Episode 1: Leaving It All

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Episode 1: Leaving it all

By the time I turned 28, I had done a lot of strange things. Blindfolded myself for 24 hours in a basement on a piece of frayed cardboard. Threw blueberry jam and oreo pie onto my T-shirt for months. Practiced reaching behind my back to touch my heel. Reached to touch my forehead to my heel, my hand back and around my waist.

00:24

I was my own lab rat, setting up experiments just to see what would happen. What would happen if I dropped out of school to study the history of cinema? What would happen if at this meal I were to only speak with my eyes? What would happen if I broke with the tiny assumptions of normal life, to see what lived outside them?

00:45

But somewhere along the way, I stopped asking.

At some point, without realizing it, I’d let myself settle. The experiments stopped. The questions got quieter. And life, once full of unpredictable edges, started feeling… manageable. Comfortable.

And that was starting to terrify me.

Because the world isn’t flat. It isn’t shallow. It has depth. It has layers. And if I stayed here—if I stayed comfortable, uncurious, afraid—I might never reach below the surface. I might never move deeper into it.

01:30

JOANNE: “It was kind of like you were itching for something more.”

That’s um, my mom! I was living ten minutes from my parents at the time, so they knew what was going on.

JOANNE: “When you, Jonny, are really energized and excited about what you’re doing, there’s an extra life about you that I was not seeing during that time.”

I needed something big. Something irreversible. Something that would crack my life wide open.

So I made a decision. I was going to disappear.

02:12

Welcome to Go and Find Out. I’m Jonny Wright.

This is a story of losing yourself in the world.

I left my home, my job, and the USA in order to learn the old-fashioned way: with first-hand experience.

Some people go on a journey to find themselves. I went on a journey to lose myself—and instead find the world.

In these episodes, I ask big questions about life, not from an armchair but from roadsides and mountaintops, from temple halls and dance halls.

Join me as I hitchhike across the world, embrace the unexpected, and let go, one step at a time.

If you’ve ever thought about living a life outside the box, keep listening.

Because this isn’t just about my story. It’s about what happens when you start to wonder what your story could be.

You don’t need to hitchhike across the world—there are ways you can choose to live with more courage, more curiosity, and more intention, right here, right now.

Let’s go and find out.

: 03:17

My inner experimenter slumbers until it wakes up with the hint of spring along the damp branches of trees in the backyard of where I live in Asheville, North Carolina. I open the porch door and find the bees are coming out of hibernation and investigating the winter’s damage. I sit on the steps and call a friend living down in Mexico. Without thinking, I say: ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to just…’

This is how most of my experiments start—with a simple ‘What if?’ followed by silence. And then… (slight beat, a breath of hesitation)

A reticent “Yeah?” on the other end of the line. Not enthusiastic. That “yeah?” is barely there. A hesitation. A crack in the door. But in my mind? It swings wide open. A neon sign blinking: GO. FULL STEAM AHEAD.

04:17

The idea itself that’s just left my mouth? It’s bolder than most of my experiments. Simple. Reckless. Some might generously call it, well, unwise. It’s the kind of idea that anyone might have in a moment of whimsy, and might even entertain for a minute while crawling into bed, and then that would be as far as the idea would get.

But this time, I don’t just think it. I decide. I’m going to leave. To get lost. To get out into the world, get to places I’ve never been, never even heard of, for no purpose beyond the sheer experience of it. One after another after another after another. And I’m going to do it by sticking out my thumb.

That last part? The hitchhiking? That’s the scariest part.

Because, before you get the wrong idea, I should say: I’m not as reckless as I might sound. In fact, I take myself way too seriously. I make rules for myself—how many minutes to meditate, how many candy corns count as a serving. It’s not OCD, I tell myself. I just like systems.

So throwing out the rulebook? That’s scary.

And there was another thing…

05:37

JOANNE: “Also, I would describe you as someone who wasn’t interested in travel... it was like that was not something that seemed exciting or inspiring to you.”

I didn’t even like to travel! I was the kid who would rather stay at home and play with legos. And as an adult, travel meant inconvenience and vapid consumerism. Hitchhiking, well, that was still just plain scary.

Not long before I left, I went to see a man named Don Acton who had hitchhiked back when hitchhiking was more mainstream. A friend of my dad’s, Don had lived through the ‘70s with his thumb in the air, riding the highways when the world felt looser, when people weren’t so afraid of each other. He had the look of someone who had seen a lot—gray hair, big glasses, a slow, easy way of moving, like nothing could shake him anymore.

I sat in a chair across from him on his porch.

I told him my plan. Told him I was nervous. That I didn’t even know if people picked up hitchhikers anymore.

He smiled, small and knowing, like I was telling him something he’d heard a hundred times before.

He looked at me, then past me, into the trees. A long silence. The crickets droned. I shifted in my chair. Finally, a slow inhale from him. Then, simply— “You’re gonna be okay.”

That was it. No complicated advice, no warnings. Just that simple, weightless thing. And for some reason, I believed him.

07:15

The day I’ve been waiting for finally arrives. I take with me a backpack with a few clothes, a toothbrush, and nothing that’ll slow me down. I stand out at the onramp of an Eastbound highway, out of Asheville. There’s no fanfare or blaring of trumpets. There’s just me and the road and the cars that fly by.

I hold up my thumb the way I’d read about in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. At first the wind coming off the cars nearly blows me over. I brace my legs and stand tall and smile at the strangers. The drivers give me all kinds of looks. A few of them wave, a few smile, and a few look confused. A lot of them didn’t pay any attention.

There’s no guidebook for hitchhiking. No timeline, no standard. It doesn’t factor into the American economy. It’s not an industry. There are barely any laws around it! Just two decisions: mine to stand there, and someone else’s to stop.

Before I go any further, I want to name something. As a white male, I know I carry privilege when I stick my thumb out on the side of the road. That’s not the case for everyone. Hitchhiking isn’t equally safe—or equally possible—for a lot of people. That reality isn’t lost on me.

08:32

Right now, on this road, I have no proof hitchhiking works anymore, for anyone. Maybe it belongs to the past—something mythic, like seances, flower children, and knights errant.

Even as I stand, wondering if anything can possibly come of this, an SUV slows to a crawl and pulls onto the berm. I stand and stare. At first, I don’t move. My brain refuses to compute what’s happening. Did… did I just win? I pick up my backpack and rush over to the vehicle. The window rolls down. Middle-aged guy, greying hair, business suit. ‘Hey there, you heading to Winston Salem?’ I ask. ‘Climb aboard,’ he says. And I do.

That moment opened a door—one that would lead to countless others. If I’d known how many, I might’ve danced right there on the spot.

09:27

Winston-Salem, Durham, Richmond, DC, Baltimore, Philly, New York. In and out of cars I jumped, in and out of semis and beamers and old greasy pickups, giving whoever was at the wheel a smile and a story and an ear to hear whatever they had to say.

There’s a specific sensation in the moment you get dropped off somewhere halfway to your destination, in the middle of nowhere, without knowing how you’ll complete the journey other than trusting that something will happen. The person dropping you there is apologetic that they aren’t going any further, and they look like they are not at all trusting that ‘something will happen.’ They look pretty worried, and you smile and thank them and say everything will be just fine. Then your feet hit the ground and you wave and they drive off, and an eerie silence creeps up, and you are alone with this stretch of road. Your ears strain in hopes of the sound of a motor, but all you hear is the pitter patter of gravel blowing on the pavement and a vulture high up somewhere. It’s lonely. It’s electric. A collision of fear and trust, of no and yes.

I couldn’t get enough of it. ‘Go go go!’ something in me said. So I did. I bought a ticket to Europe.

10:44

From New York to Amsterdam, the transatlantic jump barely registers before I’m hurling eastward, hitching with whoever will take me. Refrigerator repairmen, musicians, students, farmers, nuns. One minute, I’m squeezed into the back of a compact car, nodding along to German rap. The next, I’m in the cab of a Polish trucker who passes me an ice-cold beer while steering with one hand, swiping through photos of his grandkids in Turkey with the other.

Cologne. Munich. Leipzig. Kraków. The rhythm of the road takes hold—fast, slow, fast, stop. I wait hours in the brutal sun, parched, pacing a dusty roadside. Then suddenly, I’m in the backseat of a family car, the kids firing off curious questions, the dad proudly listing every American city he knows. No two days are the same. No two rides are the same.

And then, Bulgaria.

11:38

The sun is dropping behind the peaks, and I am well and truly screwed.

The road twists through the mountains—empty, silent, a strip of asphalt floating in a sea of dark forests and wet fields. I scan the horizon. Nothing. I accept my fate: tonight, I sleep in the dirt.

Then, headlights. A rattling purple car rolls up, looking like it was built from scraps of a flea market. Clothes and cushions spill out of the back, crammed in with books, maybe an old toaster. The driver—a rugged, bearded guy with bright, steady eyes—rolls down the window.

“You’re lost,” he says. Not a question.

I nod.

He jerks a thumb to the mess of a backseat. “Get in.”

He could be a bandit from a folktale, but something in his voice, in the quiet certainty of it, makes me trust him. I wedge myself in, and we roll down the mountain.

Turns out, he’s an environmental activist. He’s trying to protect these forests, these mountains, this land. He doesn’t just drive—he talks, fast, urgent, like a man with a mission.

By the time we reach my host’s place, I’m no longer a stranded traveler—I’m part of a cause I barely understand.

Then he’s gone.

13:00

South into Turkey, dodging traffic across highways, Istanbul’s skyline a swirling mirage of domes and water and calls to prayer. I’d made it to the edge of Europe. As I rode the ferry over the Bosporus to the Asian side of Istanbul, I imagined that squiggly lined route that had taken me from one side of the continent to the other, from East to West. Then Westward again, to finish the loop. I was on my way home. Greece, Albania. And then—Montenegro.

The plan was simple. A short ride, just past the border. But the storm had other plans.

Dark clouds stack over the peaks. The wind howls, the rain slams down, the world dissolves into streaks of water and headlights. Our driver—a local tour guide—clenches the wheel, nodding toward me and the German girl in the backseat.

“No stopping now,” he says. “You stay with me.”

So we stay. Montenegro flies by in flashes of ghostly cliffs and rivers that might be waterfalls, lost in the downpour. The road twists, climbs, drops away into shadow. Our guide doesn’t just drive—he narrates, voice weaving through the rain like an old radio signal. Stories of battles fought in these mountains, of kings and outlaws, of rivers that used to run red.

Hours pass. The rain doesn’t let up. Neither do the stories. Podgorica. The black cliffs. The endless road ahead.

By the time we reach Sarajevo, it’s deep into the night. We step out, dazed, blinking at the city lights. I shake his hand. “Didn’t plan on coming this far,” I say.

He grins. “The road doesn’t care about your plans.”

14:49

North through Croatia, Slovenia, up through Italy, glimpsing the Tuscan hills and their spiny trees, stopping at gas stations mobbed by Italians for their morning espressos. Across the Alps into France, through Belgium, and finally—Amsterdam.

Four months. Twenty countries. An entire continent flickering past like a half-remembered dream.

JOANNE: “your world blew up. It expanded, so much bigger.”

Europe shrunk behind the clouds as the plane flew back to the States. I’d tasted a way of being that was genuinely new to me. We landed in Philly and from there I hitched down to Asheville. I was ready to rest a while. The journey had been long, four months, and the adventure had continued right to the very last, fall-chilled day of catching short rides into the North Carolina mountains. I was tired, but as the sun set, and I hopped out of my last ride at Charlotte Street and crossed the bridge into my city, the smile on my face couldn’t have been bigger.

But how do you end a trip like that? We’ll find out, right after the break.

16:00

The experiment had worked—I had left, felt fear and joy, walked the land of twenty countries. And now, I was back. And all of it was slipping through my fingers.

I dreamed of the places I’d been, and even in my waking hours they flashed before me, random street corners, bits of trail along a mountain or through a graveyard or the inner dome of a mosque. They became ghostly companions, visiting without warning as I did my daily work. The places from my memory felt distant, not geographically, but almost like images from another lifetime altogether, a former life that had lived briefly and died unknowingly.

But, as my Dad said later on,

STEVE: “It seemed like pretty much the same routines.”

The rest of life moved at a snail’s pace. I went to work, and came home and wrote songs, and read books, and held yoga poses. The truth is that it all looked so damn similar to before. My big experiment had done something inside me, sure, it had been real and rough and had shaken me awake. And yet here I was again, in danger of entering that domestic dreamworld, lulling me with its easy rhythms. You can only take so many cold showers in a day to keep you on your toes.

17:26

At the end of the year, I drive North with my parents to see an old woman one last time. That woman is my Grandma, her memory stripped, just a loose husk and the innermost seed of who she used to be.

When I walk in, she lights up like a flickering candle—bright for a moment, but unsteady. Her hands tremble as she reaches for her walker, her whole body swaying with each step toward me on her toothpick legs. She leans in close as if gravity itself is pulling her toward me, her fragile frame pressing lightly into mine. I hold my arms out instinctively, steadying her, and that’s when I feel it—the shaking that won’t stop.

'I want to show you something,' she says, voice thin but urgent. She turns and shuffles over to the wall, where a large framed photo hangs. It’s a familiar picture—our whole extended family, frozen in time, smiling stiffly in a portrait from years ago.

18:34

'This is my family,' she says, running a shaky hand across the faces. 'These are my children.' She pointed, one by one, naming them slowly.

'And now,' she says, looking at me with quiet conviction, 'now you know my family.'

I laugh. And then I swallow hard. The way she says it—like she was introducing me to strangers—sends something twisting in my chest.

We sit there for a long time, the weight of unspoken things pressing in. I squeeze her frail hand in mine, feeling the endless, involuntary quivering. I want to still it, but I can’t. No one can. Time has already taken hold, and it never lets go.

This is how it happens, isn’t it? Not in some grand, cinematic way, but quietly. The slow erosion of a person. One day, you wake up and the details are still there—the names, the faces, the years. And then, suddenly, they aren’t.

That will be me, someday.

The thought of it tightens in my chest. I picture myself decades from now, sitting in some armchair, hands shaking, grasping for things, all the things I could have done, all the things I’d meant to do.

20:00

But I already know what I’d say, don’t I? It would be the same thing so many people say when they reach the end:

“I wish I had. But I never did. I never made the leap.”

This is the moment. The break in the path where either you go, or you stay. Where either you jump, or you don’t. And if you don’t, you never do. You never leap.

But the thing about waiting too long is that eventually, you step back. And the further you step back, the harder it is to run forward again.

I had to go before I convinced myself to stay. Before the edge faded into the distance, and I forgot what it felt like to stand there before the unknown."

My inner experimenter kicked in. How can I evolve before time runs out? How far could I step from what I thought I knew? How lost could I get before I had to rebuild myself from the ground up?

21:01

I pictured a dial. Etched into it—one word: Belief. The certainty I placed in everything I thought was true.

What if I could turn it down? Not abandon belief entirely, but loosen my grip. Let things hang in the air, unproven, untested. Learn, not by assuming, but by experiencing.

Maybe that was the real experiment. Not just getting lost in the world—but learning how to be uncertain.

The idea came in little glimmers at first, only hints of an idea. I’d be talking with another on that same back porch, and a sentence or two would slip out of my mouth, a kind of ‘what if’ that I knew sounded crazy. But it was only a conversation, only a wacky idea. The next week, in a different conversation, another thing slipped out. Another version of this what if. It was bolder this time. And then I started to think about this idea. It gained traction, it picked up speed. It was like a flame that crept along the log and grew as it went.

22:10

I didn't want just another trip. No, this wasn't about getting more travel. What I wanted was radical. The previous year I’d tested the waters with my 4-month trip; now it was time to set sail.

JOANNE: “You were going to find out how the rest of the world is living... If anything, it was less and less to find out who you were, and more to find out, who is the rest of this world out there?”

I wanted to cut the cord holding me to my sense of home and belonging. I wanted to go and find out.

My plan was to pack a backpack, fly to Europe, and start hitchhiking my way through Europe, and out of Europe to who knows where. I would have no more than what I could easily carry. I would stay with whoever would be willing to put me up for the night. I planned to be out on the road without an agenda except to see. Without a hope except to live. Without a path except the one that emerges right beneath my feet. To reenter life, like a baby, only a baby with lots of experience and a body that can jump and run and love.

It was terrifying for the same reason it was irresistible. I might die. I might fall in love. I might change. And if there is one thing that is shiny and terrifying and even paralyzing, it is the prospect of real change.

23:30

Since I was embarking on some deathly hallows, Mordor type shit, I felt the appropriate thing was to say goodbye to my life as best I could, since I probably wouldn’t be coming back—at least, not coming back the same person. As strange as it sounds, I approached the task of putting my American life in order as if I were preparing to die. This was a very conscious process. In order to be fully out there, fully engaged with the world, I knew I needed to be prepared to die. You can't run a race looking backwards.

The time had come. I quit my job. I packed up my violin and moved out of the house and stashed my things in my parents’ basement. I said those simple things to family and friends, the things you don’t want to die without saying.

24:22

JOANNE: “Yeah, I definitely had a sick feeling in my stomach. I didn’t sleep much that night. And neither did dad, by the way, no matter what you hear from him.”

On the way to the airport I cry in the front seat and mom cries in the back, and reaches up around the seat and puts her arms around my chest, and I remember her hands from my childhood bedroom lying on the wooden bunk bed with her standing and rubbing my back. It’s much sadder than any other goodbye, not devastating, only sad and galvanized and roaring to life at the start of the most real and dangerous thing I can think to do.

And after they dropped me off…

JOANNE: “Yeah, it felt like a long drive home from the airport... We did tons of reminiscing about you... It sounds like you died! You just went on a trip!”

25:22

I’m on my way. And I know, in some abstract way, that things will change. But knowing and feeling are two different things.

Because the moment my parents drive away, and I step into that airport, something strange happens.

The floor beneath me seems to tilt. The terminal buzzes with travelers, but I feel weightless, untethered—like I’ve already stepped off the edge of something, and I’m just now realizing I’m falling.

I have no job. No home. No plan beyond my own two feet. There’s no safety net, no promise of what comes next.

I’d leapt. And the ground is nowhere in sight.

"Sir?"

The voice snaps me back.

I turn. The security agent is holding out my passport, waiting.

"Have a good flight."

I step forward. The terminal hums. The ground tilts beneath me.

(This is it. The leap.)

And just like that, I’m gone.

26:38

Next time on Go and Find Out: New York. Loud, fast, relentless. A gravitational pull, a three-string violin, and a stage I don’t belong on. What happens when you step into something you’re not ready for? Let’s find out.

That’s it for this episode of Go and Find Out. Thanks for spending this time with me—seriously. It means a lot that you’re here, listening to this story.

This show is created—and let’s be honest, sometimes completely winged—by me, Jonny Wright, with music by me unless otherwise noted. This is episode 1, and this show would not have made it to episode 1 without the support of some amazing people, so allow me to get a little grateful for a minute here.

Thank you to everyone who’s offered feedback on various drafts of this show, especially, Jordan wright, Monica wright, David wright, Jenn Sutherland, Murray Pomerance, Trey Scott, Michael erb, Andrew Greene, George Turkington, and Baladine Pierce. Thank you to Mary Greene and James Curran, who've given invaluable advice. The title design is by Ellen Misloski. Last but certainly not least, thank you to my parents, Joanne and Steve wright for their unending support of this project, and of me generally.

If you’re enjoying the ride, hit subscribe so new episodes come straight to you every Thursday. And hey—if you’ve got a second, leaving a quick review or rating really helps spread the word. Plus, it just makes me happy.

28:03

I’d love to hear from you—thoughts, stories, weird travel tips, whatever’s on your mind. Drop me a line at goandfindoutpod@gmail.com, and I’ll do my best to write you back.

And more than anything, I hope this episode sparked something—however small.

A question, a dream, a reminder that your life is still unfolding.

You don’t have to follow my path. But my question to you is: within your world, what path are you choosing today?

Alright, that’s all I got. See you next time.

Until then...