Meander & Muse

What can thousands of miles on foot and the promise of pizza, ice cream and/or beer teach you about life?

Lots! says Jade.

In this episode, Erin sits down with serial entrepreneur and Rewiring the Game podcast host Jade Baranski to meander through a couple of adventures from their 20s and the lessons that have stuck around long after the trips ended.

They talk about what happens when comfort disappears, why a repetitive mantra can get you through challenging moments, and how enormous things - whether a journey, a business, or a fulfilling life - are ultimately built the same way: one step at a time.

It's a conversation about grit, wonder, slowing down and discovering parts of yourself you might never meet if you always stay where it's safe.

You can find Jade at owntherally.com, where you can join the Rebel Roundtable for business advice, or listen to Rewiring the Game for more conversations with queer business owners.

Standing inside the Alhambra in Granada, Mais looked around at groups of tourists trying to translate the Arabic written across its walls.

What Mais saw was the words of poets and the Quran. As she stood there reading the words, she began to weep.

For Mais, travel has always been about more than seeing new places. It’s about the places that wake something up inside us, the strangers who appear at just the right moment, and those experiences that make us feel incredibly small and expansive at the same time.

In this episode of Meander & Muse, Mais and I wander through Granada, her childhood in Iraq and Syria, what it means to carry home within you, our connection to the natural world, and surrendering our need for certainty.

We also talk about awe - the kind we experience standing somewhere extraordinary, but also the kind waiting for us in our own backyards if we’re paying attention.

Because maybe we don’t have to know exactly where we’re going.
Maybe everything is possible in awe.

Work with Mais: https://www.ishtarcoaching.com/
Poet Andrea Gibson: https://andreagibson.org/

It’s the tail end of rainy season in Thailand. Your little riverboat can’t reach shore, an afternoon cyclone is rolling in, and a guy is doggy-paddling toward you with a handful of garbage bags and rope... telling you to stuff your backpack inside and swim for it.

That’s how this week’s Meander & Muse episode begins.

This week’s guest is Claudine Rousseau - an acupuncturist, chef, photographer, musician, and the one friend that is always down for an adventure. We travel back to 1999 to a secluded island in Thailand, where a routine boat ride turned into a swim-to-shore adventure. And a month later, back in Denver, Claudine discovered an eerie twist to the story. To prove that strangers and small world moments make the world go round.

From there, we wander into her second act: leaving behind a growing disenchantment with Western medicine, training in acupuncture, spending two and a half years working with underserved communities in Guatemala, and eventually building a practice in France.

Underneath the travel tales and healing stories is a shared philosophy: adapt, go with the flow, and trust that you’ll get there. Whether she’s navigating a storm, treating a patient, or figuring out what comes next, Claudine believes in working with what you have rather than fighting what is.

And we get personal, too... including our own experiences with acupuncture and herbs to heal during breast cancer treatment.

Plus, Claudine’s Tip from the Road: never leave home without your MacGyver bag.

Come meander with us.

Links:

Stephen Corsale Acupuncture in Boulder, CO

Global Healthworks Foundation

Erin Preston Productions's video for GHF

What if time doesn't really exist, and the only way to see that is to let go of it?

In this episode of Meander & Muse, I sit down with Max McCormick, an old friend whose path I've crossed in various parts of the world, and one of the most quietly adventurous people I know.

Max grew up in Australia, studied to be an engineer, worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and eventually traded a life of deadlines for a life of following his curiosity.

We wander into the untouched rainforests of Borneo - flying in on missionary planes, trekking village to village with indigenous guides, making up maps on the fly and learning the hard way that river shoes full of holes are an open invitation to leeches. We talk about the strange freedom of being somewhere so remote that no one in the world knows where you are.

But underneath the adventures, this is a conversation about time.

Max describes how years of head-down engineering compressed his sense of time until "weeks went by like seconds" and how travel cracked that open. Waiting for buses he couldn't rush, surrendering to journeys that took as long as they took, he slowly stopped gripping the clock.

Time, he found, would "just open up." And in the places where he was most fully present, it seemed to disappear altogether - the dimension of time simply falling away from his perception of reality.

His conclusion is that time isn't the fixed thing we treat it as, and the only way to understand that is to let go and surrender to the moment. Once you do, he says, "amazingly good things start to happen."

Along the way, we talk about the creativity born from boredom, the Henry Miller line he lives by - "Every day we slaughter our finest impulses" - and why, if you're curious about something, you should simply follow it.

If you love conversations about travel, presence, and the deeper questions underneath both, I think you'll really sink into this one.

To learn more about Borneo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borneo

Why would two 22-year-old women board a passenger ship in San Francisco in 1964 and set off on a two-year journey around the world?

For Gretchen Bunn, it was simple: Exposure.

In this episode of Meander & Muse, Gretchen shares stories from a time when travel looked very different - passenger ships, trains, telegrams, hitchhiking, and crossing into countries that are now far more difficult to access.

Together, we journey through New Zealand, the Australian Outback, Asia, and the Middle East, hearing stories of trusting strangers for long rides, unexpected reunions, falling in love, crossing borders during wartime, and the remarkable encounters that shaped not only the trip, but Gretchen's life.

But this conversation is about more than extraordinary travel stories. It's about how stepping beyond what's familiar can change the way we see the world ... and each other.

After returning home and working in television, Gretchen took another leap into the unknown, joining Bill Daniels's cable television company before cable had become mainstream. While many thought the industry would never succeed, she followed her gut and watched HBO, CNN, MTV become legendary. She worked her way up through the company and became a lifelong friend of Daniels - proving that the same curiosity and willingness to embrace the unknown continued to shape her life long after the journey ended.

Her biggest lesson?

"Exposure is the key to understanding people and being inclusive and compassionate. You know... just exposure."

If you enjoy stories about travel, curiosity, and the people who quietly change the way we see the world, I think you'll enjoy this conversation.

This is it... The very first episode of Meander & Muse! It felt like the universe was saying now is the time to do this - recorded in Italy with my best friend Jen Carney while celebrating our 50th birthdays.

I was curious what her answer would be when I asked, "What's one of your craziest travel stories?". Jen and I have known each other for over 30 years, so we finish each other's sentences like old friends do - filling in the gaps, finishing each other's sentences, making jokes and laughing along the way. We meander through an electric storm in Utah's Canyonlands, a trip down the Amazon river (tarantulas, caimans, and all), and the wild story of her giving birth in Australia.

This episode is a little different too - it's the only one where Jen turns the question back on me, and I get to share an experience of my own.

And stick around until the end. Jen's takeaway from years of traveling far and wide, and living abroad for the past two decades, is one of those things that just stays with you.

This is a show about the stories travel gives us, and what they teach us about connection, overcoming fear, and the one wild and precious life we're all figuring out. Real stories from people stepping outside the familiar and going on an adventure. Welcome to Meander & Muse.

Talking about travel has always been one of my favorite ways to connect with other people.

In this trailer, I share why I created Meander & Muse - a podcast where travel is the entry point, and from there we meander through conversations about being human. Together, we explore the stories, surprises, laughter, kindness, and life lessons that emerge when we step beyond what's familiar.

I believe everyone has an interesting story to share, and that the best souvenirs aren't the ones we pack - they're the ones we carry within us.

I'm Erin Preston, a story investigator, producer, and traveler who's endlessly curious about what happens when people step beyond the familiar. Come along for the journey. I can't wait to meander with you.