Speaker 1: I guess, well, well, what's that man go? So one
Speaker 1: of the things I love about my parents is how
Speaker 1: they travel like you know them and they're pretty unassuming,
Speaker 1: but they always end up in these wonderful little adventures.
Speaker 1: Like when they were young and in Paris together, they
Speaker 1: were at dinner at some place where there was also
Speaker 1: this big band with strings, and the band started up,
Speaker 1: but no one was moving to the dance floor, and
Speaker 1: the band leader was kind of just begging people to
Speaker 1: join in. And then my dad swept up my mom
Speaker 1: and they danced on this empty floor, and of course
Speaker 1: people joined in. But when I got back to their table,
Speaker 1: the band leader brought them this fancy bottle of really
Speaker 1: smooth brandy and then joined them at the table, and
Speaker 1: they had this wonderful night together and kind of became friends. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's such a sweet story. Yeah, but they kind of
Speaker 1: embraced people wherever they go. So they went to Cancoon
Speaker 1: once and instead of staying at a resort, they actually
Speaker 1: traveled down the Yucatan to see these pyramids that only
Speaker 1: archaeologists seemed to go to. And I mean, it's because
Speaker 1: my mom's obsessed with ancient cultures. But while they were there,
Speaker 1: they made friends with these fishermen who invited them to
Speaker 1: dinner at their house, so of course they went, of course,
Speaker 1: and then they met their families, and they stayed late,
Speaker 1: and and they were still sending postcards back and forth
Speaker 1: from the US when they came back. I mean, those
Speaker 1: are just like two of a thousand stories like that.
Speaker 1: And as kids, we'd meet all sorts of people from
Speaker 1: their travels. But I mean, now that I have kids,
Speaker 1: I keep wondering, how do we make most of this
Speaker 1: world and of our travel, like, how do we use
Speaker 1: it to understand culture is better and broaden our perspectives
Speaker 1: while you know, having so much fun doing it. And
Speaker 1: I think we actually have the perfect person on to
Speaker 1: give us a roadmap for that, incredible Rick Steves. So
Speaker 1: let's dig in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
Speaker 1: Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
Speaker 1: by my good friend man guest Ticketer and sitting behind
Speaker 1: the soundproof glass ironing his Safari suit, that's our Palin
Speaker 1: producer Tristan McNeil. It looks so straight like I thought
Speaker 1: he was done with it. But it's never good enough
Speaker 1: for Tristan. He wants to perfect Chris before he gets
Speaker 1: out there for the lions. Now, Tristan is excited about
Speaker 1: our guest today, and that's because our guest today has
Speaker 1: helped so many Americans be smarter, more thoughtful travelers. He's
Speaker 1: the host of a popular travel series on public television
Speaker 1: and a weekly show on NPR, and he's here to
Speaker 1: talk to us about the release of the updated edition
Speaker 1: of his book, Travel as a Political Act. Rick Steves,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. Nice to be with you now, Rick,
Speaker 1: I loved reading about you explaining that your most powerful
Speaker 1: travel experience was actually your very first one. You went
Speaker 1: to Norway with your parents. I think you're at the
Speaker 1: age of fourteen. Can can you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about that? Yeah, well, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: beautiful experiences in that trip, and I much I think
Speaker 1: when you're referring to his I was in the park
Speaker 1: and also behind the palace, and remember my parents were
Speaker 1: just trying to make me happy and lavishing me with
Speaker 1: love and attention, and I was kind of a you know,
Speaker 1: as a typical fourteen year old kid being dragged on
Speaker 1: a family vacation. And I remember looking out in that
Speaker 1: park and it was just speckled with families, and I
Speaker 1: saw all these parents loving their kids as much as
Speaker 1: my parents loved me, and it occurred to me, Wow,
Speaker 1: this world is home to billions of equally precious children
Speaker 1: of God. And that was sort of a jolt for me.
Speaker 1: It got me out of my ego and ethnocentric kind
Speaker 1: of trap, and it opened me up to just a
Speaker 1: passion for better understanding our world. Later on that same trip,
Speaker 1: I was and I was on the carpet at my
Speaker 1: Norwegian relatives living room and bergen and we were watching
Speaker 1: uh Neil Armstrong step on the moon, you know, one
Speaker 1: small step for men and one giant leap for man kind.
Speaker 1: But I heard that in Norwegian, and I saw the
Speaker 1: enthusiasm of all my Norwegian relatives, like just really just
Speaker 1: ecstatic about this, and it occurred to me it wasn't
Speaker 1: just an American accomplishment. This was a human accomplishment, and
Speaker 1: the whole planet was excited about this. And I thought
Speaker 1: in the United States people were really into waving their flag,
Speaker 1: but uh, from a planetary point of view, it was
Speaker 1: just a huge, great thing for for all of us.
Speaker 1: And these were little moments that I had in in
Speaker 1: my childhood. That contributed to my outlook. And I've spent
Speaker 1: my career encouraging Americans to basically go beyond Orlando, to
Speaker 1: to get out of their comfort zone and and broaden
Speaker 1: their perspectives through travel. And I'm very excited about that
Speaker 1: whole value of travel. Yeah, it's funny my mom talks
Speaker 1: about that same experience watching the moon landing in India,
Speaker 1: and it is it was such a global phenomena. Since
Speaker 1: nine eleven, you've been traveling and giving this talk travel
Speaker 1: as a political act. Ken, tell us what it means
Speaker 1: to travel as a political act. Yeah, I've been teaching
Speaker 1: like mad ever since I was a kid, my love
Speaker 1: of travel, and I had didn't have any grand plan,
Speaker 1: but I've been at this for decades now, and if
Speaker 1: I look back, it does have kind of a natural
Speaker 1: progression or evolution. Back in the eighties, it was for
Speaker 1: me all about budget travel, cheap tricks. I wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Europe through the back Door, and I was
Speaker 1: teaching people, you know, how to catch the train and
Speaker 1: pack light and get a hotel and a nice meal,
Speaker 1: and that's all important stuff and that's the foundation. And
Speaker 1: I see that as kind of the the lowest rung
Speaker 1: of what you could think of as Maslow's hierarchy of
Speaker 1: travel needs if you remember Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.
Speaker 1: And then in the nineties, I figured, well, we've cut
Speaker 1: the train and we're not a pack light and stay
Speaker 1: safe and healthy. Now let's teach about enjoying the history
Speaker 1: and the art. For travelers, history and they are the culture.
Speaker 1: That's really why we travel. And I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Europe one oh one, and my my passion was
Speaker 1: for teaching people to appreciate the culture. And then after
Speaker 1: nine eleven, I realized, you know, the pinnacle of this
Speaker 1: Maslow's hierarchy of travel needs is inspiring and encouraging and
Speaker 1: e clipping Americans to get out of their comfort zone
Speaker 1: to gain an empathy for the other nineties six percent
Speaker 1: of humanity. And that's what I've been teaching a lot
Speaker 1: since then. In fact, I'm going on a on a
Speaker 1: road trip here in the next month while I'll be
Speaker 1: in cities, given this talk about how we can travel
Speaker 1: as a political act, and that really means again getting
Speaker 1: out of her comfort zone, going south of the border,
Speaker 1: gaining an empathy for the other of humanity, and coming
Speaker 1: home with what I think is the most beautiful souvenir.
Speaker 1: That's a broader perspective. And uh, you know, a mindset
Speaker 1: where you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined
Speaker 1: to build walls. Are We have so many more questions
Speaker 1: for you, Rick, but before we get to those, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
Speaker 1: and we're talking to Rick Steves about the latest edition
Speaker 1: of his book, Travel as a Political Act. I like
Speaker 1: that you had been in the book to having had
Speaker 1: tickets to India three years in a row, but pushing
Speaker 1: off the trip for your worry about going to Egypt.
Speaker 1: And I also love that line you use that the
Speaker 1: people who would benefit the most from travel off and
Speaker 1: stay home. But I'm curious, like, how do we push
Speaker 1: ourselves to embrace them comfortable and sort of make the
Speaker 1: trips to places we might not be as home with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not at all advocating going to dangerous places.
Speaker 1: There have been writers that have had that as their
Speaker 1: publicity stunt, and they go to war torn areas. I
Speaker 1: don't go to war torn areas. I've never traveled anywhere
Speaker 1: where I think it's dangerous. In fact, just this week,
Speaker 1: I can't filed out of a plan to go to Egypt.
Speaker 1: I just don't think it's quite right for me to
Speaker 1: go to Egypt and encourage Americans to go there, because
Speaker 1: it's still struggling with a lot of issues that are important,
Speaker 1: and I think Americans might be uncomfortable there. But I've
Speaker 1: traveled a lot lately in countries like Iran and Cuba
Speaker 1: and Palestine and Russia and Denmark and the Netherlands and
Speaker 1: Portugal and Rocco, and I just love, um, you know,
Speaker 1: having experiences and taking notes and learning from my mistakes
Speaker 1: and and helping other Americans go what I consider beyond
Speaker 1: our land. Don't to mention that earlier, And it really
Speaker 1: is kind of my mission is to get Americans out
Speaker 1: of their comfort zone and to realize the world is
Speaker 1: not a pyramid with us on top and everybody else
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out. There's smart people doing things
Speaker 1: different than us. This is not America bashing. This is
Speaker 1: just acknowledging that there's not the work ethic. You know,
Speaker 1: I was raised thinking we have the work ethic. It's
Speaker 1: a work ethic. My Norwegian relatives have a different work ethic.
Speaker 1: They don't have the work ethic and my Spanish, my
Speaker 1: Spanish Mints have a Spanish work ethic. It's not as
Speaker 1: hard as ours, but it doesn't make it a better
Speaker 1: or worse thing. They choose to work less and have
Speaker 1: more time with their families. That is a work ethic.
Speaker 1: And we have a work ethic. And when we travel
Speaker 1: with a with a curiosity, in an open mind, we
Speaker 1: challenge these norms that we think are given and they're
Speaker 1: they're really not, and that lets us make smarter decisions
Speaker 1: on how we want to run our lives and how
Speaker 1: we want to weave the fabric of our communities. Well,
Speaker 1: I I do love how how human this book is,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons I like it so much,
Speaker 1: is you know, you're not sort of just talking to
Speaker 1: people and ask them to embrace everything you're saying. You're
Speaker 1: saying like your opinions will differ from mine because we
Speaker 1: draw from different experiences. And I really love the perspective
Speaker 1: you've you've filled this book with. But I did want
Speaker 1: to ask you about this story of being in Turkey
Speaker 1: and observing a whirling dervish or Susie. You know, I
Speaker 1: thought the way you described it was so beautiful and
Speaker 1: and I'd love to hear a little bit about that
Speaker 1: and and what it means to sort of have your
Speaker 1: I think you call it cultural furniture rearranged. Yeah, oh, well,
Speaker 1: as a tour guide, you can imagine. First of all,
Speaker 1: you mentioned how I'm trying to be respectful of people
Speaker 1: in different life stories and different viewpoints. And I've learned
Speaker 1: that just because as a tour guide, you've got the
Speaker 1: bully pulp, but you're holding the mic and people are
Speaker 1: trapped on that bus, and it's really important if you
Speaker 1: if you want to have a challenging, stimulating, transformational experience,
Speaker 1: that you don't abuse the bully pulp it. So you know,
Speaker 1: we all have to respect that nobody's got a luck
Speaker 1: on the truth here, and we're in this together, and
Speaker 1: we just have a chance to travel around and learn
Speaker 1: from fascinating and sometimes scary sort of circumstances. Scary not
Speaker 1: meaning dangerous, but just scary because kind of freaky. When
Speaker 1: I'm in Turkey, I love to meet a dervish and
Speaker 1: introduce that dervish to my tour groups. And I account
Speaker 1: in the book. I think it's even the leadoff story
Speaker 1: and travel as a political act. How as a tour guide.
Speaker 1: I found this dervish and I said, Hi, I'm an
Speaker 1: American tour guide. I've got twenty American at the hotel,
Speaker 1: and and we'd love to see you whirl. You know,
Speaker 1: he's whirling dervishes. He said, I'm not a photo of
Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a monk and I'm praying. But if
Speaker 1: you want to watch me pray, I would welcome you
Speaker 1: to watch me, but I need I need to be
Speaker 1: able to explain to you what I'm doing. So I said,
Speaker 1: perfect where and when he said, on my rooftop at sundown.
Speaker 1: So we gathered my group and we went up to
Speaker 1: his rooftop and he walked. He came out dressed up
Speaker 1: in his dervish outfit, you know, and he welcome to us,
Speaker 1: and he said, I'm a I'm a dervish. That's what
Speaker 1: you Americans would probably call him a monk. And I
Speaker 1: follow My prophet is Nevlana. I think the Christian equivalent
Speaker 1: would be St. Francis the Profit of Love. Everybody can
Speaker 1: get their brains around his teachings and so on. And
Speaker 1: he said, five times a day, I spin myself into
Speaker 1: a meditative trance. And he showed us how he places
Speaker 1: one foot in the middle and that symbolizes his home
Speaker 1: and his family, and then the other foot goes around
Speaker 1: and around on the outside, celebrating the diversity in God's
Speaker 1: great creation. And he spins with that motion, and one
Speaker 1: hand goes up to accept the love of his creator,
Speaker 1: and the other hand goes down like the spout on
Speaker 1: a tea kettle, to shower God's love on his beautiful creation.
Speaker 1: And the dervish spins himself into a meditative trance and
Speaker 1: loses himself and that beautiful idea that he can be
Speaker 1: a conduit of God's love, and standing there as a
Speaker 1: tour guide, the travel teacher with twenty Americans who have
Speaker 1: no idea what the dervish was except this comic cruise
Speaker 1: ship entertainment, you know, and watching him lose himself in
Speaker 1: that beautiful idea and his head tilted over and his
Speaker 1: robe billowed out. And then for me to hand over
Speaker 1: to the left and see the faces of my tourists,
Speaker 1: just wonder struck, and to know that they were being
Speaker 1: changed right, and they were going to go home with
Speaker 1: that beautiful souvenir. And that's an empathy for other people,
Speaker 1: a broader perspective. And then when they implement that broader
Speaker 1: perspective back here in this beautiful country of ours, they're
Speaker 1: making travel a political act. And uh, that's kind of
Speaker 1: what I think is the greatest accomplishment for a tour
Speaker 1: guide and a travel writer like me is to help
Speaker 1: American travelers learn about the beauty and the diversity on
Speaker 1: this planet and go home and not be afraid of it,
Speaker 1: but to celebrate it. It's hard to imagine a more
Speaker 1: powerful experience than to have set there and have you know,
Speaker 1: a dervish explain what this was all about. That that's
Speaker 1: that's such a wonderful story. Great, Rick, I was hoping
Speaker 1: you could tell us a little about your experience of
Speaker 1: being a Lutheran and Namibia, you know, like that the
Speaker 1: priorities there can be different, and reading the Bible through
Speaker 1: different eyes there can Can you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, I'm a Lutheran and I think it's
Speaker 1: fun to think that there's more Lutherans in the maybe
Speaker 1: than they're in the United States. And I've been on
Speaker 1: trips with the Lutheran Church help film mission workings on
Speaker 1: in Papa New Guinea and this and that, and uh,
Speaker 1: I think The important thing for ethno center Christians to
Speaker 1: understand is there's you know, there's different ways that cultures
Speaker 1: embrace different faiths. And uh, in my travels, I've I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed trying to be open minded about that and
Speaker 1: and learning from other people. And uh, it's just Lutherans
Speaker 1: have this funny notion that Lutherans are all Germans or
Speaker 1: Scandinavian and it's another example of the centristy. And we
Speaker 1: don't all have jello and green hymnals and this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and casse roles as the garrison keeler jokes
Speaker 1: would be uh, and uh that always is a powerful opportunity.
Speaker 1: And in our travels we can, uh, we can all
Speaker 1: you know, endeavor to better understand God without being judgmental
Speaker 1: of each each other. I'll never forget as a Christian
Speaker 1: tour guide with a group in Turkey dancing in the
Speaker 1: living room of a mayor of a little village that
Speaker 1: had never met an American tour group before. And and
Speaker 1: I was the big shot because as I was the
Speaker 1: tour guy, and he was the big jump because he
Speaker 1: was the mayor. So he came over to me and
Speaker 1: we're all snapping our fingers and shaking our shoulders and dancing,
Speaker 1: and he took me over to the most sacred place
Speaker 1: in his house. It was the his Koran bag, where
Speaker 1: he hangs his Koran on the wall. And he said,
Speaker 1: in my karan bag, I keep a copy of the Bible,
Speaker 1: the Torah and the Koran, because I believe as Christians,
Speaker 1: Jews and Muslims are all children of the same God,
Speaker 1: people of the book. And I just thought, Wow, I
Speaker 1: wish more Americans could could meet this Muslim and to
Speaker 1: realize that there's just so much there's so much joy
Speaker 1: and the challenges for us to understand each other and
Speaker 1: respect each other and know how we can live together,
Speaker 1: you know, as neighbors. And Son's almost tried. That's sort
Speaker 1: of the fundamental thing about travel. We humanize this planet
Speaker 1: and we come home not fearful, but we come home
Speaker 1: celebrating the diversity and the joy and the love that
Speaker 1: just abounds on this planet. And that's one thing I
Speaker 1: come home with from wherever I travel, is that just
Speaker 1: the love of a father or a mother for their child.
Speaker 1: It's perfectly the same here or Guatemala or Sri Lanka
Speaker 1: or Papua New Guinea or Norway or Morocco. I think
Speaker 1: it's really interesting in your guides to places like Amsterdam,
Speaker 1: you know, you choose to include, you know, sections on
Speaker 1: prostitution and marijuana, both of which are legal there. And
Speaker 1: I think it's very interesting philosophy that you have around this.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about that philosophy on uncovering topics like these.
Speaker 1: I don't think everybody needs to be into the same things,
Speaker 1: but when you travel you can expose two issues. Whether
Speaker 1: it's the importance of water in a thirsty community it
Speaker 1: doesn't where women have to abandon their kids and walk
Speaker 1: for water every day. Whether it's the importance of separation
Speaker 1: of mosque and state like we have separation of church
Speaker 1: and state. Or whether it's the importance in the case
Speaker 1: of the Netherlands compared to the United States, of not
Speaker 1: legislating morality. Legislating morality. Uh, that's a very importan issue,
Speaker 1: and that's uh. You know, we might learn about that
Speaker 1: in school, but to actually go to a place like
Speaker 1: the Netherlands and and talk with people who say, you know,
Speaker 1: a society has to make a choice tolerate alternative lifestyles
Speaker 1: or build more prisons and New Americans lock up ten
Speaker 1: times as many people per capita as we do here
Speaker 1: in the Netherlands. Either you are an inherently more criminal people.
Speaker 1: Are there something screwed about your loss? Now, you can't
Speaker 1: dismiss that we lock up ten times as many people
Speaker 1: here in the United States as they do in Europe
Speaker 1: and most of Europe. And uh uh, and it is
Speaker 1: because we're really quick to legislate morality and and we
Speaker 1: incarceerate people to solve our problems. Where is in Europe
Speaker 1: they would rather have a system of pragmatic harm reduction
Speaker 1: when it comes to prostitution. Nobody's going to say prostitution
Speaker 1: is a good thing, But I think that you can
Speaker 1: look at this challenge in a pragmatic harm reduction kind
Speaker 1: of way and realize that it's going to happen one
Speaker 1: way or another. And uh, why don't we legalize it
Speaker 1: and regulate it and let prostitutes have their union and
Speaker 1: required that they get a medical checkup before they get
Speaker 1: their license and they're not passing diseases, and organize it
Speaker 1: in a way so when they have a dangerous plant
Speaker 1: and they push their emergency button, they're not rescued by
Speaker 1: a pimp, but they're rescued by the local policeman. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work out quite that nice, but that's the that's
Speaker 1: the ideal, and that's what they're striving for. In the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: It's quite impressive. The same thing with the drug problems
Speaker 1: in the United States. Have got this opioid crisis, well,
Speaker 1: they've had that crisis in Europe before. In fact, the
Speaker 1: two countries that have the most progressive laws about their
Speaker 1: drugs hard and soft are the Netherlands and Portugal. And
Speaker 1: both of those countries were responding a decade or two
Speaker 1: ago to an opioid crisis and they decided to take
Speaker 1: the marijuana out of the equation and gain credibility for
Speaker 1: their law enforcement and and UH. In those countries, the
Speaker 1: word for addicted is enslaved. They don't see these people
Speaker 1: as criminals that need handcuffs and lawyers and cops. They
Speaker 1: are sick people that are enslaved to hard drug addiction.
Speaker 1: They need compassion and counseling and nurses and UH. In
Speaker 1: those countries, they don't have the overdose depths that we have,
Speaker 1: they don't have the incarceration rates that we have, and
Speaker 1: they don't consume more drugs than we do. They just
Speaker 1: deal with it in a smart, pragmatic and compassionate way.
Speaker 1: So these are examples of ways that we can learn
Speaker 1: from our travels and make our country a better place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to observe those differences. Now, one area where
Speaker 1: we might all have certain things in common that I
Speaker 1: thought was very interesting is you know you mentioned being
Speaker 1: impressed by the level of pride and perhaps even surprised
Speaker 1: at times that the national pride from place to place. Well,
Speaker 1: these are the fun things that I've been able to
Speaker 1: put into travel as a political act. And and when
Speaker 1: my publisher was telling me we needed to reprint the
Speaker 1: second edition, I said, hold off, because there's been so
Speaker 1: many changes. I want to rework it for the new
Speaker 1: third edition. And as far as pride goes, we're dealing
Speaker 1: with this whole America first thing, and tribalism and nativism
Speaker 1: and Erexit and and air togon, and there's all these
Speaker 1: changes in these turmoil and the political landscape, both in
Speaker 1: Europe and in the United States, and we can learn
Speaker 1: from that. I mean, we're looking at failed countries in
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean basin that when they fall apart, you've got
Speaker 1: millions of refugees heading for Europe. We'll think of the
Speaker 1: failed nations. You've got Libya, you've got Syria, you've got Iraq.
Speaker 1: Those political borders were drawn by European colonial interests a
Speaker 1: century ago, and now we have an idea that, oh,
Speaker 1: they've got to be democratic. So we threw out their
Speaker 1: strong arm leaders, their Saddam Hussein's and their Kadafis and
Speaker 1: their sods and thoughts, and what you get is a
Speaker 1: country that falls apart. It's a fake country. It can't
Speaker 1: be held together in a democratic way. We created the
Speaker 1: fake countries, and then a century later we said you
Speaker 1: got to have democratic rulers. And the consequences they fall apart,
Speaker 1: and then they all these desperate people knock on the
Speaker 1: door of Europe. Uh. This is the consequences of europe
Speaker 1: and American colonial interests not sensitive to local ethnic realities.
Speaker 1: There is this pride in these countries, but it is
Speaker 1: ethnic pride, and the Pean Union has has really respected
Speaker 1: ethnic pride. As a matter of fact, the European Union
Speaker 1: does not fund political units that were created after wars
Speaker 1: when line lines were drawn, like today's Austria. The European
Speaker 1: Union funds ethnic realities. I've got a friend who is
Speaker 1: an archaeologist who renovates castles in the Tyrol, and if
Speaker 1: he wants money, he doesn't go to Vienna. You'll go
Speaker 1: home with nothing. He goes to Brussels. And when he
Speaker 1: goes to Brussels, he doesn't see I got something great
Speaker 1: for Austria. He says, I've got a cool idea for
Speaker 1: the Tyrol, and Brussels gives him money because Brussels understands
Speaker 1: it is the ethnic regions that really are the truth.
Speaker 1: And today the little language is nearper more widely spoken
Speaker 1: uh now than they were a generation ago, because Europe
Speaker 1: is embracing these sort of ethnic realities. I just love
Speaker 1: this idea that there's that national pride that does not
Speaker 1: die away, and when it's respected, I think things got better.
Speaker 1: And this is an example of how when you travel
Speaker 1: you I'm home with just a better, more human, more
Speaker 1: real understanding of the dynamics that are shaping the headlines
Speaker 1: that we're going to be reading throughout the rest of
Speaker 1: our life. Well. I also liked how some of that
Speaker 1: pride was also um shown in things like an appreciation
Speaker 1: of cheese, and how that changed your perspective on how
Speaker 1: cheese could be eaten. Could you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about that. That's that's a great example, you guys. And uh,
Speaker 1: I always used my experience as a tour guide and
Speaker 1: a travel writer in Europe is just sort of the
Speaker 1: classroom for this. And uh, you know, when I grew up,
Speaker 1: I was cheese was no big deal. It was orange
Speaker 1: and the shape of the bread. You know, here you
Speaker 1: go cheese sandwich. Uh. And you go to Europe and
Speaker 1: and these European cheese mongers in Europe are evangelical about
Speaker 1: their cheese. Going to like in France, you're going to
Speaker 1: a cheese shop and and uh, it's just a festival
Speaker 1: of mold. And I'll never forget that where I talked
Speaker 1: about a couple as a political act. The cheesemongers saw
Speaker 1: me as this American cultural bumpkin, you know, and im
Speaker 1: as you're come over here and he picks up a
Speaker 1: mouldi wad of goat cheese and he takes a deep
Speaker 1: whip and he goes, oh, spell this cheese. It sells
Speaker 1: like the feet of angels. You know. It seems a
Speaker 1: little over the top. But but you know, even long
Speaker 1: before that, as a tour guide, when I was a
Speaker 1: kid doing you vagabond minibus tours around Europe. I had
Speaker 1: a passion for exposing my Americans the stinky, expensive cheese.
Speaker 1: You don't need to go home and have fancy taste
Speaker 1: and cheese, but it is good to know that a
Speaker 1: lot of people do and you have that option, And
Speaker 1: to me, it's just humbling. I just love to shake
Speaker 1: up my ethnocentricity and my cultural self assuredness and realize
Speaker 1: that there's more than one way to live our lives
Speaker 1: and we can really learn a lot. And it was
Speaker 1: just a joy for me to to just kind of
Speaker 1: collect all the most um fascinating and impactful experiences I've
Speaker 1: had in in a lifetime of traveling out of my
Speaker 1: comfort zone, hanging out with people who find different truths
Speaker 1: to be self evident and God given, and and collect
Speaker 1: all those experiences in my Travel as a Political act book.
Speaker 1: I give the talk travel as a political collect all
Speaker 1: over the United States. People can google and watch me
Speaker 1: get the talk if they want to. And I thought
Speaker 1: writing the book would just simply be giving the talk
Speaker 1: to the page, you know, and writing up my talk.
Speaker 1: But it didn't turn out very well that way. But
Speaker 1: what I ended up doing was digging deeper and actually
Speaker 1: going back to the original experiences in the field and
Speaker 1: writing them up. And it's not it's a guidebook in disguise.
Speaker 1: Travel as a politic collector is not designed so you
Speaker 1: can go to Cuba, or go to Palestine, or or
Speaker 1: go to Denmark and have the same experience I had.
Speaker 1: It's just a reminder that we can we can connect
Speaker 1: with people, and we can uh learn more about our
Speaker 1: country by leaving and looking at it from a distance.
Speaker 1: And the world's a fascinating classroom and we have that option.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not that you you shouldn't go to Masilon,
Speaker 1: but you do have the option to go to Managua
Speaker 1: instead of Masilan, and that would be h an adventure
Speaker 1: that would broaden your viewpoint instead of your wasteline. I
Speaker 1: love how you talk about hearing experiences from locals and
Speaker 1: seeing history and foreign lens through their eyes, Like I
Speaker 1: think you've got perspectives of a war torn region over
Speaker 1: I think it was a green walnut, Grandpa. Or how
Speaker 1: you got to see someone show you how they put
Speaker 1: on a head scarf and how like one tiny twist
Speaker 1: changes the meaning of it. But how do we get
Speaker 1: that sort of insight when we're traveling within the US. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. My focus is traveling outside of
Speaker 1: the US, and a lot of people, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people just don't have the finances or the
Speaker 1: the interest in going far away for whatever reason. And
Speaker 1: our country is so multitasseted and h and multicultural, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can have these same sort of travel
Speaker 1: experiences within our own country. That's something I'd like to
Speaker 1: do more of. But you know, there's there's just rich cultures,
Speaker 1: and for to me, I'm just so inspired by the
Speaker 1: fact that there are really important things to some cultures
Speaker 1: are not important to other cultures. There are cultures that
Speaker 1: have baggage that other cultures don't have. There are cultures
Speaker 1: that have Nathan Hales that other cultures don't have. I
Speaker 1: was raised thinking, you know, Nathan Hale, Ethan l and
Speaker 1: Patrick Henry were like like amazing patriots. Well they were
Speaker 1: great patriots, but they weren't unique. And all over the
Speaker 1: world you've got Nathan Hale's doing their thing. You mentioned
Speaker 1: getting close enough to a culture where you learned that
Speaker 1: just the twist of the headband on the scarf is
Speaker 1: going to change the whole impression or meaning of how
Speaker 1: this woman is wearing that scarf. You know, I had
Speaker 1: the good fortune of going into a scarf shop in Istanbul,
Speaker 1: and scarves are are very stylish for women. Uh, I'm interested.
Speaker 1: How it's interesting how so many a lot of Americans
Speaker 1: are just really put off by the fact that Muslims
Speaker 1: make their women wear scarves. You know. Well, Jewish women
Speaker 1: wear scarves after they're married, or they even wear wigs
Speaker 1: if they're an orthodox Jewish family to go out. They
Speaker 1: can't go out showing their own hair. I mean in
Speaker 1: some families. And who am I to judged that students
Speaker 1: until recent times also had women covering their hair. We're
Speaker 1: all on parallel evolutionary tracks. And uh, you know, we've
Speaker 1: had the Reformation, We've had the Revolution, We've had Vatican too.
Speaker 1: You know, we've learned, we're affluent, we've benefited from time
Speaker 1: and uh in a winning economic sort of system. Other
Speaker 1: societies are are behind us, perhaps in their evolutionary track,
Speaker 1: but hopefully you know, people are going in the in
Speaker 1: the same direction. And we have to give everybody a
Speaker 1: little wiggle room. All right, Well, we have time for
Speaker 1: a few more questions for Rick. But before we get
Speaker 1: to those. Let's take a quick break. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius, and we're talking to one of our
Speaker 1: favorite travel guides and travel writers, Rick Steves. I'm curious
Speaker 1: if there is a trip that stands out as one
Speaker 1: that maybe aide you most nervous before you went on it,
Speaker 1: and where maybe you looked back and thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I went on the trip. What was
Speaker 1: I so nervous about to begin with? Is there one
Speaker 1: or a couple that stand out more than others? Mhm,
Speaker 1: you know, I am. I've been fearful about a lot
Speaker 1: of places in might travels. I for three times I
Speaker 1: was planning on going to India when I was much younger,
Speaker 1: and every year I found an excuse not to go
Speaker 1: there because I was afraid of the extreme poverty. And
Speaker 1: I finally got there and and it was it really
Speaker 1: opened me up to the world. In India's my favorite
Speaker 1: country on the planet. And I realized there's a lot
Speaker 1: of squalor and a lot of desperation in India. But
Speaker 1: there's an odd way to measure joy in book terms,
Speaker 1: not in individuals, but in the book sense. A billion
Speaker 1: people on the Indian subcontinent there's a lot of joy
Speaker 1: on that continent. And it's even hard to i I
Speaker 1: as did even to talk about it. But India rearranges
Speaker 1: your cultural furniture better than any other place. Definitely m
Speaker 1: to me. Before going to Egypt, I heard all these
Speaker 1: scary stories about how intense the beggars were and it
Speaker 1: was so hot that tires were melting to the streets,
Speaker 1: and there's no maps anywhere, just so they can keep
Speaker 1: you confused. And these were the stories that backpackers were
Speaker 1: hearing in Greece before flying to Egypt. And I finally
Speaker 1: flew there and it was an amazing experience. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad I went there. I'll never forget walking across the
Speaker 1: wall from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. First time I did it,
Speaker 1: it was scary going into Palestine. And then after that,
Speaker 1: after spending a few days in Palestine, I realized what's
Speaker 1: most scary about it is it's a poor country. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, it's there's a tenfold difference in per capita
Speaker 1: income from Israel to Palestine. There's a lot of hard
Speaker 1: scrapple people, a lot of soldiers in the streets keeping
Speaker 1: the peace and everything, and but there was nothing dangerous
Speaker 1: about it. I just was afraid at first, I was
Speaker 1: afraid to go to Iran. We almost left our big
Speaker 1: professional TV camera in Athens, went in with our little
Speaker 1: sneak camera, thinking people would be throwing stones at an
Speaker 1: American film grew on the streets of Tehran, got to
Speaker 1: Tehranto is that I swear in Iran. It was the
Speaker 1: friendliest welcome I've ever received with my film crew. As
Speaker 1: we're working the Tehran is a city of ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen million people, I think, and um, we're a lot
Speaker 1: of traffic jams, and uh, I'll never forget where it
Speaker 1: stuck in one traffic jam, and it's just silent. And
Speaker 1: finally the man in the next car asked my driver
Speaker 1: to roll down his window. He passed over a bouquet
Speaker 1: of flowers and he said, please give this to the
Speaker 1: foreigner in your back seat and apologize for our traffic.
Speaker 1: I just thought that never happened here in Seattle, I live.
Speaker 1: You know the traffic in the traffic jam, But Theran
Speaker 1: has that sort of warmth and beautiful person to person
Speaker 1: um um loveliness that you wouldn't know if you didn't
Speaker 1: travel there. And that's what I just love is that
Speaker 1: vivid image of actually going there, whether it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's Guatemala or the Yucatan, or Morocco or Sri Lanka.
Speaker 1: There's so many great places we can go to do,
Speaker 1: and with travel as a political act, I just collect
Speaker 1: my favorite experiences from a lifetime of travel like this
Speaker 1: in hopes of inspiring Americans to go beyond Orlando. Well,
Speaker 1: we love it so much, but before we can let
Speaker 1: you go, uh, reg what would you tell us where
Speaker 1: you're headed next or where you're excited to go next. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in a rut. For the last thirty years, I've
Speaker 1: spent four months a year in Europe. Every year, I
Speaker 1: spend April and May and the Mediterranean. I go home
Speaker 1: in June and then I go back to the north
Speaker 1: of the Alps for July and August. And I do
Speaker 1: this to update and right my guide books. We've got
Speaker 1: fifty Rick Steve's guide books all over Europe. I've got
Speaker 1: a scout new TV shows. The biggest part of our
Speaker 1: business here I work with a hundred people in Seattle
Speaker 1: is my tour program. We took about twenty people on
Speaker 1: a thousand different tours this last year, so I work
Speaker 1: on the tour program and I take the tours, and
Speaker 1: then I spend a lot of time producing the TV shows.
Speaker 1: It takes six days to make one of our thirty
Speaker 1: minute episodes for public television, and we do about a
Speaker 1: dozen of those every two years. So that's what my
Speaker 1: work is, and and I've got new projects all the time,
Speaker 1: so I'll be filming in Sicily and Scotland this year.
Speaker 1: I'm also looking forward to doing a TV show one
Speaker 1: hour Primmer on the fundamentals of global hunger and poverty,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to use Ethiopia and Guatemala as a classroom,
Speaker 1: so that'll be a new show we'll be offering through
Speaker 1: public television, I hope in the next year. Wow, you're
Speaker 1: an incredibly busy guy, and we really appreciate your spending
Speaker 1: time with us. I hope all of our listeners will
Speaker 1: check out the latest edition of Travel as a Political Act,
Speaker 1: which I believe is out this week. But Rick, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for joining us. Pleasure to talk to both
Speaker 1: of you, and and happy travel. Thanks again for listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works
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