Podcast Episodes
Back to Search12 Days of Wonder: Tumbleweed Christmas Tree
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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Published on 3 weeks, 6 days ago
The Last Seltzer Factory in Brooklyn
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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Published on 4 weeks ago
Fasnacht
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, a…
Published on 4 weeks, 1 day ago
A Blue-Green Glow in Orange, New Jersey
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 “ghos…
Published on 4 weeks, 2 days ago
Coqui Snacks
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…
Published on 1 month ago
The Hand Collection (Classic)
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 …
Published on 1 month ago
Thanksgiving Special: Church of Turkey
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…
Published on 1 month ago
Weaving Together the History of Carpets
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 h…
Published on 1 month ago
The Bottle Tree Ranch
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…
Published on 1 month ago
Frozen Dead Guy (Classic)
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 …
Published on 1 month, 1 week ago