Kindred Roads Podcast

What do you do when the only way out of the country during a pandemic is to advertise yourself on a Facebook sailing group and hope someone takes you? If you're Matt Whitley, you pack your bags, fly to Spain, and spend 21 days crossing the Atlantic Ocean with a family you met on a 20-minute call. Matt is a 23-year-old adventurer from South Manchester who has spent the last few years quietly living...

What happens when a 23-year-old, unemployed and fresh out of university during Portugal's worst financial crisis, decides to start his own surf camp anyway? In this episode, David Moore shares the story of building Surf Cascais from the ground up into one of Portugal's most loved surf schools, surf camps, and surf villas. I had the absolute pleasure of staying at Surf Cascais while recording this...

What happens when two friends invite a man they met outside a Little Caesars to come live with them, and all three of their lives change forever? This one is a little different from our usual episodes, but it might be the most important kind of story this podcast was made for. In this episode, Josh and Chandler share the story of how they met Trevor, a man who had been living on the streets, and w...

What happens when a solo woman decides to cross continents by bicycle, trusting the kindness of strangers along the way? In this episode, Claire Wyatt shares the story of cycling across some of the most remote places on earth. From riding thousands of miles across Mongolia to cycling from Asia to the UK, Claire built a life on the road powered by curiosity, resilience, and the generosity of people...

What happens when you leave a stable 9 to 5 and decide to build a career around your passions instead? In this episode, Olivia Chenery, a London based events, hotel, fashion, and brand photographer, shares how she walked away from corporate life and built a photography career. What started as small shoots and saying yes to opportunities before she felt fully ready turned into photographing Morgan...

What happens when two travelers leave everything familiar behind and cross the Middle East on foot and by camel, following a path few Westerners have ever taken? In this episode, Wells Jones shares the story of a 1,100 mile trek across Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, retracing the route of T.E. Lawrence through deserts, border crossings, and remote communities, alongside his close friend Miles. W...

Max Campbell is sailing around the world on a 50 year old Swan 37 named Elixir, a boat he rebuilt by hand and turned into a fully functioning home at sea. Over the past few years, he has sailed from the UK to New Zealand with an ever changing crew, navigating open ocean crossings, remote coastlines, and places that can only be reached by boat. In this episode, Max walks us through the moments that...

Natalie Ng is a videographer and writer from Perth, Australia who spent 20 months traveling the world alone. She did not leave with everything figured out. She left with questions, curiosity, and a willingness to learn as she went. In this episode, Natalie talks honestly about what it was like to travel solo as a woman for the first time. She walks through the fears she had before leaving, how she...

Colonel Terry Virts is a retired U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, test pilot, NASA astronaut, and former Commander of the International Space Station. He has flown 45 combat missions, piloted the Space Shuttle Endeavour, and spent more than 200 days in space, including three spacewalks. In this episode, Terry shares his extraordinary journey, from growing up with a dream of becoming an astronaut, to...

Julio Campis Díaz is a 24-year-old Puerto Rican ecologist and PhD student whose career took a dramatic turn the day he stepped into El Yunque National Rainforest. What began as a required research assignment led him from freshwater shrimp studies to working inside Great Smoky Mountains and Yosemite National Park. In this episode Julio shares how that moment reshaped his path, the mentors who guide...

Jamie Edwards didn’t plan to become a travel writer, and she definitely didn’t plan on writing for National Geographic. But after moving from New York to Tokyo, her world opened up in ways she couldn’t have imagined. What began as a small blog turned into a thriving platform called I Am Lost and Found, and eventually, a dream project as a contributing author for National Geographic’s Traveler’s At...

Ricardo Kaljouw is a Dutch mountaineer, author, and Royal Dutch Navy veteran whose life has been built around pushing beyond limits. He has visited 117 countries, climbed 75 high-altitude peaks, and stood on 45 volcanoes around the world. He’s one of only about fifty people on earth to complete the Volcanic Seven Summits, a rare challenge that involves climbing the highest volcano on each of the s...

At 25, filmmaker and surfer Meredith Rodgers found herself sailing across every ocean on Earth, filming one of the most intense races in the world. It all started with one cold email that somehow turned into a dream job she didn’t even know existed. For almost a year, she lived on a 70-foot sailboat surrounded by strangers, capturing storms, sunrises, and everything in between. In this episode, Me...

There are few people who live their calling as boldly as Dr. Clifford Redford. He is a veterinarian, documentary filmmaker, and lifelong animal advocate whose work has taken him far beyond the walls of his busy clinic in Canada. From rescuing street dogs in Jamaica to saving wildlife in India and performing surgeries in Ukraine as missiles shook the ground, Cliff has made it his mission to help an...

Emily Corinne is a yoga teacher who has lived in Thailand, taught abroad, and spent nine months backpacking through 17 countries. Along the way she moved between classrooms and retreat spaces, traded city rush for sunrise meditations, and learned how to build simple routines in unfamiliar places. Those months held everything from missed buses and last-minute detours to quiet mornings spent journal...

Lachie Smart was just 18 years old when he became the youngest person to fly solo around the world in a single-engine aircraft. What started as a wild idea with no money, no flying experience, and a stack of rejection letters turned into a 54-day journey across 45,000 kilometers and 24 countries. In this episode, Lachie takes us inside the storms that nearly knocked him out of the sky, the moments...

Lauren Bash is a storyteller, climate activist, and TED speaker who was named to Harvard’s Climate Creators to Watch list. She has been featured on BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and more, inspiring ordinary people to join the climate movement through storytelling in an approachable, optimistic way. In this episode, we hear how Lauren Bash went from the filmmaking world to inspiring millions on soc...

Eli Snyder is a travel content creator with a community of over 500 thousand people across platforms. He’s traveled to 105 countries proving that if you look past the headlines and trust humanity, travel can be safer and more meaningful, while still staying smart. In this episode, we dive into the wildest and most intense stories from his recent travels through Afghanistan, Syria, West Africa, and...

Aisha Makara is a world traveler who’s explored over 60 countries and a Mongolian artist, engineer, entrepreneur, and author of the Joyful Living Guidebook. She spent her earliest years in a Soviet-era Russian orphanage before hitchhiking across Central Asia, earning an engineering degree in Norway, co-founding Lisbon White Rose property management in Portugal and launching a nonprofit to support...

Fletcher Cox spent seven months driving the Pan-American Highway from Lake Tahoe to Ushuaia, Argentina with nothing but his husky mix, Dune, and his Audi sedan… In this episode, Fletcher tells the story of crossing a cartoonish bridge in Peru under the watch of a “toll troll,” galloping through a Mexican ghost town with a gold-toothed cowboy, and stumbling into a mysterious masked procession in a...

​​Kara Folkerts has done it all. She solo-hiked the length of Iceland at 21 and shortly after co-led her first Costa Rica trail running tour. By 22, she’d bike-packed 10,500 km from Canada through Alaska, Russia, Mongolia, and China, moved to Japan, then studied yoga in India before helping run an ecolodge in Indonesia. Since 25, she’s stepped into a career as a full-time guide, leading mountain r...

Karmen Wiid is a South African solo traveler, writer, and host of The Lost & Found Podcast. She published her first book at 12, studied philosophy and literature in university, and now works remotely while moving through the world with curiosity and creativity. She’s currently based in India, and she shares such profound wisdom on the meaning of life and how to actually work through things, ra...

Braden Roseborough is a wingsuit skydiver,, BASE jumper, helicopter pilot, and instructor with over 3,000 jumps, certifications in tandem, AFF and wingsuit flight, and a full-time career as a software engineer. In this episode, Braden takes us from packing parachutes to teaching wingsuit flights, free-flying out of MI-17 helicopters above the Pyramids of Giza, and performing live demo jumps at For...

Miki Bonny & Carlo Gava are award-winning filmmakers, certified freediving & scuba instructors, and founders of B & G Expeditions. They’ve built an online following of hundreds of thousands by sharing their freediving and scuba adventures. On top of that, they host immersive group trips, teach breath-hold techniques with their 3-Minute Program, and create breathtaking underwater photos...

Gavin McClurg is a professional paraglider, the first American to finish the Red Bull X-Alps, and National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. He’s a two-time round-the-world sailor and record-holding foot-launch pilot. In this episode, we trace his path from ski racing in Tahoe to thirteen years at sea, where he built a global sailing and kitesurfing business. He survived hurricane-force winds off...