Co-creator, co-executive producer + cohost

My cohost-- TV personality and travel writer Michael Mackie-- came to me with a concept he'd pitched to KCPBS. They wanted him to find a cohost, particularly one with a strong arts background, and he thought of me. The premise of his idea revolves around throwing a dart at a map and, sans navigation tools, just hitting the open road to get lost on the way to the dart-chosen destination. This idea is truly about the journey.

At the time, my mother was nearing end of life and I was feeling lost, unclear, scattered in a directionless void and both of his parents had already passed on. I requested that we give the show a little dimension and make it about two friends who hit the open road to find ourselves by getting lost. This travel is part adventure and part memory-keeping.

The timing couldn't have been more perfect. I'd just completed a class through MIT Opencourseware called Becoming Bill Nye all about host-as-trusted-guide. Total PBS.

We executed a second pitch to a panel of executives and the show was greenlit. We negotiated our official credits after some guidance from my mentor, gifted producer Tom Nunan and then from my friendly neighborhood entertainment attorney. And PBS being the gentle giant, they gave us exactly what we asked for. We came away with Created by, Executive Producer and Starring credits. Not bad, not bad.

Now came the real fun. The writers room-- a club of two.

My mother passed away not too long after our greenlight meeting and I was determined to make something to honor her and make her proud along with Michael's beloved parents.

After some brainstorming, Michael and I came up with a couple pages to submit for the first third of our pilot-- which, according to our contract, was to be submitted in thirds. Though my co-EP felt excited, I wasn't satisfied with it and soon realized I had a problem. Though I watched and liked travel shows, I did not know what makes a travel show.

Here came the hours of research watching whole travel series from Anthony Bourdain's earliest show, A Cook's Tour to Apple TV+ megahit, The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy. I watched shows with culture and food like Alisa Reynolds' Searching for Soul Food, shows with two hosts like Basic Versus Baller, and shows about finding yourself like Rainn Wilson's Geography of Bliss. I even watched shows out of the UK like Richard Ayoade's Travel Man, 48 Hours In... and Jack Whitehall's Travel with My Father. But none was more educational than PBS's Samantha Brown's Places to Love.

What I was searching for was commonalities and then what set them apart. Structure.

From there, I attempted another draft of the full first third.

Michael, my reluctant-to-rewrite co-EP, loved it. So, I wrote the other two-thirds of our pilot and away we went.