Award-winning journalist, author, and serial guest, Adam Skolnick, is back on the show as our international correspondent to catch us up on the globetrotting life of a travel writer, his journey to self-publishing, and more “writer porn.”
Adam’s first narrative nonfiction book is now available in paperback — One Breath: Freediving, Death, and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits — and is based on his award-winning New York Times sports coverage of the death of the greatest American freediver of all time.
The book has been compared to other classics of extreme sports journalism — like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and National Geographic Traveller called it, “A vicarious thrill that you can enjoy in a little over 300 pages and unless you read it in the bath … ”
Adam has visited 45 countries and authored or coauthored over 30 Lonely Planet guidebooks, and has written for publications as varied as ESPN.com, Men’s Health, Outside, BBC, Playboy Magazine, The New York Times, and appeared on NPR.
His latest collection of 81 verses of poetry and prose– Indolirium — takes its inspiration from Jack Kerouac’s Mexico City Blues, and is “… an insomnia-addled journey through the cities, villages and way out wilds of Indonesia …” based on what the author thought “… would be a painless three month assignment in a country he knew well, only to find his marriage and life threatened and his mind unravel as he groped for light in the darkness.”
In this file Adam Skolnick and I discuss:
- Investigating Elon Musk’s latest technology
- How a travel journalist reinvigorated his faith in the “American Dream”
- Making a living as an international content writer … in Mongolia
- How to carve out a “Man-vs-Water” beat at the New York Times
- The Olympic swimmers who organize in political protest
- Why an award-winning journalist chose to self-publish his personal insomniac poetry
- Modern poetics and the path to literary social media success
- The purpose of poetry in the age of the internet
Listen to The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience below ...

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The Show Notes
- If you’re ready to see for yourself why over 201,344 website owners trust StudioPress — the industry standard for premium WordPress themes and plugins — just go to StudioPress.com
- Adam Skolnick’s Amazon Author Page
- Indolirium – Adam Skolnick
- AdamSkolnick.com
- High Speed American Dreams – Adam Skolnick
- Adam Skolnick on Instagram
- April Wong on Instagram
- One Breath – Adam Skolnick
- In a Swimmer’s Two-Year Quest, a Final 21-Mile Challenge – Adam Skolnick for NYTimes
- Web Poets’ Society: New Breed Succeeds in Taking Verse Viral
- Donald Trump, the First President of Our Post-Literate Age
- A Neuroscientist’s Perspective on Fake News, with Michael Grybko
- Adam Skolnick on Twitter
- Kelton Reid on Twitter
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