Scott Gurian

People often say it’s a small world, but there are giant parts of the planet that most people never think about and billions of stories they’ve never heard. On Far From Home, I combine public radio style journalism with fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants storytelling as I visit some of those places and tell some of those stories. On past episodes, I documented an 18 country road trip I took from England to Mongolia, wandered through abandoned buildings in Chernobyl, attended a hallucinogenic ayahuasca ceremony in a shantytown in Peru, and visited Iran as an American tourist. Check out the show to follow along with my adventures!

Since the 1800s, the Caribbean island of Barbuda has always been a place where no one has deeds to their property. They just share the land communally and informally. But in the aftermath of a major hurricane, the country's Prime Minister has proposed a controversial plan to change that system to attract foreign investment and help the rebuilding process. I team up with reporter Sarah Gonzalez from NPR’s Planet Money podcast to tell the story.

In 1998, political leaders in Northern Ireland signed a peace agreement they hoped would end the Troubles, a 30 year period of armed conflict between Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists. Decades later, the situation has improved, but cities like Belfast remain divided by dozens of fences and walls separating the two communities. And removing them isn’t going to be easy. In collaboration with the podcast 99% Invisible, I visit Northern Ireland to learn about the history and speak to residents about why the walls are still standing.

A while back, a friend of mine named Oraz who ran an auto body repair shop in the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan came across a kind of puzzle. A new vehicle had arrived on his lot. A white Lexus SUV. He could see by the inspection sticker that it came from the U.S., but the thing that really caught his attention was the shape it was in. It was practically brand new, not like the dented and mangled cars that usually come to him for repairs.

Oraz wondered: How did this car get here, to my shop? And what kind of place, what kind of person, casts off such a nice new car? I worked with reporter Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi from NPR’s Planet Money podcast to embark on a journey through the international used car underground that led us all the way back to a pleasant, two-story home in suburban New Jersey.