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The Independent EyeEpisode Archive

This is our full archive of Hitchhiking off the Map, from 2002-2006. It’s here for free listening.

CDs are $10 each and one hour long, containing two half-hour episodes (#1-66) or one hour-long episode (#67 on) except for special sets as indicated. For themed anthologies, see Audio. Ordering links use PayPal; see Ordering for other methods and shipping costs.

  • 1 Steve Wilhite — growing up among hill tribes in the Philippines, then plunged, as a teen, into life in the US.  Dakota — That comic nightmare where you’re back in school, undressed.
  • 2 JC Todd & Bill Shoff — A poet and an ER physician, married, talk of trips together and trips alone.  Cat in the Attic — A short, furious vignette about getting stranded in the attic by a wayward feline.
  • 3 Elspeth — A 72-year-old woman rebounds from an accident to travel as a storyteller cross-country driving a bus.  Blizzard — A dream fantasy of being snowbound at the suburban dinner table, and the crash through to freedom.
  • 4 Portraits — Snapshots of people confronting new challenges:  a birth, the grid pattern of city streets, and an ATM machine.  Down the Stairs to Yellowstone — A man with five broken ribs in bittersweet dialogue with his ex-wife.
  • 5 Judy Claude — A civil rights activist talks of her first trip to jail, her years in Africa, and her coming home.  What’s Buried — A house changes hands, calling forth memories and anger.
  • 6 Bill Middleton & Jess Forrest — A couple breaks up in college and reconnects thirty years later.  Surprise — A meditation on “the first time I knew my parents loved me…”
  • 7 Ed Bacon — A renowned city planner tells of the formative journeys of his youth — to Egypt, to China, and to Flint, MI.  The Flounder — An update of a Grimms’ tale, encountering a wish-granting fish in the Chicago River.
  • 8 Portraits — Childhood adventures:  getting carsick, praying for the car to start, and going to the wrong-color restroom.  Burlington Lunch — On a trip to the Seven-Eleven, a waitress encounters space aliens, and finally her life makes sense.
  • 9 Sex & Security — A couple celebrates their anniversary while trying to keep the spirit of the War on Terrorism.  Fred Ponzlov — A harried New York taxi driver becomes a Los Angeles Buddhist and stares death in the eye.
  • 10 Sara Savitz — A woman at the mid-point of a cross-country journey, and her discovering why.  Condemned — Dream fantasy of a woman whose medical exam has found building code violations.
  • 11 Mark Chello — A Bucks County teenager in the backwash of the Summer of Love.  Martin Fusi — An African professor speaks of holding to his village roots within the expanse of America.
  • 12 Jim Looman — A small-town policeman goes to work one day, comes home without his legs.  Lot’s Wife — A daughter’s trip back from post-9/11 New York jars awake a mother’s memory of Three Mile Island and a mythical flight from home.
  • 13 Nixville — A renowned professor and a short-order waitress rekindle their high school romance.  Loveplay — A woman meets her birth mother, and a long process begins.
  • 14 Sky Chaney — A man climbs Mt.  Everest without ever leaving his desk, but he finds it much harder getting back.
  • 15 Travelers — A couple plan their dream vacation in the wake of global terror.  Erika Fabian — A Hungarian woman talks of the countless borders she’s crossed.
  • 16 Portraits — Travel adventures:  central heating in India; a fight in rural Georgia; flipping the car.  Sam Reynolds — From a class for the retarded, to boxing, to evangelism, to Black Nationalism, to India, to astrology:  one man’s journey.
  • 17 Judy Dragon — A woman speaks with a single voice about the many voices that have inhabited her.  Buddies — In an age of corporate responsibility, the Three Musketeers test their survival instinct.
  • 18 Tell It Like It Is — An employee is fired for her superior communication skills.  Twenty Years — A marriage is grounded on sound business models that have nothing at all to do with the people involved.
  • 19 Stoplight — Dad teaches his small daughter the confusing difference between WALK and DON’T WALK.  Abner Serd — He walks from Arizona to Georgia in order to start north on the Appalachian Trail.
  • 20 Hitchhiking Snapshots — A trip back through the short dramatic stories and real-life portraits of the past five months, exploring the process of creating radio stories.
  • 21 Cesar Cruz — A young Mexican-American poet-activist journeys from past to future.  Cherry Blossoms — Falling in love with Jean Seberg and the art of theatre, an Iowa teenager sees his life upended.
  • 22 Matthew Fox — The controversial dancing theologian of Creation Spirituality speaks of his personal journey.  A Drop of Honey — A woman’s meditation on Alzheimer’s and the New Year.
  • 23 Loraine Hutchins — A bisexual-rights activist copes with parents, lovers, and the daily grind.  Sleeves to Turkey — Two old friends reconnect after the grueling death of a mate with AIDS.
  • 24 Moshe Yassur — From Rumania to Israel to New York; from pogrom to Ionesco to teaching high school:  an immigrant reflects.  Peace Negotiations — Two elderly women, adrift in a Burger King, find their way toward peace.
  • 25 The Golden Venture ran aground in New Jersey with a cargo of illegal Chinese immigrants.  Corporate lawyer Hanna Dunlap took on the case of one man, and found herself on the legal and emotional battleground of her life.
  • 26 Leon Katz — A legendary literature professor traces his most personal travels.  Ashes — A woman’s pregnancy and loss intersect with the hatching and flight of the chimney swallows.
  • 27 Kym Trippsmith — A Scots woman looks back on her long-ago nightmare journey to Morocco.  Day of the Figs — A memoir of calamari, gelato, lampredotto, fresh figs, and astronauts.
  • 28 Arturo Castillo — A Mexican-American’s search, from Philadelphia to London to L.A., for what he’s searching for.  Portraits — Childhood memories of family trips.
  • 29 Mark Gold — He travels to the poorest countries on earth to give away his friends’ money.  Watchers — A suburban couple responds to the spectacle of a grisly assault on their front lawn in exactly the way you’d expect.
  • 30 Pilgrims of Spirit — Three women’s journeys:  an engineer from Siberia launches a new life of shamanic journeys; a woman follows a vision to Australia; and a Sicilian Native American reclaims her roots.
  • 31 Shoppers — A magical journey — is it by bus or the Sun God’s chariot? — to Wanamaker’s Department Store.  Mark Her Words — A mother waits anxiously to see what her daughter is getting pierced next.
  • 32 Keeper of Memory — A Jewish lesbian reflects on her dual journeys from the distance of years, and the feature’s producer Joan Schuman traces its creation and her own.

($14.95)
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    Nativity — Twenty-six women speak of their experiences of childbirth, intersected with myth fragments of divine birth:  a hymn to the diversity, the struggle, and the sacredness of bringing forth life.
  • 36 Carmel McCafferty — A woman goes shopping downtown and starts on a path that leads her through Bloody Sunday.  The Bath — Finding sisterhood in the baths in Marrakesh.
  • 37 Mark Samano — An Iraqi immigrant untangles the thirty-two languages of Detroit.  Dalmatian — That memorable trip down the hallway to the Principal’s office.
  • 38 Polly Moore — A Mississippi woman looks back over 85 years of changes.  Kill the Johnsons — Concerned suburbanites plan a preemptive strike on the neighbors.
  • 39 Popcorn Anti-Theater — A busload of artistic revelers redefine the meaning of theatre and bus rides.  Lobster Liberation — A beleaguered copy writer recalls her trip to the ocean to free a shoplifted lobster.
  • 40 Sugarshack Salome — A 400-lb.  woman at a roadhouse dances into epiphany and rage.  And the storyteller, Rocky Rockwell, an ex-newspaperman chronicling the species, and himself.
  • 41 Jacquie Godden — A Mississippi girl looks into the face of the murdered Emmett Till.  Years later, she’s homesteading in Australia.  A glimpse of two worlds.
  • 42 Tom Pencheon — An aptitude test proves he has no talent for languages, so he spends a lifetime as a linguist specializing in Berber.  Diamond Head — A businessman’s climb to the rim of a dead volcano, and what he finds.
  • 43 Radio producer Paul Ingles reports on building houses with Jimmy Carter, almost.  Home — A meditation on where it is we come back to when we’ve been wherever we’ve gone.
  • 44 Morning Glory Zell — An expedition to discover mermaids becomes a confrontation with truth.  The Right Man for the Job — Two elderly parents confront their grown daughter’s lifestyle, and their own.
  • 45 Maria Eusch Phelps — A woman scans her grandmother’s diaries of survival on the losing side of war.
  • 46 Terry Connelly — A father’s sex change operation, its impact on her marriage, and scattering the ashes.
  • 47 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Steve Wilhite — Growing up among hill tribes in the Philippines, then plunged, as a teen, into life in the US.  A Drop of Honey — A woman’s meditation on Alzheimer’s and the New Year.

($14.95)
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    Descent of the Goddess Inanna, Trenton NJ, 5:42 P.M. — A four-part dramatization of the ancient Sumerian myth of death and resurrection, adapted from our stage production.  A New Jersey wedding photographer finds her images turning into nightmares.  In another dimension, the Queen of Heaven and Earth begins a fateful descent to meet her sister, Queen of the Underworld.  In these twin journeys, the mundane and the mythic merge into a startling resurrection.  With commentary by Anodea Judith, author of Wheels of Life.
  • 52 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Fred Ponzlov — A harried New York taxi driver becomes a Los Angeles Buddhist and stares death in the eye.
  • 53 Darryl Cherney — A balladeer, Earth First activist, and car-bomb survivor tells how he got that way.
  • 54 Sandy & Tom Farley — A “peace-makers” profile:  a dream vision leads a pair of storytellers into the war rubble of Kosovo and Albania, and the extremes of humanity and hate.
  • 55 Outside the Dying — A woman shares an airline flight with her slowly-dying husband.
  • 56 David Dresser — A retired phone company employee looks back over his years of hitchhiking and discovering his path, as a new generation of hitchhiker, Mike Benham, tells of his own quest.
  • 57 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Dakota — That comic nightmare where you’re back in school, undressed.  Lot’s Wife — A daughter’s trip back from post-9/11 New York jars awake a mother’s memory of Three Mile Island and a mythical flight from home.
  • 58 Steve Fowler — He drives cross-country to collect soil samples for a monument to peace.  Bomblets — Walt’s dream of a European vacation turns sour in the face of a miniaturized arms race.
  • 59 Christina Sukkal — Their love dissolves, then deepens in the face of death.  Beate Hein — From Germany to America, expanding her world, and home again to swim in the lake of her childhood.
  • 60 Andy Mandell — He was flat on his back with diabetes for two years.  That’s why he’s walking the 10,000-mile periphery of the US.
  • 61 Donald & Maria Schell — Father and daughter make a 300-mile pilgrimage across Spain to find themselves at the beginning of another journey.
  • 62 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Down the Stairs to Yellowstone — A man with five broken ribs tells his ex-wife about the trip he never took.  Shoppers — A magical journey – is it by bus or the Sun God’s chariot? – to Wanamaker’s Department Store.
  • 63 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Bill Middleton & Jess Forrest — A couple breaks up in college and reconnects thirty years later.  Remember — A litany of things remembered and things held to:  the old furniture that we do want to keep.
  • 64 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Judy Claude — A civil rights activist tells of her first trip to jail, her years in Africa, and her coming home.  Cesar Cruz — A young Mexican-American poet-activist journeys from past to future.
  • 65 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Matthew Fox — The controversial dancing theologian of Creation Spirituality speaks of his personal journey.  Ashes — A woman’s pregnancy and loss intersect with the hatching and flight of the chimney swallows.
  • 66 Producers’ Favorites (repeats):  Cherry Blossoms — Falling in love with Jean Seberg and the art of theatre, an Iowa teenager sees his life upended.  Love — The ultimate search, from the cradle to the grave.
  • 67 Artists’ Journeys — Blake More frolics cross-country with the Doggy Diner.  The music of Halim el-Dabh spans European concert halls and African villages.  And Cameron & Kristina sing on the streets of Baghdad nine days after the bombing.
  • 68 Views of Home — Jesse Wolf Hardin is a musician, writer and environmental activist whose life is formed around his love for eighty acres of rural canyon land in southern New Mexico.  And in the audiodrama Freeway, a young couple, rushing to the hospital for the birth of their first child, take a wrong turn, get on the freeway, and never ever get off.
  • 69 War Veterans — The voices of fourteen men and women who served in the military during times of war.  What got you into the service? What did you do? How were you different when you came home?
  • 70 At Risk? — Amy Racina takes one misstep on a wilderness hike and plunges into a survival ordeal.  Lilith Rogers takes a big chance with airport security.  And Doris (Granny D) Haddock hikes across the United States at the age of ninety—and keeps on going.
  • 71 Survival Tips for the Plague Years — Conrad Bishop offers a medley of provocative stories about navigating the rapids of the daily news (adapted from his solo show).  A brash, bold underground view of mythic quests, messiahs, and wrangles with the tax man.
  • 72 The Stories We Tell About It — Norman Eisley talks of finding roots in stories created during a life of world travel.  Omaha is a dramatic duologue about telling the wrong story to the wrong person at the wrong time.  Plus Big Lake, a story about the trip your mother told you not to go on.
  • 73 Lawbreakers — Are you one of that tiny band of citizens who has never broken the law without being punished? Profiles of some very nice people who have, by choice, strayed past legal boundaries:  ex-dope dealer Sheldon Norberg; Cuban ex-counterrevolutionary Rafael Torres; and illicit traveler to Cuba, Lilith Rogers.
  • 74 Search for the Lost City — Bishop & Fuller travel to the lost city of Boston to create a show with a young theatre ensemble, Company One.  A documentary of the safari, from the first rehearsal starting with nothing but a title to opening night five weeks later.
  • 75 Adversity — Those damned growth experiences! Seven stories about that trip to the hospital — and what followed.  A man decides it’s time that his foot has to go; an ICU patient believes himself besieged by terrorists; and a ruptured spleen leads to true love.
  • 76 Just People — No theme, just profiles of unique people recently encountered.  Activism at the bridge club, coping with chronic fatigue at the CostCo, an Arkansas native’s first trip to New York City, a Jewish woman in Palestine, and eighteen years in a Berkeley collective.
  • 77 Loss & Love — Jeff & Pat’s picnic outing to the river became a nightmare:  their perspective from five years after their son’s drowning.  And Abbie, an audiodrama based on the true story of a man’s intense bonding with a cat bred for fighting.
  • 78 Artists’ Journeys — A young violinist who’s moved from classical to experimental to rock to the indescribable music of Tin Hat Trio.  A cartoonist who illustrates True Travel Tales.  And Phong Nguyen might have grown up as a rice farmer in the Mekong Delta instead of as a renowned ethnomusicologist if it weren’t for a monk’s motorboat with a cranky engine.
  • 79 Journeys thru Confusion — Four micro-dramatic stories about people making their way through the foggy moments of daily life.  Two friends reconnect after a long separation.  A small child on a life-and-death errand gets lost in his snowdrift emotions.  An elderly couple come face-to-face with their daughter’s off-beat lifestyle.  And we journey forward (and backward) to class with a computerized teacher.
  • 80 Journeys into the Dark — Four stories about driving without your headlights.  Part One: “Storm Sewers”:  kids discovering an underworld beneath the city of Oakland.  “Parking Regulations in a Time of Crisis”:  trying to fix a traffic ticket you only dreamed of getting.  Part Two: “Guide Dogs”:  profiling the experience of putting your sight and trust in the eyes of another species.  “Rabbit Hole”:  falling with Alice into the depths, at the age of 44, right after the evening news.

($29.95)
  • 81 Tapdancer 1 & 2 — The first of a three-part serial comic fantasy about the surreal journey of a young investment broker who takes the risk of starting tap-dance lessons.  This innocent venture outside his narrow bounds sends him caroming through the rapids of local stardom, midnight vandalism, and the criminal justice system.  A melange of one-of-a-kind characters, absurd surprises, social satire, and the triumph of true love.  Based on our stage production.
  • 82 Tapdancer 3 & 4 — The second of a three-part serial comic fantasy about the surreal journey of a young investment broker who takes the risk of starting tap-dance lessons.  This month, he enters the jaws of the criminal justice system, where his modest political protest balloons into accusations of major felonies, crimes against the Native American, and the testimony of his kindergarten teacher that he colored outside the lines.
  • 83 Tapdancer 5 & 6 — The final segment of our serial comic fantasy about the surreal journey of a young investment broker who takes the risk of starting tap-dance lessons.  This month, he descends into the furnace room of judgment, and for a trivial misdemeanor receives a highly disturbing sentence.  But it’s a comedy, and societal dysfunction saves the day, as long as he keeps tap-dancing on the footboard of his deathbed.
  • 84 Small Victories — Small by comparison with the tsunamis of life, but real.  Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba venture into New York for the first time to find the female rescue workers of 9/11.  Alan Moore promotes world peace through butterfly gardening.  And in “Diana,” a man, seeing himself die in another person’s dream, accepts it as a gift.
  • 85 More Artists’ Journeys — Three stories.  “Cosmic comic” Steve Bhaerman talks about the evolution of his alter ego, Swami Beyondananda.  Pakistani singer Riffat Sultana tells of her struggle, in her family with a 500-year all-male musical tradition, to be allowed to sing.  And Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, offers his thoughts toward peace in the Middle East.
  • 86 Octogenarians — Four unique individuals in their eighties who reflect on their past while living life to the fullest.  A legendary literature professor recalls his first trip to the library, and all that followed.  A New England woman hikes across the United States at the age of ninety—and keeps on going.  An agricultural consultant becomes a composer, spanning European concert halls and African villages.  And an ordinary woman works in the grassroots to make profound changes within her own arms’ reach.
  • 87 Counterculture Workers — Who cooks the food, proofreads the text, or drives the bus for the Counterculture? We talk to Ray Sewell, a chef for the Grateful Dead, and V. Vale, publisher of everything your parents would dread that you might read.  And a story about a long-distance hippie in Scranton, PA.
  • 88 Wounding & Healing — Lion Goodman heard an explosion, turned around, face to face with the man who’d just shot him.  And Carolyn Gage traces her journey from hitchhiker to Christian Science healer to lesbian feminist playwright.
  • 89 Journeys toward Truth — State Department interpreter Fred Burks talks about high-level meetings and his decision to quit due to government policies.  Conrad Bishop recalls his career as a four-year-old whistleblower.  Civil rights activist Judy Claude tells of her first trip to jail, her years in Africa, and her coming home.  And in “Watchers,” a suburban couple responds to a grisly assault on their front lawn with resolute indecision.
  • 90 Fools’ Journeys — Reinette Senum skis halfway across Alaska, then builds a canoe to continue the trip.  But she finds her actual journey comes after that:  discovering her own past.  And the path changes for Marc Gold when he finds that he’s saved someone’s life by spending a dollar and a quarter.  Now he travels the world to give away his friends’ money, a few bucks at a time.
  • 91 Long Shadow: Part One — Gold Rush country. Wartime, 1944. Justice and community fragmentation in a climate of fear. A local war hero is killed while hunting. Suspicion falls on “Wild Bill” Ebaugh, a long-haired eccentric rumored to run naked in the woods, have many lovers, poach livestock and serenade the hills. A bounty is posted, a young man shoots him dead and collects three hundred bucks. Justice or murder? Was Ebaugh a dangerous psychotic or a gentle giant? The ensuing firestorm of controversy cast a long shadow over Nevada County for decades. The play centers on three families:  those of the murder victim, the relentless sheriff, and the young bounty hunter. Based on our stage production.
  • 92 Long Shadow: Part Two — Bill Ebaugh is dead, his killer is a hero, and the community’s fears are laid to rest. Then it starts coming apart.
  • 93 War Veterans — A rebroadcast in recognition of Veteran’s Day.  The voices of fourteen men and women who served in the military during times of war.  What got you into the service? What did you do? How were you different when you came home?
  • 94 Car Crashes — Where were you going? What were you driving? When did you see it coming? What has it meant in your life? Making tangible the 40,000+ roadway deaths and 1.2 million injuries annually in the U.S., and how we accept this violence.