The most popular storyteller of our time, author James Patterson, shares insights he gained from talking to the people who work behind the scenes to make Las Vegas America's most extravagant tourist mecca. And a tour guide from Morocco invites us to imagine a very different type of desert experience as he describes sleeping under the dazzling night sky — the same that's guided travelers for millennia — that stretches over North Africa's vast Sahara.

• James Patterson, author of "What Really Happens in Vegas" (Little, Brown)
• Morocco-based tour guide Lucas Peters, author of the "Moon Morocco" guidebook (Avalon Travel)

• James Patterson co-authored "What Really Happens in Vegas" with Vanity Fair correspondent Mark Seal. James was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 2019.
• Lucas Peters writes and photographs the Moon Morocco guidebooks, and is a tour director at Journey Beyond Travel in Morocco.
• Lucas writes about UNESCO World Heritage sites in Morocco, including a number of places that he thinks also merit the designation.
• Rick's essay about what he found at the Bay of Kotor on his first trip to Montenegro is included among the observations he includes in his book "For the Love of Europe."