 Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Colin Louther and I'm Liz Wade. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live. Scientists say that the earliest humans came out of Africa around 60,000 years ago. The theory is that humans migrated or moved from one area to another. They started in the country of Ethiopia. From there humans spread to the rest of the world. Scientists have found ways to make a map that shows the paths humans walked during their migration. Today people do not need to walk across the world. They can fly in an airplane, ride on a boat, or drive in a car to anywhere they want to go. But one man, Paul Salopak, is choosing to walk. He has begun a project to walk the ancient migration path. He is calling this walking project out of Eden. He will walk almost 33,800 kilometers. It will take him seven years. Today's spotlight is on Paul Salopak and his walking trip around the world. Salopak is a famous journalist. For many years he reported on news from all around the world. He wrote stories about conflict, culture, the environment, and science in more than 60 countries. He won major awards for his writing. But after all this, Salopak wanted to do something different. He wanted to go slowly. He told the news organization NPR, I traveled around the world as a foreign reporter. After flying in to tell stories, driving into them, even helicoptering in, I thought about what it would be like to walk between stories. Salopak decided to travel the slowest possible way, walking just like human ancestors did. Salopak wants to connect the ancient stories of our human ancestors with the modern stories of our time. He wants to look at development and progress. He wants to see what humans long ago saw. He thinks this experience will help him find a different kind of story. These stories can show us more about what it means to be human. And Salopak believes that he needs to find these stories slowly. He wrote on the website Kickstarter. I have come to recognize that the major stories of our time are connected. We can only see this connection when we slow down. So I am trying to return to a more human speed of storytelling. To dig deeper into the important stories we do not see because we are always moving too fast to listen. Salopak began his seven year walk in January of 2013. He started in the beautiful rift valley in Ethiopia. Since then he has travelled up through Africa into the desert of Saudi Arabia. Then he walked through Israel and Turkey. In 2015 Salopak began his walk across Asia. He will continue to walk through Russia where he will cross the Bering Sea to the top of North America. The last part of his walk will take him down the coasts of North and South America. Hopefully in 2020 he will end at Tierra del Fuego, the very bottom of South America. Salopak must travel with only the things he needs. He travels with a light laptop, a satellite telephone, a local cell telephone, a camera and a digital recorder. He also travels with local guides and language translators. While he travels he writes stories about what he sees and experiences. The Science and Nature magazine National Geographic is helping to pay for his project. National Geographic publishes Salopak's stories during his walk. And more than 200 schools and universities follow Paul Salopak's stories on the internet. They use them as a learning tool. One of the first things Salopak wrote about was how technology is changing the world. He told NPR, I will be walking through what is probably the greatest change in human thought since the invention of farming, the wiring of the world. Today about a third of humans are connected through information technology like the internet. By the time I walk across my finish line in 2020 that connection will be complete. Salopak's journey has let him see many different and interesting things. During his trip Salopak saw Ethiopian tribes who survived by hunting. They did not drive cars or use computers but they owned cell phones. Walking has also helped him to see great natural beauty. When Salopak traveled through the West Bank in Israel, he found beautiful golden hills and amazing trees. But he also heard the sounds of gunfire in the distance. Violent conflict like this is another major issue Salopak writes about. The earth's physical beauty and the hard reality of war often do not seem to connect or make sense together. Because of war Salopak also witnessed one of the biggest mass movements of people in modern history. In September of 2014, Salopak was near the Syrian border in Turkey. In just 72 hours he saw almost 100,000 Kurdish Syrians flee Syria. He told NPR. One of the defining parts of being a refugee is that you are reduced to being back on foot. The Turkish military forced these people to leave all their vehicles at the border. And so they walked without power into these new lives, dusty, hot and on foot. It was a very sad serious time. During his walk Salopak has also been in dangerous situations. He almost died when crossing the mountains in Turkey. He and his guides were almost 3,000 meters high in the mountains. The snow kept getting deeper and deeper. Then they fell through the snow. So they decided to find safety in a valley. But their feet were frozen. Murat, the Turkish guide, had to burn some of his own clothes to light a fire. Salopak was cold and afraid. But he and his guides finally found a way to safety. Salopak was also afraid in Israel. He was traveling with a Palestinian guide. They thought everything was peaceful. But there was a protest that day. The Israeli military began firing rubber bullets very near them. But Salopak and his guide managed to escape. Through his travels Salopak is telling the stories he sees today. But he sees how these stories are all connected. They are all about humans, people. As he slowly moves across the earth he hopes to tell more and more stories. The writer of this program was Jen Hawkins. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again and read it on the internet at www.radioenglish.net. This program is called Out of Eden, The Seven-Year Walk. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye.