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It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strange Champs. Today, hitchhiking.

It didn't take very long for these dream ways to be recast as highways to hell.

Now I'm not one to pick up hitchhikers. You never know. Might be a hijacker.

I think the danger of hitchhiker is a little bit of the appeal. It's always like a joke about sex to hitchhiker.

There was a joke about danger.

My mother told me never to do this. You wish he'd taken his mom's advice.

Hitchhike to hell.

He opened the doors of hell.

Hitchhike to hell.

There's no such thing as a free ride.

If you watch enough horror movies, you get the feeling that hitchhiking can be hazardous to your health.

Very hazardous.

But does anyone still hitchhike?

Today we'll hear from cult film director John Waters.

At age 66, he recently thumbed his way across almost 3,000 miles of American highways.

And Israeli radio producer Mishi Harmon tries to heal a broken heart by hitchhiking around the world.

But first, was hitchhiking ever really as dangerous as the movies made it seem?

Ginger Strand is the author of Killer on the Road, Violence, and the American Interstate.

She told us that back in the Great Depression, when American highways were still relatively new, everyone hitchhiked.

It was entirely normal. Even Emily Post thought that if you were going to your job, particularly during the war,

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