For a long time it was just a hole in the ground. Then, for twelve months, it was the fifth-largest city in Pennsylvania and the biggest oil field in the world. And then, just as abruptly, it was a hole inthe ground again.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/skeedaddled-and-gone-to-hell

Key sources for this episode include Brian Black's Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom; Ernest C. Miller's Pennsylvania's Oil Industry; John J. McLaurin's Sketches in Crude Oil; the autobiography of Ida M. Tarbell; and most importantly, William C Darragh's Pithole: The Vanished City.

The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope is a secret society devoted to the idea that that which is least known is best to know. Each episode we share a strange story or amazing fact, and no topic is off limits -- if it's interesting or entertaining, we'll cover about it!

• Email: jackalope@order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/uEVrmKZzq2
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@orderjackalope

Welcome to the Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Chocolope, where I dive into topics too nerdy for a Chocolate Snobs episode and too chocolate-oriented for an Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope entry. Today, we ask: "How much chocolate is in your chocolate?"

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/how-much-chocolate/
https://chocolate-snobs.com

In the 1940s, while trying to rebut Freud, psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky decided the reason ancient history didn't make any sense was simple: it was all the fault of the planet Venus.

https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/no-heretic-has-suffered-less

Key sources for this episode include Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, Earth in Upheaval, and Ages of Chaos; Alfred de Grazia's Cosmic Heretics; Kendrick Frasier's Paranormal Borderlands of Science; and Michael D Gordin's The Pseudo-Science Wars. But most importantly: the collected works of Henry H. Bauer, includng "The Velikovsky Affair," Beyond Velikovsky, and Science or Pseudoscience?

The Ancient and Esoteric Order of the Jackalope is a secret society devoted to the idea that that which is least known is best to know. Each episode we share a strange story or amazing fact, and no topic is off limits -- if it's interesting or entertaining, we'll cover about it!

• Email: jackalope@order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/order-of-the-jackalope.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/uEVrmKZzq2
• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@orderjackalope