Hi, everyone. This is Elise Hugh.

Continuing our TED Audio Collective Fridays, something a little different today.

An episode from Far Flung with Salaim Rushemwala, a podcast which takes you across the globe

in search of the world's most surprising ideas.

In this episode, we delve into dinosaurs and deep time, all from behind a hardware store

in New Jersey.

If you enjoy it, find the whole series of Far Flung with Salim Rushem Walla wherever you're

listening to this.

I'm Salim Rushem Walla, and from Ted, this is far-flung.

And in a show that will take you to Bangkok, Nairobi, Mexico City, today we're going to the suburbs of New Jersey, Mantua Township.

I call it Mantua.

Okay, cool. That's how we're going to say it.

Mantua. Manchu. All one, Mantua.

Where the gators are battling the

thundering herds in a small town football game. Manchua township, like most of South Jersey,

had an identity as these kind of sleepy little crossroad villages. That was Ken Lakavara, a

paleontologist, and before that you heard

Michelle Bruner, who works for the local government. They both live in Mantua Township.

Now, this might be the nicest suburb I've ever been to. The chain stores are platonic

ideals of chain stores. Like, there's no rundown anything or grit or grime to any of them.

Like, the Chick-fil-A looks like an architectural rendering

of a perfect Chick-fil-A,

...