In 2003, my wife and I were living in Bangkok, Thailand. One day I went across town to meet a fellow travel writer named Rolf Potts. He had a new book out called Vagabonding, which was what he branded his genre of long-term world travel. I was interviewing him for a story on backpackers for the Christian Science Monitor.

Potts had written one of my favorite travel stories, called Storming the Beach, for Salon. After I sent him a note saying how much I loved it, he told me about a new travel writing site called World Hum. He also interviewed me for own website in 2001.

A few years after our meeting in Bangkok, in 2009, Potts had a second book out called Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, and I wrote a profile of him for Poets & Writers.

Now, in the 2020 , the long arc of this interviewing pendulum has swung back again, and Rolf had me on his podcast, Deviate, to talk about culture-bound syndromes andmy book, The Geography of Madness .

The next time our paths cross, circa 2030, it will be my turn again.