By Their Own Compass

In the summer of 1966, a group of men from one of the most isolated countries on Earth stepped off a plane into Swinging Sixties Britain. They had no idea about miniskirts or Beatlemania. Some were so unnerved by a statue of Jesus in their guesthouse that it had to be removed. They came from a nation the UK government didn’t even recognise – but within three weeks, the entire town of Middlesbrough...

Has a more iconic road ever been built? This year, America’s famous highway turns 100. Route 66 and its fellow numbered roads were revolutionary when the federal highway system was created in 1926. For the first time ever, an ordinary person could navigate across the country without a guide and enjoy the journey for the journey’s sake: the ultimate road trip. But what made this particular route so...

Decades before Christopher Columbus and Europe’s “Age of Exploration”, a strapping Chinese admiral named Zheng He commanded the biggest fleet of ships the world had ever seen – treasure ships so enormous that nothing comparable sailed the oceans for another 400 years. Born into a Muslim family and orphaned at a young age, Zheng He was castrated around the age of 10 and forced to work as a servant...

British travel writer and podcaster Jamie Fullerton has spent his career documenting communities and places that the average guidebook doesn’t cover – from the Dance of the Little Devils ritual in Boruca, Costa Rica , to overnight hikes on Guatemala ’s Fuego Volcano and obscure bagpipe festivals in the Rhodope Mountains of Bulgaria . His work bears witness to traditions in the midst of being reviv...

Seeking the perfect travel companion: Must like adventure, dodgy neighborhoods, good gin joints, handsome and interesting men (a spy or a poet, if you please), gibbons (which are NOT monkeys), and opium. Not in that particular order. Meet Emily “Mickey” Hahn, a writer, an adventurer, and a professional rule-breaker whose wanderlust took her from the American Midwest to Europe and Africa, and final...

In diplomatic history, some missions don’t always go off with a bang, but with a cringe. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US Navy attacked Guam and waited for return fire that never came. Turns out the Spanish-run island had no idea they were enemies and sent an army officer and port commander out in a rowboat to go say a cheerful hello instead. In 1715, Louis XIV donned his finest dia...

Captured by a Spanish pirate? A gift to Pope Leo X? Europe’s expert on Africa for nearly three centuries? Leo Africanus lived many lives. Born al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan around 1488 in Granada, Spain, he was trained in the madrasas of Fez to be a diplomat. He travelled across the Sahara Desert and North Africa, sailed the Red Sea, and called on courts from Tunis to Timbuktu, Cairo to Constant...

Cobblestones. Cafes. The smell of baguettes hits you as you walk into a warm boulangerie on a rainy morning. An open notebook on a chequered tablecloth, an old-style pen, and a café au lait at the ready. Paris in April. They even wrote a song about it. Paris is probably the most pre-imagined city on earth, and the so-called Lost Generation, the writers and artists who flooded here after the First...

Our Marco Polo episode was the most downloaded show in the history of By Their Own Compass. This week, we go deeper into the world of Marco and the Mongols as we sit down with Nicola Di Cosmo, Professor of East Asian Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and co-author of Venice and the Mongols, out this month from Princeton University Press, to talk about how the Mongol discover...

It’s a question that’s puzzled historians for centuries: did Marco Polo really go to China – or is history’s most famous traveller also its greatest liar? In this episode of By Their Own Compass, Jeremiah Jenne and Sarah Keenlyside attempt to uncover the true story of Marco Polo – the Venetian merchant who left home at 17, spent 17 years at the court of Kublai Khan, and came back with a tale so ex...

From Fanny Trollope's war on American manners to Alice Roosevelt's pet snake to the Empress Dowager Cixi's private theme park: a travel history of women who refused to behave. Every traveller knows one. You might be one. The person who sends the steak back twice, requests a different hotel room because the view isn't quite right, and has opinions about thread count that they're not afraid to share...

It’s rare that one of history’s most iconic travellers has a living relative we can speak to – but that’s exactly the case with Annie Londonderry, whose great-grandnephew Peter Zheutlin has a remarkable story of his own. In 1894, Annie Londonderry, real name Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, became a global sensation when she claimed to be the first woman to cycle around the world. A fearless Victorian adve...

On June 25, 1894, five hundred people gathered on the steps of the Massachusetts State House to watch a young woman named Annie Londonderry climb onto a Columbia bicycle and ride off to circle the globe. She carried a pearl-handled revolver, a placard advertising spring water from New Hampshire, and a wager (allegedly worth thousands) that no woman could complete such a journey in fifteen months....

If you’ve ever Googled “how to avoid scams in [destination],” you already know the genre: YouTube videos breathlessly (and ominously) exposing the 15 tricks that will ruin your trip to Florence, Bangkok, or Marrakech. Full disclosure: We watch them too. But the historically minded traveler will be quick to note that almost none of these scams are new. Structurally, the “hey, did you lose your wall...

It’s one thing to read about Leif Erikson’s epic journey from Greenland to North America in the 10th century as a child; it’s quite another to build a replica Viking cargo ship and attempt the same journey as an adult. But that’s exactly what W. Hodding Carter and his team did in 1997, making them the first crew in history to authentically follow in Leif Erikson’s footsteps. In reality, that meant...

Around the year 985 A.D., Icelandic exile Erik the Red, a man renowned for his fiery temper, founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland . Years later, his ambitious son Leif Erikson went on to become one of the first known Europeans to set foot in North America – centuries before Columbus. In this episode, we dive into the real history of Greenland’s Norse origins , the legends of Vinland , a...

When the writers on Netflix’s Bridgerton send Colin Bridgerton off on the Grand Tour in season three, it’s treated as a throwaway plot device. In reality, the Grand Tour was one of the most influential – and ridiculous – phenomena in British history , shaping everything from travel writing to modern tourism. In this episode, we use Colin Bridgerton ’s continental adventures as a starting point to...

David Livingstone spent thirty years wandering across Africa. In our main episode we spent forty minutes talking about him. We may have missed a few spots. Dan Kobayashi, a writer and longtime Africa analyst, helps us fill in the blank spaces on the map. Dan spent 13 years as an expert on Southern and Central Africa for the U.S State Department, and most recently analyzed global power competition...

In 1871, Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813-1873) was hanging out in the village of Ujiji, in what is today Tanzania. He wasn’t exactly lost, but the last few years had been rough, full of heartbreak and disappointment. Livingstone had spent three decades exploring and mapping territory that is now part of the modern countries of Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. But after cros...

In this bonus episode of By Their Own Compass, we go behind the scenes of our Sacagawea episode to unpack one of the most misunderstood figures in American history — and the creative choices involved in telling her story today. We pull back the curtain on podcasting and creative production, including a candid discussion about AI in creativity. From AI-generated music (yes, including a Sacagawea K-...

In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary journey of Sacagawea, a nursing teenager travelling across North America with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Corps of Discovery from 1804–1806. Looking beyond the legend, we examine her role as a traveller, cultural mediator, and Native American woman navigating survival, motherhood, and agency in a rapidly changing Amer...

Pour yourself something strong (we suggest a nice scotch for reasons that will become clear a few minutes into the episode) and settle in for a festive tour through history's most spectacular travel disasters. Whilst the rest of the world is busy booking flights and packing bags for the holidays, we thought we'd offer a public service: a cautionary tale (or four) about what happens when travelers...

If you enjoyed our deep dive into the life of the New Yorker correspondent, Emily Hahn wild times in China, you won’t want to miss this special bonus episode. Sarah sits down with Tina Kanagarathnam of Historic Shanghai to answer the burning question: What is actually left of Emily’s world? Every week, we transport you to a different time and place. Subscribe to get full show notes, reading lists,...

We’re back and in our second episode, we’re following the travels of Emily “Mickey” Hahn in 1930s China. Mickey Hahn was a writer, an adventurer, and a professional rule breaker whose wanderlust took her from the American Midwest to Europe and Africa and finally to China, all before she turned 30. By the time she got to China, she had already established herself as an up-and-coming literary voice...

After months of planning, scripting, and the sort of meticulous historical fact-checking that would make Ibn Battuta himself say, “Mate, it’s just a travel story,” we’re thrilled to announce the launch of By Their Own Compass. Our inaugural episode features Ibn Battuta, one of history’s most spectacular travel overachievers, on his journey from modern-day Turkey, across Central Asia, to India, hop...