By Their Own Compass

Content note: this episode contains graphic descriptions of disease, death and human remains. One victim drowns in their own blood. Another is buried alongside four of his siblings, all from the same family. Yet more are burned rather than being sent back home for a proper burial, doomed to wander the earth as lonely ghosts. And in one of the most gruesome accounts of all – some victims are turned...

In this encore episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary journey of Sacagawea, a nursing teenager who traveled across North America with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Corps of Discovery from 1805–1806. Looking beyond the legend, we examine her role as a traveler, cultural mediator, and Native American woman navigating survival, motherhood, and agency in a rapidly chang...

Where do our world maps actually come from? When was the first one made? Are our maps racist? And why did the UN just pass a resolution encouraging governments and organisations to move away from the map we’ve all been using since the 16th Century? In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we look at the one thing every traveller we’ve featured on this podcast has needed, and some have even shaped:...

Christian missionaries have regularly been at the forefront of travel adventurism over the last 500 years, sent by their churches to parts of the world few back home knew much about, and often at great personal risk. And while they were regularly showing up in regions that hadn’t invited them and weren’t always receptive to what they were selling, their stories remain some of the most fascinating...

In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, two Swiss women decided to drive a Ford from Geneva to Kabul. One of them was running out of time, and they both knew it. The driver was Annemarie Schwarzenbach – a Swiss industrialist’s daughter, archaeologist and journalist who’d been gifted the car by her father. The other was Ella Maillart – Olympic sailor, elite skier and an intrepid traveller who’...

Jeremiah and Sarah are both traveling this week, but as a special treat, we’re reposting one of our favorite episodes from earlier this year. We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back in two weeks with a fresh episode. 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 t...

Imagine being kidnapped at the age of 11, enslaved, and made to fight another country’s war as a white man pockets your wages – only to be sold off the moment you are finally owed your freedom. This was the plight of African man Olaudah Equiano – also known as Gustavus Vassa – who was passed from master to master until in 1766, aged just 21, he bought back his own freedom. From that point on, he c...

There are few women in recent history more impressive than Nellie Bly. In 1889, aged just 25, this American reporter had already pioneered undercover journalism as we know it after faking insanity to expose a poorly run asylum. Then she decided to pull off an even bigger stunt – to prove that fictional character Phileas Fogg’s achievement of going around the world in 80 days wasn’t just possible,...

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...