One of my hobbies is attending celebrity conventions. Over the years I have met hundreds of athletes, actors, musicians and other famous folks.

Along the way, I started interviewing them as a way to get extra access. Why settle for a quick greeting when I could get a few more minutes of quality time with them?

One thing I learned is these people liked to talk about things outside of their usual field. Since I work for Global Traveler, travel seemed to be a natural subject for interviews, and it was.

Baseball players were my first tests. Not shocking, they all became more talkative when discussing their travels as opposed to the game. They enjoyed the change of pace. Many gave me much more time than I could have imagined. It was also fun for me hearing their travel tales, such as former baseball player Bob Brenly’s little book of restaurants, former Chicago Sky player Allie Quigley’s favorite Chicago foods, or ESPN’s Jon Miller’s world travels. I even got an amazing story from Pete Flynn, clubhouse manager for the New York Mets. Flynn drove the Beatles onto the field for their famous Shea Stadium concert.

Earlier this year I had the idea to stretch these short interviews into long-form ones to add content to the Global Traveler YouTube channel. My first interview guest was singer Haley Reinhart. That interview received enough response to allow me to make Talking Travel a regular feature. Since then I interviewed 15 more folks from several professions.

Travel is the main focus of all of these. I learned about actor Andrew McCarthy walking 500 miles across Spain with his son, musician Suzi Quatro loving Hamburg so much she moved there, and so many other interesting nuggets from their lives away from their professions. Everyone I interview has an impressive résumé but also has great travel stories.

It has been a lot of fun for me and hopefully the reader, too. If you know someone with amazing travel stories, let me know. You don’t have to be an Academy Award winner. You just need to share interesting travel stories. Also, subscribe to the GT YouTube channel to see all of the unique travel content.

— John Wroblewski, online writer