Hello, I'm Johanna. I'm the senior producer of the show. So this whole week, the staff here at Atlas Obscera, is sharing episodes about our favorite objects. And the object that I've chosen is the world's oldest edible ham. This is actually an episode that came out a really long time ago. It came out

before I started working on this show. And when I heard it, I was like, okay, yes, I have found my

people. This is the stuff that I'm interested in. This is the show that I want to work on.

So this is the episode that made me want to work on. So this is the episode

that made me want to work on this show. And it's just really fun hearing Dylan and Sam O'Brien

waxing poetic about this very old ham. Okay, hope you enjoy.

Tell me the first moment when you saw the ham.

It was very special. I think I can only compare it to, I was thinking about this.

Like, I stepped in and you feel like this kind of reverence and excitement, it felt to a much lesser degree.

Like, when I was raised Catholic and my youth group went to the Vatican, and we saw the Pope go by in his Pope will be.

And I was just like, I had this feeling of like this reverence and excitement and you just like fed off other people around you.

And it was like that, but with a hao.

So like Pope reverence, but for the world's oldest edible hao.

I'm Samuel O'Brien, and this is Atlas Obscura.

A celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous hams.

The ham we're going to talk about today is 120 years old.

But believe it or not, that's not the weirdest fact about this ham.

Stick around.

And you'll learn how a ham survives for more than a century,

why this ham is on a leash, and how its owner, P.D. Gwaltney Jr.,

the P.T. Barnum of ham, made his town, and and me fall in love with this particular hunk of me.

That's after this.

...