Hi, Dylan here.

You have reached the Atlas Obscira podcast line, the last functioning voicemail message machine in the world.

Unfortunately, I'm not home right now, but leave me a message about a trip you took to experience some special event in person, whether it was a concert

or a convention or a sporting event, whatever it was that you were dying to see and willing

to travel for. I want to hear about it after the beep.

Hey, Atlas. My name is Dever Broapsed, and I live in New Mexico. And my story is about cicadas.

Last year was the first time that broods 13 and 19 emerged together since 1803.

So I figured it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity to go see trillions of insects crawling around

and decided that the best place for me to go see these insects would be in a forest.

So I drove about two hours south to the Shawnee National Forest,

and I spent all day wandering through the forest.

And it was amazing.

There were bugs everywhere.

There were birds.

There was rattlesnake that I almost stepped on. got lost a few times, but overall made it out alive.

The one thing that I didn't see, though, were cicadas. After nearly six hours in the forest,

didn't see a single one, didn't even hear them. So I got back to my hotel and I only had really that one day to go look for this.

But the next morning I had a little bit of time before I needed to go to the airport,

so I decided to go to a park about 10 minutes from my hotel just to relax,

kind of sit in a bench, read a little bit. And I drove in there and as soon as I turned the engine off,

I could hear them. You could hear the buzz of cicadas.

I opened the door and they were everywhere.

...