Deviate

“"When I was in the third grade my teacher announced to our class that Ronald Reagan had been shot. When she asked if we had questions, I raised my hand and asked her if the Indiana - North Carolina basketball game was still going to happen that night.”  – Chuck Klosterman In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf, Chuck, and Michael hypothesize about where in Texas the town of "Dillon" is in the TV show...

“A joke is kind of like a little life-lesson in addition to being funny. If your joke is really good, there's a little nugget of truth in it.”  – Cedar Van Tassel In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and Cedar discuss why kids want to be paleontologists and astronauts, and the existential "book" Cedar wrote when he was four (2:00); how Cedar got started reading comics, which ones were his favorites,...

“When we don't foster local filmmaking traditions, we end up making movies about what we think life is like in the cities we do see movies about.”  – Jason Bailey In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and Jason talk about how being from Kansas influenced their careers as travel writers and film critics, and the long cultural shadow of The Wizard of Oz (2:30); how Jason's career started by making inde...

“I asked everyone if they were lonely. All the guys my age said 'no, I'm too busy; too much going on.' When I answer that quickly I'm either lying or it's something I'm afraid of.”  – Andrew McCarthy In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and Andrew talk about why Andrew took a USA road trip to reconnect with his friends (2:15); what kinds of friends Andrew sought out, why none of them were public fig...

"I think you have to pick your battles when you're collaborating with people."  – Kim Krizan Kim Krizan ( @kimkrizan ) is the Oscar-nominated cowriter of the  Before Sunrise  movies, and the author of  Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin . Notable Links: Kim Krizan on the philosophy of Before Sunrise (YouTube video) Screenwriting in Paris class, with Kim Krizan  (creative writing class) Paris Writing Wo...

“I wish I loved sports, and particularly football, a lot less than I do. It consumes too much of my memory and too much of my time.”  – Chuck Klosterman In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf talks about why he's talking to Chuck Klosterman's former roommate Michael Weinreb about Chuck's book Football , rather than Chuck himself (2:00); football-themed video games, and the difference between emotional...

“In teaching us to appreciate rather than accumulate – to seek awe rather than outcomes – travel can be an ongoing exercise in gratitude.”  – Rolf Potts In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf remixes his interview from the All the Hacks podcast, with Chris Hutchins. They discuss the concept of “Time Wealth,” how it can be actualized through travel, and how it can dovetail with your family and life goa...

In this feature-length video essay that explores the role places play in storytelling, Rolf examines how Kansas -- his home state -- has been imagined, distorted, and mythologized in cinema and television for more than a century. Blending archival film clips, historical analysis, and deeply personal narration, Kansas Never Plays Itself traces how cinematic shorthand shapes our collective imaginati...

“I’m interested in writing because I don’t want to sleepwalk through life. I feel like we have an appallingly brief time on earth, and we’re here to see and understand and do as much good as we can before we’re gone.” –Anthony Doerr In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Anthony talk about how the pace of travel changes the experience of travel, and what it’s like to travel as a writer (2:45); how t...

Note : This encore episode is dedicated to the memory of Alice Potts, who died on August 20, 2025 , aged 81. “In America aging is often seen as an insult rather than an inevitable human process. We don’t celebrate getting older; we ‘fight’ age by pretending to be young.” –Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate Rolf and his parents, Alice and George Potts, talk about how surviving the COVID-19 pande...

“No endeavor to write a travel book is ever lost, since it gives you a useful perspective on (and intensified attention to) the reality of the travel experience itself. When embraced mindfully, the real-time experience of a journey is invariably its truest reward.”   –Rolf Potts In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf touches on nine lessons from attempting to write a (never finished) van-life vagabond...

“Realizing that you will die greatly clarifies your vision of life, and stimulates opportunities for making the vision real.”  –Ed Buryn In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Ed discuss the impetus behind Ed’s first travels to Europe by van in the 1960s, and his early forays into self-printed and self-promoted books about the experience (3:00); how travel to Europe was different 50 years ago, and t...

"No one motivation is ‘better’ than any other. We travel with different motivations at different times, and they sometimes overlap." –Ash Bhardwaj In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and Ash talk about curiosity as a motivation for travel (1:30); the ancient Greek concepts of happiness that underpin human motivations like travel, and how mentors influence travel (14:00); serendipity as a motivation...

"Time spent traveling on trains, just staring out the window: I don't think that's lost time. That's when we have our best ideas." –Kim Krizan In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and Kiki introduce their interview with Kim Krizan by talking about their own personal love of the movie  Before Sunrise , and how they first experienced it (0:30); Kim talks about her early travel experiences in Czechoslo...

"Time spent traveling on trains, just staring out the window: I don't think that's lost time. That's when we have our best ideas." –Kim Krizan In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kiki introduce their interview with Kim Krizan by talking about their own personal love of the movie Before Sunrise , and how they first experienced it (0:30); Kim talks about her early travel experiences in Czechoslovak...

“If you're someone who's always dreamed of going to Mars but you don't have the time to become an astronaut, you can just visit the Atacama Desert.” –Mark Johanson In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Mark talk about how Mark became interested in the Atacama Desert, and his experience in other world deserts (1:45); what Mark sought when he traveled through the region (16:00); what it's like to exp...

“Travel does not require leaving your city or state or country, but it does require leaving your comfort zone. And that can happen a block or two away from where you live.” –Chloe Cooper Jones In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Chloe talk about why a section about “slum tourism” was cut out of Rolf’s newest book  The Vagabond’s Way (2:30); how so much of what we talk about when we talk about tra...

“The most difficult part about traveling the world isn’t actually the logistics of a trip—it’s finding the courage to go in the first place.”  —Matt Kepnes In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt talk about how his travel style has changed over the years, and how fears affect people’s travels (1:00); strategies for saving money on the road (10:30); and strategies for finding activities on the ro...

“We do a lot of writing alone, in our own space. But writing is not a solitary practice. The business of writing requires a community.” –Angelique Stevens In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Angelique talk about what her writing life is like in the decade since she first took Rolf’s Paris class, with the ambition of becoming a travel writer, and how her travel book transformed into something diff...

“Anybody with curiosity and wanderlust can have their own Hippie Trail. They just need to get away from home, embrace the world, and have an adventure.” –Rick Steves In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Rick talk about Rick’s 1990s book  Asia Through the Back Door , and how Rick recently rediscovered the old Asia travel journals he kept as a young man (2:30); how Rick prepared for the journey in t...

“My life has often forced me to watch the Super Bowl in unusual circumstances. The first Super Bowl found me in boarding school in England, huddled under my bedclothes with an illegal transistor radio.” –Pico Iyer In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Pico talk about the novelty of two travel writers talking about the Super Bowl, and Pico’s NFL fandom (4:00); how sports can be a therapeutic diversi...

“In solitude, I often feel closer to the people I care for than when they’re in the same room.” –Pico Iyer In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Pico talk about how the best travels are often counterbalanced with a kind of stillness, in which one can find one’s “best self” (3:00); Pico’s decades-long experiences with monks in a California monastery, the benefits of a “childlike attitude” toward lif...

“Syria is a mix of everything. There are multiple Christian cultures, multiple Muslim cultures, and multiple languages. It’s the crossroads of the world. It made for some of my best travel memories from that time of my life.” — Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate (which was remixed from an episode of Ari Shaffir’s You Be Trippin’ podcast), Rolf and Ari talk about when and why Rolf traveled to Sy...

“In El Salvador, I dropped $5 out of my pocket at the border, and some guy came running up to me. At the beginning of the trip I would have been surprised by that. But by that point I would have been surprised if it didn’t happen.” —Matt Savino In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt talk about how the first version of his travel book was way too long, and what he ended up editing out (6:00); th...

“When we got into this, we didn’t know how to make videos. That’s a skill we’ve had to learn, because the industry has changed so much, from photos to videos. We are still learning all the time.” —Ann Howard In this episode of Deviate, Rolf, Mike, Ann and Kiki talk about they got started traveling as a couple, how they made it affordable, and how they made the transition into the world of content...