The Outfall Podcast

Somebody decided Pikes Peak would have no apostrophe. Somebody decides what every mountain, creek, and reservoir in America is officially called, and has since 1890. Almost nobody can name the committee, and most years nobody notices it is there. Show Notes. Join us on Instagram. 

A creek beside Clemson outmuscles a river forty five minutes up the road, draining twice the land and carrying close to twice the water. No agency will call that wrong, because no official line between a CREEK and a RIVER exists anywhere in America.

The reason the smaller word went to the bigger water is four hundred years old and has almost nothing to do with the water itself. Show Notes.

Two filmmakers spent years inside the East End Wastewater Treatment Facility in Portland, Maine, and came out with a comedy. It has screened at festivals and museums across New England, and it is not on Netflix, not on Hulu, not for rent anywhere. Co-director Alex Wolf Lewis explains why, and the answer draws a line between independent film and the pipes under your city. Also, we have a special event planned. Learn more here. 

In 1993, Joel Jones got a wildlife biology degree and a dream of working in the woods. He ended up on the night shift at a sewer plant instead. He stayed thirty-two years and retired as CEO. And boy, did he come away with some stories.  Show Notes and Pictures. 

A man flipping through old tax map books finds a piece of land with no parcel number, no taxes paid, and no explanation. The county can't tell him why, so he spends two years of weekends with a compass and a stack of field notes from the 1750s trying to find out. What's still sitting out there in the woods changed the way we think about the ground under our feet. Visit our Show Notes.

For seven years we thought we knew what this show was about. Listening back through 100 episodes proved us wrong. Episode 100 is the story of what we found underneath. Visit our website. 

Season 8 of The Outfall starts with a set of coordinates, a fence line, and a wife who wisely stayed in the car. What comes next is bigger, quieter, and a lot stranger than where it began. New episodes begins in June.  Visit our website. 

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A maintenance worker's suspicious 911 call. A toxic chemical banned since the 1970s. And a $2.5 million cleanup that started with one man's $6,000 shortcut. Former Spartanburg Water CEO Sue Schneider takes us inside the crisis. See the Show Notes.

For nearly a century, the Chattooga River has shaped the lives of the people who ran it, fought for it, and tried to keep it wild. In this episode, Jack Wise, Owner of Wildwater and conservationist Buzz Williams share how a once-secret river exploded after Deliverance, reshaped an entire community, and now faces a quieter kind of pressure. Along the way, we hear about a buried rapid, a new species, and a simple idea of “giving something up” that might decide the river’s future.

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In September 2019, thieves broke into Blenheim Palace and stole Maurizio Cattelan's "America"—a fully functional solid gold toilet worth $6 million—in under 5 minutes. But this isn't just a heist story: it's about an artwork that made 100,000 people equal for three minutes at a time, proving that true value can't be stolen. Join us for the wildest art infrastructure crime you've never heard of, where democracy met plumbing and lost. 

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