The Divergent Path with Rollie Peterkin

Alexander Pekoff just finished running 560 miles across New York State from Niagara Falls to Montauk Point in 14 days. He ran an average of 39 miles a day, including running 102 miles consecutively on the last day to make it on schedule. Alexander also biked from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 89 days. The stories he tells of bear encounters and rugged days in the Alaskan wilderness a...

Gregor "The Gift" Gillespie was a four time Division I All-American wrestler and a national champion. He currently fights in the UFC and has a professional record of 13-1. In this episode we discuss Gregor's obsessive personality and how it led him down the destructive path of drugs and alcohol. It's crazy that he was able to be such a top wrestler while abusing his body. But he has been clean for...

Gregor "The Gift" Gillespie was a four time Division I All-American wrestler and a national champion. He currently fights in the UFC and has a professional record of 13-1. In this episode we discuss Gregor's obsessive personality and how it led him down the destructive path of drugs and alcohol. It's crazy that he was able to be such a top wrestler while abusing his body. But he has been clean for...

Paul Rosolie is an author, conservationist, and adventurer. He's written two books. His first book, Mother of God , is about the years he spent in the Peruvian Amazon. He recounts stories of wrestling down giant anacondas, plunging in the river after caiman, coming face-to-face with jaguars, and solo journeys deep into uncharted parts of the jungle. Paul's second book The Girl and the Tiger   is a...

Cristian Velez has a job that every child dreams of. He works for the Amazon Rescue Center (Centro De Rescate Amazónico) in Iquitos, Peru. The center was built 11 years ago in order to rehabilitate baby manatees which were illegally kept as pets by private citizens. Amazon Rescue Center: https://www.centroderescateamazonico.com/ Fundraising campaign: https://www.facebook.com/groups/298074295867178...

Ty Dalitz is an Australian who has spent the last six years traveling the world. And he hasn't taken a single flight. It started off when he sailed to Asia and planned on making it to London by an overland route. But it has morphed into a six year journey filled with some of the most incredible adventures under the sun. Here are some things Ty had done: Rode a motorbike the length of Vietnam Crash...

Wayne Catan was a world class wrestler in his day. He was a three-time All-American and two-time NCAA finalist for the Syracuse University. After college, he wrestled internationally and even placed third at the legendary Tbilisi Tournament in Georgia. Nowadays, Wayne is an Ernest Hemingway scholar and English teacher at Brophy College Prep. He has published 37 articles about Hemingway. He's revie...

In this edition of Rollie's Travel Tales, I talk about the time I spent in the country of Georgia. After releasing Episode 23: HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WHILE TRAVELING, I got a bunch of requests from people who said they wanted to hear more of my travel stories. So I started thinking about some one my best ones. I ran through them in my head and rehearsed them as I walked one day. And I thought about o...

Katlyn Chookagian is a UFC fighter (14-3) who fought for the Flyweight title back in February. In this episode we talk about her roots in martial arts going back to when she started fighting karate at age four. She spent every minute she could training like a girl possessed. By the time Katlyn was in high school, she was fighting in Golden Gloves boxing and kickboxing competitions. When she first...

Amber Young has lived on four different continents. She grew up in California to a family that loved to travel. And so after finished college at UC Santa Cruz, she decided to move to New Zealand. She spend the year volunteering on farms and hitchhiking around the country. Then she moved to Australia, where she worked for the next year, including a job picking strawberries. After that, she wanted a...

Caitlin Lanigan  didn't even own a passport growing up in suburban Buffalo, New York. But deciding to do a semester abroad in Australia sent her down a Divergent Path that took her all around the world. After college, Caitlin volunteered for the Peace Corps in Botswana. She lived there and worked in a medical clinic for two years. Caitlin has some amazing stories to tell from her experience in Bot...

Din Thomas (@dinthomas) has been around MMA since the 90s and has seen the sport evolve since the early days. He had a record of 26-9 and has beaten guys like Jens Pulver, Clay Guida, and Matt Serra. As a coach, he has cornered the women's GOAT Amanda Nunes and former UFC champion Tyron Woodley. Din was on Season 4 of the UFC's reality show The Ultimate Fighter . And he is the co-host of Dana Whit...

Turney Duff is the New York Times bestselling author of The Buy Side and consultant on the Showtime series Billions. Turney had it all. He had a 7-figure salary as the head trader for a large Wall Street hedge fund. But he wasn't happy. He made a 2 million dollar bonus one year and was never more miserable. After developing a cocaine addiction, he spent two stints in rehab and has now been sober f...

Mike and Anne Howard ( @HoneyTrek ) left for their honeymoon in January 2012 and never came home. And most importantly, they share their adventures with the world through their blog HoneyTrek.com , which chronicles their journey across all seven continents. Their story as the World's Longest Honeymooners has been featured in hundreds of media outlets, from USA Today to Lonely Planet. Together, the...

Jeff Buxton is one of the most well-respected names in the sport of wrestling. As the wrestling coach at Blair Academy, he led teams to 30 consecutive Prep National titles and 10 National titles. While coaching Blair wrestling, he coached 12 wrestlers who went on to win Division 1 NCAA titles, as well as 41 All-Americans. He is currently the coach of the Lehigh Valley Athletic Club Regional Traini...

Mark Metry became an entrepreneur as a teenager and was making six figures. But he suffered from extreme social anxiety. Mark took control of his life and set out making himself better. In the process he created the Humans 2.0 podcast , which is a global top 100 podcast. He wrote the book Screw Being Shy , which details his struggle with social anxiety and how to overcome it. In this episode, we d...

Rolf Potts is a travel writer, author of four books, and host of the Deviate with Rolf Potts podcast. Rolf is a sort of philosopher when it comes to travel and his book Vagabonding is considered the Bible of travel literature. NYT Best Selling author Tim Ferriss has said Vagabonding was one of his all time favorite books.  Vagabonding changed the trajectory of my life when I first read it back in...

This podcast episode is a little different from the other ones because I don't have a guest. I am speaking about a topic that I am very passionate about: making friends while traveling. A few years ago, I wrote a book called How to Make Friends While Traveling , but I never published it even though I wrote over 100 pages! At the time, I was living abroad and traveling and I began to treat meeting...

McDojoLife ( @mcdojolife ) is one of my all time favorite accounts on all of Instagram. The page exposes fake and fraudulent martial artists who teach people tactics such as no-touch knockouts. No only does Rob expose fakes, but he exposes conmen who rip off their students and convicted sex offenders who work with children in martial arts. He is basically a real life super hero! In this podcast ep...

Kendall Cross won an Olympic gold medal in wrestling in 1996 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was on the Olympic team in 1992 in Barcelona. He was an NCAA champion for Oklahoma State. And he's a member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. He is currently the coach of the New York City Regional Training Center. He's done just about everything there is to do in the sport of wrestling. Kendall impacted my...

Daniele Bolelli is the host of the History on Fire podcast, where he has captured audiences with episodes that range from Teddy Roosevelt to Caravaggio to Crazy Horse. He has written many books on topics from religion to martial arts. His books include:  On the Warrior's Path and Not Afraid . And don't miss his Drunken Taoist Podcas t for some awesome interviews. One of the things that has always...

Claudio Puelles is UFC fighter from Lima, Peru. He was features on the reality show The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) where he finished second and got a contract to fight in the UFC. In this episode he tells the story of how he first got involved in MMA and the time he lived in the US when he was younger. You might recognize Claudio's name from my book, as we were teammates and friends during my time in...

Kenn Kweder is a musical legend in Philadelphia. He has been playing music around town since the late sixties and has some amazing stories to tell. He talks about a postering campaign in the 70's based around Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Carnation instant milk. Kweder talks about wanting to play in the NBA as a teenager and then picking up a guitar in order to impress the girls. He talks abou...

Bruce Poon Tip is an international leader in the travel industry. He founded G Adventures, which has operations in 100 countries and runs tours on every continent. He is a leader in social entrepreneurship and the founder of the Planeterra Foundation. Bruce has been invited to speak at places such as Harvard, Oxford, the World Bank, UNESCO, and the UN. Bruce talks about the state of the travel ind...

Charlie Brenneman has done it all. He wrestled in college, taught high school Spanish, fought in the UFC against top opponents, wrote two books, and hosts a podcast. In this episode, Charlie tells us how he went from a "wimpy" kid to a UFC star. The many lessons he's learned along the way and why he now shares those lessons with the next generation. Follow Charlie on social media @charliespaniard....