Sometimes you choose the adventure and sometimes the adventure chooses you. This week, stories that pinpoint when people's boring old lives turn into something wildly unfamiliar. Including a story of one young man's time served in a Chinese prison, and a handful of adventure stories from some of our favorite writers.
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Prologue
We sent a reporter named Dan Grech to the Hundred Year Starship Public Symposium, which aims to tackle the technological problems related to interstellar space travel. And as host Ira Glass explains, Dan found this gathering to be way more adventurous than your average scientific conference. (6 1/2 minutes)
Chinese Checkmate
Some adventures you seek out on purpose, and others hunt you down. Producer Alex Blumberg tells this story, about the experience a guy had in China...which started out as first kind of adventure, then quickly turned into the second kind. Alex is one of the creators of Planet Money. (23 minutes)
Oh the Places We'll Go
Any adventure show would be incomplete without some swashbuckling, dinosaur-chasing, time-traveling madness. So we asked a few of our favorite writers to offer up short stories. Dave Eggers, Jeanne Darst, Wendy McClure, Fiona Maazel and Neil Gaiman answered the call. The first four stories are fiction. Neil's is autobiographical. Wendy's story is read by Cristin Milioti. Fiona's is read by John Conlee. The others are read by the writers themselves. (26 minutes)
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Act Four: Angry Young Man, Times Two
Act Three: Eight Percent Of Nothing
Act One: Hasta La Vista, Maybe
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