Weekend Road Trip: The Mark Twain Stump

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 hi...

26 Nov 202522min

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 ...

25 Nov 202514min

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 f...

24 Nov 202517min

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...

22 Nov 202514min

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

21 Nov 202512min

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 ...

20 Nov 202526min

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...

19 Nov 202516min

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 ...

18 Nov 202515min