TV show lands newspaper reporter in excitement around nation

There's no delicate way to put this: On the first day of work on his new job, newspaper writer Geoff Edgers castrated a bull calf.

Later that day, he ate the harvested organ after it was sliced, battered, and deep-fried. If that wasn't enough, he also had to eat a still-beating rattlesnake heart.

Edgers is writer, co-creator, and host of a new weekly Travel Channel show, Edge of America, that takes the Boston Globe reporter on "the great American road trip" to experience firsthand some of the things Americans like to do for fun.

Set in a different state each week, including Minnesota, Oregon, California, and, yes, Pennsylvania, the 13-episode first season premieres Tuesday at 9 p.m.

The debut puts Edgers right smack in the middle of the Union, in Oklahoma.

And the bulls.

The memorable episode takes Edgers to the annual Calf Fry in Stillwater, Okla., a town of 46,000 located 67 miles north of Oklahoma City, to take part in a ritual he says cowboys have enjoyed for 300 years.

Calf bulls are castrated to keep them from mauling each other, Edgers says on the show. Not given to waste, cattle ranchers cooked up the remainder in a dish also popular in Colorado, where it's called Rocky Mountain oysters.

"It was my first day on the first day of shooting on the first TV show I had ever done," Edgers said in a phone interview. An arts reporter for the Globe for the last 11 years, he had his most dangerous assignment to date covering the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

"I guess it's maybe right to do that on the first day," Edgers added, "if you are going to do something that was so in-depth and so involved and so totally different from what you know."

Edgers, 42, was tapped to create Edge of America by Travel Channel executive David Padrusch, who was impressed by the reporter's 2010 documentary feature Do It Again, which chronicled Edgers' attempts to reunite British rock legends the Kinks.

Edgers said the TV series had been far more demanding than he had imagined, taking him away for long stretches from the Concord, Mass., home he shares with his wife, Carlene, who teaches journalism at Northeastern University, and their children, Lila, 10, and Cal, 2.

Edgers had just flown in from Nevada, where he shot the season's 11th episode, and he was back at his desk at the Globe, where he maintains his day job.

"I cover the orchestra or the art museum, and my job is to stay out of the story, to report it from a distance," Edgers said.

Edge of America, a half-hour show that has Edgers check out three events per episode, demanded that he take a 180-degree turn and throw himself into the middle of the action - whether it's speed-eating haggis, wrestling alligators, or swimming in a freshwater spring dressed up as a merman.

"It's sort of like reporting by immersion," Edgers said. "I really do something that's outside my comfort zone."

It's not often an arts reporter has to sign waivers in case of death or injury to do his job, as Edgers did when he went one-to-one with a rattlesnake at the Mangum Rattlesnake Derby in Oklahoma.

Sporting black-rimmed glasses and rocking a hipster-nerd Buddy Holly-Elvis Costello vibe, Edgers looks terrified as he tries to snatch a rattler with a pair of tongs. Later, he watches as a cook beheads the snake and take out its beating heart, which Edgers snatches up for a quick swallow.

Less dangerous, perhaps, but equally challenging, is Edgers' attempt in the Pennsylvania episode to eat a traditional Scottish haggis at the Celtic Classic in Bethlehem, which he says draws 250,000 people over a weekend. A sausage-like creature made up of ground sheep entrails stuffed in an actual sheep stomach, the dish defeats Edgers.

The Pennsylvania episode, set to air later in the season, also has Edgers take part in the George A. Romero-inspired Pittsburgh Zombie Fest and a demolition derby in Hamburg, in Berks County.

Edgers is obsessed with authenticity, with keeping things real and with showing respect for his subjects.  

"A lot of shows on TV will have someone chewing [something funky] and them make a funny face," he said. "There's so much in our culture that makes fun of people, people like the quote-unquote hillbillies.

"And that bothers me."