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Erudite British actor and stand-up comedian Stephen Fry starts his idiosyncratic tour of the USA like mainstream immigration and pioneering, on the East Coast, in New York. He tastes both the capital Washington D.C. and the Yankee countryside. He searches for vestiges of the Civil War but also meets Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and similar worldwide-user-run websites.
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Stephen visits the US region most appealing to him, traditional Dixieland south of the Mason Dixie line, which he physically finds between Pennsylvania and Virginia. In the Virgianias he visits the coal mines which power half of US electric current. In Kentucky, horse breeding, whiskey distilling and Bluegrass, also the link to Tennessee and an angle to break his British tongue on the Dixie accent. Forensics for real prove gruesome. Trough Smokey Mountains into the Carolinas, for a balloon flight and Southern hospitality in Georgia. South of Dixie to 'Yankee-like' Florida, not to Fry's taste except the Everglades. Finally Alabama, back in Dixie, to the Board of pardons and Parole and the elaborate show in Auburn's college sports stadium.
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Stephen travels through the basin of Old Man River, North America's greatest, from the Great Lakes to its Gulf of Mexico delta. Stephen starts in Louisiana, visiting New Orleans, site of Mardi Gras frivolity and superstition, touring the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward and Louisiana's infamous Angola State Penitentiary. He then travels north along Highway 61, with stops in Natchez, Mississippi (talking with Morgan Freeman, owner of a local blues club), Arkansas (canoeing on the river), Iowa (discussing meditation at the Maharishi International University), St. Louis (talking with some homeless people living in an abandoned warehouse), Elkhart, Indiana (riding in a fire engine) and Detroit (riding with the designer of the latest Cadillac). In Chicago, he tours the South Side with blues legend Buddy Guy and gets roped into helping with a Second City show, with Chicago-style hot dogs after with two of the performers. Then on to Wisconsin for artisanal cheesemaking, a visit to a Hmong market in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and finally a bit of ice-fishing. Meditations about river-love, the restless nature of the American dream and immigration alter with visits to towns and cities in the vast Midwest plains and Minnesota sources. Included are the San Louis homeless, Vedic 'trans-meditational yoga' guru's Iowa commune HQ, second US economic city Chicago, Scandinavian and Hmong communities in the icy north.
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Steven explores from Canadian to Mexican border the spine of North America: the Rocky Mountains, which also constitute the continental divide between river systems flowing West to the Pacific or east, to the Atlantic, where he also visits the prairie plains. Stops include nature reserves and media magnate Ted Turner's bison farming as well as the German immigrants in North Dakota, a virtual ghost town, Texan socialites at a Houston benefit dinner.
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On a tour of the Southwestern US, Stephen Fry visits Los Alamos National Lab, speaks with architect Michael Reynolds, dines with a Navajo family, attends a Mormon calendar shoot, and learns about legal prostitution.
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In California, Steven adores the old-new and social melting pot San Francisco. In the same state, which would be the world's 7th economy, stops include marijuana growing and bust, a forest reserve, as in Oregon. In Washington, innovative Seattle and a seal care center, end of the London cab's tour of 48 contiguous states. In Alaska, the northernmost and largest, the stories of sea otters, natives, Russian orthodox missionaries. On Hawaii, the southernmost and youngest state, a real P.I., Polynesians, shark cage swimming, astronomy and the 29 volcanic islands.
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