Hi, everyone. It's Michelle Cassidy and Jonathan Carey, the places editors at Atlas Obscura.

In today's episode, we want to acknowledge the people who help bring us stories from

around the world. Right now, there are more than 23,000 places in Atlas Obscura's database.

These have been compiled over the last decade by not just our staff, but by a huge and varied

group of contributors. Together, this community has put together thousands of entries that

cover lots of different places from the iconic gates of hell in Turkmenistan to the world's

largest pistachio of roadside attraction in New Mexico. Now, a while back, we took a closer

look at exactly where all of these wonderful, curious places were located. And what we found

was while we had covered, obviously, thousands of fascinating places, most of them were in

the United States and Europe. And when it came to other parts of the world, our map was

looking a little sparse. And so we on the places team set out on a mission to fix that.

Now this is not something that we could do on our own. We needed help from people who

could tell us about the places in Africa and South America and Asia and Oceania that you

wouldn't find in a typical travel guide or by sort of googling around. We've worked

with a number of talented writers who've helped us to expand the Atlas and learn about

some really fascinating history and culture along the way. One of those writers is Maggie

and Jason, a journalist and photographer who's worked in South Africa and Rwanda and Nigeria and

Rundi, lots of places. In today's episode, you'll hear about two places that Maggie has shared

with us. Two unique markets in Africa that offer a glimpse into resilient and creative communities.

First, we're going to Eritrea, a small country in East Africa that lies along the coast of the

Red Sea. In Mediver Market, the air is hot and strong with the smell of burning metal and the

sound of pounding hammers. Sparks fly around welders, many of whom are wearing elaborate masks made

...