Deviate

Latest Episodes:

Going abroad for love, and travel writing that says something new about a place Nov 14, 2023

Show notes

“When asked to give advice to young people looking to become travel writers, I invariably tell them to go – alone – and live in a country where they don’t speak the language.” –Thomas Swick

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Tom talk about the thematic limitations of memoir writing, and the early stages of Tom’s career as a journalist (2:00); his decision to move to Poland for love, and his experiences living in Warsaw around the time of the Solidarity movement (9:30); the task of writing a travel memoir about events that happened decades ago, and how the American news cycles tends to ignore international matters (15:00); the task of getting started in travel writing in the twenty-first century (21:00); and how travel writers have the ability to bring a fresh eye to places that people who live there might miss (26:00).

Thomas Swick (@roostertie) is an author and writer of The Joys of Travel, A Way to See the World, and Unquiet Days. His newest book is Falling into Place: A Story of Love, Poland, and the Making of a Travel Writer.

Notable Links:

The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
Misery memoir (literary genre focusing on trauma)
Aix-en-Provence (city in France)
Alsace (region of eastern France)
Trenton Times (newspaper in New Jersey)
Watergate (political scandal)
David Maraniss (American journalist and author)
Pope John Paul II (Poland-born Catholic pope)
Solidarity (Polish anti-authoritarian movement)
Martial law in Poland (early 1980s reaction to Solidarity)
Patrick Leigh Fermor (English traveler and author)
Tim Cahill (American travel and adventure writer)
Dave Barry (American humorist and author)
Holiday Magazine (postwar travel magazine)
Granta (British literary magazine)
Holidays in Hell, by P.J. O’Rourke (book)
Colin Thubron (British travel writer)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Seek places where your very presence makes you interesting (book club redo) Oct 31, 2023

Show notes

“One way of making famous landmarks more comprehensible is to look for surprises, good and bad, that go beyond what you are expected to encounter there, details that open you up to the raw imperfections of the encounter itself.” –Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate – which is a redo of episode 229, which didn’t air properly due to technical problems – Rolf and The Vagabond’s Way book club participants discuss how to break out of standard tourist routines and see places in unexpected way (1:30); how to get beyond the transactional, “taxi drivers and bartenders” layer of travel (10:00); how to become more independent of technology and smartphones as a traveler and find the “wisdom of place” (16:00); and the travel photos Rolf wishes he had taken when vagabonding 20 years ago (23:00).

Discussion moderator Luke Richardson is a traveler, author, and DJ based in England.

Notable Links:

Rolf’s online book club signup
The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
Kalash people (tribe in Pakistan)
Up Cambodia without a phrasebook, by Rolf Potts (essay)
Henry Rollins Travel Slideshow (spoken-word tour)
White Zombie’s J. Yuenger on long-term travel (Deviate episode)
Before Sunrise (1995 film directed by Richard Linklater)
Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf’s creative writing classes)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Travel memoir lab: Truth, luck, & multi-genre storytelling (with Tom Bissell) Oct 17, 2023

Show notes

“Not everyone who’s lucky is talented and not everyone who’s talented is lucky.” –Tom Bissell

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Tom talk about Tom’s lack of travel experience when he joined the Peace Corps, and how he dealt with his early failures (2:30); the role that luck (as well as craft and obsessive reading) has played in his writing career (8:00); how, as a writer, to turn real-life people, including yourself, into convincingly human and honest nonfiction “characters” (16:00); Tom “failures” as a writer, the challenges of screenwriting, and the difficulty of writing books that sell (38:30); the book that Tom is most proud of, and how to get out of the success/failure dichotomy as a creative person (47:00); plus a post-interview segment about drinking in Paris (56:00).

Tom Bissell is an American author, journalist, critic, and screenwriter. He is the author of such books as Chasing the Sea, Apostle, God Lives in St. Petersburg, Extra Lives, and The Disaster Artist.

Notable Links:

Rolf’s Paris travel memoir workshops (annual classes)
Salt and Fire (2016 Werner Herzog movie)
Star Wars: Andor (TV series)
Harper’s Magazine (literary publication)
Aral Sea (endorheic lake in central Asia)
Steven Soderbergh (American film director)
Ryszard Kapuściński (Polish journalist and author)
A Sense of Direction, by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (travel memoir)
“War Zones for Idiots”, by Tom Bissell (essay)
Lucasfilm (American film and TV company)
Tony Gilroy (American screenwriter)
Michael Clayton (2007 legal thriller movie)
Greg Sestero (American actor and model)
Tommy Wiseau (Polish-American filmmaker)
The Room (film regarded as the worst movie ever made)
Creative Types, by Tom Bissell (short story collection)
The Father of All Things:, by Tom Bissell (memoir)
Heraclitus (ancient Greek philosopher)
Stoicism (school of Hellenistic philosophy)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian writer and dissident)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Seek places where your very presence makes you interesting (book club remix) Oct 03, 2023

Show notes

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and The Vagabond’s Way book club participants discuss how to break out of standard tourist routines and see places in unexpected way (1:30); how to get beyond the transactional, “taxi drivers and bartenders” layer of travel (10:00); how to become more independent of technology and smartphones as a traveler and find the “wisdom of place” (16:00); and the travel photos Rolf wishes he had taken when vagabonding 20 years ago (23:00).

Discussion moderator Luke Richardson is a traveler, author, and DJ based in England.

Notable Links:

Rolf’s online book club signup
The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
Kalash people (tribe in Pakistan)
Up Cambodia without a phrasebook, by Rolf Potts (essay)
Henry Rollins Travel Slideshow (spoken-word tour)
White Zombie’s J. Yuenger on long-term travel (Deviate episode)
Before Sunrise (1995 film directed by Richard Linklater)
Paris Writing Workshops (Rolf’s creative writing classes)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Vagabonding audio companion: A life in (and philosophy of) long-term travel Sep 19, 2023

Show notes

“One ironic anxiety of travel is that suddenly you’re living in ‘organic time’ and you’re not used to it.” –Rolf Potts

In this “vagabonding audio companion” episode of Deviate, remixed from Aaron Millar’s Armchair Explorer podcast, Rolf talks about his earliest travel dreams, and what compelled him to finally take a vagabonding dream trip around North America by van in his early twenties (2:00); how travel expectations and planning are often at odds with the joy of what happens spontaneously on the road (8:30); the delightful surprises Rolf found on a recent trip to Sumatra and the Mentawai Islands (11:30); Rolf’s experiences in Myanmar, and the importance of seeing time, rather than possessions, as our most important form of wealth in life (22:00); Rolf’s early experiences in Southeast Asia, and his monthlong boat journey down the Mekong River (31:00); and how, at its best, travel teaches us to pay attention to life itself (35:00).

The Armchair Explorer podcast features adventure storytelling set to music and cinematic effects.

Notable Links:

Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts (book)
The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
Souvenir, by Rolf Potts (book)
Van Life before #VanLife (Deviate episode)
Uinta Mountains (mountain range in Utah)
Mardi Gras (annual celebration in New Orleans)
Sumatra (island in Indonesia)
“Travel in Sumatra is cheap and amazing” (dispatch)
“Seeking crowds is better than crowd-sourcing” (dispatch)
Mentawai Islands (archipelago in Indonesia)
“Boredom is one of the greatest gifts of travel” (dispatch)
Hornbill (tropical bird)
Bessie Stringfield (20 century American motorcycle traveler)
Bagan (UNESCO World Heritage Site in Myanmar)
Mekong (river in Southeast Asia)
“One Month on the Mekong,” by Rolf Potts (travel essay)
Henry David Thoreau (American essayist and philosopher)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

A train isn’t just a vehicle; it’s a place (a remix encore, with Monisha Rajesh) Sep 05, 2023

Show notes

“A wonderful aspect of traveling by train is the transactional relationship between passengers who feed off one another, picking up tips, offering advice, guarding each other’s belongings, and generating a trust that is unique to railway travel.” –Monisha Rajesh

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Monisha discuss how her interest in train-travel dates back to a series of journeys she took around India (1:30); her more recent experience of taking the Trans-Mongolian train across Russia and into Asia (14:00); what it was like to travel by train in North Korea, China, and Southeast Asia, and how they differ from European trains (28:00); what it was like to take trains across Canada and the United States, and which global trains Monisha likes best (45:00).

Monisha Rajesh (@monisha_rajesh) is a travel journalist, and the author of Around India in 80 Trains, and Around the World in 80 Trains. She currently lives in London with her husband and two daughters.

Notable Links:

Indrail Pass (Indian rail-pass for foreign nationals)
Saint Basil’s Cathedral (church in Moscow’s Red Square)
Eurail Pass (rail-pass covering 33 European countries)
Trans–Mongolian Railway (long-haul train route)
Circum-Baikal Railway (railway in Russia’s Irkutsk region)
War and Peace (novel by Leo Tolstoy)
Game of Thrones (fantasy TV series)
Korean State Railway (train system in North Korea)
Southwest Chief (American Amtrak route)
German Baptist Brethren (Anabaptist group)
Qinghai–Tibet railway (Asian train route)
Skeena (Canadian passenger train service)
Mandovi Express (train route in India)
Flight shaming (environmental social movement)
Sunset Limited (American Amtrak route)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Travelers experience more when they slow down and ask lots of questions Aug 22, 2023

Show notes

“We live in an age where you can take a series short flights inside a country to speed things up. You end up going to more places, but you experience less, because you’re not really committed to that chicken bus full of really interesting people who want nothing more than to interact with you.” –Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and The Vagabond’s Way book club participants discuss the idiosyncrasies of crossing land borders and traveling overland (1:30); travelers’ tendency to take dishonest photos of places, and how tourist destinations bend to tourists’ expectations (8:00); the small inconveniences that keep travel interesting, even as we try to avoid them, and the idiosyncrasies of haggling overseas (14:00); how food can be a window into cultures and places for travelers (19:00); common scams that travelers encounter on the road (26:00); and the process of how Rolf assembled the meditations in The Vagabond’s Way, and the concept of “walking until your day becomes interesting” (30:00).

Discussion moderator Luke Richardson is a traveler, author, and DJ based in England.

Notable Links:

Rolf’s Vagabond’s Way online book club signup
The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
YouCam Perfect (AI person-remover app)
Kenny G (American smooth jazz saxophonist)
Applebee’s (American restaurant chain)
Mentawai Islands (archipelago in Indonesia)
Brent Nelson sandwich (bar food in Lindsborg, Kansas)
Turkish Knockout, by Rolf Potts (travel essay)
Camille Dungy (poet and writer)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

“Dare to do Dirt”: Seeking rural places (and how to best experience them) Aug 08, 2023

Show notes

“Domestic travel to rural places can be as important as international travel that is more obviously cross-cultural.” –Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Marci talk about how the best trips are guided by curiosity about eight key things, rather than checklists (2:00); what Marci has learned from several decades of writing guidebooks to rural and small-town Kansas, and how these places are worth fighting for (10:30); how urban people can better experience rural places (17:00); using your five senses as a traveler, and other strategies for exploring the nuances of new places (26:30); and seeing places as “mysteries to be solved” (37:30).

Marci Penner (@GetRuralKansas) is the executive director of the Kansas Sampler Foundation, which preserves and sustains rural culture by educating Kansans about Kansas and networking and supporting rural communities. She is involved with the PowerUp Movement (empowerment of those 21-39 who are rural by choice), the Big Rural Brainstorm, and the We Kan! Conference.

Notable Links:

Kansas Guidebook for Explorers, by Marci Penner and Wendee Rowe (guidebook)
Physiographic Regions of Kansas (map)
8 Wonders of Kansas (travel destinations)
Skeleton Coast (coast area of Namibia)
Sterling (town in Kansas)
Microaggressions (accidental verbal slights)
Big Kansas Road Trip (rural tourism event)
Daniel Boone (American frontiersman)
New Almelo, Kansas (community in Norton County)
Nicodemus, Kansas (town founded in 1871 by formerly enslaved Americans)
Damar, Kansas (town founded in 1888 by French Canadians)
Exodusters (movement of African-Americans to Kansas in 19th century)
Boot Hill (cemetery in Dodge City, Kansas)
Fencepost limestone (stone bed in the Great Plains)
Cuba, Kansas (Czech-American rural community)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Vagabonding audio companion: Why (and how) travel souvenirs matter Jul 25, 2023

Show notes

“A souvenir can be anything from a travel experience that honors a certain moment in your life, certifies the journey that took you there, and celebrates the confluence of people and places and actions that made it possible.” – Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Suzanne talk about the ways souvenirs help narrate our travel experiences (2:00); the five different historical categories of travel souvenirs (7:30); the old trend of collecting hair and bones from famous people (15:00); what kinds of souvenirs are popular with travelers (20:00); which souvenirs Rolf sought when he visited Australia, and how some souvenirs make less sense when you get them home (24:30); then Rolf and Gina talk about childhood travel souvenirs (30:00); how photographs are a kind of souvenir, and how they create different memories than objects (36:00); and how the notion of “authenticity” in regard to souvenirs can be complicated (40:00).

Suzanne Hill is the presenter of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Weekend Nightlife.”

Gina Kaufmann is an essayist and radio journalist, most recently at KCUR, the NPR affiliate in Kansas City.

Notable Links:

Souvenir, by Rolf Potts (book)
One Month on the Mekong, by Rolf Potts (essay)
Grand Tour (17th- to 19th-century European travel rite)
British Museum (public museum in London)
Elgin Marbles (ancient Greek sculptures)
Boxer Rebellion (anti-colonial uprising in China)
Henry Crabb Robinson (19th century English diarist)
John Keats (English Romantic poet)
John Milton (English poet and intellectual)
On Seeing a Lock of Milton’s Hair (Keats poem)
Rue Mouffetard (street in Paris)
Las Vegas Souvenir & Resort Gift Show (convention)
World’s Columbian Exposition (world’s fair in Chicago)
Omiyage (Japanese souvenir rite)
Día de los Muertos (Mexican holiday)
Père Lachaise (cemetery in Paris)
Neil Armstrong (astronaut)
Auschwitz (Nazi concentration camp in Poland)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

Travel can return you to a kind of childhood (online book club remix) Jul 11, 2023

Show notes

“In alien parts, we speak more simply, unencumbered by the histories that we carry around at home, and look more excitedly, with eyes of wonder.” —Pico Iyer

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and The Vagabond’s Way book club participants discuss how he prepares for the book-club sessions (1:30); how the first days of one’s journeys have an optimistic energy and excitement, and how “culture shock” is a real thing (4:00); how travel can put us into a childlike mental state, and how travel expectations can lead to unfair disappointments (13:00); how food, even anomalous food, tells specific stories about places, and Rolf’s strategy for keeping a travel journal (21:30); how the “beaten path” is beaten for good reasons, but straying from it yields serendipitous rewards (31:00); and simple strategies for staying safe and dealing with burnout on the road (42:00).

Discussion moderator Luke Richardson is a traveler, author, and DJ based in England.

Notable Links:

Rolf’s online book club signup
The Vagabond’s Way, by Rolf Potts (book)
Vagabonding, by Rolf Potts (book)
Egeria (ancient Galician nun and pilgrim)
Faroe Islands (North Atlantic archipelago)
Culture shock (cross-cultural anxiety)
Expatriate life in Korea (Deviate episode)
Rick Steves (travel writer and TV host)
Mary Oliver (American poet)
Beginner’s Mind (spiritual attitude of openness)
Whittier (city in southern California)
Nottingham (city in England)
Hippie trail (overland Asia route in 1960s and ’70s)
Pulp Fiction (1994 Quentin Tarantino)
H Mart (Korean supermarket chain)
Lavinia Spalding on travel journaling (Deviate episode)
Patrick Leigh Fermor (English travel writer and scholar)
Commonplace book (compendium of learning)
The Daily Stoic, by Ryan Holiday (book)
On Trails, by Robert Moor (book)
China and Mongolia with my parents (Deviate episode)
České Budějovice (city in the Czech Republic)
Ranong (town in Thailand)

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lu mber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at deviate@rolfpotts.com.

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