I'm Alan Olga and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. Campgrounds are wonderful things because they are so little D democratic.

You're kind of living on your front porch and your neighbors are on their front porch and people are constantly kind of chatting at each other and everybody wants to learn about your RV and vice versa and everybody kind of takes tourism and it's a very healthy

thing and sometimes people talk politics but a lot of times it's just getting to know people from

really different walks of life.

That's Frank Barry.

Escaping the COVID lockdown in 2020, he and his wife Laurel set out in an RV to travel across America along what's known as the Lincoln Highway,

much of which turned out to be dirt roads. But Abraham Lincoln's

spirit was their guide because their goal was to talk with the people they met along

the way to explore the urgent question of what can hold the country

together at a time when our divisions threatened to tear us apart. The book

Frank Barry wrote about their experiences is Back Roads and Better Angels,

A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy.

Well, this is a wonderful book. It's so full of insight. It contains history, goes back to the past,

it comes back to the present, you're in it, the multitude of people across the country are in it. It's just wonderful.

Oh, thanks so much. I think the COVID lockdown played a big part in this because

you had wanted to do this trip for years, right?

Yeah.

Then the lockdown came, you couldn't get out.

Exactly.

They decided to go out and discover America.

It was now or never.

We knew that was our chance. So you bought an RV and you took to the

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