In the Nørrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, there's a small building with a garden and wooden seats. It's the Menneskebiblioteket or Human Library, where the "readers" and "books" are actually people having deeply personal and intimate conversations about topics that might normally be considered off-limits or taboo in polite society. It's staffed by volunteers whose life stories and experiences mean they face some sort of stigma, whether it be due to their ethnicity, religion, orientation, occupation, disability, or social status. On this episode of Far From Home, I pay a visit to the Human Library where I speak to a librarian and several "books" as well as the library's founder, Ronni Abergel.

Since its humble beginning in Denmark several decades ago, the Human Library concept has now spread to more than 80 countries on 6 continents! You can visit the library's Facebook page to find out about upcoming library events near you.

(This episode includes the following music: Shapeshifters, Go to Sleep, Moodswing, Mont Blanc, Ice Pack, The Gall, Scaffoldings, Downtown, and Well and Good by Podington Bear from the Free Music Archives - CC by N.C. 3.0 and 1960s 2 House from Mobygratis) 

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

When he was growing up in Southern California, Addi Somekh wasn't quite sure what to do with his life. But he knew from a young age that he wanted to "spread warmth" and make other people happy. On this week’s episode, the unusual story of how Addi’s quest to do just that set him off on a worldwide mission to make people laugh. Addi and his friend Charlie hatch a plan to travel around the globe making balloon hats for people, but what at first sounds like a fun and quirky adventure turns out to be far more meaningful than they ever could have imagined!

Visit my website to see some of Charlie’s amazing photos of people around the world wearing Addi’s balloon hats, and for links to his balloon art, his balloon bass music, his reality TV show, and the documentary that was made about his travels.

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

When he was 26 years old in 1948, Garry Davis did something that would make the rest of his life really complicated.

Over the next six decades, he’d be detained and imprisoned 34 times in 9 countries, dragged off the floor of the United Nations General Assembly, and gain millions of followers, all while confronting countless bureaucrats who had absolutely no idea what to do with him.

What set this chain of events into motion was his decision to stand before a guy in a gray suit at the US Embassy in Paris, put his hand on a bible, and read a couple of lines off a sheet of paper renouncing his American citizenship. And he'd never become a citizen of any other country, instead navigating the world as a stateless person without any sort of road map or instruction manual. Garry would go on to found the World Government of World Citizens and issue birth certificates, passports, and other identity documents, all in his quest for unity and peace.

If you're interested in learning more about Garry Davis, check out this video about him and also this documentary that was made about him a number of years ago: https://www.theworldismycountry.com/

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

Over the past few months, President Trump has taken a sort of a slash-and-burn approach to much of the U.S. government, and among the many taxpayer-funded programs he’s axed has been American foreign assistance distributed through the Agency for International Development or USAID. That’s billions of dollars that helped with things like Ebola prevention in West Africa, malaria testing in Myanmar, famine relief to war-torn Sudan, and food deliveries to refugees from Western Sahara.

Leading the cost-cutting charge is Elon Musk, who Trump appointed to run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. In response to criticism, Musk tweeted recently that “no one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” but as time has passed, more and more evidence has emerged that that assurance simply isn’t true.

The British newspaper The Telegraph reported in early February that a number of people in Thai refugee camps passed away after USAID-funded hospitals were forced to close and medical workers abruptly left the area, cutting off patient’s oxygen supplies. More recently, New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof visited South Sudan, where he heard stories of children who’d died after losing access to their American-funded HIV medications, which had only cost about 12 cents a day. The World Health Organization says that the Trump administration’s decision to cut foreign aid means eight countries could completely exhaust their supplies of life-saving HIV medications in the coming months. And internal memos from USAID itself estimate that dismantling the agency could cause up to 166-thousand worldwide deaths each year from malaria, not to mention a million children who will suffer from severe malnutrition and 200-thousand who will be paralyzed with polio.

On this episode of Far From Home, I visit a food distribution warehouse for refugees in southwest Algeria, and I speak to humanitarian workers in Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and the country of Georgia to hear firsthand accounts of how these budget cuts are directly impacting people around the world. 

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

Montreal is a city often split between English and French languages and cultures, but one thing that almost all residents can get behind is cheering on their beloved hockey team, the Canadiens. This isn't just your run-of-the-mill, sports-crazed city, however. The love of hockey here runs much deeper. It's tied to both the history of the game's creation as well as the identity of the Quebecois people, who've come to see their hometown team as a powerful symbol of their nationhood, even though they're still officially part of Canada.

On this episode of Far From Home -- which I originally reported for Here and There, a Canadian Geographic travel podcast -- I visit Montreal where I attend a game amid 20,000 cheering fans, and I even take my own hockey lesson. By the end of my trip, it's clear that what started out as a simple sports story is actually about something much deeper and more meaningful.    

Thanks to Liz Beatty and Black Cabin Studios for permission to share this story with the Far From Home audience. Thanks also to Clark McLeod, Mario Lambert, Emma Jacobs, Tourism Montreal, Destination Canada, and Excellent Ice.

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is now entering its third year, and it’s been a humanitarian disaster. According to UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency, it’s displaced nearly 7 million Ukrainians globally. And on the other side, an estimated 900,000 Russians have also fled their country for various reasons. Among them are economic migrants, conscientious objectors, and political refugees, but also a smaller subset of hundreds of exiled journalists, who’ve had to leave in order to continue to report freely, amid a crackdown on press freedom and free expression. This is the story of one of them, my friend Ivan.

For more info on the kidnapping of Ukrainian children, visit https://russiaswaronchildren.org

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

As we wrap up another year, I'm re-sharing an episode I originally released back at the end of 2020 about a holiday tradition I got to witness while I was visiting Puerto Rico. I often travel over Christmas and New Years, and I love seeing how people in other places have cultural practices that are different from my own. This was one of those experiences. My friend Rob took me to a parranda, which is sort of like a Puerto Rican version of Christmas caroling. But as you’ll hear, this particular parranda had an interesting twist.

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from faraway places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

As I spent time abroad over the past few months in the lead-up to the American presidential election, I was struck by how often news and politics from back home seemed to be on the minds of all the locals I met. It’s like no matter how far away I went, it was impossible to escape! On this episode I reflect on how important what happens in the United States is to people the rest of the world, and we hear from people in Poland, Haiti, Lebanon, Iran, India, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, and Uganda about what the election of Donald Trump means to them.

If you want to learn more about the work of Frank Mugisha’s organization, visit the webpage of Sexual Minorities Uganda. And be sure to check out The Europeans, the weekly podcast that Wojciech Oleksiak from Poland helps produce. It’s a great way to keep informed on all the important news happening around the European continent, and I always have the latest episode in my personal podcast queue.

(Thanks to Kevin MacLeod for his track Desert City, which was used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.)

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

I'm still working on my next episode, where I'm asking listeners around the world to send me short voice memo recordings from their phones, talking about how people where they live have reacted to the recent American election results and how they think a second Trump presidency would impact ordinary folks in their country.  If you have any thoughts or observations you'd like to share, please email me at [email protected].

In the meantime, I know a lot of new listeners have joined me for this 4th season of Far From Home, so I'm popping into your feed to introduce myself and share a little about my background and how I got to where I am today.

On this episode, I'm featuring an excerpt of an interview James Hammond conducted with me a few months ago for his “Winging It Travel Podcast.” It was a really great conversation, and we delved into some interesting topics that I haven't discussed on Far From Home in the past, so I wanted to share it with all of you.

You can visit Winging It's website to read a nice article James wrote about me and listen to the rest of our conversation, or simply search for Winging It Travel Podcast in whatever podcast app you use (note that this interview originally ran back in May, 2024)

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org

If you travel around Canada, you’ll find lots of regional dishes, but there isn’t really a strong national culinary identity the way there is in Italy or Mexico, for example. So I embarked on a quest to figure out how exactly to define "Canadian cuisine" beyond the stereotypical maple syrup, poutine, and butter tarts. The answer turned out to be much more interesting than I ever could have imagined!

A version of this piece originally ran on Here and There, a Canadian Geographic travel podcast. Thanks to Liz Beatty and Black Cabin Studios for permission to share this story with the Far From Home audience. Canadian listeners might also appreciate my documentary reexamining the legacy of the Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven painters.

On Far From Home, award-winning public radio journalist Scott Gurian reports fascinating stories from far-flung places like Iran, Chernobyl, and Mongolia. For more info, visit farfromhomepodcast.org