The act of leaving, wrote Jack Kerouac in the stream of consciousness that would become his book On the Road, is surprisingly easy. 

And when you’re on the road, the world is suddenly rich with possibility. 

When On the Road was published on Sept 4, 1956, Jack Kerouac found himself suddenly famous, the torchbearer of a generation whose work, according to a review in the New York Times, was the most beautifully executed, clearest and most important utterance yet made by the ‘Beat’ generation, a term Kerouac coined. 

In today’s age, what was once a too-huge world has become smaller and offices can be anywhere, and nowhere at the same time. 

The Beat generation is long settled and gone. But in their place, a new generation of nomads-digital ones-emerged. And they’ve learned that going on journeys alone is living in one long continuous and often lonely scroll where escaping the rat race can lead you to find many others doing the same thing.

Source Materials Cited In This Episode:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac 
Up in the Air by Walter Kirn
Thilini Wijesinhe Interview – Sept 9, 2021
Olga Hannonen Interview – Nov 4, 2021
Lauren Gabel Interview – Nov 11, 2021

Host and Writer: Peg Fong
Director: Callie O’Reilly
Theme music: Ian Lefeuvre and Ari Posner
Engineer: Geoff Devine
Series producers: Debbie O’Reilly, Guillermo Serrano and Allison Pinches
Executive Producer: Terry O’Reilly