Mark Adams is the author of Mr. America and Turn Right at Machu Picchu. His latest book is Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier.

“It’s always sheer and utter panic the whole time I’m on the road. I never sleep more than like three or four hours a night when I’m on the road because I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and I’m like, Who am I going to talk to today? I don’t have anything scheduled for today. What am I going to do? Sometimes things work out for that day and sometimes they don’t. I think when you start to lose that feeling — that tense feeling, that pit in your stomach — then the work starts to lose something as well.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@markcadams

[00:35] Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time (Dutton • 2012)

[00:43] Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton • 2018)

[06:28] Mr. America (It Books • 2010)

[19:20] Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (Tom Wolfe • Picador • 2009)

[21:52] Letters to a Young Writer (Colum McCann • Bloomsbury • 2018)

[24:40] Adams’ Men’s Journal archive

[28:18] Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer • Anchor Books • 1997)

[28:44] Inside Maya 5 (Mark Adams, Erick Miller, Max Simms • New Riders Press • 2003)

[36:14] The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy (Paige Williams • Hachettte Books • 2018)

[39:10] The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton & Company • 2018)

[39:42] ”Philosophy 101” (Real Simple • 2014)

[40:34] ”German Discovers Atlantis in Africa” (New York Times • 1911)

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