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- [00:00]
A
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Apple Card takes privacy. Seriously. It's your card, your info, your business. So if your credit card isn't Apple Card, maybe it should be subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com hello, and welcome to Slate Money Travel. I am Felix Salmon. I am here with Emily Peck of Axios.
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B
Hello. Hello.
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A
I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times.
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C
Hello.
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A
This week we are going to debate the proposition travel broadens the mind. I have heard this since I was a wee baron, as they would say in Scotland, but I don't know if it's true or not. And I'm going to take a quick sort of vote at the beginning here. Emily yes. No. Elizabeth yes. No.
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C
I mean, it depends person. So I would say broadly, yes. Broadly, yes.
- [01:19]
A
Broadly, yes. I think, I think I'm a yes person. As someone who has traveled a fair amount. I was just talking to my sister recently and we realized that both of us have been to seven continents, which is kind of fun. We I can't remember a time when traveling didn't help me learn something new about how other people see the world. And I do think that international travel is better for that than domestic travel. And one of, and I guess one of the super interesting things as an immigrant for me is that, like, would it, can you possibly even say that I've spent the past 27 years of my life traveling? Like, I'm just, I've been living in a foreign country for most of my life. Is that old travel?
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B
No. See, this is the key distinction. I was just thinking about this in preparation for this podcast. I was thinking we like it when you think.
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C
Emily yeah.
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B
So there's a difference between traveling and going somewhere to live.
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C
You.
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A
Okay.
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B
And then that's a huge distinction if you are temporarily going to live somewhere else. Like, we read pieces. Shaina, our wonderful producer, shared some pieces about, you know, students living abroad and how that expands their minds is really good for you, gives you the chance to immerse yourself in other cultures, experience real new things. I think that does broaden the mind. I agree. Traveling, like going for a week to a new country or place and seeing the requisite sites and being a tourist, even a special tourist who's seeing the fancier sites or not seeing sites, I don't think that broadens your mind. In fact, I don't know what it does, except I think one of the pieces we read said it was like a boomerang. You go somewhere and you come back and you are unchanged. And all that's changed is now that you're boring your friends and family with pictures and stories about wherever it is you went.
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C
I think it depends on where you're going and what you're doing while you're there, because first of all, you could go for a week somewhere that's, you know, meaningful to you or you're going with some express intention of learning something, and then I think you can come back changed. But a question I have, Elizabeth, give.
- [03:49]
A
Me an example of that, because I'm interested in what you what you have in mind there.
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C
Well, I'll one example is in my late 20s, I went to Thailand and Cambodia, and I ended up staying in Cambodia for two months. But at the beginning of that trip, I went on a tour with some UN officials to some of the Khmer Rouge sites with people whose ancestors were killed there. And I think that was an eye opening and incredibly transformative experience for me. And if I had left after that, I would have been in the country for four days, but it would have changed me. So I think it's a little bit different. Of course, whenever you're dropping into New York and going and seeing the Empire State Building and Lion King and leaving, I think that's a different thing. That's a kind of just tourism for its own sake.
- [04:40]
A
One of the words that both of you used, which I think is an important one in this context, is see, and we we find that word in the word sightseeing. I don't think that seeing something can broaden the mind. I think we're probably in agreement on that. I think if I look back to all of the things I've learned from traveling, it's always from talking to people and watching and experiencing how they interact with me and how they interact with the world. And and so just like going somewhere and ticking a site off your list, there was a wonderful New York magazine piece recently about tourists in Kyoto who they're apparently like five places in Kyoto you have to go. And all just like ticking off these five places in the list is unlikely to achieve much. But the more that you are willing to embed yourself in the unfamiliar and specifically interact as an equal with people who aren't, you know, your nationality, who don't speak your language and so on and so forth, like, I think that is much more likely. And I think, Elizabeth, to your point, even just a few days of that can have a real make a real difference. Emily is skeptical.
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B
I don't know. I mean, I, I don't want to pry, Elizabeth, but how did it change you? What changed, actually, from four days?
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C
I think it was the experience of being around people who had this kind of generational trauma that I couldn't fathom myself. And I don't think I know anybody who's close to me who has experienced anything like that. And it just felt like something that was so much bigger than the minute experience that I was seeing. I wonder if there are also people who have that experience when, for example, they go and see an incredible natural landscape and they're not used to it. That can be a transcendent moment. So I don't think that it's really about the time that you spend somewhere. I think it's the quality of time you're spending and what you're doing with it, I think.
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A
And, and this is, this is an interesting pushback to my, my thesis that seeing things isn't going to change you, which I think, actually I do agree with. You know, I think back to my trip to Antarctica and yeah, the people I was with on that boat were not unfamiliar or life changing to the degree that they really changed me very much. But the continent did, and the spectacular nature of it and the way that there's really nothing else like it on the planet did have a real effect of me. And of course, to some extent, the, you know, the famous charismatic megaphone that it boasts. But the, but the, but the constant.
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B
You know, taking mushrooms, you're like, I'm ne. Everything is different now. It's a little bit like the eyes have been opened.
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A
Yeah.
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B
A month later, it's gone.
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C
Normally there are people who would argue that that is a kind of travel. So.
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A
No, but, no, I mean, there are people, sure.
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B
But it doesn't change you.
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A
I think it does. And I think that someone like Michael Pollan will tell you that it does.
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C
I think it depends on you and your personal context. I think if you have not really been anywhere in your life and you go and see something radically different, even for a few days, you know, that can be a transformative experience. I don't think that travel by itself, without intention or context, you know, is good or bad. It's sort of what you make of it. And I do agree with Emily's sort of pushback on the, you know, sort of checking things off a list style travel, which I think of as more as casual tourism than anything. I, I don't think that that's really a life changing experience for me.
- [08:49]
A
Yes. And again, I'm in general, I think that's correct. But I would also say that aside from Antarctica, one place that everyone should go, like, literally everyone should go is Ravenna in Italy to see the mosaics there, which are just mind blowing in the best way. They're astonishingly beautiful. They're incredibly ancient. They're extremely profound. No one knows how to make anything like that anymore. And there is, you know, it is something approaching that kind of transcendent experience. And it is amazing. And I think, yeah, one hour in one of those churches can. Can change you in a meaningful way. Now, I'm not saying here transformative, like my thesis is always, you know, travel broadens the mind by some increment. You know, I'm not saying it changes who you are as a person in perpetuity, but it, at the margin it changes you and nearly always for the better.
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B
Yeah, I mean, you're really honing in on something here. There are transcendent experiences that you can have whilst traveling, whilst taking mushrooms. They're not transformative in and of themselves. To, to truly change yourself is another endeavor entirely and isn't going to come about from going anywhere. The second idea I wanted to just float is that there's something so elitist about a conversation that's like, only through travel will you understand other people's. Only through travel. I feel like travel done the right way. Like.
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A
Emily, Emily, this is too. You've managed to manage to roll out.
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B
I've aligned Felix and Elizabeth. This is amazing.
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A
You've managed to roll out two straw men in the space of like 30 seconds. Like, no one is saying that travel is permanently transformative and no one is saying that she said it.
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B
She said I was changed by this.
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C
I can be. It can be. It's not you.
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B
You took the tour and it changed you. You said, but I changing.
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C
I did not think all travel is transformative.
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A
Number one, say that all travel is transformative. And number two, number two, she. Like, I think we haven't really arrived on a common definition of transformative here, but like permanently changing who you are as a person is different from broadening the mind.
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B
Okay.
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A
And, and so I'm just trying to stick to the narrower, the weaker form of this, which is just broaden the mind.
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B
Broaden the mind.
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A
And then, and then. Certainly, certainly neither of us would say that only through travel can be. Can this be done. Like this is. This is a statement that literally no one has ever made ever. Like, you can, you can. You can have your mind broadened by reading a Good book.
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B
Yeah, that's on my notes. To talk about. Because a lot of. A lot of the. The scuttlebutt on travel is it helps you develop empathy, because, as Felix was saying earlier, you can, like, meet other people and experience other cultures and therefore develop some kind of empathy, which I don't really buy. I think that's better done through books than traveling someplace, being the outsider. And people are not going to necessarily treat you like an insider. Like there is some, like, a veil between you.
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A
100.
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B
The local culture, which is transformed just by you being there, you know, so you can't really enmesh in it.
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A
No. No one. Like, absolutely. I'm not suggesting for a second straw manning, but you're straw manning again. Like, no one is saying that you can travel somewhere and, like, become enmeshed in a community. That is not how it broadens. That is not the mechanism.
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B
But. So you're just saying, like, you go somewhere and you see pretty stuff and it's cool. That's what you're saying.
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C
No.
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A
Wow. I feel like you haven't. You haven't accurately described what we're saying once in, like, seven years.
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C
Emily's built like an army of straw man.
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B
I am the only one.
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A
We're being overrun by straw man here. It's amazing.
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B
No, it's not even where you look. No, you go somewhere and you look at the mosaics and wow. Like, that's the. The equivalent of saying, I went somewhere, I looked at pretty stuff, and it made me go, wow, cool. I don't. Does that. Is that broadening the mind? I don't know. Maybe we need to.
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A
Maybe you need to go to Ravenna.
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B
Emily, I have to go see the tiles. Maybe we need to dial it back.
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A
Maybe you need to go down into the New York City subway and.
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B
But, like, I like the New York City subway.
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A
No, but actually, you know, not to jest about this, but very serious. If you walk along the tunnel that connects the Bryant park subway station in New York to the Times Square subway station in New York, you. I'm not saying this with absolute certainty, but I'm saying with, like, at least a 50% probability, you will have a really important, high quality, immersive artistic experience. It's like. It's a really. There's this amazing series of Nick Cave murals, and they continue on and that everyone I know who's gone down that tunnel has, like, texted me afterwards and being like, oh, my God, have you been down this tunnel? It's amazing. And it's one of the most successful pieces of public art that I've ever encountered. And it's there for $2. 90, you can enter the subway. And it has this amazing feeling of, like, you just kind of stumble across it by mistake. It's not somewhere where you, like, have to get on a plane to just see the Nick Cave murals in the 42nd street connector. You know, it's. There's this weird feeling of, like, oh, wow, who knew about this? And, and that's. I think the best way to see it, actually, is without going there deliberately. We're just kind of, like, stumbling across it one day. And so, yeah, that, I think, counts as one of those wonderful little moments. But generally, my conception of the salutary effects of travel is not, you know, see a mosaic, see a piece of art by Nick Cave, see an iceberg. It's much more just watch how people interact, watch how they live, learn something about, you know, how people pay each other, I think is a really interesting thing that I've learned. Like, you know, like, look at, say, gas stations. The first time you go to a gas station and you in, you know, in a foreign country, and you pull up and you pump your gas, and there's no, like, asking for a credit card or anything first, and they just, you know, trust you to, like, pump your gas. And then once you've pumped it, you go in there and pay for it. You're like, oh, there are cultures of trust where this works perfectly well and is perfectly fine. And, And I feel like that. That little. Those little things can. Can help people learn about the range of ways in which people inhabit the world. Um, and one of the things I did want to ask you about specifically, Emily, was this question of whether that kind of experience is something that is much less likely to happen with domestic travel or whether it's just, you know, I mean, we were talking a little bit earlier about, like, when I went to Laredo, Texas, to give a speech once, and I, I, I, I really came back buzzing about Lared Laredo and how interesting it is, how architecturally interesting it is, how demographically interesting it is, how it sits right on the border in super fascinating ways. And everything I learned from talking to, you know, a few of the local captains of industry there. And I, I, you know, and I. It changed a lot of my priors. I personally learned a lot from that. But it is probably the least. One of the least American places you can find in America. It almost counts as a foreign country. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Did you Know, Apple Card is designed to help you pay off your balance faster with smart payment suggestions. And because fees don't help you, Apple Card doesn't have any. So if your credit card isn't Apple Card, maybe it should be subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Variable APRs range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness rates as of July 1, 2025 terms and more@applecard.com.
- [18:05]
B
So what is your question?
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A
So my question is like, my question is domestic travel in particular, is that like a weak tea version of the travel that Elizabeth and I are talking about?
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B
No, absolutely not. The United States is massive. You were just talking about your travels to Alaska, which is in the United States as well. There's so many places to see and I suppose broaden your mind about the fact that people live differently, look differently, have different habits, all of that. I mean, I don't, I travel an hour from my house and I'm like, oh, interesting. You know. Yeah, I don't.
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C
You can see that in media coverage of different places in the country. If you go read like a Deep south local newspaper and look at how they talk about New York, you would think it was on a different planet and vice versa. You know, New York media publications have a habit of parachuting in reporters to rural places in the country. And they, they have, they behave like they have culture shock doing that. And so sometimes they do. I mean, if you, you know, people who have moved from a big city to a rural area or vice versa, these places are so much different than each other than say, New York would be from a lot of big European cities.
- [19:24]
B
You just get a different feeling and a different vibe. I remember the first time I traveled south and I was just like every, you know, I was just like a teenager. I was like, everything is different here. You know, the plants are different, the sky looks different, people talk differently.
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A
I mean, very true.
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B
Anywhere it's. Yeah, you can bottle soda.
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C
Something totally different. Yeah.
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B
What the hell do they call a soda? Right?
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C
Everything in the south is a Coke. It doesn't matter if it's actually a Coca Cola. You order a Coke at a restaurant and they say, what kind? And you say Pepsi.
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A
You say coffee.
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B
Are they using real cane sugar in the soda? Depends, you know.
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A
Yeah, I do agree. And yeah, if like traveling, when I've been in the South, I've again, like, there's definitely been times when like, whoa, yeah. And, and in a good way. And it's one of the things I love about travel. But then I guess that raises the next obvious question, which is if you can get the same mind broadening effect from domestic travel as you get from international travel, is there any real reason to travel internationally at all? I know what Emily's answer is to this.
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B
I mean, look, what do you want me to say here? I think it's nice that for people who can afford to travel internationally, I think that sounds great and they should go see how other people live. And that's fun. But why do we need to make it into something extra special, transcendent, like why do we need to be.
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A
Transcendency again?
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B
But it just, it does seem like travel is an inherently unequal thing, right? There are a lot of people who can't really afford to travel or do much of anything. It just seems like it's one of those things where it's like you haven't lived if you haven't traveled. But it's like a code for saying, like, you haven't lived if you haven't amassed enough money to take special trips all around the world.
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C
Well, I think, you know, you have to remember that part of the pitch of the military is see the world. And if you are in the military, you are probably going to travel internationally whether you choose to or not. So I don't think it's that elitist. You know, I understand the kind of travel that I think we're talking about where you go to an expensive city and stay in a nice hotel and see some art. That's probably true.
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A
That wasn't the kind of travel that I was talking about.
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C
Yeah, I think that's what Emily was talking about, though.
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A
The travel that broadened my mind the most was definitely the ultra cheap. You know, backpacking through Southeast Asia in the early 1990s for $5 a day. You know, that is probably. I think most people who you know would agree that that is much more effective at immersing you in a different culture than staying in a luxury hotel on a beach somewhere.
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B
Do you think that makes. Makes you a better person if you travel? Do you feel like, am I straw manning? It's a question, a real question. Sometimes people who travel make you feel like, well, you're not as good of a person as me because you haven't seen as many things.
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A
So. So that's two different questions. Like, does it make me. Does it make me a better person than you? No. Does it make me a better person than, you know, counterfactual me who hadn't traveled? Yes. Like for instance, I have always been incredibly grateful that I didn't get into Oxford and wound up going to Glasgow University instead. Because I know for a fact that going to Glasgow and experiencing that made me a much better person than I would have been if I'd stayed in that kind of London, Oxford conurbation bubble, upper middle class thing that I grew up in, you know, so 100% it makes one a better person. It doesn't make, it doesn't make me a better person than the person who hasn't traveled necessarily, I think, and I.
- [23:38]
C
Don'T think these are really moral valences, but I think, you know, it is indicative sometimes of how much curiosity somebody has. Also, I think, you know, I got on a plane for the first time when I was 20 and the second time from Birmingham to North Carolina to go back to college. And the second time I got on a plane it was from Atlanta to Italy to go do study abroad, which I was only able to do because it was actually cheaper for me to do study abroad as a financial aid student than it was to stay at home, Duke for a semester. But as a result, you know, the, that felt like a life changing experience for me because I had not had access to any kind of different environment in that way. So I think it really depends on the person and your baseline context for what you know and what you've experienced.
- [24:35]
B
It depends on the person, baseline, context, where you go, what you do, how long you stay for. You know, because you, you can travel and go somewhere and have a similar experience to what your life is like at home. If you don't.
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A
Yeah, you can. And, and I would. When I first moved to New York, I used to tell people that I felt that New York was basically West London. Like they were very, not quite so much anymore, but certainly at the time they felt like two different halves of the same city a lot of the time. So there are ways of traveling and winding up exactly where you started. You know, if you're an American and you travel to Berlin and you hang out in Prince Lauerburg the whole time for eight months, like you're not going to experience anything particularly alien or weird or even, you know, many people speaking German. So this whole question is, well, I.
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B
Don'T know if it's a straw man, but the whole question, it's, it's too broad. There is no yes or no no.
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A
But I think I will come out and say that the answer is I think this is where I'm going to land on the answer to this question? I think the answer is yes. I think the degree to which travel broadens the mind varies wildly. I think sometimes it is minimal, and sometimes it is deeply profound, and.
- [26:01]
B
It.
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A
Is to some extent possible to seek out the deeply profound or the. The maximal end of that. But it's not something that a lot of people do, and that's fine. It's not necessarily the prime reason why people travel. I think the primary reason why people travel is just that they have a vacation and they want to have a break from their day to day, like Gideon, you know, it's fun, and they. And they want to lie on the beach or whatever. Right. So. Or. Or they want to take their kids somewhere nice. You know, there's a lot of reasons for traveling which aren't about broadening the mind, and that is 100% fine. I'm not going to get snobbish and go, well, if you can't broaden your mind, then you shouldn't do it. But I would say that sometimes it does to a greater extent. Most of the time, it does to some extent. And that is one of the, you know, at the very least, ancillary benefits that you get from it. You see, I like that this is a video podcast so that we can see Emily just kind of shrugging.
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C
Yeah.
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B
I mean, I think I aired the points I needed to make that it can be really elitist. It doesn't have to broaden your mind, and typically it doesn't. It's okay to just travel for fun. You don't have to make, like, a whole thing about it until it makes you special. It can broaden your mind, especially if you live in the place rather than just visit a place. That's a key differentiator when we talk about travel. Living in New York for 20 years, I'm sure has done a lot to actually transform you versus, you know, if you came here for a week and went to see. What'd you say? Elizabeth? The Lion King.
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A
The Lion King.
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C
Now I yell at people to walk faster. That's. That's my key transformation.
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A
Also now I call it New York. When I arrived here, I called it New York.
- [27:50]
C
Aw.
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B
One of the pieces we read said Socrates said that philosophy is preparation for death. For everyone else, there's travel. What does.
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A
What does that mean?
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C
What does it mean? That piece was written by Agnes Callard in the New Yorker, where she was arguing against travel. And she's a woman, she's written a book about Socrates, and she's obsessed with Socrates. So I Feel like her entire thesis might have been reverse engineered from that quote. It was the kicker quote.
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B
I was like, wait, what? Because she starts to argue towards the end that travel is like experiencing death. And I was like, what? Like, I could kind of vibe with philosophy as a way to like trial balloon death because you kind of like thinking of big ideas. But travel, I don't get it. If you're in a new place where you don't really live, so you're not there, you're like a ghost presence.
- [28:42]
C
She had a lot of straw men in her piece. She. She sort of made the argument that. Reasonable argument that people who make travel their entire identity are kind of insufferable, which I don't disagree with, you know, but I don't think that that's an indictment of travel. I think that's an indictment of those people.
- [28:59]
A
Yeah, I do think again, it's easy to argue against a spectacularly tiny minority of people who, you know, think that they're better because they've traveled or who keep on boring you with details of their travels or, you know, so on and so forth. I very much hope that I am not one of those people. And I don't think that those people are in any way represented, representative of travelers in general.
- [29:27]
B
Okay. Okay, Good, good. Now I think I understand the death thing, though. It's like, because you don't live in a place and you're visiting it, so you're like a ghost in the place and that gives. It's a trial balloon for death. So that's where I'm landing. I'm landing with traveling.
- [29:44]
A
Oh, I mean, like, we should all get some practice because we're all going to go there eventually. Yeah, yeah. So that's. So even though that's a trip you don't come back from and even though.
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C
It does transform you, though it was.
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A
Even though it was an anti travel piece, I feel like that is an argument for travel. All need a little bit of practice before we die.
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B
Sure. So we all agree then.
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A
It's just like having a heart attack, really. All right, I think we will leave it there. Let us know on slate money, slate.com if you think that Emily was 100% spot on here. And especially email us if you are listening from some profoundly wonderful and remote place that we should all travel to. Thank you very much to Shayna Roth for producing and the whole Slate team. And we'll see you back on Saturday with a regular Slate money.