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- [00:00]
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- [00:59]
Alex Schwartz
Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.
- [01:03]
Nomi Frye
I'm Nomi Frye.
- [01:05]
Vincent Cunningham
And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. It's already a big, big year for summer travel. If you don't believe me, just go ahead, take a good look at your Instagram feed. Come back to the pod whenever you can. I have already seen the classic picture of, you know, someone's unsteady phone camera in between a suspiciously narrow alley in what looks like Italy.
- [01:39]
Nomi Frye
You know what I mean, guys, I've been seeing Greece. I've been seeing France. I've been. I've been, you know, it's starting.
- [01:45]
Vincent Cunningham
It's natural and it's reasonable. You can't deny, right? Like, the thrill of packing a big bag, usually for me, just hours before I get on the plane.
- [01:56]
Nomi Frye
Classic Vincent.
- [01:57]
Vincent Cunningham
That's absolutely right. Setting an itinerary and then jetting away from all the responsibilities and anxieties, the quotidian details of everyday life. But I will also say it's kind of a confusing time to take on that designation tourist, right? Like, I'm sort of like, counting my carbon footprint more than ever. Like, every time I'm on a plane, I feel differently about it. Every time I step into a square that is populated by other honking Americans, I just honk, honk. I feel weirder about it than I used to.
- [02:33]
Alex Schwartz
You should feel weird. You should feel absolutely weird. I would even say you should feel bad. And I'm not just talking about you, I'm talking about me. You know, carbon footprint, yes. The cultural impact of what it means to flood other people's homes. I've seen photos of throngs, throngs, I tell you, of people packed like sardines on various beaches. Needless to say, we have, as we've already mentioned, social media, but absolutely driving people to certain destinations and, and driving people to distraction.
- [03:00]
Nomi Frye
Yeah, you know, the pressure one feels to conform to whatever, like, dreamy vacation you, you know, sense is expected of you in this day and age. You're supposed to hit certain spots, you know, you're supposed to take certain pictures. I'm not saying I like necessarily bend to this, you know, requirement, but there is, I feel like there is kind of a thing. You see people doing one thing and you feel like, oh, should I be doing that as well? What's wrong with me if I'm not?
- [03:30]
Vincent Cunningham
So as the summer travel season picks up, we're talking about why we travel, what has enticed our species really for as long as it's been possible on a mass scale to pack a bag and set off. We're looking at how that impulse shows up in the long and very rich history of travel narratives, from Marco Polo to the Grand Tour to the White Lotus. And we're talking about what it means to be a tourist right now when the idea of exploration is as appealing as it's ever been. But discovering someplace genuinely new that hasn't been geotagged, raided, reviewed, or straight up ruined by those other pesky tourists can feel all but impossible. That's today on Critics at Large. Is travel broken? As we mentioned, this question of travel has been fraught for the past couple years. What are you noticing about how people approach travel these days? How do you, and how do you feel about it?
- [04:37]
Nomi Frye
It seems to me that there, since the pandemic, there has been a greater hunger for travel. I feel like people are really traveling. Yeah, Like, I feel like it's almost like a kind of, I mean, I don't want to say mania, because that gives it, you know, a kind of like pathological valence. It just feels like people are really, really getting out there and it's almost like the sort of hunger or kind of like last minuteness of like, oh my God, we gotta get this in. Because who knows what other like, disaster is gonna, is gonna happen before, before we do.
- [05:17]
Alex Schwartz
It.
- [05:19]
Nomi Frye
Seems anecdotally to me to contribute to people being like, no, no, no, no. It's like you're not just going one place a summer. You're going like you're doing more than that. As far as I can See, yeah.
- [05:31]
Alex Schwartz
I don't know if in fact, I don't think that what I'm thinking of is really a post pandemic phenomenon. Although I agree with Nomi definitely. That enforced pause on travel by both the disease COVID 19 itself and also by regulations in various countries prohibiting travel or really restricting travel has now led to this big boom of the return of travel. But I would say, you know, even in looking at the time from my own childhood till now, just the fact that travel has become so much more accessible, that many, many more people take it for granted, me included, that flights are cheaper, that it's easier to book things online yourself, that I would say in the last 10 years, the rise and now not fall, but maybe plateau of airbnb has completely changed the way that people travel or expect to travel. All of these things, I think, have made travel seem much, much more accessible and therefore much more of a ne of every year. Not just like gearing up for a big trip that you do every few years, but really doing it. As we just said before, every summer becomes the season to run around.
- [06:34]
Nomi Frye
You know, when I was a child, I grew up in Israel, but spent a lot of time because of my father's job in the States. You know, it was kind of a trek, a big trek to get where we were going. Like, it was like getting to the airport, you know, every step of the way, packing like a week in advance. Travel was a huge deal. And now I just feel like it's become a much more casual thing.
- [06:59]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah, I remember sort of the way that I've narrated the past, let's say five or six years to myself has been right before. The pandemic to me was the height of trend travel. I remember there was a big Iceland moment among people just on social media, like talking about how cheap the airfare was, what resort to go to, where the sauna is. Once I traveled with some friends and my wife to Mexico City and everybody from New York was there. Oh, yeah, I kept on calling Mexico City New York's hottest club, you know? Cause it's like, oh, this is where we are in the cycle, the great cycle of, you know, where it's cool to travel.
- [07:42]
Nomi Frye
Can I quote a tweet of my own? Not to quote my own tweet, but I will quote my own tweet from February 2018. So pre pandemic. And the tweet is, I'm going to Mexico City in quotes tomorrow because I live in Brooklyn, work in media, and am aspirationally upper middle class.
- [08:03]
Vincent Cunningham
That's it.
- [08:05]
Nomi Frye
And there you have it.
- [08:06]
Vincent Cunningham
There you go. And so we've been heating back up to that moment, and we all read a book in preparation for today's episode. It's called the New Tourist. It's by a writer named Paige McClanahan. And among other things, it talks about this, right? How even from sort of an earlier era, kind of the late 70s through the 1980s, with the rise of certain newer guidebooks, that this kind of trend, travel, or travel as meme, or travel as something that is almost transmissible from one mind and heart to another is not just happenstance. And isn't just the Internet that this is the tail end of a long trend in global culture? What did you guys think about that book?
- [08:50]
Alex Schwartz
I will say I really enjoyed this book. I thought that this was a very fun and breezy way of looking at a lot of different aspects of modern travel. And one of the aspects of modern travel is exactly what you say, Vincent. This idea of feeling like an individual but actually being part of a big trend.
- [09:06]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right, yeah.
- [09:06]
Alex Schwartz
At the beginning of this book, Paige McClanahan talks about the creation of the Lonely Planet Guides. Now, I don't know if the Lonely Planet guides have been big for you, but they've been very big in my life.
- [09:17]
Vincent Cunningham
I had never heard of them before I read this book.
- [09:19]
Nomi Frye
I remember them. I never used one, but I definitely remember.
- [09:22]
Alex Schwartz
Okay, that's very interesting, because only in reading this book did I realize that I had fallen hook, line and sinker for the marketing of the Lonely Planet guides, which is like, this is gonna take you a bit off the beaten path in a way that will show you the genuine side of the culture.
- [09:37]
Nomi Frye
Yes, you're a bit authentic.
- [09:38]
Alex Schwartz
You're a bit authentic. The genuine side of the culture. You're visiting. And it's gonna provide great value. And in many of my early travel experiences, in my late teens and early to mid-20s, when I was starting to do these things on my own, I did feel that this guy delivered exactly that. It has introd to some of my favorite inexpensive eateries in cities like Naples. It's shown me, you know, where to stay when I've been in, let's say, New Delhi or in. Or where to get a houseboat in Kerala in India. And what I discovered from this book is that Lonely Planet guides came about in the post war years because a young British couple set off on an adventurous journey trying to make it to Australia by crossing overland. They were taking an overland route. I mean, through Kabul. Yeah, they were Going through the Middle east, they were going through Asia, wound up in India. And as they went, they started keeping track of what their experiences had been, where they had gotten good deals, where they were able to stay, where they had eaten, where to get hash, you know, whatever it might be. Once they did make it to Australia, they wrote up these notes and they self published them. And thus Lonely Planet was born. The point for me of the Lonely planet story that McClanahan tells is that there are people looking to be individuals. They want to take an unbeaten path, and in so doing, they beat the path and then they sell the path to other people who want to do the same thing, and it becomes a, well, trodden path. That's kind of the story of travel in general. That's certainly the story of these guidebooks. You know, the post war period sees this big boom in guidebooks like this. There are also the rough guides that she mentions. There's Fodors, there's Fromers, there are all kinds of guidebooks showing people what to do and what to see. People start following the same things, looking for the same advice. Meanwhile, the local culture becomes rather dependent on tourism and travel. You know, lots of local inns or restaurants or whatever it might be want to position and pitch themselves to be included in the next guide to get the business. So all of these things lead to this vision of a culture that is actually kind of the same for the people visiting it. And sometimes that can be not such a bad thing. As I say, I've benefited a lot from books like this, but it did make me think a lot about what it means to feel like, you know, you're trotting this unfamiliar path that actually has been handed to you and given to you in a guide.
- [11:50]
Nomi Frye
Did you find McClanahan's definition or proposal of the new tourists to be convincing or kind of distinct enough? I have to admit I was a little bit, because the book's title is the New Tourist, the New Tourist, and in the book she proposes, let us try. You know, this is a project in the making, right? We need to try to be this new type of tourist rather than the old type of tourist. And from what I understood from reading the book, the new tourist is someone who is sensitive to the problematic nature.
- [12:28]
Vincent Cunningham
Of tourism or anxious about, is aware of all the problems from social media to the sort of influencer impulse. She talks about, for example, tons of tourists following in the steps of Justin Bieber at a certain location and destroying a local ecology. Someone who is aware of and anxious about all the pernicious aspects of traveling.
- [12:51]
Nomi Frye
Yeah, yeah. Which I thought was smart and necessary, but. But I also, you know, it reminded me a little bit of, like, you know, when you go to your therapist and you say, okay, but what should I do about this problem? And your therapist says, well, the first step is to be aware of the problem. And while that is true, my question is kind of always like, okay, but what does this mean on the ground? You know, which is, in general, I think, a question that I ask myself about travel nowadays and tourism nowadays.
- [13:27]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah, right, right. I think this is a really good question. I mean, I am into the attempt to create this category of the new tourist, which is what McClanahan is doing, because she does it for a very specific reason. She makes a point which I think is very well taken, that people have a tendency to consider themselves travelers and everyone else tourists.
- [13:45]
Vincent Cunningham
That's the distinction she sets up only to knock down.
- [13:47]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah, but. Well, because, you know, it's kind of either we're all one thing or we're all the other. But you can't say, oh, well, only I know the authentic way to experience another culture, and only I am so conscientious. She's saying, and I think this is right, that, you know, Vincent, you mentioned earlier a bunch of Americans squawking in the square. Who among us has not been inclined to see things that way while realizing only later, oh, my goodness, I was one of the throng. You know, the squawk, the squawk, same walk, the squawker, same law. Precisely. So I honk, you honk. Yeah. So I think what McClanahan is doing, in part, is to say, you know, rather than thinking that we're so great and looking down on everyone else, what if we said, yes, we are tourists, and the way that we want to travel and to tour is to try to learn something new about the world, about ourselves. I mean, these are not. The funny thing to me is that these are not new ideas. These are actually very old ideas.
- [14:39]
Nomi Frye
Totally.
- [14:39]
Alex Schwartz
But it's a kind of reframing, you know, she says, because of her travels, the new tourist is inoculated against anyone who might try to convince her to hate or look down on people who look different from her, who speak a language other than her own, who pray to a different God, who or who happen to live on the other side of a border. So that's a political statement, and that is actually very similar to a kind of moral idea of travel that has been going on for many hundreds of years. That travel can expose you to the other, can make you understand that we are all part of a shared world, can make you question your own customs and prejudices, and can leave you enlargened.
- [15:22]
Vincent Cunningham
In a minute. Who was the old traveler and who is the new tourist? Critics at large will be right back.
- [15:42]
Deborah Treisman
Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson.
- [15:54]
Vincent Cunningham
Whitehead Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it. No matter what happened after.
- [16:07]
Alex Schwartz
Or Joy Williams, her father, was silent.
- [16:11]
Nomi Frye
Slowly he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence.
- [16:19]
Alex Schwartz
A place that indeed contradicted her presence.
- [16:22]
Nomi Frye
She might as well go to lunch.
- [16:26]
Deborah Treisman
Listen to news stories or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the Writer's Voice wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:44]
Jason Adam Katzenstein
Hi, I'm cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein and as a 34 year old new York based freelance artist, lately I've been finding myself at a lot of my friends Off Broadway shows. There's a delicate art to dressing for these events because I need to feel all right sitting in the dark for two hours in the most uncomfortable chair of my life. And then there are these receptions afterward and everybody's looking amazing. And it's summer so I need clothes that really breathe. Quince's summer wardrobe selection has me feeling confident and comfortable at these events. Quince has breathable flowknit polos, crisp cotton shirts and comfortable lightweight pants that somehow work for both weekend hangs and your friends Off Broadway shows. And everything with Quince is half the cost of similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markup. I got the 100% European linen short jacket in olive and I am getting so many compliments. I went to one of these off Broadway shows and an actor asked me if I was an actor. Give your summer closet an upgrade with quints. Go to quince.com nycritics for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's quincycritics to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com nycritics.
- [18:11]
Vincent Cunningham
What we've been talking about just makes me think about how much new ideas about travel End up really being about new ideas about ourselves, like identity. You know, the one that we don't want to think about is the colonial identity. I am here to plant a flag and whatever, add glory to X empire and discover various people, down to the sort of perhaps self enrichment. Eat, Pray, love. I am here. I am traveling to learn something new about myself, to project something about myself onto a new landscape. And this thing that we're trying to define now, the new tourist who sort of perhaps is building a larger and more global identity as a way of understanding things outside of themselves. But this always happens, I think, through literature. Usually literature is a place that we build identities where we sort of add to our understanding of the I. Do you guys have favorite travel narratives that have done this? Do any of those come to mind?
- [19:19]
Alex Schwartz
I have almost too many.
- [19:21]
Nomi Frye
You start. You start and then I'll go, okay.
- [19:25]
Alex Schwartz
Are you sure, Nomi?
- [19:26]
Nomi Frye
Yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course.
- [19:28]
Vincent Cunningham
That's our podcast, isn't it? You start and then I'll go, yeah. That's kind of the rhythm.
- [19:32]
Nomi Frye
Yeah.
- [19:32]
Alex Schwartz
I mean, I just have so many. Because, Vincent, you just put that so beautifully. It's about, of course, literature is about the construction of the eye, but it's also about, if I may, the eye. What has the eye seen on its travels and what can it bring back to you readers sitting by your own hearth.
- [19:48]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right.
- [19:49]
Alex Schwartz
Don't you want to see what I've seen?
- [19:50]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right.
- [19:50]
Alex Schwartz
That's right. So, like, you know, we could begin with Marco Polo. Name still shouted in swimming pools across the English speaking world and perhaps beyond it. I mean, this is a venetian from the 13th century whose memoirs still influenced the way that we see travel. You know, one thing I love about Marco Polo and his book the Travels of Marco Polo is that he did not write it. This other guy wrote it, this romance writer, Rustichello da Pisa.
- [20:21]
Vincent Cunningham
Rustichello.
- [20:22]
Nomi Frye
Rustichello, not Rustichello.
- [20:24]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. Rustichello himself wrote down Marco Polo's travels. He was. He and his family were, you know, they went on the great silk road. They went from Venice to Asia. They hung out at the court of the Kublai Khan. It was all very exciting and all very new and impressive. And then at some point, Marco Polo was in jail with Rustichello di Pisa, who wrote up his travels. And we are still reading them today. I mean, personally, for me, the era of great travel writing, and I'm talking about the West. I mean, yes, I have dabbled in Basho and his beautiful stories of Traveling around Edo era Japan.
- [20:59]
Vincent Cunningham
Yes, Beautiful.
- [21:00]
Alex Schwartz
Absolutely gorgeous.
- [21:01]
Vincent Cunningham
Listening to a frog plop into a pond.
- [21:03]
Alex Schwartz
Exactly. Mixed in with haiku. I mean, can't recommend it highly enough. It's exquisite. But my own tastes run a bit more to arrogant Europeans who, like, have to reckon with not knowing everything and also being kind of disappointed by what they've seen. I just wanna talk briefly, if I may, about Francis Bacon. Sir, please. Who wrote a very early essay called of travel. Early essay in the genre, telling people what they should do. And so here's what Francis Bacon says that you should do when you go somewhere. First, the traveler. He. Cause it was a he at that point, generally must have some entrance into the language before he goeth. Then he must have such a servant or tutor as knoweth the country. Okay, so you want to go with a guide. Let him carry with him also some card or book describing the country where he traveleth. Let him keep also a diary. Let him not stay long in one city or town. So he's basically saying, move around, get to know the local place. Go with someone who knows, speak the language. You know, get. Get some recommendations before you go. So you can actually get the genuine experience. And I think it's that thing, the genuine experience. The travelers.
- [22:10]
Vincent Cunningham
The real.
- [22:11]
Alex Schwartz
Yes, the travelers are after, I think.
- [22:13]
Nomi Frye
For me, the kind of the 19th century, either American abroad in the continent or a Britain abroad in the continent. For me, that's like, oof. I just have always loved it, you know, and it can be. There are like actual travelogues. So there's like Mark Twain's the Innocents abroad from total stone Cold Classic, 1869, where, you know, it's a group of dummy Americans going to Europe, but also to the Holy Land on a ship going to Spain and then to Morocco. So it's a classic, problematic, quote, unquote example of travel writing. But of course, it was a different time.
- [23:03]
Alex Schwartz
Well, can I share one thing from the Innocents Abroad?
- [23:07]
Nomi Frye
Yeah.
- [23:07]
Alex Schwartz
So the Innocents Abroad was published in 1869. And one thing that I dearly love about it is that it's a satiric account. And what it's satirizing, more often than not are the travelers themselves.
- [23:17]
Nomi Frye
Totally.
- [23:17]
Alex Schwartz
I think that's why it stands up as a classic, because the experience of travel is often excruciating. A ship gets quarantined and you're stuck. People are swarming you and trying to sell you stuff. Like here, for instance, right outside Naples. Twain is stuck in this town and he's describing what happens. He says they seize a lady's shawl from a chair and hand it to her and charge a penny. They open a carriage door and charge for it, shut it when you get out and charge for it. They help you to take off a duster. 2 cents. Brush your clothes and make them worse than they were before. 2 cents. Smile upon you. 2 cents. Bow with a lick, spittle, smirk, hat in hand. 2 cents. So he's describing, yes, the obnoxious locals. A classic troll.
- [24:00]
Nomi Frye
It's a meeting. Nobody comes out unscathed, you know, because it's Twain, so obviously. Yeah. And I was gonna read something about Tangier and please do, you know, it's the sort like it's basically he's describing the desire of the American travelers to get to a place that is completely different from what they know, you know, which is kind of like an age old kind of yearning of the traveler. Right. And maybe especially the western traveler. Coming to foreign parts, we wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign. Foreign from top to bottom, foreign from center to circumference. Foreign inside and outside and all around. Nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness. Nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo, in Panjeer we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen, save in pictures. And we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot anymore. Yeah, I think it really pinpoints that yearning for otherness which, you know, overtly animated travel in the past and now perhaps still animates travel, but with the grain of salt of kind of foreknowledge. Right.
- [25:18]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah. I think that this has a lot to do with this issue of identity, especially when it comes to America, where it takes on this sort of especially strong and like yearning characteristic. Twain's contemporary, Ralph Waldo Emerson was famously like in his essay self reliance is famously anti travel. His basic argument is you Americans are so obsessed with the past, so obsessed with imitation of Europe and before Europe, Rome and Greece, these forebears, that you are stunted and will not develop a natural and healthy national character. He says it is for want of self culture that the superstition of traveling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. Right. So this unhealthy. And we still see it today, you know, I said squawking Americans or like, you know, the idea is like we are the ones who don't know more than one language, whereas Europeans are more sort of cosmopolitan. You know, we still have these ideas about to travel Especially for Americans, is improving because we come from such a sort of stunted and parochial culture. It's so much about the building of an identity.
- [26:37]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. Vincent, I think your point about this sense of Americans being this shapeless mass without culture, without history, trying to find themselves in Europe is so interesting because sometimes travel, you know, travel is this individual phenomenon that very quickly becomes a collective phenomenon. And you're describing the American. The classic American version of it perfectly. The classic English version of it is the Grand Tour, this pilgrimage that English gentlemen undertook to the continent, specifically to Italy, and, you know, to see the great. The great sights of Rome and also of the hated papists. So this took place, you know, this. This great grand tour took place basically between the 17th century and the mid 19th century, when rail travel starts to make it a lot easier. But I think the thing worth noting in this context is that the Grand Tour is a collective experience because it defines something about who you are socially in England. You know, to have a certain kind of education, to see the ways of others, often to kind of scoff at the ways of others. A huge experience of the Grand Tour is going and seeing ruins. Look, we are in the midst of the greatest civilization ever known to man, the British Empire. And look at what became of Rome. Let us draw lessons from this. I spent one summer in college cataloging an enormous number of sketches that young Englishman made on the Grand Tour at the Yale center for British Art. And all of them basically feature sheep and like a ruin. It's like, look at what became of great Rome. Now it's a pastoral scene, and we're here to learn from that. And also, maybe we'll pick up some. If we want to be artists, we'll pick up some tips about how Michelangelo did things. Although one of my favorite grand tourist writers, the irascible Tobias Smollett, ended up just absolutely shitting on the Pieta when he saw it at the Vatican. He was like, why is this naked, emaciated man lying on a woman's body? So it's just like, oh, the horror of the papacy. Yeah. So there was a lot of that. A lot of our culture is great. Your culture is not so great, but we need to observe it and understand it in order to glorify ourselves.
- [28:38]
Vincent Cunningham
But, of course, this thing of personal experience amid a new backdrop, and this is part of the travel thing, too, that some of us, let's say Anglo Americans or whatever, go to Italy or whatever to do things we wouldn't do at home. It's like what happens in Italy stays in Italy or whatever. And there may be two sides of that. There's the go travel to enrich oneself. The modern sort of ideal of this is Anthony Bourdain.
- [29:11]
Nomi Frye
We just marked six years since he died.
- [29:15]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right. And the other side of that is something like the White Lotus. Yes, Mike White's series, where every year they're in a new locale and it begins with someone has died and it goes back to see how this happened. And it usually has to do with some loosh, decadent scenario of people gone wild on vacation. Both of those, I think, are very predominant in our imaginations today, wouldn't you say?
- [29:41]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah, I think that's really true. I mean, I think a lot of people would agree with this, which is that parts unknown. The Anthony Bourdain series stands the test of time in a lot of ways because it's fundamentally a text about curiosity.
- [29:53]
Vincent Cunningham
Grilled goat with cobra. A traditional goat stew on the side. Now we're talking. They roast it and they put some sauce on it. That's delicious. As you can see, people don't eat meat. Meat is Quite expensive, almost $2, which is a lot. That's more than most people make in a day or even two days. What are the first things you buy if you're very, very, very poor? Very poor.
- [30:18]
Alex Schwartz
What Bourdain wants to know is how people do things elsewhere. And that is itself a kind of ethics of travel that is not necessarily widely shared, but is huge to the experience for a lot of people. How do you do things somewhere else? Let me learn from it. Let me try to get an accurate view of it. I think there is a lot of beauty in that idea and nobility even in that idea. And I do think Bourdain did it with a lot of integrity, and that's why the show stands the test of time. I mean, I very much enjoy the White Lotus as a satire of people who go about travel in a totally different way, which is how can I best get a sense that I'm engaging with another culture, but completely not do that in any way? It's about entitled super rich people who are used to the same backdrops throughout their lives, whether they're home or abroad.
- [31:04]
Unnamed Guest
Frankly, I'd love to hear that.
- [31:06]
Vincent Cunningham
Listen, I want to do something special for my wife's. The kind of romantic. It's our honeymoon. I'm thinking a candlelit dinner, totally off.
- [31:15]
Alex Schwartz
On her own somewhere cool.
- [31:16]
Vincent Cunningham
It's like a beach or a. For just like. Like an Instagram spot, you know?
- [31:21]
Unnamed Guest
Yes. Yes. How wonderful.
- [31:23]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah.
- [31:25]
Unnamed Guest
And of course, we do private dinners for couples all the time. But since you're such valued guests and with the whole mix up regarding your room, I would love to come up with something really unique.
- [31:39]
Vincent Cunningham
Okay, great. Yeah, that's. That's what I'm thinking too.
- [31:42]
Unnamed Guest
What about a candlelit dinner on our charter boat at sunset?
- [31:48]
Vincent Cunningham
That sounds perfect.
- [31:49]
Unnamed Guest
You can watch the sunset from a private cove. Schools of dolphins leaping and circling the boat as you cruise the coastline.
- [31:56]
Alex Schwartz
I mean, another show. I'm curious if you guys have seen or. And what you thought of it. Conan o' Brien Must go. Have you guys watched that one?
- [32:04]
Nomi Frye
I haven't yet.
- [32:05]
Alex Schwartz
Okay, so I will just tell you, I've seen now three out of the four episodes of it. I really don't like it. Okay, okay.
- [32:11]
Vincent Cunningham
Is he being a zany Bourdain?
- [32:13]
Alex Schwartz
So he's being kind of the anti Bourdain.
- [32:15]
Nomi Frye
Where is he going?
- [32:16]
Alex Schwartz
He's going. In the episodes I've seen, he goes to Norway, he goes to Thailand, and he goes to Argentina. I think there's one more where he goes to Ireland. And the whole idea here is, let me. You know, just like we were talking about Paige McClanahan's idea of the new tourist versus the stereotypical old tourist who makes it all about themselves and doesn't care what's happening around them and is chewing gum and being loud and obnoxious. Basically, Conan sets out to be the old tourist. That's kind of the joke of the show. And as he. To learn absolutely nothing about the place where he's going. To me, like, I get the joke.
- [32:48]
Vincent Cunningham
Is there one, like, scenario like this that like, sort of emblematizes this approach?
- [32:53]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah, I would say so. The most recent episode I just watched is about Thailand and he shows up and goes on a Thai show, like a singing competition show. And so the funny part of it is he doesn't speak Thai, he's super jet lagged, and he has to learn how to sing in Thai using subtitles to perform on the show.
- [33:12]
Vincent Cunningham
And did you know that you come to this program you have to sing a song.
- [33:18]
Alex Schwartz
Jet lagged and I don't know the language.
- [33:21]
Vincent Cunningham
Let's give it a shot, gentlemen.
- [33:39]
Alex Schwartz
It's making this huge show of, oh, the. This place is like weird and zany and different, but I'm gonna, you know, still show up and be the star. And like, some of you may know me and some of you won't. It's about. It's satirizing the idea of being a celebrity. But the point to me is I don't find it funny enough to justify.
- [33:53]
Nomi Frye
This kind of going to Thailand.
- [33:55]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. And this kind of idea of let's sort of lightly mock other cultures while knowing nothing about them. Like, Vincent, you mentioned the idea of the colonizer before about travel.
- [34:04]
Vincent Cunningham
Sure.
- [34:05]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. I think that that kind of prototype remains with all of us. Are you going to go and bring your own ways in and kind of stomp on the ways you find?
- [34:15]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right.
- [34:15]
Alex Schwartz
Or are you going to go and be open to the new ways.
- [34:21]
Vincent Cunningham
In a minute? How far will we go to truly get away? Critics at Large from the New Yorker will be right back.
- [34:41]
Shilpa Oskokovic
I am Shilpa Oskokovic.
- [34:43]
Alex Schwartz
And I'm Jessie Shefczak.
- [34:44]
Shilpa Oskokovic
And we're the hosts of the Ba Bake Club podcast.
- [34:47]
Alex Schwartz
It's Bon Appetit's book club, but it's for baking.
- [34:50]
Shilpa Oskokovic
We would like to invite you to a live show on July 23rd at the Bell House in Brooklyn. We'll be joining the end amazing teams at Taste and Hark for Stay Cool, a summer food podcast evening.
- [35:04]
Alex Schwartz
Shilpa and I will be talking about how to keep your composure when things go wrong when you're baking.
- [35:11]
Shilpa Oskokovic
We have a lot of experience.
- [35:12]
Alex Schwartz
Things go wrong often.
- [35:13]
Nomi Frye
Yes, yes.
- [35:14]
Shilpa Oskokovic
But all for all in the name of research.
- [35:16]
Alex Schwartz
Yes.
- [35:17]
Shilpa Oskokovic
I love a baking mistake. I think you learn so much. And it won't be just us that night. Padma Lakshmi, Haley Catalano, and CH Chuck Crows will also be there.
- [35:27]
Alex Schwartz
It's gonna be really fun. Tickets for the event are on sale now. You can go to thebellhouseny.com staycool that is thebellhouseny.com StayCool we can't wait to.
- [35:40]
Shilpa Oskokovic
See you at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn on Wednesday, July 23.
- [35:54]
Vincent Cunningham
So we've spoken about Paige McClanahan's book, the New Tourist, but in another piece that she wrote for the New York Times, she says this. It's really interesting. For thousands of years, she says, humans have raced to be the first to scale a peak, cross a frontier, or document a new species or landscape. Now, in some cases, we're racing to be the last. End quote. And here she's basically getting at this idea that many of the places that we travel to are disappearing. When she says to be the last somewhere, I think she's specifically speaking about a certain kind of climate thing.
- [36:33]
Nomi Frye
Like a climate thing. Yes.
- [36:35]
Vincent Cunningham
There will be places which, due to the warming of the planet, will be uninhabitable or unvisitable.
- [36:41]
Nomi Frye
Unvisitable.
- [36:42]
Vincent Cunningham
Yeah, soon. Whatever horizon soon means to you, and therefore, you must get there before whatever the fjord overflows or melts or whatever, you know.
- [36:53]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. I find this deeply distressing that that would be a main motivator for travel. I understand it. But it is so individualistic and such an individualistic solution in deep, square quotes to a collective problem that I find it very distressing. I mean, I think McClanahan in this case is talking specifically about the Mer de Glace, which is the largest glacier in the French Alps, and it's rapidly melting. So what do you do? Do you keep away or do you try to rush there as soon as possible? I mean, in one sense, this is a political problem that we're thinking of as an individual problem. Maybe it shouldn't be up to us to make the choice. Maybe governments need to step in and say, we need to limit access to this place. And this has happened in a number of cases. I mean, another one, I'm thinking of Vincent. Earlier, you mentioned a landscape that was absolutely trodden after Justin Bieber used it in one of his music videos. And that was in Iceland, is rolling.
- [37:48]
Vincent Cunningham
Around in the mosque.
- [37:49]
Alex Schwartz
Yes. And, like, this is very fragile, delicate moss in Iceland that, as was later determined, will take like a hundred years to regrow and needs absolutely no one to step on it.
- [37:59]
Nomi Frye
So I hope the moss would have.
- [38:00]
Vincent Cunningham
Been a Belieber if it wasn't before. It was after. He fucking trampled on it now.
- [38:07]
Alex Schwartz
Well, so basically, you know, 20 years ago, if you had gone to that spot, you would have had it to yourself. You would have been able to walk peacefully, alone and think your thoughts. And now if you go there, you're going to find a parking lot, maybe some porta potties, and a very narrowly roped off path that, if you walk on it for five minutes, will lead to a stunning landscape, but you absolutely cannot stray. And that's kind of how it's gonna be. There are other places like this, like the beach in Thailand that was filmed in the beach, the Leonardo DiCaprio movie that had to be closed off. I think it reopened in 2022. You know, if you're gonna be the last to see something, I don't think that's necessarily such a badge of glory. There's other kind of, like, novelty stunt travel that's also worth thinking about. You know, there's a piece I love that we published in the New Yorker magazine by ed Caesar in 2021 about this luxury travel company called Black Tomato.
- [38:58]
Vincent Cunningham
We are the inside track.
- [39:01]
Alex Schwartz
The local Knowledge, uncharted territory. We are for.
- [39:07]
Vincent Cunningham
Let's go this way for writing a new story.
- [39:12]
Alex Schwartz
What Black Tomato does is basically say, give us your phone, give us thousands of your dollars, and we're going to drop you into a locale whose name you do not and indeed will not know. We are going pure wilderness. And you're going to have to earn your way back to civilization. You're gonna have to try to navigate back.
- [39:33]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right.
- [39:33]
Alex Schwartz
Find out how you can go. You know, it's providing this kind of adventure, terrifying experience, the total opposite of the super hyper luxury of something like the White Lotus.
- [39:43]
Vincent Cunningham
It's like beyond Survivor and pay us for it.
- [39:45]
Nomi Frye
Sure.
- [39:46]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. And I think it's about like hearkening back to this idea of the traveler, which frankly never existed as the sole lone wanderer in a totally foreign place. Travel has been going on for a really long time. And as long as it's been going on, people have been writing about and documenting their experience. So I think the idea of being the first is in many cases a bit of an illusion, as maybe is the idea of being the last.
- [40:08]
Nomi Frye
And it's also, you know, can end in disaster, as we saw recently with the submersible Titanic. Oh yeah, Talk about that Nomi disaster where it was a group of extremely rich men went on a submersible to arrive at the site of the Titanic's sinking. This was in June 2023. And they never returned. Sorry.
- [40:38]
Vincent Cunningham
One of the more terrifying stories I ever heard.
- [40:40]
Nomi Frye
Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's like maybe the worst thing to think about. But of course, because there seemed to be something so hubristic about this extremely expensive endeavor of going like all of these like multimillionaires in a tiny tin box.
- [41:01]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. Paying $250,000 a person for what was supposed to be a few hours of a trip.
- [41:06]
Vincent Cunningham
That's right.
- [41:06]
Nomi Frye
Yeah. And going down deep, kind of like against the wishes of mother Nature, so to speak. You know, tempting fate, I think created lot of kind of schadenfreude in a lot of us, I think, I mean, it was kind of became a bit of a meme, as rough as it is to say.
- [41:29]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah, I think, you know, I don't think this experience reflected well on anyone. Basically.
- [41:34]
Vincent Cunningham
It didn't.
- [41:35]
Alex Schwartz
We should say that one of the reasons that it led to such schadenfreude was the expense and the effort that went into the, you know, attempted rescue of these very super rich people. When of course, the ocean, as we know, has been swallowing up migrants by the thousands.
- [41:53]
Nomi Frye
Yeah.
- [41:53]
Alex Schwartz
With very few rescue attempts made. So I think one question that surrounds us, and it surrounds us in every era of travel is who gets to travel? You know, more people than ever now, certainly. But it is absolutely ironic to be contemplating travel by choice when we are at a moment of, I'm sorry if I sound like incredibly righteous or self righteous or whatever saying this, but it's just true. When we're at a moment of looking at unprecedented human migration that is made by necessity, that is often extremely, excruciatingly dangerous, that to me, if I were to put my finger on what kind of disgusts me about people who would pay so much to do something like black tomato and be dropped into the wilds of who knows where in order to have the exciting experience of getting out. Please just look at what the migrant journeys that people who are trying to move between Africa and Europe or people who are trying to move between Central America and the United States are undergoing. The contrast between doing this as a kind of leisure and the contrast between doing this as necessity is really striking.
- [42:53]
Nomi Frye
No, you're absolutely correct. And I think also, even if we think about. Not about chosen, harrowing journeys, even if we think about luxury travel, again, I'm not exactly sure whether I'm any different than McClanahan in saying, like, we should be aware of this. You know what I mean? We should examine this at least in our heads. It doesn't mean that we are not gonna travel, it doesn't mean that we're not gonna take vacations, but we should be aware of power imbalances. We should be aware of the cost on climate.
- [43:32]
Vincent Cunningham
But I wonder if some of the problems with travel, not least the environmental question, what should we do? Obviously, as everything in our world, it's one of those things that calls out for big answers, but usually it's left to us as individuals to figure out on our own, which is the trouble. We could travel less on our own, but how much is that gonna change? But what should we do? As people, all of us here, I think we would all classify ourselves as people who like to travel. It's a part of our lives. As people. What should we do?
- [44:13]
Alex Schwartz
It's such a hugely thorny question because even like, right, part of me wants to just punt it to the policy level, haha, when that often does not work out well, and say we need more regulations around travel to preserve the environment, to preserve some of these very delicate at ecosystems, local sites, whatever. Of course, that's in conflict with economic needs. Many places rely on travel for their economies. One trend we're seeing with travel is not from the traveler side, it's from actually government side of charging fees. Venice is doing this. The Galapagos Islands have just raised the amount of money that you need to pay to access them as a way to both restrict the number of people who come to visit, but also to pay back into, you know, protecting the local ecosystem, you know, as individuals. It's also tricky because if you say like, well, we should all travel less, then you think, well, one of the reasons we're all traveling more is because travel has been democratized. So we can't just go back to an era when only the very few can access this. And it's just for them and the rest of us, you know, stay home around the hearth or whatever. I do think realistically traveling less is not a bad idea. And maybe, you know, I think actually one thing that was examined during the pandemic is by necessity was what kinds of travel are necessary. Do you need to take the business trip for the two hour meeting and return, like traveling all over for very short periods of time? Because that's been the custom, because it's been easy to do. The other answer, I think is that it may need to become more expensive so that you have to think more about the. And again, I don't see that happening particularly. But you know, quality over quantity, that's kind of the answer, I think.
- [45:52]
Nomi Frye
I think it's also good to stay home sometimes. Yeah, I like being home.
- [45:57]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah.
- [45:59]
Nomi Frye
Hey, man, that's my environmental take.
- [46:04]
Vincent Cunningham
It's really interesting. You know, I've been trying to think this whole time about what it actually means to me, travel, and at least for me. I don't know about you guys, but I always cry on vacation, like every time, because for me, while on vacation or on vacation, while on vacation, and it is usually because I'm thinking about, I'm seeing something that I may not see again. And maybe this connects with this idea of the death of the planet. For me, I think travel is kind of also about mortality Generally. It's like, you only get so many summers, you can only take so many trips. This is why I think the reigning metaphor for me of tourism, even though we've talked about literature, is really the photograph, the sort of acquisitive. I saw that, you know, like. And now I can add it to my. Yeah, I can add it. This very like almost financial metaphor of. I can therefore add it to my bank of experiences. And really the only other thing that I can Think of, like, that is literature. This thing that's supposed to, like, sort of double your life, you know, make your life more than what it can really plausibly actually be. Given all the limits of our lives, here's a way to make it seem denser, thicker than it was.
- [47:17]
Nomi Frye
No, you're right. I think there's something sad about it. I mean, I can identify with what you're saying. I don't know necessarily that I cry every time I travel. But there is an idea of, like, will I ever see this again?
- [47:30]
Alex Schwartz
Well, I'll tell you guys something which is one thing that's really important for me as a traveler is the experience of being foreign. I really need to be foreign every so often. And to feel foreign, that is something that's very important in my life. To feel estranged and to feel new and the challenge of those things. And I don't think you have to go into the middle of nowhere to feel that way. You know, I think another thing, especially at this point in my life, is I'm making peace with not seeing everything, period, and knowing that I'm not gonna see everything. Like you talk about not returning to a place. I'm starting to realize, well, there are places I may never go. And this has actually made other people's accounts of them in the deeper sense more important. Like maybe seeing it through someone else's eyes.
- [48:20]
Vincent Cunningham
You'll settle for the vicarious in some cases.
- [48:22]
Alex Schwartz
Yeah. And I think that could be a good way to do it because I have become conscious of what it means, the cost to the planet, let alone myself, of travel.
- [48:30]
Vincent Cunningham
What you said about a new self or a new version of yourself is so true. And that's part of it, too. It's like, first of all, you get the fantasy of total freedom. What would happen if I just didn't get on that plane tomorrow? And I just lived the rest like this, sort of branching off, fantasy, sliding doors. Yeah. But then I think that's also, for me, connected to. I was thinking before we got on about, like, what is truly the first travel narrative I can remember. And, you know, and I think this is deeply, like, goes to my view of it. It's the book of Genesis. It's God telling Abraham, go, no, you're happy in the land of Ur, which is supposedly in current day Iraq. No, go, there's a land where I'm going to bless you and your descendants will be. You're only gonna know yourself until you, like, once you land in Canaan, Right. This promised place. I'm not even gonna tell you how to get there. Just go. Keep following me.
- [49:28]
Alex Schwartz
You know, Vincent is still fucked up by this to this day. Oh my God, Nomi. And I know it well, but I.
- [49:35]
Vincent Cunningham
Mean this deeply res no, that the real version of you might not be where you started, you know, like go where I send thee, you know, and the real you might show up. This has been Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Kanji Nast's head of Global audio is Chris Bannett. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Jake Loomis with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at large@newyorker.com critics critics and you can email us@themalewyorker.com with the subject line Critics. See you next Thursday.
- [50:53]
Claire Fallon
Foreign I'm Claire Fallon. And I'm Emma Gray. We are friends and reality dating show fans, and the only thing we love as much as love stories is lovingly snarking on them. Whether you love love or love to hate it, listen to Love to See it, our podcast dissecting all the romance we see on screen from reality dating shows like the Bachelor and Love Is Blind to classic rom coms like you've Got Mail. We recap in obsessive detail and unpack all the weird messages they send us about love, love, sex and dating. Listen to Love to see it on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [51:28]
Vincent Cunningham
From.
- [51:28]
Nomi Frye
PRX.