Climate Smart Travel with Rick Steves & Craig Davidson
TOPICS DISCUSSED
Climate Smart Commitment with Rick Steves and Craig Davidson
Outside of Politics: Navigating Travel Limitations
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EPISODE RESOURCES
Climate Smart Commitment (Rick Steves)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Hello and welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we are excited to welcome back travel writer extraordinaire Rick Steves, as well as his COO at Rick Steves Europe, Craig Davidson, to talk about responsible travel and their climate smart program, as so many of us kick off what is shaping up to be a real blockbuster travel season. And then Outside of Politics, we're going to talk about the limitations so many experience when it comes to travel. Small kids, no money, physical limitations, and how we've handled those at different points in our lives.
Beth [00:00:57] Before we get started, we would love to ask you to help us grow the audience that paints you politics simply by sharing a review of the show on Apple Podcasts. Even if you've done this before, it is still a nice way to sort of re-up your perspective about what makes our show valuable to you. It helps more people find Pantsuit Politics, feeds the algorithms in the way that they need to be fed. And we so appreciate your help. We also read those reviews. They're very encouraging to our team, so we'd love for you to do that today.
Sarah [00:01:25] Next up, our conversations with Rick Steves and Craig Davidson. Beth, I don't know about you, but my newsfeed has been filled with headlines about this summer travel season and how many people are going to be traveling.
Beth [00:01:53] Same here. I've seen all of the headlines about how the airports are going to be bananas. You need to bring your patience. You need to keep your schedule flexible. You need to build in some cushion time. Don't expect to get anywhere on time and immediately go to another reservation. I've seen a lot of information about how the airlines are planning to cope with this, and it seems like the airlines are walking this real balance right now of trying to retain their current employees and also recruit new ones and keep those current employees working through this entire season. So it's a moment when they have a lot of leverage if they were to strike or otherwise make a stand for better working conditions. I read all of it and think, okay, everybody, let's just keep it together this summer. We can do this.
Sarah [00:02:42] Well, and as someone who travels and who loves travel, I try not to just think about this through an individual lens. I try not to just think, okay, I need to make sure I have my backup reservation. I really want to think about this responsibly. I absolutely do carbon offsets for all the miles I have flown. We do that here at Pantsuit Politics. We keep up with our travel for work, and then we buy carbon offsets. My teenager keeps me very responsible on that. I try to think about that with rental cars and how much we're driving if we're driving across several different points in an itinerary. We even try to think about that when we're traveling to just like how much waste we're making, not doing a lot of disposable stuff. I really try not to just consume, consume, consume, because travel is an act of consumption in a lot of ways. And I try to be really responsible about that. But it's hard. I mean, it's hard as all these headlines make clear, because these individual journeys we're going on aren't just individual journeys. They're a part of a huge sort of mass movement of human beings around the globe during the summer months in particular.
Beth [00:03:53] I was especially interested to read about how many of the airlines are increasing the business class section of the plane because people want to travel in greater comfort, which means that travel is going to continue to be available to even fewer people. But the people doing it are going to have a real blast on their travels. And I'm glad all this reporting is happening because I think it's clarifying about the fact that there is a toll here. We have talked extensively and you'll hear again from Rick Steves about the benefits of travel, but it isn't something to do lightly because it does leave such a footprint not only in terms of carbon, but economically and socially.
Sarah [00:04:38] Yeah, and that's why we were excited when Rick and his team reached back out. We loved having him on the show last time. And we know as someone who moves thousands of people across the ocean to Europe every year, him and his team really think deeply about this. And so, we were thrilled that Rick and Craig came on to discuss with us their Climate Smart program. And you're going to hear them explain that and talk through that with us, as well as the bigger impact and benefits of travel.
Beth [00:05:10] Rick Steves, we are so happy to have you back on Pantsuit Politics. We would love to talk about something we've entered into a little bit the last time we spoke with you, and that is the effect of travel on climate. And I know that your company has imposed really a carbon tax voluntarily on your travel. So we'd love to hear about the climate smart commitment. What motivated you to do this and how has it been working?
Rick Steves [00:05:32] Yeah, thanks for having me. It's the big white elephant in the room. Any time an ethical company is getting together and talking about tourism and making money by taking people abroad, it involves flying on airplanes. And that's a major contributor to climate change. There's a lot of ways. I mean, you can stay home and contribute to climate change too, but we feel we need to be honest about the carbon that we put into the climate. So it's kind of two pronged. My general philosophy about traveling is travel in a way that maximizes the experience and broadens your perspective and makes you a better citizen of the world. And then you come home and when you vote, you think about what's good for the world, what's good for the future, what's good for sustainability. That should be a byproduct, I believe, of thoughtful travel. In other words, travel is really valuable, and I don't believe in being flight shamed out of my travel because flying creates carbon. I want to maximize the value of the environmentally expensive exercise of travel and then ethically mitigate the travel I create by getting on an airplane. And studies show-- and I'm no scientist, but I've read enough of these valid studies-- that if you smartly invest $30 in climate mitigation, you create as much good when it comes to funding climate change as the bad you create by flying to Europe and back.. Thirty dollars. Now, I wish the government would just tax us for that. I wish an airline had to charge $30 more and we had to pay $30 more and that money would go and get rid of that much carbon in order for us to create that much carbon. But that's not the way our system works, so we have to be individually ethical. And as a company, I want to be corporately ethical.
[00:07:18] So what we've done is give ourselves a self-imposed carbon tax of $30 per person that we take to Europe on our Rick Steves tours, and we take a lot of people on our tours in a normal year. In other words, if there's no big pandemic keeping everybody home, we take 25 or 30,000 people to Europe on about a thousand different Rick Steves bus tours. And what we've done for the last three or four years is pay $30 per person that we've taken to Europe and invested it into a portfolio of organizations that are fighting climate change. And we feel that really pretty much mitigates the carbon we take by flying from the United States to Europe and back. It's nothing to brag about. It's nothing heroic. It's just baseline ethics for a tour company to pay for your carbon on the flight. And then the people who take your tours feel good about taking your companies tours because they are paying their carbon weight as an ethical traveler should. So that's what we've been doing. And the conventional way to do this here in the first world is to pay for carbon offsets by invest in a company in the first world. What we wanted to be a little more to do our mission and a little more entrepreneurial and creative about this, we decided to take our self-imposed carbon tax money, and that's 30,000 people times $30, $900,000 rounded up to $1,000,000. So every year we have $1,000,000 in this pot that we owe the environment and we invest it in a portfolio of ten organizations that are basically working in the developing world to help farmers do their work in a way that contributes less to climate change, because half of humanity is smallholder family farmers in poor countries really working very, very hard just to feed their kids. And they make $5 a day on average, and they contribute a lot to climate change.
[00:09:13] And poor people contributing to climate change, rich people contributing to climate change, it's all contributions to climate change. We thought we could invest smartly in farming practices in the global South to help these farmers not only produce more, but produce more while contributing less to climate change. That's mitigating the carbon that we create. And it's amazing how well that works. So we've got ten organizations. We give an average of $100,000 a year to each of these corporations. And they're in the third world, in the developing world, in the poor world, in the global South, whatever you want to call it. And they are able to do their work in a way that is more productive, is more environmental friendly and contributes less to climate change. I want to distinguish that from just helping people who are suffering because of climate change. There's a lot of suffering in the poor world because of climate change. I mean, you can imagine. And that's fine to help that, but that's not what we're trying to do. That's a different kind of aid. We are investing in farmers so they can do their work in a way that is climate smart.
Beth [00:10:20] So, Craig, I would love for you to tell me about the design of the climate smart commitment. When you were thinking about this self-imposed carbon tax, what kinds of conversations did you have? What sort of alternatives did you consider?
Craig Davidson [00:10:33] Well, I think when we talk about the origin of the climate smart commitment, it really all goes back to our values. As an organization, we are teachers first. We're role models personally and professionally, and we advocate for humanness in a world that's increasingly isolated or materialistic. If you take those values aside, you then go back to say, "What does our company want to stand for and how do we want to run it?" And Rick is very committed to social programs and social justice issues. And I come from a world where I don't believe that maximizing shareholder value can exist without some sort of social element connected to that. Back in university, it was about maximize shareholder value. I think the eighties and nineties changed it to short term income, maximize your dividend. And I used to think, well, if I make you a millionaire but you can't breathe the air or drink the water, I don't know how I have maximized your value. So regulations aside, there has to be an ethical component to my decision making. I would say it's like if everything you did ends up in The New York Times and your mother reads it, is she going to be ashamed of you or not for the decisions that you're making? So I've always kind of operated that way. I've tried to be to make the right ethical decisions based on how I believe people should act. And when I met Rick, those two ideas came together-- our entire philosophy, really, where we commit the community and the earth to shareholders. We donate money locally to help our community get stronger. And then we consider the climate, our commitment, our dividend to the earth. So when we started that, it really was this idea of how do I put our values at the center of a program that helps payback or offsets, if you like that word, we would say creatively mitigates the carbon created by traveling in a way that puts humans at the center of the program, because that's what we're trying to do.
[00:12:37] Travel allows you to learn new things and break down barriers, so how can we include that element with humans at the center of it, but then really adapt all of our values and allow our travelers to understand what we're doing, be very transparent, and really take accountability for what we're doing as an organization? So then as we were thinking about what to do, we're reaching out through our networks to find out what organizations existed, what we could do. We did research carbon offsets. A book called Drawdown was really helpful for us. When you read all the different programs that can happen and reading Drawdown and meeting different organizations, this idea of really understanding the power of education, especially for women and children in the developing world, and how that can have huge impacts going forward. That ties into our teaching philosophy as an organization. And then these ideas of the global capital markets system or global capitalism is not the most humane development system that exists. It's the worst development, but it's the only one we have. The capital market system or capitalism does not care about the quality of the inputs, it cares about the value of the output, and whether the organization can make money on it. And so, looking at that and systemic injustice around the world, we really wanted to recognize that climate change or the system itself really is impacting the poorest people in the poorest countries the hardest. It's smallholder farmers who are in the middle of it. Climate change is really impacting their ability to make a living. It's keeping them in extreme poverty. Commodity prices are driving down their standard of living. And so, how can we help farmers farm in a way that helps them adapt to and mitigate their impact on climate change, stop deforestation and use of chemicals and all of that aspect of it while helping them increase their incomes, get them out of extreme poverty, educating women and girls and strengthening their communities and really owning the project. This wasn't about people coming in and telling people what to do. It was partnering with communities to take action, own the project and move forward. And that's where we come in to from a value set.
Beth [00:14:55] So you focused in on this population of farmers in the developing world. How much of that feels like sort of traditional philanthropy and what's different given what you're trying to accomplish in terms of the climate dividend here?
Craig Davidson [00:15:11] That's a good question. It all merges in my mind to be honest with you. I don't separate what would be traditional philanthropy and what we're trying to do. I think there is an argument to be made. We're doing something that's on a humanitarian level, but from a climate change perspective. If you go through the economic model, farmers make less and less money every year because commodity prices keep dropping. Because we don't want to pay more for food, they make less and less money, so it forces them to do farming in a way that hurts the environment. It's either more chemicals, they will be forced to expand their crops. They're stuck with droughts and extreme weather that really makes it hard for them to farm. And so, they do climate harming activities moving forward just to try to make enough money in order to live. When we look at this, it is really using organizations that partner with local counterparts to help farmers learn how to create organic fertilizer. For example, how to start inter-cropping and grow more than one crop at a time. Hydroponics so they save water and get through the dry spells. So now they can use their existing land, be more productive, make more income. It stops the need to go spend more on chemicals or deforest or continue to expand. If we can keep what's there, that's step number one. And then the next step is bringing in reforesting. Reforesting the depleted areas that have already been affected. A lot of people because they can't make money and are in extreme poverty, it's a constant search for firewood or open source fires and fire pits are burning all the time. That's deforestation. So if you can bring in climate smart cook stoves or chemical water filters, now you've got the ability to stop the ongoing deforestation, you can bring back biodiversity that stabilizes the environment and really has a huge impact on climate change. That's how we look at that. So we are helping bringing farmers out of extreme poverty, but we're doing it in a way that's allowing them to keep their own carbon footprint small or even decreasing and really allowing them to thrive inside of the system that otherwise is treating them as an input and not necessarily worrying about their quality of life in that process.
Beth [00:17:28] I know there's an advocacy piece of your investment as well. You want to talk about that?
Rick Steves [00:17:33] Yes, I believe in advocacy a lot, because advocacy basically means going to the halls of government and make legislators more aware of the issues so they can vote smartly. And if you just sit at home and complain, there are people who are going to advocate against the issue that you care about. There's going to be all sorts of giant corporate interests that don't really want to worry about climate change because it's not good in the short term for their profit statement and they feel legally obligated to profit maximized for their shareholders in the short term. And climate change doesn't even register if you're thinking about short term returns for stockholders. Long term sustainability, that would register. But that's not what motors a lot of corporate thinking. So we want to go and empower organizations whose mission is to advocate for the climate in Congress by helping fund them so they can do their work more effectively. For me, as a philanthropist, I feel I get more bang for my buck not by helping feed hungry people in a poor country, but by encouraging our lawmakers to have policies that are more friendly to fighting hunger or more friendly to fighting climate change. So that's something I'm really excited about. I think about a quarter of the money that we dedicate to this program of ours does go to advocacy companies, organizations in the United States, again, whose mission is to go to Congress, go to Washington, D.C., and advocate for climate smart policies in the United States government. And that alone could move mountains if we could just get our government to vote for the environment and for long term sustainability and profitability and influence. But our system really is rigged so that policies help short term profits because everybody wants the money now.
Sarah [00:19:29] Well, that's because lobbying is expensive and paying for advocacy really is important because otherwise it's just rich people who are lobbying.
Rick Steves [00:19:37] Yeah. And that's why the main organization I support outside of this climate work is Bread for the World. We're affluent, we're privileged people, we get to travel. And most of the world would never see their name on a plane ticket. And 10% of humanity is struggling in what's called extreme poverty. Half of humanity is trying to live on $5 a day. That's tough. But that's okay, I mean, there's hope there. But if you're trying to live on $2 a day, there's really no hope. And that just makes our world a more dangerous place and a more desperate place. And there's plenty of money. If we could just reprioritize a few things to smartly fight desperate, extreme poverty, the 10% of humanity that is hungry and is kind of in a situation that is hopeless.
Beth [00:20:27] Tell me a little bit about that advocacy piece that you alluded to. I know that it's two prongs here, that we're helping people on the go forward in these developing nations, but we're also looking at the big polluters where a lot of climate change impact is happening. So how did you settle on funding advocacy in the United States? And what are you thinking about when you're looking for partners in that effort?
Craig Davidson [00:20:51] Well, funding in the United States, some of it comes from Rick. He's always been involved with Bread for the World for years. They're a big advocacy group in Washington about hunger. They're now very involved in climate change and trying to get climate laws passed and using some of the farming techniques that we're now showing success with around the world, getting the U.S. government to recognize that as part of foreign aid. So some of it is Bread for the World. The other big lobbying group we have, or education group, is citizens climate education or citizens climate lobbying, kind of which side of the fence they're on. They're very grassroots oriented. They started out as a group that just wanted to force recognition of a carbon tax, basically get a nationwide carbon tax. But they're involved in all the states to try to get government to pass a law like that. But since then, they've expanded. So I really like citizens climate education. I like all of them, but I like citizens climate education because it's so grassroots. They spend time to teach everybody from all walks of life that concentrate on university students who are clearly the most interested and active, but all age ranges of how to write letters like op eds to the newspapers, letters to the editor, how to write letters to their congressmen, how to hold a meeting to really get the grassroots oriented so that on all levels of politics, politicians understand that there's an urgency. They also have worked in Washington and some of their work has been passed and the bills that Biden has signed since he's become president and the big massive bills that have gone through in the environment, the investments that have been made. So that's really where that comes from. I like advocacy work in general, but I like to see the side of grassroots involvement and teaching ordinary people basically how to get involved because so many of us things aren't going to change if we don't get involved. If we don't hold companies or politicians accountable to what we believe is right, it's not going to change. And I think that's at the core of everything we're saying. I mean, accountability. How do you take accountability for your actions? And we want to hold people accountable. We're trying to be accountable with this program. There's not a lot of accountability being taken anywhere else. So I like the idea of educating grassroots people who also care so that they can continue to hold politicians accountable.
Beth [00:23:28] I can imagine that some of your commitment to this issue comes from your travel experiences. We were talking about our conversation with you today, and we know that you have such affection for Turkey. And I can imagine that you have felt some grief following the earthquakes in Turkey. So I wonder if you might tell us a little bit about those personal experiences you have with places and then watching them be devastated by extreme weather or natural disasters that are seemingly all dialed up right now from what we experienced in the past.
Rick Steves [00:23:58] Well, I'm a traveler and I'm a historian. And so when you travel, you have kind of a horizontal appreciation of how beautiful this world is. I'm a Christian. I believe there's a God and God created all of us. And that makes all of us God's children. Therefore, we are brothers and sisters. It's kind of a fundamental approach to my faith. And if you believe in a God, in whatever sort of organized religion or unorganized religion, if there's a God or some kind of a creator, that means we're all his or her or its children, and that makes us all brothers and sisters equally precious. I love that. And it's understandable that somebody would care about somebody who's suffering across the street. That's just a decent person. But if there's somebody suffering across the sea, for me, that's just as real. That's just as real. And I don't think it's a decent person that can care about somebody across the street and ignore somebody in the same situation across the sea. I think that's the person who needs to travel a little bit or who needs to think about what really matters. So without neglecting the person across the street, I take into my realm of concern a global approach to fighting these problems. We have this opportunity as travelers to get out there and get to know the world. And that's what I love. When you travel, you not only realize there are serious problems, but just as importantly, you realize the world is home to billions of beautiful, wonderful people. So much joy, so much love, so many great families, so much happiness. And that doesn't make the news, of course. But the vast majority of us on this planet are doing great. We're not all rich. I mean, United States has a problem of too much affluence, but you don't want to talk about that. A lot of countries are much happier than us and much more fulfilled and have much more, "family values" or whatever and they're nowhere near as frantically materialistic and capitalistic as we are. But that's another discussion. But the point is the world is a beautiful place. And when you travel, you get to know it. My mission with my 100 workmates here at Rick Steves Europe is to equip and inspire Americans to venture beyond Orlando. I mean, Disneyland is fine.
Sarah [00:26:17] No judgment. We're going to Orlando next week now, Rick.
Rick Steves [00:26:19] I know. And I know a lot of people are. There's one guidebook in the United States of America that outsells the Rick Steves Italy guidebook. And it's the guidebook to Disneyland. So that's a big market. But after three or four, maybe five trips to Disney World, you could get a passport and fly across the sea. You've got enough money. It's no more expensive to go to Portugal than to go to Disney World. And maybe you just try it and think, oh, no, this stinks. They have a different god and they don't speak my language, I'm going back home. That's fine, but give it a whirl. I wouldn't have traveled had I not had the accident in my personal history that my dad, who was a band director and a piano tuner, decided to import pianos from Germany. So when I was 14 years old, he took me to Germany at the piano factories and I saw more than the piano factories. I saw this world is my playground. That was really pretty cool. I'm lucky. And ever since then, I've prioritized my life to travel. And it turns out I may make my living not teaching piano, but teaching travel. But when we travel, for me, that's the most beautiful souvenir. My mission these days is not just to help people pack light and have a smart itinerary and get a good hotel-- it's part of it. But my mission is to inspire and equip Americans to travel in a way where they get out of their comfort zone, where they see culture shock as not something to avoid, but something that is a constructive thing. Culture shock is the growing pains of a broadening perspective, and Americans need that as much as anybody. And if I can curate that culture shock by being a good tour guide or being a good travel writer, that's what I do. My hope is people bring home the most beautiful souvenir. And that's not some little thing on the wall. That is a broader perspective.
Sarah [00:28:01] I'll tell you what, though, with Turkey, that's the risk, right? It's a risk to do that. You open your heart and you allow in a little more heartbreak when something like this happens in a country you've been to. I traveled to Tunisia in my twenties with my husband. And when they experienced the Arab Spring and they had terrorist attacks in the Bardo Museum where I'd been, it just felt different. You can't wall it off when you walk streets and then you're watching them crumble after an earthquake. It's just heartbreaking.
Rick Steves [00:28:30] You're forever changed. Thomas Jefferson said travel makes a person wiser, if less happy. It complicates our lives. Muhammad said, "Don't tell me how educated you are. Tell me how much you've traveled." For Muslims, a billion Muslims on this planet, they are supposed to go to Mecca once in their life. But the idea is not to go to Mecca, that's not the fundamental thing. The fundamental thing that Muhammad was after, I believe, was getting out of their norm and finding themselves in a place where they're not the norm and then having a broader perspective on things and a greater appreciation of this planet. You could decide, Sarah, like you just mentioned, "I don't want to do that. It's going to break my heart." Yeah, you could surround yourself with people just like you doing just fine. Have your barbecue apron on and go to your grave holding a nice can of beer with a big smile on your face. That's a choice you have. I'm not going to condemn that. It's just my life is richer and I feel so much more part of the world. And it just carbonates my whole outlook and existence because I know the heartache and I know the joy that people in every corner of this planet feel when things go wrong and when things go right. And then when we have something, let's say we have a 9/11 kind of a disaster, I realize, well, that was horrible. But we're not the only country that's had a 9/11. Most countries have had tragedies that make our 9/11 seem small. We're 300 million people. We lost 3000. There are countries of 2 million people that lost 30,000. I mean, that's a thousand fold the grief per capita, and it doesn't even register on ours.
[00:30:20] But we had 9/11. We've been hit and we've got to get this rectified or whatever. Yes, that's our hurt. But there's other hurt and we contribute to other hurt. We're so powerful. We could help alleviate other hurt. I really believe our defense budget is designed to make us safer. We spend about a trillion dollar a year on military hardware [inaudible]. And we need the military. I certainly agree with that. But the litmus test would be how much should each of those billion dollars be spent to make us safer? And hard power is the default. But investing in soft power, making America more beloved, making the world a more stable and just place with our leadership and with our investment. I'm not talking about doing that because you're a person of faith and you believe in loving your neighbor because in the privacy of the voting booth, that does not work with Americans. Sadly. You could be the nicest Christian on the block. And you are wired to go into the voting booth or however you vote these days and vote not for how does this election impact people south of the border, but how does it impact my family and our wealth and our security? I just want to help teach people that if this is a pragmatic investment, when you talk about soft power, how do we make our world a more stable and just place? And you can do it because you're a compassionate person or you can do it because you just care about stability.
Sarah [00:31:55] Well, and you're seeing that right now with Ukraine. You're seeing that with our support for Ukraine. I think there's this kind of Venn diagram of hard power and soft power.
Rick Steves [00:32:03] You're seeing it with a very good and compassionate and smart investment of hard power. I think there's the soft power also which would be recognizing that for the average lot in life for women-- I don't know, half the women on this planet-- they spend hours every day walking for water. We need soldiers overseas, but for the cost of one extra soldier we could dig 100 wells and 100 thirsty communities where every mom and every one of those thirsty villagers abandons their kids for three or 4 hours every morning to walk for water and then walks that water home, drilled the well in that community. And then every morning, instead of walking across the county for water, those moms walk across the square. And when they pump that water, what are they thinking? God bless America. God bless America; I've got water for my children. That's a $5,000 investment that brings water to an entire village. What a turn on. If people could learn that, they'd think more carefully about blowing billions of dollars.
Sarah [00:33:09] Well, other countries do too. I mean, you see Russia and China investing in that way. That's why Kamala Harris is in Africa right now, because we're like, we can't be absent of influence. And that type of influence, investment influence in other parts of the world for sure.
Rick Steves [00:33:21] And fighting for the hearts and souls of those people that could be our enemies or could be our friends. But that's what's fun about travel, is you talk to other people. It's so important to get other perspectives. When I come upon a wall in my travels, whether it's a physical wall or a metaphorical wall, I know there's two stories to that wall. There's two narratives. And it's very easy to take the narrative that our society and our values would be likely to support. Think of the wall in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians. But you owe it to yourself to understand the narrative on the other side of that wall.
Sarah [00:33:56] Yeah, well, and you're right, it's pragmatically important. It's not just strategically important. I thought another interesting-- back to the topic of travel and climate change. There's been a couple articles around talking about the no visit locations or the places that need rest. A lot of national parks on that list that are suffering from water shortages. I read one that had Amsterdam on the list because I think the people who live in Amsterdam really enjoyed the Covid break and were like, you know what? This is not so bad. And I wonder how you think about that. How if you see a future in travel where we're sort of rotating or alternating or giving places rest. Even when you were talking about air travel, I thought, I wouldn't even be mad to go back to ships where it just took us longer to get over there and longer to get back. I wonder how you see the future of the intense-- because it feels like I don't know if the numbers are actually shifting or if this is just a post-COVID surge, but it does feel like people-- I was even looking back at a trip I took to Europe when I graduated from high school and just thinking about like the crowd situation where we were and how much more intense the crowds are now and how you think about that.
Rick Steves [00:35:14] Yeah, well, first of all, there's the emerging economies, India, Russia-- until the war.
Sarah [00:35:19] Right.
Rick Steves [00:35:21] Chinese people and Indian people they've got all these dreams to see these famous iconic things in Europe. And now there's 100 million people in India and 100 million people in China that have that have enough money and freedom to hop on a plane any time they want. This is a huge upper middle class or upper class, and they want to go to the Eiffel Tower. Indian people want to go to Switzerland, see where their movies are made. Everybody wants to see Romeo and Juliet Courtyard in Verona. I've never seen such a crush. And it was nothing but big busloads of people from countries in the Pacific Rim and South Asia. And they wanted to see these places just like we have in the past. And now they've got suddenly the money and the freedom to do that. It's a great thing that there's that much affluence and stability and freedom where people can do that. But the reality is, like us, they want to go to the same places. I kind of built my whole Rick Steves travel business out of helping people get off the beaten path. My first book was called Europe Through the Back Door Instead of Through the Front Door. And these days, the problem has got so much worse because so many more people are traveling and we have this crowdsource mentality and everybody is eating Tex-Mex in Paris. Why? Well, because the Tex-Mex restaurant is number one on TripAdvisor. Didn't you read? We're all going to Tex-Mex. You're going to Tex-Mex because a bunch of people have never been to Paris said this is to die for. There's no curation of this information. When I started writing, and this was 1980 was my first guidebook, and I've got 60 or 80 guidebooks now. But when I wrote my first guidebook, there was not enough information. There was desperate need for more information for independent travelers. Now, with the Internet and with all the apps and crowdsourcing and all these bloggers and all this kind of stuff, we got so much information and there's a lot of good information in that. But somebody's got to curate it.
[00:37:18] So the weird thing now is, for me, Americans still have the shortest vacations in the rich world. We still want to do too much. Back when I was a kid, there was a movie. If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium, about the blitz tour around Europe, and it's just insanity. We still have that problem. But what we have exacerbating it now is everybody wants to go to the same places. There's a handful of cities in Europe, like you were alluding to, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, Bruges, Salzburg, Rome, that in season local people run for cover and it is taken over by noisy tour groups. And I can see there being a backlash. In fact, in 2019, the big issue before COVID hit was, are people going to start getting angry at tourists as we invade their beautiful spaces? And when there was no more tourism, my friends in Rome said it was astounding. Local people came out and they retook their beloved piazzas that they had abandoned because of tourism. And now families were playing at the fountain that Bernini sculpted right there on Piazza Navona. Local families, because there wasn't all of the tourism there. But there's this crowd sourcing stuff, and we all know what that's like. There's the Instagram thing. And I just you know my whole job is to find places that are undiscovered and help people go there to spread it out. But there's this other feeling that everybody's got to go literally to the same spot for the same selfie. And I've seen it in a bunch of places around Europe where I was in Zermatt in the shadow of the Matterhorn. And there's a construction project going on, and the only bridge over the little river in their ravine in that town, Zermatt, and in Switzerland. And I said, "What are you building here? We're building a platform for the Instagram people so they don't obstruct traffic every morning by standing on the bridge." This is a theater being built for Instagram people right at the base of the Matterhorn, because for some reason, somebody declared, "If you're going to take a picture of the Matterhorn, you've got to stand right here."
Sarah [00:39:19] Oh, my gosh. I wish y'all could see Beth right now. She's in deep contemplation. Her eyes are closed.
Beth [00:39:26] Well, I'm just thinking about one of the most formative Instagram experiences that I have had in my life was at Stonehenge. And I felt such a sense of the sacredness of that spot. And I was really frustrated with the selfies. It felt like a selfie line instead of people being there to experience something truly unusual in the world. So I'm with you. I'm just suffering about the theater built on the bridge.
Rick Steves [00:39:52] Well, Beth, one of my guides sent me a photograph from the Louvre in the big room where the Mona Lisa is, and it's right back to the point where you got to have shoulder pads and you've got to have sharp elbows to even get close to Mona Lisa. And everybody's hand is up in the air. I just had this scary thing. It's almost like a Hitler salute with their camera there. And they're all taking pictures of what they're supposed to take pictures of and usually with their face in it. That's the Louvre in Paris. I was in the Prato filming just a couple of months ago for our series. We just made a six hour series called The Story of European Art for Public Television. And in the Prato, they're so strict about no photographs, you can't even bring the phone out of your pocket. And nobody has any photographs in the Prato. And at first I was frustrated by that because people want to get a photograph. But it occurred to me the experience was different. Everybody was in the moment. Everybody was whispering about the impact the art is having on them rather than jostling for a photograph. And I just think that is so beautiful. As a tour guide, many times I've had a local arranged for a group of fado singers or flamenco dancers or a folk troupe or a pub music and Scotland, Ireland and the group is just jockeying for photographs and I just say, "Hey, you guys, these musicians have something to offer. This is a beautiful opportunity to enjoy their music. We're going to take this one piece now and get all the photos you want, and then let's put our cameras away and be in the music out of respect for the musicians, if nothing else." So we all got our pictures done and then everybody put the cameras away and then they really enjoyed the concert. But as individuals and people who are taking their families around Europe and investing a lot of money in exposing our children to this kind of great art and culture, let's learn to do the stuff we need to do with our screens, but then put the screens down and be in the moment.
[00:41:40] Hike to that little place, be behind the waterfall, and feel that the spray of the waterfall on your face and look at how the sun makes rainbows through that bridal veil of water and stand there and imagine the first Vikings that came there in Iceland and how they were overwhelmed by the wonder of the power of nature on their little chunk of the world. There's so much we can do to be there, and that's the mark of a good traveler these days. And that is our challenge. And if all you do is go to the famous places, you're going to come home with stories about how long the lines were. But remember, you could take away all those famous places. Let's say 10% of Europe has crowd problems, Anne Frank's house. You could take away Anne Frank's house and you could go to the Dutch History Museum, which is actually better than Anne Frank's house for that whole experience and learn how the Dutch survived the Holocaust or didn't survive it. You could go to the Colosseum in Rome and you could scramble and struggle and wait and pay and be frustrated and finally get inside the Colosseum. Okay, that was great. But you could walk 10 minutes away to the Baths of Caracalla and see Roman engineering. Just as impressive as the Colosseum with a handful of tourists. You could enjoy the Colosseum for free and easy from the outside and then go inside the Baths of Caracalla and have no crowds at all. So one thing we're working on at Rick Steves Europe is a whole catalog of alternatives to crowds for people who really don't want to suffer through the crowds. The Uffizi gallery is really great, but I'd have a tough time saying it's greater than the Museum of the Cathedral, the Museo del Duomo just behind. It's just a five minute walk away from the Uffizi gallery and it's got no crowds just because it's not sexy for some reason. But I love that museum equally well.
Sarah [00:43:33] If you want to learn, are you there to learn and understand? Are you there to check it off the list? Are you there to just go choo-choo? And, look, I'm a list checker. I'm trying to see all the national parks. I'm not even trying to lie. But I was struck by what you said about Americans are famous for wanting to crowd in as much as possible. We just talked about this on our show. We have shrinking vacation days. That issue is getting worse because people get the same amount of time for sickness or whatever, and so they save it for disasters and think, well, I can use it for vacation because we have this finite amount of time, right? So our vacation days are shrinking. If they're shrinking and you want to get the most out of it, and that's what we tell ourselves. It's funny because the Orlando book, hilariously, it has this little section in it that's like 30 pages. And you think you're getting a book about Orlando and Disney and then it just kind of veers off course and it does like a 30 page lesson on parenting. And it's basically like, "Now listen up, don't go to Disney if you've never told your child no and write us a letter about how you had a bad experience." Like, legitimately, it's hilarious. And it's like you got to tell, no, you got to have boundaries. They got to have an app or you're not going to have a good time. It doesn't matter if you do everything else in the rest of this book. So I think all your book should have like a 30 page section on like Buddhist contemplation. Like, listen---
Rick Steves [00:44:56] That's a good.idea.
Sarah [00:44:56] You need a little section that's like, "This is why we're here. We're not here to check off a list. We're not here to run through and get all the selfies. We want to be present and put our phones down." So you need, like, a little 30 page section that's like a Buddhist, this is how we're going to do this. Because I'm telling you that section on that book, I will never forget it. I'm flipping through this book and I'm like, "Oh, we've taken a turn here, but I kind of dig it."
Rick Steves [00:45:17] I like that. Or even a sidebar on the front page of every chapter, reminding people it's going to be a lot of tourism here, a lot of chaos. You don't have a bucket list. Forget that bucket list.
Sarah [00:45:27] Yeah. you're here.
Rick Steves [00:45:28] In fact, a lot of times when I'm having a really good experience in Europe, what occurs to me is this is not bucket list travel. This is real travel. I'm not here just to check something off. I'm making friends right now. I'm getting out of my comfort zone. I'm a cultural chameleon. I'm getting to know something I would have never gotten to know. And for the rest of my life, I'm going to have a better understanding of anchovies or whiskey or pétanque or a Turkish bath or whatever is this new experience. So many people, they have a list of how many countries they visited. That means nothing. You could be in 100 airports and you could have been in 100 countries and never talk to another person. You could never get out of your comfort zone. For me, I just love this thought that culture shock is a good thing. I think, as I mentioned, it's the growing pains of a broadening perspective. And, for me, that's the souvenir. That's the joy of travel. And it's easy for a lot of people to throw around the term transformational travel. But that's really a beautiful thing if you can think about how travel can change us. The most frightened people in our society, I believe-- and fear in our society is quite a problem in politicians and other people take advantage of our fear against us. Some great president said we have nothing to fear but fear itself. It's so true. And we've forgotten that now completely. We are embracing fear. And the most frightened people in our society, I think, are the people with no passports, the people buried deep in the middle of this great nation that have never reached out. And it's basically fear is for people who don't get out very much. The flipside of fear is understanding. And we gain understanding when we travel. And I would love it if people would stop saying have a safe trip because it's safer now than it was back when people said bon voyage.
Sarah [00:47:17] I love bon voyage.
Rick Steves [00:47:19] Have a good trip. Have fun. Not have a safe trip, we'll pray for you. Are you really sure you should be taking kids over there, considering all that's going on? Statistically-- and I know statistics are optional in much of our society today, but statistically it is safer to go to Europe or go over wherever you want to go now than it was 30 years ago. And, yeah, there are certain risks, but there's certain risks by staying at home. But if you want our world to be a safer place, the best thing to do is travel. Then if you travel thoughtfully, you come home with a mindset where you're more likely to want to build bridges and less likely to want to build walls, because walls are built by people who are afraid and who want to be safe. And the irony is, if we just rely on walls rather than bridges, we're going to find ourselves in a position where we become more endangered. The best way to make us safe is to build bridges and get to know our neighbors. And that's what we do when we travel.
Sarah [00:48:17] I want to go back really quickly as we wrap up to what you said about curation, because there's so much from where you started, where you were giving so much information because so much information was lacking. I look back on that trip in 1999. I know I did it with your books, but still I'm now that you can Google and get mass transit directions like that, I'm like, how did I do that? I don't remember. I guess I had a transit map, but that is confusing. But I've lost that part of my brain, so I hope I don't need any time soon. And you pivoted. You went beautifully from giving the information to an environment where we had so much information, you became the trusted curator. I have to ask what you think about all these new artificial intelligence sites that are curating, that are taking all the data out there on travel, absolutely the text of many of your books, 100% for sure and creating these itineraries as the new type of curation. Now, I think you're right about one thing. They're going to sweep up those trip it. They're going to pick up some of that crowdsourcing. They could perhaps send you to the Tex-Mex restaurant in Paris. But I wonder how you feel about those sites and that new frontier as far as travel itineraries.
Rick Steves [00:49:33] Yeah. Well, Sarah, it's part of that whole idea that there's a lot of information out there, and it's just you could very cleverly design this information so it has artificial intelligence and it takes your needs and it put us all together. But the information that it's drawing from is not your style. It could even be accurate. But what's your style? What's your definition of funky and what's your definition of elegant and what's your definition of interesting? And that's very personal. So I think as a consumer of information, when we travel, you got to know what is the source? Who's this coming from? And my guidebooks are the best selling guidebooks for every country in Europe by a long shot. And generally we outsell our competition combined. And I think it's because we update our information in person every edition. And we have a consistent personality in the guidebooks where, yes, I know what Rick thinks about hotels and I want nicer hotels. Or I know what Rick thinks about eating in a commotion kind of place, in a dive, in a greasy spoon, and I love it. Every guidebook has their own personality about all these things, but it needs to be consistent. If you're going to use this book in Portugal and you had a great time or use it in Sicily also have a great time. I think with our guidebooks, it's funny you ask this because we just had a meeting because right now we're all heading up to Europe to update our guidebooks. I've got an amazing two months coming up where I'll have two guides every day for 60 days as I update my guidebooks all over this year. I'm going to Spain, France and Scandinavia, and we've decided, yes, we have to embrace the obvious tools that people can have online that are not subject to that crowdsourcing problem where everybody's going to Tex-Mex in what we're doing, for example, on Google Maps. Now, I don't need to describe how to get by bus or subway from your hotel in London to the British Museum. You can just type in British Museum from your hotel and click on the trolley or the bus, and it'll tell you how to do it right now and tell you how the traffic is. So we need to teach our travelers, especially those disinclined to embrace the modern tech, to be able to do that. And that's exciting. So just last month, we made a global decision for all 80 of our guidebooks to get the information that too much detail and give people the encouragement and the basic skills to take that online. And I'm thankful for that kind of information because that is the tedium of a guidebook. I don't want to spend my time figuring out how to get from Heathrow Airport to Gatwick Airport. You can just dial that in and it'll tell you how to get there and what's the traffic right now. And no guidebook can compete with that.
[00:52:22] But what our guidebook does, it has a personality. It cuts through all the superlatives. It knows that your time is just as valuable as your money, and it knows how to give you the context so that when you see that windmill, you know what an Archimedes screw is. And you know what an exciting thing that was centuries ago when the Dutch harnessed the wind this way and they developed a fancy windmill where you could spin the cap so it faces into the wind and you could let the sails go big or little, depending on how the wind power was. And then you could capitalize on the energy earned by turning that big windmill. And it would then spin in Archimedes screw, which would bring water from the low country up over the dike and pour it into the sea. And you drain that land and you could turn it into beautiful farmland and you could become a rich and powerful nation. They say God made the world with the Dutch. We made Holland. To be able to see a windmill and get excited about that is pretty cool. But how many travelers know what an Archimedes screw is when they see a windmill? Not very many. You go to the famous aqueduct in southern France that you've probably got an image of [crosstalk]. This great Roman aqueduct. That's not the aqueduct. That's the most scenic bridge in a 30 mile long stone construction with a little square manmade river on top that is engineered to drop one inch every 100 yards for 30 miles. So 2000 years ago, people didn't need to carry water into the great city of Nimes but that it would flow in a gentle little river built by the Romans into the city. What a beautiful thing. And then after seeing that biggest bridge to go to Nimes, look at the end of that 30 mile long structure and imagine the jubilation on that day when water just gushes into the city. Wow, Rome beat us, but now we're on the winning team. We've got stability and we've got running water. Hail, Caesar! I mean, that's what we want to do. And no automated source of information is going to give you goose bumps. I don't think.
Sarah [00:54:24] And I just think, paradoxically, even though it can take in all this data, it's not up to date, weirdly enough. Because it's using a dated data source. So in this world where there are so many crowds and the locations themselves are adapting quickly, where you'll get all of a sudden we have a timed entry. Like on one of our recent trip we were on, the very first day they used a timed entry for a national park at [inaudible]. And it's weird. It feels like a technology like that would be the best place first for information that's updating. But really, you need humans that are talking to the person the first day and going, okay, this is how it's going to work and this is how it's changing. And it's kind of like nearly out of date. That regular updating I think is going to get increasingly-- it's already very valuable, but even more valuable.
Rick Steves [00:55:12] Well, that's just the hard work of travel information and there's no way around it. You can't email somebody, you can't crowdsource this information. You can try. And most people that own guidebook, they are web companies that are just trying to monetize the data. And they updated without people going there. We spend three or 400 days of research to update our books every year. Three or 400 days of people, that's expensive.
Sarah [00:55:42] And it's hard work. I love to travel, but my husband was like, we travel because you do all the hard work. That's a lot of work.
Rick Steves [00:55:49] That's nice. I'm glad your husband appreciates that, because what I do, I'm a strange guy that likes to do that. It's my favorite thing to do. But I go over there and I miss and I hit and I miss. And I missed and hit. And then I bring home the hits and I write them up in hopes that other people can have a better batting average. And if you like my style, apparently you've enjoyed that, it's going to cut through the superlatives and you'll know how to get the most out of the Cinque Terre or the Algarve or the Isle of Skye. Or the best Greek Isle from Athens.
Sarah [00:56:20] I'm going to Isle of Skye for summer. I'm so excited.
Rick Steves [00:56:22] The Isle of Skye I can just never get enough of. And it has not enough infrastructure to handle its crowd, so we really need to be smart about it. And that's our challenge. And one thing that has come out of COVID, by the way, Beth and Sarah, is that they learned that they can control the crowd with these timed entries. And even if they're done with the pandemic, I think a lot of them are going to keep these timed entry policies. And I'm not inclined to nail myself down three weeks in advance to go to this or that gallery or palace or whatever at 2:00 instead of 9:00. But we got to do that now, and it's just smart. And then you build the rest of your itinerary around that. And when I'm updating one of my Rick Steves Guidebooks in Europe, I like to have like a sidebar on the first page of the chapter that kind of summarizes, okay, you're going to Amsterdam. You want to have freedom, you want to have everything nailed down, but you don't want to be frustrated by places that don't let you in because you didn't get a ticket in advance. So I'll tell you, if you're going to Amsterdam and you want to see Anne Franks, you've got to get reservation for that in advance. You want to see Van Gogh get a ticket for that in advance. You want to see the Rembrandt at the right museum. And then if you want to have a fancy dinner in a trendy restaurant, those book up weeks in advance in Amsterdam. There's the four things you need to do before you get to Amsterdam in advance. And the flip side of that coin is everything else you can wing it, but then you won't be upset. To me, there's two IQs of travelers, those who wait in lines and those who don't wait in lines. And if you're waiting in line, your time's precious. Your vacation's precious. You and your travel partners probably screwed up. You probably could have got around that line. And there's ways to do that. You just don't want to go to the Acropolis when the cruise ships are in town. There's 3000 tourists on a cruise ship in Athens. Every one of them wants to go to the Acropolis. Three cruise ships, 9000 tourists. And you try to get up under that rock. Why not go in the morning? It's open until 8:00 at night. Cruise ships are gone by four or 5:00. Why not go to the Acropolis at 6:00? It's just you and the warm tones of the setting sun. And then when I'm on the Acropolis, I look at my photograph of it. I always joke it comes with a soundtrack. I can hear the whistle of the guard saying, "Mr., we're closed. You got to get out. You know, you're the last one on the Acropolis." I'm the last person at the Acropolis. I can stand here. I can see half of all the Greek people from this little perch, 5 million people out of the 10 million people in Greece. And I've had a magic hour and I'm happy to go now.
Sarah [00:58:54] Well, listen, you've got my loyalty forever in 1999, and I remember you were like, turn this corner, open this second door. And I skipped all these crowds in the Sistine Chapel.
Rick Steves [00:59:05] The Sistine Chapel.
Sarah [00:59:05] And I was like will forever for the rest of my life. And we are loyal to you here at Pantsuit Politics. We thank you so much for coming on our show again.
Rick Steves [00:59:13] It's fun to talk to both of you. And let's talk again whenever travel issues intersect with what you like to talk about. Happy travels.
Sarah [00:59:20] Always. Thank you.
Beth [00:59:20] Thank you.
Sarah [00:59:23] Thank you to Rick and Craig for coming on the show. We can't wait to hear your thoughts on social and in our inboxes. Next up, we're going to talk about limitations we have all experienced in our lives when it comes to travel and how we dealt with those. Beth, I'm hearing that life is a highway, I'm going to ride all night long song in my head when we have conversations about travel. But the reality is that life is full of speed bumps. And so travel is not always this aspirational, wide open experience. We have to work within our own lives. And that can mean lots of things for big portions of both of our recent existences, it meant traveling with a tiny ton of children. Not always an enjoyable experience. It can mean traveling with limited budgets. It can mean traveling with physical limitations. So we thought we would just have a conversation about that.
Beth [01:00:23] Well, I can imagine that one of the biggest impediments to travel for the vast majority of people is just getting the time away from work.
Sarah [01:00:30] Mm hmm.
Beth [01:00:30] So many people, as we've talked about before, are on PTO plans where you have time available to you. But it feels like you need to hold on to that in case someone gets really sick or someone dies or you get really sick, or you just need to go to the dentist and the doctor and get your hair cut every once in a while. And so, not having those big blocks of time freely available is hard. And I know that when I was a practicing lawyer, I had lots of freedom over my own schedule, but I never felt like I could go anywhere and really be gone. I was free to go wherever I wanted to go as long as I could work while I was there and do whatever was on my calendar for work that week. And that really changes your experience of travel. I am the worst parent when I am multitasking, when I am trying to really be in the moment with my kids and also really be in the moment with anything work related. That is when I parent at my worst. So what I realize now that I have the freedom to actually be gone is that I am kind of at my best as a parent when we're on the road because I am not trying to multitask. And I am so grateful for the privilege of that. And I recognize that that's just not everyone's experience.
Sarah [01:01:51] Yeah, my husband's an attorney. He works on every one of our vacations. He takes a computer with him and there will be small moments here and there. And I just have to let that go because I feel like it soothes a little of his anxiety about how much he should be billing while he's gone or that he's not billing. And so, if he can work in some moments here and there and feel like he can be even more present once he puts it away, I'm like, whatever, do what you got to do. But I definitely agree about parenting. I love being a parent while traveling. It's like my peak parenting experience. And that was true even when my kids were really little. So when they were really little, our dear friends who we travel with a great deal had access to a house on a beach on [inaudible] South Carolina, and we would go with them. I love traveling with other people's children because then my children have playmates, which is just like its own type of vacation. I feel that way when I'm home too. And like when they were really little and people like, are you sure I can drop them off to play? I'm like, please, please, please drop them off to play. And so, on vacation I love traveling with another family for that reason. I feel that way even this summer. And I got big older kids and they're still more fun when there's other kids around for them to talk to and hang out with. And then we would bring my cousin and a friend and we would pay them a couple hundred dollars because I still got a trip to the beach and they would watch the people that napped in the morning. They'd stay with the nappers or like one of them would, and one of them would kind of help us with the kids at the beach. They'd watch everybody in the afternoon. Even the big kids who didn't nap would hang out in the room in the afternoon. And then they'd watch the kids like one or two nights while we went on an adults date night. And it was the best. It was always our best vacations. I felt relaxed. I didn't feel like I was just parenting toddlers in another location. I almost miss those vacations. That's how much I loved those beach vacations with some mommy helpers and another family.
Beth [01:03:40] I totally agree. I love going with other people. I just think it makes everything so much smoother. It also just kind of gives you permission to really be on vacation. It is easy for Chad and I in particular, because we are both workers. We will find something to keep us busy and that we feel like rewarded and accomplished about no matter what situation we're in. So we're so much better at just coming down when there are friends for our kids and friends for us to hang out with.
Sarah [01:04:11] Yeah, I love that experience. I think it is really, really fun. It just feels like there's a lot of pressure when you're by yourself, just as your nuclear family. [Inaudible]. I think that really helped me and littles. It also helps save money. I mean, when you're traveling with another family and you can share the expense and you can get some energy to get a bigger place, but it still sort of breaks down cost per bed a lot cheaper. We had to drive places. We did very little flying early in our marriage. We did a lot of vacations early in our marriage in particular with family members who were footing the bills. Like my dad drove us down the Pacific Coast Highway. My mom flew us to Hawaii for her 50th birthday, or we would just go visit family members that lived in locations we hadn't ever been to. And we would drive and we would stay at their house. I remember sleeping on the floor of my brother in law's house in Saint Petersburg, Florida, so we could go to the beach in our early twenties. And so, we did a lot of that. Listen, I still stay with other people in other people's houses for real. And I really want to try the home swap, which looks like an amazing way to save money. I just need to get my house on the actual website, but that looks like another cool option of how Kristen Howerton travels a ton with her four kids by just doing home swap with other people. But I think you know those limitations even when they were little, they built experiences that I wouldn't have had otherwise, that sometimes I even look back and think, man, I miss that.
Beth [01:05:40] I think that really brings into focus the difference between travel and vacation too, because there is an element of traveling, especially if we're staying with someone else that I find really stressful. And that's been true for me pretty much my entire adult life, especially because, as many of you know, I have fibromyalgia. I never know what my energy level is going to be like from day to day, even when I'm really thriving. There can still be situations where the smallest deviation in my routine sends me into a tailspin. I struggle with weird things like spiral staircases are very hard for me. Subways kind of take off my sense of balance. I can get carsick pretty easily, so I'm a little bit of a delicate flower in the world and I have a lot of anxiety before I hit the road every time about what are those speed bumps going to look like for me this time? How am I going to roll with it? I'm a larger body. There are plane seats that I just find extremely uncomfortable. I don't want to be touching the people around me. I don't want them to think like, oh, why am I sitting next to this person who takes up all this space? That's a terrible feeling to think about how much physical space you're occupying in the world, and travel comes with all of that. And so, when I think about summer and vacation, I don't think about travel a lot. I think about being here at my house where I am comfortable and I know I can roll with anything that's happened and where we've had the real privilege and luxury of being able to build things that we super enjoy, like having a pool and a garden and some extra space around. So that just feels so much more comforting to me because being out in the world comes with a lot of obstacles.
Sarah [01:07:24] Yeah, I think for me this summer, especially summer travel season, this is the smallest amount of anxiety I've ever had going into the summer since you and I've been working full time. I think it's because my kids are going to sleepaway camp for extended periods of time and then we're traveling even obviously with Felix's type one diabetes like it plays into it. I think my husband has a lot more anxiety about it than I do. He's a worst case scenario. I'm a best case scenario. That's really why I like travel, because my brain just goes, we will figure it out. We will find a way. That's just like my default mode. But it's such a personality thing. It really is. We were traveling for work and someone said, "Doesn't it just exhausting you?" I'm like, "No, it gives me energy." But that's a personality thing. Like so many things in life. Like what makes you flourish? What zaps you of energy? Once you figure that out, it really makes a difference in how you structure your everyday life, much less what you do with your days off. And I think travel is like a personality test. Like, do you like a beach, do you like a cruise? Do you like an adventure? Do you like to go somewhere you've never gone? Do you like to go back to the same place every time? Like it's just such a personality thing. And I think that's what's important to remember. Like, there's not a wrong answer. There's not a right answer. It's just whatever helps you feel unplugged from your daily stresses and plugged into your personal delights. If you can stay in touch with sort of both of those sides of the coin.
Beth [01:08:48] I think that it is a personality thing to an extent, but I also think it's a circumstances thing. Like my mom loves a roller coaster. She just can't do it anymore because of her rheumatoid arthritis. When you and I were in Paris, I thought, there are so many aspects of this that Mom would love. And I [crosstalk] means to get her there and to have it be a good trip for her at all. There are definitely places you can go where the experience is really colored by feeling limited in your resources. Look how much more fun this would be if I could afford to do X, Y, and Z. So I think there's a personality element, but I also think there are just some hard limitations that many of us run into in different circumstances. I do want to say, even with the nervousness that I experience around travel, I love to do it. I'm always happy that I've done it. I especially love it when we're out traveling for work and the people that we get to meet. Sometimes when I express anything other than sheer delight, people take it as like, well, maybe let's leave Beth alone while we're out on the road because this is a lot for her. No, I love it and I want to be in the moment and in the experience. And also, yeah, the run up is hard and sometimes the aftermath is hard and that's okay because it's worth it. But it does make me think with my family time about how we can have just the smoothest, easiest run out there because some of it's hard.
Sarah [01:10:18] Yeah, I agree. I don't know if I've ever gone on a trip in my life and I got home and I was like, "Man, I regret that. I wish I hadn't gone." And maybe that's just the psychological trick of, like, you've invested in it, you've taken your time and your energy and your money and you put it in it. So you're not going to be like, what a waste. But I never feel like that. Even trips that I look back and we had some stressful moment or something fell apart. Like my beloved friend Laura says, if it's not a good time, it's a good story. So we hope your summer is full of good times and good stories both. And we will be back in your ears next week. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
Beth [01:11:10] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [01:11:16] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [01:11:22] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Danny Ozment. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago.
Beth Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.