Stacking Adventures: Every Traveler Has a Story · Joe Saul-Sehy & Crystal Hammond

One Book, Dozens of Pubs, and a Life-Changing Journey

·55 min·2 clips

I turned around and I'm staring into a mirror. He's me only 20 years older.

The episode opens on Crystal's haunted pub crawl. Crystal and Jo use that as a starting point for talking about the appeal of drifting through pubs in Europe or Asia with nothing more than a book, a sibling, or a close friend. Jo likes the idea of someone else doing the planning. Crystal does too, as long as the trip is already underway and somebody else has handled the route, the stops, and the general promise that it will all work out. Michael Balter returns as the guest. The hosts set him up as an adventure and mystery writer sharing a travel story from Europe in the 1980s. He talks about being on the road with a book in hand, moving from place to place, and watching one small choice change the shape of a day. A Lewis Carroll connection becomes the hinge. He remembers reading about a location tied to Alice in Wonderland, checking the book, and finding that the place is real, which turns an ordinary stop into a story worth keeping. Then the owner shows up. What begins as a quick request for a signature becomes a longer conversation, a private tour of the pub, and the happy surprise of being in the book after all. He keeps stressing how real it felt. The memory lands like a lucky accident, the kind that makes a traveler feel as if the world is briefly on the same page. That moment changes the trip. Afterward, he and his brother realize that one unexpected encounter has made the rest of their England plans feel optional, so the route opens up instead of tightening. The hosts come back to that idea. A good travel day can come from letting the plan loosen a little, then following the interesting thing when it appears. The show ends by inviting listener stories. It also points people to the story link and the game, staying in the same playful lane of travel curiosity and light mischief.

As heard by us

A pub crawl story that makes the detours matter more than the plan.

This episode turns a haunted pub crawl into a loose, funny travel yarn about drifting through Europe or Asia with a book, a sibling, or a close friend and seeing where the day ends up.

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Why you'd press play

If one book, one pub, and one wandering detour is your kind of travel plan.

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