The Real Americans connects two worlds that usually prefer to stay apart: the liberal, achingly hip, moral-relativism of gentrified city life and the conservative, absolutist, and often hostile populism that Dan found overflowing in small-town America during his 100-day trip in 2009. Living out of his van and sleeping in backyards and Walmart parking lots, he shared meals and conversation with cowboys, coal miners, soldiers, rural drug dealers, itinerant preachers, closeted gay fundamentalists and creation theory experts.