We all know Vans for their classic shoes.

I mean, who hasn't had a pair of their checkerboard slip-ons in their closet?

But Vans also innovates.

Step into the Ultra-Range Neo VR3 and you'll feel the difference.

This versatile Onde shoe has an updated biobased foam in the midsole that delivers maximum

cushioning.

A precision support system for optimal fit and breathable mesh to keep you cool.

All that makes the Neo VR3 the most technically advanced Ultra-Range shoe yet.

Check it out for yourself at vans.com.

From outside magazine, this is the outside podcast.

W. Ralph U-Banks grew up during the dying years of Jim Crow.

His father was black and his mother came from an interracial family.

His parents lived for a time in the Mississippi Delta until a rising tide of white violence

in the mid-1950s spurred them to move to a farm in the southern part of the state where

U-Banks was born.

He would leave the region entirely as a young man, relocating to the northeastern US to

pursue life as a writer and a scholar.

But then, decades later, fate brought him back to the Delta and he fell in love with it.

For the latest episode of our summer read series, which features new and classic outside

magazine stories read by professional narrators, we hear how U-Banks was drawn to explore the

topography of a troubled place, known around the world as the birthplace of the blues,

and why he believes that the only way to understand the Delta and America itself is to walk

...