From the dusty towns of the old west, to the empty mills of the east, there’s just something about abandoned places and the stories they leave behind. Today’s Word of Mouth is all about ghost towns, from neglected Olympic villages to forgotten websites. Plus, the story of a couple who transformed an abandoned underground missile base into their home-sweet-home…complete with an overhead front door.
Listen to the full show and click Read more for individual segments.
Abandoned Olympic Parks
Photographer Jon Pack and filmmaker Gary Hustwit have been documenting what happens after the Olympic hullabaloo is over in places like Sochi, Russia, which is now a fifty-one billion dollar ghost town. Their photobook and ongoing project is called The Olympic City.
Forgotten Missile Bases
The cold war may be over, but underground nuclear missile bases and silos remain. Many of them are now empty -- but not for long. Producer Eric Molinsky brings us the story of what happens to decommissioned nuclear missile bases and silos.
Digital Ghost Towns
David Ewalt is a contributing editor at Forbes, and he spoke with us about “digital ghost-towns”…the internet’s abandoned websites and social networks.
District 12
Leigh Trapptells us the story behind the real District 12, a North Carolina ghost town ushered into Hollywood fame by the Hunger Games franchise.
Invasion Of The Tumbleweeds
George Johnson is a writer based in Santa Fe, and a regular contributor to National Geographic, where he wrote about fighting the tumbleweed menace in his own backyard.
A Road To Nowhere
It wasn’t one of New Hampshire’s handful of ghost-towns that drew the attention of Sean Hurley, but the remnants of an old street in Keene, a street that goes nowhere and sees no traffic – a ghost-road, if you will.
