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