Today at Untapped New York, we’re super excited to announce the launch of our podcast, The Untapped New York Podcast. The podcast will feature bite-sized episodes you can consume quickly to get your fix of New York City’s secrets. It will be full of all the things you’ve ever wondered about New York — like why does steam comes out of the ground? Do alligators live in the subway? How does a water tower work? I and the Untapped New York team will impart our knowledge, interview experts, and in many cases, literally go behind the scenes. If we had to name our most valuable skill, it’s getting into places we aren’t supposed to be in. And we’ll be bringing you with us. Subscribe to The Untapped New York Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all of your favorite podcast apps.
The very first episode of The Untapped New York Podcast features my favorite secret of all time: the pneumatic tube mail network. It is literally the one amazing fact that made me start Untapped New York. It made me think: if I didn’t know about that, what else don’t I know? And here we are, twelve years later after the founding of Untapped New York. I’ve become somewhat of an expert on the pneumatic tube mail, going on Stephen Dubner’s podcast Tell Me Something I Don’t Know and I’ll be on a forthcoming series, Secret Cities on the Smithsonian Channel talking about them.
In The Untapped New York Podcast episode about pneumatic tube mail, I speak with Lynn Heidelbaugh, curator at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum; Luke Kingma, former head of content at the science magazine Futurism; and with playwright, historian, and tour-guide extraordinaire, Justin Rivers, Untapped New York’s Chief Experience Officer. I even take you down inside the Chelsea Post Office, which has the last known remnants of the pneumatic mail tubes in New York City.
Here I am down at the pneumatic tube remnants in Chelsea
The second episode of The Untapped New York Podcast, which drops today, is all about water towers. I speak with artist Tom Fruin, who makes those amazing glass water tower sculptures, with Larry Hoffman, a New Yorker and Untapped New York reader who spent his career installing water towers, and the duo behind Boundless Brooklyn who designed a DIY water tower kit that I’ve put in every office and apartment I’ve had. Justin is back in this episode too.
More than a decade after the launch of Untapped New York, I’ve learned that the secrets of New York are truly limitless and there are still new discoveries to be made in this great city every day. I look forward to sharing my favorite secrets with all of you in this new format! Subscribe to the The Untapped New York Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all of your favorite podcast apps.
