Kristin Addis trusts the world, and she trusts her truest self, the one who hides inside and waits until she is alone to reveal herself. She knows a great deal about solo female travel, having adventured around the world since 2012, and she believes wholeheartedly in talking to strangers and in taking leaps. She offers support to anyone who will listen: if you don’t feel as though you’re understood, or if you don’t know where to look, there are people all around the world who will offer you oppo...
May 08, 2017•40 min
How can I connect with the world around me when I travel? How can I immerse myself in a culture? How can I share my experiences with the world? Yann Ilunga has the answer to each of these questions, and can help guide travelers to their own unique solutions. Yann Ilunga is an entrepreneur, podcaster, consultant, and all-around legendarily cool guy, in Hayden’s own words. He is the person Hayden trusts most with helping start blogs and podcasts, and he visits the Travel Stories Podcast to share h...
May 01, 2017•32 min
Can a person sustain their life on their passions? Can you do what you love and live off of it, too? It’s the perfect road to go down, and one that travelers often find themselves seeking. Juliana Dever has found the path. A travel blogger and an actress from the television series Castle , Juliana has thrown herself into world traveling and drawing experiences from her fears. When she’s not acting, she’s traveling, testing her limits. A self-proclaimed Russophile, Juliana Dever has had a fascina...
Apr 24, 2017•45 min
Travel changes a person. Adapting to an entirely new culture and people not only alters the traveler while they live in that culture, but also changes them irrevocably when they return home. Getting used to the world around you is an important travel step, and one Amanda Kendle is intimately familiar with. Amanda lived in three foreign countries during her twenties, and is the master of slow travel. During her lifetime, she’s developed a travel mentality that can be summed up in one word: “thoug...
Apr 17, 2017•37 min
Can a traveler have a home base? What does stability mean to an adventurer? Is the push-pull siren call of the two different traveling worlds surmountable? Derek Loudermilk, host of The Art of Adventure, answers all of these questions and more, unprompted and in depth. Derek is a father, a digital nomad, and a traveler who believes in the power of dichotomy and travels with his infant son, Axel. An adventurer and a businessman, Derek seeks to help others who have the elusive dream of becoming lo...
Apr 10, 2017•46 min
Letting the path ahead of you lead the way is a degree of control that some people struggle to let go of. Amie and Matt Leichtfuss encourage this degree of trial-and-error, though. On any adventure, letting the details reveal themselves as your journey unfolds can bring the most authentic experiences a traveler can experience. In telling their story, Michoacán: Don't Go There (You'll Die), they prove just how valuable that can be. Traveling with their dog, six surfboards, and a travel vlog, Amie...
Apr 03, 2017•34 min
Are you enough? The answer, no matter how you feel in any particular moment, is always a resounding “yes.” Rachel Rudwall believes that every person is “enough” to start an adventure, that stories are born from the unexpected, and that childlike wonder has a place in the life of a traveler. Her optimistic outlook on life and her love of worldwide connections are a breath of fresh air in the travel world. With a travel story from Cuba and a bright personality, Rachel gives us a story and an inter...
Mar 27, 2017•42 min
Kinga loves sharks, so she went to Isla Mujeres, where whale sharks gather periodically in an afuera. She sailed the rough seas to the afuera, where she encountered one of the greatest scenes of her life. She could see the whale sharks’ dorsal fins, the manta rays swimming with them, and so she jumped into the water with her GoPro. The manta rays spun around her; the whale sharks swam around; she felt as though she was swimming in shark soup. Just then, the GoPro died, and Kinga had to be innova...
Mar 20, 2017•7 min
What does it mean to explore your senses? What does a sense do for a person when they travel? Can you bottle your experiences and bring them home with you? Kinga Philipps, an adventurer currently living in Malibu with a passion for all things aquatic, discusses these points and more with Hayden. The host of The Wild Side with Kinga Philipps on the Travel Channel, Kinga talks mystery, senses, history, and sharks, the last of which she touches on with love and anger. Why Do Humans Travel? Kinga be...
Mar 20, 2017•39 min
In this season four finale of the Travel Stories Podcast, Hayden is joined by Nicole (his writer) and Cody (his composer) to look back over the season, share outtakes, and talk about the upcoming fifth season. They weave through every episode and discuss what they thought about the guests and the stories, bringing in recaps and flashbacks to the highlights of each episode. You’ll remember this season featured Tom Butler, Sarah Miduski, Tania Aebi, Nate Buchanan, Britany Felix, Frank Salas, Leon ...
Feb 27, 2017•59 min
Once upon a time, a wise old Jedi claimed that “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.” He stopped after suffering, though, so we have to wonder: what does suffering lead to? Is there a chance that suffering can lead to new possibilities? From suffering, there are opportunities for growth, for change, and for evolution. Suffering can be the catalyst for so many qualities necessary in a travel, and, sometimes, all that you need to do to obtain those qualities is to...
Feb 20, 2017•36 min
Knowing that you’re able to travel - able to afford it, able to hop on a plane and end up halfway across the world only hours later - can grant you a kind of appreciation you never realized before. Living in a place where travel is possible, where going on unprecedented journeys is possible, where listening to travel story podcasts is possible, is the ideal travel situation. How can you live a life of possibility, and how can you utilize the life of possibility that you have been given? Sarah Mi...
Feb 13, 2017•35 min
Solitude, uncertainty, and unpredictable storms (both physical and metaphorical) are circumstances that every single human being experiences during their lifetime. When you have only yourself and a steadfast belief in luck to rely on, it can be difficult to throw yourself into a situation. If you keep moving forward, though, even the impossible can become possible - and this is especially true when you decide to trust in others and let them help you along your path. Tania Aebi is a living exampl...
Feb 06, 2017•26 min
Learning how to trust is something only you can teach yourself how to do. It can be one of the most important things that you will encounter during travel, but encounter it you must. Who do you trust in this world, though? Can you trust someone you’ve only known for a matter of seconds? How can you trust that you’re going to make the right decision? Hayden introduces Nate Buchanan of Kara and Nate to help him answer these questions and more. Nate Buchanan is famously from the travel vlog Kara an...
Jan 30, 2017•49 min
Charlotte Ahern joins Hayden from her current home base in Vancouver to talk travel, life, Justin Bieber and Terminator 2. They deep dive into some of the more interesting aspects of life, such as why it's a good thing to be rebellious, living somewhere full time and whether it's a good idea to sometimes not take the road less traveled. Charlotte Ahern also brings her story, entitled 'Cheating Death in Lao', documenting the time she had a crystallising epiphany about life and death alike. Someti...
Jan 23, 2017•38 min
Learning how to live a life that is exclusively yours versus the life that you believe you are supposed to live is an essential part of your growth, not just as a traveler, but as a person. Britany Felix has taken a long road to living her life as she wants to, but she has made it all the way to being the person and traveler she wants to be. Her message is to live unconventionally. Britany joins Hayden from Colorado, at the base of the Rocky Mountains. She talks about compromising on settling do...
Jan 16, 2017•40 min
Living on the road is the dream, the goal for many, but not for all. Everybody on the planet Earth is wired differently, and those varied wirings apply to every area of life, including travel. Figuring out how to live on the road, though, is a huge step on the way to learning how you, personally, are wired, regardless of your circumstances. Frank Salas, who prefers the title of The Talented Mr. Salas, joins Hayden to discuss the paths available to becoming an entrepreneur and a nomad like he is....
Jan 09, 2017•40 min
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable in any situation is not easy, but, in order to make complete connections with others, it can be very necessary. Granting yourself the freedom to be vulnerable gives you a freedom when traveling that is totally unparalleled. Hayden invites Leon Logothetis, an adventurer, motivational speaker, philanthropist, host of the television series Amazing Adventures of a Nobody , and author of The Kindness Diaries , to discuss vulnerability and kindness when traveling. Le...
Jan 02, 2017•27 min
It's been quite a year for us at Travel Stories Podcast and this rather small episode is merely a thank you to all of our listeners, and the wishing of a happy holiday season, wherever you may be. Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital
Dec 22, 2016•4 min
Culture is one of the first things you might notice while you travel. While culture shock is a sizable and impactful thing, experiencing other cultures is vital to travel and vital to humanity as a whole. Learning about culture while traveling can help you learn about those that you share the world with, as well as learning more about yourself. Ladan Jiracek visits this week from his own podcast, the Travel Wisdom podcast. He has been to over ninety countries and loves to think about how travel ...
Dec 19, 2016•35 min
Solo traveling is vital to finding oneself as a traveler. Be you at a hostel in Argentina, a farm in Brazil, or a crossroads in Vietnam, traveling solo and making decisions by yourself can help you find yourself both as a traveler and as a person. Lifting the veil off your eyes and being the purest version of yourself will aid you in losing yourself so far that you become found. Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital...
Dec 15, 2016•13 min
Travel is quite the ambitious venture. As Hayden says, “to travel is to live.” “The road is the best teacher,” he continues, and he could not be more right; what travelers can learn from their adventures can shape themselves and their lives from there on forwards. The things we learn about the world are not as important as the things we learn about ourselves. The most important question to ask oneself this week is: how does traveling alone affect what travel gives to us? Justin Walter joins Hayd...
Dec 12, 2016•29 min
A stressless travel mindset is not an easy thing to cultivate, but it is necessary for travelers. Skipping to the end can be a good trait to adopt as a traveler, because you can skip to the moment where something bad seems less drastic and concerning. Bad situations will always come up; when they do, an adventurer needs to be prepared to take the positive from the negative and keep moving forwards. Get in Touch with Hayden on Instagram: @backpackdigital...
Dec 08, 2016•12 min
When bad things happen, humans, in essence, have two response options: they can worry about it, stress about it, and live in a place of fear, for one. Their second option, though? They can pre-accept that bad situations might happen and live in a place of learning and gratitude instead. It is nearly impossible to stop bad situations from happening, but one thing that can be controlled is the response. Hayden welcomes Cody Crabb, a composer based out of Salt Lake City. He has worked on a number o...
Dec 05, 2016•35 min
The only way traveling can come to be is through curiosity. Fostering your own curiosity, which is the root of all travel, is the only way to activate your active mind. Curiosity transforms your thinking about a location, about a culture, about yourself. It drives you to dive into new projects and to keep on asking questions, which can change your life, if you play your cards right. If you attempt to keep your mind open and practice being curious, you can cultivate your curiosity and have your o...
Dec 01, 2016•12 min
A proverb known around the world is “curiosity killed the cat,” but few know the rejoinder: “but satisfaction brought it back.” The risk that satisfying curiosity brings is well worth the fulfillment that comes from gratifying curiosity. Curiosity, that force that drives the human race in all they do, and has done so since their birth, is the reason behind most human activities: reading, walking, and, of course, traveling. Mike Corey joins Hayden to further explore the topic of curiosity. Mike i...
Nov 28, 2016•35 min
Season three has been a roller coaster ride of emotions, from Laura Bingham to Travis Merrigan and everything in between. Of course, Hayden, Cody, and Nicole have to answer for the questions that Hayden has been pushing for the listeners to send in all season, and they come together to do just that in the final episode of season three - the Q&A. Hayden reads questions from Chris Williams, Pete James, Jan, Lakshmi Prahlad, Tom Griffiths, Billy Chavez, Mike Cowl, and Nikola Nováková. The team ...
Nov 21, 2016•50 min
Season three has been a roller-coaster ride of emotions and adventures. Best of all, it has been a tapestry of stories, featuring a broad range of different types of stories and an in-depth exploration of the art of storytelling. Hayden, Cody, and Nicole arrive to unpack their favorite moments from the past season. Among their favorite standout moments are features from the episodes of Evan Hanson, Laura Bingham, Marissa Brown, Richard Bruschi, and Jeff Baker. A few other mentions belong to Tom ...
Nov 14, 2016•46 min
Establishing a human connection is the base of the most important things in this world. Hayden shares what he believes to be the three things that best cultivate these connections between separate human beings before he welcomes Travis Merrigan, one of the founders of Grayl, creator of the infamous Grayl Ultralight Purifier Bottle. Travis Merrigan visits to talk about how excited he is about life and being alive, and how his travels have made him that way. He discusses solo trips, and how awesom...
Nov 07, 2016•44 min
Hayden brings on Cody, Nicole, Remy (his sister), and Gail (his mother) to share stories of fear and fright from around the world. Remy visits to talk about the haunting of Havisham Court by the ghostly Elizabeth Parker, who was destroyed by grief while living in that house. In fact, some say you can still see her roaming the grounds of the house, skeletal in her wedding dress. Nicole shares stories from the haunted graveyard in her Massachusetts hometown - the Quaker Cemetery, also known as Spi...
Oct 31, 2016•53 min
