It's that Road Trip Time of Year

261 miles. That's the average length of a family road trip during the holidays in the United States.

261.5 minutes (or ~4 hours). That's the length of the playlist we've carefully curated for your upcoming road trip. This way, you'll go to Mars and back, eavesdrop on an auctioneer master class in Kansas City, meet a man desperate to remove his swastika tatoo, and take a time machine to 1984 - all before you reach your final destination.

Leaving a Mark

Emily Hsiao reads a Craigslist post about a man who wants his swastika tattoo covered up. And then she goes to meet him.

The Auctioneer

More than 20 years ago, musicologist Ned Sublette attended the Missouri Auction School in Kansas City, and brought along his tape recorder.

Except Me

Andrew Skillings is eleven now, but he was first diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a high functioning form of autism, when he was just two.

The Lemon Tree

Bashir was six during the height of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, when his family was forced to flee his stone home in old Palestine and live as refugees in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

1984 (the year not the book)

In the book 1984, George Orwell predicted that in the future "Big Brother" would watch and dictate our every move. In the year 1984, producer Benjamen Walker was in middle school.

One Way Ticket to Mars

NASA is figuring out how to take the next great leap into space. The difficulty is, if we leap to Mars, we might not make it back.