A Playboy, a Mad Man, and A Lawyer Visit Every Country in the World
Can’t recall the punchline? For Albert Podell (LAW ’76) it’s not the setup of a joke, it’s his life journey.
Podell’s career has taken him from roles as an editor at Playboy, to creating advertising campaigns for movies, to lobbyist, lawyer, and author; but it’s his most recent achievement that makes a resume you won’t find from anyone else in the world: Al Podell has visited every country on the planet.
Not only did he make it, but he overcame a hundred terrifying adventures to do so, including bandits in the Khyber Pass; robbers in the Sahara Desert; a perilous trailer breakdown on the Peak of Death; an Ebola outbreak; tsunamis; volcanic eruptions; attacks by flying crabs, giant leeches, Cape Buffalo, and tiger sharks; and, most dangerous of all, a dozen beautiful women along the route who wanted him to stop the nonsense and marry them.
His upcoming book, Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every County on Earth, due out on March 24, shares tales of surviving riots, revolutions, natural disasters, wild animal attacks, and eating everything from rats to live monkey brains.
"I tell my students to live life fully,” NYU President John Sexton wrote. “Al Podell's wonderful new book, a tour de force, describes in fascinating detail how he has done just that."
Podell’s travels begin in 1962 while he served in the Army Reserve when he and fellow crew members drove up to see Ottawa.
“I said, ‘Well traveling is interesting!’ You really get to see new things,” Podell recalled. In 1963, as a magazine editor covering movies, he traveled to Spain for work and stopped over in Paris on his return home. “I walked for 22 hours around Paris and I was hooked on travel.”
A little more than a year later in 1965, Podell co-lead an expedition drive around the world. It inspired his first book, Who Needs a Road?: The Story of the Longest and Last Motor Journey Around the World, written with his co-leader, Harold Stephens.
“[The trip] was supposed to take six months. We figured maybe with a few problems eight months,” Podell explained. “It took 591 days and overcoming a lot of problems!”
Podell used his marketing skills to promote the trip and garner 25 sponsors. After their return, Podell began planning his next big expedition: to go around the world, by land, from north to south. Unfortunately, as he began to research the trek, he realized the feat would prove too challenging, particularly on the harsh terrain of Antarctica.
“I was sort of consoling myself and somewhere along the way I said, ‘Ah, well, I’ll go to every country in the world!’ And that was it,” Podell explained. “It wasn’t until the year 2000 when I was up to about 90 countries when I really decided to give this a go. I didn’t know if I could make it.”
Before applying to NYU School of Law, Podell was an editor at Playboy and several outdoor magazines, reviewed books for the Chicago Sun-Times, managed the literary quarterly that introduced Beat Generation writers to American readers, and published more than 250 magazine articles, mostly on adventure.
“Knowing how to professionally negotiate was really helpful,” said Podell. “As a lawyer, particularly the NYU method, they teach you how to think on your feet and how to solve problems. If you’re going around the world there is nothing more important than being able to solve problems. That was very helpful training.”
Podell’s adventurous attitude, sense of humor, and all around charm are apparent within moments of meeting him. Upon entering NYU he attended a week long vocational guidance testing program to get some guidance on some career paths to explore. The results? An editor, an advertising executive, and a lawyer.
“I thought, ‘Gee, these are all good,’” Podell recalled. “So I followed all three career paths and am deeply indebted to that NYU career counseling service.” His best advice for young alumni is to live adventurously and to find a career doing what they love.
“Despite my very checkered background, NYU took me in and I have been eternally grateful ever since,” Podell said. “There are not many law schools who would take somebody who is 14 years out of college whose resume is ‘I worked for Playboy. I drove around the world and I did a lot of hot movie advertising,’ and yet, they took me and made me feel welcome.”
In addition to his impressive journalistic background, Podell has been director of photography, advertising creative director, ad agency vice president, government lobbyist, and producer and director of music videos. He spent seven years supervising movie marketing for 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures, was president of the American Society of Magazine Picture Editors, head of the American Society of Film Advertisers, and ran the annual Motion Picture Advertising Awards.
“I got great training at NYU. It’s a wonderful atmosphere. I am proud to say that thanks to my NYU training I never lost a jury trial in 32 years,” Podell explained. “I had been so nervous being 14 years out of college about how I would compete with the other kids in the class. I turned out to be number three in my class the first year. I was just so happy that NYU allowed me to come in.”
Although Podell is busy promoting his upcoming book, he is still thinking about what’s next for his travel plans, including visiting some of the non-countries that he purposefully skipped and returning to Iguazu Falls, his favorite place outside of the United States.
His book, Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every County on Earth, is due out on March 24, 2015.