The Atlas Obscura Podcast

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12 Days of Wonder: Tumbleweed Christmas Tree Dec 04, 2025

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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.

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The Last Seltzer Factory in Brooklyn Dec 03, 2025

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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.

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Fasnacht Dec 02, 2025

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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-German celebration of Fat Tuesday that was brought to the area by immigrants in the 19th century. In the 20th, Fasnacht almost died out…before being revived by two creative local women.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with West Virginia Tourism. The next Fasnacht will be celebrated on February 14, 2026 (time to plan a combo Fasnacht-Valentine’s Day trip?) For more information check out the event’s Fasnacht website and Facebook event page.

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A Blue-Green Glow in Orange, New Jersey Dec 01, 2025

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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” because the glow on these women came from radium-based paint that they used to make glow-in-the-dark watches for the US Radium Corporation. They thought it was perfectly safe to work with radium, maybe even healthy. They’d soon find out it wasn’t.

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Coqui Snacks Nov 29, 2025

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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 offering up classic Puerto Rican comfort foods…including a popsicle called a limber, which has a surprising connection to aviator Charles Lindberg.

Learn more about Coqui Snacks: https://www.coquisnacks.com/ and https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/coqui-snacks

If you’re looking for more places to eat in Kissimmee, check out Gastro Obscura’s Latin Culinary trail – a guide to dozens of restaurants offering up Cuban sandwiches, Dominican-Japanese fusion, and more!

https://kissimmee-latin-culinary-trail.atlasobscura.com/

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The Hand Collection (Classic) Nov 28, 2025

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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.

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Thanksgiving Special: Church of Turkey Nov 27, 2025

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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.

Read Sam’s article on the history of the turkey: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-the-turkey-thanksgiving

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Weaving Together the History of Carpets Nov 26, 2025

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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 sprawling, power-hungry empires.

Historian Dorothy Armstrong, author of Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets, takes us on a journey through the surprising and global story of carpets.

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The Bottle Tree Ranch Nov 25, 2025

Show notes

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 dad died, and Elliott had a decision to make.

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Frozen Dead Guy (Classic) Nov 24, 2025

Show notes

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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/frozen-dead-guy-days

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