Thor Pedersen always felt like he was born too late. He grew up in a world where other people had already done most of the amazing things, like venturing to the North and South Poles, climbing the highest mountains, following the longest rivers, and exploring the depths of the deepest seas. But in 2013, at the age of 34, he discovered one record that no one had yet managed to achieve. So he went to the store, bought a map, and began marking it with a blue pen and a red pen. Before long, he hatched a plan to make history and get his name “on page 506 in some little book,” as he saw it: he would travel to every country in the world without flying, in a single, unbroken journey. On this episode of Far From Home, he tells the story of that journey and how it turned out to be way longer and more difficult than he ever imagined it would be.

Check out Thor’s blog, where he documented his entire, decade-long trip. Read More →

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Far From Home is an immersive travel and culture podcast where Peabody award-winning journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from his journeys to faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia.

If you’re discovering the show for the first time, you might want to start with the episode about the medicine man in Peru or check out the one about the guy who’s traveled around the world making balloon hats. The story about visiting Chernobyl was also pretty popular among listeners, as was the episode about the experiences of African Americans traveling the world.

And if you’re looking for a series to binge, listen to the first season, which tells the story of an 11,000 mile / 18 country road from the UK to Mongolia in a ridiculously tiny car (highlights: check out this episode from Iran and this one from Turkmenistan)!

New to podcasting? See these step-by-step instructions for how to listen.

Two decades ago, I was just starting out as a public radio reporter, applying for literally every radio job opening I saw, and somehow I ended up getting hired by a small station in Norman, Oklahoma. Given that the culture, politics, and geography were so incredibly different from anything I’d been exposed to up to that point. moving there from my home state of New Jersey almost felt like going to a foreign country. Yet despite any initial reservations I had, it turned out to be a really great experience, and the five years I spent there ended up making me a better journalist and a better person.

On this episode, I share a couple of my favorite radio stories I produced during my time in Oklahoma, to give you a small sense of the culture of this region that many Americans on the coasts simply regard as “flyover country.” First, I get to experience the traditional sport known as catfish noodling. Then I go on a rattlesnake hunt in southwestern Oklahoma. Read More →

A while back, a friend of mine named Oraz who runs an autobody repair shop in Turkmenistan came across a kind of puzzle. A new vehicle had just arrived on his lot. A white Lexus SUV. He could see by the registration sticker that it came from my home state of New Jersey, but the even stranger thing was the shape it was in. It was practically brand new, unlike like the dented and mangled cars that usually come to him for repairs. Oraz wondered: how did this car get here, to his shop? And what kind of place, what kind of person, casts off such a nice new car? Those questions led me on a journey through the international used car underground... all the way back to a pleasant, two-story home in suburban New Jersey. To find the answers, I teamed up with reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi of NPR’s Planet Money podcast, which features fun and surprising stories about the global economy.

BONUS: If you want to learn more about Turkmenistan, one of the most obscure and reclusive countries in the world, check out this episode about my trip there back in 2016.

Season one tells the story of an epic journey I took with my brother and some friends, raising money for charity. Over seven weeks, we drove across Europe and Asia, through 8 time zones, 5 mountain ranges, and a few deserts, all the way from the UK to Mongolia!

Listen in and follow along with our adventures as we face everything from language barriers to mechanical trouble, getting horribly lost to paying bribes to shady traffic cops.

On the second season of the show, I ditch the car and slow down the journey, sharing my unexpected adventures and chance encounters with interesting people around the world as I continue my travels to places as diverse as Cambodia, Chernobyl, Spain, Japan, and Peru. The goal as always is to get lost down back alleys, venture off the beaten path, and look for stories in far-flung corners of the world that most tourists never visit. In the end, I find that wherever I go, despite whatever cultural, political, and geographic differences people have, they’re generally far more alike than they are different.