Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: today we're gonna be talking about travel. This is an
Speaker 1: interesting subject to think about right now because of the
Speaker 1: context of the ongoing pandemic. You know, at least here
Speaker 1: in the United States in early July. Of course, the
Speaker 1: risk from coronavirus is still clear. It's very profound, and
Speaker 1: so this has put some obvious limitations on people's designs
Speaker 1: for summer travel, like whether it's actually worth the risk
Speaker 1: at all to travel right now, and if you do travel,
Speaker 1: how to mitigate those risks. Of course, if you are
Speaker 1: traveling this summer, you should consult your local health guidelines.
Speaker 1: It'll probably include advice like avoiding crowds all the stuff
Speaker 1: you're familiar with by now, keeping your distance from people
Speaker 1: outside your household, wearing a mask if you're in public,
Speaker 1: you might need to quarantine before or afterwards, depending on
Speaker 1: where you are, and so forth. But in addition to
Speaker 1: these practical considerations, it's the time of year that a
Speaker 1: lot of people would traditionally be thinking about summer vacation season.
Speaker 1: You know, they be thinking about how this is when
Speaker 1: they would be trying to get out of the house
Speaker 1: and go somewhere and see something new, and that underlying
Speaker 1: urge might still be there even as we grapple with
Speaker 1: all the risks and important precautions that you would need
Speaker 1: to take if you were actually going to travel right now.
Speaker 1: And this has gotten me thinking about what travel means
Speaker 1: to us and why it is that our brains keep
Speaker 1: trying to compel us to visit far off places known
Speaker 1: and unknown. Yeah, and to your point, though, it is
Speaker 1: a weird time to think about travel. I was in
Speaker 1: a like a zoom call with some friends last week
Speaker 1: and one of one of them said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do next week because
Speaker 1: I need to travel. Actually, no, I'm not traveling. I'm
Speaker 1: just going. I'm getting in the car and going from
Speaker 1: one place to another. And we're all a little that's travel.
Speaker 1: That sounds a lot like travel, but but we mean
Speaker 1: different things by travel and um, and we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into that a bit here in this episode,
Speaker 1: because yeah, human travel is really fascinating when you think
Speaker 1: about it. The act of simply traversing distances, or say,
Speaker 1: traversing vast distances, is far from a distinctly human thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: consider like some of the more outstanding cases, like the
Speaker 1: Eastern gray whale, for example, which regularly journeys close to
Speaker 1: fourteen thousand miles from Russian waters to Mexico and then
Speaker 1: back again. Yeah, great white sharks or another example that
Speaker 1: swim just these unimaginable distances. I was just reading some
Speaker 1: reports from about a great white shark named Lydia that
Speaker 1: was tagged with a tracking device off the coast of
Speaker 1: Florida in March, and then about a year later she
Speaker 1: had traveled something like twenty thousand miles across the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: you know, crossing over the mid Atlantic Ridge, and was
Speaker 1: heading towards basically around the UK. Yeah. Another example that
Speaker 1: frequently comes up monarch butterflies. They take a five hour
Speaker 1: and five mile journey from central Mexico and California up
Speaker 1: into North America. It kind of goes in different phases,
Speaker 1: but eventually they're you know, they're getting up as far
Speaker 1: north as the Great Lakes. And then in the the
Speaker 1: avian world, we have a number of amazing examples, but
Speaker 1: the most extreme is that of the Arctic Turn, which
Speaker 1: flies a record forty four thousand miles. So these are
Speaker 1: just a few examples of some amazing journeys undertaken by
Speaker 1: individuals or groups. But then there's also the steady tide
Speaker 1: of migration that enables organisms to spread out across the planet.
Speaker 1: In humans are of course a prime example of this,
Speaker 1: with our earliest waves of archaic human migration beginning what
Speaker 1: an estimated two million years ago, and in waves we
Speaker 1: proceeded over the course of our history to spread across
Speaker 1: the planet, finding a foothold in all but the most
Speaker 1: inhospitable of environments. Yeah, and there's something interesting to think
Speaker 1: about when comparing human travel to other long traveling organisms,
Speaker 1: which is that humans travel mostly on land. Like obviously
Speaker 1: we travel by air and c. Two. But when you
Speaker 1: think about most of human history, a lot of the
Speaker 1: traveling is on land. And if you look at just
Speaker 1: a list of like the farthest traveling organisms, you will
Speaker 1: see a lot of magnificent beasts that travel either by
Speaker 1: water or by air. And these are very different methods
Speaker 1: of travel, right. These are both methods that allow you
Speaker 1: to do unique things like drift along in currents of
Speaker 1: the fluid whether that's air or water that move naturally
Speaker 1: through the larger media. You can't really do the same
Speaker 1: thing on land, right unless you're like riding a mud
Speaker 1: slide down a mountain, which is not safe and not recommended.
Speaker 1: Uh And and so that makes that makes land travel
Speaker 1: kind of different than the other ones. Uh. And of
Speaker 1: course there are other animals that do this. There there
Speaker 1: are some epic walkers on earth, like the blue will
Speaker 1: to beast in Africa, or the caribou in North America,
Speaker 1: the ladder of which sometimes migrates something like forty kilometers annually. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's incredible. I guess you could say that that flying
Speaker 1: and uh and traveling by boat for the passenger anyway,
Speaker 1: it is kind of like you're you're taking walking and
Speaker 1: via the use of vehicles, applying it to the air
Speaker 1: the sea. But but yeah, for the most part, we
Speaker 1: are we are walkers. We have to have these these
Speaker 1: fabulous vehicles that allow us to do anything more. I
Speaker 1: do enjoy those thought experiments of like running, how fast
Speaker 1: are you going? If you're running forward in a plane
Speaker 1: cabin that's already flying too fast because you should sit down. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: of so human societies of what they've spread out across
Speaker 1: the world, but of course they continue to move around
Speaker 1: for the same reasons that animal species do for resources,
Speaker 1: for mating, for shelter. Hunter gatherer societies especially had to
Speaker 1: follow the natural ebb and flow of available resources where
Speaker 1: food could be found, growing, where the prey animals traveled
Speaker 1: and therefore, you know, you have to follow them and
Speaker 1: hunt them. And there were also associated sites that offered shelter,
Speaker 1: water or say in some cases something like hot spring,
Speaker 1: something that was uh, you know, a desirable resource to
Speaker 1: have on hand. And it wasn't until the agricultural revolution
Speaker 1: that humans really were able to put themselves more in
Speaker 1: a position to set down roots. But still many groups
Speaker 1: remain nomadic by necessity. Shepherds, you know, for sure, But
Speaker 1: also you know, think of fisher people who still have
Speaker 1: to get in their fantastic vehicles of old and travel
Speaker 1: to where the fish can be found, and with surplus
Speaker 1: stocks of agriculture. With the rise of cities, we also
Speaker 1: see the traveling conqueror, the the occupation of cities and
Speaker 1: advances in sailing technology that enabled people to expand even further.
Speaker 1: But what about traveling for reasons not directly associated with food?
Speaker 1: Shelter and reproduction. This leads us to a particularly human
Speaker 1: aspect of travel UH that that ultimately brings us to
Speaker 1: our modern idea of travel and especially things like vacation travel.
Speaker 1: But it has its roots in religious travel, sacred travel,
Speaker 1: and pilgrimage into sing I was reading um paper by
Speaker 1: Lutt's uh kilber Um. This is a titled Paradigms of
Speaker 1: Travel from Medieval Pilgrimage to the postmodern Virtual tour poised
Speaker 1: in two thousand six Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys UH,
Speaker 1: and the author points out that religiously motivated or sacred
Speaker 1: travel to sacred sites might well be the oldest and
Speaker 1: most prevalent type of travel and human history, and may
Speaker 1: have factored into the beginnings of the world's oldest religions.
Speaker 1: Religious travel is the oldest form of what is sometimes
Speaker 1: referred to as non economic travel, and we see evidence
Speaker 1: of this going back even to Neolithic times. I was
Speaker 1: reading about this in UH Intercultural Pilgrimage, Identity and the
Speaker 1: Actual Age and the Ancient Near East by Joy mccorriston,
Speaker 1: published in Excavating Pilgrimage from Seen and the author points
Speaker 1: out that we see examples of temporary gathering uh sacrifice
Speaker 1: and feast that are quote commemorated in a memorial roal
Speaker 1: or monument with subsequent revisits and these day back to
Speaker 1: Neolithic times. Likewise, in Africa we see evidence from eight
Speaker 1: thousand years ago of cattle sacrifice in quote mortuary linked
Speaker 1: feasting that they commemorated with stone monuments. Yeah, religious pilgrimage
Speaker 1: is an interesting thing to consider, and there are multiple
Speaker 1: models for thinking about the cultural role of pilgrimage and
Speaker 1: how it first emerges in history or I guess in prehistory.
Speaker 1: Given the examples you decided, one interesting idea that I
Speaker 1: came across was in the works of the influential anthropologists
Speaker 1: Victor and Edith Turner in their nineteen seventy eight book
Speaker 1: Image and Pilgrimage and Christian Culture that was from Columbia
Speaker 1: University Press. And in this book they observe a lot
Speaker 1: of things about Christian pilgrimage sites. So they do like
Speaker 1: observation of the behaviors of pilgrim's uh it sites from
Speaker 1: Mexico to Ireland to France, and they end up characterizing
Speaker 1: these religious pilgrimages as what they call a limonoid phenomenon. Now,
Speaker 1: this was interesting to me, but it also gets kind
Speaker 1: of complex and took me a while to understand, and
Speaker 1: I think I've got it figured out. So here are
Speaker 1: the basics. Uh So, first of all, the idea of
Speaker 1: a limonoid phenomenon plays on the original idea of a
Speaker 1: liminal experience, which is a term that was coined by
Speaker 1: a folklorist named Arnold van gennep Uh And the word
Speaker 1: liminal here comes from the word for threshold. So a
Speaker 1: liminal experience is part of an initiation or a rite
Speaker 1: of passage, in which a person temporarily steps outside of
Speaker 1: normal social structures to undergo or signal a change, and
Speaker 1: then rejoins the social structure on the other side of
Speaker 1: the experience having changed. So there's who you are before
Speaker 1: the change that's preliminal, and then there's who you are
Speaker 1: after the change that's postliminal, and then in between there's
Speaker 1: this spended middle state, the liminal stage. And this might
Speaker 1: be in a practical example, say the time that a
Speaker 1: person physically separates themselves from the rest of their tribe
Speaker 1: to do rituals for some part of a right of passage,
Speaker 1: and in the context that they studied. The Turners argue
Speaker 1: that this middle liminal status is reinforced by the fact
Speaker 1: that people join in what they call a community toss.
Speaker 1: It's this sense of community with other pilgrims that comes
Speaker 1: with a freeing sense of equality and a shedding of
Speaker 1: previously existing social structures and differences. Though I have noted
Speaker 1: that several critics disagree with the Turner's characterization here, citing
Speaker 1: examples of well, you know, there are times when regular
Speaker 1: power structures are still expressed among in between pilgrims to
Speaker 1: religious sites. It may be that if this equalizing community
Speaker 1: power of community toss during pilgrimage really exists, it might
Speaker 1: be more common in some types of pill rimage than others.
Speaker 1: And just one example that there was a paper I
Speaker 1: found by a scholar named Darlene Yushka which does an
Speaker 1: amazing job of making this critical point just in its title,
Speaker 1: which is whose turn is it to cook? But to
Speaker 1: bring it back to the idea of so. So they're
Speaker 1: arguing that pilgrimage might be one of these liminal experiences,
Speaker 1: this like in in the middle state of this change process,
Speaker 1: except they call it not quite liminal. They say it's lemonoid.
Speaker 1: And so lemonoid applies to experiences that are somewhat like
Speaker 1: liminal experiences in structure, but they're more optional, and they're
Speaker 1: less explicitly transformative of your station in society, so they
Speaker 1: might be seen as simply an internally transformative experience rather
Speaker 1: than as a marker of an external change in status.
Speaker 1: And in a lot of religious tractions, pilgrimage is honored
Speaker 1: but not required, you know, so that would make it
Speaker 1: more limonoid than liminal. And I was reading a review
Speaker 1: of the Turner's work by the anthropologist Daniel are Gross,
Speaker 1: and so he has kind of a mixed opinion. He
Speaker 1: thinks the book is valuable, but that he also has
Speaker 1: some criticisms of the idea of communitas being a universal
Speaker 1: But he pulls an interesting quote from the Turner's book
Speaker 1: describing the role of of the of the Christian pilgrimage,
Speaker 1: which says, quote in the paradigmatic Christian pilgrimage, the initiatory
Speaker 1: quality of the process is given priority, though it is
Speaker 1: initiation to and not through a threshold. So, if I
Speaker 1: understand correctly in their view based on all of the
Speaker 1: observations they've made of Christian pilgrimages, the symbolic message of
Speaker 1: a Christian pilgrimage most often might be not you are
Speaker 1: now changed, but welcome to the process of change. That's interesting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's something we can we can continue
Speaker 1: to take with us in this discussion and apply to
Speaker 1: uh to to travel itself. The idea of travel as
Speaker 1: a a process of change, which we probably don't think
Speaker 1: about it as such, but I think whenever we engage
Speaker 1: in meaningful travel uh it is a process of change.
Speaker 1: We should arrive in a different place and end in
Speaker 1: at least a slightly transformed state of mind. Like even
Speaker 1: if it's as simple as well, I have to drive
Speaker 1: up to uh, you know, um to my parents house,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna listen to this audio book on the way,
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna catch up on my podcast, Like I'm
Speaker 1: somehow going to arrive there in an enhanced state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're exactly right, And I think it makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense to think about that enhanced state
Speaker 1: that travel triggers as essentially an openness to change or
Speaker 1: a potential for change. So I think it's pretty safe
Speaker 1: to say that, as far as non economic travel goes,
Speaker 1: sacred journeys are ultimately that the predecessor to modern vacation travel. Now,
Speaker 1: a particular line is often drawn to the link between
Speaker 1: medieval pilgrimage and also some of the economics of medieval
Speaker 1: pilgrimage with modern travel. You know, you see um advances
Speaker 1: in banking and so forth to take place during that time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course it's also important to note that the
Speaker 1: pilgrimage is still, you know, very much a part of
Speaker 1: modern travel traditions, not only in the overt case of
Speaker 1: you know, people going on an actual pilgrimage to holy site, say,
Speaker 1: you know, to to Mecca on the hodge, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, but also holy sites are often of significance
Speaker 1: to the modern traveler, even if they themselves are not, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, believers of that particular faith or practitioners of
Speaker 1: that particular faith. Like if you you know, if you
Speaker 1: go to a particular vacation destination and there is an
Speaker 1: ancient temple, there's a good chance you're gonna want to
Speaker 1: check it out to whatever degree is appropriate. This actually
Speaker 1: triggers something for me that I want to come back
Speaker 1: to when we talk about Roman tourism. Yes, Roman tourism,
Speaker 1: because because this is also key we again we can
Speaker 1: we can look to examples of sacred travel, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: far back in history. But in terms of looking for
Speaker 1: examples of travel that more closely resemble durn vacation travel,
Speaker 1: there are some interesting examples from the Greek and Roman periods. Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, in our episode uh that we have this
Speaker 1: is from what a couple of years ago, I think
Speaker 1: we did an episode on the singing Colossi of Memnon.
Speaker 1: We mentioned how the then fourteen hundred year old pair
Speaker 1: of Egyptian statues were visited by Roman travelers in the
Speaker 1: first century. See they you know, they've come to experience them,
Speaker 1: to to hear this unique singing that they that that
Speaker 1: that they produced. Uh. And then they inscribed their names
Speaker 1: on the statue as well to show that they had
Speaker 1: been there. So rude, I mean, I guess they just
Speaker 1: must have had a different attitude towards the preservation of
Speaker 1: historical artifacts and monuments. But man, yeah, graffiti on this
Speaker 1: like hundreds of years old monument. Yeah. And it's worth
Speaker 1: noting that they did seem to equate these statues with
Speaker 1: the Greek figure Memnon. Uh. But the colossi were not
Speaker 1: really of the religious value to the Roman travelers. As
Speaker 1: far as we can tell. Uh, and of course they
Speaker 1: were of Egyptian origin anyway. On one hand, I think
Speaker 1: that is true, But also that had me thinking about
Speaker 1: another tangent, about the significance of sites that we visit
Speaker 1: and how our orientation toward culture and religion kind of
Speaker 1: uh mitigates whatever that that relationship is. Uh. Something that
Speaker 1: I think is possibly interesting about understanding the Pagan Roman
Speaker 1: mindset is that well, at least compared to us, at
Speaker 1: least here in the United States, for a lot of US,
Speaker 1: our idea of religious significance is primarily through either kind
Speaker 1: of a secular lens of just sort of disinterested observation,
Speaker 1: or perhaps through an exclusive monotheistic lens, So that when
Speaker 1: we visit sites or monuments that were of religious significance
Speaker 1: to other cultures in history, I think it's possible that
Speaker 1: we're more likely to just think what that was somebody
Speaker 1: else's belief. I don't believe that, but this is in tristing.
Speaker 1: But the Pagan Romans were I think somewhat more religiously omnivorous.
Speaker 1: Their world was full of God's and I think too
Speaker 1: many of them it would have been perfectly plausible to
Speaker 1: go somewhere and find out about yet another god that
Speaker 1: you weren't aware of before. Uh So, I think it
Speaker 1: might have been possible for a pagan Roman to wonder,
Speaker 1: you know, to to see a statue made by the
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptians that had some religious significance to them and
Speaker 1: wonder if something is going on here that's worth investigating
Speaker 1: or knowing more about, at least more than than many
Speaker 1: of us would would feel that way. And if there's
Speaker 1: any truth to this, it would make traveling to a
Speaker 1: foreign land with a great history a different kind of
Speaker 1: experience I think like it would be. You know, you
Speaker 1: might also discover things that are actively relevant in the world.
Speaker 1: I know that the Romans generally had a respect for
Speaker 1: antiquity when it came to religious traditions. Uh though, I'd
Speaker 1: be interested to hear from listeners with expertise in ancient
Speaker 1: Roman culture and religion to find out what they think
Speaker 1: of about this. Now, this is a great point, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that perhaps the Romans traveled more um with kind of
Speaker 1: a spiritual mindset, you know, as opposed to a religious one. Um.
Speaker 1: I you know, as as a traveler who who does
Speaker 1: like to go to to religious sides. I mean I
Speaker 1: always think it is kind of an a rewarding exercise
Speaker 1: to sort of engage in that kind of spiritual mindset,
Speaker 1: you know, to try to at least to the degree
Speaker 1: that is culturally appropriate, you know, to to experience it. Uh,
Speaker 1: almost as if you were a believer, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Um, though it's gonna you know, obviously it's
Speaker 1: gonna vary depending on what is what is culturally appropriate,
Speaker 1: what feels appropriate given given the space. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: you go to some of these these places and you're
Speaker 1: engaging with such such history and like the and the
Speaker 1: level of belief is is tangible because a lot of
Speaker 1: times you go to a religious side and there are
Speaker 1: practitioners of the religion. They're maintaining the grounds or the
Speaker 1: facilities in addition to visiting it, and it it creates
Speaker 1: this this sacred air that you can't help but breathe in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Now, another issue just whether or not
Speaker 1: it's appropriate and all that, it's also just a question
Speaker 1: of what to what extent it's possible for you to
Speaker 1: like get into that alternate mindset. I know it's easier
Speaker 1: for some people than others, But yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a wonderful exercise. All right. On that note, we're going
Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but when we come back
Speaker 1: we will discuss um the work of a Greek author
Speaker 1: that's that is sometimes pointed to as the world's first
Speaker 1: travel guide. Thank alright, we're back, so yeah. A particular
Speaker 1: note here is a Greek geographer, Pausanias, who lived u
Speaker 1: one Tin through one a d c. And some indeed
Speaker 1: point to to him as being the world's first travel writer.
Speaker 1: He wrote a book in the second century titled Hello
Speaker 1: dos Paregus, or the Description of Greece. It is essentially
Speaker 1: a travel guide. UM. I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: an Atlas Obscura article titled the World's first travel Writer
Speaker 1: was a guy from Ancient Greece by Lauren Young and
Speaker 1: she she chats with Maria Pretzler, professor of Ancient History
Speaker 1: at Swansea University in Wales and the author um of
Speaker 1: a book about Passonias Pasanias travel writing in ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: and uh. The author says that you know, there were
Speaker 1: smaller guides at the time, but Passonia's book is the
Speaker 1: largest and the most comprehensive that survives to this day.
Speaker 1: And also it still works. It's still functions as a
Speaker 1: travel guide. You know, obviously the world has changed, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the places and even the landmarks are
Speaker 1: still there. Interesting Now. The full text can be found online,
Speaker 1: and I invite everyone to go check it out because
Speaker 1: it's it's very recognizable and travel literature. This is not
Speaker 1: an example where you're looking at ancient writings and you're
Speaker 1: having to really, you know, squint a bid and you know,
Speaker 1: take a few EAPs of faith to identify it as
Speaker 1: to travel writing. No, you read it and it reads
Speaker 1: more or less like modern travel guides. In fact, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend when you read it, uh, make sure that
Speaker 1: the voice that you hear in your head is tuned
Speaker 1: to your favorite TV travel guide, maybe Rick Steves or someone,
Speaker 1: because it's exactly the sort of thing Rick Steves would say,
Speaker 1: you know, would be like like Passonius is saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna around this next corner, and then
Speaker 1: you're gonna see the city of such and such, and
Speaker 1: out here you're gonna see the sea, and well there's
Speaker 1: a there's a particular legend about this, uh, about a
Speaker 1: military engagement that happened here that you know, this sort
Speaker 1: of thing. He's just telling you how you travel from
Speaker 1: one place to the other. What you're gonna see there?
Speaker 1: What the historical significance or cultural significance of the place is.
Speaker 1: I want to know the ancient Greco Roman world's equivalent
Speaker 1: of the person who like gives the one star Google
Speaker 1: reviews to all inspiring monuments from the ancient world, you know,
Speaker 1: like two stars for the less shan Buddha. Well, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe I don't don't even think the Romans were
Speaker 1: doing that on the Colossi were there, Uh, like one
Speaker 1: star coloss I did not sing while I was here.
Speaker 1: That's sort of thing that was too hot, bathrooms hard
Speaker 1: to find. Yeah, as far as I can tell, Pausanias
Speaker 1: wasn't engaging in in any of that. But he is
Speaker 1: indeed often pointed to is as this example of like
Speaker 1: early travel literature and this idea of modern travel uh
Speaker 1: in the ancient world. But there are also some some
Speaker 1: other examples that pop up. There's a quote attributed to
Speaker 1: the semi legendary Chinese philosopher Lao Zu, the Old Master
Speaker 1: and the founder of Daoism, who's often depicted as traveling
Speaker 1: on a water buffalo um in in in art and sculpture,
Speaker 1: and the quote is a good traveler has no fixed
Speaker 1: plans and is not intent upon arriving. So he's said
Speaker 1: to be a sixth century BC figure, though he might
Speaker 1: have been a fourth century BC historical figure. Again, he
Speaker 1: takes on this air of semi legendary status, like you
Speaker 1: see with a lot of figures from that period in
Speaker 1: Chinese history. Um though, Uh, what's interesting about this is this,
Speaker 1: this this mantra of of traveling with no fixed plans
Speaker 1: and not being intent upon arriving. It does certainly get
Speaker 1: to sort of this this heart of travel as the
Speaker 1: the transformative journey. Um and and it gets into this
Speaker 1: you know, sort of unmoored sounding notion of travel, further
Speaker 1: removed from the idea of destination travel and perhaps more
Speaker 1: in common with some of the ideas of hunter gathering.
Speaker 1: Uh though even in those traditions a certain amount of
Speaker 1: strategic thinking was involved. This Uh, this this does feel
Speaker 1: like a almost a I feel like a more modern
Speaker 1: sense of you know, just go out and see the world,
Speaker 1: just be that noble drifter from from that film you
Speaker 1: saw in the fifties, that sort of thing. This allowed
Speaker 1: to quote makes me think of a poem by St.
Speaker 1: Vincent Malay, The Unexplored. Do you know this poem? I
Speaker 1: don't think I do. It's great as a short little poem.
Speaker 1: I can read the whole thing. So this was published
Speaker 1: in nineteen two and she writes, there was a road
Speaker 1: ran past our house, too lovely to explore. I asked
Speaker 1: my mother once. She said that if you followed where
Speaker 1: it led, it brought you to the milkman store. That's
Speaker 1: why I have not traveled more. I think it's a
Speaker 1: grade encapsulation of the sort of the let down feeling
Speaker 1: of when you have when you're a child in the
Speaker 1: world is full of unknown possibility. You have that exploration mindset,
Speaker 1: and then the adult lays on you the instrumental nature
Speaker 1: of travel. Well, that road goes to the place I
Speaker 1: go to get this. And the interesting thing too, is
Speaker 1: that allows you quote I think is going to get
Speaker 1: to the heart of what we're going to spend the
Speaker 1: rest of the podcast talking about. And that's how our
Speaker 1: senses engage with travel. Because ultimately, if your if your
Speaker 1: senses are fully engaged, if all this sense data is streaming,
Speaker 1: you know, into your nervous system and into your your
Speaker 1: your brain this is how we often enter this state
Speaker 1: of of you know, being in the moment, of living
Speaker 1: in the now, of just observing and being a part
Speaker 1: of the stream of things. And I think that ultimately,
Speaker 1: like that's one of the really rewarding aspects of travel,
Speaker 1: and it's we might not even focus on it that much.
Speaker 1: I mean, and to a certain extent, especially today, like it.
Speaker 1: It helps to have a destination in mind. It helps
Speaker 1: to have a plan and you sort of plan everything
Speaker 1: out and have a destination so that you can perhaps
Speaker 1: feel even accidentally that unmoored uh nowness of travel. Yeah. Absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: then do you want to shift over now? Talked about
Speaker 1: talk about travel in the census, Yeah, let's do it. So,
Speaker 1: so we've went through some examples of what human travel
Speaker 1: is and how long we've been carrying it out and
Speaker 1: uh and we should also stress that travel is maybe
Speaker 1: not for everyone. You certainly encounter people who don't care
Speaker 1: for it or have intense personal or sort of scholarly
Speaker 1: objections to engaging in travel. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance,
Speaker 1: wrote traveling as a fool's Paradise. Our first journeys discovered
Speaker 1: to us the indifference of places. Um and I guess
Speaker 1: you also see that reflected in such adages as you know,
Speaker 1: wherever you go, there you are that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Um And and I think sometimes that's that's more about
Speaker 1: tramping on unreasonable expectations of travel. But but you you
Speaker 1: also see this this notion elsewhere as well, of of
Speaker 1: travel as being a way of of avoiding inner, local
Speaker 1: and spiritual endeavors. Um Gandhi said something to this effect
Speaker 1: as well. Oh yeah, well, I mean I can certainly
Speaker 1: see for some people how travel might just be a
Speaker 1: way too busy the mind, you know, just like anything,
Speaker 1: just like the same way TV could be a way
Speaker 1: too busy the mind. Um. And in that sense that,
Speaker 1: I don't know that that might be a less rewarding
Speaker 1: way to think about it than as opening yourself to
Speaker 1: experiences of novelty and readying yourself for change. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but then again, even if you're intent is one thing,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna end up getting, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: sneaking the you know, the medicine into the jam or something,
Speaker 1: or or you know, grinding up some pulverizing some vegetables
Speaker 1: and sneaking them in, um, you know, to the President's spaghetti.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. Um, it's it's like, if you're
Speaker 1: gonna end up engaging and novelty and engaging the senses
Speaker 1: than uh, then then ultimately the goal was there. How
Speaker 1: I do I do want to point out there there
Speaker 1: are environmental and sometimes health objections to travel, and we
Speaker 1: touched on some of those at the beginning, and we
Speaker 1: we should you know, certainly these are not things to
Speaker 1: dismiss h No, absolutely not. I mean you can simultaneously
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there might be a lot of great, uh
Speaker 1: great reasons to appreciate the role of travel and human life,
Speaker 1: while also understanding, you know, uh, maybe maybe we're driving
Speaker 1: more than we should be, maybe we're flying in planes
Speaker 1: more than we should be, and certainly understanding during like
Speaker 1: a time of pandemic, that there are a lot of
Speaker 1: inherent risks to travel and if you're going to do it,
Speaker 1: you need to get really serious about finding ways to
Speaker 1: make it safe. Yeah. And of course there's also the
Speaker 1: point that the travel can be um, distravel itself as
Speaker 1: industry can be an uh, you know, an economically transformative force,
Speaker 1: but it can also be uh you can also pose
Speaker 1: certain dangers to uh, to historical sites, to to local culture,
Speaker 1: to the local environment if if it's not carried out
Speaker 1: in just the right way. Yeah, that's another thing I'm
Speaker 1: sure most people listening have probably experienced at some point
Speaker 1: where you you go to a place wanting to experience
Speaker 1: what that place is actually like, and instead when you
Speaker 1: get there, you find that it has been altered to
Speaker 1: make itself amenable to tourists and visitors like you. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this this has sadly been the case with, for instance,
Speaker 1: to some cave environments where a part of the cave
Speaker 1: ecology is how it is is closed off and then
Speaker 1: if you open it up, um, you often just I
Speaker 1: mean you you take part of it's it's life away
Speaker 1: from it. But uh and and as you I want
Speaker 1: to come back to the tourism industry because there there's
Speaker 1: actually a lot of informative material that comes out of
Speaker 1: that industry, out of papers and conferences related to just
Speaker 1: figuring out like how do people engage um in a
Speaker 1: tourist experience. And this is where I came across really
Speaker 1: what I thought to be just a wonderful visual breakdown
Speaker 1: of how we engage with environmental stimuli during well, certainly
Speaker 1: in this case during travel, but perhaps to a certain degree,
Speaker 1: just you know, in life itself. And this was from
Speaker 1: Designing Tourism Places Understanding the Tourism Experience through Our Senses
Speaker 1: by Kim at All, presented at the two thousand fifteen
Speaker 1: t t r A International Conference. And apparently this particular
Speaker 1: graphic framework of tourism experience creation was adapted from some
Speaker 1: earlier work by by Krishna from and I'm gonna describe
Speaker 1: it here, but basically the ideas you start with a
Speaker 1: very environmental stimuli and then that feeds into sensation, vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch,
Speaker 1: appropriate reception, temperature, sense and pain. And then that's gonna
Speaker 1: all those sensations and hopefully you're not feeling too much
Speaker 1: pain on your your vacation or on your travel, but
Speaker 1: a part of it pain makes an experience real, It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean generally my in my experience, the first day
Speaker 1: of travel is going to have its share of pains,
Speaker 1: and you you just got to be prepared for it.
Speaker 1: But anyway, all those sensations then are going to go
Speaker 1: through your individual filter and then from there they're gonna
Speaker 1: go to perception. And then the perception of those senses
Speaker 1: is going to go through the individual filter again, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna go in a few couple of different directions.
Speaker 1: It's gonna go to emotional response, your emotional response to
Speaker 1: your perception of those different senses. It's also going to
Speaker 1: go to a cognitive response to those perceptions of those
Speaker 1: different senses. And then likewise you're gonna have an emotional
Speaker 1: reaction to your cognitive responses, and you're also going to
Speaker 1: have a cognitive response to your emotional responses. Um So
Speaker 1: you know, kind of going in a circle there, and
Speaker 1: then all of that is going to go through the
Speaker 1: individual filter again and feed into attitude, memory, and behavior. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think one of the elements that's most relevant
Speaker 1: to us is how travel affects memory. I want to
Speaker 1: come back to that in a moment after we discuss
Speaker 1: novelty a bit. Yeah, Novelty I think is gonna be
Speaker 1: gonna be key year. So, as we've discussed in the
Speaker 1: show before, humans didn't evolve for to live in like
Speaker 1: a solitary confinement situation. We evolved to thrive in an
Speaker 1: environment of change, seeking resources, calculating risk, etcetera. And some
Speaker 1: of these qualities have led to our I think our
Speaker 1: species spirit of exploration but one of the more studied
Speaker 1: aspects of all of this is certainly novelty, because travel,
Speaker 1: to a very large degree comes down to novel that
Speaker 1: you put yourself in a place, an environment, perhaps a culture,
Speaker 1: that differs from what you deal with every day. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and this is where you can feel, you know,
Speaker 1: this enthralling, exhilarating, overpowering, and at times even frightening sensation
Speaker 1: of novelty. It is, it is. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a stretch at all to say this is an altered
Speaker 1: mental state. Sure, yeah. And one doesn't achieve this, this
Speaker 1: particular altered state through the consumption of a potion or
Speaker 1: a mushroom or or the via the physical alteration of
Speaker 1: brain tissue. No, you achieve it by traveling from one
Speaker 1: environment to another, uh, and then continuing to be human
Speaker 1: along the way, and upon arrival endearing this altered state,
Speaker 1: you might often find yourself functioning as a sponge, right,
Speaker 1: soaking up information about your travel, destination or things along
Speaker 1: the way, perhaps pouring yourself into the local museum or
Speaker 1: historical site. And if this is is this is you?
Speaker 1: It might be due to the role that novelty plays
Speaker 1: in associative learning. I imagine a lot of us have
Speaker 1: experienced or have been the uh this or in other people,
Speaker 1: or have been the person who comes back from a
Speaker 1: unique trip, and it's just rattling off, you know, endless
Speaker 1: facts about the experience for everyone, about this site, they
Speaker 1: saw this museum, they they uh, they visited that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, it becomes uh, there's a risk when
Speaker 1: you travel somewhere that the place you most recently traveled
Speaker 1: becomes your point of comparison for everything, every every topic
Speaker 1: of conversation relates back to the most recent vacation you took. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I, I shamefully will admit I've been of that
Speaker 1: frame of mind before. And I think that happens because
Speaker 1: of because essentially, the prominence of a travel experience in
Speaker 1: the memory enables the availability heuristic. You know, the the
Speaker 1: availability heuristic is, uh, the the idea where um concepts
Speaker 1: and memories and ideas that are more accessible in memory
Speaker 1: are overrepresented in our view of the world. So if
Speaker 1: we're looking for comparisons to whatever we're talking about, whatever
Speaker 1: is just most prominent in your memory is going to
Speaker 1: be the thing that's most likely to facilitate those comparisons. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking on memory, here that there, of course are multiple
Speaker 1: different forms of memory at work in the brain, and
Speaker 1: different brain states can enhance certain forms of memory. Associated learning,
Speaker 1: which we're gonna be talking about here is the ability
Speaker 1: need to learn and remember the relationship between unrelated items,
Speaker 1: and we've we've known about this, this, this particular relationship
Speaker 1: between novelty and associated learning since the nineteen sixties. UH,
Speaker 1: the idea that novelty can enhance associated learning. One key finding,
Speaker 1: it seems, stems from from twelve though. The University of
Speaker 1: Toronto's Dr Catherine Duncan used f m RI I to
Speaker 1: identify how the brain triggers memory states, and she identified
Speaker 1: a brain ridge and region that detects novelty and demonstrated
Speaker 1: that novelty detection acts like a switch, impacting how the
Speaker 1: brain learns and remembers. Now, she's quick to remind everyone
Speaker 1: this is not the only switch. Memory is complex and
Speaker 1: there's a lot we still need to study and understand.
Speaker 1: But this is one example where it seems like we
Speaker 1: can we can draw a line between one type of
Speaker 1: of brain state and UH and a change in the
Speaker 1: way we we learn, and there the way we form
Speaker 1: new memories. The process here involves the dopamine system, which
Speaker 1: involved in associative learning. While this has been previously suspected,
Speaker 1: it looks like there was some, uh, some additional evidence
Speaker 1: for this that came out in February of this year
Speaker 1: from the Flanders Institute of Biotechnology, publishing the journal Neuron
Speaker 1: that took a closer to look at how this might work. So,
Speaker 1: working with mice, they found that dopamine neurons were activated
Speaker 1: by new smells but not by familiar ones. So this
Speaker 1: enhanced learning, and they were able to stimulate or block
Speaker 1: dopamine activation in familiar settings, then to alter learning in
Speaker 1: the mice, slowing learning down or speeding it up. Now,
Speaker 1: part of the take home here is that we might
Speaker 1: be able to learn better by shaking up our routine. Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I engage in this, or at least
Speaker 1: I would engage in this in a pretty pandemic world
Speaker 1: where if I, you know, I'd be working on something
Speaker 1: and then I would I need to change locations. I'd
Speaker 1: go to a different coffee shop or something, you know,
Speaker 1: somewhere else, some new environment where I could work while
Speaker 1: you know, sort of casually observing foot traffic or or
Speaker 1: where I actually I also really enjoy working on my
Speaker 1: front porch watching people and trains go by, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Uh, there's something about putting yourself in a
Speaker 1: novel environment that seems to help with with forming these associations.
Speaker 1: But this particular study also sheds light on some of
Speaker 1: what's happening when we engage in travel, how and why
Speaker 1: we record strong new memories, and why a vacation may seem,
Speaker 1: in retrospect, a fuller example of life than our day
Speaker 1: to day Yeah. I mean, so there are multiple things here.
Speaker 1: I think we've touched on the podcast before, at least
Speaker 1: the anecdotal evidence that people seem to find that on
Speaker 1: a vacation or during some kind of travel or major
Speaker 1: change to their day to day routine, it's easier to
Speaker 1: establish new habits or to change existing habits. That's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting thing like people don't usually think of,
Speaker 1: like the vacation is a good time to start a diet,
Speaker 1: but it might actually work. Oh yeah, yeah, I've I've
Speaker 1: seen this pointed out before, like if you're if you
Speaker 1: want to change up your your schedule, start doing it
Speaker 1: on vacation and in a new location. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that so this relates to memory obviously, and and
Speaker 1: the idea of associate of learning is very much based
Speaker 1: in memory. But another thing about memory that this makes
Speaker 1: me think of is we've talked previously on the show
Speaker 1: about I believe it was the neuroscientist David Eagleman who
Speaker 1: had pointed out this research about the different perception of
Speaker 1: time in the moment versus in retrospect and how that
Speaker 1: relates to novelty. And the idea was that in the
Speaker 1: moment experiences that our novel tend to go by really fast.
Speaker 1: They feel like they're happening really fast, and then they're over.
Speaker 1: And you probably know this from experience. It seems like,
Speaker 1: you know, your your regular routine day might kind of
Speaker 1: drag on, especially if you're doing something kind of repetitive
Speaker 1: and boring, but your vacation where you're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of novel different stuff just kind of flies by. It
Speaker 1: feels like it's over in an instant. But then once
Speaker 1: you get into the retrospective mindset and you're representing those
Speaker 1: time periods in your memory, suddenly the reverse is true,
Speaker 1: where the experience that's full of novelty feels like it
Speaker 1: lasted a long time and a lot of stuff happened
Speaker 1: in it. It's like it spreads out and expands in
Speaker 1: your memory, while the while the period of sameness where
Speaker 1: you didn't experience a lot of novelty, contracts down to
Speaker 1: a point and there's almost nothing to remember about it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, ultimately, there's nothing like going on vacation to
Speaker 1: fully engage in the weirdness of time. Um. In terms
Speaker 1: of novelty, uh, I think Eagleman might have been the
Speaker 1: one to refer to us as as novelty junkies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it could be misquoting him on that, but I
Speaker 1: have that that association is in my head for some reason. UM.
Speaker 1: I also ran across a book titled Satisfaction, in which
Speaker 1: the author Gregory Burns, points out that even if you
Speaker 1: don't personally like a novelty, if you're the type of
Speaker 1: person who you know you feel very strongly that you
Speaker 1: like a strict routine, you don't want any novelty thrown in.
Speaker 1: You may not personally like it, but your brain is
Speaker 1: because when we engage in novelty, we kind of go
Speaker 1: into probe mode and to explore mode. Our brains tune
Speaker 1: up to absorb and process the information we're hit with.
Speaker 1: And so I think that's really interesting. It's like, take
Speaker 1: that and think back to this, uh sort of flow
Speaker 1: chart of how we engage with environmental stimuli, you know, um,
Speaker 1: how you know it's going to be that that novel stimuli,
Speaker 1: those novel sensations that are gonna end up sort of
Speaker 1: supercharging this loop of emotional response and cognitive response and
Speaker 1: then feeding into the formation of these associated memories. And
Speaker 1: I think that also helps us better understand two of
Speaker 1: the the the offsided benefits of travel broadened horizons and
Speaker 1: self exploration. Well, yeah, this brings us back to the
Speaker 1: anthropological framework that we're talking about earlier. Now that was
Speaker 1: specifically in the context of Christian pilgrimage and not travel
Speaker 1: more broadly, but I think it probably relates to things
Speaker 1: that are going on often, if not always, in travel
Speaker 1: more broadly, Which is the the idea that it is, Uh,
Speaker 1: it places you at the threshold. It doesn't necessarily put
Speaker 1: you through it, but it places you at the threshold
Speaker 1: of personal change and transformation. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: some relationship here between that cultural observation and the idea
Speaker 1: of what's going on in the brain when we experience
Speaker 1: a lot of novelty that we're sort of primed for
Speaker 1: associate of learning that we can form new habits, and
Speaker 1: the formation of new habits, while it doesn't sound all
Speaker 1: that sexy when phrase that way, is the basis of
Speaker 1: the change of the self. All right, Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a quick break, but when we
Speaker 1: come back, we're going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: the idea of travel overload. Than alright, we're back. So, Joe,
Speaker 1: I know you like um Italian horror films. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: have you Have you ever seen a little film titled
Speaker 1: Stindall Syndrome. No, I have not seen the whole thing,
Speaker 1: but I have watched the scene that you linked me
Speaker 1: to in it, which involves which involves a character kissing
Speaker 1: a fish on the mouth. And while I've heard that
Speaker 1: the movie is not that great overall, even though I
Speaker 1: do love some Italian horror, uh, this fish kissing scene
Speaker 1: is extraordinary. Yeah. This was film The Stendahl Syndrome by
Speaker 1: Dario Argento of Suspiria of Fame and countless other films
Speaker 1: in which weird stuff, that stuff happens and people are stabbed. Right,
Speaker 1: this is very much in the genre of of weird
Speaker 1: stuff happens and people were stabbed, except it has this
Speaker 1: this weird hook with Stendahl syndrome and which in this
Speaker 1: in the film, you have this character played by Asia
Speaker 1: Argento who experiences this overwhelming sensory experience when she engages
Speaker 1: with fabulous works of art. Um. I believe that she's
Speaker 1: in the movie. She's looking at landscape with the Fall
Speaker 1: of Icarus, and so has this there's this dream like
Speaker 1: sequence in which she falls into the painting and falls
Speaker 1: into the ocean. You know that the Icarus would have
Speaker 1: plunged into And is that by Broygal? Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's broke of the elder and uh. And so she
Speaker 1: falls into the water and then inexplicitly she kisses a fish.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's it's a it's a. It's a
Speaker 1: noteworthy uh scene in uh in in in the film,
Speaker 1: for sure, but it also does a link into this
Speaker 1: idea of Stendahl syndrome that is in an actual, at
Speaker 1: least alleged um UH phenomenon that occurs. It's named for
Speaker 1: the French author Stendahl, who wrote such works as The
Speaker 1: Scarlet and Black and he he originally wrote about a
Speaker 1: case of what we might call extreme travel overload. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was from his book Naples and Florence, a journey
Speaker 1: from Milan to Reggio, and he talks about emerging on
Speaker 1: a on a porch uh and and being seized with
Speaker 1: his fierce palpitation of his heart, feeling like his life
Speaker 1: had just dried up and then uh and feeling like
Speaker 1: it was just gonna collapse, like just physically overcome from
Speaker 1: having visited a particular site. And and this kind of
Speaker 1: this idea that was really um sort of drawn out
Speaker 1: and and certainly was given the name Standal syndrome by
Speaker 1: an Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magarini who who wrote about this
Speaker 1: in her nine book UH the Stendhal Syndrome, which defined
Speaker 1: it is a complex process quote not intellectual, but sensitive
Speaker 1: and easily susceptible to emotions, so essentially a kind of
Speaker 1: sensory overload um. And and it can apparently result in
Speaker 1: a number of different symptoms breathlessness, panic attacks, faintness, temporary psychosis.
Speaker 1: Even all of this brought on via exposure to great
Speaker 1: works of art, generally the sort of great works of
Speaker 1: art you would find in a museum in a destination
Speaker 1: UH city, now I would be shocked if um, just
Speaker 1: because of the interesting and sort of rome antic nature
Speaker 1: of the syndrome. If it's I don't know, legitimacy or
Speaker 1: or clinical characterization has not been somewhat controversial or questioned
Speaker 1: at some point. Yeah, that that is my understanding of it.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's one of these ideas that's certainly
Speaker 1: snazzy and um and and appeals to sort of the
Speaker 1: storytelling sensibilities UH that we have, though at the same time,
Speaker 1: I don't know there seemed to be enough stories of it.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is a there there is something
Speaker 1: going on here UM which will perhaps unravel here. Now
Speaker 1: there are other related uh alleged syndromes as well, or
Speaker 1: one for instances Reuben syndrome. UH. This is the name
Speaker 1: given for an erotically charged activity that breaks out after
Speaker 1: or even daring viewings of works by old masters, such
Speaker 1: as Peter Paul Reuben's. So I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: I've never I don't think I've experienced or or witnessed
Speaker 1: that going on anytime I've seen people looking at art
Speaker 1: in an art museum, But who knows, maybe they're going
Speaker 1: around the corner is Rubens the painter, where like just
Speaker 1: everybody is just majorly thick, just like awesome, Like everybody's
Speaker 1: got huge butts and they look amazing. Uh yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that would be a fair description of of of
Speaker 1: Ruben's work. Um yeah, it certainly there is a kind
Speaker 1: of an erotic charge to it. Uh. Now, where I
Speaker 1: think we really get here into the travel aspects of
Speaker 1: this whole scenario is that there's a version of this
Speaker 1: and more travel centric version. Uh that is summed up
Speaker 1: in the idea of Jerusalem syndrome, in which tourists have
Speaker 1: been said to experience psychosis while visiting holy sites in
Speaker 1: the city of Jerusalem, and there have been similar accounts
Speaker 1: related to travel to Mecca, holy sites in Spain, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So it's not I don't want to make it sound
Speaker 1: like it's just Jerusalem specific, but the people who came
Speaker 1: up with that term, we're largely looking at data regarding
Speaker 1: visitors to Jerusalem who were there for, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: out of a sense of religious pilgrimage. Again, I think
Speaker 1: one of the big we kind of have to come
Speaker 1: back to that chart and think again about travel and senses,
Speaker 1: you know, like imagine we can you don't even have
Speaker 1: to imagine a lot of us can think back on
Speaker 1: examples where we ourselves traveled somewhere and got to see
Speaker 1: a work of art or particular site something that that
Speaker 1: was indeed the destination, and and you you build it
Speaker 1: up in your mind, right, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: reasons to to want to experience it, cultural or maybe
Speaker 1: perhaps it has to do with with your political sensibilities
Speaker 1: or your overall worldview, like you really need to see
Speaker 1: this thing and connect with it and witness it. On
Speaker 1: top of that, sometimes you encounter a work of art
Speaker 1: and you realize, oh, I had no idea it was
Speaker 1: that small or um or or perhaps the lighting is
Speaker 1: weird and it doesn't actually come off as well in person.
Speaker 1: I feel like I had that situation with Buckland's um
Speaker 1: The Island of of of Death um. The you know,
Speaker 1: we have the weird trees and it's this uh, this
Speaker 1: very islived dad, I'm sorry, that's the name of the painting. UM.
Speaker 1: And I think there are a few different versions of
Speaker 1: it at very evocative painting. But when I saw it,
Speaker 1: I think at the matter, I saw a version of
Speaker 1: it the mat There was something about the way it
Speaker 1: was lid and the way that the dark aspects of
Speaker 1: the painting came off like. I didn't find it displeasurable
Speaker 1: and an experience. On the other hand, there are plenty
Speaker 1: of other works that you just don't get the scale
Speaker 1: unless you were there in front of it. I've had
Speaker 1: both of those experiences looking at art. I've I've seen
Speaker 1: things that I've seen before, like digitally represented, when I
Speaker 1: saw them in person, I found them disappointing, and I've
Speaker 1: and I've had it on the other end. On the
Speaker 1: other end, one that really stuck with me where was
Speaker 1: in the Louver the paintings of Eugene Delacroix, the French painter,
Speaker 1: who I had seen some of his works before, just
Speaker 1: like you know images on the Internet, and they never
Speaker 1: really stood out to me. But for some reason when
Speaker 1: I saw them in person and I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I couldn't stop looking at him. Oh yeah. I feel
Speaker 1: this way about the works of Odali, for example. I
Speaker 1: feel like his his work is his is oftentimes best
Speaker 1: experienced large scale, though he has of course some works
Speaker 1: that are actually smaller than you expect um. Likewise, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite painters is Irving Norman, and he often
Speaker 1: painted these very large pieces, and it's just something about
Speaker 1: being there with it. And likewise, when we're dealing with
Speaker 1: with other aspects of travel, like you think of things
Speaker 1: like the Grand Canyon, like I've talked on the show
Speaker 1: before about like seeing the being there at the Grand
Speaker 1: Canyon is just uh, it's it's an experience that that
Speaker 1: cannot be um you know, properly housed and just you know,
Speaker 1: looking at a picture of reading about it. Like there's
Speaker 1: the experience of being in a place of of of
Speaker 1: of of taking it in and just being a part
Speaker 1: of that environment or in the case of historically significant
Speaker 1: locations temple cities, etcetera, like to actually be there for
Speaker 1: this play used to suddenly be physically real. You know,
Speaker 1: I can I can see how that could be overpowering
Speaker 1: to the senses because it is engaging the senses and
Speaker 1: your uh in your your your your your cognitive and
Speaker 1: your emotional processes uh to such a high level. You know.
Speaker 1: For me, that connects to a feeling that I've often
Speaker 1: had throughout my life and I've tried to explain to
Speaker 1: other people, and I think I have just failed to
Speaker 1: adequately communicated. Maybe I'm about to fail again, But it's
Speaker 1: this peculiar emotion that I associate primarily with two different activities.
Speaker 1: One of them is successfully following instructions to UH to
Speaker 1: accomplish a mechanical task, such as like repairing an object
Speaker 1: that I have no previous knowledge about how to fix,
Speaker 1: and the other is arriving successfully at a location that
Speaker 1: I've read about before. Both times, I have this experience
Speaker 1: of of sudden, overwhelming kind of rectitude with the universe,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like, ah, the external world is real,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense at all. It's it's a
Speaker 1: powerful emotion in the moment. UH. And I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is something that other people really experience, but
Speaker 1: it's something that's hugely operative in my mind and in
Speaker 1: my life. No, I think I've I've I've experienced something
Speaker 1: like this as well. I mean, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the on one level of the manifestation of the
Speaker 1: inner world, you know, research becomes real, and on the
Speaker 1: other hand, like this is what this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that we have evolved to do, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like the finding of things the uh. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like we we you know, we can read about
Speaker 1: these all day and it's satisfying, and it's fulfilling, but
Speaker 1: to actually you know, hit the ground and and actually
Speaker 1: you know, find a particular location or thing like that
Speaker 1: that engages us on another level and engages the full
Speaker 1: capabilities of our senses. Now, if you're if you're wondering,
Speaker 1: okay Stindall syndrome, Jerusalem syndrome, should I be worried about
Speaker 1: my senses being overloaded? Uh? The next time I'm I'm
Speaker 1: able to travel, I would say, based on the information
Speaker 1: we're looking at here, Uh, you know, I would not
Speaker 1: freak out about this. Basically, pre existing psychological conditions seem
Speaker 1: to be a major factor in most of these cases
Speaker 1: of people being overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of travel. Again,
Speaker 1: if we think of travel as an altered mental state,
Speaker 1: and if we factor in potential travel stresses and travel anxiety,
Speaker 1: we can easily see how travel to a given location
Speaker 1: could trigger a slip into an overwhelming mental state. And
Speaker 1: the stress, you know, of course, would would certainly be
Speaker 1: capable of triggering a pre existing condition and causing it
Speaker 1: to flare up. Yeah, I mean, going back to something
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, I mean, like stress is a big
Speaker 1: part of travel. It's not the part that we tend
Speaker 1: to focus on in our memories because we think about
Speaker 1: all the good things about it. But like, yeah, stress
Speaker 1: is almost always going to be there, and that's going
Speaker 1: to be a key factor for exacerbating underlying psychological issues. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at a two eighteen Columbia University
Speaker 1: these Mailment School of Public Health study that showed that
Speaker 1: traveling a great deal for work, so like two weeks
Speaker 1: or more per month was capable of inducing enhanced depression
Speaker 1: and anxiety. Now, certainly that's business travel, that's not non
Speaker 1: economic travel like we're talking about here, but I think
Speaker 1: it's still underlines like you know, when we when we're traveling, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we are uh, you know, we are engaging
Speaker 1: in stress. It is a it is ultimately a stressful
Speaker 1: um endeavor, even if you feel like you really have
Speaker 1: a handle on it. There's also, you know, interesting research
Speaker 1: along the lines of sleep, and of course sleep has
Speaker 1: an impact on our overall mental stability. Uh. I think
Speaker 1: we've talked about the first night effect on the show
Speaker 1: before and which one tends to experience worse sleep on
Speaker 1: a first night in a new location, and studies have
Speaker 1: shown that this seems to be related to enhanced activity
Speaker 1: in the default mode network during these nights. So travel
Speaker 1: for those seeking the limits of human experience, pain and
Speaker 1: pleasure indivisible. Yeah, I mean it's something that keep in mind. Um,
Speaker 1: I think it ultimately like it just it. I know
Speaker 1: in the past, when I've when I've traveled, you know,
Speaker 1: with with my family, I was trying to remind myself
Speaker 1: that that first day of travel is going to it's
Speaker 1: gonna be stressful, it's gonna have there are gonna be
Speaker 1: some flare ups and you just got to try and
Speaker 1: you know, maintain some relative level of cool and uh
Speaker 1: and flow with it. Well, maybe it's the time that
Speaker 1: you're directly on route to your destination where it's most
Speaker 1: important to keep the spirit of Lautsu or of the
Speaker 1: child and the st vincent Malay before having her her
Speaker 1: mother dash her dreams of exploration. Has to have that mindset. Yeah. Yeah, indeed,
Speaker 1: you know, to to sort of remind yourself that it
Speaker 1: is about the journey, not the arrival. I guess the
Speaker 1: thing is, it's hard to remind yourself of that when
Speaker 1: you say stuck in airports somewhere, like it's about the journey. Oh,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll have a cent a bun. It's it's
Speaker 1: not quite as rewarding. I guess it's about the journey
Speaker 1: of standing in line for coffee. Yeah, so travel again.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to to remind ourselves that it
Speaker 1: is it is an altered state, and it is h
Speaker 1: and and our senses play so heavily into the journey
Speaker 1: and into our experience of the arrival, along with our
Speaker 1: various you know, emotional expectations, you know, bringing it back
Speaker 1: to the present circumstances of the world and and all
Speaker 1: of the stuff going on right now. One thing I
Speaker 1: think I would remind people of is that I think
Speaker 1: you can get, you know, if you if you're feeling
Speaker 1: this overwhelming desire to travel right now, but you're also
Speaker 1: trying to be realistic about all the risks and stuff.
Speaker 1: I think you can get a lot of the benefits
Speaker 1: of travel just with activities that actually do remain relatively
Speaker 1: close to home, you know, even near your house. There
Speaker 1: were probably places you can figure out to go where
Speaker 1: you can experience something novel, but you don't have to
Speaker 1: travel long distances or be amongst crowds. You can stay
Speaker 1: with you know, your household and family members and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Oh yeah, absolutely, and and some households,
Speaker 1: and of course I'm speaking to uh, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of a neighborhood environment here, not like a really dense
Speaker 1: urban environment, but uh, you know, there are cases where
Speaker 1: people have are doing what they can to sort of enhance, uh,
Speaker 1: the you know, the travel sensations of just walking around
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, be it decorating for Halloween or Christmas several
Speaker 1: months early, um, doing kind of unique things with their
Speaker 1: yard or with signage. You know. Uh so I do.
Speaker 1: I do feel like the that that spirit you know,
Speaker 1: can be found even during a what is ultimately a
Speaker 1: challenging time for those who seek novelty. Obviously, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there, because we know we
Speaker 1: have some extensive travelers that listen to our show. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear your take on all of this. How
Speaker 1: your senses are engaged during your travels, has it ever
Speaker 1: become overwhelming? Uh that sort of thing, and how you're
Speaker 1: you're you're coping today. In the meantime, if you would
Speaker 1: like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind, you even find us wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Wherever that happens to be. We just asked that you
Speaker 1: help us out. Leave us a nice review, leave us
Speaker 1: some stars, um subscribe to the show if you haven't already,
Speaker 1: and of course share the show with friends. Just tell
Speaker 1: people about the show. That helps us as well. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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