What happens when you’re stuck on a train with strangers for nearly twenty hours?

Leaving Seattle behind, I board the Amtrak Coast Starlight bound for San Francisco. There’s Mount Rainier on one side, the Pacific coastline on the other, and somewhere in between a carriage full of people I’d never otherwise meet.

An Amish family returning from a bear hunt. A Kenyan business analyst. A chemist touring American universities. A melancholy young farmer writing poetry about the world. A Chelsea-supporting PhD student from Bangladesh. And, inevitably, my ongoing battle with people who recline their seats.

As the miles roll by, conversations emerge. Not because anyone planned them, but because a train creates something we seem to have less and less of: shared time, shared space and a shared focus.

This episode isn’t really about trains. It’s about what happens when people stop staring at screens and start staring out of the same window.

FAN48 follows my journey across the USA, Mexico and Canada during the 2026 World Cup, trying to meet a supporter from all 48 competing nations, one conversation at a time.

Host: Rob Shaw Cameron
FAN48: www.fan48.info
Instagram: @fan48pod
WhatsApp: +44 7518 715948

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