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[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] >> hello. it is 9:00 p.m. the book festival has been going on for nine hours. the next event -- if you have not seen the book already, you must have been out of the country because she is everywhere, it is an incredible website that pulls together some of the most fantastic things that happen around the world, things that happen in your own backyard that you may know about, has anybody seen the -- so we can all go see that tomorrow, have you ever seen the house on the rock? those are in

this book. and many other things, ella has been working for five years, she has put this book together, more than 700 different entries of amazing things that happen around the world, i will not keep her from you, ladies and gentleman, before. [applause] >> thank you so much, i am delighted to be here, i cannot think of anywhere i would rather be on a saturday night been in a library with a bunch of booklovers. i am delighted that you are all here and i'm jazz to be in madison, home of the mustard museum. [laughter] so it is wonderful to be here. as has been mentioned, i am one of the current authors of "atlas obsucra" which came out a few weeks ago. to give you a little background on how "atlas obsucra" began and what it is about, it started started as a website in 2009 is

a collaboration between my two co- authors. the goal was to assembly assembly database that inspire wonder. something that you might not know about unless someone in the know might not have tipped you off about. to give you an example of what might constitute a hidden wonder, the eiffel tower is not a hidden wonder. but the secrets apartments near the top of the eiffel tower that was built to impress friends, that thomas edison visited that has nice carpeting and a grand piano, that is a hidden wonder. those of the type of things that we are looking for in "atlas obsucra". this website began seven years ago. justin started assembling these places and opened up to the

public, the people around the world and said, show us what you have. they were not quite sure what to expect or how many submissions they would receive, people would really understand the hidden wonder thing. we are now up to 10000 places. it is picking up somewhat. people seem to get it. they get the hidden wonder thing. we get so many submissions from people who remember something from their childhood. down the road there is the guy who built the castle. i wonder if it is still there. there is a sense of hometown pride,'s people showing off what they have discovered and that is what we are cultivating. as a way of showing you some examples of what is inside the book, because we have collected about 700. we have done a sort of a greatest hits album, sampler

platter of places that we have collected on the website. i wanted to take you on a quick world to her that showcases a few of the places in the book. so let's get started. this is one of the first places that was submitted to the website, within the first few months of it launching. was submitted by someone who lives in chair punchy, in the north of india. this is one of the wettest, most humid regions of the world. one of the problems with creating infrastructure in this places that it disintegrates quickly. would rots, metals rust. so some of the people have come up with an ingenious and visibly stunning solution. these are the root bridges, there are a few of them but this

one in particular is especially spectacular because it is a double-decker. the way they are made is the villagers build a trestle over the river and they guide the roots of the trees across the trestles. it takes about 15 years for the bridge to grow and it can continue growing for centuries. when we received this we thought, okay. yes. this could work. this. this is incredible. and it is real. to continue with the theme of bridges, this is also a bridge, it is a land bridge that unites the islands in south korea. this bridge only appears for about an hour or so twice per year, there is some mythology associated with a bridge, in involves what is basically the south korean equivalent of

moses. the story goes that a tiger had descended a pound the island and everybody managed to escape apart from this elderly woman and the tiger was menacing and encroaching upon her and she looked at it and thought, [inaudible] my watch, so she prayed for a bridge to open up for the waters to receive so she might safely escape to the islands. and according to mythology, this did happen. so every year, once in in may and once in june, this bridge opens up. the people from the area and visitors walk from their separate islands along the bridge, meet in in the middle and then turn around and go back home. this is a fascinating place.

it is about 100 miles north of los angeles. in 1958 an eccentric urban planner by the name of matt mendelson purchased 80000 acres in the mojave desert. he had a grand plant, the plant was to establish a giant, sprawling automobile based metropolis that would rival l.a. it would be a utopia, so he bought the land and laid out the streets. he gave every street a name. and that's as far as the project to god. [laughter] because he clearly overestimated people's willingness to move out to the mojave desert and establish a utopian metropolis. that is a shame for him, but this still exists, all of these

roads that have been named are still there. we have events, real-world events where we go out and explore in various chapters. a few years ago we organized a convoy of people to go to the streets and was going to be called california city and they went exploring. they walked along along the streets that are being reclaimed by the sand, i have not been there yet but i very much want to. from the air it looks like a giant circuit board. this is like the greatest hit of the greatest hits. this is the classic. this is the result of an industrial accident, essentially. this is in a desert, it's referred to locally as the gates of hell, or the door to hell, in 1971 a soviet team of soviet

geologists were drilling for natural gas. they found some, unfortunately this gas was located in a giant subterranean cavern. as they began drilling this hole opened up and there drilling rig fell in. so they reacted perhaps slightly panic driven by setting the whole thing on fire. [laughter] i suppose the mentality was, give it a few days or weeks and this thing will burn off and be fine. forty-five years later it is still burning. these gates of hell are 200 feet wide, you can go visit them as this brave chap on the left is. this man in another subterranean

cavern, slightly slightly less hazardous, his name is robert. he is one of many creative driven visionaries, many of whom are rather eccentric that we celebrate. there is a former monk in madrid who woke up one morning and decided he needed to hand to build a cathedral for the next 50 years of his life. he is still doing it. rob is somewhat similar but he uses the medium of sand. since the 1990s, he has been walking in the new mexico desert and digging incredible caves. he takes commissions but it's not really about that. it's about him expressing himself through the way that he digs. he puts a wheel barrel on

his back and carries a shovel and just listens and he has made about a dozen of these caves since 1992. this fellow who looks rather the worse for wear, but not when you consider that that when he died in 1783 and two, he was 96. three, he mummified himself. his name -- he was one of many monks in northern japan who are part of the variance of buddhism. for a few centuries these monks of northern japan were engaged in the arts of self mummification.

called the fox -- of japan. you might be thinking, well, i studied ancient egypt in school and i know how to modify someone else in theory. once they are dead you do the old hook up the nostril, cranial cavity type procedure. but how how do you mama for yourself, surely that is impossible. but as you can see, it happened. it was a ten year process. it began with a very strict diet that was undertaken for 1000 days. days. it was basically nuts and seeds. and a lot of exercise. the idea was to strip your body of fat in

this initial stage. once i was stunned you did not really get a respite.wise it just became more strict. the next stage was to feast upon park and the sap from the tree which is ordinarily used on wed. so the idea behind that is you -- your internal organs, it's just that easy. once this stage was complete the monks were generally very close to death. so what they did was they went into a tomb, they sat in a lotus position and they chanted mantras, every day they would ring a bell to signal they were yet living. and when the bell stopped ringing the tomb was sealed. after they had been left there for a while the monk would be retrieved and put on display and venerated. several hundred monks attempted this procedure, about two dozen succeeded. there are about 16, that are

still on display northern japan. the practices practices outlawed at the end of the 19th century by the -- emperor who i imagine was pretty much like, guys. come on. we need some limits here. this is a charming local mystery that is a lot closer to home than minnesota on the north share of minnesota and this is called devils cattle. as you can see it is a waterfall that splits into two. on the right side the waterfall keeps going, on the left, the water goes into this known as a devils cattle and emerges, no one knows where. in is not for lack of trying. people people have tried to solve this mystery. they have thrown thousands of

ping-pong balls in there. they have tried to die the water, and thrown gps devices in there. nothing has yielded an exclamation. so it is a local mystery. try to solve it if you want to journey to minnesota. this looks like an idyllic place to go, perhaps on a pleasure cruise and take vintage postcard here. i would i would not recommend going there however. the reason why is in the name of this place. it is called snake island. i hear a murmur in the crowd. indeed, warranted. this places off the coast of brazil. it it is named snake island because it is home to a vast quantity of golden lance head vipers. they they are endemic to the island. given half the chance they will

kill you. their venom is not a good kind. if they don't kill you they will cause a lot of damage. it is remarkable that the silent is the density of the snakes. estimates have varied over the years, but rough guide says one snake per square meter. i am from the commonwealth in a work in the metric, but if you don't, what what you have to remember is on snake island you are never more than 3 feet from potential death. also also one tidbit, the snakes are not just terrestrial, they are also arboreal so you may be walking along and feel one drop beside your feet. terrifying.

you are not allowed to go to snake island. you have to convince the brazilian navy that you have a legitimate scientific reason to visit. so if it sounds enticing, start thinking of some reasons. so in florence, the museum every wants to go to is the -- is the home of venus, michelangelo, michael the banshee, but the lines get really long. in summer you can be waiting for hours to get inside. there is a museum around the corner that is less visited. it is a science museum. and among all among all of the scientific instruments, the globes, you will find galileo's middle finger. [laughter] classic. his finger was swiped from his

corpse about 100 years after his death while it was being moved. it has been in various places since then, but since 1927 it since 1927 it has been at this museum which was recently renamed, the galileo museum. there are various ways to interpret this object. meet galileo had complicated relationship with the church. you can see it as he is merely a indicating the heavens above or you can view it as a more pointed message, the interpretation is up to you. [laughter] so there is a period of a few decades in between when aircraft started to be used as part of the military weapons and prior to the development of radar for detecting an incoming bombing raid. during this during this time there is some creative

approaches into how to know when you are about to be attacked. these three concrete objects are on the south coast of england, they are known as listening ears because what the british did was to build these curves, these semi circles as a means of trying to amplify incoming aircraft noise. they built them, they pointed they pointed them toward germany, and they hoped for the rest. you can see on the right there is a stand where microphone would have been mounted. the idea was to amplify the sound that the microphone picked up, a guy with a device that was like a stethoscope, it has these big tubes here would also sit there and listen really hard, they

sort of worked, nowhere near as well as radar, these are established, devices like these were built in the 1920s and 1930s, but as aircraft move faster, the benefits became negligible they gave you an ever so slight edge if it was about to attack, but, but not a lot of time to prepare, this is the , also known as the last rope bridge, bridges like these which are woven from the grass they see in the bottom right used to be all over the andes but as far as we have been able to tell this is the last one. it stands in peru. the guy on the bridge is actually one of my

coworkers. what happens in makes it so special is that every year, because the bridge is you so much it starts just that sag and look a little dicey for walking upon, so the villages come together and cut down the existing bridge and let it fall into the valley, sometimes burn it if there feeling dramatic and they weave another one, they bring all of these grasses together and they weave them, and they reestablished this rope bridge, so this is the last surviving one of what used to be an entire network. this just look like a kind of old-school church organ in a cave. which sure has its merits in terms of strange and wondrous, but you're not seeing the whole picture, these are the cave in

the caverns of virginia and this instrument is there because of a man with an incredible name, leyland sprinkle. who in the 1950s went spelunking in the cab friends and decided they would make the perfect backdrop for what you become the world's largest musical instrument. what you see here is the council but what you don't see are the pipes of this church organ, the pipes -- what he did was spend years searching these caves for stalactites that would make the exact right sound when he struck them. so once he had found them he wired 5 miles worth of cables from the central council to each individual stalactite.

it is called this delay take pipe organ. he he used to play the organ, it is now played an automated way, but cds with music from the organ are still on sale at the gift shop in the caverns. as they have have been marketed as musical gems from solid rock. this wonderful device which resembles a tiny carousel is actually an attempt to add a weather prediction device. let's first exhibited at the 1851 london exhibition. it was created by a man with another great name, a name perfect for meteorology, doctor george meriwether. doctor meriwether who is a surgeon had come to decide or

perhaps imagine that when there was an approaching storm, freshwater leeches seem to get a little agitated. so he thought, how can i harness this meteorology wise and what what he did was built a device called the tempest prognosticator which is the very device you see before you and how it works was there is a circle of little jars in which a freshwater leech would be placed. the jars would be connected by little wires to bells, similar to the mummified monks now that i think about it. at the idea was that if a store were approaching, these leeches would shimmy and the ropes with jangle and the bells would ring and you would think i better

bring the washing them. it did did not so much work. which is why we have thermometers and barometers other than, these prognosticators which is sad because look at this, but, there's still a model in a museum that is exactly the kind of museum that we love to celebrate, it is called barometer world. it's in the north of england and it's all about barometers. go if you can. this is a place i first went to as a child and as such has made a mark on my brain and soul. it looks like -- it resembles a nebula or a galaxy if you don't know what today is. each of these glowing lights is in fact a fungus met in its --

stage. the story is, these are the caves in new zealand on the mills island which is where i was born, what you do is there it's a big network, you go in there and the final moments of wonder is that you get in this boat that rose along a subterranean river and you can close your eyes, is very dark. all of a sudden this feeling of what looks like a universe opens up before you. all of these amazing little glowing things. they are fungus gnats. they don't last very long but the thousands and millions of them. and we adore a luminescence. one of the places in the book is

also if you been to the smoky mountains at the right time of year you get synchronized fireflies. the same thing happens in a part of malaysia. and in japan there are the firefly squid that light up the bay. so this is a particularly magical example. another place for my part of the world. i was born in new zealand but i up in australia. this is near minor of the woods. it is off the south coast of australia. it is a volcanic shard people get confused, sometimes i don't know what i'm saying. and it is about 1800 feet tall known as -- med. it is is significance comes from in 2001, two scientists were scaling

these treacherous sites because they were looking for a creature that their world had given up on. the creature is known by many names, some call it the walking sausage, its name is more scientifically the lord island insects. it looks like a big insect but it's the size of your poem. if you want to see it, that's it. just imagine it this big. so the scientist in 2001 had gotten a tip from climbers that they had found the remains of these insects that had been thought extinct. they used to exist on the island which is about 13 miles from this spire, when black rats were introduced

to the island in 1918 they began to disappear. by 1930 by 1930 there are thought to be extinct but, because the walking sausage bodies had been discovered by climbers on the spire there is reason to go in search, and in 2001 the scientists, there's about 225 feet and they found this little nest of about two dozen walking sausages. having made the discovery, the next thing to ask themselves was what we do with them, is such a small, fragile population of a creature that was thought extinct. so they spend about two years trying to puzzle out what to do with these creatures in 2003 they decided to take two pairs to the melvin zoo to try to get the population going again. unfortunately one of the pairs died but the second pair became

the basis for what is now a thousand strong walking sausage population and they name were adam ne. [laughter] this one is -- okay. we have some fans in the audience, and so glad. this object is located at the icelandic museum of witchcraft and sorcery which is a few hours outside of -- go, it's a good time. good time. this is a replica garment but according to the curators who -- these existed in the 17th century. they are called, the knicker pants. the story goes as follows so the

procedure of vinegar pants which are intended to bring you luck and wealth begins with a simple request, you your approach a friend who is male and an acquaintance would be an awkward conversation. and you say, say, when you die, may i have your skin. only from the waist down, let's not be unreasonable. ideally the person would say yes and you would wait for them to die, or become involved somehow don't ask questions and exude their corpse, fillet the skin from the waist down ensuring to keep it all in one piece and then don the skin pants yourself as a pair of trousers. next comes part of the procedure that had unreasonable.

you're supposed to steal a coin from a poor widow which seems excessive. i'm not sure why she already has to be poverty-stricken to snatch the coin and place it in the scrotal pockets of the nick from the ideas that the coin in the groin will attract more coins and it will bring you luck and wealth and once, yes i've heard rumors, once the scrotal pockets is replete with coins or begins to chafe, whichever comes first you pass the nick her pants onto the next lucky where every good luck you're supposed to do it one leg at a time. like a three-legged race situation. we have not been able to confirm the veracity of these knicker pants reports but we thought the story was so good that we had to

include it. so, welcome. [laughter] these are the -- they are located just outside the village improve until 2005 nobody beyond to the people this village of their existence. in 2005 a german explorer, tours, traveler, was venturing in the area and saw these falls. he thought, they were were are really tall. like top ten in the world tall. he spoke to the villagers and the villagers said well we know they are tall but there so many things out there the world, so many waterfalls we just kind of got use to them. when the waterfalls were

measured it became apparent -- there different waves of measuring waterfalls. it's a bit of a controversy. but by some measure these are the third tallest in the world. there are 2500 feet tall. my co-authors, dylan and josh visited the falls about five years ago. when they spoke to the people it was fascinating what they said. they reiterated these points about well, yes we knew the falls were incredible but we are just so accustomed to them. we forgot they were there. this is something that we see a lot that is part of the philosophy which is, there are

incredible things all around us. you do not have to go to peru you don't have to go see the digger pants in iceland to happen upon something strange, wondrous and exciting. there are things in our own backyard that are incredible. it's just a matter of opening your eyes and not becoming complacent about what is rountree. to that end, i wanted to talk about one more place very briefly which is right here in the wonderful state of wisconsin. it is -- [applause] how many have been here? yes. this is what eyes talking i was talking about earlier about hometown pride, but wanted to share the special things that you found in your neighborhood with the world. because doctor -- of a tron is incredible. it was in the 1980s by a retired wrecking and salvage

expert, tom every who has he built this and developed his own alter ego, the idea of this space machine is that he will blast into the heavens and the lightning beam that sits at the top like in a. it's just just north of madison off highway 12. these are the kind of places that would love to celebrate. we would love for you all to go out there and explore, see what is in your neighborhood and stay. share them with us in the world and be an explorer. and we hope that use "atlas obsucra" as your guide. that is about it for my formal presentation part of the proceedings. i would love to take questions if you have any. my only disclaimer is, if you ask me about a specific detail in one of the 700 places in in

the book i may not immediately remember. but that's only because their 700 places in the book. i will try my very best. does anybody have questions? there is a microphone in the center. i will give you time to go to the microbe. do you see the nick her pants again? [laughter] [inaudible] >> i gather this started as a website and i would imagine that the book is constantly in need of updating. to anticipate future additions? >> yes, definitely. not just for that reason. we would definitely want to put future updated versions of the specific book out into the world. we are all also looking at what

other books we can rights. condensing the world wonders into 480 pages is very difficult. we're looking at putting out books that are bit more specific in their focus, whether that's geographically or by subject matter. if you look at the index in her book and is things like treacherous -- of mummified remains. anyone of those categories could be an entire book on itself. our editor give some feedback about the fact that we had too many anatomical museums that features wax molds and diseases, so we could easily put 40 of those in a book. but yes we would love to put future additions and updated editions of this book but also others. >> thank you. i also wanted to say that while

this is a great example of what you are investigating around the world, wisconsin is full of those places. and any other number of candidates, i don't know if you have other examples in the book. >> we have a lot on the website. one in the book which all of your familiar with his house on the rock. it is one of those that you will note about what people around the world don't. it's something worth sharing with the world. i hope you don't mind sharing it. >> the dickey villa grotto, there's a number of places. and thank you for doing this. >> thank you. [inaudible] >> this is for tall people. we are actually going to new

zealand for the first time. what would you recommend, or should i just buy the book? >> that would be the main version. there are so many things. if you go to a museum in wellington where i was born, he will see a giant squid that has been a colossal squid that has been beautifully mummified or that is a great place to go. what else is in the book? there is something all craters of the moon which is wonderful to walk around. it's a lunar landscape and very strange. then have places like if you are interested in the economy there

is a machine called the imo near machine which uses water to demonstrate how the economy works. which is, think it's at the university of -- is in the book. i would definitely recommend that. it's a magical experience. >> where's the university? >> on the south islands. i should really notice. >> thank you. >> was there a wonder that you wanted in the book that did not make the cut? >> there were so many. the problem with narrowing down, we started out with this giant spreadsheet. we tried to to have

a balance in terms of geography and the types of places. the problem was, we all had, had, three of us had certain things that we adored, not all of which made it into the book. as i was talking before we really love medical museums, it's museums, it's just a thing we all like. one of the problems that that is some of them are quite similar to each other. these places that by themselves are so incredible but when you already have one that is very similar in the book, like we have to take one out but i really want to keep it. i was a medical museums generally. and bone churches, we tried not to make the book to death like. there is a lot of death in there but death is treated in very interesting ways.

and like coffins that look like tigers. the cemetery -- thank you. >> thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible] >> the question is how many places have i or the others got to. we had been to his many places as possible that are in the book. we are up to, we there is a place on the website to log places you been to. we each got up to about 100 and stopped counting. the book is very much a crowd sourced project. we definitely rely on our wonderful community of atlas obscure people who are finding

things for us. we been to as many places as time and budget will allow. we've done as much fact checking as possible. i did go to the saul cathedral -- it does taste like salt. it is very much a collaborative project. >> another question is coming up. >> two quick questions. one is too often dick get asked by people not to put stuff up because they don't want people to know about it? they wanted to be their own secret. secondly where their issues, or has there been issues about cultural sensitivity? people being concerned about you making light of something they see as a very spiritual place? >> that's a good question. the first question is about people not wanting places to be included in the book. that is a concern of ours.

we don't want to overexpose or make people annoyed by the fact that they suddenly have a lot of people out the door. what was previously a special small place. we have found, thus far without exception that the places we have highlighted our places that in some cases were struggling to survive. bringing attention to them has been a good thing. that has been our experience so far but it is a concern of ours. it is a bit strange to be called "atlas obsucra" and then of the book does well maybe these places will not be so obscure. places like the glowworm cave, people in new zealand know about. so sometimes it's a case of case of spotlighting places that are only known locally. i'm bringing in more people from outside so they know about it.

in general that is a concern. in terms of cultural sensitivity , absolutely this is a big concern of ours after we never want to point to something to say that's weird, what are these people doing. we include things in the book because we want to celebrate them. we want to show i get a sense of what is out there the world. one of the prime reasons press doing this is how do people see the world. what perspectives can we view this from. so that was definitely something we thought about in terms of the language and tone we are using. speaking to people who are part

of these groups anywhere in these museums. that trying to to represent them without talking to them. i mean even the concept of exploration and discovery is a little bit loaded. it is kind of the images of the white guy in the ship or the phrase cabinet of curiosities. are the grand european tour. it's cashed up white guy going and taking stuff and bring it back. we want to move beyond that. we see expiration and discovery is something that doesn't require money or status or feud to be a particular type of person. so it is more about the mentality and philosophy of it. we wanted to be accessible to all.