Passport

For every Celestial Emu there’s a planet-killing space rock on an inevitable path towards earth. In our season 1 finale, Passport producers Jennifer Carr and Andrés Bartos head back Down Under to talk about asteroids, the scars they leave, and the stories they’ve created.

For all of the wonder and the fascination the night sky holds, it’s also filled with warnings, omens and pure chaos. Australia’s First Nations Peoples have been in...

For this season one finale of Passport, we head to Australia to explore the star-studded skies of the country’s Western Outback. Scarce on people and heavy on sheep and cattle stations, the vast expanses of land and desert here offer pure darkness and one of the top global destinations to stargaze. Astro revellers travel from all over the world, but what many miss out on is the rich tapestry of indigenous creation stories, myths, a...

South Africa, the rainbow nation. A place of dazzling sun, incredible wildlife, rugged coasts, and tabletop mountains, with a people as diverse and creative as the landscape. The country’s art scene too is in rude health, one of the most forward thinking on the continent. But South Africa as a place of space, of technology, of the future? It’s not where your mind immediately goes.

Today, the country’s creatives are not remaining stu...

Clowns: freaky, funny or downright mystifying?

This week, we tread the boards of the French capital and dive into the city’s age-old love affair with this very distinct form of theatrics.

Paris has been an epicentre for performance artistry since the 1800s, but today the face of clowning and the circus look and feel very different. These days, clowning is cutthroat – demanding, grueling, and for some in the industry, a dying art tha...

Traditions are weird, almost by definition. But where do they come from? In this week’s special Xmas episode of Passport, Neil and Andrés talk to Sergi Del Bas and historian Dani Cortijo about one of the most misunderstood regions of Spain. Catalonia. Or as the locals call it Catalunya. This is Spain, but it is very much not Spain.

And here in Catalunya, there exists what is perhaps one of the strangest Christmas traditions in the e...

The mission of MisInfoNation is to help us understand whether our ideas about a place are real or just Imagined. But what about a place that was built on imagination? A place that would be the most visited country on earth… if it was a country? This week, we’re finding out with a trip to Disney.

Disney’s films are burned into the memory of nearly every single person alive. It’s world is immense, unavoidable, unmatched and undeniable...

On this episode of Passport, we go across India by train to find a melting pot of culture sitting within the carriages. From history, literature, Bollywood and real love, you never know what’s round the corner when you hand the conductor your ticket and take your seat.

Why have trains inspired poems, films and writing throughout India? What makes them the perfect protagonist and why they are a great place to start a story? Especiall...

The Passport team is off for Thanksgiving this week, but we’ve got a taste of what’s to come.

This season we’ve taken you to over 30 countries. We’ve met the world’s most famous extra in Belfast, investigated a stolen Van Gogh in Amsterdam, met mafia fighting chefs in Palermo, spent the night in the hotel that inspired The Shining, and set the record straight on Italy, Iran, Iceland and Russia. But we’re not done yet!

Coming up on th...

Guisepe Verdi said, you can keep the universe, just give me Italy and if you’ve ever been, you know instantly what he means. Italy seems to have it all. The madness and romance of Rome. The pristine, perfectly colour coded class and style of Milan. The rugged and rich and endlessly tasty islands of Sicily and Sardinia. Cliché wise, Italy is a glaringly obvious choice for one of our MisInfoNation episodes. The whole world thinks it ...

Portugal’s Douro Valley is one of the toughest places on the planet to grow wine. Steep, terraced hills, treacherous river rapids, and blistering hot summers are a sharp contrast to the rolling hills of Spain’s Rioja or the Cypress-lined country roads of Tuscany. And yet, the Douro is actually the oldest demarcated wine region in the world. And even though a vine plague in the 1800s nearly wiped out every vineyard in the region, th...

The 2020 US presidential election is probably the most important in a century. Everything is at stake: from the health of the world’s most powerful nation to the very nature of truth in the modern world. It’s been a frantic race, with many despairing at the divisiveness of modern US politics. But elections don’t always have to be doom and gloom. This week on Passport we take a look at two elections from around the world which tell ...

45 years later, the effect of The Shining on pop culture is undeniable. From writers, to musicians to filmmakers, comedy, and every facet of the artistic world. It’s been praised, parodied, sequeled and more. So in this, the concluding episode of our two-part Halloween stay at the Overlook Hotel, we look at just how far it has gone.

The frontmen of Muder By Death and Devotchka tell us about their surprising musical connection to the...

In 2006, Passport host Neil Innes found himself outside the house of Stephen King in Bangor Maine. He didn’t get to meet King that day… but it didn’t change how he felt about his work. A lifelong fan of King and Kubrick, The Shining has always held a special place in his heart. And so this Halloween, Passport traces the legacy of a single nightmare - one that still echoes 45 years later - all the way back to the place it all began:...

On this episode of Passport, we go to Oaxaca, the heart of Mexico, to find out what the Day of the Dead really is. It’s history, it’s present and it’s future.

We’ll sit at the dinner table with spirits. We’ll dive into folklore, fables and rituals to see how this celebration has lasted so many life times, through so much hardship, and repression. We’ll hear the stories of the people closest to the festival and discover the power of ...

Vienna is a city of Old World baroque charm, cafés, and waltzes. It consistently ranks as one of the best places to live in the world. It’s the city of Mozart, Freud, Klimt, and Strauss. Except this story is less Blue Danube, more Orange Sunshine.

This week, Andrés and guest producer Aisha Prigann plunge into a 1970s acid flashback and return with a tale of mind-expansion, revolutionary politics, and the dangers of meeting your idol...

On the southernmost tip of Texas, where the US and Mexican borders meet the sea, sits the tiny town of Boca Chica. Surrounded by nothing but wild open scrub land, eight miles of virgin beach and a rich array of wildlife, the twenty-something residents of Boca Chica live in peace and disconnection. Away from the noise of the modern World.

It was that peace and disconnection that Maria Pointer, AKA Boca Chica Maria, and husband Ray so...

Super Skyscrapers, Lamborghini police cars, streets where it rains 24/7 in the middle of desert… Welcome to Dubai, the UAE’s most populous city and one of the richest and most absurdly ostentatious places in the world. Those stories of diamond encrusted Hummers? They’re all true. It’s the epitome of luxury.

And nowhere is this more true than in the city’s islands. Well, artificial islands to be exact. Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed,...

Peru has everything. Dense jungles, imposing mountains, and a long coastline. A rich history that combines breathtaking Incan archeological sites with the original seats of colonial power on the southern continent. But people also treasure Peru for something else: UFOs.

To those in the know, Peru is the Mecca for unidentified flying objects. Peru’s capital, Lima, even has its very own X Files-style UFO investigations office -- an of...