HeyJaredBy Their Own Compass
Historian Jeremiah Jenne and journalist Sarah Keenlyside bring you stories of historical travelers, the places they went, and the people they encountered. (After all, one person's frontier is another person's front door.)
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 9
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- Sep 17, 2026
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- Jul 9, 2026
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History’s Most Ambitious Missionaries (opens the original)
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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<
Escape to Afghanistan: Ella Maillart, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and the promise that couldn't be kept (opens the original)
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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.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="587" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!7U
Olaudah Equiano: Research Notes, an Exclusive London Walking Map & Further Reading (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="1727" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!29Wi!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F13003edf-a0f7-4e87-9493-991abd982267_2091x2480.
History's Greatest Travel Scams: From Medieval Relic Fraud to the Tea House Scam in Beijing (opens the original)
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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 tr
Olaudah Equiano: The Enslaved Man Who Rewrote History (opens the original)
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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. N
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