I'm Lauren Norton, and this is one strange thing,

the show where we search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

Strangers, normally, we like to use this time that we have together to give you a story with that classic structure that you've come to know and love.

Beginning, middle, end. Exposition, rising action, climax,

resolution, a particular time and place. A cast of normal people, just like you and me, except for, well, you know, it's an ancient pattern for a reason.

It works.

And we have you covered in that department.

Usually that is.

But today, we've got something just a little different.

You see, sometimes over the course of our research process, we happen upon strange things, plural.

Stories that on their faces might not have much in common.

They might not have surfaced into public consciousness in the same paper, the same city, the same year, even the same decade, but something draws

them together, a kind of chaotic connection. That something could be as simple as a common premise.

A cryptid walks into a suburb, for instance, or our bi-weekly need to write a podcast episode with whatever

weird stuff has floated across our desks. But sometimes there's a deliciously strange game

of Connect the Dots to play, and disparate stories popping up in entirely different places and times seem destined to come together.

Connect those dots hiding in the margins of local newspapers, and we not so humbly suggest that the result can be a work of art.

And art is, incidentally, where we begin today.

More specifically, today we deal in the world of artifacts, art technology and miscellania

from bygone eras.

Listeners plugged into this kind of thing might be familiar with the idea of provenance.

Basically, the history of who's possessed a particular work or artifact over the course of its existence.

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