Family Travel Year

How to Be a Family brings listeners along as the Kois girls - witty, solitary, extremely online Lyra and goofy, sensitive, social butterfly Harper - walk through the Kiwi bush, ride bikes to a Dutch school in the pouring rain, battle iguanas in their Costa Rican kitchen, and learn to love a town where everyone knows your name. Meanwhile, Dan interviews neighbors, public officials, and scholars to learn why each of these places work the way they do. Will this trip change the Kois family's lives? Or do families take their problems and conflicts with them wherever we go?

What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre-COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget. Equal parts "how-to" and "how-not-to" - and with an eye toward a world emerging from a pandemic - We Came, We Saw, We Left is the insightful and often hilarious account of one family's gap-year experiment.

In One Year Off, you can join the family on a trek up a Costa Rican volcano, cruise the canals of Burgundy by houseboat, and ride ferries through the Greek Islands. Later, as the Cohens wander further off the tourist trail, you can drive through the villages of Rajasthan, traverse the vast Australian Nullarbor, and discover the charms of Cambodia's Angkor Wat and the hidden shangri-las of northern Laos.

At age 34 Jo Piazza got her romantic-comedy ending when she met the man of her dreams on a boat in the Galápagos Islands and was engaged three months later. But before long Jo found herself riddled with questions. How do you make a marriage work in a world where you no longer need to be married? How does an independent, strong-willed feminist become someone's partner - all the time?

Fourteen-year-old Nephele used to have friends. Well, she had a friend. That friend made the adjustment to high school easily, leaving Nephele behind in the process. And as Nephele looks ahead, all she can see is three very lonely years. Nephele is also a whip-smart lover of math and science, so she makes a plan. Step one: invent time travel. Step two: go back in time, have a do-over of ninth grade, crack the code on making friends, and become beloved and popular. Does it work? Sort of. Nephele does travel through time, but not the way she planned - she’s created a time loop.

An idyllic childhood takes a sinister turn. Rumors of a serial killer haunt the neighborhood, families pack up and leave town without a word of warning, and the country begins to unravel. Policemen stand by as protesters overtake the streets, knowing that the once awe-inspiring symbols of power they wear on their helmets have become devoid of meaning.