Mirage Travel Writing Podcast

Today we have guest writer Lawrence Wrinkler, who takes us on a breathtaking journey through the Annapurna Circuit — a trek where gods and mortals meet. From lush jungles to frozen passes, 'Chosen' f…

In this episode, two guest writers share their stories of being stranded abroad. In the first story, Jessica Holmes relates her trials in South Korea during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and in the second,…

This is a fevered dream about travel. 

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If you enjoy what you're listening to but would rather hold these stories in your hand, say while riding on public transport to m…

Imagine that you’re a psychologist, a therapist. Outside the window of your office is the Mediterranean landscape of Southern Turkey—hills with small trees. There are Roman ruins and mosques on the h…

I was going to start this episode with something personal to introduce myself, but perhaps it’s not an opportune time to introduce myself when the following story is about scoring hookers in Paris. I…

This is a confession to a breaking and entering in Germany.

This is not an alibi but rather a justification for why I did it. 

This is a love story and a story of a golddigger.

So come travel to France…

In this episode, we rehabilitate a house in France, we get married (almost), and travel to Germany to bug my father-in-law's house. This begins a longer narrative (continued in future chapters) of ba…

In this episode, we go on a vertiginous tour through the Western World, guided by one night stands, aging parents, and a lone suicide bomber. From Cape Town, Sydney, Istanbul, Athens, Sevilla, Madrid…

The Bangui Magnetic Anomaly refers to a variation in the Earth's magnetic field centered at Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. 

I wrote a story with the same name in response to a fr…

I’m calling as I drive through Saxony Anhalt, in eastern Germany, because I’ve drank more coffee than water and need to talk.

We've talked a lot about travel in the past, you know, in our 20s, always …

I once thought each culture had its neuroses, I now think each culture is a neurosis. 

Neurosis is defined as a particular atrophied behavior, the expression of which results from some sort of malady.…

Multiple times a day, on a whim or by demand, I sing my son the song The Wheels on the Bus. He's just turned two and loves repetition. He watches my lips as I describe the movements of wheels, wipers…

Travel writing is always going on about place. And travelers are forever comparing and positioning themselves between home and away. But if you travel long enough, the home you think you know will va…

A blow by blow of a humanitarian aid distribution in eastern DR Congo

The aid industry is selling you a lie but it’s one that’s necessary.

The poignant photos on aid organization websites showing benef…

In this episode we have a crash course in clanic values in Palestine when yours truly is robbed and the question of justice—formal justice or informal justice is forced upon me, the wayward traveler.…

Anyone who has ever had his or her heart shit on, enjoyed needle drugs, or rotted away in Sub-Saharan Africa might have witnessed things and could have things worthwhile to say. Worth what? I haven't…

In this episode we have the politics of foreign aid as it relates to the KONY 2012 campaign told through a story about an aid worker kicking painkillers in the Central African Republic. We have croco…

Herbert Marcuse's book "Eros and Civilization" proposes a non-repressive society by attempting a synthesis of the theories of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. He describes a utopia based on aesthetics, s…

When I was living in West Africa, I learned the hard way why people are poor. And why, during the International Year of Microcredit, why the clients of the microfinance institution where I interned f…