam Grossman -- friend of the show, curator, writer and host of the podcast The Witch Wave.
How one man made someone else's trash into his own treasure ... and how it became a storied part of a New Jersey town.
Every year, hundreds of boats circle the waterways of the eastern United States on The Great Loop. But Mike Straub took a different approach, riding over 6,000 miles alone on a JetSki.
Listeners share stories of memorable encounters with strangers – for better or for worse.
This week, we’re presenting Sound Influence: The Art and Soul of Puerto Rico.
This week, we’re presenting Sound Influence: The Art and Soul of Puerto Rico.
Many people moved to Granbury, Texas for the peace and quiet. Then, a noisy neighbor moved in – and strange things began happening in town.
The Ether Dome in Boston was once filled with the screams of patients undergoing painful surgeries. In 1846, everything changed with the first successful use of anesthesia, transforming medicine forever. Dylan explores the room where pain-free surgery began.
Mohawk ironworkers built many of New York City’s iconic skyscrapers. But simultaneously, they were also building a lesser known neighborhood of their own in downtown Brooklyn – one that would become home to hundreds of Mohawk families.
This week and next, we’re presenting Sound Influence: The Art and Soul of Puerto Rico.
Today and tomorrow, we’re presenting Sound Influence: The Art and Soul of Puerto Rico.
Producer Gabby Gladney sees her South Side Chicago neighborhood in a new light thanks to Mahogany Bus Tours, a local company sharing hidden histories around the city.
In the 1880s, an eccentric California dentist gave away free public water fountains in the hopes they would encourage people to drink less alcohol. One of them went to the small town of Rockville, Connecticut, where it was… not well received. In fact, it was t…
Listener stories about the places we’re thankful for – from a beloved neighborhood, to an odd and out-of-place house down the block, to a library that inspired one listener to become a writer herself.
Catoosa, Oklahoma is the cite of a massive landlocked whale - and possibly the greatest anniversary gift ever.
Journalist and food writer Evan Rail considers himself a beer guy, but when a mysterious bright green spirit started shaking up the scene in the Czech Republic (where he lives) in the 1990s, he knew he had to learn more.
In August 1953, airstrip operator George van Tassel claimed he was woken up in the middle of the night by an intelligent lifeform from outer space named Solganda. George says Solganda told him to build an energy rejuvenation machine – so that’s exactly what he…
On a remote island 200 miles off the coast of Alaska, a community hunts for a single, elusive rat.
Places editors Michelle Cassidy and Diana Hubbell tell us about two real-world places that have been shaped by the internet.
Blame it on this time of year, but we've been ruminating a lot on the places we're thankful for. And we want to hear your thoughts for a future episode. What's a place that played a pivotal role in shaping your life? It can be a place you grew up, or a place y…
The Wren’s Nest in Atlanta is both a museum and former home of journalist Joel Chandler Harris and a hub for modern storytellers.
Nate DiMeo, host and creator of The Memory Palace podcast, walks us through some of the rooms in his own personal memory palace. We visit his grandfather’s old nightclub outside Providence, a beloved family home, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Visible Storag…
During the early 20th century, malaria was ravaging the world. We hear the story of Dr. Charles Campbell, who had a plan to cure it. But as it turns out, his big idea was… rather batty.
In the 1980s, a group of friends on the track team at Sul Ross State University hauled a discarded dorm room desk to the top of a mountain. They left a notebook there to keep track of their run times and leave little notes for each other. Then… other people fo…
San Juan Sounds is an iconic studio where musicians, engineers, and quite possibly a music-loving ghost carry on the island’s musical traditions, which date back hundreds of years.
Travel to Denver Colorado and meet Steve Berke who helped found the first International Church of Cannabis in 2015.
The San Francisco Cannabis Buyers’ Club was one of the first marijuana dispensaries in the country. Its members were people with AIDS, cancer, and other serious illnesses, and inside the club had stages, TV lounges, puzzles, and other things that would bring p…
An ancient cemetery in western China may hold the answer to a question asked by many a stoner: where on Earth did humans first smoke weed to get high?
In 1976, an airplane carrying 6,000 pounds of smuggled weed crashed into a remote lake in Yosemite. A group of climbers had a heyday. Read John Long’s account of the crash, and check out Greg Nichols’ reporting on the same subject.
Cannabis is now legal in more than half of U.S. states, but it remains federally illegal – which makes doing research on the plant extremely difficult. Today, we meet a clever group of scientists who found their way around these laws… by literally driving arou…
A South Carolina ghost story is a harbinger of hurricanes and a window into history. Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/south-carolina-hurricane-ghost
In 1944, a strange spate of “gas attacks” in a small Midwestern town reveals what was really lurking in mid-century America. Read Colin Dickey’s article about the mad gasser, and check out his Monster of the Month series.
Listener stories about places that give off big creepy vibes – from an abandoned ice factory to a haunted university music building.
To avoid traumatizing kids, many summer camps are banning scary stories. But can a little fun with fear be a good thing?
In 1976, a television crew filming an episode of the show “The Six Million Dollar Man” descended on a rundown funhouse in Long Beach, California. While filming, they accidentally broke the arm off a wax dummy. Except...it wasn't a wax dummy. It was a real body…
The Smallest Mollusk Museum in New York City is part of a fleet of tiny museums that might just have a big impact on the world.
Kelly and Zach Weinersmith walk Dylan through the practicalities of making a home on the red planet.
Outside the French Quarter lies Hidden South, an antique shop like any other. And hidden amongst the oddities is a bathroom full of secrets.
Producer Alexa Lim visits a collection of natural aromas in Berkeley, California. She gets a whiff of some of the world’s lesser known smells, and stumbles down the rabbit hole of the hidden world of scents.
In the 1930s and 1940s, a young Black woman named Bessie Stringfield decided she’d strike out on her own and hit the road – and ended up crisscrossing the United States eight times, and becoming the first Black woman to ride a motorcycle through each of the lo…
For a brief period the small frontier city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota drew in socialites and celebrities who were desperate to end their marriages.
Reporter Diana Hubbell brings us to an island off the coast of Georgia, and tells Dylan the story of an eccentric heiress, a daring mission, and the fight for North America’s most unusual pig.
Producer Talon Stradley takes us on a tour of three skinny houses – each with a big story inside. Do these skinny houses have you curious about spite houses?
Comedian, actor, and podcaster Jacob Wysocki takes Dylan on a tour of a very special expo: The Reptile Super Show!
We’re bringing you stories about places that you can no longer visit – this time we have stories about a hometown hangout spot, a beloved amusement park, a mural building in Queens, and a disappearing natural wonder.
We go inside a place that some paranormal investigators call the most active haunted location in the world. Before it was known as the inspiration for Stephen King...the Stanley Hotel had a reputation -- and ghosts -- of its own. Find more information about …
The City Hall in Lincoln, Illinois has an unusual architectural appendage with a curious history.
Traveling as a wheelchair user comes with some unique accessibility challenges, but Cory Lee has managed to visit 48 countries and all 7 continents. Cory is a travel blogger who shares his stories and tips for disabled travelers. He shares some of the most (an…
The small mountain town of Spruce Pine provides nearly all of the ultra-pure quartz used to make the world’s semiconductors. When Hurricane Helene nearly wiped out the mines, it provided a stark wake-up call. Journalist Ed Conway joins Dylan to discuss what we…
A group of seagull lovers in Belgium wants you to sympathize with these birds… by sounding just like them.
After experiencing burn out, South Korean artist WoopsYang decides to take a rest and create an environment for others to space out… by having a competition.
We want to know about places that give you the creeps. Places that get under your skin, give you that eerie feeling. And why? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message telling us your name and story. Just so you know, our mailbox will cut you off afte…
In Myrtle Beach, mini-golf is not so mini. They’re hosting the Mini-Golf Masters, where titans of the tiny game will compete to see who rises to the top.
We head to the cliffs of Balneario El Condor in Argentina to visit a parrot city… and the parrot suburbs. And we meet the biologist who risks his life to study them.
How 78 toilets exposed a Cold War secret in Carp, Ontario.
In the late 1980s, a goose named Andy was born without webbed feet. A local Nebraskan inventor made him a pair of customized baby shoes and grew to care for the goose. But then – Andy was murdered. Twenty years later, the inventor's granddaughter picks up the …
This summer we learned about a 15,000-year-old oak tree in California that was facing a potential housing development. Today, we learn its fate. Listen to our original episode about the Jurupa Oak here. Read Shannon Osaka’s article about the recent decision he…
This experimental automotive replica of Stonehenge has become a symbol of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. But residents haven’t always been fans.
Every summer, more than 10,000 people flock to this Pennsylvania town for two weeks for the largest gathering of medieval arts and culture anywhere in the world. This episode was produced in partnership with GoUSATV based on a video series we do with them call…
We go to a central Wyoming town, just a couple hours from Yellowstone, that's appropriately named Thermopolis. City of Heat. It’s home to one of the largest mineral hot springs in the world. But it turns out this town of less than 3,000 is also home to so much…
We’re visiting a town 150 miles west of New Orleans in the absolute heart of Cajun country, where every year, thousands of people come from across the country to march through the streets, play music, celebrate French culture, and cook up an absolutely enormou…
Every October, amateurs and professionals alike gather in this small town in the Appalachian Mountains to hone their storytelling chops and share them with crowds of thousands. In this episode, host Dylan Thuras takes his turn at the mic during the National St…
Steve and Amy Hartbauer have turned their home in residential Denver, CO into a massive mosaic and decade’s long expression of inner inspiration.
Dylan talks with journalist and author Ed Conway about three materials that our entire civilization depends on: salt, copper, and sand. They visit the biggest man-made hole on Earth, a salt mine large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower inside it, and a single mine…
We asked you to send us stories about places you can no longer visit – and nearly everyone wrote in about a beloved closed restaurant. So today, we hear your stories of places you can no longer EAT.
In Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, there was once a revolutionary community for African Americans willing to do whatever it took to maintain their own freedom – and help others achieve theirs. Learn more about planning a trip to Smith Court via the Black He…
Zahra Hankir is the author of the book Eyeliner: A Cultural History. She brings Dylan to three places across the globe where eyeliner plays a key cultural role: Egypt, Chad, and Los Angeles.
The hunt to memorialize Rhode Island’s founder created one of the state’s strangest and most enduring myths. Learn more about Roger Williams relationship to local indigenous tribes here.
Cookbook author and Sporkful host Dan Pashman sets out on a research trip across Italy in search of highly regional pasta dishes that he can’t find anywhere else. Along the way, he learns a shocking truth about Italy and pasta, and ponders innovation and authe…
In May 2024, tractors across the American Midwest stalled. But that was only the first piece of a much larger story. Journalist Jason Koebler takes us to Nebraska and Illinois to find out what is going on with American tractors – and what Ukrainian hackers hav…
Over the course of its 200 year history, the lighthouse on Wood Island in Maine has been home to a celebrity dog, a grisly murder, some mischievous ghosts, and a monster storm that may or may not have been brought on by a pickpocket’s curse.
Producer Luz Fleming takes his son to revisit a special childhood spot that just happens to be a San Fransisco gem hiding in plain sight ... in the middle of the bay!
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D. is a wildlife ecologist specializing in large carnivores. And in this episode she unfolds a mystery for listeners.
Producer Abbey Perrault takes a trip into the Kenyan savanna, where she meets researchers who are studying how people share space with unlikely neighbors: lions. Along the way, she learns why a researcher would possibly pull the tail of a lion, and gets *extre…
We all love to zone out to a soothing nature documentary. But what you’ll learn about them in this episode will make you watch – and listen! – a lot more carefully. Reporter Abigail Keel tells Dylan about her conversation with sound designer and mixer Graham W…
Decades after eradicating its wolves, Yellowstone National Park decided to reintroduce them. In the 1990s, the wolves were thriving—until one wolf decided to make life hell for everyone around her. Our guest in this episode, Rick McIntyre, has written several …
The natural world is weird. Dylan talks with Cara Giaimo, co-author of our forthcoming book Wild Life, about the world’s tiniest chameleon, an acrobatic fog catching beetle, and how shellfish hold the keys to Poland’s water supply.
These miniature mansions and luxurious homes were built for the feathered residents of Istanbul.
The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum is dedicated to telling the stories of the league’s greatest players, its impact on communities, and the game-changing innovations it brought to baseball.
Pegged as the “world’s greatest indoor miniature village,” Roadside America was a beloved roadside attraction in Shartlesville, Pennsylvania. The creator Laurence Gieringer and his family ran the business for 85 years until its closure in 2021. Today, the piec…
Saying farewell to summer with a lazy day in Mallorca, and a blustery night in Massachusetts. “3 p.m. in Sa Cabaneta” and “7:10 p.m. in Provincetown” were edited by Aube Rey Lescure. Both essays originally appeared in Off Assignment.
Producer Emma Morgenstern spends nearly 6 hours waiting in a famous line. Will she get into the most exclusive tennis tournament in the world – or face bigtime disappointment?
The world’s largest random, assorted key collection located outside Denver, CO, was inspired by a literary infatuation and includes keys to danger and memory.
In 2023, 60% of Americans chose to be cremated instead of having a traditional burial. If that trend continues, do cemeteries need to be worried about the future? Loren Rhoads, author of 222 Cemeteries To See Before You Die (which is coming out on August 27), …
District Six is a neighborhood in Cape Town South Africa that was destroyed under the apartheid regime. Today, a museum stands as a monument to the people who once called the neighborhood home.
Writer Meghan Gunn meets a stranger in the jungle, and writes him a letter.
The Atlas Obscura Places team brings us to a dazzling aquarium and a small town in the heart of what was once eastern Pennsylvania’s coal country. The catch? Neither place exists anymore. Do you have a place that you love that no longer exists? Give us a call …
Maybe it was a mom and pop shop that closed down. Maybe it was a facility that you often used and shut down. Or an art space that was replaced by a housing development. We want to hear about places that YOU can no longer visit. What was there before disappeari…
In 1954, two groups of boys thought they were going to summer camp. But they’d been recruited for a different kind of summer experience.
An update on the thousands of masks from the former Kingdom of Benin. These pieces of art and culture are spread in museums across the world, but a new discussion has reignited about if they should stay put.
The story of how a former nuclear missile silo in Wamego, Kansas became the site of the largest LSD bust in US history (allegedly). Fore more information, check out author Dennis McDougal’s website and Rolling Stone’s interview with Leonard Pickard.
An evening visit to a racetrack, and a late night walk on the beach. “8:45 p.m. at the Selinsgrove Speedway” was edited by Aube Rey Lescure and “10 p.m. in Muriwai” was edited by Tusshara Nalakumar Srilatha. Both essays originally appeared in Off Assignment.
Mike O’Connor’s Cape Cod store provides supplies for birders, gives away thousands of pounds of free potatoes, and inspires April Fools’ Day-related hijinks. For more information, check out the Bird Watcher’s General Store website.
Today we hear from an Atlas Obscura user who, when he isn’t aboard an icebreaking warship for the Canadian Navy, spends weeks at a time road-tripping with his dog. Check out Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/puppercycle/?hl=en
Investigator Mitch Yockelson, a historian and academic turned archival bounty hunter, has a job that makes for pretty interesting dinner party discussion: tracking down the people who steal government property.
Mary Maschal set out to document women’s history, unintentionally becoming part of it herself. Learn more about the Women's Museum of History here.
A visitor in Cajicá, Colombia sees a stranger on a bicycle, and writes him a letter. This essay was edited by Carey Baraka and originally appeared in Off Assignment.
In the early 1900s, influential psychologist Carl Jung spent more than a decade documenting the strange images that popped up in his unconscious mind and documenting them all in a beautiful illustrated manuscript. After his death, his family thought the book w…
This giant limestone cave outside of St. Louis, MO. is home to a combination of kitsch and world-class scenery.
Dylan is joined by Marisa Scheinfeld, a photographer who has dedicated years to exploring the lost and abandoned properties of the Borscht Belt. A stretch of hundreds of hotels, resorts and summer camps where Jewish Americans would go to escape. Check out more…
You bring us road trip stories from all over the globe. Along the way, we hear about encounters with wild boars, a visit to a famously large ball of twine and a lifelong friendship that began on the back of motorcycles.
Strap on your hiking boots and say goodbye to your spouse. We’re pulling off the highway and going on a trek through Dinosaur National Monument with photographer Randy Fullbright. To see Randy’s photos for yourself, check out his website or stop by his shop, F…
It’s Road Trip Week! Dylan hops in a (virtual) car and embarks on a Great American Road Trip. Along the way, Atlas Obscura staffers recommend their favorite road trip stops – from a strange doll hospital, to a massive sculpture only visible during certain time…
Step inside the Theater of Electricity in Boston and learn about the World’s Largest Air-Insulated Van De Graaff Generator.
Writer and journalist Walt Hickey joins Dylan for a conversation about the different ways film and television have impacted us and our real world surroundings, a topic that’s the subject of his new book You Are What You Watch.
The story of a stork, a spear and a scientific mystery that led to breakthroughs in the way we understand bird migration.
In the California’s Jurupa Valley, residents discovered a treasure in their backyard: a 15,000 year old tree. Now, it may disappear.
Today we visit the ATF Fire Research Laboratory where investigators recreate arson attacks and analyze burn patterns.
Atlas Obscura's Gemma Tarlach shares what it's like to step inside a relic from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and to find traces of a famous lost party of explorers.
Today we're powering up our metal detectors and keeping a very close eye on the surface of the earth as we set out in the hunt for meteorites with Steve Arnold, who’s been in the game for more than three decades. If you want to learn more, check out Steve’s we…
In the basement of a Berlin hostel – in a corridor connecting their brewery to the luggage storage area – is a shrine to a pop culture icon with a surprising connection to the city’s history. (Hint: It’s David Hasselhoff.)
Dylan takes us on a tour of three places that have shaped his life.
How a woman in her 70s inspired some of the biggest labor uprisings in American history.
This elaborate architecture throughout Iran served a very unique purpose - gathering pigeon guano.
Travel writer Susan Orlean is an admitted terrible tourist. But she’s an expert at getting lost – with a purpose. Today, she takes us to some of the places that have shaped her life. And she talks about throwing out the guidebook – opening herself up to these …
Barry Enderwick has made and tasted more than 1000 sandwiches from across history. Today, he and Dylan make – and eat three sandwiches that each tell us something about history, culture, and ourselves.
For one day every July, the Assateague Channel on Virginia’s marshy eastern shore is filled with the bobbing heads of swimming ponies. These feral horses are celebrities in the area, but nobody actually knows exactly how they got there. Atlas Obscura senior ed…
In 2008, a researcher floating in a boat in Lake Huron had an idea for how to learn more about our prehistoric ancestors. It involved sonar, a lot of patience, and some very bumbling AI caribou. Listen to Morgan Springer’s original story here. For more stories…
We're working on another listener-led episode and want to know: What is your favorite unusual road trip destination? The weirdest road trip memory holed deep in your subconscious. Where was it? What did it look like? What do you remember? Maybe there is a plac…
Anna Swan had an adventurous life before settling in Seville, Ohio and building a house large enough to fit her large life.
Today we have two classic episodes to share about hidden histories of America. In one, we’ll hear the story of an unconventional Revolutionary patriot – an enslaved woman who sued her enslaver. And in the other, we’ll learn about a group of Native American vet…
The story of a big idea, and a big duck – and how this duck would go on to become an important architectural landmark that would influence buildings all around the world.
Thomas Downing, who arguably invented fine dining in New York City, had a secret going on underneath the floor of his popular oyster house. Writer Briona Lamback tells us the story. If you want to read the full article, check out the link here. And if you’re l…
Gilbert Baker’s pride flag design is now a worldwide symbol for LGBT freedom and liberation. Now, his former stomping grounds remember his efforts with a beautiful mural. But there’s more to this pride-filled house than meets the eye. SEE the mural for yoursel…
This tiny stone cabbage has a big backstory stretching from the rich, treasure-laden halls of Beijing’s Forbidden City...through a harrowing wartime escape...to its prized place at the National palace museum in Taipei, Taiwan.
Author Doug Preston brings us back into the world of his latest book, The Lost Tomb, with a story of a remote lake in the Himalayas where hundreds of human skeletons were discovered – puzzling scientists and researchers for years.
This museum in New York is a recreated 19th century glove making workshop complete with sizing tools, cutting blocks, and irons. It’s also part studio, part exhibition space and the brainchild of a craftsman who dedicated his life to the art of glove-making.
In the 1850s, one anonymous Massachusetts shoemaker became a national celebrity – all by exhibiting his “family” of captured grizzly bears.
A hospital and rehab center for birds in Manhattan started with a woman who just wanted to do all she could to help an injured goose. Decades later, it has become an institution.
Places editors Michelle Cassidy and Jonathan Carey bring us stories about two specific languages that were created by people who gave us a glimpse into their worlds and cultures – real and imagined.
History buff Torri Yates-Orr gives us the tea on Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and Amanirenas – and explains why we often don’t hear their full stories in history class.
In Atlanta, on this historic Auburn Avenue, sits a small bookstore and reading room that’s been called “an interactive art museum of Black Thought”
James Baldwin’s former home in the South of France is a site that many visit hoping to feel the essence of the great African-American writer. But should it be?
In the early days of drinking in America, bartenders passed down drink recipes simply via word of mouth. Then, a suit-wearing, itinerant bartender decked out in diamonds changed everything.
What is your favorite unusual road trip destination? Plus, Dylan wants your travel questions. Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message, or send a voice memo to Hello@Atlas Obscura.com.
Noah Purifoy was a pugilistic LA artist who eventually filled a 10 acre plot of land in Joshua Tree, CA with his off-kilter art.
Ultimate slow travel adventurer (and friend of the show) Bernie Harberts returns to tell us what happened when he spent months floating alone at sea. Bernie is also an author and filmmaker. You can read more about Bernie's travels at his website www.riverearth…
Listener stories of hitting the road, parents in tow. We’ll hear about an unexpected run-in with a group of lumberjacks, a rare road trip with parents visiting from Thailand, and a heart-pounding incident in Istanbul. If you have a suggestion about our next ca…
We visit a London neighborhood that’s the epicenter of Caribbean culture and a place that aims to be the home for Black British history. Learn more about the Black Cultural Archives here.
During the 1970s, archaeologists and fishermen stumbled across an abandoned military weather station on the coast of Labrador. It was labeled “Canadian Meteor Service.” The problem was: the Canadian Meteor Service didn’t put it there. In fact, the Canadian Met…
The only remaining operational Rotary Jail, found in Crawfordsville, Indiana, shows visitors how inmates were once locked within the building’s walls.
This garden park in Paris, France contains the ruins of a colonial exhibition from 1907.
We get a crash course in the fascinating temperature-controlled ecosystem we’ve created to keep our food fresh – and available – all year round. Our guide is Nicky Twilley, co-host of the Gastropod podcast and author of the new book called Frostbite: How Refri…
In the South Dakota badlands, a small pharmacy employed an ingenious marketing gimmick, and boomed into a business that draws millions of visitors every year. It’s a story that involves giant dinosaurs, a mythological jack rabbit, and lots and lots of donuts.
We’ve got a fun collaboration with podcasters SuChin Pak and Kulap Vilaysack, hosts of Add to Cart. Hear them chat with Dylan about traveling with kids – the good, the bad, and the vomit-y times. Pick up tips if you’re about to make your first or 10th trip wit…
We head to Florida, the wintertime refuge for many, for a glimpse of a rehabilitation effort aimed at some very distinct creatures known for being gentle giants – manatees. This episode was produced in partnership with VISIT FLORIDA.
Producer Johanna Mayer takes a trip to the last Sears in New York City, and a Brooklyn landmark, with two people whose lives were shaped by the department store.
Telescope tourist, rocket scientist and STEAM educator Summer Ash gives us the nitty gritty on the V.L.A. - a 22-mile telescope in New Mexico whose formal name is literally “Very Large Array.” We talk about how this observatory works and what cosmic wonders it…
CANADALAND host Jesse Brown introduces Dylan to a strange and decaying Quebecois fast food institution… housed inside a giant orange sphere. Today, the orange is a relic of a bygone era. But decades ago, this odd establishment was on track to become the McDona…
Host Dylan Thuras brings us to a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia. On Sable Island, we learn how – against all odds – a group of beloved feral horses have not only survived, but thrived. There’s only one problem: Some people want them gone.
CANADALAND host Jesse Brown tells Dylan the story of a Canadian man who adopted a black bear in the woods of Winnipeg – and how that bear became the inspiration for one of the most beloved children’s characters of all time.
This mechanical boy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a mystery - until it began to write.
Historian and author Edda L. Fields-Black tells us the fascinating and action-packed story of one of the most daring spy operations and raids of the entire Civil War – led by Harriet Tubman.
We catch up with Amir Siraj – friend of the show, scientist and world wanderer – who visited a new observatory in a Chilean desert that could help his search for rogue planets
Earlier this spring we shared the story of the city of Melbourne’s program to track trees, which morphed into a love fest. In this episode, we hear from YOU and your love letters to trees that play a special role in your life.
The Ludlow colony in southern Colorado was once a bustling tent city and haven for miners and their families. But it was also the site of one of the country’s most monumental –and violent – clashes of the labor movement.
In 2006 a massive haul of Doritos was shipwrecked on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks, leaving its mark on the town forever.
Author Colin Dickey tells us the story of a Kentucky family who, in 1955, claimed to be in a wild gunfight with unidentified creatures who may or may not have been aliens. And we learn how this event had a mysterious, surprising, and shockingly long legacy tha…
Jason deCaires Taylor takes intentional art to another level with his sculptures that can be visited by humans and fish.
From a rubber duck contest to hypnotizing chickens, listeners share stories about annual customs, events and practices that set their hometowns apart from others.
We visit the Louisiana town where the infamous – but often misunderstood – couple’s story came to an end.
We're going to be bringing you more listener-led stories this year, and we need your help. Tell us about a place you went with your parents that was special to you. Maybe it was the annual trip to Niagara Falls or a national park. Or maybe it was just a one ti…
The pigs once plopped on an uninhabited Auckland Island known for capturing castaways now play an important role in modern medical research.
Science writer and journalist Rebecca Boyle has a new book about all about the ways in which the moon has impacted nearly every aspect of human life – including our conception and invention of time.
We empty out our change purse and visit Dan Zelinsky - the owner and head mechanic of the Musée Mécanique - one of the few remaining vintage arcades in the country.
A gnarly looking elm tree rumored to be older than Britain itself was the anchor in a community – until beetles got to it and it was suddenly gone one day. Thanks to the magic of technology, you can see a 3D scan of the Beauly Elm here.
We go to Haiti, and visit a royal residence once called the Versailles of the Caribbean. But though Sans-Souci Palace, once home to Haiti’s only king, is now ruins and rubble, it remains a large symbol – just as its creator intended. | Read about this in the A…
Farmers in Yorkshire, England take years to coax their rhubarb plants into a world-renowned delicacy using a century-old technique.
On the eve of the Second World War, there was one place that was the source for all good stories — the Hotel Imperial in Vienna. It exuded luxury and power, and also was the converging spot for foreign correspondents in the 1920’s and ‘30s who were warning the…
Long before Joe Exotic got the country talking about big cats, there was Joe Taft – regular guy – who began raising and rescuing these types of felines in Indiana.
The Old Cahawba Archeological Park is perhaps one of Alabama's most famous ghost towns. But it once was the center of life in this southern state. We unravel the surprising tale of this onetime capital city.
Today’s episode comes from Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast that reveals the stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds. On their show, they’ve explored topics like the sounds of other planets, the mind blowing ways that insects commun…
The Tree of 40 Fruits in San Jose California is an horticultural marvel of 40 types of stone fruit trees grafted together to form a living work of art.
We promise, this is not another sappy (pardon the pun) story about trees. Instead, author and science writer Mary Roach takes us deep into an ancient forest grove on Vancouver Island, in search of the danger trees and the people who seek them out.
We spend some time with some celebrity trees – one in Washington, DC and one in Berlin – that have left an impact on all who visit them. Today’s stories are brought to you by Michelle Cassidy and Diana Hubbell, of the Atlas Obscura Places Team.
In 2012, the city of Melbourne gave every tree a barcode and email address so people could report when it needed maintenance or attention. But, a funny thing started happening. Instead of reporting problems, people began emailing love letters to the trees.
Meyer lemons are so special that restaurants go out of their way to call them out on menus. Martha Stewart loves to bake with them. And yet, Meyer lemons also have a fascinating and kinda tragic backstory. Tune in for a very fun episode about this very particu…
The Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska aims to domesticate a species that used to roam the earth at the same time as the wooly mammoth.
IN THIS EPISODE OF THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST, Dylan sits down with “How To” creator and narrator John Wilson about his travels, his favorite places and his HBO series that is part documentary, part memoir, part essay — and unlike any other show on TV.
Just outside of Myrtle Beach sits a medieval castle that would feel out of place if not for its charm. We tell the story of the eccentric couple who, nearly a hundred years ago, built this fortress — which was turned into a popular part of the state park syste…
A one-room museum located in the basement of a church-turned-community arts center is crammed with mementos from a pretty spectacular period in history. We hang with some retired dancers who recall the time when Chinatown in San Francisco was filled with late …
From Tractor Day to an Italian style wedding to the streets of New York City to throwing water into the air in negative 20 degree weather, we take a tour of some quirky hometown traditions.
This week wasn't special only because of the eclipse. We also recorded our first live show, during the Atlas Obscura Ecliptic Festival in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In this episode, hear host Dylan Thuras try to stump guests -- astrobiologist Dr. Graham Lau and s…
Rick Steves has seen a lot of strange, incredible and wondrous places over his decades-long career as the leading authority on European travel. And today he is going to guide us through three places that helped shape his life.
We’re heading to the mountains of western North Carolina, where for more than a century, people have witnessed unusual displays of shimmering and sometimes even exploding lights. And we hang with a skeptical scientist who’s spent years trying to solve the myst…
The world’s biggest treehouse was inspired by a message from God.
Today, millions of people across North America donned solar glasses, and looked up. And since our show is all about wonder and curiosity and incredible places — a moment like the Great American Eclipse is something we take very seriously. If you missed it, or …
Millions of people will be getting in their cars, breaking out the cardboard glasses and looking to the sky for today's Great North American Eclipse… which won’t occur again for another TWENTY years. Host Dylan Thuras will be smack dab in the path of totality …
At The Martin, family-style dining is rooted in a very specific history and cultural experience that began with Basque sheepherders in the 1800s and has been carried on and celebrated ever since. This episode was produced in partnership with Travel Nevada and …
A spectacular art installation is hidden inside an all-luxury shopping mall in Las Vegas. As of April 2024, the exhibit appears to be closed.
Las Vegas was once the preferred tourist destination for watching weapons of mass destruction explode. This episode is part of Nevada Week, where we bring you stories all week from the Silver State. Find out more about cool things to see, do and experience in …
Jessica Oreck has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects. Now, they’re all beautifully curated and on display in the Office of Collecting and Design in Las Vegas. This episode is part of Nevada Week, where we bring you stories from the S…
This micronation about an hour outside of Reno draws visitors from all over the world. This episode was produced in partnership with Travel Nevada and is part of Nevada Week, where we bring you stories all week from the Silver State.
Friend of the show Joanna Ebenstein tells us about her enduring fascination with death, how it led her to create the Morbid Anatomy Museum and, after some setbacks, why she eventually settled on her new home of Mexico City.
For one year, this journalist had the coolest assignment – as the New York Times “52 Places” reporter. Its charms and challenges were more than he ever imagined.
There are two miles of abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of Cincinnati, OH. A relic of an attempt to establish underground transportation in the city.
A producer sits down with Dylan and recounts his trip to a place referred to as “The Venice of Africa.”
This museum in Kentucky is either your dream place or your nightmare, depending on how you feel about dummies. Because there are more than 500 of them there, resting in peace.
The Great North American Eclipse will be April 8, 2024. Where will you be watching it? Who will you be with? And why is it important to you to see this marvelous event? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message, or send a voice memo to Hello@AtlasObsc…
An adventurous couple sets out to document and unearth the arrow’s of America’s past, once used to help pilots find their way across the skies.
Author, astrophysicist, folklorist, and science communicator Dr. Moiya McTier guides Dylan through the galaxy, and along the way reveals why she loves space so much, how folklore helps people understand things bigger than themselves, and the origins of her awa…
This site, and the enormous telescope that sits on it, is loved and lost to both scientists and everyday Puerto Ricans.
Friend of the show Amir Siraj tells us the wild tale of his search for an interstellar object – a journey that led the astrophysicist to the bottom of the ocean floor.
Today the story of how a street lamp, a tangle with municipal government, and a love of the stars led a man to Goblin Valley, Utah a “dark sky certified” place for lovers of the night sky.
Take a trip to a hostel in Iceland to visit the country’s last Big Mac, where the burger’s existence unfolds a story about economics and national identity.
Atlas Obscura writer Roxanne Hoorn brings us the story of an extraordinary relationship between people and killer whales. And, through conversation with Dylan, we learn how to better cohabitate as species on this planet.
LeVar Burton presents SOUND DETECTIVES – a funny, engaging, and thought provoking podcast that invites elementary school-aged kids to explore the magic and mystery of sound.
We go to Fayerweather Island, off the coast of Connecticut, and get the story of Kate Moore, one of the first recorded woman lighthouse keepers. Over several decades, she poured her heart and soul into a task and defied common expectations of what a keeper sho…
We go to Deep River, Connecticut – where the story of a botched bank robbery more than 100 years ago has taken on a life of its own as an urban legend.
The largest theater pipe organ in the world lives in a restaurant in Mesa, Arizona. Phenomenal musicians play requests while diners feast on pizza.
Dylan sits down with guest Blake Pfeil about what inspired him to begin exploring abandoned spots, what those spaces have taught him about escapism, sobriety and the sometimes blurry line between real and unreal that he finds there.
We visit a quaint Dutch fishing village and attempt to unravel the mystery that unfolded there… a mystery that involved strange and curious letters and a voyage to the other side of the world.
On our second day with Sporkful senior producer Andres O’Hara, we see what happens when invasive creatures that have made their way to the US refuse to leave… even when they’re slow and slimy.
With the help from a podcast friend (Andres O’Hara of The Sporkful), we go inside one of the busiest airports on earth. And we find out the fate of all the food that gets confiscated by customs. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t get eaten.
Dylan braves one of New York’s most touristy sites to bring listeners the lesser-known history of Madame Tussaud’s origins.
For years, contributions from Black Americans to public spaces like beaches and museums have been hard to detect. Places Editors Jonathan and Michelle Cassidy take us to New Jersey’s Chicken Bone Beach and Chicago’s Field Museum to highlight a couple of these …
We visit Jerry’s Hat Museum, where a retiree has turned to an old chapel to house a collection of thousands of hats, pens, odds, ends and other artifacts from his Illinois hometown.
Listeners share their stories of places that made them feel at home, from the beaches of Australia to a ubiquitous coffee shop.
The Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York played a pivotal role in the influential neighborhood’s cultural identity.
The founders of this prison in Philadelphia aimed to revolutionize incarceration for the better - and unintentionally created new horrors.
A producer revisits her hometown (Houston) and goes to the Buffalo Soldiers Museum, learning about the contributions of Black members of the armed forces and one man in particular, who started the collection years ago in his garage.
This giant rock has been used in the coronation of every English monarch since the 1300s, but is it authentic? Or could the real one be in a Scottish bar? We parse through the evidence and debate!
We visit the misnamed “world’s loneliest house” and visit the flocks of puffins who live there. Some people want to eat them, some want to protect them. And these two groups collide here.
We take a hike up Great Blue Hill in Boston and get more than a stunning view of the city. A visit to the peak reveals the story of a weather observatory with the longest continuous daily weather record in the United States.
A public health crisis plagued the Midwest until a simple solution was introduced to a ubiquitous cooking ingredient.
A mysterious religious community founded by an insurance agent-turned spiritual leader in northern Italy spent 15 years constructing an underground temple covered in intricate paintings, mosaics, trippy colors and images inspired by Roman, Greek and Egyptian m…
Award-winning chef Sean Sherman, aka the Sioux Chef, has dedicated his Minneapolis restaurant to decolonized food and honoring indigenous meal traditions
Mexico City is known for its museum and art scene. The collection at El Museo del Juguete Antiguo – The Antique Toy Museum – encourages visitors to lean into their imaginations – and reflect on the rich history and culture in this city.
We go to south Florida and hear the story of a family that took a gamble on a humble roadside stand that blossomed into a fruit emporium and community staple.
This collection, preserved by the United States Library of Congress, features locks of hair from cultural icons from Beethoven to General Ulysses S. Grant.
This museum in John Day, Oregon, was once a Chinese general store and medicine shop that dates back to the 1800s. But these days it’s a perfectly preserved time capsule, down to the fruit – down to the orange its former owner left on the counter in the 1950s. …
Hear staff stories about places in the world that made them instantly feel at home, from the Big Easy to the Magic Kingdom.
A city in Uzbekistan used to be the site of one of the world’s largest seas. Now it’s a dusty reminder of one of the largest and most forgotten environmental disasters.
This tiny island off the coast of Peru is an UNESCO World Heritage site for having the finest textile art. It’s also the place where a knitted hat represents and symbolizes a man’s code of honor, marital status, and love for life.
Producer Baudelaire Ceus searches for the resting place of famed author Richard Wright among the graves of other cultural icons like Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Sadegh Hedayat.
We pick up the ball from internet sleuths and journalists and find the mysterious maker of a Minnesota-shaped forest, who’s never spoken about his secret project – until now.
We follow one man’s journey down an internet rabbit hole that becomes a search for a one-of-a-kind forest and its mysterious creator.
At one time, sea otters had an enormous historical range—from Baja California, up the West Coast, through Alaska, Russia, and Japan. But these days, their levels are low. In this episode, we get an inside look at a groundbreaking program at the Monterey Bay Aq…
We follow a man’s quest to find the remains of a shipwrecked slave ship off the coast of the Florida Keys, and learn about its forgotten history, mysterious remains, and vital legacy.
These trees sprang from seeds that were brought to outer space.
We go to New Hampshire – but not for politics. Instead, we visit Goffstown, the pumpkin boat capital of New England, and meet the man who came up with an annual, improbable regatta.
We go to Houston, where a gigantic underground vessel that used to be a water source is now an enchanting – and echo-filled – part of the downtown park system.
We get out our passports and visit The Republic of Slowjamastan, a nation built on good vibes, good music and a dream of eliminating one very popular type of footwear.
We go to Safety Harbor, Florida – where two artists have made their house into a magnet for creativity and culture, and where Troll Dolls, Jello molds, and bowling balls reign. This episode was produced in partnership with Visit St. Pete/Clearwater.
This forest in Oslo, Norway will provide the trees for paper as part of a century long art project featuring famed contemporary authors.
Forty-two school buses have been buried in Horning’s Mills, Ontario - covered in concrete, they can house up to 500 people in case of nuclear fallout.
Congo Square in New Orleans is the heart of where African drumming found its way into American music and the birth of Jazz.
Turns out, complaining about bad service really is as old as time. Hear the story of an ancient Babylonian clay tablet that has launched a slew of modern memes. Click here for more.
An archeological site in the country of Georgia, which features the oldest, human skull fossils found outside of Africa, challenges what we think we know about our deep past.
An island off the coast of Puerto Rico is home to more than 1500 imported monkeys, which have been studied by researchers for decades.
The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea has become an accidental bird sanctuary for one of the world’s most endangered crane species. Learn more about the International Crane Foundation at savingcranes.org.
A grand library in Portugal has some unexpected nighttime caretakers -- tiny bats.
These Argentinian parrots have made an unlikely home in a Brooklyn, NY cemetery.
Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki has had an infestation of Chilean recluse spiders for more than 50 years.
Take a trip to Micropia, the world’s only museum dedicated to microscopic organisms and learn about our invisible life companions.
Join host Dylan Thuras, a satellite scientist, and a ship captain in search of gigantic swaths of bioluminescence that radiate up from the surface of the sea over thousands of square miles.
A toxic lake high in the Andes mountains in Argentina is home to microbes that provide a window to our planet’s past — and a key to securing its future.
There’s an everlasting lightning storm in Northwestern Venezuela that appears in the night sky nearly every night.
Science writer Peter Brannen takes listeners on a tour of the world’s five major mass extinctions.
Where does space stuff go after it dies? To this spot deep, deep in the Pacific ocean.
Author Mary Roach takes us into the hidden corners of the scientific world. From training to poop in space to the surprisingly pleasant Common Cold Unit, all the way to the inside of Elvis’s colon. If you want to check out her work, we recommend starting with …
Visitors leave bananas on the grave of “America’s First Lady of Space,” an early astronaut whose incredible life was forgotten.
We head to a remote region of Russia, to the epicenter of what would become known as the Tunguska Event. An event that may seem unfathomable… except we have firsthand accounts from people who witnessed it.
Amir Siraj was a sophomore in college when he discovered what may be the first documented interstellar object to hit Earth.
Chandler, Arizona creates a Christmas Tree made entirely of the diaspore of this Western plant.
Over the last two and a half years, the Atlas Obscura podcast has published well over 500 original episodes. For the next few weeks, we're taking a holiday break -- but not leaving you without wonder. Over the course of 20 episodes, host Dylan Thuras is going…
42 giant busts of U.S. presidents are slowly crumbling in a field in Virginia.
Specific smells have been linked to specific geographies, cultures, and mythologies for THOUSANDS of years. Today, we hear from Saskia Wilson-Brown about fragrance, power, and the power of scent.
We learn about an age-old practice of nightwalking, with the help of two women who took it on as an experiment in the early chaotic days of the pandemic. Joining the conversation is Bianca Giaever, creator of one of our favorite podcasts of the year, Constella…
Gastro Obscura’s senior editor Sam O’Brien returns to the podcast to go deeper with us on her strange beat – recipes etched into gravestones. We probe how food can help heal and remember those we’ve lost.
A producer takes a detour for a glimpse of what some call New York’s worst kept secret – a train station that’s been shut down and sealed away for nearly a century.
Fishlake National Forest is home to the biggest organism by mass on the planet - but this giant is shrinking and an usual group has banded together to help defend it.
This magical wonderland in Ithaca, New York is devoted entirely—almost spiritually—to this unusual and versatile fruit. It's also the brainchild of Graham Ottoson, who is teaching an Atlas Obscura course on gourds. Listeners get 15% off by using code GOURDLOVE…
An oozing whale skeleton isn't the only attraction at this Massachusetts museum. Hear how a producer’s visit revealed some surprising facts about an industry that helped enrich a city and was inclusive well before diversity became a buzzword.
Back in the day, people were so hungry for info about the weather that they would stand in line all day to get a glimpse of a series of kiosks placed in towns across the country. We go to Tennessee to hear the story of one.
A small cemetery in the grasslands of Kenya serves as a way to honor one of the most endangered animals in the world – the rhino – and elevate the plight of a species on the brink.
A midwest city has embraced what it means to be the namesake hometown of one very famous superhero. And at its center is a museum that holds the carefully cultivated collection of one superfan.
We follow a long set of wooden stairs deep underground to a sea cave with a mysterious and colorful past, and take in a spectacular, hidden view of the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.
The Luray Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are home to an instrument that draws out the secret sounds of millenia-old stone.
Professional Adventurer George Kourounis knew he needed to visit the Cave of the Crystals, located nearly a 1000 feet beneath northern Mexico, the moment he saw a photograph from inside the cave.
We got so many responses to our question about listener experiences with animal encounters that we made a second episode. Experiences include a woman who touches a tiger’s tail, a man who plays peek-a-boo with a bear and a chance meeting of a herd of elk.
This episode will break your heart. And that’s a good thing.
A small town in Texas has embraced the story of the visit and demise of an otherworldly being from the 1800s… and what many say is America’s only alien gravesite.
A few weeks ago, our staff here at Atlas Obscura put out an episode about our traveling expectations – places that either blew us away… or were a major letdown. And today - we are hearing YOUR stories.
An art gallery in Kansas celebrates the losers of presidential elections.
A Seattle restaurant pushes diners to eat beyond their borders through its embrace of global street foods.
The Elephant Clock, a replica of an ancient invention, sits in Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, surrounded by stores like The Gap and H&M.
A listener’s voicemail sent us searching for the story of a very special -- and giant -- oak tree in Peoria, Illinois, and the family of arborists who cared for it.
For decades, rumors and conspiracy theories swirled after nine people disappeared in the Ural mountains of the Soviet Union in 1959. But just a few years ago, the case was solved – even though many don’t accept the explanation. Journalist and author Doug Prest…
Journalist and author Doug Preston guides us through the first half of a cliffhanger story about the mysterious disappearance of a group of hikers in the Soviet Union... and the myriad conspiracy theories that sprouted up afterward.
Producer Manolo Morales, a devoted Little Monster, gallivants around the Lower East Side via an immersive performance-art walking tour dedicated to an iconic pop star.
Places editors Jonathan and Michelle are back again with a few new standout entries to the Atlas … including a spot in Antarctica that’s home to the oldest Martian meteorite and a column in Greece that symbolizes the fear and ritual past generations embraced w…
For art nerds, the Lightning Field installation in the New Mexico desert is a bucket-list destination. It’s also a testament to the extraordinary control the artist who created it was able to exert, even after death. To reserve your spot to stay at the Lightni…
A couple created what is perhaps the cutest and most filling micro-store to pop up during the pandemic. But to find it, you’ll have to trek through rural Vermont and look for the phone-booth sized box filled with baked goods.
A mysterious sinkhole in Arizona has befuddled an exclusive group of divers who’ve gotten a glimpse of a strange world underneath its sandy bottom.
We’re in Amsterdam, learning about a bad-ass woman who championed queer folx and provided a safe haven throughout World War II via her quirky bar in the red light district.
A listener tells us about a treasure buried in his literal backyard, and the two strange men who showed up on his doorstep and asked to dig it up.
We will always love Dolly Parton, who’s installed a “dreambox” time capsule at her amusement park. In it, there’s a secret song that no one will hear until the legendary artist turns 100.
We meet back up with our pal Bernie Harberts, the beast whisperer, who trekked 19 million mule steps across the United States only to find himself, for the first time, a little homesick.
We go to the former estate of the Davies sisters, two unusually wealthy Welsh women who traveled the world, fell in love with art, served their country, and then dedicated their home to culture and community.
In a place where multiple world religions intersect, this unassuming little ladder is a symbol of the very delicate balance that keeps a church in Jerusalem running.
Reporter Eric Grundhauser recounts a memorable visit to an unusual museum in Iceland, where he explored the ancient lore of the occult, learned how to steal milk from his neighbors, and laid his eyes upon a pair of pants… made of human flesh.
Photographer and author Paul Koudonaris brings listeners to this Ethiopian Church and explores ossuaries, jeweled skeletons, and death practices throughout the world.
Atlas contributors bring listeners stories from spooky locations they’ve visited, and which continue to haunt them.
With Halloween just around the corner Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring you two spooky legends of The Mothman from Point Pleasant, West Virginia and a potentially ghoulish forest in the Transylvanian Region of Romania.
This island between Missouri and Illinois was a preferred meeting place for duels to the death in the early 1900’s.
Hear from the caretakers of a ghost town in Bolivia that was once the world's highest ski resort.
We chat with one of the leading experts on art theft – professor and author Noah Charney, who unpacks the cultural fascination with this type of crime. Charney also tells us the story of one of the most notorious real life art thieves.
We visit a museum in Montana that’s a dream for dinosaur nerds, and home to bones that are the real deal, locally sourced and sustainably foraged.
Journalist Susan Casey takes us to the deep deep ocean, where she explores the relationship between humans and this mysterious underworld.
A basketball fan goes to the hall of fame – and no, it’s not the big one in Massachusetts that you may be thinking about. Hear the story behind a Midwest state’s special link to the sport.
Host Dylan Thuras riffs on a subject that has long fascinated him: The world’s longest-running science experiments.
There’s a special tree in Portland that’s full of a city’s hopes, dreams, and wishes.
We peek into the life and work of the oft-understood artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who was behind a strange and wildly popular playground sculpture in Jerusalem.
We meet the robot saints – sculptures made of wood and wire, of cams and pulleys during medieval times – that might just help us understand this new AI age we all find ourselves living in.
We get up close and nosey about a peculiar exhibit in Copenhagen that reveals a lot about what artists and society considered beautiful throughout the years
Josh Foer, the co-founder of Atlas Obscura, takes us to a remote patch of land in the Arizona desert, where he built (and later rebuilt) a museum in honor of the company’s former CEO, David Plotz.
We go inside a place that some paranormal investigators call the most active haunted location in the world. Before it was known as the inspiration for Stephen King...the Stanley Hotel had a reputation -- and ghosts -- of its own. This episode was produced wi…
Travel is sometimes like a box of chocolates – never know what you’re going to get. In this episode, we share stories of places that blew us away, and those that didn't live up to the hype.
We head to a remote region of Russia, to the epicenter of what would become known as the Tunguska Event. An event that may seem unfathomable… except we have firsthand accounts from people who witnessed it.
This fall marks 50 years since JRR Tolkien’s death. In honor of the writer’s life and legacy, we want to take you back to the places where it all began.
A huge rock, teetering on the edge of a hill for thousands of years, brought tourism, fame, and what’s said to be a 100-year curse to the town of Tandil, Argentina.
We go to Bonaventure Cemetery in Georgia to the grave of one Charles F. Mills to learn about a distinct – but at one time widespread – phobia – and the hope to be saved by a bell.
The story of Chef Hamissi Mamba, whose family sought asylum in the US and years later founded an East African restaurant that serves up a small slice of Burundi in the Motor City. Find out more here.
We go to Wilmington, Delaware, to a 4-acre garden with characters and exhibits created using castoff materials and greenery that invites kids to drop screens and rules – and instead give in to a state of play.
We go on a journey through the depths of the ocean, meeting a different squid deity at each stop along the way. Our guide is cephalopod expert, biologist and science educator, Dr. Sarah McAnulty.
Podcaster Ashley Ray has more than a soft spot for her Midwest hometown. Hear why she thinks it may just be the best kept secret.
A listener takes us to a town on the edge of the longest undefended border in the world.
Lake Karachay in Ozersk, Russia is the site of a former secret Soviet Union nuclear facility - that’s inspired art despite the little that’s publicly known of the site.
The Dedan Kimathi Post Office played a notable role in Kenya’s struggle for Independence.
An intentional community in rural central Virginia has been testing an interesting premise for decades — that maybe three, or four, or more parental figures are even better than two. This episode is part of a collaboration we did with Freakonomics. You can fi…
Urban planner, Moses Gates, shares his unlikely experience with the residents of the 61st floor of one of New York City’s most iconic buildings..
At Denmark’s largest haunted house attraction, it’s not just about the screams. Researchers are studying the effects – good and bad – that fear has on humans
There are thousands of varieties of citrus, many more than just the navel oranges. And they’re all being preserved in a collection at the University of California Riverside. Learn more here.
Many of us rely on digital maps and GPS to get anywhere these days. Hear what happens when Producer Amanda McGowan finds herself lost in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a sport you may have never heard of – orienteering – which forces participants to navi…
We chat with writer Alessio Perrone about what he learned from the people who hunt for Italy’s unexploded bombs, leftover from times of war.
How an MIT fraternity pledge instituted a new, unique unit of measurement.
How do we determine the time? Believe it or not, there is an official clock. It’s located in Boulder, Colorado at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and we go there to visit.
We go to the Allegany territory of the Onödowá'ga people to learn about "The Creator's Game” – which evolved into the sport now known as lacrosse – and their constant fight to be recognized.
We explore the power of myth and folklore through the story of an Irish woman, whose husband murdered her because he believed she’d become a fairy.
One of the last remaining World War II Victory Gardens in the U.S is quietly growing across from Boston’s Fenway Park.
School is back in session. So for this episode, Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring two stories - one from the campus of Gallaudet University and the other from Cornell University to tell us about usual traditions that take place…
In Myrtle Beach, mini golf is not so mini. It’s over the top! This episode was produced in partnership with Visit Myrtle Beach, and to find a list of all mini golf courses, go to VisitMyrtleBeach.com.
Our team has shared memorable encounters they’ve had with animals, and some were very unexpected. So this time we asked YOU about those experiences – and some of them are wild!
Just an hour west of Philadelphia, there’s a charming town in Pennsylvania that produces about two thirds of all the mushrooms sold in the US. We visit during the town’s annual festival and check out the mycelium madness. This Small Town, Big Story episode is …
A music box given to Scott Harrison while he served in Vietnam inspired him to hand-carve all the animals for the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, Colorado.
We go back in time to another era of travel and take a trip on the oldest commercial sailing vessel in the United States. Click here to learn more about windjammers and here to book a trip with Captain Becky. This episode was made in partnership with the Maine…
The story of the white deer on Mount Madonna, the two robber barons who put them there, and the last survivor of the herd.
Back in 2020, a lot of people moved to faraway places to escape urban life amid a global pandemic. Brent Underwood bought and moved to an abandoned town. We check in, three years later. To learn more about Brent Underwood and Cerro Gordo, you can check out the…
Let’s all go to hell. Seriously. Hell, Michigan, that is :)
An abandoned mansion in Italy has become the source of rumors about ghost activity that some believe is justified by its very real gothic past.
We nearly stump host Dylan Thuras with a seemingly simple question: Who are the top five dead people he would like to go on a road trip with?
The New Deal is known for ushering a string of social safety net programs. But in this episode, we tell the saga of an ambitious, government-backed homestead project in West Virginia that never quite lived up to its hype.
One family’s regular day of exploring some sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan turned into a wild tale of a little boy being sucked into a sinkhole, and the discovery of underground tunnels.
A tiny town in West Virginia takes “living lift to the fullest” to a different level, with its embrace of extreme adventure activities. Like, for instance, a day where people sign up to jump off a bridge. This Small Town, Big Story episode is produced in part…
We chat with writer Daniel Kraus, who let his imagination run deep into the ocean after hearing a wild news story about an encounter between kayakers and a whale. And we get the backstory to Kraus’ new novel Whalefall, about a man who finds himself in the bell…
Where does space stuff go after it dies? To this spot deep, deep in the Pacific ocean.
A small church in a village in Norway is home to an unusual and perplexing mural that’s become known for its demonic illustrations.
This episode may have you reconsidering what you think about rats. That’s because at this training and research center in Tanzania, African Giant Pouched Rats are being raised up to sniff out landmines and disease, proving to be the heroes we all need.
A series of churches in Texas that look unassuming from the outside in fact have some of the most intricately painted interiors. And for one of our listeners, these churches mean home – religiously and culturally.
A tiny island off the coast of Brazil is known for being a dangerous place … purely because its inhabitants are, well, snakes. But we speak to a researcher who’s seen it up close and says it’s time for this place to shed its reputation.
Does this sprawling mansion in San Jose, California live up to its reputation as one of the most haunted places in the world?
The oldest operating pet cemetery in the world is just north of NYC, and it’s where dearly departed four-legged friends come to rest – and sometimes, even their owners. Grab your tissues.
We visit a museum in Georgetown, SC that’s dedicated to preserving and prioritizing the rich and historic Gullah Geechee culture.
An incomplete luxury housing development in Turkey is a mashup of fairy tale and ghost town, and almost everyone has an opinion of (or wants to see) this place.
Producer Johanna Mayer and Atlas Obscura associate editor Sarah Durn tell us the story of a fort in Hawaii with two names – and how those names both preserve and erase its history.
We follow a long set of wooden stairs deep underground to a sea cave with a mysterious and colorful past, and take in a spectacular, hidden view of the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.
We go to the Caribbean island of Dominica and hear the story of Jacko, a formerly enslaved man who became a national hero for his ingenious escape and emancipation efforts
An archeological site in the country of Georgia, which features the oldest human skull fossils found outside of Africa, challenges what we think we know about our deep past.
Today we're headed just a couple hours south of Albuquerque to Hatch, New Mexico, a town where the heat doesn’t just come from the sun. It also comes from the signature crop: Hatch, New Mexico chiles. This Small Town, Big Story episode is produced in partnersh…
In the Soviet Union, x-rays didn’t just give you a look inside the human body. They also gave you a glimpse of the outside world, thanks to music that was imprinted onto this unassuming medical tool.
Grab your pickaxes, your shovels, and your code breaking supercomputers because today we’re going on a treasure hunt.
The family behind this farm relies on itsy bitsy helpers to produce one-of-a-kind art.
Hear how a trip to the jungle, and a series of nighttime hikes, cured producer Chris Naka’s bug-phobia, once and for all.
Places editors Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy bring us two stories about two particular places whose histories intersect with real world American espionage.
For decades, a one of a kind travel guide opened up the world for gay travelers. Today, historians are using them to create an interactive map of LGBTQ spaces in midcentury America.
A trip to Sweden prompts former show producer Sarah Wyman to dig into a superstitious story passed through generations about the Red Stone Man
Our show often focuses on interesting people and places. But in this episode, the team shares memorable encounters they’ve had with animals – everything from parakeets to a very special opossum.
An infamous break in the road that links North and South America has been in and out the news for more than 100 years – for good reason. This stretch of jungle has been a magnet for adventure junkies, but also is the site of a growing humanitarian and migratio…
Author Dave Eggers has an enduring affinity for Idaho. In this episode, he chats with Dylan about a unique family that undertook what is perhaps one of the strangest, slowest moves in history. The fascinating tale provided inspiration for the writer’s new chil…
A majestic building in Santos, Brazil used to be the center of the coffee trade.
Blind Guy Travels host Matthew Shifrin discusses a formative encounter with a wolf tied to the origins of Rome. Listen to Blind Guy Travels: https://radiotopiapresents.fm/blind-guy-travels
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring us two charming stories of some very special canines who have been (literally) preserved for the ages.
Turns out, complaining about bad service really is as old as time. Hear the story of an ancient Babylonian clay tablet that has launched a slew of modern memes. Click here for more.
Every year, lumberjacks and lumberjills from around the world flock to Hayward, Wisconsin – a couple hours north of Minneapolis – to compete in the Lumberjack World Championships. Join us as we get our hands dirty alongside the world’s most skilled in all-thin…
For years, students at Bennington College snuck into a locked room for a glimpse of strange and magical instruments created by professor Gunnar Schonbeck. Today, we join his orchestra.
In this final installment of summer stories we tackle a topic that transcends the seasons—the captivating magic of water during travel. If you’d like to share a story about your summer, record a voice memo and send it to hello@atlasobscura.com or leave a voice…
In this installment we hear a listener’s tale of a theological dispute that became a real money-maker known to some as “Old Hoaxy.”
This is the second of a series of listener-powered episodes about summer travel stories. If you’d like to share a story about your summer, record a voice memo and send it to hello@atlasobscura.com or leave a voicemail at 315-992-7902.
This is the first of a series of listener-powered episodes about summer travel stories. If you’d like to share a story about your summer, record a voice memo and send it to hello@atlasobscura.com or leave a voicemail at 315-992-7902.
The nights in the northern hemisphere are drawing in, which means whispering stories of witches and spirits are top of mind for many of us. Lale chats with Mexico City-based author Brenda Lozano, whose new novel Witches looks at the lives of Mexican women who …
We visit what might be the world’s largest collection of fraudulent, nefarious, or otherwise ineffectual medical machinery -- and meet the founder who brought it all together.
Asheville is a well-known foodie destination. In this ep we hear about a group that takes visitors into the wild – to learn all about North Carolina’s incredible biodiversity and to enjoy the foods that grow all around them. This episode is coproduced with Exp…
Host Dylan Thuras meets a teenage hero: author John Marr, who created the infamous Murder Can Be Fun zine and chronicled tales of unusual amusement park ride deaths and other odd disasters
Created by a volcanic eruption in 2015, this island in the South Pacific no longer exists… but we chat with a person who got to see it before it disappeared.
Gastro Obscura Writer Sam Lin-Sommer tells us the story of the fascist war on pasta and its surprisingly delicious legacy.
You’ve probably heard about the Gold Rush. But what about the bone rush of the 1870s? Hear the story of a bitter rivalry between two paleontologists – and how this epic feud unearthed an epic amount of fossils we still admire today.
You can learn a lot about a person from their hands. In this episode, we hear the story of a doctor who made it possible for us to hold onto the stories of presidents, astronauts, musicians, artists and more… through bronze molds of their hands.
Podcaster, TV critic and comedian Ashley Ray has more than a soft spot for her Midwest hometown. Hear why she thinks it may just be the best kept secret.
Behind the Ben & Jerry's factory in Vermont sits a very peculiar graveyard... one dedicated to dearly departed ice cream flavors.
Writer and travel educator Tracey Friley tells the story of the glamorous life of entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist, Josephine Baker and the pilgrimages women still make to her chateau.
A repository in Cambridge, Massachusetts holds over 2,700 pigments that’ve been quietly coloring the world around us since the beginning of human history.
Step inside the cutest, most cuddly museum for handmade crafts. This museum, set near Joshua Tree National Park, has been called “a vortex of love and joy and peace.”
Students at Reed College study things like philosophy, history and English. But for the past 50 years they’ve also had access to a scientific instrument many people have never seen. We visit the World's only nuclear reactor operated by liberal arts undergradua…
You’d never guess that beneath a historic, genteel southern resort sits a massive bunker that the US government built in case of catastrophic events. Hear the story of the Greenbrier Resort that was kept secret for decades.
We asked, you answered. Hear listener stories of near death travel experiences.
Travel to Penobscot, Maine, where one farmer maintains the tradition of burning his crop each year to rejuvenate it the next.
Colorado is known for being a music and performance hub. And that history goes way back – all the way to a theater that staged high dramas, tragedies, tales of star-crossed lovers, and even inspired an opera of its own. This episode was co produced with Visit …
Atop a mountain in a picturesque Colorado town is the frozen corpse of a Norwegian grandpa. We get the tale of how this came to be, from the person who for years has trekked up and down the mountain for this unique preservation mission.
We visit southern Benin to hear the story of the Temple of Pythons and clear up some misconceptions about one of the world's most misunderstood spiritual systems.
A famous movie actress from the 1920s left the world a lasting piece of art — a remarkable miniature home that could be considered Chicago’s cutest piece of real estate.
It roamed the seas, served an evil dictator, survived a war, and ended up in a New Jersey auto-repair shop bathroom.
We step into the shoes of the miners who once labored in the Nevada mountains, via a trip to the Tonopah Historic Mining Park. This episode was produced in partnership with Travel Nevada.
A race is on to save this world heritage site that straddles the border of Togo and Benin. It’s home to remarkable earth tower homes called Takienta, and the Batammariba people, whose existence is threatened by climate change and migration.
We go to Sweden, where some people are intent on making a woman a permanent symbol of resistance, whether or not she would have wanted it. Check out some of Samuel Merrill’s research work on the photo here.
We go to Statesboro, Georgia to the US National Tick Collection to learn what ticks, often thought of as little monstrosities, can teach us.
The Flagg Grove School in Brownsville, Tennessee has become a museum dedicated to its most famous student.
Take a trip to Micropia, the world’s only museum dedicated to microscopic organisms, and learn about our invisible life companions.
The story of the unimaginable destruction of the American Chestnut tree and the group of scientists, academics and tree lovers who are desperately trying to bring them back from the edge of extinction.
A spinning furnace tucked under the football stadium at the University of Arizona is building giant telescope mirrors.
Sun cannons have been around since the 1600s. But as far as we know, there’s only one left that’s still up and running. We pay it a visit.
Habaneros! Jalapenos! Green! Red! These days, an appreciation for chiles is pretty mainstream. But that wasn’t always the case. We head to New Mexico to learn how this food became such a huge part of our culture, and visit an institute dedicated to its contin…
A North Carolina town has become a draw for people who want to see the wreckage of the train wreck from the movie “The Fugitive.” But a more interesting – and true – story happened just a pistol shot away.
A once-blacklisted Hollywood star created a magical theater in Topanga Canyon, California, that still endures and inspires today.
One of the oldest books in the world is also the most misunderstood. A medievalist tells us about the Voynich, which is in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale.
She’s about 8 feet wide and 500 pounds. And her history spans all the way from the stockyards of Chicago... to a nuclear test during the Manhattan Project...to a stadium at the University of Texas at Austin.
We dig through more than 1,000 years of dirt, history, colonialism, and myth on the Swahili Coast.
Where can you find the smoothest, most scrumptious edible art? If you ask our host, Dylan, it’s in the Minnesota State Fair butter sculpture room. He’s joined in this episode by Gastro Obscura writer Sam O’Brien, who got the scoop on the yummy centerpieces.
We all dream of the perfect vacation when everything goes right. This episode is about the opposite. Hear stories of people having near death travel experiences.
Elusive patches of land in America’s Midwest can show us what the environment was like 150 years ago and tell us about the future.
We spend time with the world’s foremost poo enthusiasts, who operate a museum in England where poo is elegant, elevated and celebrated.
A walk through this scale model has you feeling like a giant, and striding from Baton Rouge to Omaha in an hour. LEARN MORE about the model and the group trying to revive it, here: https://friendsofmrbm.org/
The next time you go out on a road trip, keep your eyes peeled for a peanut-shaped car that got its start as an advertising play during the Great Depression
Nestled in a hospital courtyard in Kumasi, Ghana, you’ll find the strength of the Asante people: the sword of Okomfo Anokye, planted in the ground over 300 years ago.
We go on a bumpy ride with the Hurricane Hunters – the government’s team of scientists who fly into storms so the rest of us can have accurate info and research about massive weather events. Our guide is Nick Underwood, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric …
At a food truck in Austin, tried and true barbecue favorites meet unexpected spices and flavor profiles. Here, chef Damien Brockway’s journey into family history led him to weave the flavors of the African diaspora into his food. This episode was produced in p…
In 1986 an unknown natural disaster at Lake Nyos in Menchum, Cameroon left more than 1700 people dead in one night - and puzzled scientists. Listen to learn how they solved the mystery.
How far would you go to find the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the United States?
The variety of apples we enjoy today have a common ancestor that lies in the forests of Kazakhstan, where scientists are studying the wildest version of the fruit.
Welcome to the Judith A Basset Canid Education & Conservation Center, where a California couple has dedicated their lives to showing folks man has even more best friends than previously thought.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring us stories about the trees that have witnessed history.
It’s easy to dismiss Bigfoot, the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and other cryptids as far-fetched X-Files fodder. But the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine aims to show that when investigations into unknown creatures are done right, they inv…
In the Adirondacks of northern New York sits John Brown's Farm, a monument to the famous abolitionist, and the last vestige of Timbuctoo, an ambitious but failed settlement that some hoped could help African Americans secure the right to vote.
In Atlanta, on this historic Auburn Avenue, sits a small bookstore and reading room that’s been called “an interactive art museum of Black Thought.”
Ross Jennings, aka the First Piper, has been on a world-spanning quest to play the bagpipes in every country of the world.
We go to Northern Ethiopia and learn about an ancient King who left a great legacy to his people and the world: the rock hewn church known as St. Giyorgis, where religious services are held to this day. See a virtual rendering of all the rock hewn churches of …
This stunning geological marvel just north of Dahab, Egypt has been called the deadliest dive spot in the world. But is that reputation deserved?
Author Mary Roach takes us into the hidden corners of the scientific world. From training to poop in space to the surprisingly pleasant Common Cold Unit, all the way to the inside of Elvis’s colon. If you want to check out her work, we recommend starting with …
We head to the Namib Desert in Africa, where the landscape is dotted with mysterious, pimple-like indents known as fairy circles. Where do these things come from? Scientist Walter Tschinkel has spent the last several years studying and experiencing a natural o…
For decades, the Ashley House in Sheffield, Massachusetts preserved and promoted the story of Col. John Ashley, a wealthy businessman who opened his home to those fighting against British rule on the eve of America’s war for independence. But in this episode w…
Hear tales of our team’s most memorable family trips – like going on vacation with Thomas Jefferson, getting thrown in the ocean and meeting Klingons.
Photographer and author Paul Koudonaris brings listeners to this Ethiopian Church and explores ossuaries, jeweled skeletons, and death practices throughout the world.
In 1986, something really weird happened in Pennsylvania – a replica of The Statue of Liberty mysteriously appeared through the fog on the Susquehanna River. We unravel the mystery.
A 50 square mile patch of Yellowstone National Park in Idaho might just be the perfect place to commit a crime.
An adventurous couple sets out to document and unearth the arrows of America’s past, once used to help pilots find their way across the skies. You can learn more about Charlotte and Brian’s journey – and see photos of the arrows they’ve documented – at their w…
A tidy little story from Pocatello, Idaho, home to the Museum of Clean
Trailblazing computer scientist Grace Hopper shaped the way people use and talk about computers. Her actual computer bug is preserved at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
This San Francisco museum, curated by a super-fan of the Beats, is a shrine to an incredibly influential cultural movement and a destination for folks keeping it alive today. *An earlier version of this episode contained a mispronunciation and a misattributed …
Filmmaker and writer Cheuk Kwan takes us for a round-the-world meal. Three courses, three incredible places. Three stories of Chinese immigration.
Dylan chats with Rowan Jacobsen, a food journalist and host of the podcast called OBSESSION: Wild Chocolate. And he takes us on a journey that follows his multiyear quest into the Amazon rainforest to learn more about a mythical chocolate that has a dark histo…
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring us stories about the biggest balls of twine. Plus, a special guest adds an additional tangle to the tale.
Tonopah, Nevada is home to the Clown Motel - an inn on the edge of the desert that’s packed with statues and figurines of Clowns. The eerie and fully-functioning inn is also a labor of love.
The deep woods of Pennsylvania hold a phenomena that has drawn attention from scientists and people around the world, and was almost recently destroyed. To learn more about the Pennsylvania Firefly Festival visit https://www.pafireflyevents.org/.
We visit a park in Palo Alto, California, home of the world’s most famous donkey.
A massive 19th-century reservoir under the city of Copenhagen has been repurposed as a contemporary art cave. We venture inside to learn more about its history, and bask in the incredible acoustics of the space.
A swath of land in Northern France still bears scars of the destruction of World War I. Destruction so bad that, in some cases, humans have never been allowed to return.
As part of Women’s History Month, we're sharing some episodes from the archive including this story about mysterious doors scattered throughout Atlanta. They dare you to imagine what might be found on the other side.
Writer Stacy Horn tells us about a period in American history when the study of psychic phenomena and the paranormal was serious business at places like Stanford and Duke University. And she reveals the story of J.B. Rhine and Louisa Rhine, a scholarly couple …
We go to Tokyo, to a particular place that is both nemesis and best friend to all those procrastinators out there. (Yes, we’re looking at you :)
Producer Abigail Keel takes us on the most strange, wonderful and beautiful potty break. And tells us how – and where – you can do it too.
Writer Jessica Leigh Hester joins us on a deep dive into the sewer, the subject of her new book. We’ll talk about some of the interesting (and disgusting) things she found there … like fatbergs.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive, including this story about the origins of a Swedish holiday tradition which evolved from sinister pagan lore to a celebration of light, warmth and music.
Here the podcast team shares stories of wonder and curiosity that lies just outside your doorstep. Stories feature a troll bridge, a cemetery, natural methane vents, and more.
The Dedan Kimathi Post Office played a notable role in Kenya’s struggle for Independence.
The Ouija Board went from a tool for communicating with the dead to a sleepover party game. This trip through the Ouija Board’s past features a pit stop at the Ouija 7-Eleven.
This restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi was a haven for Civil Rights leaders and has stood for four generations, 83 years, and a whole lotta pig ear sandwiches.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this story about a forest in Oslo, Norway that will provide the trees for paper as part of a century long art project featuring famed contemporary authors.
This architectural oddity in Hartford, Connecticut looks like a mansion… but is only one room deep.
California's longest-running tourist attraction is a stump that helped spark a conservation movement.
This simple brick building in Chicago, Illinois was the boyhood home of Civil Rights icon, Fred Hampton Sr. and a continued site for community organizing.
Nellie Mae Rowe decorated her home in Vinings, Georgia with homemade dolls and shiny bottle caps and placed paper streamers, pieces of colored glass and improvised sculptures throughout her yard.
As part of Black History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including Producer Baudelaire Ceus’s journey to Leimert Park, a unique neighborhood in Los Angeles characterized by its historical relationship to Black liberation.
This little house in New Haven, Kentucky is where Thomas Merton aka profit-poet aka the rebel monk tried to get away from the world.
This tiny stone cabbage has a big backstory stretching from the rich, treasure-laden halls of Beijing’s Forbidden City...through a harrowing wartime escape...to its prized place at the National palace museum in Taipei, Taiwan.
One man in Brooklyn, New York - armed with a homemade boat and an artistic vision - helped transform one of the most polluted industrial waterways in the US.
Chiseled out of a stone cliff, one farmer's unfinished art project in Yoshimi, Japan lies in ruins. And an architect and a photographer are working to keep his legacy alive.
As part of Black History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including the history of this paddleboat that gave some Black children a place to learn even when they were denied formal education on land.
This site in Boonarga, Australia honors the cactoblastis - a humble moth that traveled across the globe, and became the hero of a continent.
The story of how famous Russian author Alexander Pushkin once faced a duel by The Black River on the outskirts of St. Petersburg features high drama, society scandals, a weird foot joke, and pistols at dusk.
For Valentine's Day, the Atlas team would like to bring you this tale of the heart….literally. The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Poland is the final resting place of famed composer Frédéric Chopin’s heart - smuggled there by Chopin’s sister after his dea…
This site is “not a Library where you can borrow books” nor “a memorial with dusty relics” but still aims to honor the spirit of American author Henry Miller.
As part of Black History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this journey to famed Jazz musician Louis Armstrong’s House in Corona, Queens in New York.
The killing of a British pig on an island off the coast of Northwestern Washington almost started a war between two of the world’s greatest military powers. 100 years later, a local artist commemorated the Pig War with a one-woman show, a troupe of mannequins,…
This relic of roadside attractions in Creston, South Dakota is believed to be the first of its kind in North America
Professional rainmaker Charles Hatfield was either a scientist or a con man who had a particular influence on San Diego, CA.
Marchand Dessalines, Haiti is a town named after Jean Jacques Dessalines one of the leaders of the Haitian Revolution and one of the country’s founding fathers.
As part of Black History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this story about a gigantic public square dedicated to Ghanaian independence - and producer Baudelaire Ceus’s introduction to soursop.
Rico Gagliano, host of the MUBI podcast, takes listeners to The Westgate Movie Theater in Minneapolis for a story about a movie that flopped terribly when it was released that changed the course of the theater’s history.
Sigmund Freud’s famous psychoanalytic couch is preserved in his final office in London, England.
Host Dylan Thuras leads listeners on a journey that leads to the preserved middle finger of Galileo Galilei, astronomer, physicist and engineer.
This building in Tangier was one of the first pieces of land owned by the United States Government outside of the country, and was a gift from “America’s first friend.”
This Ecuadorian cave has captured the attention of government officials, scientists, and professional cavers and is home to a particularly rare creature.
Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D. is a wildlife ecologist specializing in large carnivores. And in this episode she unfolds a mystery for listeners.
Empress Anna’s Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia was the site of an incredibly strange wedding. Was it a cruel joke? A strategic power move? Or something else?
Lee's Legendary Marbles & Collectables in York, Nebraska is a pilgrimage of sorts for serious collectors and a curiosity for the casual passerby.
This intricately carved church in Luster is one of Norway’s great treasures of architecture.
The Luray Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are home to an instrument that draws out the secret sounds of millenia-old stone.
The José María Azael Franco Guerrero Cemetery in Tulcán, Ecuador is a topiary anomaly and a lush green paradise for the dead.
This abandoned lodge in Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique has been reclaimed by local lions - a story deeply enmeshed in the larger history of the country.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring you stories of how sometimes giant monuments built for a specific site need to go on a journey.
This internationally recognized jazz lounge has been running for more than a century. Its guests have included Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin and less reputable icons like Al Capone.
Host Dylan Thuras visits a Staten Island mansion with a dubious and vitriolic past, only to learn the site’s curse may not be as obvious as it seems.
Barnali Ghosh and Anirvan Chatterjee take us on a walking tour of Berkeley, CA, where they share their community's legacy of radical South Asian activism.
This railway was built for one purpose and one purpose only: to keep the London’s mail coming on time.
Drawbridge operators in Chicago, IL used to live at these specific homes nestled at the base of their bridges.
Venture into the mind of Sky Hopinka, member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient. He and host Dylan Thuras discuss his work, his past and what he’s still searching for out on the road.
We visit Vanuatu in the South Pacific and go underwater to visit a very strange place from a very strange episode at the end of World War II.
The history of medical clowning extends back to Ancient Greece and the time of Hippocrates and is taught in workshops throughout the world.
This former meat-packing plant in Chicago, Illinois is now a site where people work to create a new kind of community in the city’s post-industrial remains.
Post Office Bay on the Galapagos Islands is a post office that runs on luck and the goodwill of visitors. It has a knack for bringing strangers together.
Experience the Orfield Anechoic Chamber: a room inside a concrete bunker that was once known as the quietest place on earth.
We explore the power luck has on us all, rational or not, through the unlikely places people go to re-up.
This secluded museum beats the drum for the preservation of Nepal's musical heritage.
A renegade art project in Vancouver galvanized a small community, pitted residents against city government, and ultimately resulted in a new name for a chill park.
An industrial water tank-turned-concert hall in the high deserts of Colorado is nothing less than a sonic wonder of the world.
About 400 miles south of New Zealand, on the subantarctic Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku, stands a Sitka spruce whose nearest neighbor is 170 miles away.
This unique installation in Sydney, Australia combines art and ornithology, commemorating the calls of the city’s lost birds. Plus, bin chickens!
Urban planner Moses Gates shares his unlikely experience with the residents of the 61st floor of one of New York City’s most iconic buildings.
Updated December 2022. Built by indigenous people thousands of years ago, the Newark Earthworks are part cathedral, part cemetery, and part astronomical observatory. But today, this ancient ceremonial site is part of a golf course in Ohio.
The story of Thomalind and Priscilla is 300 years in the making and brings listeners to Bunce Island, off the coast of Sierra Leone.
Chandler, Arizona creates a Christmas Tree made entirely of the diaspore of this Western plant.
Home is where the grudge is. We survey a special kind of architecture that is both petty and personal.
Atlas contributors bring listeners stories of getting lost on transit, on romantic getaways, or while just trying to get home, and the joy that comes from finding yourself somewhere unexpected.
Artist Duke Riley has turned trash into a medium, like clay or paint, and an indictment. His exhibit DEATH TO THE LIVING, Long Live Trash will run through April 23, 2023 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Discover how Tarpon Springs, Florida became known as the Sponge Capital of the World. This “Small Town, Big Story” episode is produced in partnership with GoUSA TV.
In honor of Lucia Day on December 13, we’re diving into the origins of a Swedish holiday tradition which evolved from sinister pagan lore to a celebration of light, warmth and music.
We go to the Westman Islands off the southern coast of Iceland and meet the heroes who save young birds that have wandered from their nests every summer.
The story of the Fendika Cultural Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is the story of Melaku Belay and his journey from homelessness to international acclaim as a community leader.
This abandoned hospital outside Boston, Massachusetts was originally conceived as a place to help people with mental health issues. But it wound up doing a lot of harm.
This collection, preserved by the United States Library of Congress, features locks of hair from cultural icons from Ludwig van Beethoven to General Ulysses Grant.
One of Australia’s greatest stories of escape and survival centers around this rock formation in Point Lonsdale.
How To! Host Amanda Ripley goes in search of the answer to the question “how to set up a roadside attraction that will bring visitors to your town” with expert Erika Nelson - the founder of the World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Things.
The Flagg Grove School in Brownsville, Tennessee has become a museum dedicated to its most famous student.
The Sterling Hill Mine in Ogdensburg, New Jersey is the site of a geological marvel that can’t be found anywhere else in the world.
This radical puppet collective has shaped the small New England town of Glover, Vermont for decades. This “Small Town, Big Story” episode is produced in partnership with GoUSA TV.
These trees sprang from seeds that were brought to outer space.
The Sporkful team dives deeper into the history of the unknown whiskey bottle and the lives of those it touched.
Dan Pashman and the Sporkful team attempt to unravel the history of a bottle of whiskey found at an estate sale when the brand seems to not exist.
Under the forests of Nyack, New York lays a series of dark and decrepit tunnels with militaristic roots but now attract graffiti artists and plenty of teen lore.
This site, and the enormous telescope that sits on it, is loved and lost to both scientists and everyday Puerto Ricans.
Our team goes on a quest to find Prospect Park’s elusive -- and perhaps most magical -- resident rodent.
A carefully curated collection of miscalculations in Edinburgh, Scotland serves as a warning for our gullibility, especially when it comes to money.
This beautiful beach made of sand and worn down coral is covered in the wreckage of tanks once used by the U.S. military for target practice.
Larry Spring’s Museum of Common Sense Physics in Fort Bragg, California begs the question: what do you do with a science museum where the science preserved inside is a kind of folk art?
Thousands of sheep take over downtown Ketchum, Idaho during the annual Trailing of the Sheep Festival. This “Small Town, Big Story” episode is produced in partnership with GoUSA TV.
The African Heritage House in Mlolongo, Kenya is one of the greatest collections of African art in the world - and it has an unusual backstory.
The story of how humans desperate for water created a lake the size of the city of Los Angeles. And then, how that thirst turned toxic.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring you stories of how sometimes giant monuments built for a specific site need to go on a journey.
A voicemail from a listener takes us out on the Appalachian trail, where we ford rivers, climb mountains, and work our way across one of the most storied backpacking routes in North America.
The Wren’s Nest in Atlanta is both a museum and former home of journalist Joel Chandler Harris and a hub for modern storytellers.
A toxic lake high in the Andes mountains in Argentina is home to microbes that provide a window to our planet’s past — and a key to securing its future.
Real Good is a podcast with the mission to highlight real people out in the world - trying to make it better. This excerpt features the Real Good hosts and Goalsetter CEO Tanya Van Court discussing financial literacy. The show is powered by US Bank.
Kasanka National Park in Zambia hosts one of the largest – and most mysterious! – animal migrations on the planet.
Medellín Cartel founder Pablo Escobar built himself a sort of Jurassic Park-meets-Disney World resort with drug money. He called it Hacienda Nápoles. Now it’s overrun by Hippos.
Thompson’s Ice House in Bristol, Maine is one of the only places in the United States where people gather every winter to take part in the age-old process of harvesting ice from a frozen pond. This “Small Town-Big Story” episode is produced in partnership with…
Atlas contributors bring listeners stories from spooky locations they’ve visited and which continue to haunt them.
These cakes had a particular ingredient that some believe protected them from witchery - and sparked one of the best-known witch hunts in United States history.
With Halloween just around the corner Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring you two spooky legends of The Mothman from Point Pleasant, West Virginia and a potentially ghoulish forest in the Transylvanian Region of Romania.
The Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki has been home to an infestation of Chilean recluse spiders for more than 50 years.
Producer Johanna Mayer visits Houdini’s grave in Queens, NY and goes searching for evidence of the great beyond. To hear another take on Spiritualism check out our earlier episode - Cassadaga with Jamie Loftus.
The Atlas Obscura Podcast is launching a week of spooky-themed stories ahead of Halloween. We begin with Jamie Loftus’ newest podcast about Cassadaga, a small town in central Florida that is one of the last great bastions of a Victorian era religion called Spi…
The fossils of Wadi al-Hitan (Valley of the Whales) in Egypt give us a glimpse of a remarkable evolutionary history.
Producer Johanna Mayer travels to Times Square in NYC, in search of a particular sound that may sometimes go overlooked.
This memorial marks the life of a pup who sparked riots over animal rights issues in London, England.
This giant limestone cave outside of St. Louis, MO. is home to a combination of kitsch and world-class scenery.
The San Diego Automotive Museum in California contains one man’s dream...of creating the ultimate road trip car.
Some say this little burbling creek is “The deadliest body of water on Earth.”
In 1820 a group of Black Americans set off to make a home in Africa. They landed in Providence Island and set the stage for the development of the country Liberia.
The Burger King in Kayenta, AZ is home to a small museum dedicated to a group of Native American veterans who developed an unbreakable secret code during WWII.
Science communication superhero Emily Graslie shares how a pair of severed wolf heads helped her fall in love with science, about the road trip she took back to the beginning of time, and why she’s now looking for wonder in her own backyard.
This former limestone mine in Kansas City, MO has been turned into a 55,000,000 square-foot industrial park and storage facility.
A mind-tripping place where the art stands out not because of what's on them but what's in them.
Iconic musician Fela Kuti declared his home in Lagos, Nigeria, an independent state. He called it Kalakuta - and in 1977 it was invaded by the Nigerian Army.
A map in the archives of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library in Portland, OR may be the key to finding buried treasure that has yet to be found.
The history of this 150-year-old immersive painting at the Atlanta History Museum features a scheming promoter, the cast of Gone with the Wind, Atlanta’s first Black mayor, and the voice of Darth Vader himself - and shows how our interpretations of art reflec…
The Endangered Wolf Center in Eureka, Missouri was founded by zoologist and wildlife TV host Marlin Perkins and was home to an extraordinary wolf who gives us hope for the future of wolf survival.
A listener takes us to a town on the edge of the longest undefended border in the world.
For more than 40 years Selma Miriam and Noel Furie have maintained the Bloodroot Feminist Vegetarian Restaurant and Bookstore as a place where women from all over the world can gather, share ideas, and share meals.
Oyotunji is an African Village with real homes and real community founded in the 1970s and located in the US - just an hour south of Charleston, South Carolina.
The 1980s birthed a gleaming creature that spread its wings of scrap wood and glass over the intersection of two iconic Brooklyn, NY neighborhoods for thirty years.
Steve and Amy Hartbauer have turned their home in residential Denver, CO into a massive mosaic and decade’s long expression of inner inspiration.
An Indian village is home to one of the world’s oldest and greatest ornithological mysteries.
Luz Fleming explores the home where he grew up, Libre - one of the longest lasting intentional communities still exists.
Green Bank, West Virginia is free of wifi and cell signals due to the massive telescope nearby that requires radio silence.
Today, a sampling of listener-submitted stories of summer adventures from the wild, strange and wonderful world in which we live.
Forty-two school buses have been buried in Horning’s Mills, Ontario - covered in concrete, they’re house up to 500 people in case of nuclear fallout.
This ancient temple complex in Northern Lebanon is one of the most well-preserved Roman ruins on earth, and one of the most overlooked.
One of the world’s tallest waterfalls is nestled In Northwestern Peru, right where the Amazon rainforest crashes into the Andes Mountains.
This ranch in Sanger, Texas trains people in jousting and sword-fighting with the goal of making them knights of the highest order - for the Medieval Times dinner theater chain.
Whiting Writer’s Award, Best Literary Criticism award winner, and author of several critically-praised books, Lucy Sante speaks with host Dylan Thuras about digging into place and how our relationship to places can shape our identities.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team are on a mission to grow the Atlas community and include more wonderful and curious locations from Africa, Asia and South America. Two recent entries that caught their eyes include a market in Medeb…
On the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, there’s a mausoleum some say is the city’s “best kept secret.” It’s the underrated masterpiece of a mostly unknown artist -- an artist who was overshadowed his whole life by his more successful brother.
Like a lot of historic neighborhoods, the sidewalks of Fairhaven in Bellingham, WA, are studded with small plaques commemorating local history. But unlike other neighborhoods, the markers in Fairhaven are a little bit darker, and a little bit weirder.
At one time thirty thousand Africans per year were forced through Elmina Castle in Ghana, before they were taken across the world as part of the trans-atlantic slave trade.
Built on a tiny island in Antarctica, the “loneliest post office in the world” got its start as a top-secret British military outpost during World War II—and became beloved by stamp collectors around the world.
These Argentinian parrots have made an unlikely home in a Brooklyn, NY cemetery.
A disaster in a seaside town got locals wondering about government conspiracies, weather control, and if human beings could actually, truly for real, make it rain.
The Coney Island Mermaid Parade isn’t linked to a holiday, religious affiliation or corporate celebration – it’s a celebration of having fun and getting a little weird.
In 1954, two groups of boys thought they were going to summer camp. But they’d been recruited for a different kind of summer experience.
This garden in Lynchburg, Virginia is the key to unlocking the writing and mind of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer.
In Mitchell, South Dakota there stands a massive building covered in murals that are made completely from… corn!
On the tiny Kinmen Island, a bow-tie-shape strip of land between China and Taiwan, sits a giant weaponized wall of sound that still stands--and still broadcasts--today.
This elaborate architecture throughout Iran served a very unique purpose - gathering pigeon guano.
Atlas Obscura's Gemma Tarlach shares what it's like to step inside a relic from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, and to find traces of a famous lost party of explorers.
This collection of ceramic eggs records the personal makeup designs of clowns around the world - and to some extent a clowning code of conduct.
Today we hear from an Atlas Obscura user who, when he isn’t aboard an icebreaking warship for the Canadian Navy, spends weeks at a time road-tripping with his dog.
A graveyard in the “Granite Capital of the World” pays tribute to stone cutters and artisans who are buried amongst the sculptures they created.
Atlas Obscura reporter Sarah Durn ventures deep into the Louisiana swamp in search of the legendary monster that prowls it.
Civil war in Sierra Leone brought this beautiful island to the brink of destruction - now it’s making its comeback.
Matt Farley has written dozens of songs about cities and towns across the United States. Why?
Trailblazing computer scientist Grace Hopper shaped the way people use and talk about computers. Her actual computer bug is preserved at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Gigantic pieces of the United States Capitol rest in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC - waiting for anyone willing to step off the beaten path.
Every Sunday, there’s a binational church service at Friendship Park, which straddles the U.S.-Mexico border. We sent two reporters to attend the church service — one on the U.S. side and one in Mexico — to learn more about how changes to the U.S. border have …
The world’s largest random, assorted key collection located outside Denver, CO, was inspired by a literary infatuation and includes keys to danger and memory.
MacArthur Genius Grant winner, artist, and experimental geographer Trevor Paglen and host Dylan Thuras discuss documenting government surveillance, AI, and place.
Las Vegas, Nevada was once the preferred tourist destination for watching weapons of mass destruction explode.
The world's oldest rose is so tough it survived being bombed in World War II.
Catoosa, Oklahoma is the site of a massive landlocked whale - and possibly the greatest anniversary gift ever
These miniature mansions and luxurious homes were built for the feathered residents of Istanbul.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring listeners two stories where sculpture meets the depths: The Sunken Crosses of Malpique and a harbor in Odense, Denmark.
Producer Abbey Perreault gives listeners an introduction to the long-unknown creator behind the widely known concrete fauna of Mexico’s urban playscapes.
A listener in Lawrence, Kansas takes us on his journey of discovering the secrets of his hometown.
This archaeological landscape in Phonsavan, Laos is one of the most mysterious, important, and dangerous prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia.
The Smallest Mollusk Museum in New York City is part of a fleet of tiny museums that might just have a big impact on the world.
This mechanical boy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was a mystery - until it began to write.
Space Cowboy Buck Atom stands watch over an old gas station in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a link to the glory of Route 66’s Muffler Men.
We're sharing with you a new Witness Docs show: Welcome to Provincetown, a documentary podcast in the vein of reality television about a small town on the Cape with a strong LGBTQIA+ history. Warning: The episode does contain explicit language. Find out more …
The voice announcement at Embankment Station in London is unlike any other announcement on the Tube.
The hunt to memorialize Rhode Island’s founder created one of the state’s strangest and most enduring myths.
Legends and troubled history lay beneath Lake Lanier in Forsyth County.
The Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between North and South Korea has become an accidental bird sanctuary for one of the world’s most endangered crane species.
Occasionally the podcast team requests messages about the strange and wondrous places you experience. These are some of first responses we received last year regarding our request to hear of wonders from listeners' backyards. Stories feature the world’s larges…
Producer Baudelaire Ceus brings listeners to Accra, Ghana and a gigantic public square dedicated to Ghanaian independence.
This small town in Ecuador was thought to hold the fountain of youth and drew the curiosity of scientists and wellness practitioners alike.
Sets from the original 1960’s Star Trek have been recreated for fans and actors alike in Ticonderoga, New York.
Syren Nagakyrie set out to make a whole world of incredible beauty more available to millions of people with disabilities - starting with the Olympic Peninsula in Washington.
An abandoned Russian mining village is literally frozen in time.
Congo Square in New Orleans is the heart of where African drumming found its way into American music and the birth of Jazz.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring listeners stories of two of their favorite places that can be found in the Atlas - on in Washington, DC and one in Scotland.
Amir Siraj was a sophomore in college when he discovered what may be the first documented interstellar object to hit earth.
Anna Swan had an adventurous life before settling in Seville, Ohio and building a house large enough to fit her large life.
A rapidly disappearing glacier holds the key to a forgotten species, a century-old entomological mystery, and… an opera. This episode previously aired in 2021.
This paddleboat gave some Black children a place to learn even when they were denied formal education on land.
This meteorite is one of the very few on record to have hit a human being.
A public health crisis plagued the Midwest until a simple solution was introduced to a ubiquitous cooking ingredient.
A number of tiny, mysterious doors scattered throughout Atlanta, Georgia ask viewers to imagine what might be found on the other side.
Join host Dylan Thuras and producer Harry Huggins as they visit the unruly architecture of The House on the Rock - one of the inspirations for Atlas Obscura.
The strange story of Catalina Island’s herd of bison, and the harrowing story of producer Sarah Wyman’s encounter with these intimidating residents.
Eight rare vehicles at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky vanish, thanks to a massive sinkhole.
All summer we’ve been asking you to send us your summer travel stories. In this installment we hear a listener’s tale of a theological dispute that became a real money-maker known to some as “Old Hoaxy.”
Producer Baudelaire Ceus travels to Leimert Park, a unique neighborhood in Los Angeles characterized by its historical relationship to Black liberation.
An audio postcard from the desert of Badain Jaran in China, home of the Booming Dunes, and possibly the coolest sand sounds you’ve ever heard.
This sculpture in Spokane, WA was created by a"welding nun" decades ago.
For a brief period the small frontier city of Sioux Falls, South Dakota drew in socialites and celebrities who were desperate to end their marriages.
There are two miles of abandoned tunnels beneath the streets of Cincinnati, OH. A relic of an attempt to establish underground transportation in the city.
Atlas Obscura listeners share stories from places they love so much they keep going back.
In the busy, traffic-packed capital city of Bolivia, we meet the zebras who keep the streets of La Paz safe for its citizens.
Atlas Obscura’s resident food and death reporter Sam O’Brien takes us to Smithfield, Virginia, where we meet a 120-year-old ham, and the people who love it.
This social and architectural experiment in Tokyo, Japan was once the leading building in a movement attempting to pair construction and biological growth.
The City Hall in Lincoln, Illinois has an unusual architectural appendage with a curious history.
The founders of this prison in Philadelphia, PA aimed to revolutionize incarceration for the better - and unintentionally created new horrors.
We take you to East Detroit, where an artist transformed a largely abandoned street into an immersive, living museum -- which grew into something even bigger.
San Juan Sound is an iconic studio where musicians, engineers, and quite possibly a music-loving ghost carry on the Island’s musical traditions, which date back hundreds of years. This episode is produced in partnership with Discover Puerto Rico.
Dylan Thuras braves one of New York’s most touristy sites to bring listeners the lesser-known history of Madame Tussaud’s origins.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring listeners the stories of two mummies - one preserved in a bog in Jutland, Denmark and another at a monastery in Palermo, Italy.
An orchard of metal poles sits on a hill overlooking Lake Washington. And when the wind blows, this musical sculpture "sings the world into existence" with its unique sound.
In the depths of Northeastern India, centuries-old bridges are not built, they are grown.
The pigs once plopped on an uninhabited Auckland Island known for capturing castaways now play an important role in modern medical research.
This experimental automotive replica of Stonehenge has become a symbol of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. But residents haven’t always been fans.
Producer Baudelaire Ceus searches for the resting place of famed author Richard Wright among the graves of other cultural icons like Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Sadegh Hedaya.
Niles, Illinois is home to an exact replica of Italy’s leaning tower of Pisa - only it’s half the size of the original structure.
Brendan Francis Newnam, the host of the new podcast Not Lost, and Dylan Thuras discuss how getting lost is the best way to find yourself. And Brendan shares a great scene from his podcast where he and his co-host travel to the Umbrella Cover Museum on Peaks Is…
Atlas Obscura contributors take listeners to some of the places they loved so much they keep going back.
This funicular in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania used to offer coal and steel workers a respite from the smog of industry.
Today the story of how a street lamp, a tangle with municipal government, and a love of the stars led a man to Goblin Valley, Utah a “dark sky certified” place for lovers of the night sky.
Take a trip to a hostel in Iceland to visit the country’s last Big Mac, where the burger’s existence unfolds a story about economics and national identity.
A river in the Amazon is so hot that anything that falls into it will die … but how did it get this way?
This garden park in Paris, France contains the ruins of a colonial exhibition from 1907.
Thousands of years ago, a young woman named Ko-kwal-alwoot crouched over a set of tide pools, looked into the water, and saw a face looking back at her that wasn’t her own. Today, her descendants are still telling the story of what happened next.
Scientists in Denver, Colorado store and conduct tests on miles of ice core samples dating back hundreds of thousands of years.
This underground oasis in Fresno, California is a winding maze of rooms and passageways filled with lush citrus trees.
A grand library in Portugal has some unexpected nighttime caretakers -- tiny bats.
Noah Purifoy was a pugilistic LA artist who eventually filled a 10 acre plot of land in Joshua Tree, CA with his of-kilter art.
An underground chamber in Upton, MA puzzled some New Englanders while others long knew its ancient origins.
Thousands of masks from the former Kingdom of Benin are spread throughout museums across the world. Is that where they belong?
Hashima Island in Japan was once the most densely populated place on Earth. Until – almost overnight – everyone left.
Typically, space junk ends up deep in the Pacific Ocean. This is the story of when it plunged back to earth … onto a street in small-town Wisconsin.
This forest in Oslo, Norway will provide the trees for paper as part of a century long art project featuring famed contemporary authors.
The Last Tenement in Boston’s old West End has come to represent everything that can go wrong with urban planning.
These documents highlight the intellectual legacy of an ancient civilization based in Timbuktu, Mali.
Writer and island-hopper Anna Marlis Burgard takes us on a tour of three of the 135 strange, incredible, and wondrous islands she’s explored in the United States.
We dig into the tales of TWO whales washing ashore along the southeastern coast of Brazil. And learn how one became a scientific marvel and the other, a local landmark.
This island between Missouri and Illinois was a preferred meeting place for duels to the death in the early 1900’s.
Famed Jazz musician Louis Armstrong’s house in Corona, Queens in New York is now a museum preserving his legacy.
A community of kitschy lawn gnomes have taken over an Australian roundabout.
Science writer Peter Brannen takes listeners on a tour of the world’s five major mass extinctions.
We venture out to Long Island, not for the beautiful beaches, or an Islanders game, or to hang with Billy Joel. We're here to explore the fraught history of a gigantic, ominous sea foam-green nuclear power plant.
Last month we asked listeners about your encounters with the unknown, and boy did you all deliver! This presents two stories we received from listeners Maggie and Melissa.
The only remaining operational Rotary Jail, found in Crawfordsville, Indiana, shows visitors how inmates were once locked within the building’s walls.
One of the United State’s most famous pieces of self-built architecture consists of seventeen interconnected towers that rise like inverted ice cream cones from the ground - the tallest reaching over 100 feet.
This museum built of memories in Istanbul, Turkey was created in a book before it was created in real life.
Host Dylan Thuras confronts the good and the bad ways travel changes as you move through different life stages.
Lake Natron in Monduli, Tanzania can leave welts and burns on human skin but is a bit of a paradise for another animal.
Learn how a group of indegnous women in Puerto Misahuallî, Ecuador fought “machismo” to become entrepreneurs and build an eco-friendly getaway.
This treacherous path cut through a stretch of the Pyrenees Mountains in France may have played a key part in one nation’s quest for international influence and possibly helped foment a revolution.
Explore a modern landmark in a medieval city. The Corpus Clock in Cambridge, England honors both the past and future of telling time.
Atlas Obscura presents Gastropod’s episode “Buried Treasure: Weeds, Seeds, and Zombies.” Gastropod Hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley examine a scientific quest – and one of the world’s longest running experiments - to see how long weeds can survive. The…
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this tour of the world's oldest living things - with artist Rachel Sussman who’s been documenting these ancient things for 10 years.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this conversation with Jessica Oreck who has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects. Now, they’re all beautifully curated and on displ…
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this story of the women who stepped up to produce thousands of guitars during World War II, only to be written out of the history.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this story of a national park in Southwest Uganda that is home to nearly half the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas. They and the local com…
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this story of how herdswomen in Northern Sweden have lured cows home with haunting melodies.
Criminal and This is Love host Phoebe Judge brings us to the ancient ruins of Torre Argentina in Rome - the site of Julius Caesar’s assasination, which also happens to double as an enormous sanctuary for cats.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring listeners two Atlas Obscura locations developed as the result of a life-changing decision - to embark on a massive art project and live.
Travel to the world’s oldest intact pyramid in Egypt - and learn about the genius who also influenced the fields of architecture, astronomy, and medicine.
AirBnB founder and CEO Brian Chesky discusses how design experiences, like those found at the Edna Laurence Nature Lab, shape his work.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive including this museum’s buzzing collection which honors vibrator history.
A giant abandoned dam in Sudbury, Massachusetts, marks the inglorious failure of America’s champion of industry to triumph over nature.
Farmers in Yorkshire, England take years to coax their rhubarb plants into a world-renowned delicacy using a century-old technique.
The Haitian Monument in Savannah, Georgia was built to commemorate the Haitian soldiers who came to the rescue of Patriots fighting in the Revolutionary War.
Eight thousand years ago, this land’s first inhabitants built a village around a sacred spring. And today, in what is now Los Angeles, CA, their descendants still work to protect the site.
As part of Women’s History Month Atlas Obscura will be sharing some episodes from the archive starting with the story of how a 30-foot-tall mural on the side of a house in West Oakland is teaching an often left out part of the history of the Black Panther Part…
Wausau, Florida’s monument and annual festival celebrate this furry critter’s contributions to the community.
The Elephant Clock, a replica of an ancient invention, sits in Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, surrounded by stores like The Gap, and H&M.
The Hotel Theresa in Harlem, New York played a pivotal role in the influential neighborhood’s cultural identity.
Gigantic pieces of the United States Capitol rest in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC - waiting for anyone willing to step off the beaten path.
Members of the Atlas Obscura team share their experiences with unknown phenomena.
The grooves cut in this road outside Lancaster, CA play the finale of the William Tell Overture.
St. Brigid’s well in Clare, Ireland is site integral to the story of how a pagan goddess became a Christian saint.
This office, established by the founder of the American Red Cross, changed the lives of thousands of Civil War soldiers and their families.
This folk art dinosaur was almost pushed to extinction due to lack of a building permit.
Lake Karachay in Ozersk, Russia is the site of a former secret Soviet Union nuclear facility - that’s inspired art despite the little that’s publicly known of the site.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team bring listeners two Atlas Obscura locations created by people compelled by visions - the East West Peace Church in Munich, Germany, and the Source du Nil in Musenyi, Burundi.
Lincoln, Massachusetts is home to one of the strangest pony herds you’re likely to see - and it’s been growing for more than a decade.
Producer Johanna Mayer takes a trip to the last Sears in New York City, a Brooklyn landmark, with two people whose lives were shaped by the department store.
Host Dylan Thuras speaks with Dave Seminara, author of the book Mad Travelers, about extreme travel and the people who love it.
The Panorama of the City of New York a star of the 1964 World’s Fair where it competed for attention with new technology like touch-tone phones and the Ford Mustang. The artwork now lives in the Queens Museum.
Nicola Twilley takes us to suburban London, where a 1000 square meter greenhouse is all that stands between us and the chocapocalypse.
Join host Dylan Thuras, a satellite scientist, and a ship captain in search of gigantic swaths of bioluminescence that can radiate up from the surface of the sea over thousands of square miles.
Step inside the Theater of Electricity in Boston and learn about the World’s Largest Air-Insulated Van Der Graaf Generator.
Producer Baudelaire Ceus travels to Leimert Park, a unique neighborhood in Los Angeles characterized by its historical relationship to Black liberation.
Writers Geoff Manaugh and Nicky Twilley take us inside a crumbling, centuries-old quarantine facility, and we explore the history and future of quarantine.
Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town in South Africa, is a destination where sunbathers, tourists, and penguins share both the beach and parts of the town.
Monkey Island, Cayo, Santigo is an island off the coast of Puerto Rico where more than 1500 imported monkeys have lived and been studied by researchers for decades.
The Citadelle Laferriere in Haiti was built to ensure the island remained free after Haitians defeated French colonizers.
Boston’s Old North Church was cemented in American History by Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride. But now the ringers who play these bells in a centuries-old style are adding a twist.
In 1993 Bob Cassilly began to turn an old shoe factory into a massive interactive museum that now includes a plane fuselage, caves, and a ten-story slide.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team find beauty and fascination at the sites of warped and bizarre statues in Nuremberg, Germany and Urgnano, Italy.
The Musk Ox Farm in Palmer, Alaska aims to domesticate a species that used to roam the earth at the same time as the sabretooth and wooly mammoth.
The Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, Poland is the final resting place of famed composer Frédéric Chopin’s heart - smuggled there by Chopin’s sister after his death.
Razzouk Tattoo in Jerusalem has given Christian pilgrims permanent souvenirs from their travel for centuries.
Visit the ruins of an ancient economic powerhouse’s capital city, Great Zimbabwe in the nation of Zimbabwe and learn how a colonial empire was determined to rewrite its story.
Reporter Sam O’Brien takes us to Lily Dale, the world’s largest surviving community of spiritualists, where she learns (even if you don’t believe in ghosts) there’s more than one way to connect with the dead.
There’s an everlasting lightning storm in Northwestern Venezuela that appears in the night sky nearly every night.
A massive 19th-century reservoir under the city of Copenhagen has been repurposed as a contemporary art cave. We venture inside to learn more about its history, and bask in the incredible acoustics of the space.
Reporter Eric Grundhauser recounts a memorable visit to an unusual museum in Iceland, where he explored the ancient lore of the occult, learned how to steal milk from his neighbors, and laid his eyes upon a pair of pants… made of human flesh.
The largest theater pipe organ in the world lives in a restaurant in Mesa, Arizona. Phenomenal musicians play requests while diners feast on pizza.
The Alnwick Poison Garden in England is a place where stopping and smelling the flowers could actually kill you. The garden is dedicated entirely to plants that are narcotic or deadly.
The Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, Alabama bills itself as “the nation’s only retailer of lost luggage.” If you’ve ever lost a bag during air travel, it probably wound up there - along with many other treasures and oddities. READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: ht…
John Milkovisch spent 18 years covering his Houston home in beer cans. The house has been preserved for visitors since John’s death in 1988.
Resident food and death correspondent, Sam O’Brien, returns to tell us about a grave with a nut roll recipe engraved on it and the layered and touching story behind the treat.
A national park in Southwest Uganda is home to nearly half the world’s population of endangered mountain gorillas. They and the local community rely on each other to survive.
In this two-part series, we venture towards frozen graves tied to an infamous Arctic expedition. We follow two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and play witness to the disasters that befell them all.
In this two-part series, we venture towards frozen graves tied to an infamous Arctic expedition. We follow two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and play witness to the disasters that befell them all.
After a profound show of devotion for his master, a dog becomes the symbol of loyalty for an entire nation.
The crumbled ruins of the world’s largest flour mill became one of Minneapolis’ most prominent graffiti-writing locations, and later a museum.
In Kongthong, India, every person’s name is a unique song, composed by their mother within a week of their birth, part of a centuries-old tradition.
A listener’s voicemail sent us searching for the story of a very special -- and giant -- oak tree Peoria, Illinois, and the family of arborists who cared for it.
The oldest (maybe) swimming pool in Iceland is a stunning oasis built into the side of a lush hill.
This old cement mine in Rosendale, New York, has been used as everything from a mushroom farm to a recording studio.
The Atlas production team would like to share some of their favorite holiday places as 2021 comes to a close. This episode will be followed by a series of re-listen episodes from the past year, published over the next two weeks.
In 2006 a massive haul of Doritos was shipwrecked on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks, leaving its mark on the town forever.
Professional Adventurer George Kourounis knew he needed to visit the Cave of the Crystals, located nearly a 1000 feet beneath northern Mexico, the moment he saw a photograph from inside the cave.
Post Office Bay on the Galapagos Islands is a post office that runs on luck and the goodwill of visitors. It has a knack for bringing strangers together.
A music box given to Scott Harrison while he served in Vietnam inspired him to hand-carve all the animals for the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, Colorado.
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team catch listeners up on the new and surprising additions to Atlas Obscura that capture their attention. This includes a heiress’s pet cemetery and ruins visible beneath a grocery store floor.
This small mineral museum in Dodgeville, Wisconsin is home to plenty of rocks - some of which may rival those in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
In 1986 an unknown natural disaster at Lake Nyos in Menchum, Cameroon left more than 1700 people dead in one night - and puzzled scientists. Learn how they solved that mystery.
Visit a museum inside the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, which documents how public health officials have slowed the spread of disease through history.
Hear from the caretakers of a ghost town in Bolivia that was once the world's highest ski resort.
Take a trip to Micropia, the world’s only museum dedicated to microscopic organisms and learn about our invisible life companions.
The Tree of 40 fruits in San Jose California is an horticultural marvel of 40 types of stone fruit trees grafted together to form a living work of art.
The Sporkful host Dan Pashman brings listeners on a quest to find a fruit indigenous to North America that has never been industrialized - but may be seeing a resurgence.
It’s easy to dismiss Bigfoot, the yeti, the Loch Ness monster, and other cryptids as far-fetched X-Files fodder. But the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine aims to show that when investigations into unknown creatures are done right, they inv…
In a collaboration with our friends at Science Diction, we explore the Indian temple complex that gave rise to the word "juggernaut," which means an unstoppable force. But the real story behind it is far more complicated.
We follow a long set of wooden stairs deep underground to a sea cave with a mysterious and colorful past, and take in a spectacular, hidden view of the Pacific Ocean in La Jolla.
This stunning geological marvel just north of Dahab, Egypt has been called the deadliest dive spot in the world. But is that reputation deserved?
Jonathan Carey and Michelle Cassidy of the Atlas Places Team aim to answer the question at the heart of Atlas Obscura - “What kind of place merits an Atlas Obscura entry?”
Jessica Oreck has spent the last 30 years collecting odd and forgotten objects. Now, they’re all beautifully curated and on display in the Office of Collecting and Design in Las Vegas.
This unique installation in Sydney, Australia combines art and ornithology, commemorating the calls of the city’s lost birds. Plus, bin chickens!
Visit the taverns of colonial America to take a frothy sip of the hot ale flip and how it helped pave the way for contemporary mixology.
Travel to Denver Colorado and meet Steve Berke who helped found the first International Church of Cannabis in 2015.
Josh Foer, the co-founder of Atlas Obscura, takes us to a remote patch of land in the Arizona desert, where he built (and later rebuilt) a museum in honor of the company’s former CEO, David Plotz.
Join host Dylan Thuras and producer Harry Huggins as they visit the unruly architecture of The House on the Rock - one of the inspirations for Atlas Obscura.
This amusement park in Singapore holds the Ten Courts of Hell, a series of dioramas that depict the kind of horrible fates awaiting people who behaved badly on Earth.
Matthew Shifrin, host of the podcast Blind Guy Travels, stops by to tell us about a memorable trip he took to Italy, and a visit with an ancient wolf he’s never forgotten.
This Ecuadorian cave has captured the attention of government officials, scientists, professional cavers and is home to a particularly rare creature.
Photographer and author Paul Koudonaris brings listeners to this Ethiopian Church and explores ossuaries, jeweled skeletons, and death practices throughout the world.
An island filled with hundreds of hanging and decomposing dolls is a window into the sociology of why we pursue experiences that inspire fright, fear, and an attraction to the macabre.
We send reporter Sarah Wyman to northern Sweden to climb a mountain, explore a grim legend, and listen to the devil’s violin.
Tonopah, Nevada is home to the Clown Motel - an inn on the edge of the desert that’s packed with statues and figurines of Clowns. The eerie and fully-functioning inn is also a labor of love.
Two members of the Atlas Obscura team go in search of the true story that may have inspired the literary classic, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
The deep woods of Pennsylvania hold a phenomena that has drawn attention from scientists and people around the world, and was almost recently destroyed.
The Luray Caverns in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are home to an instrument draws out the secret sounds of millenia-old stone.
Travel to Penobscot, Maine, where one farmer maintains the tradition of burning his crop each year to rejuvenate it the next.
Experience the Orfield Anechoic Chamber: a room inside a concrete bunker that was once known as the quietest place on earth.
In honor of the release of our new book, we bring you another Gastro Obscura Classic: A ranch on the outskirts of Aptos, California features a magical machine that dispenses music, joy, and 18 of the freshest eggs in the land.
In honor of the release of our new book, we bring you another Gastro Obscura Classic: Open your minds and steel your stomachs as we go to a food museum in Sweden that challenges what exactly makes something delicious… or disgusting.
In honor of the release of our new book TODAY, we bring you a Gastro Obscura Classic: Inside a living, breathing collection of sourdough starters in Belgium
Explore the unexpected combination of recipes and graves through the story of Naomi Odessa Miller Dawson’s spritz cookies.
Places editors Jonathan and Michele are back again with a few new standout entries to the Atlas … including ancient ossuaries and a shrine covered in shells that’s far from the sea.
The story of the white deer on Mount Madonna, the two robber barons who put them there, and the last survivor of the herd.
From the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death we move to the Scarpetta house, where full-size reenactments help investigators perfect their skills in evaluating death.
Eighteen macabre miniatures housed at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore Maryland have shaped the field of criminal investigation.
All summer we’ve been asking you to send us your summer travel stories. And in this final installment of summer stories we tackle a topic that transcends the seasons - the captivating magic of water during travel.
We sift through the dirt to solve a mystery involving a massive mammoth grave site.
Host Dylan Thuras visits a Staten Island mansion with a dubious and vitriolic past, only to learn the site’s curse may not be as obvious as it seems.
Fishlake National Forest is home to the biggest organism by mass on the planet - but this giant is shrinking and an usual group has banded together to help defend it.
All summer we’ve been asking you to send us your summer travel stories. In this installment we hear a listener’s tale of a theological dispute that became a real money-maker known to some as “Old Hoaxy.”
A trip to Sweden prompts producer Sarah Wyman to dig into a superstitious story passed through generations about the Red Stone Man.
Places editors Jonathan and Michele are back again with a few new standout entries to the Atlas … including a spot in Antarctica that’s home to the oldest Martian meteorite and a column in Greece that symbolizes the fear and ritual past generations embraced wh…
Artist Erika Nelson didn’t set out in life to necessarily become one of the foremost connoisseurs of large things, but her museum in Lucas, KS is nevertheless the ultimate tribute to the roadside attraction.
All summer we’ve been asking you to send us your summer travel stories. Our second installment in the series follows one listener from London to Rome – on foot.
This secluded museum beats the drum for the preservation of Nepal's musical heritage.
A spinning furnace tucked under the football stadium at the University of Arizona is building giant telescope mirrors.
This museum’s buzzing collection honors vibrator history.
All summer we’ve been asking you to send us your summer travel stories. This is the first of a series of listener-powered episodes about this magical season.
About 400 miles south of New Zealand, on the subantarctic Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku, stands a Sitka spruce whose nearest neighbor is 170 miles away.
We visit Vanuatu in the South Pacific and go underwater to visit a very strange place from a very strange episode at the end of World War.
We’ve made 100 episodes of the show and figured it was time to hear from the people who make it happen. Enjoy! (And go back and catch up on any episodes you’ve missed)
A listener in Lawrence, Kansas takes us on his journey of discovering the secrets of his hometown.
This site, and the enormous telescope that sits on it, is loved and lost to both scientists and everyday Puerto Ricans.
She’s about 8 feet wide and 500 pounds. And her history spans all the way from the stockyards of Chicago...to a nuclear test during the Manhattan Project...to a stadium at the University of Texas at Austin.
Sun cannons have been around since the 1600s. But as far as we know, there’s only one left that’s still up and running. We pay it a visit.
We nearly stump host Dylan Thuras with a seemingly simple question: Who are the top five dead people he would like to go on a road trip with?
An industrial water tank-turned-concert hall in the high deserts of Colorado is nothing less than a sonic wonder of the world.
On the tiny Kinmen Island, a bow-tie-shape strip of land between China and Taiwan, sits a giant weaponized wall of sound that still stands--and still broadcasts--today.
There are tens of thousands of entries in the Atlas -- In these episodes, we hear from the people who sift through them, Jonathan and Michele, and hear about their favorites.
The story of the unimaginable destruction of the American Chestnut tree and the group of scientists, academics and tree lovers who are desperately trying to bring them back from the edge of extinction.
Host Dylan Thuras confronts the good and the bad ways travel changes as you move through different life stages.
A walk through this scale model has you feeling like a giant, and striding from Baton Rouge to Omaha in an hour.
A repository in Cambridge, Massachusetts holds over 2,700 pigments that’ve been quietly coloring the world around us since the beginning of human history.
Our team goes on a quest to find Prospect Park’s elusive -- and perhaps most magical -- resident rodent.
On the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, there’s a mausoleum some say is the city’s “best kept secret.” It’s the underrated masterpiece of a mostly unknown artist -- an artist who was overshadowed his whole life by his more successful brother.
Artist Rachel Sussman takes us on a tour of the world's oldest living things, which she’s been documenting for 10 years.
We visit a park in Palo Alto, California, home of the world’s most famous donkey.
Host Dylan Thuras chats with author and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell about a beloved Disney movie, and the deeper questions it raised about the stories we tell ourselves -- and our children -- about places real and imaginary.
A huge rock, teetering on the edge of a hill for thousands of years, brought tourism, fame, and what’s said to be a 100-year curse to the town of Tandil, Argentina
Does this sprawling mansion in San Jose, California live up to its reputation as one of the most haunted places in the world?
The story of how humans desperate for water created a lake the size of the city of Los Angeles. And then, how that thirst turned toxic.
A river in the Amazon is so hot that anything that falls into it will die … but how did it get this way?
In Kongthong, India, every person’s name is a unique song, composed by their mother within a week of their birth, part of a centuries-old tradition.
The story of the women who stepped up to produce thousands of guitars during World War II, only to be written out of the history.
A listener’s voicemail sent us searching for the story of a very special -- and giant -- oak tree Peoria, Illinois, and the family of arborists who cared for it.
Grab your pickaxes, your shovels, and your code breaking supercomputers because today we’re going on a treasure hunt.
We dig through more than 1,000 years of dirt, history, colonialism, and myth on the Swahili Coast.
There are tens of thousands of entries in the Atlas -- today we meet the people who sift through them.
Writer and travel educator Tracey Friley tells the story of the glamorous life of entertainer, French Resistance agent, and civil rights activist, Josephine Baker and the pilgrimages women still make to her chateau.
Typically, space junk ends up deep in the Pacific Ocean. This is the story of when it plunged back to earth … onto a street in small-town Wisconsin.
Where does space stuff go after it dies? To this spot deep, deep in the Pacific Ocean.
The strange story of Catalina Island’s herd of bison, and the harrowing story of producer Sarah Wyman’s encounter with these intimidating residents.
This ancient temple complex in Northern Lebanon is one of the most well-preserved Roman ruins on earth, and one of the most overlooked.
Comedians Tess Barker and Babs Gray, who you might know from Lady to Lady or the now legendary Britney’s Gram podcast, are here to bring you a brand new investigative series about Britney Spears' conservatorship and the court system that's allowed it to persis…
How an MIT fraternity pledge instituted a new, unique unit of measurement.
The fossils of Wadi al-Hitan (Valley of the Whales) in Egypt give us a glimpse of a remarkable evolutionary history.
A renegade art project in Vancouver galvanized a small community, pitted residents against city government, and ultimately resulted in a new name for a chill park
Host Dylan Thuras convinces his family to stop at this most unusual attraction in Pennsylvania
This episode will break your heart. And that’s a good thing.
Host Dylan Thuras riffs on a subject that has long fascinated him: the world’s longest-running science experiments.
We venture out to Long Island, not for the beautiful beaches, or an Islanders game, or to hang with Billy Joel. We're here to explore the fraught history of a gigantic, ominous sea foam-green nuclear power plant.
Mortician Caitlin Doughty gives us a dance lesson in the two-step we were all born to do.
In this two-part series, we venture towards frozen graves tied to an infamous Arctic expedition. We follow two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and play witness to the disasters that befell them all.
In this two-part series, we venture towards frozen graves tied to an infamous Arctic expedition. We follow two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and play witness to the disasters that befell them all.
A few weeks ago we dropped an episode debating whether technology has helped or hurt our modern travel experience. It sparked a lot of reaction, and we hear some of that today.
We dig into the tales of TWO whales washing ashore along the southeastern coast of Brazil. And learn how one became a scientific marvel and the other, a local landmark.
A 30-foot tall mural on the side of a house in West Oakland is teaching an often left out part of the history of the Black Panther Party-- the women who fueled the movement.
In the busy, traffic-packed capital city of Bolivia, we meet the zebras who keep the streets of La Paz safe for its citizens.
We visit what might be the world’s largest collection of fraudulent, nefarious, or otherwise ineffectual medical machinery -- and meet the founder who brought it all together.
The story of a community that came together in the 1930s to build this schoolhouse, and then came together again several decades later to build it a second time and preserve its legacy
Calling all listeners! We want to hear about your memorable summer travel experiences: road trips, unforgettable places, summer traditions, magical memories. Leave us a message at 315-992-7902, or send an email or a voice memo to hello@atlasobscura.com.
Urban planner, Moses Gates, shares his unlikely experience with the residents of the 61st floor of one of New York City’s most iconic buildings..
An audio postcard from the desert of Badain Jaran in China, home of the Booming Dunes, and possibly the coolest sand sounds you’ve ever heard
Some say this little burbling creek is “the deadliest body of water on Earth.,”
We take you to the east side of Detroit, where an artist transformed a largely abandoned street into an immersive, living museum -- which grew into something even bigger
Built by indigenous people thousands of years ago, the Newark Earthworks are part cathedral, part cemetery, and part astronomical observatory. But today, this ancient ceremonial site is part of a golf course in Ohio.
We explore the power luck has on us all, rational or not, through the unlikely places people go to re-up
Under the forests of Nyack, New York lays a series of dark and decrepit tunnels with militaristic roots but now attract graffiti artists and plenty of teen lore.
Eight rare vehicles at the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky vanish, thanks to a massive sinkhole
An Indian village is home to one of the world’s oldest and greatest ornithological mysteries
A carefully curated collection of miscalculations in Edinburgh, Scotland serves as a warning for our gullibility, especially when it comes to money.
A ranch on the outskirts of Aptos, California features a magical machine that dispenses music, joy, and 18 of the freshest eggs in the land.
Home is where the grudge is. We survey a special kind of architecture that is both petty and personal.
It roamed the seas, served an evil dictator, survived a war, and ended up in a New Jersey auto-repair shop bathroom.
A grand library in Portugal has some unexpected nighttime caretakers -- tiny bats. Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mafra-palace-library-bats
You’ve been leaving us messages about the strange and wondrous places in your towns, like the world’s largest tin soldier, the home of the first public beach and a phone connecting us to people we’ve lost.
Open your minds and steel your stomachs as we go to a food museum in Sweden that challenges what exactly makes something delicious… or disgusting.
An old friend takes us under the streets of Instanbul and into an encounter with Medusa.
A boxy, Brutalist building in Silver Spring, Maryland contains one of the greatest collections of disease, injury, and human body bits ever assembled.
The strangest, most famous resident from this Colorado town happens to be a headless fowl.
We go to the Westman Islands off the southern coast of Iceland and meet the heroes who save young birds that have wandered from their nests every summer.
There was a time when we didn't walk around with computers in our pockets and exploring a new place required a paper map. In this episode, we dig into the ultimate debate: has technology ruined or elevated travel? Send us your questions about traveling or tell…
Inside a living, breathing collection of sourdough starters in Belgium.
A listener tells us about a treasure buried in his literal backyard, and the two strange men who showed up on his doorstep and asked to dig it up.
A mind-tripping place where the art stands out not because of what's on them but what's in them.
A special journey told in two parts, beginning with the world’s largest conveyor belt in the Western Sahara and ending on your dinner plate
A special journey told in two parts, beginning with the world’s largest conveyor belt in the Western Sahara and ending on your dinner plate.
Today we flip the focus from the memorable places we visit to the memorable people we meet on our adventures.
A listener takes us to a town on the edge of the longest undefended border in the world. Our theme and end credit music was composed by Sam Tyndall.
After a profound show of devotion for his master, a dog becomes the symbol of loyalty for an entire nation.
The world's oldest rose is so tough it survived being bombed in World War II.
A Canadian community comes together to save its slithering neighbors... the largest single concentration of harmless garter snakes in the world
Humans have a primal need to honor their dead. We take you on a tour of our favorite communist mummies.
Giant busts of U.S. presidents are slowly crumbling in a field in Virginia.
A spectacular art installation is hidden inside an all-luxury shopping mall in Las Vegas.
Six tiny houses built for working class people form the largest intentional cluster of Wright homes anywhere.
A swath of land in Northern France still bears scars of the destruction of World War I. Destruction so bad that, in some cases, humans have never been allowed to return.
A rapidly disappearing glacier holds the key to a forgotten species, a century-old entomological mystery, and… an opera.
A graveyard in the “Granite Capital of the World” pays tribute to stone cutters and artisans who are buried amongst the sculptures they created.
An abandoned Russian mining village is literally frozen in time.
In the depths of Northeastern India, centuries-old bridges are not built, they are grown.
For centuries, herdswomen in Northern Sweden have lured cows home with haunting melodies.
The crumbled ruins of the world’s largest flour mill became one of Minneapolis’ most prominent graffiti-writing locations, and later a museum.
How an English party animal turned 1620s-era Quincy, Massachusetts into the world’s least likely party town.
A South Carolina ghost story is a harbinger of hurricanes and a window into history.
Visitors leave bananas on the grave of “America’s First Lady of Space,” an early astronaut whose incredible life was forgotten.
The world’s biggest treehouse was inspired by a message from God.
The oldest (maybe) swimming pool in Iceland is a stunning oasis built into the side of a lush hill.
A disaster in a seaside town got locals wondering about government conspiracies, weather control, and if human beings could actually, truly for real, make it rain.
A listener from Riverside, California, reminisces about his hometown's history as a star-studded WWII camp.
A basement museum in Somerville, Massachusetts is dedicated to collecting awful artwork. But what makes art bad, really?
This old cement mine in Rosendale, New York, has been used as everything from a mushroom farm to a recording studio.
A gigantic crater of fire in Turkmenistan has been burning for nearly fifty years.
Coming March 15: A new audio guide to the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places.
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