The Atlas Obscura Podcast

On Fridays this October, we're surfacing strange, incredible, sometimes haunted and sometimes spooky places. This episode takes us back to1976, when a television crew filming an episode of the show “The Six Million Dollar Man” descended on a rundown funhouse in Long Beach, California. While filming, they accidentally broke the arm off a wax dummy. Except...it wasn't a wax dummy. It was a real body. The body of a notorious train robber from the early 1900s, named Elmer McCurdy. Check out the Atlas entry for Elmer McCurdy’s grave.
For more information on Elmer, we recommend Mark Svenvold’s book “Elmer McCurdy: The Misadventures in Life and Afterlife of an American Outlaw.”

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Telescope tourist, rocket scientist and STEAM educator Summer Ash gives us the nitty gritty on the V.L.A. - a 22-mile telescope in New Mexico whose formal name is literally “Very Large Array.” We talk about how this observatory works and what cosmic wonders it’s detected.

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Today, we go to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and meet the two historians who are working to better connect us to the mysteries and beauty of the human body.

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Christina Staton is a tour guide of the 9/11 Memorial. And today, she guides us to tell us about the overlooked places, memorials and sculptures of the memorial.



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Today, with the help of Ben Naddaff-Hafrey from Revisionist History, we’re going to Fresh Kills in Staten Island: a pile of trash that grew so tall and so vast, that it inspired a secession movement and changed the people who grew up beside it. Emily Forman produced this episode. Be sure to check out Ben’s series The Staten Island Problem on the Revisionist History podcast.



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