This week’s episode is a bit different from what I normally do on the show. I’ve been getting a lot of questions and comments from listeners recently, so I thought I’d spend some time today answering some of them and sharing a bit of the feedback I’ve received. Some of you were also curious about my background and how I created Far From Home, so in the second half of the program, I’m featuring a recent interview I did with Corey Cambridge on his show, OPP (Other People’s Podcast) , where I talk ...
Nov 14, 2019•37 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This upcoming January marks the tenth anniversary of the massive earthquake in Haiti. It came on a Tuesday afternoon, 12 days into the new year, and destroyed or severely damaged a quarter of a million homes, killing more than 100,000 people. Eight months later, in September of 2010, I traveled to Haiti with several journalist colleagues to document the country’s slow recovery process. On today’s episode, I revisit my journey and some of the reporting I did, and I check in with Haitian freelance...
Nov 05, 2019•43 min•Season 2Ep. 9
When he was growing up in Southern California, Addi Somekh wasn't quite sure what to do with his life. But he knew from a young age that he wanted to "spread warmth" and make other people happy. On this week’s episode, the unusual story of how Addi’s quest to do just that set him off on a worldwide mission to make people laugh. Addi and his friend Charlie hatch a plan to travel around the globe making balloon hats for people, but what at first sounds like a fun and quirky adventure turns out to ...
Oct 17, 2019•26 min•Season 2Ep. 8
I feel like several of the trips I’ve taken in recent years have been to places people have urged me to go while I still can, or at least before things change. On today’s show, I visit Cambodia, which is one such place that’s changed dramatically, where the present no longer looks like the past. First I go to Angkor Wat, which had just 8000 tourists in 1993, but 2.5 million by 2018. Then I take a ride on Battambang’s famous bamboo railway, which was moved to a new location the year after my trip...
Oct 04, 2019•22 min•Season 2Ep. 7
As a follow-up to my last episode , I present the story of my friend Dennis, who also tried ayahuasca in Peru and seemed to be immune to its effects. Select music in this episode was licensed from composer Anthony Kozar under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. ————- On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian documents fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org...
Sep 28, 2019•17 min•Season 2Ep. 6
In the previous episode of Far From Home, I visited Lima, Peru, where I met a traditional medicine man named Lucho. This time, I accompany him to a healing ceremony where he uses a hallucinogenic brew called ayahuasca. I also speak with an anthropologist to learn more about the history of shamanism. Visit my website to see some photos from the ceremony. ————- On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian documents fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Cherno...
Sep 23, 2019•30 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Lucho is a traditional medicine man who describes himself as a "curandero," or someone who heals. Using medicinal herbs, archeological relics, and hallucinogenic plants (as well as some special powers), he claims to have rid himself of diabetes and his father of cancer. He regularly travels around Peru treating people with all sorts of ailments. On this episode of Far From Home, I travel to Lima and join Lucho as he goes on a journey, searching for a star-shaped stone with supposed magical power...
Sep 06, 2019•28 min•Season 2Ep. 5
In 1998, political leaders in Northern Ireland signed a peace agreement they hoped would end the Troubles, a 30 year period of armed conflict between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists. Decades later, the situation has improved, but cities like Belfast remain divided by dozens of fences and walls separating the two communities. And removing them isn’t going to be easy. On this episode of Far From Home, I visit Northern Ireland to learn about the history and speak to residents about w...
Aug 22, 2019•28 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Throat singing is one of the world’s oldest forms of music. It’s practiced by indigenous groups in several parts of the world, including South Africa and the Canadian Arctic. But mostly when people talk about throat singing, they’re referring to the style performed in the remote Russian republic of Tuva, which the local people call khoomei. It’s an ancient practice created by the nomadic people of Central Asia who were trying to mimic sounds of nature like the songs of birds, a babbling brook, o...
Aug 13, 2019•23 min•Season 2Ep. 3
For more than 80 years, Tokyo, Japan’s Tsukiji fish market had a reputation for supplying some of the freshest and best quality seafood anywhere. But over the decades, it had become overcrowded, unsanitary, and unsafe. After years of planning, the city decided to move the market last fall to a larger and more modern facility about a mile-and-a-half away. Despite the obvious benefits, there were also plenty of complaints that the new location was harder to get to, felt sterile and soulless, and s...
Jul 25, 2019•29 min•Season 2Ep. 2
If you’ve seen or heard about the recent HBO dramatic miniseries about Chernobyl, you might have wondered what it’s really like there today. I take a trip to the abandoned villages surrounding the reactor to find out for myself. Read more about my visit and see photos and videos on my website. ————- On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian documents fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.or...
Jul 11, 2019•36 min•Season 2Ep. 1
People often say it’s a small world, but there are giant parts of the planet that most people never think about and billions of stories they’ve never heard. On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian visits some of those places, documenting his unexpected adventures and chance encounters with interesting people wherever he goes. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org .
Jun 18, 2019•2 min
After driving 11,000 miles over the course of seven weeks, we finally reached the finish line of the Mongol Rally, and everything was suddenly over. There was no more waking up early to hit the road, driving 12 hours to make up for lost time, and arriving at our destination long after dark. No more tow trucks or tow ropes, restaurants serving meat from another strange animal, or sleeping in uncomfortable beds in sketchy hotel rooms that desperately needed a remodel. No more use for Google Transl...
May 01, 2019•39 min•Season 1Ep. 24
We’d spent 7 weeks driving nearly 11,000 miles across Europe and Asia, and although we were nearing the end of our journey, we still had a series of challenges ahead. Our route in the coming days would take us across some of the roughest terrain we’d encounter our entire trip, and our car problems would continue, but after hearing stories from some of the other rally teams, we realized our situation could have been far worse. Plus the hardships along the way only make getting to the end all the ...
Mar 21, 2019•37 min•Season 1Ep. 23
After a series of bad decisions, my brother and I had ended up stranded with our friends at the bottom of an incredibly steep and rocky hill in a really remote part of Mongolia. We’d sent a text by satellite to the American embassy in Mongolia’s capital who dispatched a rescue team, and when that team couldn’t find us, they sent a second team. Help finally arrived after dark, but this would be no simple rescue. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to li...
Dec 24, 2018•26 min•Season 1Ep. 22
After getting stuck driving across a shallow river in Mongolia, my brother and I make the fateful decision to veer off the main path onto another trail that seems like it might be easier. Unfortunately, it’s not long before we realize we’ve made a terrible mistake. Now we’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, with no other signs of life for miles in any direction. Having exhausted all our options, we seek shelter in an abandoned-looking building and contact the American embassy for help. Read mo...
Oct 01, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Mongolia is a place of wide open spaces and little vegetation. It’s the the land of Genghis Khan, nomadic culture. and yodeling dance music . It’s a country that’s twice the size of Texas, but with only 3 million people, it has the lowest population density of any nation on earth. It’s also a place with notoriously bad roads, where the main east-west routes are often little more than tracks through the dirt. Maps and satellite GPS are of little navigational help, and signs are few and far betwee...
Aug 01, 2018•32 min•Season 1Ep. 20
When my brother and I told friends we’d be driving across Kazakhstan, we got plenty of jokes about Borat, but we were about to find out that the real-life nation of Kazakhstan was almost nothing like what was portrayed on the screen. Far from being backwards and uncivilized, the country we experienced was fascinating, friendly, and full of surprises. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to listen to all the episodes in order from the beginning for the s...
Jun 11, 2018•32 min•Season 1Ep. 19
We were in an extremely remote section of eastern Tajikistan, and we’d just received news that our car’s engine might not last much longer. Left with few options, the best we could do was to keep going, keeping our fingers crossed that our luck would hold out. In the midst of it all, our route was about to take us over a mountain pass that was nearly 3 miles high. Then we end up getting horribly lost in Kyrgyzstan on a rocky dirt road with dozens of switchbacks, and we have no idea where we’ll s...
May 02, 2018•26 min•Season 1Ep. 18
The mountainous Pamir Highway in Tajikistan was precisely the type of terrain that our 1-liter Nissan Micra hatchback was not suited to handle. One of our friends had described it as a car “that you would expect a 60-year-old woman to drive to the supermarket twice a week,” and now we were pushing it to ever-greater extremes, keeping our fingers crossed that it would somehow persevere. So we weren’t totally surprised when our luck eventually ran out. Read more and see photos on my website. Far F...
Apr 03, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Our car was running once again, but now we faced a handful of new mechanical issues, just as we were about to embark on the roughest part of our journey yet: a 600 mile stretch of mostly unpaved and mountainous road along the Tajikistan - Afghanistan border that’s considered one of the most spectacular and potentially dangerous routes in the world. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to listen to all the episodes in order from the beginning for the sto...
Mar 05, 2018•30 min•Season 1Ep. 16
When we first learned that it would take a week for our car to get repaired, we figured we’d have some time to relax and explore the historic city of Bukhara, Uzbekistan. But instead we’re hit with a variety of unforeseen challenges: our friends Rosi and Jane’s visas are about to expire, the four of us contract some sort of nasty stomach bug, and we learn that we might not be able to enter Mongolia after all. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to list...
Feb 01, 2018•34 min•Season 1Ep. 15
In the three weeks since we started our journey, we’d broken down about 4 times, been to half a dozen mechanics, and tried all sorts of stop-gap measures to solve our car issues, but there was still some sort of big underlying problem whose name we didn’t yet know. Now at another mechanic in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, we were about to find out. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to listen to all the episodes in order from the beginning for the story to make...
Dec 19, 2017•25 min•Season 1Ep. 14
When it comes to welcoming foreign tourists, Turkmenistan is close to the bottom of the list. It was hard enough to get visas in the first place, and when we did, they were only good for 5 days. Now broken down with serious car problems, we had to try to convince officials to give us more time. Alternately, we could throw in the towel and tow the car all the way to the border to try to get it fixed on the Uzbekistan side, but would the border guards even let us in with a car that wouldn’t start?...
Nov 10, 2017•32 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Driving a small, crappy car was a prerequisite for anyone participating in the Mongol Rally. The point was to make the journey more exciting and adventurous. We liked the idea at first, but now we’d broken down yet again, and our mechanical issues this time were worse than ever. After getting a hole in our radiator while driving across eastern Turkmenistan, we get towed to a garage where they repair the leak, but things take a turn for the worse. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From ...
Aug 23, 2017•23 min•Season 1Ep. 12
While I continue to work on the next regular show, here’s a short bonus episode of some conversations I had with some other Mongol Rally teams during our stopover at Turkmenistan’s Door to Hell. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to listen to all the episodes in order from the beginning for the story to make the most sense. Learn more about our trip and follow our adventures at farfromhomepodcast.org and teamdonundestan.com . And if you like what you ...
Jul 27, 2017•6 min•Season 1Ep. 11
We visit the hermit kingdom of Turkmenistan — one of the most reclusive and authoritarian nations in the world — and we see why some visitors describe its capital city of Ashgabat as a cross between Las Vegas and Pyongyang. Paranoia sets in as we get the feeling we’re constantly being watched. And we take a side trip to a giant fire pit in the desert that’s been burning for 40 years! Read more and see photos, as well as a video of the Darvaza Gas Crater on my website. Far From Home is a series, ...
Jul 09, 2017•37 min•Season 1Ep. 11
“Honestly, most Americans — when they think of Iran — probably think of 3 things,” my brother said. “Desert, oil, and nuclear capabilities.” And it was true. Before our road trip across Europe and Asia last summer, we didn’t really have much of an idea what to expect. But now as we drive across Iran, we realize it’s a place where things are rarely black and white. Everywhere we turn, we see a tension between sticking to the old way of doing things and forging a new path. Listen in as we visit th...
May 20, 2017•35 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Our eighteen country road trip across Europe and Asia last summer left us with a wealth of memorable stories and experiences. But if you asked me to name the single most fascinating and thought-provoking place we visited, the answer would clearly be Iran. On this episode, we have enlightening conversations with average Iranians that make us see the country in a new light. Read more and see photos on my website. Far From Home is a series, so it’s best to listen to all the episodes in order from t...
Apr 14, 2017•28 min•Season 1Ep. 9
First there were a series of terrorist attacks in Istanbul and Ankara and a threat from Kurdish separatists vowing to target Turkey’s tourism industry to inflict economic harm. Then an attempted military coup followed by a government crackdown on dissent. As we followed the news in the months leading up to our planned drive across Turkey, it was easy to feel nervous and uncertain about just what we would encounter. After all the anticipation and hand-wringing, we finally cross the border and are...
Mar 23, 2017•25 min•Season 1Ep. 8
