Backroad Odyssey: Travel Stories, Van Life & Road Trip Oddities

Noah Mulgrew and his dog Noodles spend their lives on America's backroads, and Backroad Odyssey is their field report. The show focuses on the places most travelers blow past on the interstate -- the small towns, roadside oddities, and overlooked historical sites that make American road trips genuinely interesting once you get off the highway. With 81 episodes across two seasons, the podcast alternates between deep-dive location episodes and shorter "On the Road" segments packed with travel trivia and listener questions. Recent episodes have covered spots like Sanibel Island's shell beaches and other locations that rarely show up in mainstream travel guides. Each episode runs 20 to 35 minutes, which is just enough time to thoroughly cover a place without dragging. Noah's research is thorough -- he digs into the history of each location with the kind of detail you'd expect from a documentary, but delivers it with the casual energy of someone telling you about a cool place they just stumbled across. The production quality is polished, and listeners have given it a perfect 5.0 rating across 25 reviews, which is unusual for a podcast this size. The show updates weekly and has built a following on Instagram where Noah shares photos from the road. If you tend to pull off at every brown highway sign pointing toward something historical, this show was made for you.