The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Atlas Obscura listeners share stories from places they love so much they keep going back.

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In the busy, traffic-packed capital city of Bolivia, we meet the zebras who keep the streets of La Paz safe for its citizens.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/la-paz-cebritas

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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.

Learn more about the Isle of Wight County Museum: www.historicisleofwight.com/

Let Sam eat the ham: hamtruther.com

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-oldest-edible-ham

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This social and architectural experiment in Tokyo, Japan was once the leading building in a movement attempting to pair construction and biological growth. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nakagin-capsule-tower

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The City Hall in Lincoln, Illinois has an unusual architectural appendage with a curious history. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/phone-booth-on-a-roof

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The founders of this prison in Philadelphia, PA aimed to revolutionize incarceration for the better - and unintentionally created new horrors.  

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/eastern-state-penitentiary

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/heidelberg-project

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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. 

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Dylan Thuras braves one of New York’s most touristy sites to bring listeners the lesser-known history of Madame Tussaud’s origins.

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/haraldsk-r-woman

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/capuchin-monastery

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/a-sound-garden

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In the depths of Northeastern India, centuries-old bridges are not built, they are grown.

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/root-bridges-cherrapungee

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The pigs once plopped on an uninhabited Auckland Island known for capturing castaways now play an important role in modern medical research. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-lives-on-auckland-islands

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This experimental automotive replica of Stonehenge has become a symbol of the town of Alliance, Nebraska. But residents haven’t always been fans.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/carhenge

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pere-lachaise-cemetery

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/leaning-tower-niles

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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 Island in Maine.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/umbrella-cover-museum

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Atlas Obscura contributors take listeners to some of the places they loved so much they keep going back.

Got your own place that calls you to return again and again? Submit a voice memo to hello@atlasobscura.com

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This funicular in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania used to offer coal and steel workers a respite from the smog of industry.  

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS:https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/monongahela-incline

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/goblin-valley-state-park

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/iceland-mcdonalds

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A river in the Amazon is so hot that anything that falls into it will die … but how did it get this way?

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-boiling-river-of-the-amazon-puerto-inca-peru

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This garden park in Paris, France contains the ruins of a colonial exhibition from 1907.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/le-jardin-d-agronomie-tropicale

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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. 

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-maiden-of-deception-pass

Learn more about the Samish Indian Nation: https://www.samishtribe.nsn.us/

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Scientists in Denver, Colorado store and conduct tests on miles of ice core samples dating back hundreds of thousands of years. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/national-ice-core-lab

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This underground oasis in Fresno, California is a winding maze of rooms and passageways filled with lush citrus trees. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/forestiere-underground-gardens

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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

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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. 
 

Noah Purifoy’s Outdoor Museum: http://www.noahpurifoy.com/joshua-tree-outdoor-museum

Learn more about Dale Davis: https://dalebdavis.com/

Listen to our episode about Leimert Park: https://pod.link/1555769970/episode/1a593d4fba52c8d48fd9e62728a2a16f

Listen to our episode about the Watts Towers Art Center: https://pod.link/1555769970/episode/18849745a4259a207da75f53dfa6e657

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/noah-purifoy-s-outdoor-desert-art-museum

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An underground chamber in Upton, MA puzzled some New Englanders while others long knew its ancient origins.  

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/upton-chamber

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Thousands of masks from the former Kingdom of Benin are spread throughout museums across the world.  Is that where they belong?

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Hashima Island in Japan was once the most densely populated place on Earth. Until – almost overnight – everyone left. 

Additional information for this episode was provided by Joshua Synenko of Trent University.

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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.

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sputnik-crash-site

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This forest in Oslo, Norway will provide the trees for paper as part of a century long art project featuring famed contemporary authors. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/forest-of-the-future-library

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The Last Tenement in Boston’s old West End has come to represent everything that can go wrong with urban planning.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS:https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-last-tenement

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These documents highlight the intellectual legacy of an ancient civilization based in Timbuktu, Mali.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/timbuktu-manuscripts-mali

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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.

Learn more about Anna's Islands of America adventure: http://www.islandsofamerica.com/

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-united-islands-of-america

CORRECTION: A previous version of this episode misidentified the name of the Skete on Nelson Island. It is the St. Nilus Skete, not the St. Nicholas Skete.

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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.

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ubatuba-whale

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This island between Missouri and Illinois was a preferred meeting place for duels to the death in the early 1900’s.

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Famed Jazz musician Louis Armstrong’s house in Corona, Queens in New York is now a museum preserving his legacy.  

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/louis-armstrong-house

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A community of kitschy lawn gnomes have taken over an Australian roundabout.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/gnomesville

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Science writer Peter Brannen takes listeners on a tour of the world’s five major mass extinctions. 

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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.

Read more in the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/shoreham-nuclear-power-plant

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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.

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The only remaining operational Rotary Jail, found in Crawfordsville, Indiana, shows visitors how inmates were once locked within the building’s walls. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/rotary-jail-museum

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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. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/watts-towers

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This museum built of memories in Istanbul, Turkey was created in a book before it was created in real life. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-museum-of-innocence-2-istanbul-turkey

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Host Dylan Thuras confronts the good and the bad ways travel changes as you move through different life stages. 

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Lake Natron in Monduli, Tanzania can leave welts and burns on human skin but is a bit of a paradise for another animal.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-natron

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Learn how a group of indegnous women in Puerto Misahuallî, Ecuador fought “machismo” to become entrepreneurs and build an eco-friendly getaway. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/sinchi-warmi-amazon-lodge

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chemin-de-la-mature

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