Deviate

“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 spa...

“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). M...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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 ta...

“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...

“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...

“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 C...

“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...

“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...

“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,...

“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-1...

“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,...

“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...

“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 d...

“Part of our lives are lived on social media and part are lived in our heart and in the real world. The discrepancy between the two often makes people miserable.” – Aaron Hamburger In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and Aaron discuss identifying with Nirvana (3:00); the nature of genius (11:00); and the search of authenticity (20:00). Aaron Hamburger ( @hamburger_aaron ) is an author whose writing...

“In the late 1980s human beings were your YouTube algorithm. Flesh-and-blood people introduced you to the music that changed your life.” —Rolf Potts In this episode of  Deviate , Rolf and and Tod talk about Tod’s experience of being in the Jane’s Addiction “Stop!” video (3:00); Rolf reads his essay about discovering the album “Nothing’s Shocking” in 1989 (7:00); Rolf and Tod discuss what it was li...

“Home is in dialogue with the places you travel, and often serves as an interpretive lens.” – Rolf Potts   In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and his parents reflect their journey to China and Mongolia many years ago. The episode starts with an excerpt of Rolf’s 2001 NPR dispatch about the experience, then they recall their visit Korea four years earlier, when Rolf worked as an English teacher in P...

“Common sense is a very poor guide to understanding the universe. Science is kind of the opposite of common sense. It seems fanciful to think that a bird is a dinosaur, but that is literally true.”   – Kenneth Lacovara In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and Kenneth discuss why dinosaurs matter, especially for little kids (5:00); how we have come to learn what we know about dinosaurs (23:00); the “b...

“Traveling, for me, is all about destroying stereotypes and narratives about people and places.” – Matt Green In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and Matt discuss Matt’s mission to walk every street in New York City (3:00); walking across the entire United States and breaking stereotypes (12:00); bucket lists as a catalyst for action (28:00); and Matt’s experiences walking in unfamiliar places and f...

“Because I was entering football fandom at the same age that Star Wars was blowing up, the Roger Staubach Dallas Cowboys were my Luke Skywalker, and the Steelers and the Raiders were, in my child mind, the Evil Empire.” —Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate , Rolf shares his 2002 NPR “Savvy Traveler” dispatch about trying to watch the Super Bowl in Thailand (2:00); then he and Tod Goldberg discus...

“You have to make moves that will not just impact your today but the lives of folks down the road.” —Kaye Monk-Morgan In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and Kaye discuss the life of her grandfather John Monk, growing up in Louisiana during Jim Crow, and the extended impacts of sharecropping (13:00); the challenges of assimilating to military life and overcoming racial adversity during World War II...

“Have a bias toward action.” – Chris Guillebeau In this episode of Deviate , Rolf and Chris discuss Chris’ quest to travel to every country in the world (4:30); discovering and fine-tuning your passions through travel (17:00); exploring creativity through various mediums, and discontentment as a catalyst for change (27:00); knowing when to write a book (44:00); and overcoming adversity as a creati...