Bad Rap Week: Searching for Wonder in the Most Boring Mall in Canada

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.6 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Toronto is home to a massive underground mall called the PATH, a labyrinth of hallways with shops, banks, and no fewer than nine Tim Hortons. At 30 kilometers long, it’s the largest underground shopping complex in the world. It's also famously dull. What wonder can be found in a dreary, underground mall? Reporter Elah Feder takes this as a challenge and descends into the PATH to see if she can wring an ounce of wonder from this godforsaken place. Along the way, she ponders the nature of boredom – and confronts some existential questions. All week, we’re collaborating with the great podcast Terrestrials to tell stories about people, places, and animals with bad reputations – and the surprising truths behind them.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi Lulu. Happy Abby Wednesday. Happy hump day, Dylan.
0:07.7	So, you know, if you've been listening over the week, you will know that Lulu Miller of Radio Lab and Terrestrials and I, Dylan Theris, we're doing bad rap week.
0:18.4	We are talking about places and animals and people that have bad reputations and trying to find out the truth behind them.
0:26.6	And today we're going to the mall.
0:31.6	And I grew up in Minnesota, which is home to Mall of America.
0:35.8	So I have some feelings about malls.
0:38.2	Were you like a mall rat as a teen or a kid at all?
0:41.9	I so deeply was.
0:43.6	Like I actually, I know we're supposed to be like,
0:46.1	these are bad places, but I love the malls so much.
0:48.9	I miss malls in my life.
0:50.5	I feel like I had independence and all kinds of like early romances.
0:55.8	So I'm so excited we're going to them all.
0:58.4	The food courts, the weird carpets.
1:00.6	Orange Julius.
1:01.9	Anyway, our tagline is normally a celebration of the world, strange, incredible, and wondrous places.
1:07.4	Today, we are going to a decidedly non-wondrous place and seeing if we can still find something special.
1:16.2	Okay, I was so excited. Let's squeaks on the linoleum. Let's bring it. Let's go. Let's go to the mall.
1:26.0	Underneath Toronto, there's a massive underground mall called The Path.
1:34.2	It's a 30-kilometer network of shops and banks and food courts that connect buildings
1:39.6	in the downtown core.
1:41.5	Apparently, it's the biggest underground shopping complex in the world.
	...

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