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, this kind of reverence and excitement 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-Hopio, 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 hair.

It's like Pope reverence, but for the world's oldest edible hair.

I'm Sam O'Brien, and this is Atlas Obsgera, 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, Midas Town, and

me, fallen love with this particular hunk of meat.

That's up to this.

Okay, so walk me to the ham, walk me through, I don't even know where we are, set some

sea where we are in the world, what is the place, walk me in?

So we're in Smithfield, Virginia, which, according to the people of Smithfield, is the

ham capital of the world.

Ham's that come from Smithfield, it's like champagne, you can't call it a Smithfield

ham unless it's cured and processed in Smithfield, Virginia.

...