Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. Last summer when I was taking a break and had

no form of income, I thought maybe I could come up with an idea for a series of stories that I could sell to a podcast company for a lot of money.

Because there's a lot of money in podcasting these days.

And this is the way business is done. You come up with an idea for a series and sell it.

You get the money before you do the stories.

So I was thinking big, and the idea that came to mind was one that had been floating around in my head for a long time,

travel around the world by taxi, one after another.

I'd never done it because it seemed too expensive, but the idea was and

still is a good one because when you get into a taxi or a ride share or even hitchhiking, you're getting in a car with a stranger. But instead of it being scary, there's a built-in relationship of trust. You trust that he or she is not crazy and knows how to drive and he or she trusts that you're not crazy or violent or rude.

You're both vulnerable, but you leave your fear behind.

The past and future don't matter.

You travel together for a short time, and then you never see each other again.

In this time and space you can talk and listen freely, openly. Not all

the rides would be good ones. Much would depend upon luck and random

chance, but traveling is like that.

Life is like that.

So I called my friend Ben Adair, who has a new podcasting company, Western Sound in Los Angeles.

He liked the idea, but thought we should do a test here in the United States,

somewhere that seemed like the most foreign part of the country to me, somewhere I didn't know much about.

I said that would be the South.

I've hardly been there.

And he said, okay, try going from New Orleans to Jacksonville. It's 550 miles along I-10. Spend four or five days taking

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