PODCAST · society
The Human Adventure
by Jake Bushman
The Human Adventure is a podcast about people who choose to live fully—through travel, challenge, creativity, and the courage to step into the unknown. Hosted by Jake Bushman, each episode features honest conversations with adventurers, travelers, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and everyday humans doing extraordinary things. We explore not just what they’ve done, but why—the failures, fears, faith, and resilience that shape a meaningful life. From remote corners of the world to inner journeys of growth and reinvention, The Human Adventure reminds us that life isn’t about reaching a destination—it’s about who we become along the way. If you’re drawn to authentic stories, bold ideas, and the shared experience of being human, this podcast is for you. 🎧 New episodes weekly 🌍 Travel • Adventure • Personal Growth • Human Stories
Episodes
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Episode 254 - From Tehran To Tomorrow With Sara Fashandi
#254 - What if the most important stories in your family were the ones nobody could afford to tell at the time? I sit down with author Sara Fashandi to trace her family’s journey from Tehran, Iran to the United States, and the brother at the center of it all, Mohsen, whose memory is so sharp it...
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Episode 253 - Stranded In Antarctica with David Knoff
#253 - 537 days. That is how long David Knoff is stuck in Antarctica after signing up for what should have been a 12-month station leader posting at Australia’s Davis Station. What starts as a high-endurance adventure becomes a real-time experiment in isolation, morale, and leadership under...
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Episode 252 - From A Lake Kid To World Champion With Logan Vaughan
#252 - A world champion wakeboarder doesn’t just “send it” on command. Logan Vaughan joins me to unpack what winning actually costs, what nobody sees behind the highlights, and how it feels when the sport that built your identity suddenly starts to burn you out. We talk through the full wake…
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Episode 251 - Stop Waiting for Permission with Jay Cameron
#251 - What if the biggest thing stopping you from traveling is not fear, money, or time, but the belief that you need permission first? I sit down with Jay Cameron, founder of Maximum Impact Travel, to unpack how a curious kid raised between D.C. and South Carolina became someone who has visited...
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Episode 250 - 250 Conversations Later: What I’ve Learned About the Human Adventure
#250 - 250 episodes can look like a number on a screen, but it feels more like a trail you’ve walked one conversation at a time. Featuring my friend Colleen Avis as the host, we flip the script and Jake goes to the guest seat to talk about the real origin of The Human Adventure: burnout, the…
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Episode 249 - Embracing Vitiligo In Fashion And Art With Wildy Martinez
#249 - What happens when the thing you’re most tempted to hide becomes the reason other people feel brave? Fashion designer and artist Wildy Martinez joins me for a conversation that moves from New York City childhood memories in Washington Heights and the Bronx to a hard-earned kind of…
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Episode 248 - Turning Suicide Loss Into Advocacy And Hope with Nicole Jones-Vogel
#248 - What do you do with a loss that never fully leaves you? I sat down with Nicole Jones Vogel, who lost her father to suicide at 25 and has spent the years since turning grief into advocacy, education, and real-world support for others. We go deep on what suicide loss actually feels like over...
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Episode 247 - Rebuilding Life Through Adventure with Taylor Hutcheson
#247 - Running away doesn’t heal you, but choosing a new direction might. Taylor Hutcheson (@taywanders) shares the real story behind her full-time travel life, from growing up in North Georgia to becoming a mom at 20 and leaving an abusive, controlling relationship with safety and fear both on…
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Episode 246 - How Thru-Skating Turned Into Freedom With Moondog Roop
#247 - He didn’t hop on a skateboard until he was 33 and he still calls himself “awful” at it, which somehow makes what happens next even wilder. Moondog Roop (David, if you ask his mom) joins us to talk about thru-skating: combining long-distance skateboarding with the realities of hiking,...
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Episode 245 - Small Acts, Big Impact In Guyana with Forrest Mcsweeney
$200 for cement. $500 for a business upgrade. A few receipts and a real relationship. That’s the kind of giving that actually lands, and it’s what we dig into with Forrest Mcsweeney, founder of the Uplift Project, a grassroots nonprofit focused on direct microgrants and practical support in rural...
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Episode 244 - Buried Italy with Joseph Walker
#244 - One impulsive decision changed Joseph Walker’s entire life: at 19, he joined the U.S. Navy to “see the world” and got sent to Italy. Within a day, he felt something click, not because he knew the language or the history, but because the people, the food, and the everyday energy made him…
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Episode 243 - Blue-Collar Dad Turns Small Trips Into Big Memories with Dustin Tichenor
#243 - Waiting for the “right” time to travel can quietly turn into years of missed memories. I sat down with Dustin Tichenor, an Indianapolis dad who works a physically demanding warehouse job, to talk about what actually makes a family adventure meaningful when budgets are tight and life is…
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Episode 242 - Meaningful Travel That Sticks with Eleanor from Elevate Your Escapes
#242 - A “perfect” itinerary can still produce a forgettable trip. What actually makes travel stick is the human stuff: the meal you can’t stop describing, the guide who made you laugh, the neighborhood you wandered without a plan, the courage it took to go even though you felt nervous. I spoke...
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Episode 241 - Go Be James Bond With Derrik Dyka
#241 - Your life can change in less than two months, and then you’re left staring at the silence. Derrik Dyka knows that shock firsthand. After his wife of 24 years is diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, everything moves fast and then stops. Derikk describes freezing, losing his footing,...
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Episode 240 - Stumbling Upon Serendipity with Dani Campbell
#240 - What if the life you carefully planned suddenly feels too small? That question sits at the heart of my conversation with Dani Campbell, a former teacher who used the pandemic as a wake-up call. She walked away from the school routine, built a camper van, and spent years learning what solo...
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Episode 239 - From Broken To Unbreakable with Joshua Church
#239 - Joshua Church’s life starts with a shock: his lung collapses right after birth. What follows is years of injuries, surgeries, chronic pain, and a quiet belief that takes root early, “Maybe I’m broken.” When that story hardens, it doesn’t just shape how he moves through sports and school.…
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Episode 238 - Coddiwompling Into Freedom With Kristy Halvorsen
What if the life that scares you is exactly what will set you free? I sit down with Kristy Halvorsen, a former firefighter who traded the predictable path for a solo, off-grid Airstream life driven by intuition, curiosity, and a willingness to not know what’s next. She calls it “coddiwompling,”...
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Episode 237 - Accidental Outdoor Therapy with Melody Harman
#237 - Melody Harman didn’t come to Utah for a postcard life, she came because staying put felt like drowning in reminders. After losing her dad following 70 days in the hospital, and carrying earlier grief from losing her brother as a teen, she hits that brutal stretch where your world looks...
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Episode 236 - Adventures Without A Blueprint With Daniel Eggington
#236 - The Darien Gap has a legend attached to it, but Daniel Eggington brings the parts that don’t fit the movie version: endless wet days, rivers fought step by step, fear used as a tool, and the mental math of staying alive when you’re deep in the jungle with no easy reset button. Daniel…
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Episode 235 - Finding Peace On The Trail With Alison Monda
#235 - The woods “understood her” before she could understand herself, and Alison Monda’s story makes that feel less like poetry and more like a practical roadmap. She’s a full-time firefighter, a search and rescue volunteer, a musician, a longtime hiker, and someone who finally got an ADHD...
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Episode 234 - The Last Rocket Man with Dan Schlund
#234 - Your childhood dream is supposed to save you, not send you to the burn ward. Dan Schlund is one of the rare people who has flown a real rocket belt, a true rocket motor strapped to your back with about 30 seconds of fuel, superheated thrust, and no room for hesitation. After his third…
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Episode 233 - From Fugitive to Founder: Peter Young's Journey of Risk and Reinvention
#233 - He thought he might do a couple years for breaking into fur farms. Instead, a DOJ press release tells him he’s facing animal enterprise terrorism and RICO-related charges with a maximum of 82 years. That’s the moment Peter Young goes from activist to full-time fugitive, living under a fake...
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Episode 232 - Hiding From The School Bus With Calvin Bagley
#232 - You think you know someone, then you hear what they had to survive. Calvin Bagley looks like the guy with the steady career and the good family, but as a kid he was literally taught to hide when the school bus came by so no one would discover he wasn’t being educated at all. We talk…
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Episode 231 - Meeting Strangers On The Road with Melissa Rodway
#231 - A passport full of stamps can look impressive, but what if the real point of travel is the people who crack you open and change how you see your life? I sat down with Melissa Rodway, author of *The People You Meet*, for an honest, funny, and surprisingly practical conversation about…
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Episode 230 - Ten Ironmans And A Stolen Pair Of Pants with JD Tremblay
#230 - Ten Ironman distances in ten days sounds like a headline, but JD Tremblay treats it like a case study. JD is a military veteran, ultra-endurance athlete, and founder of Hungry Warrior Academy, and he joins me to explain how he became one of the rare finishers of the Epic Deca across the...
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Episode 229 - From A Surfing Accident To A 240-Mile Finish with Patrick Yalon
#229 - He was face down in the ocean, paralyzed, and running out of time. Patrick Yalon went out for a routine surf at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach and never came back the same person and he’s honest about how close he came to not coming back at all. We talk through the full arc: the low-tide...
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Episode 228 - Rock Bottom To Redemption with Justin Kinney
#228 - Rock bottom isn’t always a single catastrophic night. Sometimes it’s a slow drift: one more drink that becomes normal, one compromise that becomes routine, one secret that feels easier than the truth. Justin Kinney knows that drift firsthand, and he joins me to tell the full story of...
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Episode 227 - Dreaming After Loss with Chanoa Inez
#227 - What do you do when the person you love is gone before morning and you’re in a country that doesn’t feel fully like home yet? Chanoa Inez lived that question on the coast of Montenegro after her partner died suddenly overnight. The days that followed were filled with shock, language...
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Episode 226 - Living in China: A Four-Year Journey of Challenges and Growth with Jeff Lewis
#226 - You think you want to live abroad until you’re standing in a Shanghai apartment you barely recognize, sleeping on a mattress that feels like concrete, and realizing you can’t read a single sign outside your window. Jeff Lewis did exactly that, on a timeline so fast he had to get a same day...
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Episode 225 - From Pastor to the FBI with Eric Robinson
#225 - A Baptist pastor walks away from a church he planted… and ends up kicking doors with SWAT as an FBI special agent. That’s the real-life career pivot Eric Robinson lived, and his story isn’t just a wild résumé line. It’s a clear look at how pressure, identity, and responsibility can build...
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Episode 224 - Building Bridges In Business Across Ghana And The US with Edith Oduraa
#224 - Business advice usually starts with scaling, margins, and “hustle.” This conversation starts somewhere more honest: what is business for, and who does it actually serve? We sit down with Edi Odura, an engineer turned entrepreneur and fractional COO who helps mission-driven founders build...
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Episode 223 - Travel Is No Vacation: 30 Years of Choosing the Hard Road Together with John and Ann Craig Cinnamon
#223 - What does it take to stay teammates for 30 plus years while crossing borders, missing comforts, and choosing the hard route on purpose? I’m joined by John and Ann Craig Cinnamon, a travel power couple who’ve visited 120 plus countries on seven continents, and they’re honest about the part...
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Episode 222 - From Car Dealership to Dream Driven with Jason VanDevere
#222 - When was the last time you let yourself dream without limits, not as a cute idea, but as a serious practice that could change your life? I sit down with Jason VanDevere, an entrepreneur, planner creator, and author of Dream Driven, to talk about what happens when you walk away from the…
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Episode 221 - One-Way Ticket to Herself: Tracy Smith’s Journey of Rediscovery
#221 - A one-way ticket sounds romantic until you’re standing in a foreign airport, exhausted, hungry, and convinced you’ve made a huge mistake. That’s where Tracy Smith’s story gets real and why it’s so relatable. After a divorce, years of nonstop parenting, and a career grind that left little...
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Episode 220 - Turning Pain into Punchlines: The Human Side of Comedy with Danny Johnson
#220 - Behind every great joke is a real story and Danny Johnson’s story explains why his stand-up feels both clean and dangerously close to losing its cool. We talk about how he grew up in a loud Long Island family where roasting was basically a love language, and how that early chase for...
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Episode 219 - Winning The Amazing Race Was Just The Beginning with Alex Boylan
#219 - A million-dollar decision can look a lot like a random pop-up ad and a quick, messy “why not?” Alex Boylan went from being a preacher’s kid on the North Shore of Boston to winning Season 2 of The Amazing Race, and that victory didn’t just change his bank account, it rewired his definition…
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Episode 218 - A Naval Academy Life That Keeps Evolving with Jim Paulk
#218 - At 92, Jim Paulk doesn’t sound like someone looking back. He sounds like someone still chasing the next idea, the next project, the next person worth learning from. Our conversation starts with a dream delayed, how a kid from Brunswick, Georgia missed his Naval Academy appointment, kept...
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Episode 217 - Saving Elephants, Finding Purpose In Bali with Nigel Mason
#217 - What does it take to leave one life, build another, and then wager it all on saving a species? We sit down with Nigel Mason, whose path runs from blitz-era London to the beaches of Bali, from music PR to pioneering “armchair rafting,” and finally to a 30-year fight to protect Sumatran...
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Episode 216 - Chasing the Music Dream: A Journey of Passion and Purpose with Nora Suknaic
#216 - What does it really take to walk away from a steady paycheck and bet on your art? We sit down with singer-songwriter Nora Suknaic to trace the messy, exhilarating path from a corporate tour marketing job to a life built around honest songs, late-night writing sessions, and the small...
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Episode 215 - Warrior Of Light: A Healer’s Path with D Paul Fleming
#215 - Some adventures test your legs; others test your soul. We sit down with D Paul Fleming—a Navy veteran, Native American healer, and self-described hollow bone—to explore a life spent between worlds: military discipline on one side, spiritual warfare on the other. What begins with a hard...
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Episode 214 - Redemption Miles: Addiction, DNFs, And Purpose with John Calabrese
#214 - What if the lowest point isn’t a dead end but a doorway? That’s the charge at the heart of our conversation with ultrarunner and dance dad John Calabrese, who traded alcohol and anxiety for sunrise miles, grassroots races, and a community that made space for the mess and the miracle. John...
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Episode 213 - Storms, Grit, And The Road Back To Self with Belinda Coker
#213 - A hurricane on New Year’s Day, a shredded tent, and a sudden slide toward hypothermia at 1,600 meters—Belinda Coker’s Canary Islands traverse didn’t go to plan. That sharp turn, and her decision to bail out, reveals the heartbeat of this conversation: how true adventure balances awe with...
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Episode 212 - From Rescuer To Whole: Healing Through Conscious Choice with Casey Stevens
#212 - Growth doesn’t arrive with a trophy. It often shows up as friction, confusion, and the stubborn urge to fix other people. With therapist Casey Stevens, we explore why discomfort is the doorway to becoming, how the subconscious scripts our choices, and what changes when you stop rescuing…
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Episode 211 - Forgotten Wars, Remembered Voices with Jenny Chan
#211 - Some histories whisper when they should thunder. We sit down with Jenny Chan, co‑founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, to listen—really listen—to the Pacific Front of World War II and the millions of lives bound up in it. From the euphemism of “comfort women” to the cold precision of…
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Episode 210 - Rats, Kayaks, And A Naked Greek With Cheese with Joy Owens
#210 - What if travel wasn’t a checklist but a classroom? I sat with Joy Owens—mother of two, CEO and co-owner of Butler Travel, and veteran of 60 countries—to explore how faith, service, and slow travel can shape a family and a life. From a grandmother who’s visited more than 80 countries to…
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Episode 209 - Art, Travel, And Dialogue In A Divided World with David Deighton
#209 - Conversations feel brittle right now, and disagreements can feel like stepping onto a minefield. We sit down with artist, educator, and traveler David Deighton to explore a different path: using art, curiosity, and face-to-face dialogue to turn political tension into human connection. From…
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Episode 208 - Brotherhood, War, Grief, And The Long Walk Home with Ron Timmerman
#208 - A helicopter door swung open over Vietnam, and years later a trail opened underfoot across the Appalachians. That arc—war to wilderness, adrenaline to stillness—frames Ron Timmerman’s rare story of brotherhood, love, loss, and the long work of healing. We invited Ron to unpack the moments...
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Episode 207 - Climbing For A Cause with Dr. Matthew Harmody
#207 - One phone call redirected a life. When Matt Harmody’s father entered emergent dialysis, Matt saw both the power and the limits of modern medicine—and it set him on a path from corporate engineer to emergency physician, living kidney donor, and advocate who ties purpose to action in...
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Episode 206 - Beyond the Speech: Conversations That Change You with Sagar Soni
#206 - What if the voices you let in are steering your life more than your goals are? That question sparked a wide-ranging, grounded conversation with Sagar Soni—nuclear engineer, creator of Beyond the Speech podcast, and a traveler who learned the hard way that more content and more checklists...
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Episode 205 - Adriene Caldwell On Resilience, Mental Health, And Finding A Way Forward
#205 - Some stories don’t just move you—they recalibrate your sense of what’s possible. Adriene Caldwell grew up in the crosshairs of untreated schizophrenia, constant relocation, and a home life that spun from denial to violence. After losing the grandmother who shielded her, she entered a…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Human Adventure is a podcast about people who choose to live fully—through travel, challenge, creativity, and the courage to step into the unknown.
Hosted by Jake Bushman, each episode features honest conversations with adventurers, travelers, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and everyday humans doing extraordinary things. We explore not just what they’ve done, but why—the failures, fears, faith, and resilience that shape a meaningful life.
From remote corners of the world to inner journeys of growth and reinvention, The Human Adventure reminds us that life isn’t about reaching a destination—it’s about who we become along the way.
If you’re drawn to authentic stories, bold ideas, and the shared experience of being human, this podcast is for you.
🎧 New episodes weekly 🌍 Travel • Adventure • Personal Growth • Human Stories
HOSTED BY
Jake Bushman
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Human Adventure have?
The Human Adventure currently has 264 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Human Adventure about?
The Human Adventure is a podcast about people who choose to live fully—through travel, challenge, creativity, and the courage to step into the unknown. Hosted by Jake Bushman, each episode features honest conversations with adventurers, travelers, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, and everyday...
How often does The Human Adventure release new episodes?
The Human Adventure publishes regularly with 264 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Human Adventure?
You can listen to The Human Adventure on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Human Adventure?
The Human Adventure is created and hosted by Jake Bushman.
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