The Travel Hour

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with Tracy Tucker, education director and archivist of the Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska, about the novelist's life and works. 

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson walks around the childhood home of the novelist Willa Cather (My Antonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop) with Rachel Olsen, the education specialist of the Willa Cather Center in Red Cloud, Nebraska. 

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with guide and historian Bulent Yilmaz Korkmaz of Crowded House Tours in Turkey, about the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli, fought for the control of the narrow straits of the Dardanelles—not far from ancient Troy.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with French correspondent Maurin Picard about his new book, Ils Ont Tué Monsieur H (They Have Killed Mr. Hammarskjold: Congo, 1961. The French Mercenary Plot Against the United Nations - published in France.) They discuss various theories that could have led to the plane crash of the UN Secretary General during the Congo Crisis of 1961.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and goes around with Taib and Damir, two guides with Funky Sarajevo, a locally-operated tour company, which is part of the renaissance of the city that was earlier synonymous with war and suffering. 

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits the home in Edinburgh, Scotland, where the writer Robert Louis Stevenson grew up and where he lived well into his twenties. Matthew speaks with the current owner of the house, John Macfie, and explains to listeners how they can stay overnight in the home.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits the Chester A. Arthur Cottage (it belonged to the president's father, before he emigrated to North America) and speaks with Ms. May Kirkpatrick about the Arthur family's roots in Ulster.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits the Free Derry Museum in Northern Ireland and speaks with historian Adrian Kerr about what happened on Sunday January 30, 1972, when fourteen Derry citizens were killed by British soldiers, and more were wounded.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson, in Gettysburg, PA, visits with the famous Civil War congressman and abolitionist, Thaddeus Stevens, courtesy of Ross Hetrick, president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, which is dedicated to preserving the memory of the legislator who opposed slavery and promoted public education.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits the Geneva Book Fair and speaks with New York Times senior editor (of the Books Desk) Greg Cowles and Editor-in-Chief of Penguin Books (USA) Patrick Nolan about the many worlds that they visit in the course of their reading, writing, and editing. 

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with Damian Sadie, general manager of Rovos Rail, the private luxury railways located in Pretoria, South Africa, and with railroad excursions—of the highest standards—across southern Africa.  

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson talks with Nancy and Adlai Stevenson III (the former U.S. senator from Illinois) about their political family that stretches to the time of the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1850s and includes the presidential runs of Adlai Stevenson II in the 1950s.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits Lecompton, Kansas, and speaks with Tim Ruis, site administrator of Constitutional Hall, where in many ways the Civil War began.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with Grady Atwater, site administrator of the John Brown Museum Historic Site, which is southwest by about an hour from Kansas City, MO. It was from here that John Brown fought against slavery coming to the Kansas territories in the 1850s.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with the director of the James K. Polk Home & Museum, John Holtzapple, about how, as president, James K. Polk added more than a million square miles to the United States.

University of London Professor and noted scholar of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dr. Sarah Churchwell, speaks with Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson about the 1925 great American novel, The Great Gatsby, and its many worlds

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with Edward Mortimer—the well-respected journalist, author, and diplomat who is now a distinguished fellow at All Souls College in Oxford, England—about Israel, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and the chances for peace in the Middle East.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with veteran journalists Robert Carmichael and Luke Hunt about Cambodia and the legacies of the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot, and how listeners can explore Cambodian history on their own.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with human rights lawyer Richard J. Rogers about the long civil war in Sri Lanka and his hopes that the victims of that fighting might find justice for their losses.

Host Matthew Stevenson speaks with author Andrew Lownie talks about his new book, Stalin's Englishman, a biography of the Russian spy Guy Burgess, a member of the Cambridge Ring that penetrated the heart of British foreign policy in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with John Buchan biographer Andrew Lownie about the life and times of the Scottish writer, diplomat, and parliamentarian, John Buchan, author of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" and many other books.  

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson speaks with his son, Charles Stevenson, a biology student at UCL in London, about his travels around Indochina and Vietnam.

Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson visits Portsmouth and the National Museum of the Royal Navy, in southern England, and speaks with the museum director general, Professor Dominic Tweddle about the life and battles of Admiral Lord Nelson.  

Join host Matthew Stevenson as he speaks with Assistant Professor Christopher J. Galdieri of Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, and then listen in to the primary speeches of Republican Donald Trump and Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders.

The author of "A House in St. John's Wood: In Search of My Parents," sculptor Matthew Spender talks with Travel Hour host Matthew Stevenson about growing up as the son of famous parents.  His father was the celebrated English poet from the 1930s, Stephen Spender, and his mother was the pianist, Natasha Litvin.  Writers W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood were fixtures of his childhood.

Author Joan Brady talks with host Matthew Stevenson about the Alger Hiss case, which gripped the United States from 1948 until 1950, when the former State Department official was convicted—Brady says unjustly—of perjury for denying he knew a purported Communist named Whittaker Chambers.  According to Brady's new book, in helping to convict Hiss, Richard Nixon, who later was elected U.S. President, worked to fabricate evidence against Hiss.

Novelist, historian, and investigative journalist Jim Hougan talks with host Matthew Stevenson about traveling in and around Havana, Cuba, now that American sanctions and restrictions have eased.

The director of the Einstein Forum, Dr. Susan Neiman, talks with host Matthew Stevenson about the life and times of Albert Einstein, and especially about his summer house located in Caputh, a lakeside village near to Potsdam—where the Forum bearing his name has its headquarters. 

Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council, takes host Matthew Stevenson and Travel Hour listeners on an extended tour of the woods in northern Maine, up Mount Katahdin, and down the Allagash River.

Tuscan winemaker Alessandra Casini Bindi Sergardi speaks with host Matthew Stevenson about the art of making Chianti Classico and some other wines from her family's estate in the heart of Italy.

Host Matthew Stevenson interviews Chattanooga historian Ralph Brown about the Civil War battles in 1863 at Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge.  

Host Matthew Stevenson travels to Marion, OH, the home of President Warren G. Harding (1921-23) and tours the house with Harding Home director Sherry Hall, who has also written a history of Harding's ownership of the Marion Star, a local newspaper.

Host Matthew Stevenson visits the National Memorial on the Vítkov Hill in Prague to discuss with staff member František Štambera the legacy of 1938 Munich Agreement in the Czech Republic.

Host Matthew Stevenson visits the Dieppe Raid Museum on the coast of France and hears about the disaster that awaited Canadian and Allied soldiers when they attacked German fortifications there in summer 1942.

Former Serbian former minister, Vuk Jeremic, speaks to host Matthew Stevenson about the diplomacy of the Balkans, his work at the UN, and the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development and Horizons Magazine.

A casualty of the wars in Iraq includes the recent Islamic State attacks the classical ruins at Hatra, Iraq, near the city of Mosul.  Scholar and writer Fatema Fsoudavar Farmanfarmaeeian speaks with host Matthew Stevenson about the threats and greatness of the classical cultural sites around western Asia.

Host Matthew Stevenson visits the presidential home in Ohio of Rutherford B. Hayes, who was a decorated Civil War veteran and noted lawyer, before he was elected president in 1876.

Host Matthew Stevenson visits the 1918 U.S. Marine Corps battlefield at Belleau Wood, France, near to the River Marne and Chateau Thierry, and the scenes of desperate fighting that helped establish the modern reputation of the USMC.

Authors Jim Hougan (Secret Agenga) and Jack Owens (novelist and former agent for the FBI) discuss with host Matthew Stevenson the Watergate break-in and scandal that brought down the Nixon administration in 1974.  

Navy veteran of the kamikaze battles off Okinawa and Bucknell University Professor of English John Wheatcroft talks with host Matthew Stevenson about how his experiences in the Pacific War shaped his writing, many books, novels, poetry, and life.

Lincoln's indispensible man, William Seward, lived most of his adult life in Auburn, NY, that is, when he wasn't governor of New York, a US senator, or Secretary of State during the Civil War.  Host Matthew Stevenson speaks with Andy Roblee of the William Seward House.

Meeting in Charlottesville near the home of Thomas Jefferson, novelists and authors Jim Hougan and Jack Owens discuss with host Matthew Stevenson the incongruities of the John F. Kennedy assassination in Dallas—bringing to the discussion their backgrounds (Hougan) as an investigative journalist and (Owens) as an agent for the FBI.

Assassinated in Buffalo, NY in 1901, President William McKinley lived most of his adult life in Canton, OH, where host Matthew Stevenson speaks with the McKinley Museum's Buzz Ream about the qualities that made McKinley a Civil War hero and president. 

Professor Barbara Snedecor, director of the Elmira College Center for Mark Twain Studies, in upstate New York, describes for host Matthew Stevenson and Tom Leonard the octogonal study where Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and many other books at his Elmira summer home.

Curator Chris Lafave of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in downtown Indianapolis speaks with host Matthew Stevenson about the life and books of the celebrated Indiana-born author who struggled for years as a writer until his first best-seller was published in 1969. 

Calcutta director of Indian Mother and Child, Dr. Sujit Brahmochary remembers his early days working as a physician for Mother Teresa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace.  Host Matthew Stevenson.  

Documetnary filmmaker Paul Yule speaks with host Matthew Stevenson about his film,  "The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover" about photographer O. Winston Link, and the disturbing questions that it raises about the iconic figure.

Host Matthew Stevenson speaks in 2012 with Boston University professor and noted author and commentator, Professor Andrew Bacevich, about his books and his views on US foreign policy.

Host Matthew Stevenson speaks with the celebrated Civil War mapmaker Earl B. McElfresh about Gettysburg, Antietam, and other Civil War battles, and the generals that led the troops into the fighting.