“Deviate with Rolf Potts” takes you off topic with native Kansan
What does the native Kansan best known as the author of a book on long-term travel do in the midst of worldwide travel restrictions? Hunker down and increase the number of podcasts he’s producing from his rural home near Salina.
“I am usually overseas traveling during the winter, but this year I stuck closer to home to help my aging parents, who are also my neighbors, tend to their ranch duties in Saline County,” said Potts, the Wichita North grad who wrote “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” in 2003 based on post-college travel experiences that included exploring the U.S. in a van for eight months and then traveling independently around Asia for two-and-a-half years.
“I had taken side trips to places like LA and — as recently as early March — Salt Lake City. But the pandemic has squelched short-term travel plans for now.”
Potts, 49, has reported from 60 countries and was based overseas for a total of seven years. He still travels often and for long periods, but he also keeps a home in north-central Kansas near family. A travel writer, essayist and a creative writing teacher, he updated “Vagabonding” in 2016 and published his fourth book, “Souvenir,” in 2018.
In between those projects, he launched a podcast that recently reached 100 episodes. New installments of “Deviate with Rolf Potts” typically appear each Tuesday at rolfpotts.com or through your preferred podcast aggregator. We asked Potts about podcasting during the pandemic.
Q: Tell us about the scope of your podcast.
A: I called the podcast “Deviate with Rolf Potts” on the premise that each episode would deviate in interesting ways from the prescribed theme. I am best known for my book “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel” so about half of my episodes deal in travel in some way. Other episodes deviate from the topic of travel into other topics that interest me. Kansas sometimes figures in my travel-oriented episodes, like the episode on best places to live in America, but usually my home-state figures in to non-travel episodes I’ve done on topics like law enforcement, alternative agriculture or the “satanic backward masking” music scare of the 1980s.
Q: Has the virus changed your content plans?
A: When COVID-19 broke out I did some more immediate episodes about travel related to making sense of health information in the pandemic era, in part because it seemed strange to run pre-recorded travel episodes during a time when world travel has largely shut down. Right now the plan is to continue with COVID-19-themed episodes through mid-April, then transition back to travel, literary and lifestyle themes, keeping in mind the new pandemic context.
Q: Do you produce the podcast in Kansas?
A: A majority of the episodes are produced in Kansas. Even when the interview itself takes place in person in, say, New York or LA or Paris, I write the intro scripts and do most of the editing here in Kansas. I did some of my editing last summer when I was based in Paris, but a majority of the edits are done at my home office in Kansas. A lot of my interviews are done with travel experts based all over the world, but I do most of those over Skype, from my office here in Saline County.
Q: What are a few episodes you’d recommend to a new listener?
A: Two of my favorites were produced right here in Kansas. Episode 40, “Satanic backward masking changed 1980s rock,” which was recorded at KMUW in Wichita and uses the lens of my Wichita childhood to explore the “satanic panic” of the 1980s. Also episode 96, “The power of small choices across decades,” which features a 102-year-old Army veteran named John Monk and his granddaughter, my old Wichita North High classmate Kaye Monk, talking about overcoming Jim Crow-era prejudice to make a better life for dozens of people.
Most of my episodes tend to be more travel-oriented, however, and a good place to start is episode 39, “Celebrating the best places to live in America;” episode 85, “The world’s cheapest destinations;” episode 57, “How to travel lighter, safer, and smarter;” or episode 46 “Traveling Russia onboard the Trans-Siberian Express.” I also talk with famous travel authors, like Paul Theroux, and some episodes recount personal experiences like traveling to Mongolia with my parents or traveling America by van when I was in my 20s.
Q: What are some other episodes with a Wichita or Kansas connection?
A:
▪ “An outsider’s inside history of the Beat Generation, as told by Charles Plymell”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/beat-generation-plymell/
▪ “The way we grow food has been broken for 10,000 years (but we can fix it)”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/reinventing-agricuture/
▪ “The epic one-against-five foul-out basketball game of 1964”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/1-against-5-basketball-game/
▪ “A personal history of being a lifelong pro-sports fan (Super Bowl special)”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/super-bowl/
▪ “Filmmaker Rod Pocowatchit on Native American zombie movies and DIY film”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/rodrick-pocowatchit/
▪ “Celebrating the subtle (and not-so-subtle) genius of ‘Pulp Fiction’ 25 years on”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/pulp-fiction/
▪ “What it’s like to be a Latino police officer in America”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/latino-police/
▪ “What it’s like to be a black police officer in America”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/black-police/
▪ “A shadow history of rock music in the 1980s”
https://rolfpotts.com/podcast/1980s-music/