Deviate

“Things don’t happen in Las Vegas. Things are happened in Las Vegas. All actions in the town are so meticulously predicted and orchestrated that spontaneity itself exists only as the ghost of compulsion.”  –Rolf Potts (in 1998)

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Ari discuss Rolf’s 1998 Las Vegas essay “The Mystical High Church of Luck,” and their relationship to their early creative work (2:30); how the experience of Las Vegas depends on what stage of life you’re in, how Vegas compares to New Orleans, and how Rolf and Ari have a hard time enjoying themselves when they go there (14:00); the stereotypes that surround Las Vegas, why it is difficult to write about, and how one might find original experiences there (30:00); what it would be like to live in Las Vegas, and the mysteries and mechanics of “luck” (47:00).

Ari Shaffir (@AriShaffir) is a comedian, writer, podcaster, and actor. He is the host of the Skeptic Tank podcast. His latest comedy special, JEW, is available on YouTube.

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The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“Nothing against bucket lists, but sometimes that interest that makes you weird and nerdy at home is going to make you vulnerable to all the weird nerdy people in some distant new place who are also interested in that thing.” —Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and The Vagabond’s Way book club participants discuss what compels us to be interested in certain places, and how Rolf’s latest book is designed to be read over the course of a year (2:00); how nomads can create consistency and community in new places, and how to find good cities for families in Italy and the Balkans (4:45); how to find places to stay in places where last-minute reservations are hard to come by (8:30); how to choose where to go on a given vagabonding journey (13:00); how having a mission can give focus to your travels (17:45); and how guidebooks can still be a useful travel tool (21:10).

Discussion moderator Luke Richardson is a traveler, author, and DJ based in England.

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The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“You hear how there’s many words for snow in native cultures in Canada; there are actually over 20 words for ‘fog’ in the Faroe Islands.”  –Matthew Landrum

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matthew discuss what makes the landscape and culture of the Faroe Islands distinctive, and how Matthew came to study Faroese (2:00); how your motivation to travel to a place affects what you see and experience there, and how isolation affects people’s worldview in a place like the Faroes (13:00); Faroese history, art, and culture, and how World War II transformed it (24:00); how the weather affects one’s experience of the Faroe Islands, and what it’s like to travel there (34:00); and how the Faroe Islands have changed — and stayed the same — over the years (46:00).

Matthew Landrum (@MatthewLandrum) is a writer, speaker, and teacher. He is the translator of Faroese poet Katrin Ottarsdottir’s Are There Copper Pipes in Heaven, and the author of Berlin Poems. He lives in Detroit where he teaches at a private school for students on the autism spectrum.

Faroese music, art, and literature links:

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Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“”I wasn’t partying. I wasn’t relaxing on the beach. I was photographing – working – every minute of the day. That was a means to see as much as I possibly could. And to keep looking.”  –Kevin Kelly

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kevin discuss the ambitions and connections that led Kevin to Asia not long after high school (2:30); how Kevin’s interest in photography affected his experience of Asia (7:30); how seeing other cultures gave him perspective on his own culture, and on himself, and his countrymen (15:00); how photography gave him intensified attention to what in the world might be changing (23:00); how AI and other technology are changing how we live, create, and travel (30:00); how to travel in such a way that you are open to phenomenon and experiences you don’t know of yet, and how technology might enable a “protopia” future (40:00).

Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is a co-founder of Wired magazine, a co-founder of the Rosetta Project, and he serves on the board of the Long Now Foundation. He is a photographer, writer, and futurist, with much of his work centering on Asian and digital culture. His three-volume photo book Vanishing Asia draws on 50 years of vagabonding travel experiences, and his newest book, Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, debuts in May of 2023.

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The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“Success is often about finding just enough material wealth to fund the life that makes you happy.” —Rolf Potts

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and The Nomadic Network book club participants discuss how travel can intensify the attention you pay to life at home (2:30); how the best discoveries of travel can’t be planned, and how you can give yourself permission to travel at all ages in life (10:30); how travel can give you perspective on the notion of “success” (22:00); what various book club participants have learned from (and discovered on) their travels (34:00); and the details of Rolf’s annual Travel Memoir writing class in Paris (41:00).

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“Travel has become a way to remind myself how it feels to get lost, and then get unlost. It is a way to remember the discomfort of uncertainty and the unfamiliar. It’s an exercise in receiving the unexpected.”  –Kristin Van Tassel

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Kristin discuss being in DC, living in Kansas, and Kristin’s family trip to Mexico using migrant-economy buses (1:30); how seeking international restaurants and grocery stores at home can be a window into distant cultures (8:00); Kristin’s motivation to learn Spanish in middle age, and how it connects to her perspective as a teacher (16:00); Kristin’s harrowing experience of getting lost on a run in Nairobi in 1990, and how getting lost in a place is a way of experiencing it in a deeper way (20:30); how Kristin experienced the country and culture of Moldova through soups and salads while being hosted there by a former student (34:30); and how to stay open to being lost without compromising yourself, and embrace unfamiliar languages as a traveler and learner (41:00).

Kristin Van Tassel teaches writing and American literature at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas. She writes essays and poetry about place, teaching, motherhood, and travel.

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“Running back John Levi is about as easy to stop as a 200-pound eel. With his speed, and his shifting, sidestepping style of running, tacklers slide off of him like rain off a slicker.” –From the Minneapolis Star, October 1923

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf talks about a 1927 football game between the New York Giants and an all-indigenous Oklahoma team called the Hominy Indians, and how the team’s star player, John Levi, was the father of Rolf’s junior high gym coach (0:00); John Levi’s early years as a football player at Haskell Institute, and Haskell’s games against teams like Baylor and Minnesota (5:00); Haskell’s game against the Quantico Marines at Yankee Stadium, and how it led to John Levi being offered a baseball contract (10:30); how professional football was different in the 1920s than it is now (14:00); how Osage County, Oklahoma was in the midst of an oil boom in the 1920s (17:30) the specifics of the 1927 New York Giants versus Hominy Indians game (20:30); and how John Levi’s legacy was embodied by his son, a U.S. Marine veteran who later became a physical education teacher in Wichita, Kansas (22:30).

John Levi, Jr. served as a medic for the First Marine Division during the Korean War. He later taught physical education for several decades at Hadley Junior High School in Wichita, Kansas. Now retired, he lives in Green Valley, Arizona.

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The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“For ancient Roman tourists, the whole point of travel was to go where everyone else was going. Sightseeing was a form of pilgrimage.” –Tony Perrottet

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Tony discuss the habits idiosyncrasies of ancient Roman tourists, and how they relate to modern travel (1:30); the class tensions and expectations inherent in different types of modern and historical travelers, and how the “unexpected” affects these journeys (17:00); the appeal of Egypt to both ancient and modern tourists (22:30); how mythic ages can be a prism through which to see a place (33:00); how travel and geographical endeavor is an important task for a historian (44:30); and how the experience of travel has and hasn’t changed over the years (55:30).

Tony Perrottet (@TonyPerrottet) is the author of six books, including Pagan Holiday: On the Trail of Ancient Roman Tourists; The Sinner’s Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe; and The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Greek Games.

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“A willingness to fail is an important part of difficult beauty. Because difficult beauty will arrive first not as beauty at all.” –Chloe Cooper Jones

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Chloe discuss the philosophical concept of “easy beauty” and “difficult beauty” in the context of travel (2:30); how our relationship to places changes over time with repeated exposure (15:00); how art and travel, home and adventure, became important aspects of Chloe’s life (23:00); how the archetype of the “Hero’s Journey” evokes aspects of home as well as travel (35:30); Chloe’s investigation and experience of “dark tourism” in Cambodia, and how it gave her perspective on how other people view her disability (45:15) and how there’s no easy way to navigate the polarities of the self, but trying to do so can result in a hard-won experience of beauty (1:08:00).

Chloe Cooper Jones (@CCooperJones) is the author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir. She has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist in Feature Writing, and was the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, as well as a Howard Foundation Grant from Brown University.

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].

“Travel is one of the few activities we engage in not knowing the outcome and reveling in that uncertainty. Nothing is more forgettable than the trip that goes exactly as planned.” –Eric Weiner

In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Eric discuss the tendency of travelers to idealize the very recent bygone past in places, and Rolf’s experience of traveling by freighter ship (2:00); Eric’s satisfaction in returning to places he’s visited before, such as India, and how to remain open to uncertainty and surprise on the road (9:30); how conversations about travel differ from generation to generation, culture to culture, person to person (20:00); what it was like for Eric to have his book The Geography of Bliss adapted into a TV show, and the nuances behind the concept of “happiness” (28:30); how the experience of travel is inevitably intertwined with the experience of home (38:00); how luxury hotels can insulate you from the experience of a place, and how “adventure travel” is modern concept (43:30); and how Eric’s relationship to home, and to time, has changed over the years (58:30).

Eric Weiner (@Eric_Weiner) is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. His books include The Socrates Express, and The Geography of Bliss, which is being made into a six-part docu-series, featuring actor Rainn Wilson, and due to air on NBC’s Peacock streaming service. For more about Eric, check out https://ericweinerbooks.com/

Notable Links:

The Deviate theme music comes from the title track of Cedar Van Tassel’s 2017 album Lumber.

Note: We don’t host a “comments” section, but we’re happy to hear your questions and insights via email, at [email protected].