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SiriusXM and Atlas Obscura

An audio guide to the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Co-founder Dylan Thuras and a neighborhood of Atlas Obscura reporters explore a new wonder every day, Monday through Thursday. In under 15 minutes, they’ll take you to an incredible place, and along the way, you’ll meet some fascinating people and hear their stories. Our theme and end credit music is composed by Sam Tyndall.

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

In honor of Lucia Day on December 13, we’re diving into the origins of a Swedish holiday tradition which evolved from sinister pagan lore to a celebration of light, warmth and music.

 
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12 Days of Wonder: Luciadagen

About 400 miles south of New Zealand, on the subantarctic Campbell Island / Motu Ihupuku, stands a Sitka spruce whose nearest neighbor is 170 miles away.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/worlds-loneliest-tree

 
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12 Days of Wonder: World's Loneliest Tree

Gastro Obscura’s senior editor Sam O’Brien returns to the podcast to go deeper with us on her strange beat – recipes etched into gravestones. We probe how food can help heal and remember those we’ve lost.

 
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12 Days of Wonder: Return to Recipe Graves

We visit the taverns of colonial America to take a frothy sip of the hot ale flip and how it helped pave the way for contemporary mixology.

 

 
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12 Days of Wonder: Hot Ale Flip

Empress Anna’s Ice Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia was the site of an incredibly strange wedding. Was it a cruel joke? A strategic power move? Or something else?

 
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12 Days of Wonder: Empress Anna's Ice Palace

Mexico City is known for its museum and art scene. The collection at El Museo del Juguete Antiguo – The Antique Toy Museum – encourages visitors to lean into their imaginations – and reflect on the rich history and culture in this city.

 
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12 Days of Wonder: Toy Story

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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12 Days of Wonder: Tumbleweed Christmas Tree

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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The Last Seltzer Factory in Brooklyn

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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Fasnacht

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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A Blue-Green Glow in Orange, New Jersey

Early polar explorers faced long nights and dangerous expeditions. To entertain themselves, they wrote and published niche newspapers and periodicals. Atlas Obscura’s community editor Allegra Rosenberg reads an essay exploring this unique polar tradition. Read her full essay here. 

 
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How Polar Explorers Entertained Themselves

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