By Their Own Compass

Content note: this episode contains graphic descriptions of disease, death and human remains.One victim drowns in their own blood. Another is buried alongside four of his siblings, all from the same family. Yet more are burned rather than being sent back home for a proper burial, doomed to wander the earth as lonely ghosts. And in one of the most gruesome accounts of all – some victims are turned into human ammunition, flung over the walls of a Genoese fortress to spread terror among those within.And yet this stealthy killer was able to travel across the globe, undetected, for more than 500 years.That’s because history’s deadliest traveller wasn’t a person, but the plague – and it was only when an awkward Swiss man named Alexandre Yersin decided to take matters into his own hands in Hong Kong in 1894 that the culprit was finally identified.In the centuries that preceded him, people around the world could only guess at the cause of their misery – and when you don’t understand what’s killing you or why, you’re powerless to stop it.Just 16 years after Yersin’s breakthrough, the killer returned, but this time in a different guise, picking people off one by one in Harbin, northern China. Another out-of-town scientist, Wu Liande, suddenly found himself in a race against time to understand exactly how this deadlier form of the disease was spreading along the country’s new railway lines – and, against the advice of others, made a discovery that still protects us today.Join Sarah and Jeremiah for this special Halloween episode of By Their Own Compass, as we tell the story of history’s deadliest traveller, and the two men who put their own lives on the line to stop its reign of terror.In this episode, Sarah and Jeremiah discuss:* The siege of Caffa, where a Mongol army is said to have catapulted plague-ridden corpses over the city walls, and whether this really unleashed the Black Death* The Black Death and its effect on the medieval population of Europe, including the first-hand account of Italian shoemaker Agnolo the Fat* Alexandre Yersin’s race to identify the plague bacterium in Hong Kong in 1894, despite being shut out by a better-equipped Japanese team led by Kitasato Shibasaburō* How Wu Liande uncovered the airborne spread of pneumonic plague in Harbin, and the French rival who ignored his advice to wear a mask* Whether the marmots of the Manchurian steppe could be the plague’s hidden reservoir, and why rats and fleas may not be the whole story* Dark-tourism spots for plague history, from Hong Kong’s Tai Ping Shan to Edinburgh’s Mary King’s Close, Venice’s Festa della Salute and the Sedlec Ossuary This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

In this encore episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary journey of Sacagawea, a nursing teenager who traveled across North America with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the Corps of Discovery from 1805–1806. Looking beyond the legend, we examine her role as a traveler, cultural mediator, and Native American woman navigating survival, motherhood, and agency in a rapidly changing America.Join us as we gently dismantle the stereotypes attached to Sacagawea to tell her story as a voyager and cultural pioneer learning to move between two radically different worlds.Was she the faithful guide so often portrayed in American history books? A collaborator in a process that brought devastation to Indigenous peoples across the United States? Or was Sacagawea acting for her own reasons – making the best of a situation she did not choose while doing what she believed was right for herself and her newborn child?Born into a world shaped by seasonal migrations and annual rhythms, she was a member of the Shoshone tribe, part of a complex network of exchange, cooperation, and conflict with neighboring peoples, including the Hidatsa, Mandan, Sioux, and Crow – each with its own languages, customs, and political realities. Sacagawea understood this world instinctively, one the expedition did not.Along the way, she repeatedly saved Lewis and Clark from disaster, asserted herself when it mattered – insisting on being allowed to see a beached whale – and experienced deep emotion, including a brief reunion with her long-lost brother, only to be forced to leave him again.This is the story of a Native American woman negotiating colonial expansion, motherhood on the move, and the power of finding your voice in a world being reshaped around you. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

Where do our world maps actually come from? When was the first one made? Are our maps racist? And why did the UN just pass a resolution encouraging governments and organisations to move away from the map we’ve all been using since the 16th Century?In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we look at the one thing every traveller we’ve featured on this podcast has needed – and some have even shaped: a map of the world.Our story starts in Roman Alexandria, where Claudius Ptolemy’s grid of latitude and longitude laid the foundations of modern geography, and continues with Gerardus Mercator, whose 1569 world map transformed navigation at sea – then shaped how the world saw itself for the next 450 years.The catch? Maps have always meant power, and many things we take for granted – that north is up, that Europe sits at the centre, that Africa is roughly the size of Greenland – are choices and distortions, not facts.And it's no surprise that African nations led the recent push at the United Nations to move away from Mercator: few places have paid a higher price for the way Europe drew the world. We ask how the blank spaces on European maps of Africa came to be seen as an open invitation to colonialism, and how the Scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference turned lines on paper into borders that still divide communities today.We also delve into Renaissance heresy trials, horoscope-obsessed Greeks, and the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. You’ll also hear about David Livingstone’s hunt for the source of the Nile, the Gall-Peters map controversy (yes, including that West Wing scene), and why the only map that doesn’t lie, is a globe.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

Christian missionaries have regularly been at the forefront of travel adventurism over the last 500 years, sent by their churches to parts of the world few back home knew much about, and often at great personal risk.And while they were regularly showing up in regions that hadn’t invited them and weren’t always receptive to what they were selling, their stories remain some of the most fascinating that history has to offer – particularly those of the missionaries who were more ambitious than most.In this episode, we take a closer look at the efforts of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit priest who set out to convert China from the emperor on down; Mary Slessor, who tried to personally save as many Nigerian-born twins from infanticide as she possibly could; and Samson Occom, a Mohegan convert whose fundraising tour of England aimed to fund a school for training other Native Americans – a school better known today as Dartmouth College. Yes, that one. (But also this one. And this one, too.)And yet their accounts of the places they visited didn’t just shift opinions back home or capture something significant about a moment in time – sometimes their efforts genuinely changed the lives of the people they encountered, and, just as often, ended up changing the missionaries themselves.Sarah and Jeremiah discuss the complicated legacy of missionaries like Slessor, who found herself simultaneously opposing and embedded within colonial British rule in Africa; the advantage of being a novelty in a foreign land; and whether any of the three actually converted the people they set out to bring into the house of God. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

In 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, two Swiss women decided to drive a Ford from Geneva to Kabul.One of them was running out of time, and they both knew it.The driver was Annemarie Schwarzenbach – a Swiss industrialist’s daughter, archaeologist and journalist who’d been gifted the car by her father. The other was Ella Maillart – Olympic sailor, elite skier and an intrepid traveller who’d already crossed from Beijing to India by camel, lorry and foot with Bond author Ian Fleming’s older brother.Schwarzenbach had a secret, but Maillart was eager to go, so off they went – through the Balkans, across Turkey and Iran, over the Hindu Kush, and into Kabul, arriving in Afghanistan just as war broke out in Europe behind them.When they arrived, they found a country with its own problems: a king exiled a decade earlier for unveiling Kabul, girls’ schools operating unofficially against the objections of the clergy, and women whose identities were completely erased.The women recorded the journey in two separate books: The Cruel Way (Maillart) and All the Roads Are Open (Schwarzenbach) – but readers may wonder if they’re even on the same road, never mind sitting next to each other in the same car.In this episode, Sarah and Jeremiah discuss the differing versions: Schwarzenbach’s desperate need to escape and Maillart’s doomed conviction that distance could cure any problem; travelling as women who were often read as men; and the Afghanistan they drove into. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

Jeremiah and Sarah are both traveling this week, but as a special treat, we’re reposting one of our favorite episodes from earlier this year. We hope you enjoy it, and we’ll be back in two weeks with a fresh episode.If you’ve ever Googled “how to avoid scams in [destination],” you already know the genre: YouTube videos breathlessly (and ominously) exposing the 15 tricks that will ruin your trip to Florence, Bangkok, or Marrakech. Full disclosure: We watch them too. But the historically minded traveler will be quick to note that almost none of these scams are new.Structurally, the “hey, did you lose your wallet” scam is identical to cons recorded in Chinese travel literature over 400 years ago. The “helpful stranger” who leads you to his friend’s shop? A porter scam from 1617. Fake antiquities? Egyptian villagers were running that play on European collectors since the days of Napoleon.In this episode, we trace the world’s most common travel scams back to their historical origins across three centuries and three continents, and then embarrass ourselves by sharing the ones we’ve fallen for personally or that have happened to people on our trips we’re supposed to be protecting.You can trust us! For a small monthly donation, join the By Their Own Compass Club for bonus content, transcripts, reading lists, and special member-exclusive offers. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

Imagine being kidnapped at the age of 11, enslaved, and made to fight another country’s war as a white man pockets your wages – only to be sold off the moment you are finally owed your freedom. This was the plight of African man Olaudah Equiano – also known as Gustavus Vassa – who was passed from master to master until in 1766, aged just 21, he bought back his own freedom.From that point on, he carved out his own destiny in a way that almost none in a similar situation before him had managed. Not only did he become one of the most widely travelled individuals of the 18th century, but a one-man publishing powerhouse.Join us as we tell the incredible story of Olaudah Equiano – Royal Navy veteran, entrepreneur, merchant, hairdresser – and the spark that lit the flame under the British abolitionist movement.In his lifetime he set foot in countries ranging from Canada and America to Barbados, Portugal, France, Turkey, Nicaragua and Italy. He even sailed to the Arctic as a lab assistant on the same expedition as a young Horatio Nelson. But it was his memoir – The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African – that turned him into a global sensation in his own right, and led to real, lasting change.This episode traces Equiano’s life from a childhood in what is now Nigeria, through the Middle Passage and the Caribbean sugar trade, to freedom, marriage, and a self-published book that made him one of the wealthiest Black Britons of his century.We ask whether Equiano was really born in Africa, discuss what freedom actually meant for a free Black man in the Atlantic world, and delve into the perils of life on the ocean in the 1700s. Plus: a walking tour of Equiano’s London, and the Black Georgian community he called home. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

There are few women in recent history more impressive than Nellie Bly. In 1889, aged just 25, this American reporter had already pioneered undercover journalism as we know it after faking insanity to expose a poorly run asylum. Then she decided to pull off an even bigger stunt – to prove that fictional character Phileas Fogg’s achievement of going around the world in 80 days wasn’t just possible, but could be beaten.Sure enough, her record-breaking attempt for newspaper The New York World was a smash hit, and had its readers clamouring for updates day after day, collectively wondering: Where in the world is Nellie Bly?She raced by steamship and rail through England and France – including a detour to Amiens to meet Jules Verne himself – Italy, Colombo, Penang, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, acquired a spectacularly ill-behaved monkey en route (why is there always a monkey!?), and then embarked on a final dash across America by train to the finish line.What she didn’t know for most of her trip is that a rival newspaper had decided to pit another woman, Elisabeth Bisland, against her. So how did Nellie Bly travel around the entire world in just 72 days before the era of air travel? Who was this fearless woman, who wrote that if she failed she could never return to New York (“I would rather go in dead and successful than alive and behind.”) And what did she do with her newfound fame on her return?In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we explore the extraordinary life of Nellie Bly, the pioneering reporter who transformed investigative journalism, became one of the world’s first celebrity correspondents, smashed Phileas Fogg’s fictional record, and went on to become an inventor, industrialist and one of the most remarkable women of the Gilded age.Topics: Nellie Bly, investigative journalism, undercover reporting, Ten Days in a Mad-House, Blackwell’s Island Asylum, Around the World in 72 Days, Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne, Phileas Fogg, Elisabeth Bisland, Joseph Pulitzer, New York World, Victorian travel, Gilded Age America, women in journalism, women's history, newspaper history, circumnavigation, record-breaking journeys, solo female travel, travel history.Follow By Their Own Compass on Instagram!https://www.instagram.com/bytheirowncompass/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

In the summer of 1966, a group of men from one of the most isolated countries on Earth stepped off a plane into Swinging Sixties Britain. They had no idea about miniskirts or Beatlemania. Some were so unnerved by a statue of Jesus in their guesthouse that it had to be removed. They came from a nation the UK government didn’t even recognise – but within three weeks, the entire town of Middlesbrough had fallen in love with them.This is the story of North Korea at the 1966 World Cup – and one of the biggest upsets in footballing history.Not only did this diminutive, 22-man team knock out mighty Italy – one of the favourites to win the whole thing – but in the quarter-final against Portugal, barely 25 minutes in, they were 3-0 up and within touching distance of the semis. So what went wrong?In this episode, Jeremiah and Sarah invite DPRK expert Simon Cockerell to explain just how the hell Cold War era North Korea qualified for the World Cup in the first place, and to give us the inside story on what happened to the team after they returned home.Not only has Simon been to the secretive country 183 times as General Manager of Koryo Tours, but he knows the players personally, having helped organise a 2002 return visit for them to the site of their iconic victory against Italy.Was their entire game plan really based on advice from Kim Il Sung to “run fast and kick hard”? Were the players imprisoned on their return home? And did an Italian chef really try to poison striker Pak Doo-ik in revenge for his country’s most humiliating defeat?Plus: Sarah and Jeremiah dig out their favourite moments from their own trips to North Korea and ask whether you can still visit in 2026, before finishing on the Middlesbrough housing estate where, on the site of the old Ayresome Park pitch, a bronze cast still marks the exact spot of Pak Doo-ik’s winning goal.A story of pride, determination, and one of the unlikeliest runs in football history – eat your heart out, Cape Verde.Topics: 1966 World Cup, DPRK history, Pak Doo-ik, North Korea vs Italy, Middlesbrough, Ayresome Park, Cold War history, Kim Il Sung, Chollima, North Korea travel, Koryo Tours, Simon Cockerell, The Game of Their Lives documentary, Swinging Sixties Britain, football's greatest upsets, Eusébio, Teesside history, sports diplomacy, World Cup underdogs, Cape Verde 2026 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe

Has a more iconic road ever been built? This year, America’s famous highway turns 100. Route 66 and its fellow numbered roads were revolutionary when the federal highway system was created in 1926. For the first time ever, an ordinary person could navigate across the country without a guide and enjoy the journey for the journey’s sake: the ultimate road trip.But what made this particular route so legendary? Covering almost 2,500 miles, Route 66 passed through Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. Depression-era migrants fleeing the Dust Bowl used the Mother Road to head west; a famous footrace on the route, known as the Bunion Derby, captured the public imagination; then a Nat King Cole song and a television show cemented its place in the American psyche once and for all.As author Michael Wallis says, “Route 66 is Woody Guthrie and Mickey Mantle and Jack Kerouac. It’s thousands of waitresses, service station attendants, fry cooks, truckers, grease monkeys, hustlers, state cops, wrecker drivers, and motel clerks”.But who was the road really for – and who did it leave out?A large stretch of it also sold a decidedly manufactured Southwest – “Native American” wigwam hotels; cafés built in the shape of a giant sombrero. Roadside “trading posts” and “snake pits” promising a brush with a Wild West more imagined than real. Meanwhile, Black travellers were forced to consult The Green Book just to stay safe on the very same route – a compendium of the diners, hotels and gas stations that would actually serve them at a time when segregation and sundown towns made a simple road trip genuinely dangerous.Then, in 1956 the Interstate Highway Act slowly kills the road. Towns were bypassed in the interest of speed, and businesses die. But in 2026, the myths (and the wigwam hotels) are as alive as ever.In this episode, we dive into the romance, the reality, the open road, and everything it leaves unsaid. Plus, we unpack in detail how to do the trip yourself, which car to drive, and why this centennial year might just be the perfect moment to go.Topics: Route 66 centennial, US highway history, Dust Bowl migration, Jack Kerouac, On The Road, Beat Generation, John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath, Nat King Cole, Green Book, Black travel history, racial segregation, Native American representation, Chicano culture, American exceptionalism, Chicago to Santa Monica, Southwest USA travel, Interstate Highway Act.Follow By Their Own Compass on Instagram!📸 Instagram: By Their Own Compass This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.bytheirowncompass.com/subscribe