Rick Steves

As a 23-year-old, Rick Steves embarked on an eight-week journey across Asia that helped crystallize his travel philosophy and turn him towards a career as a travel guru. 

Rick Steves Iceland takes viewers not just to Reykjavík and the popular day trips outside it but also to remote peninsulas, fjords, and towns that are less frequently visited. We spoke to Steves' travel companion and producer of the special.

The travel guru Rick Steves believes that travel can change lives and improve the world by broadening perspectives. "I'm sort of into cultural shock," he said. "I think it's a constructive thing." 

From the feted arrival of an Italian Fascist in Chicago during the Century of Progress World's Fair (commemorated with the renaming of a street and a monument donated by Mussolini) to the infamous controversy where neo-Nazis tried to march in Skokie, learn about fascist flare-ups in Chicago.