February 9, 2018 • 32 mins
9/11 changed Rick Steves and how he wanted to approach writing about the world. In this special interview, Will and Mango sit down with legendary PBS host and travel writer Rick Steves to talk about the newest edition of "Travel as a Political Act", why watching a Sufi dance can be such a transcendent moment, and whether the best French cheeses really smell like "Angel's Feet." (They don't.)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I guess, well, well, what's that man go? So one
(00:02):
of the things I love about my parents is how
they travel like you know them and they're pretty unassuming,
but they always end up in these wonderful little adventures.
Like when they were young and in Paris together, they
were at dinner at some place where there was also
this big band with strings, and the band started up,
but no one was moving to the dance floor, and
the band leader was kind of just begging people to
(00:22):
join in. And then my dad swept up my mom
and they danced on this empty floor, and of course
people joined in. But when I got back to their table,
the band leader brought them this fancy bottle of really
smooth brandy and then joined them at the table, and
they had this wonderful night together and kind of became friends. Wow,
that's such a sweet story. Yeah, but they kind of
embraced people wherever they go. So they went to Cancoon
(00:44):
once and instead of staying at a resort, they actually
traveled down the Yucatan to see these pyramids that only
archaeologists seemed to go to. And I mean, it's because
my mom's obsessed with ancient cultures. But while they were there,
they made friends with these fishermen who invited them to
dinner at their house, so of course they went, of course,
and then they met their families, and they stayed late,
(01:05):
and and they were still sending postcards back and forth
from the US when they came back. I mean, those
are just like two of a thousand stories like that.
And as kids, we'd meet all sorts of people from
their travels. But I mean, now that I have kids,
I keep wondering, how do we make most of this
world and of our travel, like, how do we use
it to understand culture is better and broaden our perspectives
(01:26):
while you know, having so much fun doing it. And
I think we actually have the perfect person on to
give us a roadmap for that, incredible Rick Steves. So
let's dig in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
(01:58):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
by my good friend man guest Ticketer and sitting behind
the soundproof glass ironing his Safari suit, that's our Palin
producer Tristan McNeil. It looks so straight like I thought
he was done with it. But it's never good enough
for Tristan. He wants to perfect Chris before he gets
out there for the lions. Now, Tristan is excited about
(02:18):
our guest today, and that's because our guest today has
helped so many Americans be smarter, more thoughtful travelers. He's
the host of a popular travel series on public television
and a weekly show on NPR, and he's here to
talk to us about the release of the updated edition
of his book, Travel as a Political Act. Rick Steves,
Welcome to Part Time Genius. Nice to be with you now, Rick,
(02:39):
I loved reading about you explaining that your most powerful
travel experience was actually your very first one. You went
to Norway with your parents. I think you're at the
age of fourteen. Can can you tell us a little
bit about that? Yeah, well, I had a lot of
beautiful experiences in that trip, and I much I think
when you're referring to his I was in the park
and also behind the palace, and remember my parents were
(03:01):
just trying to make me happy and lavishing me with
love and attention, and I was kind of a you know,
as a typical fourteen year old kid being dragged on
a family vacation. And I remember looking out in that
park and it was just speckled with families, and I
saw all these parents loving their kids as much as
my parents loved me, and it occurred to me, Wow,
(03:21):
this world is home to billions of equally precious children
of God. And that was sort of a jolt for me.
It got me out of my ego and ethnocentric kind
of trap, and it opened me up to just a
passion for better understanding our world. Later on that same trip,
I was and I was on the carpet at my
(03:43):
Norwegian relatives living room and bergen and we were watching
uh Neil Armstrong step on the moon, you know, one
small step for men and one giant leap for man kind.
But I heard that in Norwegian, and I saw the
enthusiasm of all my Norwegian relatives, like just really just
ecstatic about this, and it occurred to me it wasn't
(04:04):
just an American accomplishment. This was a human accomplishment, and
the whole planet was excited about this. And I thought
in the United States people were really into waving their flag,
but uh, from a planetary point of view, it was
just a huge, great thing for for all of us.
And these were little moments that I had in in
my childhood. That contributed to my outlook. And I've spent
(04:24):
my career encouraging Americans to basically go beyond Orlando, to
to get out of their comfort zone and and broaden
their perspectives through travel. And I'm very excited about that
whole value of travel. Yeah, it's funny my mom talks
about that same experience watching the moon landing in India,
and it is it was such a global phenomena. Since
(04:46):
nine eleven, you've been traveling and giving this talk travel
as a political act. Ken, tell us what it means
to travel as a political act. Yeah, I've been teaching
like mad ever since I was a kid, my love
of travel, and I had didn't have any grand plan,
but I've been at this for decades now, and if
I look back, it does have kind of a natural
progression or evolution. Back in the eighties, it was for
(05:07):
me all about budget travel, cheap tricks. I wrote a
book called Europe through the back Door, and I was
teaching people, you know, how to catch the train and
pack light and get a hotel and a nice meal,
and that's all important stuff and that's the foundation. And
I see that as kind of the the lowest rung
of what you could think of as Maslow's hierarchy of
travel needs if you remember Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.
(05:28):
And then in the nineties, I figured, well, we've cut
the train and we're not a pack light and stay
safe and healthy. Now let's teach about enjoying the history
and the art. For travelers, history and they are the culture.
That's really why we travel. And I wrote a book
called Europe one oh one, and my my passion was
for teaching people to appreciate the culture. And then after
nine eleven, I realized, you know, the pinnacle of this
(05:48):
Maslow's hierarchy of travel needs is inspiring and encouraging and
e clipping Americans to get out of their comfort zone
to gain an empathy for the other nineties six percent
of humanity. And that's what I've been teaching a lot
since then. In fact, I'm going on a on a
road trip here in the next month while I'll be
in cities, given this talk about how we can travel
as a political act, and that really means again getting
(06:12):
out of her comfort zone, going south of the border,
gaining an empathy for the other of humanity, and coming
home with what I think is the most beautiful souvenir.
That's a broader perspective. And uh, you know, a mindset
where you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined
to build walls. Are We have so many more questions
for you, Rick, but before we get to those, let's
take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
(06:47):
and we're talking to Rick Steves about the latest edition
of his book, Travel as a Political Act. I like
that you had been in the book to having had
tickets to India three years in a row, but pushing
off the trip for your worry about going to Egypt.
And I also love that line you use that the
people who would benefit the most from travel off and
stay home. But I'm curious, like, how do we push
(07:10):
ourselves to embrace them comfortable and sort of make the
trips to places we might not be as home with. Yeah,
you know, I'm not at all advocating going to dangerous places.
There have been writers that have had that as their
publicity stunt, and they go to war torn areas. I
don't go to war torn areas. I've never traveled anywhere
where I think it's dangerous. In fact, just this week,
I can't filed out of a plan to go to Egypt.
(07:31):
I just don't think it's quite right for me to
go to Egypt and encourage Americans to go there, because
it's still struggling with a lot of issues that are important,
and I think Americans might be uncomfortable there. But I've
traveled a lot lately in countries like Iran and Cuba
and Palestine and Russia and Denmark and the Netherlands and
Portugal and Rocco, and I just love, um, you know,
(07:53):
having experiences and taking notes and learning from my mistakes
and and helping other Americans go what I consider beyond
our land. Don't to mention that earlier, And it really
is kind of my mission is to get Americans out
of their comfort zone and to realize the world is
not a pyramid with us on top and everybody else
trying to figure it out. There's smart people doing things
different than us. This is not America bashing. This is
(08:13):
just acknowledging that there's not the work ethic. You know,
I was raised thinking we have the work ethic. It's
a work ethic. My Norwegian relatives have a different work ethic.
They don't have the work ethic and my Spanish, my
Spanish Mints have a Spanish work ethic. It's not as
hard as ours, but it doesn't make it a better
or worse thing. They choose to work less and have
(08:34):
more time with their families. That is a work ethic.
And we have a work ethic. And when we travel
with a with a curiosity, in an open mind, we
challenge these norms that we think are given and they're
they're really not, and that lets us make smarter decisions
on how we want to run our lives and how
we want to weave the fabric of our communities. Well,
(08:55):
I I do love how how human this book is,
and that's one of the reasons I like it so much,
is you know, you're not sort of just talking to
people and ask them to embrace everything you're saying. You're
saying like your opinions will differ from mine because we
draw from different experiences. And I really love the perspective
you've you've filled this book with. But I did want
to ask you about this story of being in Turkey
(09:16):
and observing a whirling dervish or Susie. You know, I
thought the way you described it was so beautiful and
and I'd love to hear a little bit about that
and and what it means to sort of have your
I think you call it cultural furniture rearranged. Yeah, oh, well,
as a tour guide, you can imagine. First of all,
you mentioned how I'm trying to be respectful of people
in different life stories and different viewpoints. And I've learned
(09:37):
that just because as a tour guide, you've got the
bully pulp, but you're holding the mic and people are
trapped on that bus, and it's really important if you
if you want to have a challenging, stimulating, transformational experience,
that you don't abuse the bully pulp it. So you know,
we all have to respect that nobody's got a luck
on the truth here, and we're in this together, and
we just have a chance to travel around and learn
from fascinating and sometimes scary sort of circumstances. Scary not
(10:02):
meaning dangerous, but just scary because kind of freaky. When
I'm in Turkey, I love to meet a dervish and
introduce that dervish to my tour groups. And I account
in the book. I think it's even the leadoff story
and travel as a political act. How as a tour guide.
I found this dervish and I said, Hi, I'm an
American tour guide. I've got twenty American at the hotel,
and and we'd love to see you whirl. You know,
(10:22):
he's whirling dervishes. He said, I'm not a photo of
I'm a I'm a monk and I'm praying. But if
you want to watch me pray, I would welcome you
to watch me, but I need I need to be
able to explain to you what I'm doing. So I said,
perfect where and when he said, on my rooftop at sundown.
So we gathered my group and we went up to
his rooftop and he walked. He came out dressed up
in his dervish outfit, you know, and he welcome to us,
(10:45):
and he said, I'm a I'm a dervish. That's what
you Americans would probably call him a monk. And I
follow My prophet is Nevlana. I think the Christian equivalent
would be St. Francis the Profit of Love. Everybody can
get their brains around his teachings and so on. And
he said, five times a day, I spin myself into
a meditative trance. And he showed us how he places
(11:07):
one foot in the middle and that symbolizes his home
and his family, and then the other foot goes around
and around on the outside, celebrating the diversity in God's
great creation. And he spins with that motion, and one
hand goes up to accept the love of his creator,
and the other hand goes down like the spout on
a tea kettle, to shower God's love on his beautiful creation.
(11:29):
And the dervish spins himself into a meditative trance and
loses himself and that beautiful idea that he can be
a conduit of God's love, and standing there as a
tour guide, the travel teacher with twenty Americans who have
no idea what the dervish was except this comic cruise
ship entertainment, you know, and watching him lose himself in
that beautiful idea and his head tilted over and his
robe billowed out. And then for me to hand over
(11:53):
to the left and see the faces of my tourists,
just wonder struck, and to know that they were being
changed right, and they were going to go home with
that beautiful souvenir. And that's an empathy for other people,
a broader perspective. And then when they implement that broader
perspective back here in this beautiful country of ours, they're
making travel a political act. And uh, that's kind of
(12:15):
what I think is the greatest accomplishment for a tour
guide and a travel writer like me is to help
American travelers learn about the beauty and the diversity on
this planet and go home and not be afraid of it,
but to celebrate it. It's hard to imagine a more
powerful experience than to have set there and have you know,
a dervish explain what this was all about. That that's
(12:36):
that's such a wonderful story. Great, Rick, I was hoping
you could tell us a little about your experience of
being a Lutheran and Namibia, you know, like that the
priorities there can be different, and reading the Bible through
different eyes there can Can you talk a little bit
about that. Yeah, I'm a Lutheran and I think it's
fun to think that there's more Lutherans in the maybe
than they're in the United States. And I've been on
(12:58):
trips with the Lutheran Church help film mission workings on
in Papa New Guinea and this and that, and uh,
I think The important thing for ethno center Christians to
understand is there's you know, there's different ways that cultures
embrace different faiths. And uh, in my travels, I've I've
really enjoyed trying to be open minded about that and
(13:19):
and learning from other people. And uh, it's just Lutherans
have this funny notion that Lutherans are all Germans or
Scandinavian and it's another example of the centristy. And we
don't all have jello and green hymnals and this sort
of thing, and casse roles as the garrison keeler jokes
would be uh, and uh that always is a powerful opportunity.
(13:39):
And in our travels we can, uh, we can all
you know, endeavor to better understand God without being judgmental
of each each other. I'll never forget as a Christian
tour guide with a group in Turkey dancing in the
living room of a mayor of a little village that
had never met an American tour group before. And and
I was the big shot because as I was the
(14:00):
tour guy, and he was the big jump because he
was the mayor. So he came over to me and
we're all snapping our fingers and shaking our shoulders and dancing,
and he took me over to the most sacred place
in his house. It was the his Koran bag, where
he hangs his Koran on the wall. And he said,
in my karan bag, I keep a copy of the Bible,
the Torah and the Koran, because I believe as Christians,
(14:23):
Jews and Muslims are all children of the same God,
people of the book. And I just thought, Wow, I
wish more Americans could could meet this Muslim and to
realize that there's just so much there's so much joy
and the challenges for us to understand each other and
respect each other and know how we can live together,
you know, as neighbors. And Son's almost tried. That's sort
(14:46):
of the fundamental thing about travel. We humanize this planet
and we come home not fearful, but we come home
celebrating the diversity and the joy and the love that
just abounds on this planet. And that's one thing I
come home with from wherever I travel, is that just
the love of a father or a mother for their child.
It's perfectly the same here or Guatemala or Sri Lanka
(15:11):
or Papua New Guinea or Norway or Morocco. I think
it's really interesting in your guides to places like Amsterdam,
you know, you choose to include, you know, sections on
prostitution and marijuana, both of which are legal there. And
I think it's very interesting philosophy that you have around this.
Can you talk about that philosophy on uncovering topics like these.
(15:32):
I don't think everybody needs to be into the same things,
but when you travel you can expose two issues. Whether
it's the importance of water in a thirsty community it
doesn't where women have to abandon their kids and walk
for water every day. Whether it's the importance of separation
of mosque and state like we have separation of church
and state. Or whether it's the importance in the case
(15:53):
of the Netherlands compared to the United States, of not
legislating morality. Legislating morality. Uh, that's a very importan issue,
and that's uh. You know, we might learn about that
in school, but to actually go to a place like
the Netherlands and and talk with people who say, you know,
a society has to make a choice tolerate alternative lifestyles
or build more prisons and New Americans lock up ten
(16:14):
times as many people per capita as we do here
in the Netherlands. Either you are an inherently more criminal people.
Are there something screwed about your loss? Now, you can't
dismiss that we lock up ten times as many people
here in the United States as they do in Europe
and most of Europe. And uh uh, and it is
because we're really quick to legislate morality and and we
incarceerate people to solve our problems. Where is in Europe
(16:36):
they would rather have a system of pragmatic harm reduction
when it comes to prostitution. Nobody's going to say prostitution
is a good thing, But I think that you can
look at this challenge in a pragmatic harm reduction kind
of way and realize that it's going to happen one
way or another. And uh, why don't we legalize it
and regulate it and let prostitutes have their union and
(17:00):
required that they get a medical checkup before they get
their license and they're not passing diseases, and organize it
in a way so when they have a dangerous plant
and they push their emergency button, they're not rescued by
a pimp, but they're rescued by the local policeman. It
doesn't work out quite that nice, but that's the that's
the ideal, and that's what they're striving for. In the Netherlands.
It's quite impressive. The same thing with the drug problems
(17:20):
in the United States. Have got this opioid crisis, well,
they've had that crisis in Europe before. In fact, the
two countries that have the most progressive laws about their
drugs hard and soft are the Netherlands and Portugal. And
both of those countries were responding a decade or two
ago to an opioid crisis and they decided to take
the marijuana out of the equation and gain credibility for
(17:42):
their law enforcement and and UH. In those countries, the
word for addicted is enslaved. They don't see these people
as criminals that need handcuffs and lawyers and cops. They
are sick people that are enslaved to hard drug addiction.
They need compassion and counseling and nurses and UH. In
those countries, they don't have the overdose depths that we have,
they don't have the incarceration rates that we have, and
(18:04):
they don't consume more drugs than we do. They just
deal with it in a smart, pragmatic and compassionate way.
So these are examples of ways that we can learn
from our travels and make our country a better place. Yeah,
it's interesting to observe those differences. Now, one area where
we might all have certain things in common that I
thought was very interesting is you know you mentioned being
(18:26):
impressed by the level of pride and perhaps even surprised
at times that the national pride from place to place. Well,
these are the fun things that I've been able to
put into travel as a political act. And and when
my publisher was telling me we needed to reprint the
second edition, I said, hold off, because there's been so
many changes. I want to rework it for the new
(18:47):
third edition. And as far as pride goes, we're dealing
with this whole America first thing, and tribalism and nativism
and Erexit and and air togon, and there's all these
changes in these turmoil and the political landscape, both in
Europe and in the United States, and we can learn
from that. I mean, we're looking at failed countries in
the Mediterranean basin that when they fall apart, you've got
(19:10):
millions of refugees heading for Europe. We'll think of the
failed nations. You've got Libya, you've got Syria, you've got Iraq.
Those political borders were drawn by European colonial interests a
century ago, and now we have an idea that, oh,
they've got to be democratic. So we threw out their
strong arm leaders, their Saddam Hussein's and their Kadafis and
(19:30):
their sods and thoughts, and what you get is a
country that falls apart. It's a fake country. It can't
be held together in a democratic way. We created the
fake countries, and then a century later we said you
got to have democratic rulers. And the consequences they fall apart,
and then they all these desperate people knock on the
door of Europe. Uh. This is the consequences of europe
and American colonial interests not sensitive to local ethnic realities.
(19:55):
There is this pride in these countries, but it is
ethnic pride, and the Pean Union has has really respected
ethnic pride. As a matter of fact, the European Union
does not fund political units that were created after wars
when line lines were drawn, like today's Austria. The European
Union funds ethnic realities. I've got a friend who is
(20:17):
an archaeologist who renovates castles in the Tyrol, and if
he wants money, he doesn't go to Vienna. You'll go
home with nothing. He goes to Brussels. And when he
goes to Brussels, he doesn't see I got something great
for Austria. He says, I've got a cool idea for
the Tyrol, and Brussels gives him money because Brussels understands
it is the ethnic regions that really are the truth.
(20:38):
And today the little language is nearper more widely spoken
uh now than they were a generation ago, because Europe
is embracing these sort of ethnic realities. I just love
this idea that there's that national pride that does not
die away, and when it's respected, I think things got better.
And this is an example of how when you travel
(20:59):
you I'm home with just a better, more human, more
real understanding of the dynamics that are shaping the headlines
that we're going to be reading throughout the rest of
our life. Well. I also liked how some of that
pride was also um shown in things like an appreciation
of cheese, and how that changed your perspective on how
(21:19):
cheese could be eaten. Could you talk a little bit
about that. That's that's a great example, you guys. And uh,
I always used my experience as a tour guide and
a travel writer in Europe is just sort of the
classroom for this. And uh, you know, when I grew up,
I was cheese was no big deal. It was orange
and the shape of the bread. You know, here you
go cheese sandwich. Uh. And you go to Europe and
(21:41):
and these European cheese mongers in Europe are evangelical about
their cheese. Going to like in France, you're going to
a cheese shop and and uh, it's just a festival
of mold. And I'll never forget that where I talked
about a couple as a political act. The cheesemongers saw
me as this American cultural bumpkin, you know, and im
as you're come over here and he picks up a
mouldi wad of goat cheese and he takes a deep
(22:04):
whip and he goes, oh, spell this cheese. It sells
like the feet of angels. You know. It seems a
little over the top. But but you know, even long
before that, as a tour guide, when I was a
kid doing you vagabond minibus tours around Europe. I had
a passion for exposing my Americans the stinky, expensive cheese.
You don't need to go home and have fancy taste
(22:24):
and cheese, but it is good to know that a
lot of people do and you have that option, And
to me, it's just humbling. I just love to shake
up my ethnocentricity and my cultural self assuredness and realize
that there's more than one way to live our lives
and we can really learn a lot. And it was
just a joy for me to to just kind of
collect all the most um fascinating and impactful experiences I've
(22:49):
had in in a lifetime of traveling out of my
comfort zone, hanging out with people who find different truths
to be self evident and God given, and and collect
all those experiences in my Travel as a Political act book.
I give the talk travel as a political collect all
over the United States. People can google and watch me
get the talk if they want to. And I thought
writing the book would just simply be giving the talk
(23:09):
to the page, you know, and writing up my talk.
But it didn't turn out very well that way. But
what I ended up doing was digging deeper and actually
going back to the original experiences in the field and
writing them up. And it's not it's a guidebook in disguise.
Travel as a politic collector is not designed so you
can go to Cuba, or go to Palestine, or or
(23:29):
go to Denmark and have the same experience I had.
It's just a reminder that we can we can connect
with people, and we can uh learn more about our
country by leaving and looking at it from a distance.
And the world's a fascinating classroom and we have that option.
You know, it's not that you you shouldn't go to Masilon,
but you do have the option to go to Managua
(23:51):
instead of Masilan, and that would be h an adventure
that would broaden your viewpoint instead of your wasteline. I
love how you talk about hearing experiences from locals and
seeing history and foreign lens through their eyes, Like I
think you've got perspectives of a war torn region over
I think it was a green walnut, Grandpa. Or how
(24:11):
you got to see someone show you how they put
on a head scarf and how like one tiny twist
changes the meaning of it. But how do we get
that sort of insight when we're traveling within the US. Well,
that's a good question. My focus is traveling outside of
the US, and a lot of people, you know, a
lot of people just don't have the finances or the
(24:31):
the interest in going far away for whatever reason. And
our country is so multitasseted and h and multicultural, and
you know, you can have these same sort of travel
experiences within our own country. That's something I'd like to
do more of. But you know, there's there's just rich cultures,
and for to me, I'm just so inspired by the
(24:55):
fact that there are really important things to some cultures
are not important to other cultures. There are cultures that
have baggage that other cultures don't have. There are cultures
that have Nathan Hales that other cultures don't have. I
was raised thinking, you know, Nathan Hale, Ethan l and
Patrick Henry were like like amazing patriots. Well they were
(25:16):
great patriots, but they weren't unique. And all over the
world you've got Nathan Hale's doing their thing. You mentioned
getting close enough to a culture where you learned that
just the twist of the headband on the scarf is
going to change the whole impression or meaning of how
this woman is wearing that scarf. You know, I had
the good fortune of going into a scarf shop in Istanbul,
and scarves are are very stylish for women. Uh, I'm interested.
(25:40):
How it's interesting how so many a lot of Americans
are just really put off by the fact that Muslims
make their women wear scarves. You know. Well, Jewish women
wear scarves after they're married, or they even wear wigs
if they're an orthodox Jewish family to go out. They
can't go out showing their own hair. I mean in
some families. And who am I to judged that students
(26:00):
until recent times also had women covering their hair. We're
all on parallel evolutionary tracks. And uh, you know, we've
had the Reformation, We've had the Revolution, We've had Vatican too.
You know, we've learned, we're affluent, we've benefited from time
and uh in a winning economic sort of system. Other
(26:21):
societies are are behind us, perhaps in their evolutionary track,
but hopefully you know, people are going in the in
the same direction. And we have to give everybody a
little wiggle room. All right, Well, we have time for
a few more questions for Rick. But before we get
to those. Let's take a quick break. Welcome back to
(26:50):
Part Time Genius, and we're talking to one of our
favorite travel guides and travel writers, Rick Steves. I'm curious
if there is a trip that stands out as one
that maybe aide you most nervous before you went on it,
and where maybe you looked back and thought, you know,
I'm so glad I went on the trip. What was
I so nervous about to begin with? Is there one
or a couple that stand out more than others? Mhm,
(27:13):
you know, I am. I've been fearful about a lot
of places in might travels. I for three times I
was planning on going to India when I was much younger,
and every year I found an excuse not to go
there because I was afraid of the extreme poverty. And
I finally got there and and it was it really
opened me up to the world. In India's my favorite
(27:33):
country on the planet. And I realized there's a lot
of squalor and a lot of desperation in India. But
there's an odd way to measure joy in book terms,
not in individuals, but in the book sense. A billion
people on the Indian subcontinent there's a lot of joy
on that continent. And it's even hard to i I
(27:53):
as did even to talk about it. But India rearranges
your cultural furniture better than any other place. Definitely m
to me. Before going to Egypt, I heard all these
scary stories about how intense the beggars were and it
was so hot that tires were melting to the streets,
and there's no maps anywhere, just so they can keep
you confused. And these were the stories that backpackers were
(28:14):
hearing in Greece before flying to Egypt. And I finally
flew there and it was an amazing experience. I'm so
glad I went there. I'll never forget walking across the
wall from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. First time I did it,
it was scary going into Palestine. And then after that,
after spending a few days in Palestine, I realized what's
(28:35):
most scary about it is it's a poor country. Uh
you know, it's there's a tenfold difference in per capita
income from Israel to Palestine. There's a lot of hard
scrapple people, a lot of soldiers in the streets keeping
the peace and everything, and but there was nothing dangerous
about it. I just was afraid at first, I was
afraid to go to Iran. We almost left our big
professional TV camera in Athens, went in with our little
(28:58):
sneak camera, thinking people would be throwing stones at an
American film grew on the streets of Tehran, got to
Tehranto is that I swear in Iran. It was the
friendliest welcome I've ever received with my film crew. As
we're working the Tehran is a city of ten or
fifteen million people, I think, and um, we're a lot
of traffic jams, and uh, I'll never forget where it
stuck in one traffic jam, and it's just silent. And
(29:20):
finally the man in the next car asked my driver
to roll down his window. He passed over a bouquet
of flowers and he said, please give this to the
foreigner in your back seat and apologize for our traffic.
I just thought that never happened here in Seattle, I live.
You know the traffic in the traffic jam, But Theran
has that sort of warmth and beautiful person to person
(29:41):
um um loveliness that you wouldn't know if you didn't
travel there. And that's what I just love is that
vivid image of actually going there, whether it's uh, you know,
whether it's Guatemala or the Yucatan, or Morocco or Sri Lanka.
There's so many great places we can go to do,
and with travel as a political act, I just collect
(30:04):
my favorite experiences from a lifetime of travel like this
in hopes of inspiring Americans to go beyond Orlando. Well,
we love it so much, but before we can let
you go, uh, reg what would you tell us where
you're headed next or where you're excited to go next. Yeah,
I'm in a rut. For the last thirty years, I've
spent four months a year in Europe. Every year, I
(30:24):
spend April and May and the Mediterranean. I go home
in June and then I go back to the north
of the Alps for July and August. And I do
this to update and right my guide books. We've got
fifty Rick Steve's guide books all over Europe. I've got
a scout new TV shows. The biggest part of our
business here I work with a hundred people in Seattle
is my tour program. We took about twenty people on
a thousand different tours this last year, so I work
(30:47):
on the tour program and I take the tours, and
then I spend a lot of time producing the TV shows.
It takes six days to make one of our thirty
minute episodes for public television, and we do about a
dozen of those every two years. So that's what my
work is, and and I've got new projects all the time,
so I'll be filming in Sicily and Scotland this year.
I'm also looking forward to doing a TV show one
hour Primmer on the fundamentals of global hunger and poverty,
(31:11):
and I'm going to use Ethiopia and Guatemala as a classroom,
so that'll be a new show we'll be offering through
public television, I hope in the next year. Wow, you're
an incredibly busy guy, and we really appreciate your spending
time with us. I hope all of our listeners will
check out the latest edition of Travel as a Political Act,
which I believe is out this week. But Rick, thanks
so much for joining us. Pleasure to talk to both
(31:32):
of you, and and happy travel. Thanks again for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
(31:53):
the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan
McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme
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(32:15):
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Did you? Did you forget
Jens Jason who
I guess, well, well, what's that man go? So one
(00:02):
of the things I love about my parents is how
they travel like you know them and they're pretty unassuming,
but they always end up in these wonderful little adventures.
Like when they were young and in Paris together, they
were at dinner at some place where there was also
this big band with strings, and the band started up,
but no one was moving to the dance floor, and
the band leader was kind of just begging people to
(00:22):
join in. And then my dad swept up my mom
and they danced on this empty floor, and of course
people joined in. But when I got back to their table,
the band leader brought them this fancy bottle of really
smooth brandy and then joined them at the table, and
they had this wonderful night together and kind of became friends. Wow,
that's such a sweet story. Yeah, but they kind of
embraced people wherever they go. So they went to Cancoon
(00:44):
once and instead of staying at a resort, they actually
traveled down the Yucatan to see these pyramids that only
archaeologists seemed to go to. And I mean, it's because
my mom's obsessed with ancient cultures. But while they were there,
they made friends with these fishermen who invited them to
dinner at their house, so of course they went, of course,
and then they met their families, and they stayed late,
(01:05):
and and they were still sending postcards back and forth
from the US when they came back. I mean, those
are just like two of a thousand stories like that.
And as kids, we'd meet all sorts of people from
their travels. But I mean, now that I have kids,
I keep wondering, how do we make most of this
world and of our travel, like, how do we use
it to understand culture is better and broaden our perspectives
(01:26):
while you know, having so much fun doing it. And
I think we actually have the perfect person on to
give us a roadmap for that, incredible Rick Steves. So
let's dig in a their podcast. Listeners, Welcome to Part
(01:58):
Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined
by my good friend man guest Ticketer and sitting behind
the soundproof glass ironing his Safari suit, that's our Palin
producer Tristan McNeil. It looks so straight like I thought
he was done with it. But it's never good enough
for Tristan. He wants to perfect Chris before he gets
out there for the lions. Now, Tristan is excited about
(02:18):
our guest today, and that's because our guest today has
helped so many Americans be smarter, more thoughtful travelers. He's
the host of a popular travel series on public television
and a weekly show on NPR, and he's here to
talk to us about the release of the updated edition
of his book, Travel as a Political Act. Rick Steves,
Welcome to Part Time Genius. Nice to be with you now, Rick,
(02:39):
I loved reading about you explaining that your most powerful
travel experience was actually your very first one. You went
to Norway with your parents. I think you're at the
age of fourteen. Can can you tell us a little
bit about that? Yeah, well, I had a lot of
beautiful experiences in that trip, and I much I think
when you're referring to his I was in the park
and also behind the palace, and remember my parents were
(03:01):
just trying to make me happy and lavishing me with
love and attention, and I was kind of a you know,
as a typical fourteen year old kid being dragged on
a family vacation. And I remember looking out in that
park and it was just speckled with families, and I
saw all these parents loving their kids as much as
my parents loved me, and it occurred to me, Wow,
(03:21):
this world is home to billions of equally precious children
of God. And that was sort of a jolt for me.
It got me out of my ego and ethnocentric kind
of trap, and it opened me up to just a
passion for better understanding our world. Later on that same trip,
I was and I was on the carpet at my
(03:43):
Norwegian relatives living room and bergen and we were watching
uh Neil Armstrong step on the moon, you know, one
small step for men and one giant leap for man kind.
But I heard that in Norwegian, and I saw the
enthusiasm of all my Norwegian relatives, like just really just
ecstatic about this, and it occurred to me it wasn't
(04:04):
just an American accomplishment. This was a human accomplishment, and
the whole planet was excited about this. And I thought
in the United States people were really into waving their flag,
but uh, from a planetary point of view, it was
just a huge, great thing for for all of us.
And these were little moments that I had in in
my childhood. That contributed to my outlook. And I've spent
(04:24):
my career encouraging Americans to basically go beyond Orlando, to
to get out of their comfort zone and and broaden
their perspectives through travel. And I'm very excited about that
whole value of travel. Yeah, it's funny my mom talks
about that same experience watching the moon landing in India,
and it is it was such a global phenomena. Since
(04:46):
nine eleven, you've been traveling and giving this talk travel
as a political act. Ken, tell us what it means
to travel as a political act. Yeah, I've been teaching
like mad ever since I was a kid, my love
of travel, and I had didn't have any grand plan,
but I've been at this for decades now, and if
I look back, it does have kind of a natural
progression or evolution. Back in the eighties, it was for
(05:07):
me all about budget travel, cheap tricks. I wrote a
book called Europe through the back Door, and I was
teaching people, you know, how to catch the train and
pack light and get a hotel and a nice meal,
and that's all important stuff and that's the foundation. And
I see that as kind of the the lowest rung
of what you could think of as Maslow's hierarchy of
travel needs if you remember Maslow's hierarchy of human needs.
(05:28):
And then in the nineties, I figured, well, we've cut
the train and we're not a pack light and stay
safe and healthy. Now let's teach about enjoying the history
and the art. For travelers, history and they are the culture.
That's really why we travel. And I wrote a book
called Europe one oh one, and my my passion was
for teaching people to appreciate the culture. And then after
nine eleven, I realized, you know, the pinnacle of this
(05:48):
Maslow's hierarchy of travel needs is inspiring and encouraging and
e clipping Americans to get out of their comfort zone
to gain an empathy for the other nineties six percent
of humanity. And that's what I've been teaching a lot
since then. In fact, I'm going on a on a
road trip here in the next month while I'll be
in cities, given this talk about how we can travel
as a political act, and that really means again getting
(06:12):
out of her comfort zone, going south of the border,
gaining an empathy for the other of humanity, and coming
home with what I think is the most beautiful souvenir.
That's a broader perspective. And uh, you know, a mindset
where you're more inclined to build bridges and less inclined
to build walls. Are We have so many more questions
for you, Rick, but before we get to those, let's
take a quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius,
(06:47):
and we're talking to Rick Steves about the latest edition
of his book, Travel as a Political Act. I like
that you had been in the book to having had
tickets to India three years in a row, but pushing
off the trip for your worry about going to Egypt.
And I also love that line you use that the
people who would benefit the most from travel off and
stay home. But I'm curious, like, how do we push
(07:10):
ourselves to embrace them comfortable and sort of make the
trips to places we might not be as home with. Yeah,
you know, I'm not at all advocating going to dangerous places.
There have been writers that have had that as their
publicity stunt, and they go to war torn areas. I
don't go to war torn areas. I've never traveled anywhere
where I think it's dangerous. In fact, just this week,
I can't filed out of a plan to go to Egypt.
(07:31):
I just don't think it's quite right for me to
go to Egypt and encourage Americans to go there, because
it's still struggling with a lot of issues that are important,
and I think Americans might be uncomfortable there. But I've
traveled a lot lately in countries like Iran and Cuba
and Palestine and Russia and Denmark and the Netherlands and
Portugal and Rocco, and I just love, um, you know,
(07:53):
having experiences and taking notes and learning from my mistakes
and and helping other Americans go what I consider beyond
our land. Don't to mention that earlier, And it really
is kind of my mission is to get Americans out
of their comfort zone and to realize the world is
not a pyramid with us on top and everybody else
trying to figure it out. There's smart people doing things
different than us. This is not America bashing. This is
(08:13):
just acknowledging that there's not the work ethic. You know,
I was raised thinking we have the work ethic. It's
a work ethic. My Norwegian relatives have a different work ethic.
They don't have the work ethic and my Spanish, my
Spanish Mints have a Spanish work ethic. It's not as
hard as ours, but it doesn't make it a better
or worse thing. They choose to work less and have
(08:34):
more time with their families. That is a work ethic.
And we have a work ethic. And when we travel
with a with a curiosity, in an open mind, we
challenge these norms that we think are given and they're
they're really not, and that lets us make smarter decisions
on how we want to run our lives and how
we want to weave the fabric of our communities. Well,
(08:55):
I I do love how how human this book is,
and that's one of the reasons I like it so much,
is you know, you're not sort of just talking to
people and ask them to embrace everything you're saying. You're
saying like your opinions will differ from mine because we
draw from different experiences. And I really love the perspective
you've you've filled this book with. But I did want
to ask you about this story of being in Turkey
(09:16):
and observing a whirling dervish or Susie. You know, I
thought the way you described it was so beautiful and
and I'd love to hear a little bit about that
and and what it means to sort of have your
I think you call it cultural furniture rearranged. Yeah, oh, well,
as a tour guide, you can imagine. First of all,
you mentioned how I'm trying to be respectful of people
in different life stories and different viewpoints. And I've learned
(09:37):
that just because as a tour guide, you've got the
bully pulp, but you're holding the mic and people are
trapped on that bus, and it's really important if you
if you want to have a challenging, stimulating, transformational experience,
that you don't abuse the bully pulp it. So you know,
we all have to respect that nobody's got a luck
on the truth here, and we're in this together, and
we just have a chance to travel around and learn
from fascinating and sometimes scary sort of circumstances. Scary not
(10:02):
meaning dangerous, but just scary because kind of freaky. When
I'm in Turkey, I love to meet a dervish and
introduce that dervish to my tour groups. And I account
in the book. I think it's even the leadoff story
and travel as a political act. How as a tour guide.
I found this dervish and I said, Hi, I'm an
American tour guide. I've got twenty American at the hotel,
and and we'd love to see you whirl. You know,
(10:22):
he's whirling dervishes. He said, I'm not a photo of
I'm a I'm a monk and I'm praying. But if
you want to watch me pray, I would welcome you
to watch me, but I need I need to be
able to explain to you what I'm doing. So I said,
perfect where and when he said, on my rooftop at sundown.
So we gathered my group and we went up to
his rooftop and he walked. He came out dressed up
in his dervish outfit, you know, and he welcome to us,
(10:45):
and he said, I'm a I'm a dervish. That's what
you Americans would probably call him a monk. And I
follow My prophet is Nevlana. I think the Christian equivalent
would be St. Francis the Profit of Love. Everybody can
get their brains around his teachings and so on. And
he said, five times a day, I spin myself into
a meditative trance. And he showed us how he places
(11:07):
one foot in the middle and that symbolizes his home
and his family, and then the other foot goes around
and around on the outside, celebrating the diversity in God's
great creation. And he spins with that motion, and one
hand goes up to accept the love of his creator,
and the other hand goes down like the spout on
a tea kettle, to shower God's love on his beautiful creation.
(11:29):
And the dervish spins himself into a meditative trance and
loses himself and that beautiful idea that he can be
a conduit of God's love, and standing there as a
tour guide, the travel teacher with twenty Americans who have
no idea what the dervish was except this comic cruise
ship entertainment, you know, and watching him lose himself in
that beautiful idea and his head tilted over and his
robe billowed out. And then for me to hand over
(11:53):
to the left and see the faces of my tourists,
just wonder struck, and to know that they were being
changed right, and they were going to go home with
that beautiful souvenir. And that's an empathy for other people,
a broader perspective. And then when they implement that broader
perspective back here in this beautiful country of ours, they're
making travel a political act. And uh, that's kind of
(12:15):
what I think is the greatest accomplishment for a tour
guide and a travel writer like me is to help
American travelers learn about the beauty and the diversity on
this planet and go home and not be afraid of it,
but to celebrate it. It's hard to imagine a more
powerful experience than to have set there and have you know,
a dervish explain what this was all about. That that's
(12:36):
that's such a wonderful story. Great, Rick, I was hoping
you could tell us a little about your experience of
being a Lutheran and Namibia, you know, like that the
priorities there can be different, and reading the Bible through
different eyes there can Can you talk a little bit
about that. Yeah, I'm a Lutheran and I think it's
fun to think that there's more Lutherans in the maybe
than they're in the United States. And I've been on
(12:58):
trips with the Lutheran Church help film mission workings on
in Papa New Guinea and this and that, and uh,
I think The important thing for ethno center Christians to
understand is there's you know, there's different ways that cultures
embrace different faiths. And uh, in my travels, I've I've
really enjoyed trying to be open minded about that and
(13:19):
and learning from other people. And uh, it's just Lutherans
have this funny notion that Lutherans are all Germans or
Scandinavian and it's another example of the centristy. And we
don't all have jello and green hymnals and this sort
of thing, and casse roles as the garrison keeler jokes
would be uh, and uh that always is a powerful opportunity.
(13:39):
And in our travels we can, uh, we can all
you know, endeavor to better understand God without being judgmental
of each each other. I'll never forget as a Christian
tour guide with a group in Turkey dancing in the
living room of a mayor of a little village that
had never met an American tour group before. And and
I was the big shot because as I was the
(14:00):
tour guy, and he was the big jump because he
was the mayor. So he came over to me and
we're all snapping our fingers and shaking our shoulders and dancing,
and he took me over to the most sacred place
in his house. It was the his Koran bag, where
he hangs his Koran on the wall. And he said,
in my karan bag, I keep a copy of the Bible,
the Torah and the Koran, because I believe as Christians,
(14:23):
Jews and Muslims are all children of the same God,
people of the book. And I just thought, Wow, I
wish more Americans could could meet this Muslim and to
realize that there's just so much there's so much joy
and the challenges for us to understand each other and
respect each other and know how we can live together,
you know, as neighbors. And Son's almost tried. That's sort
(14:46):
of the fundamental thing about travel. We humanize this planet
and we come home not fearful, but we come home
celebrating the diversity and the joy and the love that
just abounds on this planet. And that's one thing I
come home with from wherever I travel, is that just
the love of a father or a mother for their child.
It's perfectly the same here or Guatemala or Sri Lanka
(15:11):
or Papua New Guinea or Norway or Morocco. I think
it's really interesting in your guides to places like Amsterdam,
you know, you choose to include, you know, sections on
prostitution and marijuana, both of which are legal there. And
I think it's very interesting philosophy that you have around this.
Can you talk about that philosophy on uncovering topics like these.
(15:32):
I don't think everybody needs to be into the same things,
but when you travel you can expose two issues. Whether
it's the importance of water in a thirsty community it
doesn't where women have to abandon their kids and walk
for water every day. Whether it's the importance of separation
of mosque and state like we have separation of church
and state. Or whether it's the importance in the case
(15:53):
of the Netherlands compared to the United States, of not
legislating morality. Legislating morality. Uh, that's a very importan issue,
and that's uh. You know, we might learn about that
in school, but to actually go to a place like
the Netherlands and and talk with people who say, you know,
a society has to make a choice tolerate alternative lifestyles
or build more prisons and New Americans lock up ten
(16:14):
times as many people per capita as we do here
in the Netherlands. Either you are an inherently more criminal people.
Are there something screwed about your loss? Now, you can't
dismiss that we lock up ten times as many people
here in the United States as they do in Europe
and most of Europe. And uh uh, and it is
because we're really quick to legislate morality and and we
incarceerate people to solve our problems. Where is in Europe
(16:36):
they would rather have a system of pragmatic harm reduction
when it comes to prostitution. Nobody's going to say prostitution
is a good thing, But I think that you can
look at this challenge in a pragmatic harm reduction kind
of way and realize that it's going to happen one
way or another. And uh, why don't we legalize it
and regulate it and let prostitutes have their union and
(17:00):
required that they get a medical checkup before they get
their license and they're not passing diseases, and organize it
in a way so when they have a dangerous plant
and they push their emergency button, they're not rescued by
a pimp, but they're rescued by the local policeman. It
doesn't work out quite that nice, but that's the that's
the ideal, and that's what they're striving for. In the Netherlands.
It's quite impressive. The same thing with the drug problems
(17:20):
in the United States. Have got this opioid crisis, well,
they've had that crisis in Europe before. In fact, the
two countries that have the most progressive laws about their
drugs hard and soft are the Netherlands and Portugal. And
both of those countries were responding a decade or two
ago to an opioid crisis and they decided to take
the marijuana out of the equation and gain credibility for
(17:42):
their law enforcement and and UH. In those countries, the
word for addicted is enslaved. They don't see these people
as criminals that need handcuffs and lawyers and cops. They
are sick people that are enslaved to hard drug addiction.
They need compassion and counseling and nurses and UH. In
those countries, they don't have the overdose depths that we have,
they don't have the incarceration rates that we have, and
(18:04):
they don't consume more drugs than we do. They just
deal with it in a smart, pragmatic and compassionate way.
So these are examples of ways that we can learn
from our travels and make our country a better place. Yeah,
it's interesting to observe those differences. Now, one area where
we might all have certain things in common that I
thought was very interesting is you know you mentioned being
(18:26):
impressed by the level of pride and perhaps even surprised
at times that the national pride from place to place. Well,
these are the fun things that I've been able to
put into travel as a political act. And and when
my publisher was telling me we needed to reprint the
second edition, I said, hold off, because there's been so
many changes. I want to rework it for the new
(18:47):
third edition. And as far as pride goes, we're dealing
with this whole America first thing, and tribalism and nativism
and Erexit and and air togon, and there's all these
changes in these turmoil and the political landscape, both in
Europe and in the United States, and we can learn
from that. I mean, we're looking at failed countries in
the Mediterranean basin that when they fall apart, you've got
(19:10):
millions of refugees heading for Europe. We'll think of the
failed nations. You've got Libya, you've got Syria, you've got Iraq.
Those political borders were drawn by European colonial interests a
century ago, and now we have an idea that, oh,
they've got to be democratic. So we threw out their
strong arm leaders, their Saddam Hussein's and their Kadafis and
(19:30):
their sods and thoughts, and what you get is a
country that falls apart. It's a fake country. It can't
be held together in a democratic way. We created the
fake countries, and then a century later we said you
got to have democratic rulers. And the consequences they fall apart,
and then they all these desperate people knock on the
door of Europe. Uh. This is the consequences of europe
and American colonial interests not sensitive to local ethnic realities.
(19:55):
There is this pride in these countries, but it is
ethnic pride, and the Pean Union has has really respected
ethnic pride. As a matter of fact, the European Union
does not fund political units that were created after wars
when line lines were drawn, like today's Austria. The European
Union funds ethnic realities. I've got a friend who is
(20:17):
an archaeologist who renovates castles in the Tyrol, and if
he wants money, he doesn't go to Vienna. You'll go
home with nothing. He goes to Brussels. And when he
goes to Brussels, he doesn't see I got something great
for Austria. He says, I've got a cool idea for
the Tyrol, and Brussels gives him money because Brussels understands
it is the ethnic regions that really are the truth.
(20:38):
And today the little language is nearper more widely spoken
uh now than they were a generation ago, because Europe
is embracing these sort of ethnic realities. I just love
this idea that there's that national pride that does not
die away, and when it's respected, I think things got better.
And this is an example of how when you travel
(20:59):
you I'm home with just a better, more human, more
real understanding of the dynamics that are shaping the headlines
that we're going to be reading throughout the rest of
our life. Well. I also liked how some of that
pride was also um shown in things like an appreciation
of cheese, and how that changed your perspective on how
(21:19):
cheese could be eaten. Could you talk a little bit
about that. That's that's a great example, you guys. And uh,
I always used my experience as a tour guide and
a travel writer in Europe is just sort of the
classroom for this. And uh, you know, when I grew up,
I was cheese was no big deal. It was orange
and the shape of the bread. You know, here you
go cheese sandwich. Uh. And you go to Europe and
(21:41):
and these European cheese mongers in Europe are evangelical about
their cheese. Going to like in France, you're going to
a cheese shop and and uh, it's just a festival
of mold. And I'll never forget that where I talked
about a couple as a political act. The cheesemongers saw
me as this American cultural bumpkin, you know, and im
as you're come over here and he picks up a
mouldi wad of goat cheese and he takes a deep
(22:04):
whip and he goes, oh, spell this cheese. It sells
like the feet of angels. You know. It seems a
little over the top. But but you know, even long
before that, as a tour guide, when I was a
kid doing you vagabond minibus tours around Europe. I had
a passion for exposing my Americans the stinky, expensive cheese.
You don't need to go home and have fancy taste
(22:24):
and cheese, but it is good to know that a
lot of people do and you have that option, And
to me, it's just humbling. I just love to shake
up my ethnocentricity and my cultural self assuredness and realize
that there's more than one way to live our lives
and we can really learn a lot. And it was
just a joy for me to to just kind of
collect all the most um fascinating and impactful experiences I've
(22:49):
had in in a lifetime of traveling out of my
comfort zone, hanging out with people who find different truths
to be self evident and God given, and and collect
all those experiences in my Travel as a Political act book.
I give the talk travel as a political collect all
over the United States. People can google and watch me
get the talk if they want to. And I thought
writing the book would just simply be giving the talk
(23:09):
to the page, you know, and writing up my talk.
But it didn't turn out very well that way. But
what I ended up doing was digging deeper and actually
going back to the original experiences in the field and
writing them up. And it's not it's a guidebook in disguise.
Travel as a politic collector is not designed so you
can go to Cuba, or go to Palestine, or or
(23:29):
go to Denmark and have the same experience I had.
It's just a reminder that we can we can connect
with people, and we can uh learn more about our
country by leaving and looking at it from a distance.
And the world's a fascinating classroom and we have that option.
You know, it's not that you you shouldn't go to Masilon,
but you do have the option to go to Managua
(23:51):
instead of Masilan, and that would be h an adventure
that would broaden your viewpoint instead of your wasteline. I
love how you talk about hearing experiences from locals and
seeing history and foreign lens through their eyes, Like I
think you've got perspectives of a war torn region over
I think it was a green walnut, Grandpa. Or how
(24:11):
you got to see someone show you how they put
on a head scarf and how like one tiny twist
changes the meaning of it. But how do we get
that sort of insight when we're traveling within the US. Well,
that's a good question. My focus is traveling outside of
the US, and a lot of people, you know, a
lot of people just don't have the finances or the
(24:31):
the interest in going far away for whatever reason. And
our country is so multitasseted and h and multicultural, and
you know, you can have these same sort of travel
experiences within our own country. That's something I'd like to
do more of. But you know, there's there's just rich cultures,
and for to me, I'm just so inspired by the
(24:55):
fact that there are really important things to some cultures
are not important to other cultures. There are cultures that
have baggage that other cultures don't have. There are cultures
that have Nathan Hales that other cultures don't have. I
was raised thinking, you know, Nathan Hale, Ethan l and
Patrick Henry were like like amazing patriots. Well they were
(25:16):
great patriots, but they weren't unique. And all over the
world you've got Nathan Hale's doing their thing. You mentioned
getting close enough to a culture where you learned that
just the twist of the headband on the scarf is
going to change the whole impression or meaning of how
this woman is wearing that scarf. You know, I had
the good fortune of going into a scarf shop in Istanbul,
and scarves are are very stylish for women. Uh, I'm interested.
(25:40):
How it's interesting how so many a lot of Americans
are just really put off by the fact that Muslims
make their women wear scarves. You know. Well, Jewish women
wear scarves after they're married, or they even wear wigs
if they're an orthodox Jewish family to go out. They
can't go out showing their own hair. I mean in
some families. And who am I to judged that students
(26:00):
until recent times also had women covering their hair. We're
all on parallel evolutionary tracks. And uh, you know, we've
had the Reformation, We've had the Revolution, We've had Vatican too.
You know, we've learned, we're affluent, we've benefited from time
and uh in a winning economic sort of system. Other
(26:21):
societies are are behind us, perhaps in their evolutionary track,
but hopefully you know, people are going in the in
the same direction. And we have to give everybody a
little wiggle room. All right, Well, we have time for
a few more questions for Rick. But before we get
to those. Let's take a quick break. Welcome back to
(26:50):
Part Time Genius, and we're talking to one of our
favorite travel guides and travel writers, Rick Steves. I'm curious
if there is a trip that stands out as one
that maybe aide you most nervous before you went on it,
and where maybe you looked back and thought, you know,
I'm so glad I went on the trip. What was
I so nervous about to begin with? Is there one
or a couple that stand out more than others? Mhm,
(27:13):
you know, I am. I've been fearful about a lot
of places in might travels. I for three times I
was planning on going to India when I was much younger,
and every year I found an excuse not to go
there because I was afraid of the extreme poverty. And
I finally got there and and it was it really
opened me up to the world. In India's my favorite
(27:33):
country on the planet. And I realized there's a lot
of squalor and a lot of desperation in India. But
there's an odd way to measure joy in book terms,
not in individuals, but in the book sense. A billion
people on the Indian subcontinent there's a lot of joy
on that continent. And it's even hard to i I
(27:53):
as did even to talk about it. But India rearranges
your cultural furniture better than any other place. Definitely m
to me. Before going to Egypt, I heard all these
scary stories about how intense the beggars were and it
was so hot that tires were melting to the streets,
and there's no maps anywhere, just so they can keep
you confused. And these were the stories that backpackers were
(28:14):
hearing in Greece before flying to Egypt. And I finally
flew there and it was an amazing experience. I'm so
glad I went there. I'll never forget walking across the
wall from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. First time I did it,
it was scary going into Palestine. And then after that,
after spending a few days in Palestine, I realized what's
(28:35):
most scary about it is it's a poor country. Uh
you know, it's there's a tenfold difference in per capita
income from Israel to Palestine. There's a lot of hard
scrapple people, a lot of soldiers in the streets keeping
the peace and everything, and but there was nothing dangerous
about it. I just was afraid at first, I was
afraid to go to Iran. We almost left our big
professional TV camera in Athens, went in with our little
(28:58):
sneak camera, thinking people would be throwing stones at an
American film grew on the streets of Tehran, got to
Tehranto is that I swear in Iran. It was the
friendliest welcome I've ever received with my film crew. As
we're working the Tehran is a city of ten or
fifteen million people, I think, and um, we're a lot
of traffic jams, and uh, I'll never forget where it
stuck in one traffic jam, and it's just silent. And
(29:20):
finally the man in the next car asked my driver
to roll down his window. He passed over a bouquet
of flowers and he said, please give this to the
foreigner in your back seat and apologize for our traffic.
I just thought that never happened here in Seattle, I live.
You know the traffic in the traffic jam, But Theran
has that sort of warmth and beautiful person to person
(29:41):
um um loveliness that you wouldn't know if you didn't
travel there. And that's what I just love is that
vivid image of actually going there, whether it's uh, you know,
whether it's Guatemala or the Yucatan, or Morocco or Sri Lanka.
There's so many great places we can go to do,
and with travel as a political act, I just collect
(30:04):
my favorite experiences from a lifetime of travel like this
in hopes of inspiring Americans to go beyond Orlando. Well,
we love it so much, but before we can let
you go, uh, reg what would you tell us where
you're headed next or where you're excited to go next. Yeah,
I'm in a rut. For the last thirty years, I've
spent four months a year in Europe. Every year, I
(30:24):
spend April and May and the Mediterranean. I go home
in June and then I go back to the north
of the Alps for July and August. And I do
this to update and right my guide books. We've got
fifty Rick Steve's guide books all over Europe. I've got
a scout new TV shows. The biggest part of our
business here I work with a hundred people in Seattle
is my tour program. We took about twenty people on
a thousand different tours this last year, so I work
(30:47):
on the tour program and I take the tours, and
then I spend a lot of time producing the TV shows.
It takes six days to make one of our thirty
minute episodes for public television, and we do about a
dozen of those every two years. So that's what my
work is, and and I've got new projects all the time,
so I'll be filming in Sicily and Scotland this year.
I'm also looking forward to doing a TV show one
hour Primmer on the fundamentals of global hunger and poverty,
(31:11):
and I'm going to use Ethiopia and Guatemala as a classroom,
so that'll be a new show we'll be offering through
public television, I hope in the next year. Wow, you're
an incredibly busy guy, and we really appreciate your spending
time with us. I hope all of our listeners will
check out the latest edition of Travel as a Political Act,
which I believe is out this week. But Rick, thanks
so much for joining us. Pleasure to talk to both
(31:32):
of you, and and happy travel. Thanks again for listening.
Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works
and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do
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