January 11, 2023 • 35 mins
Brendan talks with Jessica Nabongo, the author of “The Catch Me if You Can: One Woman’s Journey to Every Country in the World” about the mysterious community of “country counters” and the non-mysterious eurocentricity of most travel media. Then Canadian pop duo Tegan and Sara talk about surviving life on tour, plus answer your burning questions about road trips (good), bed and breakfasts (bad), and guided tours (you’ll just have to listen to find out.)
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey everyone, So in this episode of Not Lost Chat,
I speak with writer and traveler Jessica to Bongo, and
as you'll learn, she's been to every recognized country in
(00:37):
the world, which is incredible. I mean, I've been to
every recognized pizza shop in North Brooklyn, but foreign countries.
Let's just say, I'm going to have to get to
work if I want to catch up with her. But
reading her book to Catch Me if you can, did
get me thinking about, you know, where was the furthest
(01:00):
that I've ever gone from home? And I started reminisce
about adventures in Brazil and Japan and Estonia. And I
was going to write a kind of moody intro essay
to put here, you know, part tone poem, part personal reflection,
some musical flourishes. But then a guy on the l
(01:22):
train coughed in my face and I contracted RSV. So
that's going to have to wait until the next episode.
But don't worry, because there is lots of fun content
in store for you. In this episode, they're listening to
the aforementioned Jessica Nabongo will tell us about her travel adventures,
(01:46):
including the scariest place she's ever been hint she didn't
need a passport to go there. Also, the musical duo
The Twins, the sisters Tegan and Sarah, come by and
talk about the touring life. They've been touring since they
were teenagers. Before they could drive, they used to take
a greyhound between gigs, and while now they have an
(02:07):
entire bus. They talk about that and they answer listen
to travel questions. So stick around, and I promise that
you'll learn at least one interesting thing. Again, this show's
really blowing my mind because I feel like I'm like
leaving with two like brand new thoughts in my brain.
All right, two two interesting things more after sigh these
(02:28):
advertisements welcome back to Not Lost Chat, my series of
conversations with fellow travelers. I am Brendan Franz's Nunham. The
idea behind this series was for me to talk to
people in the travel space, because when I did the
(02:48):
first season of the show, I wasn't really one of
those people. I had had a travel column, I was
a traveler. I did do some writing, but I was
blinging it. And so now that I'm here, I thought,
let me meet other folks who've been here, and we're
going to talk to lots of writers and people who've
spent their time thinking about travel. But if you're thinking
(03:10):
about the modern world and traveling, you can't help but
think of influencers, those modern sentinels on the lookout for
all that is glamorous and instagrammable. And my guest today
might be considered an influencer, but her writing and mission
are a bit more substitutive than say, bathing suit selfies
(03:32):
with an endangered species. Jessica Nobongo is basically a professional traveler.
She is also the first black American woman to document
visiting every single country in the world, and earlier this year,
she published a book about her travels called The Catch
Me if you Can, And that title totally fits because
Jessica was kind of hard to catch. She's always on
(03:56):
the move. But thanks to some deft sleuthing on my
part and her book publicist, I was able to get
some time with her while she was temporarily on the ground. Well,
I guess my first question is just where are you now?
And no idea where you are? I am in West
(04:17):
Hollywood right now. I just got back in the country Thursday.
Are you just constantly a little bit disoriented? Like about
what the weather is, what day it is, like, what's
happening in your town. I recall a couple of years
ago being in a target and literally, for like maybe
fifteen seconds, I could not remember what city I was
in because it's like, wait, where am I It's it's
(04:40):
the weirdest thing in the world. So I never know
what day it is like that is always elusive. You've
outstripped your consciousness, like you've traveled so much. You are
a pure traveler, and I'm wondering, how do you describe yourself?
You know, I'm someone where travel is the air that
(05:00):
I breathe, you know, like I've been traveling internationally since
I was for My family is from Uganda, so it's
really something that we've always done. Every summer when I
was little, we did something, whether it was camping in
the US, going on an American road trip, or going
to the Cayman Islands or Jamaica or back to Uganda.
We did something. So, you know, a lot of people
(05:21):
have asked me, oh, you've been to every country in
the world. Are you going to stop traveling? For me,
it wasn't like I have this goal, I'm going to
do it and then I'm done because travel is a
part of me, you know, Like now I'm set to
be on the ground for like two and a half weeks,
and I'm like, Okay, I have to book a flight.
I have to go somewhere. You're getting itchy feet. Yeah. Well, look,
(05:43):
one of the many things I learned in your book
is that there's this culture of country counters, which is
which which are almost they're rarer than astronauts or something.
Can you tell me a little bit about this class
of people. Yes, there's a group of lunatics from different
countries around the world. Yeah, so the country counting community
there might be more than astronauts, but as far as
(06:06):
people who've been to every country in the world, there's
less and three hundred some more people have definitely been
to outer space than have been to every country in
the world. I stumbled upon this group in twenty seventeen.
I had already been to sixty countries and I was
a country counter, but I didn't know there were other
weirdos like me out there, people who are filling in
(06:27):
these maps. And it's a really great community because people
are supportive and share resources. Obviously, some countries are easier
to navigate than others. So people often share fixers for
certain countries, you know, and just give tips and advice.
But you know, I think the important thing is because now,
of course, a lot of people are like, well, I
want to go to every country in the world. And
(06:49):
I always tell people what is your why? You know,
like do you want to just go to every country
so that you can say you did it, or do
you have a real mission behind it? And you know,
for me, my mission I was driven by my own
personal curiosity and as media around my journey picked up,
like most of the people who've been to every country
(07:10):
in the world are white men, didn't specifically like Northern Europeans,
so like Germans and Danes and Norwegians. Um, I guess
it's the Viking thing. I have no idea, right right
exactly living different types of lifestyles. And so for me,
(07:32):
I was the first black woman to do it. I
don't even know if we're at fifty women yet who
have done it. I don't think fifty women have done
it yet. So it's a different experience, you know, Like
dealing with immigration was not always easy. If I was
using my American passport, sometimes they thought that it was fake.
If I was using my Ugunan passport, they thought that
I was going to overstay my visa. So I've been detained,
(07:55):
you know, harassed by multiple immigrations around the world. But
I will say, for me, one of the biggest lessons
I learned is that no matter all of that, most
people are good. And so for me, like the people
in the country exist on a different plane than the government, right,
and I don't conflate the two. So no matter what
(08:15):
nonsense I deal with at the border, I'm not going
to put that on the people of that country because
I'm also like, I don't want people to associate me
with either of my governments, the US or the Ugandan government,
Like I like to be looked at as an independent person. Yeah, yeah,
I mean that's still a graceful way to look at it. Well,
you said a lot there, and I want to like
unpack a little bit of it. You write in your
(08:37):
book about how you are perceived as African instead of
Black American, and I wondered if you could talk about
how that affects your experience traveling versus maybe some of
your friends. Yeah, for sure, you know, blackness is not
a monolith. And those blue American passports, as powerful as
(08:58):
they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. The
world is decidedly anti African. I mean, we can look
at it from the refugee crisis in Europe a few
years ago to how they responded to Ukrainian refugees, right, Like,
that's a very clear difference that we can acknowledge. And
just the way that Africans are treated, not only in
(09:18):
terms of economics and bilateral association between governments, but just
in terms of television, all of the things. Right, And
so for me, I recognize clearly how I'm treated as
an African versus a Black American because I travel with
my black American friends and so you know, they'll go
through immigration and they're gone, and then I'm stuck and
(09:40):
I'm being detained, and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
we just came back from the same place. We both
have American passports. Why am I being detained? And it's
this idea that Number one, I guess Africans can't be American,
which is weird because anybody can be American. That's kind
of our thing. And then you know, when I'm using
my Ugnan passport, is this assumption that somehow our countries
(10:03):
are so terrible that no one with a Ugunan passport
or any African passport can just go on holiday somewhere
and then go back home. Right. Like, there's that idea
that if they're crossing a border, they have to want
to live in our countries, and it's like, actually, truth
be told, there's a lot of African countries I'd rather
(10:23):
live in than you know, the US, or a lot
of European countries for sure. I mean, I'm thinking of
the picture you have in your book of the sunset
in Uganda right over the lake, and like that alone
is would draw one back. You also write about how
the scariest country you visited is America, Like quite literally,
the experiences you had here were more searing, it seems. Yeah.
(10:46):
I mean, you know, the first time I saw a gun,
I was looking at a point blank range and on
the other side of it was Miami PD because they
thought I was breaking into my friend's house. I mean,
I can remember coming back from a work trip to
Ethiopia and DC I was at dullest, got through immigration,
went to customs and they asked for my passport and
(11:08):
then asked me for another form of ID, and I'm like, what,
my United States passport is not good enough to get
me into the United States? You know, like that still
is absolutely one of the most absurd things that happened.
But I think just generally, the anxiety that I have
when I'm in the US is unlike being anywhere else,
(11:31):
whether it's landing and not knowing if I'm going to
be harassed at immigration or just fear of like knowing
that there's so many guns in rotation. I mean, and
it's so often now we barely blink at mass shootings anymore. Yeah,
you know, like I just can't wrap my mind around it.
You know, at one point in your book, you quote
Malcolm X and you quote American propaganda is designed to
(11:54):
make us think that no matter how much hell we
catch here, we're still better off in America than we'd
be anywhere else. And the WII there is he's talking
about black Americans. I feel like the we now as
all of us though, But yes, definitely. You know a
lot of people will semi messages and say which countries
are safe for black people to travel to. I know
(12:18):
where it comes from, but I hate it because there's
this lack of freedom, that people feel like this idea
that their blackness is such a weight that they can't
travel the world freely. And so part of it, not
only with the book and the imagery in the book,
but just my Instagram and everything I do is showing
me in all of these places. Because have I had
(12:40):
some bad travel experiences, yeah, but very very few compared
to how much I travel, Very very few negative experiences,
And like, I'm unmistakably black, you know, and I go
in places and I've been welcomed, and I visit rural
parts of like Kyrgyzstan. I remember being in rural Kyrgyzstan
and I was walking across the street to get a
(13:01):
SIM card and cars were stopping and staring. I was like, oh, yeah,
I forgot I'm black, you know, because I just wasn't
thinking about it, you know, And it was hilarious. But
I really hope that not only for black people but
also women traveling solo. I hope that people see my
journey and gives them a sense of freedom, you know.
(13:22):
And I know that has been the outcome because I
get messages, emails, dms, whatever from people saying I went
here because of you. I was afraid. My family told
me to be afraid, but seeing me go, they went.
So I'm glad that my journey has really released some
fear for people. It makes me think of that. There's
a Mark Twain quote which I will misquote and paraphrase,
but basically how travel is the biggest and adode to prejudice, right.
(13:47):
It's being there interacting with the people that are really
just going to break through any kind of preconceptions you have. Absolutely,
And that's the other big thing I learned from visiting
every country in the world. We're more similar than we
are different. So for me, that's why I always say
the world is our neighborhood. So it's about being a
good neighbor. Because, first of all, borders are fiction. Borders
(14:07):
are just geopolitical lines on a map, but they don't
actually mean anything. We're all sharing this planet together, so
we have to stop thinking about ourselves as Americans and
Canadians or Ugundans, whatever it is, because we're all in
this together, and when this planet blows up on us,
it's not going to be like, oh, well, you have
(14:28):
a strong passport, we're gonna save you. No, we're all
going down. You talk about the you know, the eurocentric
bucket lists that exists for various reasons, and this book
is a corrective for that in many ways you want
to speak to that. I love that it is a corrective, Yeah,
because I think for too long and still ongoing, the
(14:49):
powers that be are still mostly white men in terms
of telling us where to go, what to do. We
look at Kane Nash Traveler, we look at Traveling Leisure,
even my publisher, National Geographic. There's not that much diversity
of those telling us this is what should be on
your bucket list. A lot of the people writing haven't
been to the continent. Because to me, if you go
(15:11):
to a place like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia,
these are amazing countries where I have always felt one
hundred percent safe, they have great tourism infrastructure, and in
some cases they're relatively affordable to visit. So to me,
(15:34):
I'm just like, I mean, I look at the New
York Times fifty two places to visit. I look at
all of these lists every year and I always roll
my eyes because I'm just like, Yeah, Vermont is amazing,
but what about Madagascar? You know what I mean. For me,
I'm just like, come on, y'all, so you know, for
(15:54):
those listening, I'm here to help you make your twenty
twenty four lists. Let me know if you need my help.
I mean, that's part of why among the reasons I
wanted to have you on is you know, I'm talking
with travel writers and travel thinkers, and when you make
that list it is embarrassing. And I was going to
ask you, and maybe this is too reductive, but like,
(16:15):
what do you you know? Like why do you travel?
But when part of why I travel, I think is
collecting wisdom? You know, when why am I like talking
to all these people? What am I looking for? I
don't know what I'm looking for, but I know I
am just trying to find some sort of wisdom about
the world. What about you? What are you looking for? No,
(16:36):
I think what's kept it going is I'm so curious.
I am like a child, and I love asking questions.
And I love visiting new places more than I like
visiting old places. You know. I really novelty, Yeah, for sure.
And I think studying basically my degree was global economic
(16:58):
and political history, So for me, it's just so interesting
to go to these countries, knowing their political history, knowing
their economic history. And I'm person who I feel like
we all have something to teach and we all have
something to learn. So if you're open, you can learn
something new every day. I love that. Yeah, well, Jessica,
(17:19):
I think that we should end it on that great point.
I want to thank you so much for chatting with
me and for putting this book together and sharing it
with the world. Jessica Nobongo's book is called The Catch
Me if you Can, and it is a really great
place to start if you are looking to fill the
blind spots in your travel itinerary. And it's not just
(17:43):
pictures and places. It has lots of neat little information
like this scary fact. In twenty eighteen, in the USA,
seven hundred and sixty eight million vacation days went unused.
Whoa right. So if you need some ideas about where
you should go, you can check out the book or
(18:05):
Jessica's Instagram page at Jessica Nobongo. The beauty full images
on her grid will be certain to influence you. All Right, Well,
after a quick break, we're going to move from traveling
for pleasure to traveling for work. And I don't mean
a two day convention at the Chicago Hyatt. I am
talking about months and months on the road. Here you
(18:26):
are on a bus like you're a grown adult, sleeping
within inches of other adults. It's very intimate and uncomfortable,
and I've adapted to that by being able to like
dissociate on some levels when you need to kind of
ghost walk. Canadian indie pop duo Tegan Sarah stop by
to talk about the touring life and to answer your
(18:47):
travel questions. When Not Lost returns welcome back to Not
(19:10):
Lost Chat. Hey, that almost rhymes welcome back to Not
Lost Chat. It is now time for the part of
the podcast where I invite someone more qualified than me
to help answer your travel questions, and today I invited
two people to assist me. They're kind of a package deal.
Tegan and Sarah are an indie pop duo hailing from
(19:32):
the Great Nation of Canada. And as always, if any
Canadian immigration authorities happen to be listening, please slide into
my DMS at b F Newnham so we can start
building my new life in Montreal. Thank you anyway. Teagan
and Sarah are identical twins queer icons. They are known
for their catchy hooks and on stage banter. They also
(19:55):
became best selling authors after publishing their memoir called High School,
which is their story of teen angst and their search
for separate identities. It is now a show on Amazon,
also called High School. And these super twins all so
just finished touring for their new album, cry Baby. They've
been touring as a duo since they were teenagers. Back
(20:15):
then they got from show to show via Greyhound bus.
Now when they tour, they have an entire bus to themselves,
well them their crew, a sort of family members and
now babies. Oh and a quick note about this interview.
Tegan and Sarah are twins. They do sometimes sound similar.
In fact, when I conducted this interview over zoom, every
(20:38):
once in a while I would discreetly mouse over the
window so that their respective names would pop up under
the images and I could remember who is who. I mean,
there are so many amazing things about touring on a bus.
I mean, the fact that you get to sleep overnight
is really nice rather than having to drive all day.
That is Teagan, who plays guitar, keyboards and sings. She's
also wearing a hot pink hat during our interview I
(20:59):
can't reveal the name of the star, but we know
someone who has toured with one of the largest artists
in the world, and that is Sarah, who also plays guitar,
keys and sings. And it's also wearing a hot pink
hat during our interview. Not confusing at all. This is
like private jets, like the whole thing. And he recently
was describing to me a scenario in which this person
(21:19):
how they deal with a show and sleeping and getting
to the next show, like the suitcases and the family
and the entourage and everything is just sounded like kyos
and it's like not RESTful. And this person, you know,
has like a thing over their eyes, you know, like
they have all the sleep of koutrement and like trying
to help them get to sleep. But I thought to myself,
my god, this is like objectively one of the biggest
stars in the world, And if that is how that
(21:42):
star is getting quote unquote rest, then the rest of
us are doomed. Like, don't ever think there's a level
of touring that you're going to achieve as like an
indie rock band where you're not going to feel kind
of like deeply like cellularly exhausted. Yeah, I think it's hard.
I have friends who have done pretty well in music,
and at first when they would complain about touring, would
(22:03):
you would be a little bit when you're in your
twenties or third you're like, sorry about your problems, but yeah,
you're up in to Australia and every cool person came
out to see you and you were single. But it
seems like the pain is real. It's real. I think
it's like a total not to get like too dark
about our wonderful great aunt Helen, who's ninety two this year. Yeah,
(22:24):
she's amazing. But I I was teasing her because she
doesn't really travel anywhere, and she said, I don't like
to travel because you go somewhere, you eat what other
people want, and then you sleep in someone else's bed,
on someone else's sheets, and then you are you're stopped up.
But she used some sort of old and timey word,
but she means like constipated. And then you go home
(22:44):
and you're just relieved to get back into your house,
your sheets, eat the food, you like a poop again.
And I thought to myself, well, great aunt Helen, you
kind of just nailed the worst part of travel yeah,
it's glamorous up to a point, but also to way
your aunt was saying, it also makes you appreciate your
home to a certain extent, Like I feel like, oh, yeah, absolutely,
I like New York more after spending a year and
(23:04):
a half traveling from Montreal to Mexico City doing things.
I like my apartment more. I appreciate my friends more
than I did when I was here and I was
just chafing for something else. I think there's a calibration required. Yeah,
oh my god. I mean I used to feel completely
the opposite to the way that I feel now in
my twenties, and those gears were so fun, you know.
I mean I had an apartment, but like did I
(23:25):
you know, I was I'd finish a tour and I'd
be like, I don't know, I'll just stay in Portland
for a week and you know, I'll like take a
bath and order room service, and like I kind of
lived the dream of like, oh, I was single, I
was having like a really fun time. But my draw
to home and the sort of like nesting thing didn't
really kick in for me until my mid thirties. I
think that correlated with, you know the fact that I
(23:47):
had more disposable income. I got more interested in like
building a home and having nice things, and you know,
I had like a weekly Bachelor watching like drunk Fest
every week in LA when I lived there, and like,
you know, like I just started to feel like, oh,
like I really I really miss my community and I
really miss the comfort of what I'm building in my environment.
And now it's really hard to like this last tour,
(24:11):
it was just hard. I have like a really nice
life at home, and you know, I just had a kid,
and like, you know, it's like, you know, I'm I'm
like really settled. Did you you brought your kid with
you on tour? Yeah, yeah, I did. I know, he
did not get constipated. He did not get constipated on tour.
Um he's almost six months, so he was just about
(24:31):
to be five months. And uh, he did great. And
my partner Stacy came out as well, and we brought
my mom and she helped out. And it was profoundly destabilizing.
I mean, I've developed a lot of adaptations to make
living on the road and touring and being nomadic work.
And I think, you know, the things that he can
mentioned at the top about you know, here you are
(24:52):
on a bus like you're a grown adult sleeping within
inches of other adults. It's very intimate and uncomfortable. And
I've adapted to that by being able to like dissociate
on some levels when you need to kind of ghost
walk I call it, like through some of the touring,
so that you can feel comfortable and you know there's
some self preservation there. Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't do
(25:13):
that with my wife, mother, and son on tour. I
felt like I had to be present twenty four hours
a day, and if I wasn't present, then it just
felt really uncomfortable. My pitch to my partner Stacy the
whole time was I was like, we're building a story
for Sid, you know, like we're gonna tell him about
his first carousel ride in Utah, and we're going to
tell him about his first swim in Pennsylvania, and you know,
and there was a few times where she was like, yeah,
(25:35):
I'm not a storyteller. Shut up, you know, like she
was kind of like, this is exhausting. Stop trying to
make it a positive thing. All right, I'm gonna ask
some of these travel questions. I lost the first one
I wanted to ask you, but I'm going to try
to call it back from memory. It was a very
simple one, but it was essentially my colleague Emily was
based on Washington, DC, and she was asking, if you're
on a road trip with a partner, what if any
(25:56):
responsibilities does the non driving partner have. I remember her
signing it off. You may or may not be saving
a relationship here, and I think they include like navigation, music,
you know, what if any responsibilities? Yeah, I mean, speaking
just specifically about the relationship I've been in for the
last twelve years. There is a delicate balance when one
(26:19):
says that the non driving person is in charge of navigation.
I think that that's a trick. I don't necessarily think
that you're in charge, and I also don't think you're
not in charge. So I think it's a very dangerous
place to be emotionally. There's tension there, like are you
actually the person staring at the navigation system and saying,
you know, two hundred yards and it's on your right
(26:40):
you want to move over now? Like is it that
layer or is it just more of like a you know,
making sure that the volume of the music doesn't like
overpower the navigation voice. You know, like, but it is
important to stay on your toes. You are not in
control or not not in control, you're somewhere in between.
I think that's well said. You can do anything to
add to that. As a lifetime passenger, my biggest piece
(27:00):
of advice to other lifetime passengers is just to be
very patient and helpful and it just just know that
it doesn't matter what the driver tells you. They are
resentful that you're not driving. Sounds like we're both having
a lot of fun in our relationships in cars. Usually
I am the driver, but I think you guys both
(27:21):
struck him on something. It's like you are relinquishing control. Yeah,
and so the driver ultimately has the power, which is
why they shouldn't be a jerk, because if you drive recklessly,
it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, Like you could kill us. Yes, okay,
two more questions. This is a short one comes from
Sean from Saratoga Springs, and Sean asks guided tours could
(27:42):
be cool or boomer culture. So we've been guided tours
in a bunch of places. I love guided tours. If
there's alcohol, yeah, probably nowhere more than New Orleans. We
find a new one every time, like you know, French Quarter,
Garden District, the Haunted Tour, We've done it all, and yeah,
(28:04):
it's it's particularly exciting when there's stops at bars. My
partner and I did one in London. We did the
Ripper Drack, the Ripper Tour or whatever. It was harrowing.
You start at a bar and then there are multiple
stops at bars, but then when they finish, like you're
in a back alley and then they just are like
okay bye, and the like guide person just leaves and
everyone just scatters like rats. And Sophie and I were
(28:27):
just like on this cobblestone dark lane, just heard about
this horrible thing that happened and we had no idea
where we were. I was like, this is awful. It's terrible,
but I love it. I would do it again in
a heartbeat. Love them. And oh, I want to just
address the boomer thing. There were so many young people
on the tour. Well, well that's why you want ones.
That's why you want ones with alcohol, even if you
don't drek it just it. I feel like it just
(28:47):
attracts like a more fun demographic. Also, unless you're doing
something like Graceland or something like you know you're doing
like a home tour or something. Those are kind of fun.
But in general, and this is just my own personal thing,
I don't like guided tours because I think as a
performer and just as like a kind of egotistical person,
I feel like I'm supposed to engage with the guide
(29:09):
and I'm like, oh God, does everyone think I'm like
the hugest brown noser? And then if I don't connect
with the guide, I'm like, how did that guide not
see how special I am? And how how next level
this experience could have been for everyone. Yes, I don't
like guided tours. I don't like them. It gives you
it sounds like it stresses you out. It stresses me out.
It gives me a lot of anxiety. Well there you go.
I think the fact that just the fact that you
(29:29):
guys have gone on tours, I think answered Sean's question like,
no shame in that game, no shame. Um, all right,
this is a question from Latal in New Jersey and
latal rights as fellow queer folks. I'm curious if they
you guys share my version to B and B's where
I feel, Oh my god, Yes, way would be. It
(29:52):
would be too conspicuous sitting around a breakfast table with strangers. Yeah. Yeah,
I want to jump in and say, because I've stayed
at a bunch of B andb's. Being on the West
Coast the last twenty some years, I did a lot
of travel on the Southern Gulf Islands and there are
a lot of B and B's, and as a twenty
something with my very queer looking girlfriend, I used to
feel so uncomfortable. But there were like some of these
(30:13):
places there's no hotels or in some cases away couldn't
afford hotels, and I hated it. I felt very, very uncomfortable.
You can quote me on this. I don't like B
and B's, I don't like Airbnb's, I don't like any
I want to be in a hotel where I want
to be in my house, but I would. I do
think that there's something this again, this show's really blowing
my mind because I feel like I'm like leaving with
(30:35):
two like brand new thoughts in my brain. But I
think that queer people and B and B's do not mix,
and still even in this time in day and age,
and I don't I don't quite understand what it's about,
except that there's a real visceral reaction for me about
staying in a place that makes me feel very vulnerable
and exposed. I mean more so than Tigan. I really
(30:56):
dealt with a lot of internalized homophobia and fear when
I was younger, and the few B and B experiences
I had actually a lot of it was really like
a lot of it hinged on my discomfort that people
would know, like I'm queer, and are we like, are
we staying in a house with people that that would
be hostile to that? Well, what if it's different, What
if it's a queer B and B? That might be worse.
(31:18):
I mean it might be worse because then it feels
like it's a theme park or something like. It's like,
we have queer members of my family. My parents are
much older, but some of their favorite people are these
two queer B and B owners in Florida. They stay
with like this couple, this married couple, and my mother
loves them. I think that's the most exposure she's been
(31:39):
with a married gay couple. Interesting is because they go
there each winter and they stay with them. You know
what our problem is, Brendan, I think I figured it
out is that we don't even like staying with people
we know, Like when we go to cities with friends
who have space for us and offer us space, we
always stay at hotels. And I wonder if a lifetime
of being nomadic and traveling is that we just we
(31:59):
crave space of our own. And this has probably got
less to do with B and b's and maybe even queerness,
although those are contributing factors to this discomfort, is that
we just don't like sharing space. It's like indoor camping,
and it's like, no, thank you, thank you so much.
I really genuinely enjoyed this conversation and in your in
(32:20):
your nesting and then your touring, and I look forward
to running into you all again. This was a delight,
Thank you so much, show your weekend, Thank you so so,
(32:41):
and that everyone was Tegan and Sarah. You can check
out their new album cry Baby and watch their show
High School, which is on Amazon. Full disclosure that conversation
went on for over an hour. I found them so
easy to talk to. I want to become their best friend.
Maybe I'll become one of their fellow Canadians at some
point um and if there's interest, maybe I'll share it
(33:03):
on this feed later on in the year. So that's
it for this edition of Not Lost Chat. If you
have travel questions that you want answered in a future episode,
you can email them to me at not Lost at
Pushkin dot Fm or ping me at b F Newnham
on Twitter. Please send them along. Not Lost Chat would
(33:24):
not have been made without producer Jordan Bailey, who caught
a red eye from Northern California to North Carolina to
be able to set up that Teagan at Sarah interview.
Thank you, Jordan. This show is written and hosted by
me Brendan Francis Nunham, The furthest I travel this week
was the corner of Bedford Metropolitan to get a COVID test.
Came back negative for COVID but positive for RSV, so
(33:47):
you know, it all evens out. As usual, we receive
top notch booking assistance from Laura Morgan. This episode was
edited by the wonderful Julia Barton with assistance from our
cools of Cucumber managing producer Jacob Smith and our mix
engineer is the unflappable Sarah brugere Not Lost as a
co production of Pushkin Industry's Topic Studio and iHeartMedia. It
(34:10):
was developed at Topic Studios. And yes, there are some
executive producers on this show, including me, Brendan Francis Newnham,
Christy Kressman, Maria Suckerman, Lisa line Gang and Lata Mulad.
If you dig what you here, please tell a friend,
make a comment at Apple Podcasts, spread the word. It's
really appreciated. And if your inboxes lonely, you can sign
(34:32):
up for the Pushkin newsletter at Pushkin dot fm Slash
Newsletter And if you'd like to find more Pushkin podcast
and there are some great ones. There's Talk Easy, there's
Story the Week, There's death of an artist. There's so
much good stuff going on. You can listen and find
them on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or you know
(34:54):
wherever you listen to podcast. That's it for this episode.
Thanks so much everybody,
Pushkin. Hey everyone, So in this episode of Not Lost Chat,
I speak with writer and traveler Jessica to Bongo, and
as you'll learn, she's been to every recognized country in
(00:37):
the world, which is incredible. I mean, I've been to
every recognized pizza shop in North Brooklyn, but foreign countries.
Let's just say, I'm going to have to get to
work if I want to catch up with her. But
reading her book to Catch Me if you can, did
get me thinking about, you know, where was the furthest
(01:00):
that I've ever gone from home? And I started reminisce
about adventures in Brazil and Japan and Estonia. And I
was going to write a kind of moody intro essay
to put here, you know, part tone poem, part personal reflection,
some musical flourishes. But then a guy on the l
(01:22):
train coughed in my face and I contracted RSV. So
that's going to have to wait until the next episode.
But don't worry, because there is lots of fun content
in store for you. In this episode, they're listening to
the aforementioned Jessica Nabongo will tell us about her travel adventures,
(01:46):
including the scariest place she's ever been hint she didn't
need a passport to go there. Also, the musical duo
The Twins, the sisters Tegan and Sarah, come by and
talk about the touring life. They've been touring since they
were teenagers. Before they could drive, they used to take
a greyhound between gigs, and while now they have an
(02:07):
entire bus. They talk about that and they answer listen
to travel questions. So stick around, and I promise that
you'll learn at least one interesting thing. Again, this show's
really blowing my mind because I feel like I'm like
leaving with two like brand new thoughts in my brain.
All right, two two interesting things more after sigh these
(02:28):
advertisements welcome back to Not Lost Chat, my series of
conversations with fellow travelers. I am Brendan Franz's Nunham. The
idea behind this series was for me to talk to
people in the travel space, because when I did the
(02:48):
first season of the show, I wasn't really one of
those people. I had had a travel column, I was
a traveler. I did do some writing, but I was
blinging it. And so now that I'm here, I thought,
let me meet other folks who've been here, and we're
going to talk to lots of writers and people who've
spent their time thinking about travel. But if you're thinking
(03:10):
about the modern world and traveling, you can't help but
think of influencers, those modern sentinels on the lookout for
all that is glamorous and instagrammable. And my guest today
might be considered an influencer, but her writing and mission
are a bit more substitutive than say, bathing suit selfies
(03:32):
with an endangered species. Jessica Nobongo is basically a professional traveler.
She is also the first black American woman to document
visiting every single country in the world, and earlier this year,
she published a book about her travels called The Catch
Me if you Can, And that title totally fits because
Jessica was kind of hard to catch. She's always on
(03:56):
the move. But thanks to some deft sleuthing on my
part and her book publicist, I was able to get
some time with her while she was temporarily on the ground. Well,
I guess my first question is just where are you now?
And no idea where you are? I am in West
(04:17):
Hollywood right now. I just got back in the country Thursday.
Are you just constantly a little bit disoriented? Like about
what the weather is, what day it is, like, what's
happening in your town. I recall a couple of years
ago being in a target and literally, for like maybe
fifteen seconds, I could not remember what city I was
in because it's like, wait, where am I It's it's
(04:40):
the weirdest thing in the world. So I never know
what day it is like that is always elusive. You've
outstripped your consciousness, like you've traveled so much. You are
a pure traveler, and I'm wondering, how do you describe yourself?
You know, I'm someone where travel is the air that
(05:00):
I breathe, you know, like I've been traveling internationally since
I was for My family is from Uganda, so it's
really something that we've always done. Every summer when I
was little, we did something, whether it was camping in
the US, going on an American road trip, or going
to the Cayman Islands or Jamaica or back to Uganda.
We did something. So, you know, a lot of people
(05:21):
have asked me, oh, you've been to every country in
the world. Are you going to stop traveling? For me,
it wasn't like I have this goal, I'm going to
do it and then I'm done because travel is a
part of me, you know, Like now I'm set to
be on the ground for like two and a half weeks,
and I'm like, Okay, I have to book a flight.
I have to go somewhere. You're getting itchy feet. Yeah. Well, look,
(05:43):
one of the many things I learned in your book
is that there's this culture of country counters, which is
which which are almost they're rarer than astronauts or something.
Can you tell me a little bit about this class
of people. Yes, there's a group of lunatics from different
countries around the world. Yeah, so the country counting community
there might be more than astronauts, but as far as
(06:06):
people who've been to every country in the world, there's
less and three hundred some more people have definitely been
to outer space than have been to every country in
the world. I stumbled upon this group in twenty seventeen.
I had already been to sixty countries and I was
a country counter, but I didn't know there were other
weirdos like me out there, people who are filling in
(06:27):
these maps. And it's a really great community because people
are supportive and share resources. Obviously, some countries are easier
to navigate than others. So people often share fixers for
certain countries, you know, and just give tips and advice.
But you know, I think the important thing is because now,
of course, a lot of people are like, well, I
want to go to every country in the world. And
(06:49):
I always tell people what is your why? You know,
like do you want to just go to every country
so that you can say you did it, or do
you have a real mission behind it? And you know,
for me, my mission I was driven by my own
personal curiosity and as media around my journey picked up,
like most of the people who've been to every country
(07:10):
in the world are white men, didn't specifically like Northern Europeans,
so like Germans and Danes and Norwegians. Um, I guess
it's the Viking thing. I have no idea, right right
exactly living different types of lifestyles. And so for me,
(07:32):
I was the first black woman to do it. I
don't even know if we're at fifty women yet who
have done it. I don't think fifty women have done
it yet. So it's a different experience, you know, Like
dealing with immigration was not always easy. If I was
using my American passport, sometimes they thought that it was fake.
If I was using my Ugunan passport, they thought that
I was going to overstay my visa. So I've been detained,
(07:55):
you know, harassed by multiple immigrations around the world. But
I will say, for me, one of the biggest lessons
I learned is that no matter all of that, most
people are good. And so for me, like the people
in the country exist on a different plane than the government, right,
and I don't conflate the two. So no matter what
(08:15):
nonsense I deal with at the border, I'm not going
to put that on the people of that country because
I'm also like, I don't want people to associate me
with either of my governments, the US or the Ugandan government,
Like I like to be looked at as an independent person. Yeah, yeah,
I mean that's still a graceful way to look at it. Well,
you said a lot there, and I want to like
unpack a little bit of it. You write in your
(08:37):
book about how you are perceived as African instead of
Black American, and I wondered if you could talk about
how that affects your experience traveling versus maybe some of
your friends. Yeah, for sure, you know, blackness is not
a monolith. And those blue American passports, as powerful as
(08:58):
they are, it doesn't work the same for everyone. The
world is decidedly anti African. I mean, we can look
at it from the refugee crisis in Europe a few
years ago to how they responded to Ukrainian refugees, right, Like,
that's a very clear difference that we can acknowledge. And
just the way that Africans are treated, not only in
(09:18):
terms of economics and bilateral association between governments, but just
in terms of television, all of the things. Right, And
so for me, I recognize clearly how I'm treated as
an African versus a Black American because I travel with
my black American friends and so you know, they'll go
through immigration and they're gone, and then I'm stuck and
(09:40):
I'm being detained, and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait,
we just came back from the same place. We both
have American passports. Why am I being detained? And it's
this idea that Number one, I guess Africans can't be American,
which is weird because anybody can be American. That's kind
of our thing. And then you know, when I'm using
my Ugnan passport, is this assumption that somehow our countries
(10:03):
are so terrible that no one with a Ugunan passport
or any African passport can just go on holiday somewhere
and then go back home. Right. Like, there's that idea
that if they're crossing a border, they have to want
to live in our countries, and it's like, actually, truth
be told, there's a lot of African countries I'd rather
(10:23):
live in than you know, the US, or a lot
of European countries for sure. I mean, I'm thinking of
the picture you have in your book of the sunset
in Uganda right over the lake, and like that alone
is would draw one back. You also write about how
the scariest country you visited is America, Like quite literally,
the experiences you had here were more searing, it seems. Yeah.
(10:46):
I mean, you know, the first time I saw a gun,
I was looking at a point blank range and on
the other side of it was Miami PD because they
thought I was breaking into my friend's house. I mean,
I can remember coming back from a work trip to
Ethiopia and DC I was at dullest, got through immigration,
went to customs and they asked for my passport and
(11:08):
then asked me for another form of ID, and I'm like, what,
my United States passport is not good enough to get
me into the United States? You know, like that still
is absolutely one of the most absurd things that happened.
But I think just generally, the anxiety that I have
when I'm in the US is unlike being anywhere else,
(11:31):
whether it's landing and not knowing if I'm going to
be harassed at immigration or just fear of like knowing
that there's so many guns in rotation. I mean, and
it's so often now we barely blink at mass shootings anymore. Yeah,
you know, like I just can't wrap my mind around it.
You know, at one point in your book, you quote
Malcolm X and you quote American propaganda is designed to
(11:54):
make us think that no matter how much hell we
catch here, we're still better off in America than we'd
be anywhere else. And the WII there is he's talking
about black Americans. I feel like the we now as
all of us though, But yes, definitely. You know a
lot of people will semi messages and say which countries
are safe for black people to travel to. I know
(12:18):
where it comes from, but I hate it because there's
this lack of freedom, that people feel like this idea
that their blackness is such a weight that they can't
travel the world freely. And so part of it, not
only with the book and the imagery in the book,
but just my Instagram and everything I do is showing
me in all of these places. Because have I had
(12:40):
some bad travel experiences, yeah, but very very few compared
to how much I travel, Very very few negative experiences,
And like, I'm unmistakably black, you know, and I go
in places and I've been welcomed, and I visit rural
parts of like Kyrgyzstan. I remember being in rural Kyrgyzstan
and I was walking across the street to get a
(13:01):
SIM card and cars were stopping and staring. I was like, oh, yeah,
I forgot I'm black, you know, because I just wasn't
thinking about it, you know, And it was hilarious. But
I really hope that not only for black people but
also women traveling solo. I hope that people see my
journey and gives them a sense of freedom, you know.
(13:22):
And I know that has been the outcome because I
get messages, emails, dms, whatever from people saying I went
here because of you. I was afraid. My family told
me to be afraid, but seeing me go, they went.
So I'm glad that my journey has really released some
fear for people. It makes me think of that. There's
a Mark Twain quote which I will misquote and paraphrase,
but basically how travel is the biggest and adode to prejudice, right.
(13:47):
It's being there interacting with the people that are really
just going to break through any kind of preconceptions you have. Absolutely,
And that's the other big thing I learned from visiting
every country in the world. We're more similar than we
are different. So for me, that's why I always say
the world is our neighborhood. So it's about being a
good neighbor. Because, first of all, borders are fiction. Borders
(14:07):
are just geopolitical lines on a map, but they don't
actually mean anything. We're all sharing this planet together, so
we have to stop thinking about ourselves as Americans and
Canadians or Ugundans, whatever it is, because we're all in
this together, and when this planet blows up on us,
it's not going to be like, oh, well, you have
(14:28):
a strong passport, we're gonna save you. No, we're all
going down. You talk about the you know, the eurocentric
bucket lists that exists for various reasons, and this book
is a corrective for that in many ways you want
to speak to that. I love that it is a corrective, Yeah,
because I think for too long and still ongoing, the
(14:49):
powers that be are still mostly white men in terms
of telling us where to go, what to do. We
look at Kane Nash Traveler, we look at Traveling Leisure,
even my publisher, National Geographic. There's not that much diversity
of those telling us this is what should be on
your bucket list. A lot of the people writing haven't
been to the continent. Because to me, if you go
(15:11):
to a place like Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia,
these are amazing countries where I have always felt one
hundred percent safe, they have great tourism infrastructure, and in
some cases they're relatively affordable to visit. So to me,
(15:34):
I'm just like, I mean, I look at the New
York Times fifty two places to visit. I look at
all of these lists every year and I always roll
my eyes because I'm just like, Yeah, Vermont is amazing,
but what about Madagascar? You know what I mean. For me,
I'm just like, come on, y'all, so you know, for
(15:54):
those listening, I'm here to help you make your twenty
twenty four lists. Let me know if you need my help.
I mean, that's part of why among the reasons I
wanted to have you on is you know, I'm talking
with travel writers and travel thinkers, and when you make
that list it is embarrassing. And I was going to
ask you, and maybe this is too reductive, but like,
(16:15):
what do you you know? Like why do you travel?
But when part of why I travel, I think is
collecting wisdom? You know, when why am I like talking
to all these people? What am I looking for? I
don't know what I'm looking for, but I know I
am just trying to find some sort of wisdom about
the world. What about you? What are you looking for? No,
(16:36):
I think what's kept it going is I'm so curious.
I am like a child, and I love asking questions.
And I love visiting new places more than I like
visiting old places. You know. I really novelty, Yeah, for sure.
And I think studying basically my degree was global economic
(16:58):
and political history, So for me, it's just so interesting
to go to these countries, knowing their political history, knowing
their economic history. And I'm person who I feel like
we all have something to teach and we all have
something to learn. So if you're open, you can learn
something new every day. I love that. Yeah, well, Jessica,
(17:19):
I think that we should end it on that great point.
I want to thank you so much for chatting with
me and for putting this book together and sharing it
with the world. Jessica Nobongo's book is called The Catch
Me if you Can, and it is a really great
place to start if you are looking to fill the
blind spots in your travel itinerary. And it's not just
(17:43):
pictures and places. It has lots of neat little information
like this scary fact. In twenty eighteen, in the USA,
seven hundred and sixty eight million vacation days went unused.
Whoa right. So if you need some ideas about where
you should go, you can check out the book or
(18:05):
Jessica's Instagram page at Jessica Nobongo. The beauty full images
on her grid will be certain to influence you. All Right, Well,
after a quick break, we're going to move from traveling
for pleasure to traveling for work. And I don't mean
a two day convention at the Chicago Hyatt. I am
talking about months and months on the road. Here you
(18:26):
are on a bus like you're a grown adult, sleeping
within inches of other adults. It's very intimate and uncomfortable,
and I've adapted to that by being able to like
dissociate on some levels when you need to kind of
ghost walk. Canadian indie pop duo Tegan Sarah stop by
to talk about the touring life and to answer your
(18:47):
travel questions. When Not Lost returns welcome back to Not
(19:10):
Lost Chat. Hey, that almost rhymes welcome back to Not
Lost Chat. It is now time for the part of
the podcast where I invite someone more qualified than me
to help answer your travel questions, and today I invited
two people to assist me. They're kind of a package deal.
Tegan and Sarah are an indie pop duo hailing from
(19:32):
the Great Nation of Canada. And as always, if any
Canadian immigration authorities happen to be listening, please slide into
my DMS at b F Newnham so we can start
building my new life in Montreal. Thank you anyway. Teagan
and Sarah are identical twins queer icons. They are known
for their catchy hooks and on stage banter. They also
(19:55):
became best selling authors after publishing their memoir called High School,
which is their story of teen angst and their search
for separate identities. It is now a show on Amazon,
also called High School. And these super twins all so
just finished touring for their new album, cry Baby. They've
been touring as a duo since they were teenagers. Back
(20:15):
then they got from show to show via Greyhound bus.
Now when they tour, they have an entire bus to themselves,
well them their crew, a sort of family members and
now babies. Oh and a quick note about this interview.
Tegan and Sarah are twins. They do sometimes sound similar.
In fact, when I conducted this interview over zoom, every
(20:38):
once in a while I would discreetly mouse over the
window so that their respective names would pop up under
the images and I could remember who is who. I mean,
there are so many amazing things about touring on a bus.
I mean, the fact that you get to sleep overnight
is really nice rather than having to drive all day.
That is Teagan, who plays guitar, keyboards and sings. She's
also wearing a hot pink hat during our interview I
(20:59):
can't reveal the name of the star, but we know
someone who has toured with one of the largest artists
in the world, and that is Sarah, who also plays guitar,
keys and sings. And it's also wearing a hot pink
hat during our interview. Not confusing at all. This is
like private jets, like the whole thing. And he recently
was describing to me a scenario in which this person
(21:19):
how they deal with a show and sleeping and getting
to the next show, like the suitcases and the family
and the entourage and everything is just sounded like kyos
and it's like not RESTful. And this person, you know,
has like a thing over their eyes, you know, like
they have all the sleep of koutrement and like trying
to help them get to sleep. But I thought to myself,
my god, this is like objectively one of the biggest
stars in the world, And if that is how that
(21:42):
star is getting quote unquote rest, then the rest of
us are doomed. Like, don't ever think there's a level
of touring that you're going to achieve as like an
indie rock band where you're not going to feel kind
of like deeply like cellularly exhausted. Yeah, I think it's hard.
I have friends who have done pretty well in music,
and at first when they would complain about touring, would
(22:03):
you would be a little bit when you're in your
twenties or third you're like, sorry about your problems, but yeah,
you're up in to Australia and every cool person came
out to see you and you were single. But it
seems like the pain is real. It's real. I think
it's like a total not to get like too dark
about our wonderful great aunt Helen, who's ninety two this year. Yeah,
(22:24):
she's amazing. But I I was teasing her because she
doesn't really travel anywhere, and she said, I don't like
to travel because you go somewhere, you eat what other
people want, and then you sleep in someone else's bed,
on someone else's sheets, and then you are you're stopped up.
But she used some sort of old and timey word,
but she means like constipated. And then you go home
(22:44):
and you're just relieved to get back into your house,
your sheets, eat the food, you like a poop again.
And I thought to myself, well, great aunt Helen, you
kind of just nailed the worst part of travel yeah,
it's glamorous up to a point, but also to way
your aunt was saying, it also makes you appreciate your
home to a certain extent, Like I feel like, oh, yeah, absolutely,
I like New York more after spending a year and
(23:04):
a half traveling from Montreal to Mexico City doing things.
I like my apartment more. I appreciate my friends more
than I did when I was here and I was
just chafing for something else. I think there's a calibration required. Yeah,
oh my god. I mean I used to feel completely
the opposite to the way that I feel now in
my twenties, and those gears were so fun, you know.
I mean I had an apartment, but like did I
(23:25):
you know, I was I'd finish a tour and I'd
be like, I don't know, I'll just stay in Portland
for a week and you know, I'll like take a
bath and order room service, and like I kind of
lived the dream of like, oh, I was single, I
was having like a really fun time. But my draw
to home and the sort of like nesting thing didn't
really kick in for me until my mid thirties. I
think that correlated with, you know the fact that I
(23:47):
had more disposable income. I got more interested in like
building a home and having nice things, and you know,
I had like a weekly Bachelor watching like drunk Fest
every week in LA when I lived there, and like,
you know, like I just started to feel like, oh,
like I really I really miss my community and I
really miss the comfort of what I'm building in my environment.
And now it's really hard to like this last tour,
(24:11):
it was just hard. I have like a really nice
life at home, and you know, I just had a kid,
and like, you know, it's like, you know, I'm I'm
like really settled. Did you you brought your kid with
you on tour? Yeah, yeah, I did. I know, he
did not get constipated. He did not get constipated on tour.
Um he's almost six months, so he was just about
(24:31):
to be five months. And uh, he did great. And
my partner Stacy came out as well, and we brought
my mom and she helped out. And it was profoundly destabilizing.
I mean, I've developed a lot of adaptations to make
living on the road and touring and being nomadic work.
And I think, you know, the things that he can
mentioned at the top about you know, here you are
(24:52):
on a bus like you're a grown adult sleeping within
inches of other adults. It's very intimate and uncomfortable. And
I've adapted to that by being able to like dissociate
on some levels when you need to kind of ghost
walk I call it, like through some of the touring,
so that you can feel comfortable and you know there's
some self preservation there. Yeah, I couldn't. I couldn't do
(25:13):
that with my wife, mother, and son on tour. I
felt like I had to be present twenty four hours
a day, and if I wasn't present, then it just
felt really uncomfortable. My pitch to my partner Stacy the
whole time was I was like, we're building a story
for Sid, you know, like we're gonna tell him about
his first carousel ride in Utah, and we're going to
tell him about his first swim in Pennsylvania, and you know,
and there was a few times where she was like, yeah,
(25:35):
I'm not a storyteller. Shut up, you know, like she
was kind of like, this is exhausting. Stop trying to
make it a positive thing. All right, I'm gonna ask
some of these travel questions. I lost the first one
I wanted to ask you, but I'm going to try
to call it back from memory. It was a very
simple one, but it was essentially my colleague Emily was
based on Washington, DC, and she was asking, if you're
on a road trip with a partner, what if any
(25:56):
responsibilities does the non driving partner have. I remember her
signing it off. You may or may not be saving
a relationship here, and I think they include like navigation, music,
you know, what if any responsibilities? Yeah, I mean, speaking
just specifically about the relationship I've been in for the
last twelve years. There is a delicate balance when one
(26:19):
says that the non driving person is in charge of navigation.
I think that that's a trick. I don't necessarily think
that you're in charge, and I also don't think you're
not in charge. So I think it's a very dangerous
place to be emotionally. There's tension there, like are you
actually the person staring at the navigation system and saying,
you know, two hundred yards and it's on your right
(26:40):
you want to move over now? Like is it that
layer or is it just more of like a you know,
making sure that the volume of the music doesn't like
overpower the navigation voice. You know, like, but it is
important to stay on your toes. You are not in
control or not not in control, you're somewhere in between.
I think that's well said. You can do anything to
add to that. As a lifetime passenger, my biggest piece
(27:00):
of advice to other lifetime passengers is just to be
very patient and helpful and it just just know that
it doesn't matter what the driver tells you. They are
resentful that you're not driving. Sounds like we're both having
a lot of fun in our relationships in cars. Usually
I am the driver, but I think you guys both
(27:21):
struck him on something. It's like you are relinquishing control. Yeah,
and so the driver ultimately has the power, which is
why they shouldn't be a jerk, because if you drive recklessly,
it's like whoa, whoa, whoa, Like you could kill us. Yes, okay,
two more questions. This is a short one comes from
Sean from Saratoga Springs, and Sean asks guided tours could
(27:42):
be cool or boomer culture. So we've been guided tours
in a bunch of places. I love guided tours. If
there's alcohol, yeah, probably nowhere more than New Orleans. We
find a new one every time, like you know, French Quarter,
Garden District, the Haunted Tour, We've done it all, and yeah,
(28:04):
it's it's particularly exciting when there's stops at bars. My
partner and I did one in London. We did the
Ripper Drack, the Ripper Tour or whatever. It was harrowing.
You start at a bar and then there are multiple
stops at bars, but then when they finish, like you're
in a back alley and then they just are like
okay bye, and the like guide person just leaves and
everyone just scatters like rats. And Sophie and I were
(28:27):
just like on this cobblestone dark lane, just heard about
this horrible thing that happened and we had no idea
where we were. I was like, this is awful. It's terrible,
but I love it. I would do it again in
a heartbeat. Love them. And oh, I want to just
address the boomer thing. There were so many young people
on the tour. Well, well that's why you want ones.
That's why you want ones with alcohol, even if you
don't drek it just it. I feel like it just
(28:47):
attracts like a more fun demographic. Also, unless you're doing
something like Graceland or something like you know you're doing
like a home tour or something. Those are kind of fun.
But in general, and this is just my own personal thing,
I don't like guided tours because I think as a
performer and just as like a kind of egotistical person,
I feel like I'm supposed to engage with the guide
(29:09):
and I'm like, oh God, does everyone think I'm like
the hugest brown noser? And then if I don't connect
with the guide, I'm like, how did that guide not
see how special I am? And how how next level
this experience could have been for everyone. Yes, I don't
like guided tours. I don't like them. It gives you
it sounds like it stresses you out. It stresses me out.
It gives me a lot of anxiety. Well there you go.
I think the fact that just the fact that you
(29:29):
guys have gone on tours, I think answered Sean's question like,
no shame in that game, no shame. Um, all right,
this is a question from Latal in New Jersey and
latal rights as fellow queer folks. I'm curious if they
you guys share my version to B and B's where
I feel, Oh my god, Yes, way would be. It
(29:52):
would be too conspicuous sitting around a breakfast table with strangers. Yeah. Yeah,
I want to jump in and say, because I've stayed
at a bunch of B andb's. Being on the West
Coast the last twenty some years, I did a lot
of travel on the Southern Gulf Islands and there are
a lot of B and B's, and as a twenty
something with my very queer looking girlfriend, I used to
feel so uncomfortable. But there were like some of these
(30:13):
places there's no hotels or in some cases away couldn't
afford hotels, and I hated it. I felt very, very uncomfortable.
You can quote me on this. I don't like B
and B's, I don't like Airbnb's, I don't like any
I want to be in a hotel where I want
to be in my house, but I would. I do
think that there's something this again, this show's really blowing
my mind because I feel like I'm like leaving with
(30:35):
two like brand new thoughts in my brain. But I
think that queer people and B and B's do not mix,
and still even in this time in day and age,
and I don't I don't quite understand what it's about,
except that there's a real visceral reaction for me about
staying in a place that makes me feel very vulnerable
and exposed. I mean more so than Tigan. I really
(30:56):
dealt with a lot of internalized homophobia and fear when
I was younger, and the few B and B experiences
I had actually a lot of it was really like
a lot of it hinged on my discomfort that people
would know, like I'm queer, and are we like, are
we staying in a house with people that that would
be hostile to that? Well, what if it's different, What
if it's a queer B and B? That might be worse.
(31:18):
I mean it might be worse because then it feels
like it's a theme park or something like. It's like,
we have queer members of my family. My parents are
much older, but some of their favorite people are these
two queer B and B owners in Florida. They stay
with like this couple, this married couple, and my mother
loves them. I think that's the most exposure she's been
(31:39):
with a married gay couple. Interesting is because they go
there each winter and they stay with them. You know
what our problem is, Brendan, I think I figured it
out is that we don't even like staying with people
we know, Like when we go to cities with friends
who have space for us and offer us space, we
always stay at hotels. And I wonder if a lifetime
of being nomadic and traveling is that we just we
(31:59):
crave space of our own. And this has probably got
less to do with B and b's and maybe even queerness,
although those are contributing factors to this discomfort, is that
we just don't like sharing space. It's like indoor camping,
and it's like, no, thank you, thank you so much.
I really genuinely enjoyed this conversation and in your in
(32:20):
your nesting and then your touring, and I look forward
to running into you all again. This was a delight,
Thank you so much, show your weekend, Thank you so so,
(32:41):
and that everyone was Tegan and Sarah. You can check
out their new album cry Baby and watch their show
High School, which is on Amazon. Full disclosure that conversation
went on for over an hour. I found them so
easy to talk to. I want to become their best friend.
Maybe I'll become one of their fellow Canadians at some
point um and if there's interest, maybe I'll share it
(33:03):
on this feed later on in the year. So that's
it for this edition of Not Lost Chat. If you
have travel questions that you want answered in a future episode,
you can email them to me at not Lost at
Pushkin dot Fm or ping me at b F Newnham
on Twitter. Please send them along. Not Lost Chat would
(33:24):
not have been made without producer Jordan Bailey, who caught
a red eye from Northern California to North Carolina to
be able to set up that Teagan at Sarah interview.
Thank you, Jordan. This show is written and hosted by
me Brendan Francis Nunham, The furthest I travel this week
was the corner of Bedford Metropolitan to get a COVID test.
Came back negative for COVID but positive for RSV, so
(33:47):
you know, it all evens out. As usual, we receive
top notch booking assistance from Laura Morgan. This episode was
edited by the wonderful Julia Barton with assistance from our
cools of Cucumber managing producer Jacob Smith and our mix
engineer is the unflappable Sarah brugere Not Lost as a
co production of Pushkin Industry's Topic Studio and iHeartMedia. It
(34:10):
was developed at Topic Studios. And yes, there are some
executive producers on this show, including me, Brendan Francis Newnham,
Christy Kressman, Maria Suckerman, Lisa line Gang and Lata Mulad.
If you dig what you here, please tell a friend,
make a comment at Apple Podcasts, spread the word. It's
really appreciated. And if your inboxes lonely, you can sign
(34:32):
up for the Pushkin newsletter at Pushkin dot fm Slash
Newsletter And if you'd like to find more Pushkin podcast
and there are some great ones. There's Talk Easy, there's
Story the Week, There's death of an artist. There's so
much good stuff going on. You can listen and find
them on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or you know
(34:54):
wherever you listen to podcast. That's it for this episode.
Thanks so much everybody,
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