Blog - Rolf Potts

“All writing is trying to destroy a stereotype, and the individual that you’re writing about — the figure in the landscape — is actually the ideal.” —Paul Theroux Paul Theroux‘s highly acclaimed novels include Blinding Light, My Other Life, and The Mosquito Coast. His 1975 book The Great Railway Bazaar is credited with revitalizing the genre of literary travel writing, and…

“”When I was in the third grade my teacher announced to our class that Ronald Reagan had been shot. When she asked if we had questions, I raised my hand and asked her if the Indiana – North Carolina basketball game was still going to happen that night.” – Chuck Klosterman In this episode of Deviate, Rolf,…

“A joke is kind of like a little life-lesson in addition to being funny. If your joke is really good, there’s a little nugget of truth in it.” – Cedar Van Tassel In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Cedar discuss why kids want to be paleontologists and astronauts, and the existential “book” Cedar wrote when he…

“When we don’t foster local filmmaking traditions, we end up making movies about what we think life is like in the cities we do see movies about.” – Jason Bailey In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Jason talk about how being from Kansas influenced their careers as travel writers and film critics, and the long cultural…

This week I appeared on Yonder Radio, an hour-long audio show and podcast produced by the Center for Rural Strategies, to talk about my feature-length found-footage video essay Kansas Never Plays Itself, which draws on a century of film to analyze how cinematic shorthand shapes the public’s imagination of places. What’s the name of this…

“I asked everyone if they were lonely. All the guys my age said ‘no, I’m too busy; too much going on.’ When I answer that quickly I’m either lying or it’s something I’m afraid of.” – Andrew McCarthy In this episode of Deviate, Rolf and Andrew talk about why Andrew took a USA road trip to reconnect…

“I think you have to pick your battles when you’re collaborating with people.” – Kim Krizan Kim Krizan (@kimkrizan) is the Oscar-nominated cowriter of the Before Sunrise movies, and the author of Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin. Notable Links:

“I wish I loved sports, and particularly football, a lot less than I do. It consumes too much of my memory and too much of my time.” – Chuck Klosterman In this episode of Deviate, Rolf talks about why he’s talking to Chuck Klosterman’s former roommate Michael Weinreb about Chuck’s book Football, rather than Chuck himself (2:00);…

“In teaching us to appreciate rather than accumulate – to seek awe rather than outcomes – travel can be an ongoing exercise in gratitude.” – Rolf Potts In this episode of Deviate, Rolf remixes his interview from the All the Hacks podcast, with Chris Hutchins. They discuss the concept of “Time Wealth,” how it can be actualized…

In this feature-length video essay that explores the role places play in storytelling, Rolf examines how Kansas — his home state — has been imagined, distorted, and mythologized in cinema and television for more than a century. Blending archival film clips, historical analysis, and deeply personal narration, Kansas Never Plays Itself traces how cinematic shorthand…

"All the Light We Cannot See" novelist Anthony Doerr and Rolf talk about travel and writing (from 2012)

Jenny Inzerillo of High Plains Public Radio’s “High Plains Morning” chats with actress/writer Kristen Bush about her film THE GAME CAMERA, the Rural Women Films initiative, and its artistic mission to uplift female voices in rural America.   CONDENSED TRANSCRIPT Jenny Inzerillo: Folks, you are tuned to High Plains Public Radio. I am so excited to…

A Kansas-based travel writer on our obsession with souvenirs. Interview by Gina Kaufmann   Rolf Potts, travel writer and author of Souvenir A miniature Eiffel Tower, a plastic snowglobe that encases the White House, a seashell from the beach … we don’t give much thought to souvenirs. A travel writer, who just wrote a book about souvenirs,…

When Rolf's parents accompany him on a trip to Mongolia, he suddenly finds the whole parent-child dynamic reversed. But who's teaching whom a lesson?

Rolf reports from Thailand on the difficulty of taking part in a time-honored American custom — watching the Super Bowl — while traveling in Asia.

Sometimes you have to travel halfway around the world to find out how American you are.

In Egypt, Rolf discovers that even the simplest experiences sometimes carry a price tag.