(driving epic world music)
– Why walk around the world?
My response is, “Why not?”
Everybody has a story.
They may tell it in a different language.
They may whisper it, they may shout it.
But they have a story.
I’m interested in telling the untold stories
of people who live around the world.
Who work in farms, in factories.
People who make societies work.
The Journey
So over the last, almost six years,
I’ve been walking out of Africa towards
the tip of South America.
Following the pathways of the first human migration
out of the mother continent back in the Stone Age.
(gentle acoustic music)
And along the way of this foot journey,
I’m stopping every 100 miles to do
what I call “a milestone.”
I take a picture of the sky,
a picture of my feet on the ground.
I record video and audio.
And I interview the first human being I meet
with a series of three questions about human identity.
Who are you?
Where do you come from?
And where are you going?
The Silk Road
(melodic Indian music)
For the last three years more or less,
I’ve been walking The Silk Road.
I’m here in India.
This was part of what we call “The Silk Road.”
It wasn’t really a road, it was actually a network
of trading routes that were both on land and at sea.
It didn’t just involve the exchange of silk.
It involved the exchange of luxury goods and commodities
between Asia and Europe and Africa.
And so it was this early kind of international trade deal.
Done by camel back,
done on foot,
on sailing ships,
and it was amazing.
India was an integral part of The Silk Road.
Not just for commodities like spices, like gems,
but for ideas.
It was an amazing center of learning.
My journey will take about 10 years
and it’s gonna be about 22,000 miles long.
My storytelling is like a needle that weaves through
all of these different ripples in the human experience.
And when I string all these milestones together
they will have what the world looked like
at the turn of the 21st century
along the pathways of the first discovery of the world.
(driving pop music)
(piano music)
As a storyteller, I’m kind of a funnel
that takes in people’s stories
and then shares them out with the world.
(epic orchestral pop music)
One of the missions of my project
is to connect the past to the present
in order to help us make better decisions
about where to walk into the future, into the 21st century.
