The Human Experience · Episode

Episode 120 – Richard Grant – American Nomads, Wanderlust, Van Life

A conversation with Richard Grant

Richard Grant is a journalist and author whose interest in exploration and wandering has taken him on a number of riveting travel adventures, from traveling across America to dangerous rivers in Africa.…

Published
September 4, 2018
Runtime
53:59
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Richard Grant is a journalist and author whose interest in exploration and wandering has taken him on a number of riveting travel adventures, from traveling across America to dangerous rivers in Africa. Alongside a number of books, Richard has written for a number of publications including Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times and Telegraph UK.

Episode source imageAmerican Nomads, Travels With Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers and Bullriders (Grove Press, 2003): Richard spent fifteen years wandering throughout the U.S, and in that time he met all manner of America’s nomads, from truck-drivers and tramps to rodeo cowboys and retirees in their R.Vs. He uses their lives and his own to hold a magnifying glass over the myths and cultures that wandering life creates, and how this contradicts societie’s more “normal” way of living.American Nomadswas also made into a 90 min documentary hosted by Richard himself.

God’s Middle Finger, Into The Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre (Free Press, 2008): Richard visits the lawless region of Sierra Madre, a place from which even the Mexican government tends to keep its distance. Richard details meetings with folk healers, the attendance of strange rituals, treasure hunts, and a scary chase by cocaine-fuelled Mexican hillbillies.

Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa (Oct 2011) :Richard attempts to make the first descent of an unexplored river in Tanzania: the Malagarasi River, or “the river of bad spirits”. Along the way he has to dodge both bullets, and crocodiles, among other things, and then emerges at last, into a war zone.

Dispatches From Pluto: Lost and Found in the Mississippi Delta (Oct 2015):A book which relates the trials and tribulations of Richard and his girlfriend as they decide to move from their tiny New York apartment into an old plantation house on the Mississippi Delta.

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This conversation will inform, entertain and enthrall you. 

Find Richard and his work Visit richardgrant.us.

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Transcript

A full transcript has been published for this conversation.

Click here for transcript

Ideas worth returning to

Quotes

Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.

  1. “The desire to move, explore, and discover what lies beyond the horizon seems deeply encoded in human beings. That impulse helped people move outward from Africa and encounter new landscapes. Historically, migration was also practical: people often followed the animals on which they depended as those animals moved elsewhere.”
    From the conversation
  2. “I have spent a surprising amount of my life in dangerous situations, although that was never exactly the plan. In the 1990s, a magazine assigned me to cover Snoop Dogg’s murder trial in Los Angeles. Reporting repeatedly placed me inside unfamiliar environments where curiosity and risk were inseparable.”
    From the conversation
  3. “A story can preserve an experience without requiring you to hold up a phone and press a button. I write for a living, so I habitually carry a notebook. Anyone who travels in order to learn about the world needs to observe closely, remember vividly, and find a form through which the experience can be relayed to another person.”
    From the conversation
  4. “When you are accustomed to great freedom, suddenly having a wife, a young child, a mortgage, and an uncertain income requires a profound adjustment. A child changes the practical shape of every decision. The story you tell about independence changes because your choices now affect a family rather than only yourself.”
    From the conversation
  5. “When Mariah—then my girlfriend and now my wife—and I finally had some money from a BBC documentary, we decided to live in New York for a year. It was the capital of the world, we had close friends there, and I arrived with assignments from major magazines. We wanted to experience the city rather than merely imagine it.”
    From the conversation

About the guest

Richard Grant

Richard Grant is a journalist and author whose interest in exploration and wandering has taken him on a number of riveting travel adventures, from traveling across America to dangerous rivers in Africa. Alongside a number of books, Richard has written for a number of publications including Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times and Telegraph UK.

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