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A $500 loan, a broken-down bus, and a mystery country star.
Leslie Sisson shares the unbelievable story of how her father ended up with a 1950s Gibson Country Western guitar as collateral for a roadside favor. It took years for the family to find out exactly whose hands had played it—and the answer is a piece of country music history.
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Desert barons, high-altitude comedy, and a rock & roll wizard.
Seth Morris recounts meeting an "elegant desert baron" during a cross-country bike trip, while Brian Soika shares how a chance meeting with Wayne Coyne led to a fiery national television segment and a legendary band photo.
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A gold-leafed king's suite and a midnight rocket launch.
Parker Brooks describes the surreal architecture of Berlin’s most famous artist hotel, while Aaron Kyle reflects on the grueling peaks and unbridled joys of a decade spent in a tour van.
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A breakdown in a rural warehouse and a tour with a legend.
Keith Waggoner recounts being stranded in a small-town warehouse with a questionable mechanic, while Adeline Dante shares a memorable and innocent encounter with Daniel Johnston during her first national tour.
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A stomach-churning burger joint in Alabama and a last-minute gamble at the Canadian border.
Andy Creighton tells a stomach-churning story about a roadside burger joint in rural Alabama that made a bold claim and delivered something nobody ordered. Then Thomas Sutherland reveals the improvised trick that saved a 30-day international tour from complete collapse at the Canadian border.
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A documentary filmmaker, a desert, an edible, and a clown who couldn't tell what was real anymore.
John Gilkey, award-winning circus performer and Cirque du Soleil veteran, shares the story of a film student who tracked him down in the Arizona desert to make a documentary — and what happened when John's own philosophy of blurring reality came back to bite him in the ass.
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A secret parking spot in Chicago and a rock and roll cover-up 19 years in the making.
Ian Lee, drummer, songwriter, and tour bus company owner, shares two stories from life behind the wheel. The first is a tale of unexpected human connection forged in a sketchy industrial corner of Chicago. The second involves the Dave Matthews Band, 800 pounds of waste, and a tip from someone who claims to know what really happened on that bridge.
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A child actor on set in Spain and a coffee hunter in the mountains of Yemen.
Daryl Sabara reflects on what it was like to grow up on the road as a young actor — the wonder, the loneliness, and the grief of missing ordinary life. Then Chris Jordan takes us to the remote farms of Ethiopia and Yemen where he's spent years building relationships with the people who grow some of the world's most extraordinary coffee.
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A cross-country road trip in 2003 where the strange and the meaningful kept showing up at the same time.
Johnny O'Donnell, songwriter and filmmaker, recounts a summer road trip through America with two best friends — a journey full of bad motels, missed connections, a 70-year-old hitchhiker in the Gulf of Mexico, and a train ride home that turned into one of the most unexpectedly moving experiences of his life.
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A one-way ticket out of LA and a chance encounter that put her back on the page.
Kristi Dick, screenwriter and world traveler, shares the story of what happened when she finally stopped waiting and just left. What followed was a journey through South America and beyond — and one unexpected conversation that reminded her why she became a writer in the first place.
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From a Highland village revolt to the depths of the Guatemalan jungle.
Scout McComb, artist and writer, shares two extraordinary stories from his time in Guatemala — one that pulls him into the middle of something ancient and raw, and another that takes him deep into the jungle to a place most people will never see, where the unexpected happens more than once.
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On a mountain film set with a Hollywood legend and on a bus that should never have gone through a car wash.
Kent Adamson takes us behind the scenes on the opening shoot day of The Big Red One — a story about Samuel Fuller, a pearl-handled pistol, and one very unforgettable introduction to Lee Marvin. Then Katy Cox takes us through both ends of the touring spectrum, from the most chaotic bus ride of her life to the perfectly organized tours that reminded her why she got into music in the first place.
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A sketchy truck stop somewhere between Denver and Kansas City, and a music festival cookie that nobody was ready for.
Joey Siara, frontman of Near Beer and the Henry Clay People, shares two stories about the strange and affectionate bonds that hold a band together even when everyone is driving each other crazy. One involves a broken drumstick, a little screwdriver, and a very scary trucker. The other takes place at the Sasquatch Festival and ends in a porta potty at 3:30 in the morning.
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A 65-day tour, a spice-addled house in Jacksonville, a border crossing gone sideways, and a blown head gasket in the middle of the Washington desert.
Frank Hurricane, musician and storyteller, takes us through one of the most colorful tours you'll ever hear about, from a crusty suburban nightmare in Florida to a small town in Washington state where two stranded musicians met the most unlikely angels of the road.
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A Lemmy moment in Sweden and a Navy inspection that nobody on that ship will ever forget.
Susan Otten shares highlights from 25 years on the road as a backup singer with Maria McKee, including a festival in Sweden where she witnessed something legendary, and a small show in Europe where the wrong person happened to be in the audience. Then Navy veteran Forrest Malnar takes us aboard a ship in San Diego for a health and comfort inspection that redefined what the phrase "living conditions" can mean.
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Eight months driving a cab in San Francisco and a boxing gym in East LA that changed everything.
Stephen Flinn, composer, drummer, and percussionist, shares a string of stories from his time driving a cab through the wildest nights San Francisco had to offer, and then takes us to a boxing gym in East Los Angeles where he found something he wasn't expecting to find.
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Thirty years of touring as a punk rock poet dad and a honeymoon in Sicily that went sideways in the most unexpected way.
Ed Hamell of Hamell on Trial shares how he kept his son at the center of a 30-year touring life, racking up 300,000 miles and 16 cross-country trips together. Then clown and Vegas performer Tyler Watson takes us to a beautiful ranch house in Palermo where he and his new wife settled in for a quiet, sober retreat, only to find themselves drawn into a dark and baffling mystery playing out in the cat colony on the property.
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A Ford Mustang, a Mormon Western screenplay, and approximately zero words written.
Josh Caldwell and his longtime writing partner Robert Bell set out across the American West in an upgraded rental Mustang with big plans to write a screenplay on the road. What followed was a week of lightning storms, campus visits, a cop who let them go, a Vietnam vet in a Boise saloon, mushrooms in an Oregon state park, sea lions, a pirate, and a very long drive home. The screenplay never got written. The trip never got forgotten.
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A backpack, a one-way ticket, and a photograph that led him somewhere he never planned to go.
Writer and director Jacob Vaughan sold everything, crossed the border into Mexico, and started following the river wherever it went. What followed was a journey through some of the most unexpected corners of the country, including a hitchhike that could have gone badly, a chance encounter in a town square, and a knock on a stranger's door in a mountain village that turned into something he couldn't have scripted.
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From opening for the Black Crowes on September 12th, 2001 to watching the Doobie Brothers play China Grove in a New Mexico casino.
Farmer Dave Scher, founding member of Beachwood Sparks, takes us through a life of music that has taken him from a munitions factory recording studio in Connecticut to Navajo Reservation land two days after 9-11, from a tour that nearly fell apart in New Mexico to a perfect day off in Paris with a love letter floating down the Seine.
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Gators in Georgia, a fake body in a swamp, and the day he became the Tampon Man.
Location manager and scout David Warren takes us through some of the strangest corners of Georgia, from calling gators out of the Okefenokee Swamp on the back of a golf cart, to accidentally making the Augusta news cycle, to scouting the Florida Georgia state line for the perfect spot to put a giant tampon on somebody's property.
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A self-playing cello in an English pub and a tour bus trapped in the entrance to the Midtown Tunnel.
Songwriter Giulia Millanta shares two spooky encounters from the road in England, and then traces a thread from a childhood coma in Florence to a first year anatomy class that revealed something she never expected. Then tour bus driver Ian Lee returns to paint the sweatiest, most nail-biting picture of what it means to navigate a 13-foot bus through midtown Manhattan with 12 lanes of traffic and guns drawn.
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A purse left in a Bangkok taxi, a passport stuck in an embassy, and an alarm clock that did not go off.
Valerie Warren was on a routine visa run from Taiwan to Bangkok in 1993 when everything that could go wrong did, in rapid succession. What followed was one of the most relentlessly stressful solo travel days imaginable, and how it ended is the part nobody would believe.
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From the blues clubs of Detroit to a mountain in Colorado where something shifted that he still can't fully explain.
Bill Bruzy, therapist, writer, and photographer, takes us through the years he spent getting knocked down and finding his way back. From buying random plane tickets after his father's death, to a late-night bus to Chicago where the strangest people kept appearing, to a solo climb into the Rocky Mountains that ended in a moment he has carried with him ever since.
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A one-way ticket to Shanghai, two years of underground punk records, and one very tense moment at a Chinese police station.
Music producer and studio owner Manny Nieto bought a one-way ticket to China in 2011 with a backpack full of microphones and a plan to record bands that nobody in the West had ever heard. What followed was two years of Cold War bunkers, Rastafarian bars, mystery street food, and a border crossing that nearly ended everything.
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Two years traveling the world without a plane, and enough close calls to fill several books.
Former TV journalist Lucy Griffiths set out in 2001 to circle the globe by train, bus, boat, yacht, donkey, and whatever else came along. What followed was two years of cocaine on a Belarus train, diamond smugglers in Moscow, Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia, machine guns in Pakistan, and a leaking boat stranded in the dead calm waters between Indonesia and a country at war.
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A two-month car commercial shoot spanning five continents and ending in a Shanghai police station.
Producer Michael Merryman was tasked with finding the tallest, longest, and biggest wonders on earth for a major automotive campaign. What followed was a two-month journey from the world's highest active volcano in Ecuador to the ice roads of the Canadian Arctic to the Silk Road in western China, and eventually to a situation in Shanghai that he absolutely did not see coming.
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A news reporter deep in the Indiana woods who really should have checked what season it was, and a van full of musicians who probably should not have called Dr. Drew.
Jeremy Sage trekked 40 minutes into the woods chasing a secret waterfall and came face to face with someone who was not happy to see him. Then Keith Waggoner, returning for his second episode, shares the story of a road trip, a Vice Magazine article, and an inadvertent national radio appearance that may have introduced America to a disease that didn't exist.
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A Cadillac ride through West Texas with Santa Claus and a dying woman, and a man on a church steps in Oaxaca with a scar and a story.
Josh's brother Patrick Caldwell hitchhiked across the US in the mid-80s with a guitar and no plan, and shares one of the more unforgettable rides the road has ever served up. Then photographer Jeffrey Martin, who builds cameras that see everything, shares a story from Oaxaca that begins with weed on church steps and ends somewhere very dark. Fair warning on that second one.
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A tech reporter sent to cover wildfires and protests just a few neighborhoods from his own front door.
Jacob Ward was NBC's technology correspondent until COVID and the murder of George Floyd rewrote his job overnight. He shares what it was like to be tear gassed live on MSNBC two miles from his own house, and what it taught him about the limits of journalistic distance when the unfamiliar shows up in your own backyard.
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From a Rajneesh ashram neighborhood in Pune to a dishwasher shift in upstate New York to the San Francisco startup scene.
Karthik Nagarajan grew up in India in the 1990s, five minutes from a famous ashram, with a French best friend from the commune next door and David Bowie playing in his head. He shares what it was like to discover himself in a country on the edge of globalization, and what it took to build a life in a country he only knew through art.
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A dead transmission on I-10 and a yellow Lebaron that ended up green.
Sima Cunningham of Finom shares the story of a van breakdown in the New Mexico desert that set off a sixteen-hour chain of events culminating in a very specific moment outside of LAX. Then actor Jessy Schwartz shares what happened when a stranger on a Hollywood street offered to fix his car while he went to an audition.
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Seven cities in five days across China and a bioluminescent midnight swim in Vietnam.
World Barista Champion Dale Harris shares what it was like to accidentally become coffee famous and spend the following years bouncing between continents, and the one tranquil hour in an unknown Chinese tea house that he can't quite place on any map. Then Josh's nephew Seth Caldwell shares a night on an abandoned beach in Vietnam where the ocean started glowing, and what happened when he followed a German woman across Southeast Asia in search of Wiener Schnitzel in Cambodia.
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A piano lesson that went somewhere nobody expected and a U-Haul full of ravers that went somewhere nobody expected either.
DJ Nancy Chang shares the origin story behind her love of music, a story she tells at the start of every new friendship because it's just that kind of story. Then Robb Gilbear takes us through a night of raving in Toronto in 1995 where a night of dancing ended with 33 teenagers in the back of a U-Haul truck on a dark highway, and a senior police officer saying something that nobody wanted to hear.
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A one-way ticket to Kolkata and a Royal Enfield with no license.
Podcaster and specialty coffee veteran James Harper shares the piece of his origin story that happened on the roads of India, where a series of decisions he couldn't quite explain led him somewhere he never planned to go.
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A skater from San Francisco, a sailing school in Florida, and one final night in the Bahamas that got out of hand.
Chris Robinson shares the story of a strange detour from his San Francisco skating and school life, where a chance to become a certified sailor led him to Florida, then to the Bahamas on a 38-foot sloop called the Shady Lady, and eventually to a roadside in the middle of the night surrounded by strangers.
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A village in Scotland where someone kept walking into the shot, and a mountain pass in Montenegro with no guardrail and a stalling stick shift.
Filmmaker and director Tessa Blake shares two stories from the road that capture exactly what it takes to get the job done, one that required a lawn chair and a cup of tea, and one that required considerably more nerve.
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Paul Simon, a quantum wink and a rental car returned to Dublin Airport in a condition best not described.
Singer-songwriter Harry Hudson-Taylor shares the surreal chain of events that began with his dad being in a band with Sting and ended backstage in Los Angeles with his musical hero. Then his partner Seraphina Taylor shares what happened on a solo Ladybird Lad tour of Ireland when everything that could go wrong did, all at once, on a motorway.
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Seven days of vodka through Montenegro and a midnight drive from Detroit to New York City.
Seth Shelden shares a road trip through Montenegro that started with sleeping on a stranger's floor and ended somewhere he never could have predicted. Then roots rock singer Caitlin Krisko shares the overnight drive that changed her life, courtesy of a mom who didn't think twice.
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A one-way ticket out of New York and the baggage that followed her everywhere.
Therapist and podcaster Kate Marlene shares what happened when she blew up an engagement, took the wedding money, and set out to travel the world looking for freedom. It's the kind of story that starts one way and ends somewhere very different.
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A treatment center in Arizona, a surprising roommate, and an invitation to Maui with fifty-three dollars in his pocket.
VFX producer Rick Redick shares the story of a dark period in his younger days that led him somewhere completely unexpected, and the friendship that formed along the way that taught him something he's never forgotten.
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A filmmaker who tells other people's stories suddenly finds herself in the middle of one she never expected to live.
Documentary filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos shares what it was like to lose everything in the LA fires of January 2025, and the two moments in the aftermath that stayed with her. One she couldn't walk into. One she didn't expect to need.
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A rusty swing stage six stories up in Ukraine and a bat in a trash can in Roanoke, Virginia.
Muralist James Bullough shares two stories from life on the side of a building, one involving a jankety Ukrainian swing stage that nearly took him out, and one involving a Grateful Dead loft, a box cutter guy, and four nights of escalating bat chaos in Virginia.
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A cinematic nightmare in West Texas and a freezing spring race through Europe.
James Ease shares the story of a West Texas road trip that felt like it was following a pre-written script, while Jeff Smith details a harrowing tour through a cold European spring that ended in a literal run for the boarding gate at Schiphol.