The Atlas Obscura Podcast

In the early 1900s, influential psychologist Carl Jung spent more than a decade documenting the strange images that popped up in his unconscious mind and documenting them all in a beautiful illustrated manuscript. After his death, his family thought the book was too bizarre to be made public and locked it away in a Swiss bank vault for decades. 

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Learn more about the Jung House Museum (and visit the study where Jung wrote the Red Book) https://www.cgjunghaus.ch/en/

A link to the New York Times article mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/magazine/20jung-t.html

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In 1978, a team of Soviet geologists working deep in the Siberian taiga came across something they never expected to see: a house. As it turned out, they had stumbled on a family that had lived in complete isolation for decades – they weren’t even aware of World War Two.

Sophie Pinkham, author of the new book “The Oak and the Larch: A Forest History of Russia and Its Empires,” tells us the story of the Lykov family and what drove them into the forest.

Check out Sophie’s book about how Russia’s vast forests have shaped its history and culture: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324036685

There’s also Sophie’s longread about the Lykovs in The Guardian, adapted from her book: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/22/forty-years-in-the-siberian-wilderness-the-old-believers-who-time-forgot

We always want to hear from you! If you have a question or story for us, give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message, or send an email to [email protected].

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Co-host Kelly McEvers and producers Jerome Campbell and Manolo Morales answer questions about places they could live permanently, how to navigate travel as a Type B person when all your friends are Type A, and appropriate airplane attire. 

If you have a question for our next mailbag episode, give us a call at 315-992-7902 and leave a message. You can also record a voice memo and email it to us at [email protected], or simply email your question.

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Marta Becket was an artist from New York City. Then in 1967, when she was on a road trip with her husband, she discovered an abandoned social hall in the California desert town of Death Valley Junction. She left New York and moved there to transform this hall into the Amargosa Opera House to live out her dream as an artist. 

To read more about Marta Becket, you can check out her autobiography To Dance On Sands, or watch the documentary that was made about her life, called Amargosa.  

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In 2007, the beloved former mayor of Suwon, Korea, demolished the home he and his wife had lived in for 30 years and built them a new house shaped like a toilet: curved walls, a toilet seat roof, and a bowl-shaped courtyard in the middle. For many spouses, this might be grounds for divorce, but the mayor had his reasons.

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