8980: Book of Travelers is an attempt to rediscover and celebrate our collective humanity in the face of deep political and cultural divisions. The day after the 2016 presidential election, Gabriel Kahane set out on an 8,980 mile train trip around the continental U.S. with no phone or internet connection. The song cycle/monodrama that resulted etches a series of intimate character studies, people whom Kahane almost certainly would not have met within the confines of our silo’d digital culture. He asks the audience to contemplate the varied scars of our collective past, while at the same time offering a seed of hope that when we step outside of our digital lives, we may have more in common with our fellow Americans than we’re often led to believe.