[female 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.

Ever since the original Roadtrip in 2001, the keys to the Green RV have been passed down to a new generation of Roadtrippers.

[Roadtripper #2] Me and two total strangers [Roadtripper #3] Are going to travel across the nation, interviewing [Roadtripper #2] People who have made lives out of passions.

[Roadtripper #1] We're trying to find out who we are and what we want to do with our lives.

[female narrator #3] This is Roadtrip Nation.

[Roadtripper #1] We are in New York City.

We have one week left of the Roadtrip.

[Camera man #1] Zachariah, did you see what's outside your window?

It's New York!

[Roadtripper #3] Oh my god!

New York's out there!

[Roadtripper #3] Right now we're in New York.

We're posted up just downtown, this prime little location.

So every day I get to wake up, walk to Central Park, go on an awesome adventure.

Few interviews left, but the majority of them are kind of over with.

So we're definitely at that tail end now.

It's really starting to blow my mind.

[Roadtripper #2] It's such an interesting combination because my surrounding are so familiar now.

Sirens and horns.

And I see pizza.

So that is so normal, but then I realize the window that I'm looking out of is from out of a 36-foot RV.

[Roadtripper #1] Waking up in the morning in the middle of the city is pretty cool because we're not paying for any hotels.

You just kind of step out and are like, "Oh, here's New York City!

Here's Manhattan!"

[Megan] It's a lot easier to use public transportation to get around Manhattan so we've been using the subways to get to our interviews.

[Jackie] We are interviewing Mariette DiCristina, Editor in Chief of Scientific American.

And she's pretty cool!

(laughs) So we were getting on the subway, but Zachariah got stuck with his ticket.

♪ [train announcement] [Jackie] Hopefully we will make it on time.

[horns honking] [Jackie] There he is!

Finally!

[Jackie] What happened?

You couldn't find your card?

[Zachariah] Yeah, I pulled out my card, because I had two in there.

And then I swiped it and it said "insufficient funds" so I thought it must have been the wrong one.

So I flip flip flip and swiped the next one and it said "insufficient funds."

So I thought, "Well it must have been my last one."

And I couldn't find my last one!

It just vaporized into oblivion.

[Megan] I think it's in the kitchen.

♪ [Jackie] About six weeks ago, we started this Roadtrip because we wanted to find out what people are doing and all the different paths they have taken.

And this is our last week on the Road.

So we still have a lot of questions about how do we find our own paths and how do we continue growing into becoming what we want to be?

And not what other people tell us to be?

[Mariette] Well, first of all, you look remarkably well-rested and cool for people that have been on the Road for six weeks.

That's awesome!

♪ [Mariette] Can I tell you a little bit, if you'd like, about the Road ahead?

And what it looked like to me when I was just a little younger than you?

Because I realized that everything is really clear if I look back, but it wasn't at all clear when I sat in the chairs you all are sitting in and looking forward.

So when I was in 8th grade, I had a 100 average in science.

I was a member of the after-school club called 'The Alchemists.'

And the exciting thing that I did was clean up the Bunsen burners and put away the Florence flasks and the Erlenemeyer flasks, and I knew the difference.

And I thought that was so cool.

I thought, "Scientist.

Definitely going to be a scientist."

I'm very lucky in many ways because I had none of the questions that a lot of girls had at my age in those days, where they didn't know they could do certain things.

Because from 12 on, I was raised by a single dad, and I remember going to the gas station one day with him.

I said, "Dad, if there was a woman pumping the gas, how would you feel about that?"

Because in those days, you didn't see them.

And he said, "Well, is she good at pumping the gas?"

And I said, "Yeah, she's just as good as anybody else."

And he said, "Then I'm fine with her pumping the gas.

Anybody can do whatever they want as long as they're good at it."

And I thought, "All right.

As long as I'm doing something that I'm good at and that I really like."

And in 8th grade I thought that was science.

I had taken biology and I was in chemistry.

And I suddenly realized something about science that I hadn't known before.

Which was that if I wanted to be in science, you told me you're in geology and you're in chemistry, I'd have to pick one thing.

And I liked everything way too much to pick one thing.

I really loved writing.

And I really loved helping students and teaching.

And I loved art so much.

And with all that known, I went off to Boston University with a vague idea of something Communications.

I did not know.

And it wasn't until I was in my sophomore year and I was taking the first journalism class that they teach.

And I had a professor, Professor Bran.

And he was totally scary.

And used to do this classroom exercise.

He said, "Okay, imagine an airplane crashes.

Here's the first call you make, here's the next call you make."

And he would describe it all.

And you take notes really quickly because these are going to be your notes to write the story.

He'd say, "All right, folks.

"You have four minutes until deadline.

"I want to see at least four paragraphs or enough room "for a banner headline for tomorrow's news.

Go!"

And we would [grunts] on the typewriters as fast as we could.

And for some reason, I found this   so fun.

Like the most fun I ever had.

And then one day, Professor Bran said, "Mariette, I want to see you after class."

And I was really afraid.

I figured I must be doing something terribly wrong.

And he called me up after class and he said, "What are you majoring in?"

And I said, "I don't know...PR?"

And he said, "PR?

"The best people are in journalism!

You can do this.

You can be in journalism."

And I thought, "Wow.

Okay, that's really cool."

[Jackie] So when you graduated from college, how was that transition and how were you able to do what you wanted to do?

In the future?

[Mariette] So I got my first job as a newspaper reporter.

And my first...

There's something called a 'try out story.'

If they don't know how well you'll do, they'll give you a story.

And the story was about a kind of fish called bluefish returning early to the area where this newspaper was.

So I thought, "I'm going to get this bluefish story."

And I went and saw the fish.

I brought my black-and-white camera.

Took pictures of them.

And when I filed the story, I not only filed it with "The blue fish are here early."

But also "What about their life?"

and the natural history of these fish and "What do they do?

What do they do in this area?"

So it was a science story.

And while I was at that local newspaper doing local stories, I was slipping in science stories without anybody knowing.

Because science stories are everybody's stories.

[Zachariah] Yeah!

[Mariette] And I did it because it was very interesting and non-boring.

[Mariette] (laughs) I didn't know that you could do something really fun that was about one of your passions.

And it all came together.

Because not only does science writing bring together the love of science and the love of writing, but one of the important things about a magazine like   Scientific American is being able to story board your stories visually.

So you have to tell your story visually.

So all three things came together really neatly for me.

And I had no idea before that moment that that was the career path I was going to be taking.

And even at that moment, I wasn't sure what I had.

I just knew it was really fun.

[Mariette] So first of all, obviously, Google Science Fair.

That was awesome.

Awesome.

On Monday, we met the winners of the Science In Action awards... [Megan] You mentioned how in hindsight, everything has come together almost irillogically?

[Mariette] It's kind of crazy, yeah.

[Megan] I guess being where we are and not having that hindsight yet, how did you prepare to take those risks when nothing really felt like it was coming together?

[Mariette] You know, I remember when I was first going for that newspaper job, people would say to me, "Oh, newspaper?

"You'll never get a job in a newspaper, never!

I thought, "Why not?

"It could happen.

It could happen to me.

It's as likely as anybody else."

And my job is to make it as likely as   I can make it by being as good as I can.

Keep your eyes open for opportunities when they pop up.

And you know, people say, "Follow your passions."

I really believe in that.

Because if you really like it, then you'll do your best.

When I was growing up, sometimes I liked to ask people, "What would you do?

What would you do?"

And I might do something other.

But for me it's second nature now to report a story.

You ask a lot of people similar questions.

You have asked a lot of people similar questions.

And as you ask them, it sort of helps you sort out in your own head what you want to do.

Does it make everything safe and feel totally good?

No.

But you're never going to make life totally safe and totally without risk.

There's always going to be a little something.

People make much of having it all.

And I really don't believe in having it all, but I believe you can have some portion that works for you.

So follow those passions and just remember, "Why not you?

Why not you to succeed?

You can do it."

[Jackie] Thank you so much!

[Mariette] Take care!

[Zachariah] She was awesome!

[Megan] Yeah, she was.

[Zachariah] "Why not me?"

For every single thing possible.

"Why not me?"

[Jackie] Yeah.

Why not me?

[Zachariah] On this trip, I was like, "Well I want to figure out which Road I want to go down."

And the biggest main theme I've got is I have no idea which Road I want to go down.

And also, there's not one specific Road.

Look at this map right here!

Look how many Roads there are!

We took the 10.

We took the 75.

We took the 69.

We took all these different Roads to get to where we are.

And every single different Road taught us so many different things.

[Jackie] And also, we didn't necessarily take the 10 all the way.

[Zachariah] Yeah!

Yeah!

[Jackie] We took a lot of side Roads that were more interesting than just going on the highway.

[Zachariah] One of my most favorite parts on the trip was highway 60 through Arizona.

It was just mountain ranges and beauty.

It took a lot longer.

It was a lot 'weavier'.

But it was incredible.

And it was a fun drive.

We could have had a four-hour drive to San Francisco.

But instead, we took the 1, baby!

We took the slow, arduous, dangerous, scary, incredibly beautiful 1.

And while it was full of anxiety and things like that, it was so rewarding!

And so beautiful!

And we saw so many gorgeous things.

[Jackie] And we still got to San Francisco.

[Zachariah] And we still got to San Francisco!

[Zachariah] The more I talk to these people, the more I'm sculpting the fact that I can't define my own Road.

I can define the way I want to walk down an infinite amount of different Roads.

♪ [Jackie] Just being on the Roadtrip, I know every few days we change cities and we're doing a whole bunch of things super quickly.

It's been an interesting way to live.

[Megan] Miss Jackie.

[Jackie] Yes?

[Megan] What can I do?

[Jackie] Do you want to do the snacks?

[Megan] Sure, let me first wash my hands.

[Jackie] I would have never guessed that we had so many things in common, even though we're very different.

Like, just the smallest thing, like Megan knows Spanish.

[Jackie and Megan speak Spanish] [Jackie] It's been super interesting.

We've been starting to get into this super cool friendship.

[Jackie and Megan speak Spanish] [Jackie] I grew up in Chihuahua, Mexico.

A dream of mine that I have is to come back to the community and make a difference.

Or help my community.

This is where I grew up and I'd like to give back to it.

After I graduated, my research advisor told me, "Good luck in grad school.

"And here's one advice: Don't do anything else other than research."

And I starting thinking, "No!

I can't do that!"

I want something more than just the research.

I-I-I...

I need something else.

This week that we have left, I will just gather as much advice as I can get.

Enjoy the team.

And enjoy the Road.

[Megan] It's our six week anniversary.

[Zachariah] Woah.

[Megan and Jackie] Yeah.

[Zachariah] Woah.

[Megan] This very day, six weeks ago, we landed in California.

And saw the RV for the very first time.

♪ ♪ [Megan] Today we're outside Albany, New York.

And we're going to interview Victoria Smith, who works for Vicarious Visions, which is a game developer.

[Victoria] This has been, of my many jobs, this is   by far my favorite job.

I was telling my parents the other day, "I basically get to go into work and build castles in the sky."

♪ [Megan] So did you always have an interest in Video Games?

What were you like as a kid?

[Vicki] Yeah, yeah.

I always did love video games.

I didn't really get into the idea of making them until relatively recently, but yes, I was definitely a gamer as a kid.

[Megan] What was your end goal?

Did you have one in particular?

[Vicki] I wanted to make comic books.

Writing and drawing.

That's what I mostly wanted to do.

And, you know, It's not every... Well, okay.

It wasn't my parents' dream that their daughter would become a comic book artist and writer.

As much as they loved me and encouraged me, they were like, "We're not going to pay for a humanities degree."

They said, "We will pay for a science or engineering degree but not otherwise."

So I went and I got my degree in Electrical Engineering.

And I basically...

It's a really good career.

But I had that sort of creative side and essentially got really bored.

Ended up quitting and trying a bunch of different things.

I got my master's in interactive technology.

Which is euphemism for a master's in video game design.

Then I got really lucky and VV recruited me, so now I get to work here.

[Zachariah] What is that like?

When you had this passion and you had this drive and you went down that path, you followed that science?

Did you perspective of science kind of come around?

[Vicki] Um...

Absolutely it did.

It's like when you're in sports and all you want to do is play football.

And you do not want to do the jumping jacks or the push-ups or the weight lifting.

[Zachariah] Wow, that's a good analogy!

[Vicki] But I'm really...

In the end, I was really, really glad I did.

Because if you don't do the push-ups, you don't get to play the game.

And because of my technical background, because I had to teach myself how to code, I had to teach myself how to work with computers, that gave me such an advantage when it came to working video games.

And this is the thing.

I think that American culture, we have sort of this "chase your dream" thing.

So we tell somebody, "Okay, if you're really good at this, you should   just concentrate on this.

You should just, you know, pour your soul into acting or into writing and leave everything else behind.

And I kind of think that that's a really unbalanced way to go about things.

I mean even if you say you're a writer, and you want to write the great American novel, so you completely blow off math and science.

But if you don't understand math and science, you're not going to understand technology.

And if you don't understand technology, there's no way you can understand the world we live in today.

And if you don't understand the world we live in today, how are you going to write the great American novel?

If you really want to be a writer, you should chase that dream, but you shouldn't neglect math and science.

Just like if you're really into the math and science, you should still read the Shakespeare.

Because that's going to round you out and that's going to allow you to bring creativity into your math and science work.

I mean, the artists here...

I'm such a fan girl when I walk around the office and look at people's work.

And they do 3D modeling and they do just stunning environments.

You know, really beautiful characters and really beautiful animation.

And they're working on computers.

They're working with extremely sophisticated technology.

But obviously, if they hadn't worked on art, they wouldn't have been able to apply that technology in such a beautiful way.

[Zachariah] So are any of the seeds of your comic book still in there?

[Vicki] I get to work here now!

And here, they give me a level.

And they say, "At the beginning of the level, the game is at state A.

And by the end of the level, we want to be at state B.

But in the meantime, make a little story out of your level."

So I get to make, essentially, three-dimensional, interactive comic books now.

I get to build a castle and figure out, "Okay, in the beginning, "they're going to be welcome by Count Dracula.

"And then he's going to grab your boyfriend and drag him "to the top of the tower.

"And you have to fight these monsters in this order and solve this puzzle."

It's my story.

It's my level.

So, I'm not actually in comic books but I kind of got a step up, I thought.

[Megan] So our final question might seem a little huge.

But what advice would you give to the three of us and other people around our age who are just getting started?

[Vicki] I knew a priest once who...

I was in college and I was drifting.

He told me that it's impossible to steer a bike that's standing still.

So just go for things.

And then the weird part about doing that is that you get deflected in the direction that you want to go.

Like I did engineering and when I changed careers, that deflected me again into video games.

And I just think sometimes you need to stop wondering what you want to do with your life and go out and do something.

If you move forward, you'll find your way because your way will be informed by who you are and what you like.

Just...

Your life's a game, right?

You just have to play it.

[Jackie] She said, "It doesn't matter what you do.

It's always your future.

It's going to steer you to where you want to be.

Or to where you're supposed to be."

And I think that was very comforting to see that, "All right, I'm completely lost.

"I don't know if I want to do this but I'm going to try it.

"And I'm going to see if it's worth it.

"And this is going to take me on the path that I'm supposed to go."

[Megan] In really, a relatively short amount of time, what's it been?

Six weeks?

I'm more comfortable with the fact that I don't know what the hell I'm doing in seven days.

Literally, I don't know what I'm doing in seven days.

Six-weeks-ago-Megan would have been distraught.

Literally inconsolable.

And now I'm just like, "I don't like this [whispers] but I'm going to be okay."

[Zachariah] And it's just interesting to hear all these motifs just be reiterated and come up again and again and again.

And it's like, "Fail fast and hard.

"Fail all the time.

"If you're not failing, "you're not getting better at all."

♪ [Vicki] There was a study recently, I think in Sweden, to try and identify scientifically what is most fun about a video game.

And they found that people had most fun when they did fail.

When they did something wrong and they were like, "Okay.

Now it's on!

I can do this!"

If you try five times and you fail each time, and then on the sixth time you get it.

That feeling is so great!

That's the moment.

It's not just playing the game, it's learning that your limits are not what you think they are.

[Megan] We don't have all the answers because we haven't seen all the questions.

[Jackie] We haven't lived enough.

[Zachariah] We need to fall on our butts from time to time but there's nothing wrong with maybe preventing a few of those butt-falls.

[Megan] Yeah.

[Zachariah] That's okay, too, you know!

[Megan] We're going to fail bigger and better and bolder!

[Zachariah] Yeah!

[Megan] Because we're not doing the little failures.

[Zachariah] We're going to be the best freakin' failures that this world has ever seen!

[Jackie] (laughs) [Megan] The biggest failures ever.

[Zachariah] Yes!

[Jackie] We're going to fail!

[Zachariah] We're going to fail!

[Roadtrippers] Whoo!

[Zachariah] Fail!

One, two, three... [Roadrippers] Fail!

[laughter] [Megan] We are now at the Atlantic Ocean.

So we drove coast to coast in six weeks.

Seven weeks.

[Zachariah] Wow!

Yeah, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

[Jackie] In 47 days.

[Megan] And over 5,000 miles.

[male #1] If you're not scaring the hell out of yourself every once in a while, you're not close enough to the edge.

[female #1] In the end, there isn't anything that anyone does that doesn't have its challenges or its hard days or its really difficult times.

[Zachariah] Definitely feeling like being a part of something real for the first time in my life.

[female narrator #2] For more than 10 years, dozens of Roadtrippers have traveled in the green RVs to define their own Roads in life.

Here's a quick update from Matt, a Roadtripper from season 3.

[male #2] My name is Matt Maude.

Back in 2005, I did this six and a half week Roadtrip from New York to LA.

You don't really sit down with people that often and ask them the really important questions in life, I think.

I don't think that kind of happens in your day to day.

Where does that sort of desire come from, personally?

Does that mean that if you went back, you'd do it differently?

What have you done in the periods of times when you have been lost?

When I first came back, I was still in Roadtrip-mode.

Basically just gave me a very big thirst for a deep interaction with people.

I knew before that Roadtrip that film was going to be my thing.

I just didn't know how to do it.

The whole experience was just a huge affirmation of something I thought I could do maybe 10 years from now or 20 years from now.

Back in the UK, I'm a filmmaker and a writer and a director, and do some decent producing as well.

I run a small production company called Left Eye Blind.

We do lots of different things like music videos, short films, commercials.

Roadtrip was just a massive confidence booster.

It's like a bank that you put a huge amount of money into.

I still live off the interest.

[female narrator #4] If you're living a life you love and want to share your story with the next generation, or if you're looking to define your own Road, head to Roadtripnation.com to join the movement.

♪