You know when you get the very thing you thought you wanted…. and then it sucks? Lucy Pepper realized her fantasy of moving to Portugal, but she was miserable. She was wife to a workaholic husband, a city girl living in the country, an artist who no longer made art. This episode is about breaking free from places or people or roles that don’t feed us anymore. It’s about the courage it takes to grow up and become who you really are.

Donna Davis switched careers to pursue her dream job, travel the world, spend time with grandkids, and forage for wild mushrooms in the woods. Her life was a midlife success story…until she made a mistake. Today’s episode is about the importance of taking risks, even after you take a wrong turn.

When I felt I’d started aging faster, I wondered: Should I take hormones? Fifteen years after a landmark study scared millions of menopausal women off the drugs, I found out the case against estrogen is a lot more complicated. Part two in my personal hormone journey.

In the time between when my mother went through menopause and I did, the medical advice on how to handle it did a complete 180. So what happened? And what does it mean for me—for all of us—now?

Three years after launching Midway, I’ve pivoted to a new career, my son just started his senior year of college, and—well, I’m still trying to figure out this new period of my life. That’s what the second season of Midway is all about.

I’ve been dreading my son Miro leaving home for college. Now the moment has finally arrived—and I'm surprised by my reaction.

Today’s show is about friendships—how they help shape who you are,  and why they can be so hard to navigate and keep going.

Midway's Independent Cafe Tour of DC   

Producer Barbara Paulsen and Middlebury College Intern Sara Hodgkins worked on the 5th episode—on friendship—in coffee shops all around the district: Big Bear Cafe in Bloomingdale; Open City at the National Cathedral; Tryst in Adams Morgan; and Coffee Nature in Tenleytown. Many thanks to Sara for her amazing insights and wise counsel on how to shape this story!

When your kid applies to college, it can feel like the end of your child rearing, the last time they'll need your help, the final verdict on how you've done as a parent. This is the story of my son Miro applying to college, but it's also my own, sometimes frantic, quest to figure out what I’ll do as an empty nester.

My family travels 2,000 miles from Oklahoma to California to witness the drought that's taken hold of the American Southwest and California—and to get closer as a family.

Any parent of a teenager can get wistful about what’s been lost. When they were younger, they drove you round the bend with all their need. Now they don’t need you and it’s not like you want them to—but there’s a closeness that is lost. At 16, my son Miro spent a lot of time in his room listening to music, and when he came out I usually pounced on him with questions and reminders. I didn't like the pattern we’d fallen into.

Part of the reason I'd quit my job was that I wanted to try to regain some of the intimacy that had slipped away while I’d been so focused on work, and he’d grown into a teenager all of a sudden. But was that still possible? To find out, my family of three did what so many Americans do when they’re looking for answers: We took a road trip out West. We drove from Oklahoma to California—retracing the journey taken by the Joad family in the Grapes of Wrath. 

This podcast is the story of that trip, told in 4 chapters for each state we passed through. It’s the story of the people and places we encounter over the course of a 2,000-mile trek across the southwest—which happens to be in the midst of an historic drought. But like any road trip story, it’s also about other things, about love and attachment, and how learning to tell the difference can transform relationships—can transform us.

Check out my three-part article for National Geographic.

Part One: On the 'Grapes of Wrath' Trail, the Dust Bowl Still Resonates

Part Two: Rediscovering Route 66, America's Mother 'Road'

Part Three:  A Visit to the Migrant Camp of Weedpatch During California's Worst Drought in History 

The people behind the Mother Road Trip: 

From Top Left: Miro recording sound in Hooker, Oklahoma; Tom and Patsy Fischer outside Patsy's mother's house in Hooker; Diana Peterson Lane at the Joy Junction Homeless Shelter in Albuquerque; Miro mopping up after a volunteer session at Joy Junction; Barbara outside David Newton's house in Albuquerque; Miro and Teo dig holes to build a fence in Portersville, CA; Barbara wades in the Colorado River in Needles, CA; Carla Eggman is an orange farmer whose son has returned to Oklahoma in what she calls a "reverse migration."

One spring day I woke up on my birthday and realized it was time to quit my dream job.