No Blackout Dates

Kina Pickett spent the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic traversing the country in an Airstream trailer, family of four in tow. In partnership with Matador, Kina dubbed the journey the Beyondland Roadtrip. He’s here to talk family travel, an endless road trip during a global pandemic, and why learning to manage risk is the most important factor in creating the life you want to live.

Captain Kirk had it all wrong. The final frontier is, in fact, Antarctica -- a place explored far less than space, at least in our imaginations and fiction television programming. Today’s guest is here to shine a bit of light on the furthest away place you could go while still being based “here on earth.” Joe Horneman is a Physicians’ Assistant stationed on the South Pole. As one of just two medical staff at his camp of scientists, chefs, and service workers, Joe is one of the three dozen most remote people in the entire world. He’s been enlightening the rest of us on his adventures via TikTok and YouTube, and at first sight of his viral content, we knew we had to get him on the show to explain how things work down there.

Meeting someone exotic while traveling is on your bucket list. If you deny this, you’re lying, and today’s guests can prove it. Yue Xu and Julie Krafchick are dating experts -- like, legit -- and as the hosts of Dateable, one of the most popular dating podcasts, they’ve seen and heard it all. On today’s episode, the ladies join Tim and Eben to discuss all things dating and travel.

This one’s all about the biggest craze of the pandemic. No, not sourdough bread or backyard chickens. We’re talking about OnlyFans, the DIY creator platform that has recently been in the spotlight for its (since recalled) plan to ban “pornographic content” on its site. Our guest is none other than Lauren Blake, the epitome of OnlyFans success. Not only is Lauren the face of one of the platform’s most popular accounts, but she has also parlayed that success into her own travel show on OnlyFansTV, Travel With Lauren.

No Blackout Dates is back for Season 2! We've partnered with Matador Network to take the cause of irreverent and unfiltered travel talk to heights not seen your last international flight.

Tune in every Tuesday morning beginning October 5 for guests including an OnlyFans star turned travel tv host, the outspoken hosts of the web's preeminent dating podcast, a Physician's Assistant living on the South Pole, and a cadre of other booming personalities from across the weird world of travel. The insight is big, and the Hot Takes are, well, as revealing as Tim and Eben's deepest thoughts allow them to get.

We'll see you right here next Tuesday!

We’re kicking off today’s episode with a VERY important announcement: No Blackout Dates has officially been acquired by travel media company Matador Network. What does this mean? Well, we’re getting a new logo, website, overall look, and we might sound a bit better too. It also means we’ll have access to a wider range of awesome guests. We’re excited for this next chapter of NBD and can’t wait to turn the page sometime next month. But more on that in the coming weeks...

Comedian Ivy Le is joining us today. Ivy hosts the podcast FOGO: Fear of Going Outside, one of Spotify’s most popular new podcasts, documenting Ivy’s experience as an avid indoorswoman venturing (reluctantly) into outdoor adventure. Eben and Ivy rebrand camping as “voluntary homelessness” and hiking as simply “walking,” while Tim defends the merits of voluntary homelessness and walking. We also expose the outdoors community as more judgmental than you might think, and learn why some indigenous peoples don’t feel comfortable hiking their own ancestral land.

Eugene Buchanan has done everything that you’d like to say you’ve done. He’s searched for Incan treasure in an uncharted South American Canyon. He’s paddled Russia’s Bashkaus River with a ragtag crew of adventurers speaking multiple languages. And he’s raised a family in the always dangerous environs of a Colorado mountain town. Fresh off a week of offshore kayaking in Iceland, Eugene joins Tim and Eben to discuss his experience in Icelandic Covid quarantine, the future of expedition travel, and how it is that he still finds these crazy trips so exciting even after he’s lived the phrase, “What can go wrong, will.”

In Hot Takes, Tim and Eben discuss the perks of small airports vs large, and decipher when it’s actually ok to take a work call in a coffee shop (it’s all about self-awareness). Tim also wonders aloud whether any airport breweries actually make their own beer onsite.

While Tim and Eben struggle to figure out how laptop webcams work, Clara Wetzel was in South Sudan filming the first documentaries ever made in the country. Her groundbreaking films spotlight the lives, relationships, and struggles of those living in this young African nation, and set an inspiring precedent for the country’s emerging film industry. We learn about the dangers of filming in South Sudan, and the importance of creative expression in the face of authoritarianism.

Everyone loves food. Matt Siegel literally wrote the book on it. The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat, comes out August 31. On today’s show Matt teaches us more than we ever thought we'd know about the puritanical roots of cereal, why semen and beer are actually better at catching flies than honey or vinegar, and whether or not aphrodisiacs are all they’re cracked up to be (no spoilers). Eben finally gets his chance to nerd out about pizza and fast food with someone on his side of the argument, and we have the biggest breakthrough in the history of No Blackout Dates -- the declaration of what is unofficially the official food of the United States of America.

In Hot Takes, Tim and Eben discuss the perfect date food and each reveals their go-to pocket snack -- one comes in a shell, and the other, well, let’s just say it flies solo.

9 months, 38 guests, and 327(ish) Hot Takes later, we made it to episode 40. To celebrate all the incredible guests we’ve been lucky enough to interview...we’re not interviewing anyone at all today. For this special episode we’re reviving an old tradition: listener stories. We asked for your craziest travel stories and you guys delivered. Get ready to hear about a drug deal gone wrong in Colombia, bar brawls, water shortages, and airplane malfunctions in an episode full of YOUR tales from the road. So sit back, relax, and see why Tim could easily have a career narrating audiobooks.