Welcome to Mirage Travel Writing Podcast, I’m your host William Barlow. 

After two decades of indigent wanderings, I’m coming to you with stories, curiosities, and questions. In this first season, there will be narratives of sleeping on the streets in European capitals. There will be tales of crocodile men in remote Central African Republic and armed groups in eastern DR Congo all told through the experience of an aid worker. We will try to understand what it means to be a foreigner in clanic Palestinian society, and why not chronicle the ins and outs of a Parisian sexclub during a gangbang. Stories, all told with the tact of an anthropologist. Somewhat. 

The storytelling is pulled from ten years of published and unpublished writing about the West, the Middle East, and Africa and raises questions relating to cross-cultural understanding or better yet, misunderstanding. I welcome your feedback and interpretations of stories, namely on the many oddities that come from travel across cultures. 

The podcast will also feature writing from listeners. Writing that can be published anonymously. Writing of confusion or awe at the puzzle of cultures. Stories that serve no other purpose but to be told.