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.

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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 tradition. And he found him in an unexpected place: working in a convenience store.  

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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.     

Plus, we want to hear stories about the fictional places you wish were real. Tell us why this place lives in your imagination. What resonates with you about this place? And how did you discover it? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave us a message telling us your name and story. Or record a voice memo and email it to us at hello@atlasobscura.com

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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.

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Sigmund Freud’s famous psychoanalytic couch is preserved in his final office in London, England.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/freud-museum-london

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The Finnish Museum of Natural History in Helsinki has been home to an infestation of Chilean recluse spiders for more than 50 years.

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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.

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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 creating one centralized park, he argued, why not make Buffalo a city within a system of interconnected parks? It was a plan that would change the course of urban design.

This episode was brought to you in partnership with Visit Buffalo. Learn more about Buffalo’s park system: https://www.bfloparks.org/

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From long flights to strenuous trips, listeners share stories about traveling with their kids for the first time. 

Plus, we want to hear stories about the fictional places you wish were real. Tell us why this place lives in your imagination. What resonates with you about this place? And how did you discover it? Give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave us a message telling us your name and story. Or record a voice memo and email it to us at hello@atlasobscura.com

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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.

READ MORE: Visit the Stihia website here to learn more about the music festival that happens in Moynaq, including where it may be this year. And this news article is a good primer on some of the current conflicts and issues in the region.

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/gregynog-hall

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There’s a special tree in Portland that’s full of a city’s hopes, dreams, and wishes.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/portland-wishing-tree

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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. 

Every Thursday this month, writer Colin Dickey joins us to talk about the cultural history behind some of our favorite spooky legends and creatures.

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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. 

Learn more about the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants: https://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers

  

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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 in the US. We go to the Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame to play through the history of the game.

This episode was brought to you in partnership with the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. 

Check out the Pinball Hall of Fame online: https://pinballmuseum.org/

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This archaeological dig in Phonsovan, Laos is one of the most important and dangerous prehistoric sites in Southeast Asia. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/plain-of-jars

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Sets from the original 1960’s Star Trek have been recreated for fans and actors alike in Ticonderoga, New York.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/star-trek-original-series-set-tour

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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.

Every Thursday this month, writer Colin Dickey joins us to talk about the cultural history behind some of our favorite spooky legends and creatures.

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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 like a big, somewhat-scary, somewhat-cuddly ghost. This ghost will get stuffed with shredded paper, and then around 50,000 people get together to…well, set him on fire.

This…is the Burning of Zozobra.

This episode was brought to you in partnership with Visit Santa Fe. Learn more about the Burning of Zozobra and start planning your trip now - the event takes place every year the Friday before Labor Day: https://burnzozobra.com/

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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 Delta. Today, Locke stands as one of the last remaining rural Chinese towns in the United States.

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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.

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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.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/indiana-basketball-hall-of-fame-museum

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Deep in the Phoenix Gold Mine in Idaho Springs, Colorado, a strange noise inspires a legend.

Every Thursday this month, writer Colin Dickey joins us to talk about the cultural history behind some of our favorite spooky legends and creatures.  

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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 the 1940s, to ...

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.”

To learn more, check out Zither International: https://zithers-usa.com/    

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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.

Plus: Off Assignment is offering a writing course, called The Practice of Imagination. It begins November 4, and you can use code ATLAS20 for 20% off: https://www.offassignment.com/practice-of-imagination  

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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. 

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/1800-s-alien-gravesite

If you can’t make it out to Texas, check out this documentary about the incident which is online.

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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 Doughty, of Ask a Mortician, to talk about one of their shared obsessions: the candle-lit, hand-cranked, Civil War submarine which has one of the most gruesome undersea histories you can imagine.

Find more of Caitlin’s work: https://caitlindoughty.com/

Watch her doc about the HL Hunley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiDThvhadss

Visit the Hunley for yourself: https://www.hunley.org/

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“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 masses, was conside...

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 carpenter who wandered in from the desert – and 200 years later, we’re still not sure who it was. 

This episode was brought to you in partnership with Visit Santa Fe. Find out more about visiting the Loretto Chapel here: 

https://www.lorettochapel.com/staircase?srsltid=AfmBOorVB6TCf7cxF3k4Ctc3PSgBTy40A9Zl3lzWWvz5jc3vH-AgYuu9

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