Is the mic on?

Yep.

One, two, three. One, two, three.

In the microscopic town of St. Vith in Belgium, there's a very unusual library.

We have 107 from more or less 20 countries.

It's not really open to the public.

You can't check anything out, and every single item in the collection needs to be fed.

We open the jars, and we start feeding it, and you see it bubbling, and it's alive, it's like a pet.

Presiding over this library and supervising the regular feedings is a guy named Carl.

72 is from Mexico.

He's a jolly bearded man who roams the world to gather the oldest, rarest and best specimens for his living library.

89 is from Germany, 90 from the Netherlands.

For thousands of years, we fed them, and they fed us.

But a radical new technology came along, and we didn't really need them anymore.

Then, in 2020, a lot of people suddenly became very interested in the contents of this little library in Belgium.

People are surprised when I say that we have a sourdough library, because many people have no idea what the sourdough really is.

Fallen from grace, and back in fashion, today, we're talking about sourdough.

I'm Annie Ubank, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

Today, we're taking a tour of this totally unique library, and doing a deep dive into the fascinating history of sourdough.

We'll be back with our friend Dylan Therese, right after this.

So, Annie, what's your relationship to bread-related things?

It was definitely something that I was really interested in when I was younger.

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