The Outfall Podcast

An undersea cable breaks in the middle of the Atlantic, and the answer to “what happens now?” takes us back to 1866. The Great Eastern is searching for a lost cable with a hook, a winch, and a crew trying to hear one word from Ireland. Then Samanth Subramanian explains why repairing the internet still involves dragging a grapnel across the ocean floor.

Full show notes for this FIVE MINUTE SHORT and resources

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Featuring: Samanth Subramanian, author of The Web Beneath the Waves.

Dramatization: “Alive or Dead” is based on contemporary accounts. Dialogue is invented, and the events follow first-hand records of the 1866 recovery.

A cable from Argentina comes ashore through a manhole at Myrtle Beach State Park, and it does not stop there. In Part 2 of Where the Internet Comes Ashore, DC BLOX, the company that built the landing station, follows it 470 miles to Atlanta and the data centers waiting at the other end. One building on that route is already too small. Visit the show notes here. 

We found a line on a map that runs nine thousand miles up from Argentina and comes ashore at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. We didn't believe it, so we called Samanth Subramanian, who wrote a book about the cables that carry the internet across the ocean floor. Somebody decided the internet should climb out of the sea under a beach full of mini golf and pancake houses. See the show notes.

Somebody decided Pikes Peak would have no apostrophe. Somebody decides what every mountain, creek, and reservoir in America is officially called, and has since 1890. Almost nobody can name the committee, and most years nobody notices it is there. Show Notes. Join us on Instagram. 

A creek beside Clemson outmuscles a river forty five minutes up the road, draining twice the land and carrying close to twice the water. No agency will call that wrong, because no official line between a CREEK and a RIVER exists anywhere in America.

The reason the smaller word went to the bigger water is four hundred years old and has almost nothing to do with the water itself. Show Notes.

Two filmmakers spent years inside the East End Wastewater Treatment Facility in Portland, Maine, and came out with a comedy. It has screened at festivals and museums across New England, and it is not on Netflix, not on Hulu, not for rent anywhere. Co-director Alex Wolf Lewis explains why, and the answer draws a line between independent film and the pipes under your city. Also, we have a special event planned. Learn more here. 

In 1993, Joel Jones got a wildlife biology degree and a dream of working in the woods. He ended up on the night shift at a sewer plant instead. He stayed thirty-two years and retired as CEO. And boy, did he come away with some stories.  Show Notes and Pictures. 

A man flipping through old tax map books finds a piece of land with no parcel number, no taxes paid, and no explanation. The county can't tell him why, so he spends two years of weekends with a compass and a stack of field notes from the 1750s trying to find out. What's still sitting out there in the woods changed the way we think about the ground under our feet. Visit our Show Notes.

For seven years we thought we knew what this show was about. Listening back through 100 episodes proved us wrong. Episode 100 is the story of what we found underneath. Visit our website. 

Season 8 of The Outfall starts with a set of coordinates, a fence line, and a wife who wisely stayed in the car. What comes next is bigger, quieter, and a lot stranger than where it began. New episodes begins in June.  Visit our website. 

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