The United States
Episode One: New World
Fry's journey begins in New England with lobstermen in Eastport, Maine. He attends a primary meeting hosted by Mitt Romney and visits the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where he rides a cog railway to the top of Mount Washington.
In Vermont he is invited to create his own Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavour. He hunts for deer in the Adirondack Mountains (without a gun), attends a tea party with Harvard University professor Peter Gomes, and meets witches in Salem, Massachusetts.
Fry tours a submarine at the Naval Submarine Base New London in Groton, Connecticut, visits stately homes in Newport, Rhode Island, and moves on to New York City, meeting cabbies, mobsters, and Sting.
Next is Atlantic City, where he apprentices as a croupier at the Trump Taj Mahal casino before crossing the Delaware to Maryland and Washington, D.C. to interview Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales and a member of the Capitol Steps. He ends the first leg of his journey at the Civil War battlefield in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Episode Two: Deep South
Fry tries to find out what makes the South so distinctive. He begins this leg of his journey with a visit to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He then finds the Mason–Dixon line, tours a coal mine in West Virginia, and watches horse trading and bourbon brewing before getting a trim at a barber shop in Kentucky.
He then visits a body farm in Tennessee, rides in a hot-air balloon in the Great Smoky Mountains, experiences the Gullah culture in the South Carolina Low country, attends a Southern-style Thanksgiving Dinner, tolerates Miami, mingles with snowbirds, and attends a massive college football game in Alabama.
Episode Three: Mississippi
A 2000-mile journey up the Mississippi River begins in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, followed by a visit to Morgan Freeman's blues club in Mississippi. He hitches a canoe up the river to Arkansas, visits hoboes in St. Louis, gets to see his brainwave activity at the research department of the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, and after a detour going into a burning building in Indiana and over to Ohio and Detroit, explores Chicago and its place as a center for blues and comedy. He finishes the journey with a sheep's milk cheese farm in Wisconsin and Hmong immigrants and ice fishing in Minnesota.
Episode Four: Mountains and Plains
National security becomes a recurring theme as Stephen visits Border patrol agents in Montana, a former missile silo in Kansas, and an INS patrol in El Paso. He also visits Glacier National Park, Ted Turner's Bison ranch, the Continental Divide, the German American community in North Dakota, Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Monument, the Lakota people, a major truck stop on Interstate 80, Aspen and Salvation Army work in Oklahoma.
Episode Five: True West
Stephen explores the ancient city of Santa Fe, sees the cutting edge of scientific research in Los Alamos, eats frybread with Navajos in Monument Valley, and hitches a ride with a B-17 Flying Fortress to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group. He sees a wild west show in Tucson, takes a houseboat around Lake Powell, takes part in a team-building exercise in Las Vegas, and sees another legacy of the wild west at the Mustang Ranch before arriving at the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
Episode Six: Pacific
Stephen begins in San Francisco, exploring its Chinatown and meeting Apple executive Jonathan Ive. He takes a ride with the Mendocino County sheriff, meets students at Humboldt State University, explores the forests of Oregon with activists and Bigfoot believers, and reaches the end of the Contiguous United States at a cabaret in Seattle. In Alaska, Stephen encounters fishermen and Inupiat whalers. Finally he goes to Hawaii, where he swims with sharks, meets a real-life Magnum, P.I., attends an authentic luau and finishes his journey at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.
Central America
Episode One: Mexico
Stephen Fry crosses Mexico from El Passo in a yellow US school bus, commonly getting its second, hardest career there. Vaqueros (the Original cowboys) and canyons impress him more then the Grand Canyon. In Chihuahua he enjoys the donkey festival and visits the once priceless silver mine at rundown Real Catorce.
A proud archaeologist shows him the Tutanchalon-like treasures in the Precolumbian capital Teotihuacan near Aztec, colonial and modern metropolis Mexico City. Stephen plays a butler cameo in a telenovela (soapserie) and attends a mass demonstration against the horrible murders in drug wars. Heading for the Pacific coast, he admires the colony of multi-generational monarch butterfly migrations and the brave, yet often studying cliff divers in Acapulco, once a fanciful elite resort.
Episode Two: Belize and Guatemala
Stephen crosses from Mexico to Belize, the former British Honduras, still anglophone and with a now tiny British garrison, where the major kindly helps repair the bus. Then to Guatemala, a green and mountainous country, where half of the population is Mayan, and suffered excessively in decades of civil war. Steven tastes their rituals and learns about the bloody originals, admires archaeological sites at Tikal and Atitlan while the onerous ball sports is revived by youth and traditions maintained, like 'fashionable' weaving in each tribal regions.
Episode Three: Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua
In the penultimate episode, Stephen journeys into tiny and little-visited El Salvador and tries his hand at surfing, before crossing into Honduras. He visits a banana plantation and learns about charitable projects in the capital to give the next generation of Hondurans more opportunities for the future.
Finally, Stephen crosses into Nicaragua where he visits a cigar factory, meets a gay activist and dances around the maypole with Creole-speaking slave decendant Nicaraguans.
Episode Four: Costa Rica to Panama
In the final episode, Stephen continues his journey into Costa Rica, billed as the 'Switzerland of Central America' for its stable democracy, enviable living standard and lack of a national military. Here, he takes advantage of Costa Rica's stunning scenery and adventurous attitude by trying white water rafting, tarpon fishing and climbing active volcanoes.
In Panama, Stephen has the unique opportunity to watch giant leatherback turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, and visits Panama City with its infamous canal before bidding farewell to the continent at the end of his epic journey.
