(male narrator #3) Everywhere you turn, people try to tell you who to be and what to do.

But what about deciding for yourself?

Roadtrip Nation is a movement that empowers people to define their own roads in life.

Every summer, we bring together three people from different backgrounds.

Together, they explore the country, interviewing inspiring individuals from all walks of life.

They hit the road in search of wisdom and guidance, to find what it actually takes to build a life around doing what you love.

This is what they found.

This is Roadtrip Nation.

(Ed) It's a quarter to 10.

It's about I'd say 110 Fahrenheit, which I think in England is like, uh 40 degrees, which is hotter than anything I've ever been in.

[laughs] So me and T just can't cope walking through it.

It's like an oven.

Olivia's fine.

(Olivia) It's a little bit hot.

(Ed) She's lovin' the heat.

[laughs] We're melting.

(Tele'jon) Ah!

Feels like I'm just walking through a heater.

It doesn't even feel like air.

Yeah, in Oakland it's like 68 degrees right now and sunny.

[laughs] I miss it.

We're a week in--a week and a day, I think?

It's like eight days, I'm not even sure.

Uh, it feels like it's been a month already.

(Olivia) We have another six-and-a-half weeks ahead of us.

Everything's going swimmingly.

I feel like I've gotten so much already and I haven't even left California yet.

I got two cans of juice, ice cream, popsicle, and I got a big thing of water that's cold.

(Ed) We're in Palm Springs, about to go meet Adam Steltzner now.

I've been trying to get ahold of him for months.

and I managed to get a hold of him, It's gonna be funny, turning up to meet this guy for the first time, and I'm just gonna be like a sweating pot.

Adam Steltzner is the chief engineer of the Mars Curiosity Rover project.

[NASA countdown]   T   minus   five,   four,   three, two, one.

Main Entrance Start.

Zero and   lift off.

♪ (Ed) So maybe you can tell us about yourself a little bit.

So I'm Adam.

(Ed) Yeah?

[laughs] Um, I grew up in Sausalito, CA.

I have a Ph.D. in engineering physics, but my route to that final degree destination was maybe slightly circuitous.

I was not a very good student in high school.

I didn't really know if I'd ever graduated because they kept your diploma back, and you were to go after the graduation ceremonies and pick it up.

And I needed to get a C- or better in John Lighty's environmental chemistry class or I was not going to graduate high school.

And I didn't know if I'd gotten a C- or better.

Um, so I never went back to pick up the diploma 'cause I was worried it wouldn't be there.

Um, at any rate, I played music.

Uh, went to music school in Boston at a place called the Berklee College of Music for a little bit.

Bailed on that because I was still not really engaging.

I went to music school, I bailed out of music school, I came back to San Francisco Bay Area, I was playing in a few different bands, playing around the Bay Area.

And I was getting bored of it.

Anyway, I'd, I had actually started to notice that when I would return home from playing a show at night, the stars were in a different place in the sky.

(Olivia) What were you thinking when you were looking at the stars?

(Adam) I was thinking, "Woah, they're moving.

Why do they move?"

I mean, I rally had not been paying attention in high school.

That's kind of a big thing to miss.

[roadtrippers laughing] (Adam) Right?

That the earth is rotating on its axis.

And so literally, I went to the local community college to take an astronomy course to teach me why the stars were moving.

And all of a sudden, I was ripe for a structured education.

I was just on fire.

(Ed) Wh-what had changed between high school and then, and then that?

(Adam) I think before, I had always been worried about trying anything.

Really applying myself.

(Ed) Okay.

(Adam) My father was clearly scared to fail, so he would dabble in lots of different things, but never really, when it would come to the moment of truth, he'd back off and pick up another thing.

And that's kind of like what I had done: I did music at the tail end of high school and after high school, and then when that was about to get serious, music school, I pulled outta that.

And finally, I decided I didn't wanna keep doing this.

I didn't wanna replay the actions that my father had gone through.

I wanted to really do something.

(Tele'jon) Can I ask a question around the crazy transition that you've had with like the whole education thing?

Um, what was it for you that just like, you know, was like, "This is gonna be like what I'm gonna study for the rest of my life."

(Adam) Yeah this is gonna sound very strange.

It was very simple.

It was "F = ma".

That there was a simple equation that determined how hard you had to push on some thing to make it change its state of velocity, that blew my mind.

"F = ma" and then "a = F/m".

It was so simple, it was beautiful.

Look at those little letters, there's just three of 'em.

They're pretty.

And they do different woo-woop!

Teaches you something different then brup!

And I was like, "Oh wizard of mathematics, teach me the incantations that you use to manipulate the symbols to show you the truth."

"F = ma" is an awesome thing, I love it.

(Olivia) Did you know you were good at math?

Not at first.

And so there's like probably a year here of transition, and actually, that's a very interesting time to talk about.

I'm deciding I wanna try this, and I'm not any good at it.

I had to hold on to the act of trying.

I had to surrender to the act of doing, rather than the promise of success or something on the, at the end of it.

Sort of surrender to the process rather than the goal.

And so working through this stuff and getting C's and then eventually B's in my math courses in the beginning was very hard.

(Ed) So how were you motivating yourself?

I mean, obviously it was tough.

(Ed) How'd you keep going?

(Adam) I felt that I was saving my life from not trying like my father had not really tried.

And then I just started, you know, and then I tried really hard to, I worked hard.

I worked really hard.

And for my undergrad, I became very monk-like.

I literally shaved my head, I became like--'cause I grew up in the zen center zone, so everybody, monks shave their heads, that's what you do, the way you got monkish.

So anyway, um-- [roadtrippers laughing] (Adam) Oh, it was just like, "What can I do?

Ho-, it's kind of how powerful might I be?"

I got my Master's, started my Ph.D.

I'd met this woman in a math class at Cal Tech, and so I wanted to stay around there-- she was still finishing her degree-- and so I went and worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

(Olivia) What was your title at the time?

(Adam) I was Analyst in the Spacecraft Structures and Dynamics group.

But I liked, I was comfortable with those weird problems, the ones at the steep end of the learning curve, so I started to get the-the weirder problems: the separation dynamics, the spin agil-, you know, weird mechanism functions and stuff.

People would go like, "myghhh Give that to Adam."

And so I started doing stuff like that.

Eventually, that started the being involved in landings.

[  NASA dialogue ] And I got pulled into the Mars Exploration Rover opportunity, and I led the mechanical engineering of the landing system for that.

[  NASA dialogue ] [  NASA Voice ]   Touchdown   confirmed.

[Room] Yeah!

(Ed) I saw in a talk you gave, you said, "Exploring the universe is also about exploring yourself."

And I was wondering how that ties into you personally and how you can relate to that.

(Adam) Even where I've gravitated to at work is the high-risk and most-exposed-you-could-be part of the job.

And I am always somehow courting that edge to prove to myself that I'm not trapped in the fear.

And I started to explore in my mind why we go to Mars with a huge rover.

What I mean by that is, if we put a smoking hole on the surface of Mars when we try to land Curiosity, I would have definitely failed.

My team would have not been successful, right?

But I think humanity is better for trying that and making smoking hole on the surface of Mars, than never having tried.

So then that even forces me to thinking about exploration in the general sense, right?

Like exploring yourselves.

That's the process part, when you step back and look at what are we doing as human beings, right?

So I would say don't put your value in success; put your value in your effort.

People that are thought of as being successful leaders, they were able to put their all into it and make something great happen.

But there's people who put their all into it and make beautiful great things happen that don't show up on the national radar screen or the world's radar screen and don't make as big of a splash.

And if your happiness is waiting for that big splash, it's gonna be hard to find happiness.

So when you look back at your life, you remember the great highs and the great lows.

The middle sort of does not stand out that much, so never fear risking the great low(s) in pursuit of the great high(s).

♪ "Do reckless good and you will not know regret".

♪ (Tele'jon) So like, first driving out of California, it was like saying bye for a long time, like I knew I wasn't gonna be back for a long time.

Being outside of my norm, I find that I have to take more time out to reflect, to kinda grasp everything that's going on, to soak it all in.

Feels good not to be in California at the moment.

Yeah.

(Olivia) After Adam, we did go from Palm Springs to Phoenix.

Hot as hell.

It was 117 degrees, which kind of was just in itself distracting.

(Ed) Just like wow, okay, this is something different.

This is a place that shouldn't really shouldn't really exist in the middle of a desert.

(Tele'jon) I saw my first tumbleweed, and I was excited.

(Olivia) Okay guys, we still need to book an interview in New Mexico.

(Ed) So the 23rd to the 27th we're in New York?

(Olivia) Yeah, let's ah, let's focus on the robotics stop.

(Tele'jon) That probably won't work out since it's tomorrow.

(Olivia) I'm gonna pull the calendar up right now.

(Ed) Hello?

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I mean, if you want to explain to Sherry as well, it'd be great if we could interview her, say, sort of early morning and then do a day of rafting.

Yep, see you tomorrow 7am.

Bye.

Huh, she was very friendly.

(Tele'jon) So we're kayaking?

(Ed) Uh, the day today looks like a long, hot drive to uh, Taos in New Mexico.

By the time we get there, the one thing we're gonna want is to go down a rapid river.

[laughs] I think it's about 600 miles, which translates into-- It says it's eight hours.

Is it really that long?

Well, 10 hours, 11 hours maybe.

(Tele'jon) Uh, we have a long ride.

And I shoulda gotten more snacks now that I'm thinkin' about it, but uh, this should keep me goin' for like an hour or two.

(Ed) Ugh yeah, need some music, that's what we need.

[Hinterland playing   "Intelligent Design"] (Olivia) All right, let's power down a river.

Like, I'm super charged.

Life list, check, bam.

(Ed) T, how're you feeling?

(Tele'jon) I guess right now, I can toss it on my life list and then check it.

[everyone laughing] (Ed) But it was never on there.

(Tele'jon) It was never on there.

(leader #2) So it's gonna be like an obstacle course this afternoon.

We're gonna have to be real active and engaged and paying attention to what's happening to make it safely down the river.

I thought I was gonna become a lawyer.

I thought I was going to have a regular life: get married, get a house, get debt, you know?

[laughs]   [Billy Shaddox singing   "Holy Whistle Blues"] (Sherry) And so I really started really thinking about what I was getting myself into and talking to other attorneys and, you know, I just had this moment of clarity that I wasn't going in that direction.

I just wanted to get more connected again to nature and my surroundings.

I went on the river with a friend who worked for another company, and thought, "I can, I can handle this.

I can do this."

(Tele'jon) I've always wanted to be in a montage.

(cameraman) Tele'jon, guess what?

You're in a montage right now.

(Tele'jon) I'm in a montage!

Rafting was, it was, it was hard.

Um, took a lot to get used to, and even when I felt like I got used to it, there was some challenges that came along.

(Olivia) I really enjoyed being on the water.

It was nice to get some adrenaline going.

We caught our first rapid!

(Sherry) A lot of my philosophies are around water.

You have to go with the flow, but you have to act at the right time so you don't crash into a big giant rock and flip over and swim through a sieve, you know, and get stuck and die.

You know what I mean?

[laughing] You know?

I mean there's, you know, I mean you can really hurt yourself rafting, you really can.

And just like in life, you can really get hurt in life, but you just continue with the flow and you act at the right moments, you take action.

(Tele'jon) I'm not sure how relevant it is to the interview But I feel like it's a really personal question, for me.

What do you think the meaning of life is?

I think that there's, the meaning of life is to search for the meaning.

You know, is to be on a search, on a quest, on a journey.

It's about are you engaged in your life?

Are you participating in your life, or are you just waiting to die?

'Cause we all have to die, you know, but it'd be nice to live.

You know, to actually live and be present and have fun.

(Olivia) Nobody does tell you that you can be a whitewater rafter.

I appreciate seeing women do it because a lot of men will be like, oh, the "rockclimbing guy" or the "surfing guy", and that's their life.

So I really appreciated just like a single woman going out there and saying, "This is my life of adventure."

(Sherry) Definitely, I've had people ask me, you know, when I'm gonna get a real job or-- (Ed) Yeah.

You know, "S-so what are your plans for your future?"

Well, this is my life.

This is my life.

I mean, I'd like to do other things as well.

I mean I don't wanna do, nobody really wants to do exactly the same thing every day for the rest of their life.

So as soon as I start to feel stagnant, I feel like I need to find the next thing to add, but I don't wanna feel stagnant ever.

And you are never a prisoner of life.

You have ultimate freedom.

(Olivia) I loved her rafting adventure, and it was so cool to just like feel her energy and pick up on that.

(Tele'jon) It was really fun.

I'd go rafting again.

That was, that was nice.

Just like so different from a city environment, and I feel like I could never leave a city environment, but like when I went to that like environment in New Mexico, it felt really good.

Like I really liked being there.

I was like, "This is just beautiful."

(Olivia) I really enjoyed coursing through there, and it was peaceful.

(Ed) What stuck out most to me was, uh, her phrase "Don't get stagnant."

So that idea of stagnation really comes back to my situation in life.

So I came out of university and I took up a couple of jobs, but I'm living in my hometown, Colchester.

And I love Colchester and I love living with my family, but are you moving forward?

And honestly, no.

Working a call center for me wasn't developing my self.

So really, it's kind of it's motivation for me to when I get back.

You know, there's loads of things I wanna do from these interviews: I wanna start volunteering, I want to start educating myself again.

So yeah, moving forward for me.

[Ed laughing] [Tele'jon rapping] (Tele'jon) Today, we're headed to Lubbock, which is nearly halfway between, um, Dallas, TX, and where we are right now.

I've heard that they have great barbecue.

(Ed) Today's plan is to get a cowboy hat, an American flag, and some fireworks, and celebrate some 4th of July.

I'm gonna get into it, but uh, just so you know, I'm on the UK side here.

[laughing] ♪ (Ed) Over the last two weeks, I've experienced a lot, just totally new to me.

It's kinda blown me away.

Like, what is this place?

How is this so different?

This is crazy.

You take yourself to a new place and you build these amazing views and things, and it kind of feels like it's opening up new ideas and it's-it's opening up new paths in my brain that I can be like, "Oh, well, why haven't I thought about this before?"

(Tele'jon) We went to a rodeo.

[laughing] I mean, it was another one of those things, it was like the river.

I wasn't excited about it.

I'm like, "Why am I in a rodeo?

Like, this is not a place where I belong."

I'm from the Bay Area; we don't do this.

But um, I was rollin' the whole time.

(Ed) I didn't expect to be that entertained and have that much fun.

(Olivia) And we stopped in who-knows-where in Lubbock, some speedway.

(Ed) Just on the end of a field, I got out the America football, got out the camp chairs.

(Olivia) The fireworks and ate beans and dogs over a grill and just played out the American dream.

(Ed) I never imagined that kind of 4th of July experience for myself.

[firework explodes] (Olivia) Oh!

That was it!

(Ed) Home of the brave and home of the pyromaniacs.

(Olivia) We are 20 days in now.

All of this traveling, seeing the different type of people, that's like a way to rattle the cage, and I love it.

(Ed) We're about to go on Airboat Adventures.

(Tele'jon) We saw an alligator, and we were like, "Woah, wait.

You wrestle alligators."

(leader #3) You take the age of the universe and even the age of the earth, and you realize how unbelievably lucky any of us are to have that gift of being here for however many years we get.

And what are you gonna do with that gift?

(female narrator #3) Roadtrip Nation extends beyond the program you just watched.

Online you will find an extensive archive of even more stories from the road.

Here's a quick snapshot of another interview from this Roadtrip.

(Ed) Wow, it's gorgeous.

(Olivia) Look at that!

(Tele'jon) It's crazy.

(Olivia) Right?

This is like Jurassic Park.

(Tele'jon) Goliath bird-eating spider.

(Ed) That worries me that I can't see it.

It's beautiful here.

(leader #4) Isn't it something?

Yeah, it's very special.

I was about eight years old and I said I want to be a marine biologist.

That's, there was never ever anything else I ever wanted to do.

(Olivia) Did you have any roadblocks with that motivation?

(leader #4) It was interesting that as I went through school and as I went through college and the beginning of my career, people would say, "You can't do this and be a mother.

You can't do this and-and be a woman.

You'll never find a job.

No one is getting jobs right now in marine biology."

I remember telling my mother when I was where you guys are and I was 22, 23, and you know, I'm working hard, and I'm not where I wanna be yet.

She just kept telling me, "Don't worry about it, don't worry about it."

I never thought I'd be working close to jaguars or flamingos, so if you keep it up, you will get there, but you gotta start with what you love and what you know and then just let it take you to the next thing.

[roadtrippers laughing] (girl #1) No matter what you do (boy #1) Or where you come from (boy#2) You've got wisdom to pass down (male narrator #1) Help young people find their way by sharing the lessons you've learned.

Take fifteen minutes to tell us what you love to do (boy #1) The door's open (boy #2) We're all ears.

(girl #1) Become a leader at ShareYourRoad.com ♪