Deviate With Rolf Potts

“Travel is often one part geography and nine parts imagination.” –Kate Harris In this episode of Deviate Rolf and Kate discuss Kate’s early fixation with exploration and interest in Mars (3:00); science as a catalyst for exploration (10:30); the universality of the human experience and her trip through Asia (21:00); the concept of borders (32:00); nostalgia and the transformational effect of travel (43:00); the role of home in relation to travel (52:00); and letting adventure into your life (1:02:00). Kate Harris (@kateonmars) is an adventure writer, named by Condé Nast Traveler as one of the “world’s most adventurous women.” Her work has appeared in Outside, The Walrus, and Georgia Review. Her book, Lands of Lost Borders, is a national bestseller For more about Kate, check out www.kateharris.ca Notable Links: Rolf’s Q&A with Kate Harris (book foreword) Silk Road (network of trade routes) Mars Desert Research Station (Mars simulation in Utah) Morehead-Cain Scholarship (UNC program) Ernest Shackleton (exp

“I had a great day in Cambodia, and I was like, ‘Oh my god I’m so happy right now.’ I had no idea what I was doing, or what I would discover, and I just trusted that I would be OK.” –Andrew McCarthy In this episode of Deviate Rolf and Andrew discuss his relationship with interviews and the origin of the Brat Pack (3:30); fear and journaling in the time of pandemic, and treasured possessions (12:30); regrets, and artistic truth (23:00); writing as a way of thinking, and what Andrew values in his friends (29:00); and happiness, quarantine-reading, The Great Gatsby, and coming to terms with ones youthful success (38:00). Andrew McCarthy (@AndrewTMcCarthy), who rose to fame as a teen actor during the John Hughes 80’s era, is a television director and writer of such books as The Long Way Home and Just Fly Away.  Notable Links: Proust Questionnaire (set of interview questions) Confession album (19th century autograph book) Pretty in Pink (1986 film) St. Elmo’s Fire (1985 film) Camino de Santiago (pilgrimage route)

“The dualities of the ‘creative person’ and the ‘business person’ don’t need to exist any more, because one person can do all of it.” –Sachit Gupta In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Sachit discuss creativity versus business success, and the currency of social media (2:30); the diminishing returns of listening to advice, and the importance of action (16:00); interview and preparation techniques, and how how “bringing value” can apply to spiritual ideas as readily as business ideas (24:00); being creative in business, and how creative people are now expected to do their own marketing and promotion (36:00); thinking innovatively, and breaking with habit and tradition (44:00); how success can be compromised in the clickbait era, and creativity in the age of social media (59:00). Sachit Gupta (@sachitgupta) is the founder of Platforms Media, where he helps creators build, grow, and scale their online platforms to amplify their message and connect with brands. He is also the host of the Conscious Creators Show. 

“Even the briefest trip into a tunnel or a cave can feel like an escape into a parallel reality, the way characters in children’s books vanish through portals into secret worlds.”  –Will Hunt In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Will talk about our imaginative relationship with underground places, and how it often starts in childhood (4:30); the concept of “urban exploration” in the industrial spaces underneath cities, and Will’s fascination with a NYC graffiti artist named REVS (11:00); the catacombs of Paris, how easy it is to get lost underground, and how hard it is to map underground passages (26:15); going underground as a form of time travel, the microbes that live underground, and the relics that can be found underground (40:00); the spiritual aspect of spending time underground in the dark zone of a cave (51:00); and how and why to get started exploring underground (59:00). Will Hunt’s (@willhunt__) writing, photography, and audio storytelling have appeared in The Economist, the Paris Review Daily, Th

“You need to create your own life, and gather memories while you still can. There are no guarantees that you will have a ‘next year’ or a ‘ten years from now’ or even a tomorrow.” –Maggie Downs In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Maggie discuss how she started traveling (3:00); “trying on” different versions of yourself during travel (17:00); and travel as a way to reflect on your life (37:00). Maggie Downs (@downsanddirty) is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and Lonely Planet’s True Stories From the World’s Best Writers and Best Women’s Travel Writing. She is the author of Braver Than You Think. This episode is also brought to you by AirTreks, an industry leader in multi-stop international travel, specializing in complex routes with up to 25 stops. The AirTreks website offers suggested pre-planned travel itineraries to help you get started, but can customize to fit your journey. The Deviate theme music comes from the title tra

“I reached out to dozens of potential mentors. The two that that changed my life are the ones who didn’t give me advice upon first meeting me, but asked me questions..” –Alex Banayan In this episode of Deviate, Rolf, Cal, and Alex discuss how Alex realized he desperately he needed help in writing his book The Third Door, how Cal Fussman came to help him with the project, and why asking questions is as essential of a mentor as is giving advice (5:30); why the vulnerability and tension of good storytelling is more essential than conveying dry facts in writing a business book, and how Cal encouraged Alex to recount a humiliating story about sending a single shoe to Warren Buffet at the behest of a bad-faith mentor (23:00); what happens when a would-be mentor gives the mentee advice out of narcissism or bad faith, and how to know when not to heed the advice of a mentor (35:00); how to find and recount the most vulnerable and appealing part of your own life-narrative, and how Cal taught himself how to tell good st

“Binge watching is designed to make time disappear. A home film festival is designed to be time well spent.”  –Kevin Smokler Kevin Smokler (@weegee) is a writer, public speaker, critic, and author of Brat Pack America and Practical Classics. He speaks on the future of media and culture and his written work has appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, and Vulture. He previously appeared as a guest on Episode 33 of Deviate, Why 1980s coming-of-age movies matter, and Episode 60, “Celebrating the best travel movies ever.” In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kevin explain how to organize and execute a Shelter in Place Film Festival as an alternative to bingeing video during a time of pandemic. Kevin hosts a full guide online at his website, but here’s an outline version: Notes on creating a Shelter in Place Film Festival Establish a time-constraint An afternoon? A day? A weekend? Film Festivals are inherently a time-bound activity. It may seem counterintuitive to begin planning with how

“Give yourself the luxury of unplugging from the news cycle. Like travel, this will allow you to reconnect with an older way of being human.”  –Rolf Potts To celebrate the launch of Deviate Season 3, Rolf gets the tables turned on him as he is interviewed by Konrad Waliszewski as part of TripScout’s #TravelFromHome initiative. Discussion topics include how travel skills apply to quarantine life at home, and how to engage in creative new habits a familiar environment (3:00); how to find serendipity and spontaneity at home when you can’t travel (12:00); hopes and advice for “getting travel right” once we’re able to travel again (17:30); how to engage in the spirit of long-term travel when you have a more traditional life, such as kids or a place-based job (26:00); which travel books Rolf recommends right now, why he started the Deviate podcast, and which projects he plans to tackle in the near-future (31:00); and how Rolf plans his journeys, what inspired his early travels, and how he seeks to go vagabonding in

“The pandemic might be a pretext to reinvent travel writing in a way that actually reports on the nuances of a complicated world rather than just framing vacation experiences.” –Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf reports solo from his quarantine to talk about the end of his second podcast season, and the misconceptions people have about his home state of Kansas (0:50); what travel might look like once we are no longer in quarantine, the ethical issues surrounding the consumer rituals of the travel industry, and the shortcomings of commercial travel media and travel writing (9:00); how vagabonding travel skills, habits, instincts can help make pandemic quarantine easier and more dynamic, including reading books (16:00); a recap of the most interesting and unique episodes of Deviate Season Two, including movie episodes (20:40); what to expect from Season Three of Deviate, including episodes about travel, travel writing, nostalgia, and racial diversity (25:10); and what life is like for Rolf in quaranti

“This is another thing that travel teaches you: It reminds you that you have to live now, and travel is a way of living now.” – Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and his parents convene in quarantine to reminisce about their old trip to Paris and Prague together, and how it deepened their memories, their understanding of Europe, and their relationship with each other. They begin by talking about why exactly they went to Paris and Prague (8:00); what sights they saw in Paris, both intentional and accidental, and how they remember their experience there (13:00); how in some ways travel to other cultures is a form of “time travel” (18:00); how travel has a way of reverting travelers into a childlike awareness of their surroundings (24:00); why Père Lachaise Cemetery is a fascinating place to visit in Paris (30:00); how a hostel made for a good place from which to base an exploration of Prague, and what they found in the city by walking everywhere (36:00); the joy of taking public transport into unfamil

“What will travel look like after the pandemic? In material ways it will probably change more than it did post-9/11.” –Sean Keener In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Sean talk about how fast the assumptions surrounding international travel have changed in recent weeks, and how that has transformed the assumptions of the travel industry (4:15); making sense of the current uncertainty about how travel has been altered by the COVID-19 pandemic (9;30); distinguishing facts from stories while information about travel keeps changing (16:00); and what travel possibilities and travel ideals might look like in the near future (21:00). Sean Keener (@SEKeener) is the Cofounder and CEO of the BootsnAll Travel Network, a travel media network focused on planning complex, multi-stop, round-the-world travel. He is also the Chairman of AirTreks, a travel network specializing in multi-stop international travel. Notable Links: 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (global viral outbreak) Travel pros reflect on being grounded (Washington Po

“Imagine you wake up and you get this call telling you that your father died three days after your mother. How do you think I felt? I couldn’t even cry any more. ” –Marco Ferrarese This episode of Deviate, Rolf summarizes the pandemic-travel reports he’s been getting from travelers is places like London, Turkey, Mexico, India, and Macau (2:00); then the episode transitions into Marco Ferrarese’s report about his travel-writing excursion in Peru, and what it’s like to be locked down in the Peruvian mountain town of Cabanaconde (4:45); how he heard that Tundra and Maurizio, his parents back home in the Lombardy region Italy, had become sick, and why the virus was still spreading in that part of the country (6:45); how his parents’ illness was initially misdiagnosed, and how things changed when they were admitted to the hospital (11:40); how it was difficult to interpret the news that was being passed along from the hospital as his parents’ conditioned worsened, and how he found out that his mother, and later hi

“Epidemiologists have found that you can slow a pandemic tremendously by focusing public hygiene efforts on three key global airports.” –Dr. JP Santiago In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Dr. JP Santiago talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic will change global air travel moving forward (2:00); the prescience of the 2011 movie Contagion, what the scientific data says right now about how long COVID-19 can contaminate various surfaces (13:30); what to make of certain “folk cures” for COVID-19, as well as whether or not it’s safe to take medicines like ibuprofen to treat symptoms (20:00); the future of post-traditional medical treatment approaches, such a telemedicine (29:30); what other pandemics, such as H1N1 can (or cannot) teach us about how to respond to COVID-19 (34:00); and when “normal” life might return, given pandemic concerns, and what that might look like (42:00). JP Santiago has been a family medicine physician in private practice in Dallas/Fort Worth for nearly 20 years. He earned his medical degr

“We need to avoid cherry-picking pandemic data that suits our personal narrative of what we think is going on.” –Dr. JP Santiago In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Dr. JP Santiago talk about how the “existential threat” of pandemic is changing the way family-practice doctors are dealing with patients right now (1:40); the role of data in medicine, the definition of “observer bias,” and how the willingness to arrive at conclusions that contradict one’s initial hypothesis is essential in a medical context (9:30); a history of the shortcomings and dangers of naming infectious diseases after animals, people, or geographical places (20:00); how capitalism can be a force that can both enable and compromise solutions during a pandemic (33:30); and Dr. Santiago’s advice on how people should respond to the pandemic (40:00). JP Santiago has been a family medicine physician in private practice in Dallas/Fort Worth for nearly 20 years. He earned his medical degree in 1997 from the University of Texas Southwestern in D

“All the struggles of travel have taught me lessons about survival that will be useful coming up.” –Rollie Peterkin “I don’t think there are any ‘right’ choices at the moment. We’re all making the best with what we’ve got to work with.” –Aimée Bruneau “I think we’ll come out of this with a better sense that caring for other people is the most important thing in life. Not material possessions. Not political differences. Not ethnicity or religion. Just the fact that we’re all one human family.”  –Barbara Weibel In this episode of Deviate, Mike and Anne Howard describe what it’s like to be staying put in Poland during the pandemic lockdown (2:30); Justine Miller talks about being stuck in a Tunis hotel after flights stopped leaving the airport (6:00); Rollie Peterkin recounts what it was like to travel in Turkey as news of the pandemic mounted (9:00); Samantha Page talks about how Australian emergency preparedness was enhanced by the recent wildfire outbreak there (13:30); Aimée Bruneau describes a comparativel

“Being diagnosed with COVID-19 creates a lot of anxiety. And then you think: Is this thing I’m feeling just anxiety, or is it shortness of breath? Do I need to go to the hospital?” –Nomadic Matt Kepnes This episode of Deviate, begins with Rolf and Matt Kepnes taking about what it has been like for Matt to suffer from COVID-19, where he might have contracted it (having recently traveled to Taiwan, Paris, and New York), and what will happen to TravelCon in 2020 (2:30); digital nomad Melissa Witmer describes her social isolation in the Canary Islands after having traveled in Turkey (13:00); Marco Ferrarese talks about getting stuck in Peru while COVID-19 ravages his home country of Italy (16:40); Stephanie Johnson explains her decision to stay in rural Kenya rather than try and return stateside (21:05); Jon DeHart describes a seemingly lackadaisical pandemic atmosphere in Tokyo (27:10); Amber Hoffman recounts reactions to COVID-19 in Hong Kong and Spain (32:15); Claire and Sam Jessup talk about waiting out the

“Travel is in our nature. We’ll have to counterbalance our new ‘normal’ when borders reopen to weigh in an extra element of risk.” –Dr. JP Santiago In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Dr. JP Santiago talk about how to make sense of the misinformation about COVID-19 that has flooded social media, and how American cultural attitudes toward the pandemic differ from those in Asia (2:10); how COVID-19 affects its victims, and what data doctors are looking for about the pandemic (12:00); how the virus replicates itself, the duration of its incubation period, and how to stay healthy in public places (17:45); the importance of social distancing and self-quarantine for sick people, and how to keep from transmitting sickness to health workers (22:00); reliable online sources for information about the COVID-19 virus (29:00); how the pandemic has affected travel, and how travelers can stay healthy moving forward (32:00); what happens next with the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, our efforts to create a vaccine, political

“The average human ear tunes out after about six minutes of orality. It used to be nine.” –Elena Passarello In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Elena talk about the first giraffe ever to live in Paris in the 19th century (3:30); how public presentation and performance differs from other kinds of speaking and reading, and how to prepare for it (9:00); the role of nervousness in public speaking, and how to deal with it (21:00); how prepare a text or script before reading or using it as an outline in a public speaking situation (31:00); and the importance of concrete language and “syntactical music” in public speaking (42:00). Elena Passarello is an American writer, actor, and professor. Her book Let Me Clear My Throat (Sarabande, 2012), won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards, and her essays on performance, pop culture, and the natural world have been published in Oxford American, Slate, and Creative Nonfiction, among other publications,. For more on Elena, check out https://

“Travel is kind of strength-training for your soul.” –Tara Quinn In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Tara talk about she got started coaching people pm setting up work sabbaticals, what her clients’ most common concerns are, and how Americans’ attitude toward work are different from the rest of the world (3:00); common tactics and techniques she employs as a sabbatical coach, and what kinds of clients she attracts (17:00); how to use travel as a pretext for professional development, self-education, and changing careers (28:00); the importance of imperfection and failure in learning useful lessons from travel (40:00); and ending a long-term sabbatical journey and transitioning back into professional life (48:00). Tara Quinn (@threemonthvisa) is a certified life and career coach with a passion for working with clients who dream of taking time off to travel, live, work, study or volunteer abroad. Tara roster of clients includes people from companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Bank of America, UC Berkeley

“It doesn’t matter where you’re going. Just find a reason to go.” –Ari Shaffir Ari Shaffir (@AriShaffir) is a comedian, writer, podcaster, and actor. He is the current host of the Skeptic Tank podcast. For more information on Ari, visit his website. This episode of Deviate is excerpted from Ari Shaffir’s Skeptic Tank episode #298: Vagabonder. ​In this episode of Deviate, Ari and Rolf sit down in New York’s Tompkins Square Park and talk about the esoteric obsessions that lead you into unique adventures in faraway countries, and the best way to meet people on the road (4:20)​; ​learning languages other than English (11:30); how the presence of communication technology has changed travel, including its social dynamic (17:30); using toilets, eating unfamiliar food, and haggling in markets in non-Western countries (28:00); how travel changes once you’re more experienced as a traveler (53:00); comfort food, ordering food overseas, living as an expat overseas, and getting started out in your career overseas (1:04:00