By Their Own Compass

Where a love of history meets a passion for travel.
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Historian Jeremiah Jenne and journalist Sarah Keenlyside explore historical travellers and the worlds they encountered, connecting past journeys to today's travel destinations. bytheirowncompass.substack.com

  1. Marco Polo’s 17 Year Journey in China: Reality vs Fiction

    1 DAY AGO

    Marco Polo’s 17 Year Journey in China: Reality vs Fiction

    It’s a question that’s puzzled historians for centuries: did Marco Polo really go to China – or is history’s most famous traveller also its greatest liar? In this episode of By Their Own Compass, Jeremiah Jenne and Sarah Keenlyside attempt to uncover the true story of Marco Polo – the Venetian merchant who left home at 17, spent 17 years at the court of Kublai Khan, and came back with a tale so extraordinary that people still argue about whether it’s true. Moreover, what was China like during the Yuan dynasty? We examine what Marco Polo actually saw – the cities he visited, the jobs he claimed to hold, the things he noticed, and, intriguingly, the things he didn’t, and ask whether those omissions work for or against him as a reliable narrator. He may not have mentioned the Great Wall, or tea, or chopsticks, but he sure went into detail about the Khan’s legions of concubines and the empire’s impressive postal system, which stretched all the way to Persia. We also look at the famous book that came out of it – The Travels of Marco Polo – dictated to his cellmate Rustichello of Pisa in a Genoese prison, and ask how much of it is memoir, how much is merchant’s log, and how much is a romance writer adding colour for a medieval audience. And, as always, we follow the Marco Polo trail in China today – from Beihai Park and the hutongs of Beijing, both built on the bones of Kublai Khan’s capital Khanbaliq, to the West Lake at Hangzhou, the city Marco called the greatest in the world. We also talk about why the bridge outside Beijing that bears his name is known to Chinese people for a very different reason. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    41 min
  2. History's Biggest Travel Divas: Fanny Trollope, Empress Dowager Cixi, and Alice Roosevelt

    19 MAR

    History's Biggest Travel Divas: Fanny Trollope, Empress Dowager Cixi, and Alice Roosevelt

    From Fanny Trollope's war on American manners to Alice Roosevelt's pet snake to the Empress Dowager Cixi's private theme park: a travel history of women who refused to behave. Every traveller knows one. You might be one. The person who sends the steak back twice, requests a different hotel room because the view isn't quite right, and has opinions about thread count that they're not afraid to share with the concierge at volume. But is it always a fair label? Are Divas difficult? Demanding? Or are they a woman who refuses to travel on somebody else's terms? We discuss. Fanny Trollope: The Woman Who Hated America (And wrote a bestseller all about it) In 1827, Frances "Fanny" Trollope was nearly broke, pushing 50, and raising five children plus a husband going mad on his own mercury cures. So naturally she decided to sail to America to join a utopian commune in Tennessee. By 1831, she was over the American experience and moved back to England to write a caustic book of her travels which earned her the name "Old Madam Vinegar." It was a smash hit. Empress Dowager Cixi: The Woman Who Built Her Own Theme Park The de facto ruler of China from 1861 to 1908 spent a dynasty's fortune rebuilding the world in her back yard. Landscapes. Temples. Famous vistas. Unfortunately, events would force this reluctant traveller to leave her theme park world behind. Alice Roosevelt Longworth: The Woman Who Simply Did Not Care WHAT You Think Teddy Roosevelt put his eldest daughter on a diplomatic ship to Asia in 1905, probably because he needed a break. She jumped fully clothed into the swimming pool, learned the hula in Hawaii, carried a pet snake named Emily Spinach in her handbag, and slid down a banister at the Korean royal court. We also share some of our own encounters with diva behaviour from years of leading trips and running a luxury travel company. To sign up for regular updates or to become a member of the By Their Own Compass Club and get bonus content, transcripts, research notes, and reading lists for each episode, visit bytheirowncompass.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    37 min
  3. Interview: Annie Londonderry’s Great-Grandnephew Peter Zheutlin

    12 MAR

    Interview: Annie Londonderry’s Great-Grandnephew Peter Zheutlin

    It’s rare that one of history’s most iconic travellers has a living relative we can speak to – but that’s exactly the case with Annie Londonderry, whose great-grandnephew Peter Zheutlin has a remarkable story of his own. In 1894, Annie Londonderry, real name Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, became a global sensation when she claimed to be the first woman to cycle around the world. A fearless Victorian adventurer and brilliant self-promoter, she filled newspaper columns from Paris to Singapore before vanishing without a trace for nearly a century. Even her own descendants knew nothing about her. Until Peter Zheutlin got a phone call. In this bonus episode of By Their Own Compass, the US-based author and journalist recounts piecing Annie’s life together from scratch, clue by clue, until he had enough to write her definitive biography. What followed was a full-scale revival: West End musicals, documentaries, children’s books, and more. Spin: A Novel Based on a (Mostly) True Story can be found at your local independent bookseller, and an audio version of Peter’s first book, Around the World on Two Wheels, is available on Libro.fm. Want even more of the juicy details? Paid subscribers to our Substack newsletter and members of the By Their Own Compass Club get Zheutlin’s full story. Sign up at bytheirowncompass.substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    40 min
  4. Annie Londonderry: The Woman Who Bicycled Around the World (Sort Of)

    5 MAR

    Annie Londonderry: The Woman Who Bicycled Around the World (Sort Of)

    On June 25, 1894, five hundred people gathered on the steps of the Massachusetts State House to watch a young woman named Annie Londonderry climb onto a Columbia bicycle and ride off to circle the globe. She carried a pearl-handled revolver, a placard advertising spring water from New Hampshire, and a wager (allegedly worth thousands) that no woman could complete such a journey in fifteen months. There were a few things the crowd didn’t know. Her name wasn’t really Annie Londonderry. She’d never ridden a bicycle until a few days earlier. She had a husband and three small children at home. And the wager was almost certainly something she made up. In this episode of By Their Own Compass, we follow Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, advertising saleswoman, Latvian immigrant, mother, and one of history’s most audacious self-promoters — as she talks, pedals, and occasionally steamships her way around the world. From Boston to Chicago (where she ditches her skirts for bloomers and never looks back), across the Atlantic to Marseilles (where she tells reporters she’s a Harvard medical student), through a hopscotch tour of Asia (mostly from the deck of a ship), and back across the American West (where she crashes into a drove of pigs in Iowa), Annie’s journey is a story about the bicycle as a tool of women’s liberation, the birth of influencer marketing, and the thin line between adventurer and con artist. We explore how Annie invented her own sponsorship model, turning her body into a walking billboard decades before the concept existed, why Susan B. Anthony said the bicycle did more to emancipate women than anything else in the world, and how Annie was forgotten for over a century until a letter from a stranger led her great-grandnephew to uncover her story in dusty newspaper archives. Plus: how to follow Annie’s wheel tracks today, from the golden dome of the Massachusetts State House to the cycling routes of southern New England, and why the Boston neighbourhood she grew up in no longer exists. This episode owes a tremendous debt to Peter Zheutlin's Around the World on Two Wheels: Annie Londonderry's Extraordinary Ride, the definitive account of Annie's journey. Zheutlin, Annie's great-grandnephew, spent years piecing her story together from newspaper archives, microfilm, and the few surviving artifacts held by her granddaughter. Without his research, Annie would still be forgotten. If this episode sparks your interest, that book and his novelization of Annie’s journey, Spin, are the essential next steps. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    52 min
  5. History's Greatest Travel Scams: From Medieval Relic Fraud to the Tea House Scam in Beijing

    26 FEB

    History's Greatest Travel Scams: From Medieval Relic Fraud to the Tea House Scam in Beijing

    If you’ve ever Googled “how to avoid scams in [destination],” you already know the genre: YouTube videos breathlessly (and ominously) exposing the 15 tricks that will ruin your trip to Florence, Bangkok, or Marrakech. Full disclosure: We watch them too. But the historically minded traveler will be quick to note that almost none of these scams are new. Structurally, the “hey, did you lose your wallet” scam is identical to cons recorded in Chinese travel literature over 400 years ago. The “helpful stranger” who leads you to his friend’s shop? A porter scam from 1617. Fake antiquities? Egyptian villagers were running that play on European collectors since the days of Napoleon. In this episode, we trace the world’s most common travel scams back to their historical origins across three centuries and three continents, and then embarrass ourselves by sharing the ones we’ve fallen for personally or that have happened to people on our trips we’re supposed to be protecting. Medieval Europe: Holy Bones, Unholy Business The medieval relic trade was a continent-wide fraud economy hiding in plain sight. Churches needed relics to attract pilgrims, pilgrims brought money, and money built cathedrals. The problem? There are only so many saints, and they only have so many bones. Enter the relic hunters: professional grave robbers descending into the Roman catacombs to fill orders from churches across Northern Europe, and (in the greatest heist/relic rescue of the era) two Venetian merchants who smuggled the body of St. Mark out of Alexandria (hidden under a shipment of pork). We also meet Chaucer’s Pardoner, literature’s most shameless con artist, and hear John Calvin’s withering data-driven observations about the improbable number of supposed holy relics held in churches across Europe. Ming Dynasty China: The Original Lonely Planet Warning In 1617, a Chinese writer named Zhang Yingyu published The Book of Swindles — essentially a traveler’s field guide to every way you could get cheated on the road. The bag-drop switcheroo. The porter who disappears into the crowd with your luggage. The commentary is remarkably familiar: a traveler on the road doesn’t seek ill-gotten gains, and to keep his own property safely hidden, it’s the only way to prevent loss. Four centuries later, it still is. 19th-Century Egypt: When the Scammed Deserved It After Napoleon kicked off a European craze for Egyptian antiquities, colonial collectors stripped temples and bought relics by the crate. We find it difficult to feel sorry for them when it turns out local workshops were producing fake scarabs and amulets by the thousand. The crowning achievement: an entire village near Luxor that built a convincing fake royal tomb, furnished it with forged antiquities, and conned a dealer out of 600 gold pounds. And Then There’s Us We also share some of our own less glorious moments — including the tea house and KTV bar double-hit (one student, one day, both scams), a game of bat and ball at the Temple of Heaven that turned out to have a cover charge, and a Berber market in Marrakech that supposedly only happens once every two months but whose bracelet broke in two days. The through-line? The scam works because the wanting is universal. We want to believe. We want our trip to be magical. And sometimes that plays right into the magician's hands. Have a scam story of your own? Send it in — we might feature it in a future newsletter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    35 min
  6. What Happens When You Recreate a Viking Voyage, with W. Hodding Carter

    19 FEB

    What Happens When You Recreate a Viking Voyage, with W. Hodding Carter

    It’s one thing to read about Leif Erikson’s epic journey from Greenland to North America in the 10th century as a child; it’s quite another to build a replica Viking cargo ship and attempt the same journey as an adult. But that’s exactly what W. Hodding Carter and his team did in 1997, making them the first crew in history to authentically follow in Leif Erikson’s footsteps. In reality, that meant sailing over 3,000km in a wooden boat with no heating, no shelter, and in brutal conditions. In this bonus episode of By Their Own Compass, we chat to the man himself about why he did it, how well his replica Viking clothing held up in freezing, stormy seas, and why you shouldn’t eat abandoned whale blubber. By retracing the intrepid Norse explorer’s route using the same equipment, Carter also stumbled across several fascinating insights about what he thinks really happened, and why some items the Vikings had – in particular sun stones to help navigate through the fog – remain a complete mystery today. *You can buy A Viking Voyage by W. Hodding Carter at all good booksellers Subscribe to By Their Own Compass 🎧 Want extended cuts? 🗺️ Insider travel tips we don’t share anywhere else 📚 Full reading lists + source material 🎙 Behind the scenes silliness > Join here for the price of a coffee per month: bytheirowncompass.substack.com This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    33 min

  7. 12 FEB

    Erik the Red & Leif Erikson: The outlaw who founded Greenland and the son who reached North America

    Around the year 985 A.D., Icelandic exile Erik the Red, a man renowned for his fiery temper, founded the first Norse settlement in Greenland. Years later, his ambitious son Leif Erikson went on to become one of the first known Europeans to set foot in North America – centuries before Columbus. In this episode, we dive into the real history of Greenland’s Norse origins, the legends of Vinland, and the first confirmed European site in North America at L’Anse aux Meadows. Who exactly were these seafaring Norse explorers? How did Greenland get its name? And how on earth did they survive (and thrive) in such inhospitable conditions? Amid the modern mythmaking of Netflix’s Vikings: Valhalla and the cultural misunderstandings around Greenland thanks to one Donald J. Trump, we unpack the reality of this father-son duo’s epic travels as they got further and further from their Scandinavian homeland; how they created a fragile Norse colony built on trade (including walrus ivory), got incredibly lucky with the climate during the Medieval Warm Period, and why they failed to settle North America once landing on its shores. We also take a little detour to discuss Freydís Eiríksdóttir, Leif’s formidable sister (whose bare-breasted sword posturing in the sagas shows she wasn’t exactly a believer in the art of making friends and influencing people), and discuss how Norse encounters with those they called skrælingjar* foreshadowed later patterns of contact and conflict with Arctic indigenous peoples. Plus: how to travel to Greenland and Newfoundland today, visit Norse ruins, and follow the route of the brave (and occasionally reckless) Vikings who sailed beyond the limits of their world. Warning: This word is a pejorative term for Indigenous people and appears in the episode in quotations from the Icelandic Sagas or in contexts that reflect Norse attitudes toward some of the people they encountered. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    54 min
  8. The Grand Tour Explained: Bridgerton, Bad Behaviour and Too Many Sex Scandals to Count

    5 FEB

    The Grand Tour Explained: Bridgerton, Bad Behaviour and Too Many Sex Scandals to Count

    When the writers on Netflix’s Bridgerton send Colin Bridgerton off on the Grand Tour in season three, it’s treated as a throwaway plot device. In reality, the Grand Tour was one of the most influential – and ridiculous – phenomena in British history, shaping everything from travel writing to modern tourism. In this episode, we use Colin Bridgerton’s continental adventures as a starting point to explore the 18th-century Grand Tour: the original gap year for wealthy young men. Its participants travelled through Paris, Rome and Venice, crossed the Alps, wrote pompous letters home, got embroiled in scandals, caught STDs, and became the target of savage satirical cartoons. We unpack how the Grand Tour also helped invent the travel guidebook, why tourists still flock to the same “must-see” sights today, how so-called souvenirs often meant mass produced art and looted antiquities, and why Venice became both a cultural hotspot and an early warning about over-tourism. It’s a story of privilege, taste-making and cultural theft –and explores how many of travel’s biggest controversies in 2026 can be traced back to the Grand Tour. Ps. Hang around for the end of the podcast, where we’ve included another episode-themed musical easter egg. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bytheirowncompass.substack.com/subscribe

    40 min
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About

Historian Jeremiah Jenne and journalist Sarah Keenlyside explore historical travellers and the worlds they encountered, connecting past journeys to today's travel destinations. bytheirowncompass.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Where a love of history meets a passion for travel.
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © By Their Own Compass
  • Show Website
    By Their Own Compass

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