The Adventure Story Podcast: For lovers of Adventure, Archaeology, and Historical Mysteries.

Two thousand miles, one campervan, and a trail of unanswered questions.
For the final episode of the season, join Mrs R and I me as we retrace our recent camper van adventure — from Dover to the foot of Mont Blanc and back — and the stories we picked up along the way.
We start in Normandy, at an abbey built on a tidal island that no army ever managed to take. Then south, to the mountain where two hundred people walked into the flames rather than say the words that would have saved them. We follow the Templars to the point where the trail simply stops, and nobody has ever picked it up again. We visit the village where an alchemist may or may not have hidden something in a chateau, and where a hotelier's tall tale grew, quietly and accidentally, into an entire genre of fiction.
What struck me by the end wasn't any one of those stories. It was how close together they sit. You can drive between them in an afternoon, and often we did — parked up somewhere with the kettle on, ten minutes from a place where something genuinely strange happened eight hundred years ago.
That's the thing about doing it in a van. History stops being something you visit and starts being something you're camped in the middle of.
This also marks the final episode of season two. Thank you for coming along for the ride! We'll be back in a few months so make sure you're subscribed and signed up to the Adventure Society.
The episode features lots of the settings in my upcoming book, the Alchemist's Codex. Check that out here.
The Alchemist's Codex will be the eighth book in Eden's adventures, and this time she's heading to France.
What if Notre-Dame's fire wasn't an accident? What if it was a ploy — a way to find something that's lain hidden beneath the cathedral for hundreds of years?
That's where Eden's trail begins, in the shadow of Notre-Dame, chasing a secret someone was willing to burn a cathedral to reach. From there it winds through Renaissance châteaux and down into the Pyrénées. Eden and her crew pursue the ghost of Fulcanelli — the master alchemist who vanished without a trace and left behind only whispers of a lost codex.
But they're not the only ones hunting for it. The man on the other side of the trail has reasons of his own — reasons that run a great deal deeper than gold.
Some say Fulcanelli cracked the oldest secret of all, but Eden's about to find out whether the legend is worth dying for.

Takeaways for today's episode:
This episode of the Adventure Story podcast embarks on an extensive journey across France, exploring diverse historical sites.
We delve into the intriguing tales of monks, Templar knights, and alchemists that enrich the narrative of our travels.
Noteworthy is the discovery of an abbey built to house a sacred relic, a compelling story of faith and legend.
The podcast reflects on the beauty of travel, emphasizing the unexpected experiences that emerge through exploration.

Got a Story Idea?
If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!

Join the Adventure Society!
Need more adventure in your life? (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) Join The Adventure Society, my weekly newsletter, where I share real-world explorations, book updates, and exclusive podcast insights. Sign up at:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/AdventureSociety

Get a Free Adventure Thriller!
A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time!
When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself.
Grab your FREE COPY of The Paris Heist here:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/Paris

Love Adventure Stories?
If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love my books—fast-paced thrillers packed with action, history, and mystery.
Check them out at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com

Thanks for tuning in! See you in the next episode of The Adventure Story Podcast. 🏆🎙

Picture this: you're flying your trusty Cessna above the crystal-clear waters of the Caribbean when the engine note changes in a way you know it shouldn't. That's the world Nate Van Coops writes from and lives in.
Nate has spent 30 years in aviation as a commercial pilot, mechanic examiner, and certified flight instructor. He's poured all of it into the Archangel Aviation series, following former Black Hawk pilot Luke Angel through sun-soaked mysteries across coastal Florida, the Gulf, and the Bahamas. In this episode, Luke sits down with Nate to find out how real flying experience becomes gripping fiction and why aviation and adventure have always gone hand in hand.
In This Episode, We Explore:
From art school dropout to aviation author — Nate started flying lessons at 15, detoured toward fine art, then found his way back to the sky and eventually realized the smartest move was writing about the world he already knew.
Putting the aircraft front and center — Rather than treating planes as a way to get characters from A to B, Nate makes flying itself the adventure — right down to the golden-age Grumman Mallard flying boat he casts as his hero's aircraft.
Real airports, real risk — From setting scenes at St. Pete's actual Albert Whitted Airport to calculating exactly how far a plane could fly on its fuel tanks, Nate explains why he'd rather mess up almost anything else in a story before the aviation.
The detective who happens to be a pilot — Luke Angel solves mysteries using aviation knowledge nobody else in the story has, but Nate deliberately made sure being a pilot isn't what makes him special, since everyone in his world is one too.

Episode Timestamps:
02:33 - Early Aviation Spark
05:27 - Planes as Adventure
07:52 - Golden Age Flying Romance
10:16 - Vintage Flying Hands On
13:04 - Writing Authentic Aviation
17:55 - Building A Relatable Hero
21:15 - Accuracy Versus Drama
31:16 - Stories That Inspired Nate

Links Referenced in This Episode:
Nate's Instagram
Nate's Website

Got a Story Idea?
If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Join the Adventure Society!
Need more adventure in your life? (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) Join The Adventure Society, my weekly newsletter, where I share real-world explorations, book updates, and exclusive podcast insights. Sign up at:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/AdventureSociety

Get a Free Adventure Thriller!
A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time!
When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself.
Grab your FREE COPY of The Paris Heist here:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/Paris
Love Adventure Stories?
If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love my books—fast-paced thrillers packed with action, history, and mystery.
Check them out at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com
Thanks for tuning in! See you in the next episode of The Adventure Story Podcast. 🏆🎙
Mentioned in this episode:
Join us on the trail of the Knight's Templar
www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

For the first time ever, we're inviting you to join us on one of our adventures. And what better place to start than one of my favourite destinations… Portugal. But we’re not just going for the beaches and the wine, we’re following in the footsteps of one of history's most enigmatic organisations... the Knights Templar.
We're going on the trail of the Templars in Portugal!
Over five days and four nights, we'll guide you from the winding streets of Lisbon to the hilltop castle of Almourol, the sacred halls of Tomar's Convent of Christ, and the enchanting esoteric grottoes of Quinta da Regaleira—the very place that inspired my book The Templar Enigma.

www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

We all know the story: the first woman ever made lifted the lid on something she'd been told to leave alone, releasing sickness and sorrow and death into the world, and we've been paying for it ever since. It's the tidiest morality tale in the whole Greek canon, but almost every part of it is wrong.
In today's episode I sit down with James Richardson (no relation!) to talk about the real story behind Pandora and her jar — that's right, it wasn't even a box — and why he found this myth so inspiring that it shaped his latest golden age archaeological thriller, The Olympus Vendetta.
James has spent years retelling Greek mythology to his own sons, and he traces these stories back through Hesiod, the Bronze Age collapse and three thousand years of retellings. We cover what Pandora's myth actually says, where the Land of the Hesperides might really be, and why Heracles keeps solving his labours with his brain instead of his fists.

Grab a copy of the Olympus Vendetta HERE
Here's what it's all about:
AN ANCIENT GREEK LEGEND. AN UNHOLY ALLIANCE. AN APOCALYPTIC WEAPON.
December 1939. New York P.I. Jackson Raine thinks he's hunting kidnappers. He's wrong. A missing persons case drags him onto the trail of a secret stretching back to the dawn of civilization, and into the path of the Spanish Inquisition, returned from the shadows and allied with the Third Reich's elite occult division. Both are racing to find the Well of Sorrows — the real Pandora's Box — and the weapon sealed inside it.
From a floating fortress to the caves of Greece to a long-lost island, Jack has to unlock the past before the gods take their vengeance.
Perfect for fans of Indiana Jones, James Rollins and Andy McDermott.
Grab a copy of the Olympus Vendetta HERE

In This Episode, We Explore:
The real Pandora myth — no box, no accident. Hesiod's original Greek describes a pithos, a massive storage jar, and Pandora herself was less a careless woman than a "beautiful evil" engineered by Zeus specifically to punish mankind.
The Land of the Hesperides — the Greeks' mythical western paradise, guarded by a never-sleeping hundred-headed dragon and shifting location on the map as Greek sailors pushed further west — from the Atlas Mountains to the Canaries.
Heracles, the thinking man's hero — how the "world's strongest man" solves most of his twelve labors through cunning rather than brute force, and the surprising family tie that links him directly to Pandora's bloodline.
The Temple of Artemis as sanctuary — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, four times the size of the Parthenon, and a literal place of legal asylum where women fled persecution under a matriarchal religious order.

Episode Timestamps:
03:41 - Zeus and Prometheus
06:22 - Hesperides Paradise
09:25 - Apples Atlantis Avalon
13:40 - Heracles and Myth Variants
17:44 - Pandora Lineage Link
22:18 - Temple of Artemis
27:33 - Pandora as Propaganda
32:42 - Childhood Myth Origins
36:58 - Olympus Vendetta Overview

Links Referenced in This Episode:
James' Website

Got a Story Idea?
If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Join the Adventure Society!
Need more adventure in your life? (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) Join The Adventure Society, my weekly newsletter, where I share real-world explorations, book updates, and exclusive podcast insights. Sign up at:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/AdventureSociety

Get a Free Adventure Thriller!
A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time!
When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself.
Grab your FREE COPY of The Paris Heist here:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/Paris
Love Adventure Stories?
If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love my books—fast-paced thrillers packed with action, history, and mystery.
Check them out at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com
Thanks for tuning in! See you in the next episode of The Adventure Story Podcast. 🏆🎙
Mentioned in this episode:
Join us on the trail of the Knight's Templar
www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

For the first time ever, we're inviting you to join us on one of our adventures. And what better place to start than one of my favourite destinations… Portugal. But we’re not just going for the beaches and the wine, we’re following in the footsteps of one of history's most enigmatic organisations... the Knights Templar.
We're going on the trail of the Templars in Portugal!
Over five days and four nights, we'll guide you from the winding streets of Lisbon to the hilltop castle of Almourol, the sacred halls of Tomar's Convent of Christ, and the enchanting esoteric grottoes of Quinta da Regaleira—the very place that inspired my book The Templar Enigma.

www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

There's a volcano on the western tip of Iceland where, according to one of the greatest adventure stories ever written, the journey to the centre of the earth begins.
Jules Verne knew what he was doing.
Because Iceland isn't just a travel destination — it's a feeling, a pull, something that gets under your skin and doesn't let go, even when you're back home, even when months have passed, even when you've already been four times.
For Monika Pronczuk, though, Iceland isn't just a destination she covers on her travel blog, Plan Pack Explore. It's the one place she can't stop going back to. She first planned a family trip there in 2022 — badly, by her own admission, against a backdrop of cancelled flights, sick kids, and a volcano that erupted days before she landed. Four trips later, she still hasn't run out of places to show her family, or herself.
In this episode, we go from the touristy Golden Circle to the honor-system campsites of the highlands, from troll legends written into the landscape to the one moment that actually rattled her. If a place needs to earn its "adventure" credentials, Iceland does it in the first five minutes off the plane.

In This Episode, We Explore:
Folklore as daily life — trolls, hidden people, and the Yule Lads aren't tourist material in Iceland; they shape where roads get built and how locals talk about the landscape.
Going off the well-trodden path — a warm river you can bathe in after a 45-minute hike, Iceland's oldest swimming pool tucked into an empty valley, and a working farm with a resident reindeer named Tova.
Driving into the highlands — beginner-friendly F-roads, camper van life, and why renting a car (not a tour bus) is Monika's top recommendation.
The one time it got scary — not the remote wilderness, but a yellow wind warning five minutes from a hotel, and what it taught her about trusting the locals.

Episode Timestamps:
03:52 – Planning Backwards: A Cancelled Trip, a Volcano, and a Leap of Faith
07:34 – Trolls, Hidden People, and Roads Built Around Legends
11:04 – The First-Timer's Route: Golden Circle, Secret Lagoon, South Coast
15:03 – Camper Van Life and the Honor-System Campsites
18:02 – Off the Guidebook Path: A Warm River and a Farm Called Home
20:53 – Into the Highlands: Beginner F-Roads and Epic, Empty Landscapes
22:38 – The Only Time It Got Scary (and It Wasn't the Wilderness)
29:33 – The Twelve-Volume Mystery Series That Started It All

Links Referenced in This Episode:
Monika's Website
Monika's Instagram

Got a Story Idea?
If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Join the Adventure Society!
Need more adventure in your life? (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) Join The Adventure Society, my weekly newsletter, where I share real-world explorations, book updates, and exclusive podcast insights. Sign up at:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/AdventureSociety

Get a Free Adventure Thriller!
A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time!
When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself.
Grab your FREE COPY of The Paris Heist here:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/Paris
Love Adventure Stories?
If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love my books—fast-paced thrillers packed with action, history, and mystery.
Check them out at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com
Thanks for tuning in! See you in the next episode of The Adventure Story Podcast. 🏆🎙
Mentioned in this episode:
Join us on the trail of the Knight's Templar
www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

For the first time ever, we're inviting you to join us on one of our adventures. And what better place to start than one of my favourite destinations… Portugal. But we’re not just going for the beaches and the wine, we’re following in the footsteps of one of history's most enigmatic organisations... the Knights Templar.
We're going on the trail of the Templars in Portugal!
Over five days and four nights, we'll guide you from the winding streets of Lisbon to the hilltop castle of Almourol, the sacred halls of Tomar's Convent of Christ, and the enchanting esoteric grottoes of Quinta da Regaleira—the very place that inspired my book The Templar Enigma.

www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

Imagine an order of warrior monks so devout they prayed like priests, so wealthy that kings owed them money, and so mysterious that eight centuries on, we're still arguing about what they found beneath Jerusalem.
That's the Knights Templar, and in this episode, Templar historian Tony McMahon takes us from their founding as pilgrim bodyguards to their afterlife in Freemasonry, Nazi occultism, and Assassin's Creed.
Tony has written three books on the order and hosts the Talking Templars podcast. Nine knights from Champagne built a monastic army out of Europe's landless second sons; popes showered them with privileges; and when the French crown turned on them in 1307, the charges became a template for the witch trials that followed.
If you're drawn to stories where history and legend never quite settled, this one's for you!

In This Episode, We Explore:
Born as bodyguards — after the First Crusade took Jerusalem in 1099, nine French knights formed a monastic order to protect pilgrims on the roads — and built the template for a new kind of professional, celibate soldier.
Relics, real and rumored — the Templars' Jerusalem headquarters sat on Temple Mount, root of centuries of speculation linking them to the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, and the Shroud of Turin.
The fall — in 1307, King Philip IV had the order's leaders arrested for heresy and devil-worship, pressured the Pope into compliance, and burned the last Grand Master at the stake in 1314. Tony argues it was really about money and a dry run for the witch trials to come.
Did they survive? — from the disputed Larmenius Charter to Portugal's Order of Christ to Otto Rahn's doomed grail-hunt for Himmler, the Templars' afterlife runs through Freemasonry, the Age of Discovery, and pop culture from Walter Scott to Assassin's Creed to the Jedi.

Check out Tony's book on the Knight's Templar here

Have you read my, the Templar Enigma? Read it here
A TEMPLAR CURSE
AN ANCIENT PROPHECY
A PULSE-POUNDING RACE AGAINST TIME
In 1314, Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master uttered a curse as he burned at the stake. Within months, both men responsible for his downfall, the King of France, and the Pope, lay dead.
Centuries later, a Templar descendant discovers the key to unleashing the curse's power: The legendary Seal of Solomon. Learning of the relic’s power, he plans a cataclysmic event which will return civilization to the Dark Ages.
Enter Eden Black. As the countdown begins, Eden is thrust into a web of intrigue that spans centuries, from the final days of the Knights Templar to the shadowy activities of a modern secret society.
But, learning just how deep this conspiracy goes, and who exactly is involved, Eden realizes things are much more deadly that she first thought.
From the crypt of a long-dead templar knight, to the shifting sands of the Sahara, and on to the palaces of Portugal, she uncovers shocking truths about her own destiny and the role she must play in the coming apocalypse.
With heart-pounding action, characters you’ll fall in love with, and a plot that will leave you breathless, The Templar Enigma is a must-read for fans of Dan Brown, Steve Berry, Ernest Dempsey, and Nick Thacker.

Episode Timestamps:
02:03 – Ground Zero: Who Were the Knights Templar and Why Were They Formed?
07:00 – Jerusalem Falls, Pilgrims Die, and the Templars Get a Mission
10:00 – Temple Mount and the Birth of the Treasure Rumours
12:00 – The Holy Grail, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the Templizer
16:56 – Otto Rahn, the Nazis, and the Doomed Hunt for the Grail
19:38 – 1307: King Philip IV Moves Against the Order
22:52 – Did the Templars Survive? The Larmenius Charter and the Neo-Templar Split
26:26 – Templars in Pop Culture: Walter Scott, Assassin's Creed, and the Jedi
31:52 – The Order of Christ, Henry the Navigator, and the Age of Discovery
33:41 – Tony's Favorite Legend: Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail at Glastonbury

Links Referenced in This Episode:
Tony's Website
Tony's Books

Got a Story Idea?
If you have a mystery, legend, or adventure you’d like me to explore, drop a comment or email me at hello@lukerichardsonauthor.com. I’d love to hear from you!
Join the Adventure Society!
Need more adventure in your life? (And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?) Join The Adventure Society, my weekly newsletter, where I share real-world explorations, book updates, and exclusive podcast insights. Sign up at:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/AdventureSociety

Get a Free Adventure Thriller!
A missing Picasso... A master thief... A thrilling race against time!
When a priceless Picasso disappears in Paris, legendary thief Bernard Moreau is the prime suspect. But as two unlikely allies—Eden Black and Adriana Villa—hunt him down, the chase turns deadly. It’s a race through the shadowed streets of Paris, where every twist is as unpredictable as the city itself.
Grab your FREE COPY of The Paris Heist here:
LukeRichardsonAuthor.com/Paris
Love Adventure Stories?
If you enjoyed today’s episode, you’ll love my books—fast-paced thrillers packed with action, history, and mystery.
Check them out at LukeRichardsonAuthor.com
Thanks for tuning in! See you in the next episode of The Adventure Story Podcast. 🏆🎙
Mentioned in this episode:
Join us on the trail of the Knight's Templar
www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour

For the first time ever, we're inviting you to join us on one of our adventures. And what better place to start than one of my favourite destinations… Portugal. But we’re not just going for the beaches and the wine, we’re following in the footsteps of one of history's most enigmatic organisations... the Knights Templar.
We're going on the trail of the Templars in Portugal!
Over five days and four nights, we'll guide you from the winding streets of Lisbon to the hilltop castle of Almourol, the sacred halls of Tomar's Convent of Christ, and the enchanting esoteric grottoes of Quinta da Regaleira—the very place that inspired my book The Templar Enigma.

www.lukerichardsonauthor.com/templartour