Everything Is Stories

For the first seven years of her life, Sulome Anderson never met her father, journalist Terry Anderson. Three months before she was born, her father was kidnapped and imprisoned by Shiite Muslim militants in Lebanon. Through hostage videos and letters, Sulome began forming an image of a perfect parent. But after his release, she soon realized Terry Anderson was not the person she imagined.

Years later, Sulome began investigating the events that led to her father’s kidnapping. In this episode, she tells her story of a personal journey into the Middle East and confronting the extremists responsible for her family’s fracture.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At age 15, novelist Vanessa Veselka ran away from home and began living life as a hitchhiker in the United States during the 1980s. From highway to highway, coast to coast, truck stop to truck stop, Veselka experienced poverty, perversion, and a showdown with a potential serial killer. She shares her story at the MacDowell Colony for Artists where she works on her second novel, Light the Lamp With the Last of the Whale Oil (Riverhead Books).

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by Dan Svizeny.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

B.B. St. Roman is the only staff member for the New Orleans Police Department Homeless Assistant Unit. Before helping the homeless, she traveled the world, recording sound for documentaries involving shamans, Buddhist monks, and Mother Teresa. And at one point, she became the tour manager for Dr. John, Louisiana musician and legend.

Now, she works full-time with the homeless. She tells her stories of Hurricane Katrina, shelter issues in the city, as well as planning and dreaming of ways to help those living in the streets.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by Holy Gallows.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Scooter Tramp Scotty is a writer who’s lived on the road for over 20 years. Traveling across North America on an old Harley Davidson, Scotty never stays in a single place more than two months. In this episode, we find Scotty in New Orleans, Louisiana and Harlingen, Texas where he talks about becoming a drifter, finding places to stay, and the loneliness of the road.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by Destruction Unit.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For over 30 years, Peter Willcox has been a sea captain for Greenpeace, an environmental organization based out of Amsterdam. Willcox helps international campaigns against whaling, anti-nuclear activities, and global warming. In this episode, he tells his experiences of growing up in an activist family, his first protest at sea, being attacked by the French government and jailed in Russia. He also shares the history of the Rainbow Warrior, the famous Greenpeace vessel that continues to sail today.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by Villages.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a young man growing up in the Dominican Republic, Miguel Vargas-Caba had an early interest in foreign language. With minimal resources in a country wrapped up in political turmoil and an eventual civil war, Cabas began writing to people overseas to request books and stamps for his collection. After teaching himself various languages from Latin to Russian, it was ultimately his curiosity in the latter that would land him in the United States after his mother feared for his life amongst an anti-communist culture.

After adjusting to life in the U.S., Vargas-Caba would eventually earn his green card and contribute to the work force for the next 30 years in the computer industry. In the days following the attacks on 9/11 he would put his love of language to the test.

Music by Lee Noble and Cough Cool.You can hear and purchase their music over at Pale Blue Records.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lois Gibson is considered by many to be the most successful forensic artist in the world. Using skills in art, witness interviewing, and facial reconstruction, Gibson has helped solve over 1,200 cases by sketching portraits of both victims and criminals all over the United States. In 2005, she was even placed in the Guinness Book of World Records because of her success in suspect identifications. EIS finds Gibson at her home in Spring, Texas where she tells stories of an early career in modeling, surviving a brutal attack, and her fascination with faces.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by High Aura’d and Mike Shiflet.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mat Fraser is a performance artist who starred on the FX television show American Horror Story: Freak Show. Born with phocomelia, a condition that results in malformation of the limbs, Fraser embraces his disability through activism, art, and the carnie-sideshow experience. In this episode, Fraser tells the stories of his condition, his relationship with Coney Island, and how he entered show business with a physical deformity.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by PC Worship.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After surviving cancer, Forrest Fenn, a dealer of antique luxuries, hid a treasure chest filled with gold coins, gold dust, gold nuggets, rubies, and other valuable things. The treasure is said to be worth over one million dollars, and he’s only given clues to where it may be in his poetry, prose, and the occasional television appearance.

In this story, Forrest Fenn is interviewed at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he shares stories from his childhood, experiences of being a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, and what exactly made him want to hide a treasure. Local friends and treasure hunters also describe their encounters with Fenn and ideas of where the treasure may be found.

Music by High Aura’d.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Originally released in 1969, Dave Bixby’s Ode to Quetzacoatl is considered an underground classic in the psychedelic folk genre. With tracks such as “Drug Song” and “666″, the album remains dark, revelatory, and spiritual even in the 21st century. For years, rumors of Bixby’s disappearance and death spread amongst listeners. No one knew his story or his whereabouts or what influenced him to create an album dedicated to a Mesoamerican deity. He was a mystery.

In this episode Everything Is Stories finds Dave Bixby in Northern Arizona where he shares his incredible adventures with hallucinogens in the 60s, a Christian cult in the 70s, sailing the open sea alone in the 80s, and what exactly influenced him to produce an album named after a feathered serpent.

Produced by Garrett Crowe, Mike Martinez, and Tyler Wray.

Music by Dave Bixby with additional music by Khris Reinshagen of Nostilevo and Men of Bissau.

Transcripts are available at everythingisstories.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices