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Blog postYou may be the most cynical, born and bred, citified lefty like me — instinctively skeptical of big concepts like “patriotism”, relatively foreign to hunting culture, unused to wide open spaces, but spend any length of time traveling around Montana and you will understand what all that “purple mountains majesty” is all about, you’ll soon be wrapping yourself in the flag and yelling, “America, fuck yeah!” with an absolute and non-ironic sincerity that will take you by surprise. You will unders
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Blog postSome shows start out with a simple premise–or a nebulous one.
This one, set in the Greek island of Naxos, was the first one filmed for this season ( episodes are frequently shown out of sequence). The idea going in was quite simple: I go to a really nice, laid back Greek island–one with an actual local culture, businesses and income streams outside of tourism–and slide gently into another year of making television whilst maintaining my sun tan from summer vacation.
What d -
Blog postI spend a lot of my life — maybe even most of my life these days — in hotels. And it can be a grim and dispiriting feeling, waking up, at first unsure of where you are, what language they’re speaking outside. The room looks much the same as other rooms. TV. Coffee maker on the desk. Complimentary fruit basket rotting on the table. The familiar suitcase.
All too often, particularly in America, I’ll walk to the window and draw back the curtains, looking to remind myself where I might be- -
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Blog postTagalog, the language of the Philippines, is not an uncommon thing to hear in my household. Like many children all over the world, my daughter arrived home from the hospital to find a Filipino baby nurse. Vangie was with her from the very beginning of her life and in time my daughter came to know her son, her daughter-in law, their kids — and in time, an extended family and friends — in New Jersey, Southern California and the Bay Area — and of course, most importantly, Jacques, Vangie’s grand
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Blog postIt’s a sprawling, beautiful city, still, in spite of the unrestrained construction where Europe and Asia meet. There’s no place like it — and for a time, until very recently, it looked like the future.
We arrived in Istanbul at a hopeful time. The election results were in and power was shifting away, it appeared, from Prime Minister Erdogan and his ruling AKP. So, our show is filled with cautiously hopeful people.
Subsequent events have failed to deliver on their optimism. Turke -
Blog postWho are we and where do we come from? To what extent are we the sum of our parts? I wonder about stuff like that. And this week, my friend Marcus Samuelsson gets to ponder exactly those things as he and his wife Maya take me back to Ethiopia, to the towns they were born–and tell me their fascinating stories.
I’ve been meaning and hoping to visit Ethiopia and make a show there for years. But I would never consider doing it without Marcus coming along to put a personal spin on thing -
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Blog postI ate delicious Yakisoba. And fluffy egg salad sandwiches from my favorite convenience store. I watched old school karate close-up. Maybe too close. I found out I am not completely horrible at “tegumi”, a relatively fat-free version of sumo (though I won’t be making a career of it).
Okinawa is the largest island in the Ryukyu archipelago, a kingdom, a culture and a people until 1879, separate from Japan. You feel that difference immediately. It feels, relative to mainland Japan, -
Blog postIn the cinematic genre known as the “Buddy Pic”, custom and tradition demand that the two protagonists adhere to classic roles—as codified by Felix Unger and Oscar Madison in “The Odd Couple” and persisting through such bro-tastic tag teams as Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy, Danny Glover and Mel Gibson, Robert DeNiro and Charles Grodin, and beyond. One character must be the “straight man”, the reasonable person, exasperated, perhaps, but relatable—and the other, the “zany” one: obsessive/compuls
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Blog postThe toothpaste is out of the tube and there’s no putting it back.
Cuba is changing. It’s changed dramatically already, just in the few years since I was last there—and those changes are accelerating at a rate that no one can contain or control.
It’s long overdue.
It’s ludicrous that ordinary Cubans, 100 miles from our shores, have been excluded from the international conversation, deprived for so long of basic internet access, social media, even the abil -
Blog postI briefly considered naming my daughter “Beirut”. She was, after all, conceived within two hours of returning from my first visit there. In 2006, along with my crew, and a number of other foreign nationals, I had been taken off the beach by the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and transported by LCU to the USS Nashville, and from there to Cyprus and home.
The experience left me with a deep love and appreciation for the US Navy and Marines, the now decommissioned Nashville (once refe -
Blog postI have, in my 14 years of traveling the world in search of kicks, seen many things. But I want to tell you that my experience during the closing sequence of this episode of PARTS UNKNOWN was, short of watching the birth of my daughter, the most amazing. I hope your TV set is big enough to convey the sense of being where I was, and having something that….large…coming up at you from the depths. I suspect you’d need an IMAX. Absolutely breathtaking.
Those of us who were not born -
Blog postIf you’ve been following the show for any period of time, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I’m a hopeless cinematography geek. That everybody who works on the show is a cinematography geek, that we’re the type of people who, in their spare time, sit around talking about directors of photography we love, films whose looks we are inspired by, and whenever possible emulate (if not outright rip off). It’s expected of the people who work with me. If you don’t know who Gregg Toland is—or
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Blog postI woke up this morning in Borneo, went for breakfast in a crowded kopi tiam, where I greedily devoured a lip burning, nose running, utterly delicious bowl of Kuching style laksa. Tomorrow, I’ll board a long boat and, for the second time in my life, head up the Skrang River—this time for Gowai, the Iban harvest festival, where I will, I am warned, be drinking way too much rice whiskey. I have asked that my former headhunter hosts give me a hand tap tattoo. Possibly a durian pattern. I have bee
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Blog postTravel is not always comfortable, even when the scenery is at its most beautiful. You look out the window, or you get too close, and the reality of the situation—the world you will soon be leaving behind—intrudes. I’m talking, of course, about crushing poverty, hunger, the kind of desperation people can find themselves in when feeding themselves and their families becomes a matter of immediate urgency. On Parts Unknown, we travel to a lot of places where people are poor. We either choose—or d
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Blog postThese days, most mornings, wherever I am, I wake up early and go train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. If at home in New York, I’ll prepare and pack lunch for my daughter, walk her to school, and shortly after, be on my way to Renzo Gracie Academy where I will spend the better part of the next hours trying to prevent someone half my age from choking me to the point of unconsciousness. Often, I will look over from under a haze of sweat and exertion, to see my wife practicing the dark arts of knee reap
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Blog postMusically speaking, the years 1969 and 1970 were not good years for me. Raised on the Yardbirds, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and Blue Cheer, I watched in mute horror as my friends and fellow enthusiasts melted away into the more melodic, thoughtful, easy listening arms of Poco, Gram Parsons, and Steely Dan, as well as various monsters of prog rock. Friends who, at age 16, could play “Purple Haze,” note for note — and well — were suddenly putting down their Telecasters and picking up peda
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Blog postI have, for some time, believed that the chefs doing the most interesting work in America — chefs who are, in fact, redefining what “American food” means — are Korean. When I go out for dinner with non-Korean chef friends, all they want these days, is Korean food. They get excited by the deep, tangy, spicy funk of kimchee, thrilled by the little plates of pickles and snacks that accompany the main courses, intrigued by what is to them, often a whole new spectrum of flavors. Date night with my
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Blog postHow quickly it’s all over. And yet, already, begun again. This Sunday's PARTS UNKNOWN marks the end of yet another season and we tried for a soft landing in Jamaica.
I’d like to thank veteran field producer, Josh Ferrell (hopefully you follow his exploits on twitter @TheMagicalGiant), for heroically volunteering the use of his mighty buttocks for our carefully crafted Bond inspired cold open. I sent him and the crew to Margaritaville with every intention of depicting the pla -
Blog postWords matter. Especially in Iran where what is permissible — to say, to do, to be seen to say or do — is an ever changing thing.
It took us many years of trying to finally be allowed in to Iran, the country with whom we have probably the most contentious relationship on earth. At the time, we thought that perhaps, our welcome was an indicator of a new attitude, an opening of a window. But as it turned out, that is probably not the case. The window appeared to slam shut in particularly
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