Randa Abdel-Fattah

The nation-state model, I think if we take a thousand-foot view from it, is both very new and very fragile and might just be a blip.

The question is, if the rules are being rewritten, who gets to rewrite them?

Svalbard is a story about, you know, sorry to say it, but men who want to start something new in a place that they consider almost a blank slate.

I think there's a lot of parallels with somebody like Elon Musk who wants to explore space.

And this kind of awareness that none of the rules are all that fixed.

Coming up... It was like a message in a ball.

You pop the cork in, you throw it out into the sea of the internet.

Let's see what happens.

We take to the high seas.

Part 2...

Let a thousand nations bloom.

These are the opening lines of the 1956 movie starring John Wayne called The Searchers.

the music feels almost wistful, reveling in the adventurous spirit that pushed so many to head out into the frontier.

The movie follows Wayne's character, a Civil War vet who fought on the side of the Confederacy after he returns home to Texas.

And like any good Western, there are long, panoramic shots of the vast landscape, deep red sands, and intense blue skies.

The Great Unknown.

It's set just a few years after the 1862 Homestead Act passed, when anyone moving out West could claim land if they were willing to settle on and farm it.

What was it like when people were colonizing the West, setting out on their own to build a ranch and stuff like that?

This is Wayne Gramlich.

He's a retired computer engineer.