The Outfall Podcast

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.