Deviate with Rolf Potts

Mar 03 2025 252 ep. 59 mins 1.4k
Deviate with Rolf Potts Podcast artwork

Travel Writer, Essayist, Adventurer, Teacher

  Society & Culture
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Travel memoir lab: On blending travel narrative with a broader memoiristic life-narrative

Mar 03 2025 37 mins  
“We do a lot of writing alone, in our own space. But writing is not a solitary practice. The business of writing requires a community.” –Angelique Stevens In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Angelique talk about what her writing life is like in the decade since she first took Rolf’s Paris class, with the ambition of becoming a travel writer, and how her travel

How a journey on the Hippie Trail changed Rick Steves’ life (and influenced Rolf’s travels too)

Feb 11 2025 44 mins  
“Anybody with curiosity and wanderlust can have their own Hippie Trail. They just need to get away from home, embrace the world, and have an adventure.” –Rick Steves In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Rick talk about Rick’s 1990s book Asia Through the Back Door, and how Rick recently rediscovered the old Asia travel journals he kept as a young man (2:30); how Rick pre

A travel writers’ Super Bowl special: Pico Iyer and Rolf discuss NFL football from the global perspective

Jan 31 2025 38 mins  
“My life has often forced me to follow the Super Bowl in unusual circumstances. The first Super Bowl found me in boarding school in England, huddled under my bedclothes with an illegal transistor radio.” –Pico Iyer In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Pico talk about the novelty of two travel writers talking about the Super Bowl, and Pico’s NFL fandom (4:00); how sp

Pico Iyer on how solitude, stillness, and silence play an essential counterbalance to the traveling life

Jan 13 2025 55 mins  
“In solitude, I often feel closer to the people I care for than when they’re in the same room.” –Pico Iyer In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Pico talk about how the best travels are often counterbalanced with a kind of stillness, in which one can find one’s “best self” (3:00); Pico’s decades-long experiences with monks in a California monaster

Life changing travel experiences: Memories of traveling to Syria, 25 years on (with Ari Shaffir)

Dec 30 2024 83 mins  
“Syria is a mix of everything. There are multiple Christian cultures, multiple Muslim cultures, and multiple languages. It’s the crossroads of the world. It made for some of my best travel memories from that time of my life.” —Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate (which was remixed from an episode of Ari Shaffir’s You Be Trippin’ podcast), Rolf and Ari talk

Travel memoir lab: How to fast-track your travel book by working with a hybrid publisher

Dec 09 2024 61 mins  
“In El Salvador, I dropped $5 out of my pocket at the border, and some guy came running up to me. At the beginning of the trip I would have been surprised by that. But by that point I would have been surprised if it didn’t happen.” —Matt Savino In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt talk about how the first version of his travel book was way too long, and what he end

HoneyTrek: A case study in making a full-time living as travel influencers and content creators

Nov 25 2024 43 mins  
“When we got into this, we didn’t know how to make videos. That’s a skill we’ve had to learn, because the industry has changed so much, from photos to videos. We are still learning all the time.” —Anne Howard In this episode of Deviate, Rolf, Mike, Anne and Kiki talk about they got started traveling as a couple, how they made it affordable, and how t

Live from Bali: How tourists, influencers, and nomads transform destinations (for good and for bad)

Nov 11 2024 38 mins  
“Influencers are forever reinforcing the same images. They’re spending no time in the actual place, other than the requisite time to take the photo. From the local community’s point of view, these kinds of tourists bring very little value.” –Stuart McDonald In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Stuart talk about why Stuart chose to make his office in We

Vagabonding audio companion: Obnoxious travelers (and how to avoid being one)

Oct 21 2024 45 mins  
“We’re having less enjoyable travel experiences, even as our photos show us having this amazing time, because we’re performing a version of travel for people who aren’t even there.” In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and David talk about the time-honored practice of Americans pretending to be Canadian on the road, and why Americans at times have had a bad reputa

What you discover when you walk down every single street in New York City (encore)

Sep 16 2024 90 mins  
“Traveling, for me, is all about destroying stereotypes and narratives about people and places.” – Matt Green In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Matt discuss Matt’s mission to walk every street in New York City (3:00); walking across the entire United States and breaking stereotypes (12:00); bucket lists as a catalyst for action (28:00); and Matt’s experiences walking i