, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la [ drums ] ♪♪ >> over the years i've let a lot of extraordinary landscapes recede into a blur outside my windows. i've looked, maybe seen, maybe noticed, then gone. we all carry different experiences inside us. we see things differently, don't we? madagascar -- exotic, unspoiled paradise or microcosm for the end of times. antananarivo, tana for short, madagascar's crowded, chaotic capital city. >> how are you doing, man? base camp. >> wow, that's quite a rain. ♪ i don't know. i'm not sure if i can be in front of the camera. >> just ignore them. >> i'm so used to like controlling everything. >> darren aronofsky, director of the films "pi," "requiem for a dream," "the wrestler," "black swan," and as it would turn out sort of appropriate to our location, "noah." he asked me if he could go along on a trip with us. i said where do you want to go? >> so madagascar. i knew almost nothing about it. i knew it was an animated film that i've seen many times in my life. >> i guess it's one of the more extreme

, la, la, ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >>>miles, all those airports. infinite variety of awful plumbing. it was time for something low impact. so off to jamaica. this is the first time i have ever driven a car on the wrong side of the road. i mean, knowingly. how hard can it be? oh, i get to pass on the right too. whoo-hoo-hoo. thankfully we have a roll bar. this time a different angle. you probably know of jamaica as a vacation paradise. it is worth mentioning this is a divided country and has been in one form or another since the days of slavery. there is a small minority who control most everything. and then there is the poorer, generally darker skinned majority, less connected. left out. jamaican cuisine, a lot of it still reflects this conflicted history. bread fruit. salt fish. this was slave food, cheap, long lasting, filling. introduced basically as feed. day one. first order of business. get some jerk chicken. can you blame me? no, i think not. ♪ oh, that's good. yeah, yeah, i know this routine, believe me. it's brown

, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la ♪ sha la, la, la, la, la >>> the western myththe american imagination. none of us can escape it. for ages, we identified ourselves with the image of the lone cowboy, the perception of frontier values, self-sufficiency, rugged individualism, the freedom of wide open spaces. few places in america still manage to embody that mythic landscape of the imagination like the state of new mexico. what does freedom mean? it's different things to everybody, it seems, but something about this place manages to capture the overlap between a whole hell of a lot of very different cultures. old route 66 runs through new mexico like a collapsed vein, right through santa fe and albuquerque. it must have seemed like magic once. families loaded in a massive chrome and steel chariots with powerful v-8 engines and took off down that blacktop highway. they slept in whimsical motor lodges and bungalows, swam in kidney-shaped pools. then it all went redundant. route 66 was decommissioned, chopped up, largely forgotten, except by desperate and lazy travel s

♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la ♪ sha-la-la-la >>> it's where nearly everything american and great camee world wanted, made here. the heart, the soul, the beat of an industrial cultural super power. a magnet for everyone with a dream of a better future. from eastern europe to the deep south. american dream? you came here. >> the one straight ahead with the green roof? >> the rococo building, completely empty. >> unbelievable. >> the white one is being rehabbed. there's money coming in. the one on the right is completely empty. the great pyramid with the spire on top sold for $5 million. >> $5 million for that? you can't buy a garage in the hamptons for that. >> $5 million for a skyscraper. >> it is post-apocalyptic. i mean, it's like a science fiction film. what the hell happened here? >> well, it is post-apocalyptic. except for the fact there are several hundred thousand people living here. >> detroit, 2013. charlie la duff is a writer, journalist, television reporter. he grew up here. >> it used to be two million people. that was rubber. that guy was steel. that guy was a doctor. this

, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la ♪ sha, la, la, la, la, la ♪ >>> there'sntic. it's majestic. i love the beach. pretty much had my first everything on a beach. you name it, first time i did it, beach. i was miserable in love, happy in love, alternately, as only a 17-year-old could be. this is where i lived. very happy summer in the early '70s, and that was my room on the left. it's an amazing spot if you think about it, a bunch of knuckle heads working as dish washers, pizza servers. we could work on a beach like this. happier, stupider times. you know, i can still hear the play list, the brothers johnson. if you put on marvin gaye right now, i'd burst into tears. what do you do? you're young, you go to the beach, you know, you get laid, and you get high. it was here, all the way out at the tip of cape cod, provincetown, massachusetts, where the pilgrims first landed. and it was where i first landed. 1972, washed in a town with a head full of orange sunshine and a few friends. provincetown, a wonderland of tolerance, long-time tradition of accepting artists

la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la >> i can go to the desert, but i am not going to gett that's part of the whole experience of the desert. it ain't friendly, it ain't nice, it ain't good, you know. you're out here, you know, a half a mile, doesn't matter if you're a half a mile out or 20 miles out, there's no reason to walk a mile further. you're already in infinite desolation. sin city was true, it was real. part of moving out here, you were never going to see the family again. i'm moving to vegas and i ain't coming to see you and you ain't coming to see me. that's the character of the city. it really was the pit of america. it wasn't somebody came out here and make a million bucks, it was i'm going to come out here and survive and you all ain't going to bug me at all back home. in vegas, there's winners and losers. god knows i've been both. in a place like this, where you can lose your shirt on the unlucky turn of a card, you need a friend. and for my sins, i got ruhlman. currently evading prosecution in just about every jurisdiction from his hometown cleveland to gra