“…this road trip podcast offers a unique opportunity to give something back by sharing the Swedish story of a country built with bricks from all parts of the world. Because these are the ‘Letters from America’, about America - to America.”

I am Martin Wærn, a senior photographer, writer, and podcast producer, with twenty-odd years of remote work and light travels.

Starting out as a broadcast technician at a local branch of Swedish Radio in my early twenties, then moving into commercial radio as a reporter and sound engineer, I eventually landed a job as a copywriter and marketing manager at Sweden’s largest private health and medical company, Feelgood Svenska AB.

In July 2004, five years in, I started my own creative bureau, focusing on telling clients’ stories through photography, videography, and sound. I’ve portrayed people, makers, horses, and places, reaching a peak during the pandemic - when everything we did in life went online - by being assigned to film and produce podcast episodes and video shorts for Aftonbladet, one of Sweden’s most prominent news outlets, collaborating with its contracted influencers, resulting in nearly 100 productions over a two-year period.

I joined my first band when I was fifteen, played a featured role in a German film, and appeared in countless commercials and catalogs. I’ve stumbled through mistakes and friendships, performed in crowded venues, spilled my heart out in front of empty seats, and sold art to a man I never met.

- And I’ve been brought up with never-ending tales of post-war America.

I’ve heard every story of my father’s youthful transformation from Swedish sailor to an aspiring American artist and actor, each unfiltered brag from my grandfather’s brother and his Californian bakery, and I’ve read Christmas cards from distant cousins and their ever-so-proud mothers.

We watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ride across our Saturday-night television dinners, felt the anger of Hackman raging through the seventies, and the joy of the Ingalls family as our Sunday matinees.

I fell headfirst into the reels of my uncle’s View-Master, with its tales of giant redwoods, ancient canyons, and roadside diners, clapped to the backbeat of Eddie Cochran screaming through a broken car radio, and learned every word of Springsteen’s “Racing in the Street” - and I still watch reruns of Bogart-Bacall.

The world stopped for my mother when she first heard about the Dallas shooting in November of ’63, and years later, when a single shot rang out through Memphis on April 4th, 1968 - it echoed its way to the day I was born, and I still carry my name in the preacher’s honor.

The United States of America is a friend I have come to know in my heart, and this road trip podcast offers a unique opportunity to give something back by sharing the Swedish story of a country built with bricks from all parts of the world.

- Because these are the letters from America, about America - to America.