The Fast Food Craze that Built Your City w/Kobi Omenaka

If it's 2 am in Denver Colorado and you've been out partying all night, where will you go to fill up on some fast food to tide you over? Well, if it's 1858 the answer is: oyster bars. This week on Seemingly Unrelated we are cracking open the shell that hides the secret history of the oyster asking big questions like: How dangerous were oyster beds to early European colonists? Why does anyone know about Altoona, PA? HOW much did the US government spend on the transcontinental railroad?! What putrid Youtube rabbit hole has our guest fallen down recently? And of course, do oysters really get people excited or is it just the beverages we tend to pair with them?

Our guest this week is a marketing guru and podcast producer/host of The Wire Stripped as well as Flixwatcher (both featuring Andrew as a guest in multiple episodes) it's Kobi Omenaka!

All this plus: How McDonald's rebuilt the 11th busiest airport in the world, on Seemingly Unrelated!

Bibliography:

Ali, Rafat. ‘The 23 Grandest Amtrak Train Stations in America’. Skift, 26 October 2013. https://skift.com/2013/10/26/the-22-grandest-amtrak-train-stations-in-america/.

Bill of Rights Institute. ‘Westward Expansion Migration US’. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://live-bri-dos.pantheonsite.io/essays/migration-west/.

Burrows, Michelle. Oyster Nutrition Facts. n.d.

‘Cannery’. The Baltimore Museum of Industry, n.d. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.thebmi.org/exhibits/cannery/.

Jennifer Bohnhoff. ‘A Short Inquiry into Canning, Oysters, and Christmas’. Accessed 15 September 2025. http://jenniferbohnhoff.com/3/post/2018/12/a-short-inquiry-into-canning-oysters-and-christmas.html.

‘Kuwait International Airport’. Airport Technology, n.d. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.airport-technology.com/projects/kuwait-international/.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. ‘Traveling on the Overland Trails, 1843-1860 | National Expansion and Reform, 1815 - 1880 | U.S. History Primary Source Timeline | Classroom Materials at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress’. Web page. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/united-states-history-primary-source-timeline/national-expansion-and-reform-1815-1880/traveling-on-the-overland-trails-1843-1860/.

Maryland, Preservation. ‘This Day in History: Chartering of the B&O Railroad’. Preservation Maryland, 28 February 2022. https://preservationmaryland.org/this-day-in-history-chartering-of-the-bo-railroad/.

‘OYSTERS AND TYPHOID’. Journal of the American Medical Association 84, no. 4 (1925): 286–87. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1925.02660300044015.

Program, Campus Archaeology. ‘The Great Oyster Craze: Why 19th Century Americans Loved Oysters’. MSU Campus Archaeology Program, 23 February 2017. https://campusarch.msu.edu/?p=4962.

Stover, John F. History of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Purdue University Press, 1987.

University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. ‘History of Oysters’. 18 September 2017. https://www.umces.edu/oysters/history.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science. ‘History of Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay’. Accessed 15 September 2025. https://www.vims.edu/research/units/labgroups/molluscan_ecology/archive/vorhf/introduction/.

Seemingly Unrelated is a podcast all about exploring how everyday things connect to major movements in history, politics and culture.

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