Tomfool Traveler read by Clark Carr

The second installment of "Saints & Rascals" (History in the First Person) is Avicenna, the great, great Persian doctor, philosopher, scientist, and person of all things from about the Year 1000. He (I) describes what it was like to be able to read ALL the books there were before he was out of his teens. He describes the adventure of philosophy and even of being a doctor in his age of sultans, caliphates, imperial courts. And finally he tells why he spent his whole life running away from powerful sultans in order to preserve his freedom to think. Enjoy. And please let others know!

In this first audio essay, Thomas De Quincey, of a new series of monologues, Saints and Rascals, by Clark Carr, we hear De Quincey talk about his book, "Confessions of an Opium Eater," and of the terrible history of opium, the British/Chinese Opium Wars, and the evolution of the modern international drug crisis. What a tale! Told by someone who lived it...

This is the last chapter of the comic travel adventures. Comic after the fact, of course! Miserable or frightening while one is in the teeth of the tiger. But even if all might not be well that ends well, it DOES make for good stories! Enjoy. There are 12 chapters before this in Clark Carr's podcast "Clark Reads Books."

The way you learn the Cardinal Rules is by breaking them wildly, dumbly. Best done at 4AM outside Mumbai, or in a crowded Manila airport lobby with waiting passengers staring at you, or sitting on the royal white throne in Mexico City for days...and days...and days. Again somehow I survived, somehow!

Well, I've had more than my share of good luck. Here are three stories where it could have gone very south, very fast. But somehow kismet smiled on me. I don't deserve it, but I'm alive to tell the ridiculous stories of how I survived. Enjoy!

Not everyone gets to present at a science conference in Iran. You would think this would be so simple. What could possibly happen? After all, we're all such good friends, aren't we? Well, I made it, and it was VERY interesting. Very interesting indeed. Enjoy the fun and frisson!

CC "Nix" Nixdorf comes clean and tells some stories on himself, when he put his feet throughly in his mouth...and even had to chew on them. Stories of blowing with a lovely old Japanese lady, trying to teach Indian doctors in Mumbai, trying to help a trainee raise funds in Bollywood, and simply teaching Shanghai teachers how to wake kids up in the morning. What could be less complicated than that? What could possibly go wrong?

In this chapter of "Tomfool Traveler," we go down to Mexico City and to what it was earlier, the capital of the Aztecs. We see that some of Mexico Today is built from the very stones...and blood...of the Aztecs and their city. The author looks...down below...

These are eleven 'moments' that divide the 12 chapters of Tomfool Traveler. They span the globe from a Bangladesh sultry afternoon to a Hollywood luncheon with Russian doctors, from a Ghana fishing beach to the deep Montana night. You might chuckle, but you also might sit back, sigh, and think, "Yes, there IS a world out there, isn't there?" Indeed, there is. Enjoy.

This is the sixth chapter of the travelogue adventures or misadventures, Tomfool Traveler, by CC Nixdorf, read by Clark Carr. Will we ever stop learning good manners? Hopefully not. But it's a rocky road (although funny as hell, sometimes.)

In Chapter Five, CC Nixdorf regales us with some of his experiences lodging in spidery forests, wannabe Communist hotels, Southeast Asian princely palaces... Dry humor, but always smiling with us (not at us).

Chapter Four - The Great Equalizer - of Tomfool Traveler, by CC Nixdorf, is a very NON-serious story about the author's adventures with...bathrooms, toilets, baños, pissores...you name it, from India to China, Mexico to wherever. Very funny stuff. You definitely did not have to be there. It was embarrassing enough for the author. Read by author and humorist Clark Carr as part of "Clark Reads Books."