Out of Eden Walk

06/11/2026

🎙️ Marco Werman, Host of The World: So, when the Out of Eden Walk wraps up at the south end of South America, you’ll have completed about 22,000 miles. Roughly that will amount to 220 [Milestone] interviews. You call this part of the Out of Eden Walk a map of faces. So, what do these portraits tell us, do you think, about the world in 2026, and what will you do with this map of oral history?

🎙️ Paul Salopek: The beautiful thing about the simplicity of this idea is that it relies to some degree on serendipity. And so, I can talk to a migrant by accident, and that’s recorded sometimes. In Jordan, at one milestone, it was Syrian refugees that I met. And that tells part of the story of the civil war in Syria at that time. So, the idea at the end is to use this kind of rainbow of humanity, because … the majority of people that I do bump into, migrants aside, are generally from that place. So, you can see the face of humankind change, right, through all the different rainbows of ethnicities, languages, cultures. It’s really lovely, it’s beautiful. And it shows the continuity of the human family. And along the way, you can see the faces and read the voices of the stories of the people encountered at each place. So, it’s kind of a gallery of humanity.

🌐 From public radio program The World: “For over a decade, National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been on an assignment to walk the world — continent to continent, on foot. It’s all being documented in a project known as Out of Eden Walk.

Every time he clocks 100 miles, he stops — wherever he is — and interviews the first person he sees. He calls these ‘milestones.’

Salopek spoke to Host Marco Werman about these moments.”

🎧 Listen to or read the conversation between Paul & Marco, part of an ongoing series of stories about the Walk produced by The World in collaboration with the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization and the National Geographic Society: https://theworld.org/stories/2026/05/29/how-an-interview-project-shows-the-continuity-of-the-human-family

🥾 Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

[slow journalism, walking the world, slow travel, migration, storytelling, slow media, public radio, human stories, culture]

National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been walking across the globe for his project, Out of Eden Walk. And he marks every 100 mile checkpoint by interviewing the first person he sees. He joins Marco Werman to explain how these interviews, which he calls Milestones, are central to his global....

06/10/2026

✍️ “The enraged wind raked up fistfuls of beach pebbles and sand. Gusts scattered the birds like confetti.”

— Paul Salopek, Milestone 169

This milestone was recorded near Cape Fairweather, Alaska, United States on day 4,631 and mile 17,050 of the Out of Eden Walk.

🔗 Explore Milestone 169: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestone-169-cape-fairweather-misnamed/

🥾 Every hundred miles, Paul pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but Paul’s walked distances are generally much longer.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

[slow journalism, walking the world, storytelling, human history, slow travel, outdoors, nature, migration, slow media]

06/08/2026

“The enraged wind raked up fistfuls of beach pebbles and sand. Gusts scattered the birds like confetti. My walking partner, Rowan Sharman, slogged on, an InReach satellite communication device in his open palm, trying to arrange a pickup by bush plane. A big storm was brewing. It could lock us into the Outer Coast for a week. We were running short of food, and tired from a six-week traverse of the wild coastline. We were in retreat. The walk would be paused for months while gales hammered the ocean footings of the misnamed Fairweather Range.” — Paul Salopek

✍️ Explore Milestone 169 of the Out of Eden Walk: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestone-169-cape-fairweather-misnamed

This Milestone was recorded near Cape Fairweather, Alaska, United States on day 4,631 and mile 17,050 of the Walk.

🥾 Every hundred miles, Paul pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but Paul’s walked distances are generally much longer.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Video description in comments.

[slow journalism, walking the world, storytelling, human history, slow travel, outdoors, nature, migration, slow media]

06/03/2026

🎙️ “I thought, let’s apply this kind of biological methodology to storytelling, and every 100 miles in straight lines — we’re not talking the squiggles of a trail, but like as the crow flies — stop and do the same kind of recordings all the way across the planet, and that was the methodology I came up with. You mentioned talking to the first human being I meet; I have a systematic number of questions. There are three questions. And the idea is that by the end of this massive journey we have kind of a gallery, a portrait of humanity and landscapes, as seen on foot, at the turn of the millennium across the world. That’s kind of the philosophy, idea and vision behind this milestone thing.”

— Paul Salopek to Marco Werman, Host of The World

🌐 From The World: “For over a decade, National Geographic Explorer Paul Salopek has been on an assignment to walk the world — continent to continent, on foot. It’s all being documented in a project known as Out of Eden Walk.

Every time he clocks 100 miles, he stops — wherever he is — and interviews the first person he sees. He calls these ‘milestones.’

Salopek spoke to Host Marco Werman about these moments.”

🎧 Listen to the full conversation between Paul Salopek and Marco Werman, part of an ongoing series of stories about the Walk produced by The World in collaboration with the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization and the National Geographic Society: https://theworld.org/stories/2026/05/29/how-an-interview-project-shows-the-continuity-of-the-human-family

Pictured: At his 103rd milestone, recorded near Yamaguchi, Japan, Salopek interviewed Michelle Yeonho Hyun, director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts at New York University-Shanghai.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Follow along with dispatches from the trail at www.outofedenwalk.org ✍️

Join our newsletter at www.outofedenwalknonprofit.org/email-updates ✉️

Image descriptions in comments.

[slow journalism, walking the world, slow travel, migration, storytelling, slow media, public radio, human stories, culture]

06/02/2026

O repórter americano Paul Salopek conta-nos como foi navegar, na companhia de Bill Romberg, pelos rápidos da memória num rio selvagem do Alasca, o Copper.

Saiba mais aqui 👉https://shorturl.at/0BJT5

Out of Eden Walk National Geographic Society

📸 Paul Salopek

06/01/2026

Every hundred miles on the Out of Eden Walk, Paul pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but Paul’s walked distances are generally much longer.

⛰️At Milestone 168, on day 4,612 and at mile 16,950, Paul met Ned Rozell, 62, writer. Rozell lives in Fairbanks and has written a science column for the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska for 31 years.

Paul: Who are you?
Ned: Ned Rozell.

Paul: Where do you come from?
Ned: I was born in Manhattan.

Paul: Where are you going?
Ned: Towards Hubbard Glacier for a little bit.

🔗 Explore Milestone 168 of the Out of Eden Walk: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestone-168-please-bear-dont-do-that/

✍️ Read more about Ned: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/ones-you-ned

📍 This Milestone was recorded near Yakutat, Alaska, United States.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Image descriptions in comments.

05/29/2026

“The Outer Coast of Alaska is a stormy mosaic—nature’s reshuffling puzzle. The big, wide, silty Grand Wash River draining the Malaspina Glacier shifts constantly, like a whip in mid-crack, its moveable banks built up and eroding by kilometers from year to year. We located its mouth, in the end, by simply floating our pack rafts down the freezing current. In this way, we overshot the Milestone. After beaching my raft, I slogged back almost a kilometer to record it. Belatedly, I noticed bear signs everywhere. Huge tracks crisscrossing yet more giant tracks all over the riverbanks. A veritable bear dance floor imprinted on gray sand.“

— Paul Salopek

✍️ Explore Milestone 168 of the Out of Eden Walk: https://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/milestone-168-please-bear-dont-do-that

This Milestone was recorded near Yakutat, Alaska, United States on day 4,612 and mile 16,950 of the Walk.

🥾 Every hundred miles, Paul pauses to record the landscape and a person he meets, assembling a global snapshot of humankind.

Milestones reflect straight-line distances, but Paul’s walked distances are generally much longer.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Video description in comments.

[slow journalism, storytelling, slow media, outdoors, migration, human history, slow travel]

05/28/2026

“The Outer Coast of Alaska is a stormy mosaic—nature’s reshuffling puzzle.

The big, wide, silty Grand Wash River draining the Malaspina Glacier shifts constantly, like a whip in mid-crack, its moveable banks built up and eroding by kilometers from year to year.”

— Paul Salopek

🥾At the link, explore Milestone 168 in full, which was recorded near Yakutat, Alaska, United States on day 4,612 and at mile 16,950 of the Out of Eden Walk.

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic Fellow Paul Salopek is retracing on foot the global migration of our ancestors in a 42,000 km, multiyear odyssey that begins in Ethiopia and ends in Tierra del Fuego.

05/27/2026

📚 For all of the readers who follow the Out of Eden Walk, here’s a book recommendation from Paul. He shares:

“I loved this new book by my friend Megan
O’Grady —an intimate and honest self-examination that blossoms outwards into the vast, defining, human mystery of why we make art.

HOW IT FEELS TO BE ALIVE is an eloquent compass for questing in our uncertain times.”

Read more here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374613327/howitfeelstobealive

05/26/2026

🎙️ Paul Salopek: This whole walking project is an interesting experiment in recreating the vast ancient dispersal that [occurred] in the Stone Age. And basically, my experience [mirrors], more or less, what scientists have been telling us in the latest research: that human beings often populated the planet along the interface between land and sea. Basically, we kind of beachcombed our way across an unmapped world. And this has two advantages. One is … you sort of have a direction to go in, right? You have a beach, or you have a coastline that gives you directionality. And the beauty of it is that you have two ecosystems to harvest food from. So, sometimes things wash up by the sea, or if you’ve developed hooks using the seashells, you can fish, and when the sea doesn’t give, you can pivot and turn inland. It’s actually a very clever way to move through the world.

🎙️ Marco Werman, host of The World: Yeah, and that coastal diet varies so much depending on which coast you are on. In Alaska, what stood out to you in the nourishment that comes from the water?

🎙️ Paul: Well, you know, I’ve got to admit I’m mainly eating freeze-dried packaged foods. For me, I’m having to make kilometers every day and pausing to fish or to subsistence hunt, while it would be fascinating, is something I frankly don’t have time for. But what I do see is a lot of the resources that ancient people used. There are tremendous shellfish beds along the rocky shores. And what’s really fascinating is that archeologists find what they call shell middens — basically feast sites where temporary camps or villages would gorge on shellfish. And you just find these big lenses, these big mounds of what they cooked, the shells that are left. And they’re all over the world along coastlines.

🎧 Listen to this conversation about how coastlines propelled ancient humans across the planet, part of an ongoing series of stories about the Walk produced by The World in collaboration with the Out of Eden Walk nonprofit organization and the National Geographic Society: https://theworld.org/stories/2026/05/15/how-coastlines-propelled-ancient-humans-across-the-planet

Out of Eden Walk is a 42,000 kilometer walk across the world in the footsteps of our ancestors.

📷: Tlingit salmon fishers Dylan Petersen and Paul Pavlik in Yakutat, Alaska.

Photo by Paul Salopek

Image description in comments.

[migration, slow journalism, water stories, human history, slow travel, storytelling]