Conversations with Tyler - Chris Arnade on Walking Cities

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Most people who leave Wall Street after twenty years either retire or find another way to make a lot of money. Chris Arnade chose to walk through cities most travelers never truly see. What emerged from this approach is a unique form of street-level sociology that has attracted a devoted following on Substack. Arnade's work suggests that our most sophisticated methods of understanding the world might be missing something essential that can only be discovered by moving slowly through space and letting strangers tell you, their stories. Tyler and Chris discuss how Beijing and Shanghai reveal different forms of authoritarian control through urban design, why Seoul's functional dysfunction makes it more appealing than Tokyo's efficiency, favorite McDonald's locations around the world, the dimensions for properly assessing a city's walkability, what Chris packs for long urban jaunts, why he's not interested in walking the countryside, what travel has taught him about people and culture, what makes the Faroe Islands and El Paso so special, where he has no desire to go, the good and bad of working on Wall Street, the role of pigeons and snapping turtles in his life, finding his 1,000 true fans on Substack, whether museums are interesting, what set him on this current journey, and more. Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated CWT channel. Recorded February 27th, 2025. Help keep the show ad free by donating today! Other ways to connect Follow us on X and Instagram Follow Tyler on X Follow Chris on X Sign up for our newsletter Join our Discord Email us: [e-mail] Learn more about Conversations with Tyler and other Mercatus Center podcasts here. Photo Credit: Bryan Jones

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at Mercadis.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit Conversationswithtyler.com. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting live and in-person with Chris Arnotti. Chris has a long, interesting, and varied history.

He started with a PhD in particle physics from Johns Hopkins, was then a bond trader on Wall Street for about 20 years, had a life course shift around 2011, where he started traveling around lower-income America, and he became quite famous for what you might call photojournalism, his writings about lower-income America and also Trump voters. He published a very well-known book called Dignat. seeking respect in back row America.

He is now, I would say, obsessed in the good sense with a new project, which is walking both walkable and non-walkable cities throughout the world. And he writes a substack about his walking and his travels. Chris, welcome. Thank you for having me. If you had to live in either Beijing or Shanghai for 10 full years, which one would you pick and why? You know, I thought I was actually thinking about that a lot on the airplane.

I couldn't come up with an answer. I think Beijing ultimately because there is just more there. Shanghai I had a better experience in. I think the reason I like Shanghai more initially was just because of my location. I had a good location. I was right next to People's Park and I kind of had a good four or five days. Beijing grew on me with time, though. I just thought there was just more there.

I think I would much prefer Beijing. It feels more intellectual and there's a greater variety of Chinese foods there. Yeah, you know, the food part. I didn't do as much time as I usually do in a city when I was in Bo Shanghai and Beijing. I usually try to spend at least 10 days in a place. And in both cases, because of visa constraints, I was there for six or less days. But the food thing to me was interesting was I felt very much like what I had hoped to find in China I didn't find, which was I thought I was going to have like a Taipei like experience where there was just going to be a variety of different foods all over the place on the streets. and I ended up finding that it was just I was eating in mall food courts.

It felt very simply. Like there was a lot of diversity there, but it felt very hard to choose because there was just all crammed together in these small food courts. If you had to explain the fundamental difference between the residents of the two places in as small a number of dimensions as possible, how would you explain it to an outsider? And those two? Beijing versus Shanghai. I don't have a good answer to that one because I don't feel like I know it well. either of them well enough. How would you do it? Shanghai, what is status is money and conspicuous consumption. In Beijing, what is status is power.

In a funny way, that intersects with making the city more intellectual, having better bookstores, and having ties to more of China. Shanghai is more tied to the outside world, which is maybe better for the city, but for me makes it less interesting. You know, it was interesting because I didn't get as much of a sense of those places as you as you did. I felt the overwhelming feature to me and what kind of frustrated me in some ways was how similar Shanghai and Beijing were, that they were kind of inscrutable to me at the level I do things. And a lot of that to me, you know, maybe the way I approach kind of learning, which is just simply walk 15 miles. And they're not particularly walkable cities. Right. And, you know, that's one of the things I've come to have to deal with in

my project is, you know, I walk to learn, but some places that's not the actually right approach. And in both cases, the analogy I use, because I walk, you know, 15 miles in Beijing or 15 miles in Shanghai. And I kept on saying that it felt like I was in one of those cheap cartoons where the background kept repeating. And it was kind of frustrating to me in the sense of I didn't feel like I got a sense of either place, at least at the granular level, like I usually do from when I do what I do. And I don't know if that was kind of intentional. That's kind of how the cities are designed to kind of like, you know, to be uniform,

to kind of to remove any differences. I think parts of Beijing are designed to discourage protests and demonstrations, and that correlates with being hard to walk. It doesn't explain the whole pattern. I mean, I think that there's a lot, you know, I was thinking in particular of that approach. I've been reading James C. Scott, who writes a lot about kind of the idea of, you know, control, regulation as control or top-down regulation as control. And that's certainly the case in Beijing where you, like, you know, gone are the small winding dens of kind of small neighborhoods because those are hard to control. They're much easier if you replace them by, you know, 50-story towers with a mall next to it. And surveillance. Yeah, in surveillance. Yeah. And so what struck me when I was in Beijing, it was not so.

much the difference between Beijing and Shanghai, but how top-down regulation is often designed, you know, very intentionally for control. And, you know, Beijing in particular, you know, feels that way. And that's kind of what frustrated me initially was I had just kind of said, you know, because I kind of do all these kind of something seeds of pants. I just do, you know. So I landed and I said, I'll just walk to Tiananmen Square. Well, you know, I just did that. I did that once, but it wasn't easy. I got there, even though I had found out along the way that you had, I went through six security checks or five security checks, and I was supposed to have had a QR code where I'd signed up for it. And I didn't. I just kind of like walked by.

You know, so I kind of came up with what I wrote about was there being kind of what I call a totalitarian anarchy, which is there, I think they intend to be controlling, but they're just don't pull it off very well. They're just too incompetent to pull it off. Some of that's a bit deliberate, though. I think they feel that if people have a sense of partial freedom, they can control them better along the dimensions they want to, and they're probably correct. I mean, that's kind of what I thought about with a firewall, right, which is, you know, everybody has a VPN,

and everybody knows everybody has a VPN, so that there really isn't a firewall. But it's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, the idea that you regulate people by making sure the people who are the most ignorant can't possibly deal, you know, like the people who don't have enough, you can't get enough together to figure out how to get around it, don't get around it. And the VPN is also a way to monitor them, right? Yes, exactly.

Yeah, you can't actually trust the VPN supplier. I don't like to be conspiratorial because I think this is often wrong, but I did notice my VPN kind of clunked out at very odd moments. Like I was there during the actual election. The U.S. election. Yeah, when I was following, and I noticed that my VPN went out at very inopportune time. like when, you know, when there was kind of stuff going on that probably wouldn't have been fun to watch or wasn't convenient. So, you know, so you think that actually the Lucy Goosey approach is actually intentional.

I'm not sure they have the option of cracking down entirely, but I think they have come to terms with the partial controls and they found that it's still working. Right. And until it starts, it's not working. Don't try too hard to fix it. What do you think ultimately is driving them, though? Like, what is their goal here? Well, when you say them, if you mean the... The CCP.

The inner committee of the CCP, I think it is to make China, quote unquote, a great nation again, to drive the United States out of Asia, to have much of the world, cowtow to China, to have China be rich, never democratic and stable. Now, all that together is probably impossible, but it's not a crazy set of goals. They're not my goals. I mean, what struck me was, and one of the things I wrote about on both of pieces was I just kept thinking of them as a guardian class. kind of incorporating Plato's Republic. You know, they really do think of themselves as kind of as the guardian class whose goal it is to build the best society. I just don't know what they're working towards because if they're working towards kind of a fully material, increasing material wealth, they're doing that. They're doing well. But if the end point is someplace like Korea, Korea is famously not particularly happy.

Yes. Like so, you know. I don't think that's their goal, but I think they want China to be happy enough. I don't think they're not altruists. I just think it's a very nationalistic view of altruism, where Chinese lexically come before other considerations, and anyone whose ethnic Chinese ultimately falls under their purview, which is also different than, say, an American view.

I mean, I'm going back again because I find it so fascinating, because I don't understand it to the well to the degree. I feel like I understand other places. Like other places I come away with a pretty quick sense of, describing a town in some ways, but like both Beijing and Shanghai just felt a little bit. And I don't know, maybe it's a scale because, again, they're not really smart places to walk. Right. I find it's oddly like America in a number of ways.

I think you've written about this too. Inward looking, large, self-confident, business-oriented, pretty friendly, pragmatic. But I think a lot of the CCC plan is improvised rather than planned. So something like the fertility crisis, I think they were not expecting. Really, no one was. They don't know what to do. They'll try different things. And the larger the scale at which you operate, the more the so-called plan just becomes improvisation.

And again, it's also the problem that comes with top-down management, which is sometimes you just get it wrong. Yeah. Just get it wrong, you know. And I think they're deathfully afraid of disorder and civil war, given their history, in a way we are not. But to me, what's interesting about it is how explicit the top-down organization is at the built level as well as at the cultural level. Like, everything is micromanaged. But, you know, again, with a loosey-goosey approach to give a little bit of wig room. But, like, you know, the image I will always have of at least Shanghai, one of their initial images, Asia has very rambunctious cities.

And a lot of the kind of what I like about Asian cities is they have kind of an organic street life. kind of low regulatory organic street life. That is gone in China. And so to have gone from like Taipei to Shanghai to see that, that lack of organic street life is intentional. And like, we don't like this. And so there was this neighborhood was walking through Shanghai where they had bought up the entire neighborhood, had been an old neighborhood. And it was going to be slayed for development into kind of a business park style living. And they had replaced where there had been stores with murals of store life. Like, you know, it was like, it's just kind of too spot on for what they're doing, which is removing actual organic street life and replacing it with cartoon images of it.

You should try Kunming, by the way, if you haven't been there. It still has organic street life, as does much of Western China. It's more fun. It feels less authoritarian. I'm going to Gianne next trip. That also has organic street life. It's a bit harder. The further west you go, the harder is to get a visa. Yes. But you should be able to get to Kunming without problems.

And Xi'an, try the cherries. They're fantastic. Now, which is more interesting in a major Chinese city? A McDonald's or a KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken? I'm going to, you know, everybody told me KFC, and I stuck with McDonald's because of my past history with McDonald's. But what struck me about Beijing and China, both in cases, was it's the one I'm on my trips. I famously have become kind of online the McDonald's guy because I

wrote a lot about McDonald's and U.S. on the role of McDonald's in the U.S. And whenever I go overseas, people expect me to use McDonald's, but I just don't use them because people don't use them. There's alternatives in Japan at 7-Elevens and Izakaya's and, you know, other countries, other forms of kind of what I would say, kind of third spaces, organic third spaces. In Beijing, it was McDonald's. Like, and it was interesting. It served the same role it does in the U.S. for very different reasons, which is in the U.S., the McDonald's is the place people go because it's the one function, because it's functional relative to the neighborhood.

McDonald's and Beijing people go because it's dysfunctional relative to the neighborhood in terms of regulatory rate. Like, you just can go and relax. People say, I went to a few KVCs use a bathroom, but I do not, I don't like fried chicken. I just do not like it. I don't like fried foods in general, so I didn't really spend time there. I just found myself spending a lot of time in the McDonald's and in China.

And, you know, I find them be really wonderful places. My favorite McDonald's in the world is in Auckland, New Zealand, which is the world's largest Polynesian city. And McDonald's there often serves as the center for Polynesian gatherings, not just Melry. I can imagine that, yeah. But Cook Islands, Tongans, Fiji. Yeah, I can see that. And if you're ever in Auckland, it's a phenomenal McDonald's.

You know, the mixing that takes place in McDonald's is just, you know, You know, is absolutely amazing. You know, in the U.S. is absolutely amazing. And it's similarly across the world. But, again, a lot of other countries have other things that serve that role. And so... Where's your favorite McDonald's in the world? A favorite McDonald's in the world?

The one I probably use the most as in L.A. But where are in L.A? East L.A. I don't remember the name of the street. A lot of my book was written in it. It's kind of in the Mexican, East L.A. Mexican neighborhood. I forget that...

That should be a good one. the name is of the street is on the tip of my tongue. It's just, you know, there's just a organic life there that is just absolutely wonderful. And I just learned so much in that, you know, I was, because when I was in the U.S. doing my project, I would literally just sit in McDonald's at night and type up my notes, you know. And that's where I got up. So many of my stories would also become from just being in McDonald's for not trying to get stories. And it's funny to look back on that period because, you know, when I was doing this project on addiction,

and poverty, I would talk to people and then I'd meet them in a McDonald's, and then I would take them outside the McDonald's to photograph them because it just didn't seem photographic, you know, like, but then I was like, wait a second. The fact that I'm meeting everybody in McDonald's, that's the story. It's just such a great community center for so many people. Why is Seoul, South Korea, possibly your favorite city? It's got a functional dysfunction. It's a little bit more dysfunctional, a little more less uptight than in Tokyo, but it has a lot of the same positive qualities of Tokyo, which is very safe, it's very efficient.

It's got an amazing food scene, if you like food. It's very active, but it's a little bit quirkier to me than Tokyo, and I feel like it's a little bit less known, and I kind of enjoy that. But also, you know, I just find when I'm in a place, I like to get into a regular walk, and they just have a happen, having a, a 10-mile walk there, I absolutely love. Like, I just do it every day when I'm there. It's along, though, revital, it had been an old drainage ditch, and it goes underneath subways, and it goes underneath interstates, and now it's just this beautiful reclaimed 10-mile walk.

What I like there is that the food scene is not Instagrammed to death. So you can find an obscure place that's more or less undiscovered, and it can be very good, in almost any neighborhood. You know, someone asked me about the best food, and I think if you measure the best food by the kind of the median food. Like, you know, I actually think Japan is still higher than Korea that way. But they have the worst food also. Yeah, yeah.

They, you can get some really disgusting things there. I had a, I had the night before got on a 15 hour flight, I had chicken sashimi. There should, you should not have chicken shishimi. You should not have chicken shishimi. I've refused. I saw it. No, I didn't. I had two pieces down before I realized what it was.

And I'm like, okay, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. going to die, but it wasn't good. Like, it doesn't look good either. Even for the risk, it wasn't good. Like, you know, I'll take a risk if something tastes good. Also, some of the fried foods Japan, Japanese have is just, just, Koreans have some weird food. Like, you know, one of the things I like about Japan is I can go to the 711s and get a good sandwich. Yeah, very good food.

The sandwiches and the Korean 711 have a lot of sugar in them. Like sugar when mixed with ham, things like that. But I actually think Japan has better food than Korea, but I agree with you that the Korean food scene is less understood by the West, and I think it's less precious. But, you know, some of the best food I've had in the world is in just small places, small places in Japan that are just, you know, off the beaten track. Yeah. Now, in evaluating cities, how much do you take weather into account?

So I meant to solve at the end of November, which is not even the worst of the winter. And it was awful. It was truly freezing. I love cold weather, though. So I was just in Seoul three days ago. Yeah. And it was when I got up in the morning, it was 18 degrees. And I love that.

So I like cold weather. But if you don't like cold weather, don't go to salt. Like, I mean, the thing is, the winds come off the mountains and it's really cold. Like when the winds come off, it's just really bitterly cold. And how much do you count air pollution for? Because that's going to hurt China, right? So, yeah. For walking especially.

I actually put together a metric on walkability. I had I think seven, eight categories. And I put climate, climate and crime and pollution are three big factors. Like, I think people don't forget about, like, you know, I famously rank relative, people got on my ass for ranking L.A. relatively high as a walkability. Oh, I put it in here at the top. Yeah. But it's got great weather.

And if you can deal with some of the distances involved in lack of density, it's just a really wonder. It's got a fantastic bus system. That, you know, part of the part of being able to walk is when you choose not to walk, you can just jump on public transportation. So it's got a ubiquitous bus system that can get you pretty much everywhere. It's got great climate. And it's also just, it's just a visually impressive city. It's got, you know, it's got good skies. It's just like it's a very enjoyable place to walk.

And it's got an amazing food scene. It's got a better food scene than almost any place in the U.S. Sure, yeah. So. I once walked across South Paulo, which in retrospect was insane. I wouldn't do it today. Yeah, that's not. That's tough.

It's tough. Yeah. Do you remember which direction you walked? No, but it was a very long walk. And then, you know, the murder rate then was much higher, but street problems were much less frequent. You know, I've always found that I generally, a lot of the locals tell me not to go where I go, and I've never had a problem. I think if you are, I mean, I have zero, you can look, I have zero jewelry on. I never wear jewelry.

I dress very simply. And I've just never had a problem. I think Latin America is one of the few places. Latin America and Africa are some of the few places where there are real problems. And you do have to have a little bit of common sense. I walked all over Lima, Peru, when I was told not to and I was fine. That's okay. But what's your nomination for the least walkable city?

Phoenix is pretty bad. And the rest of the world, what was the lowest ranked on mine? I think it's Dakar is your lowest rank. But I don't find that so bad. It was partially the heat. And also there was a safety issue, which is it's not actual violence. It's just the risk of a miscommunication going very badly. When you're in a neighborhood where you're a slum, basically, where you're one of few white people. It's not that I feel threatened by being robbed. I feel threatened that something you do is. It can be just a miscommunication. Like, why are you here? What are you doing here? And so that can spiral out or really control if you don't speak the language. Decar was really, really tough. Compala was really tough to walk. Why is that? I've never been there.

Again, these are cities that are not meant to walk. Locals don't walk them. You know, and so people would look at me like I'm crazy. Like so, because first of all, you can jump on a hack bus. So why would you walk? Right. Or the bo-to-boda-bottos, which are you just jump on the back of a motorcycle, which I won't do. I did it once.

And I'm like, I'm not doing this. This is just a really dumb risk. Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I almost got killed in the first time I did it, but they do it. And so consequently, people, there's not much, there's no walking infrastructure. And when you do walk, you're at risk of being hit by a bodeboto or like a, you know, people will walk out of necessity, but there's just no infrastructure. Absolutely none. And then you're getting hit by a car.

You can get hit by a car or motorcycle. Rio for me would be the least walkable. It's very dangerous. But on top of that, there are so many places where walks in, there's mountains, there's tunnels. Yeah. I mean, I have not in this recent project gone to Brazil to walk, partly because when I was a banker, I spent a lot of time in Brazil. And so I don't really want to go back. I would imagine that just connecting down, Sepa is a lot more walkable than Rio is.

Sure. Rio is just, there's just no go zones. Like it's just literally those are dangerous. And also you have, you know, the department. of a place does determine this walkability. Yeah. Like, you know, certain cities are just disjoint, and it's really just hard to walk. One of my favorite cities in the world, and I quite enjoyed walking, was Amman Jordan.

And I would encourage people who listen to this. It's, you know, people always like what's undiscovered place. It's a relatively really undiscovered place. And it was safe. You know, I went into some very, quote, rough neighborhoods, but I was, you know, even though I was open to people that I was Jewish. Most of the Arab world is quite safe, I found. Just, I'll salute malakum, you know, you're good. But it's eight hills.

There are climbs I was taking that I was just absurd. Like, I'm walking up basically 60 floors of steep flights. And then, you know, you feel like a hero. And then a 50-year-old, 60-year-old woman comes right past you. Who's been doing it all the day with like stuff on her back? I don't know if you've ever been there. but one of my favorite walkable cities was Alexandria, Egypt. I have not been.

Because you have both the waterfront and streets with interesting buildings. And when I was there, at least it was quite safe. It probably still is. I also do these long walks where I walked across England and I walked across Japan. I walk the Rhone Valley and I walk the Rhine Valley. Kind of what, you know, 200-mile walks, who I'll do over the course of two weeks. I've been trying to, that's one of the ones I want to do,

which is a walk from basically down, part of the Nile, you know, up from Alexandria down to Cairo in that region. Yeah. What's the greatest purely physical problem you have with all your walking? Heat, usually, heat exhaustion, because a lot of the interesting places are in very hot parts of the world. Heat never bothers me. I feel very lucky. It's called I hate. Dehydration and heat are my big problems because, again, places I find really interesting tend to be in the, near the equator. So I don't know how old you are.

As I've gotten older, I just can't handle the heat. 63. Yeah, okay, so it's, I'm impressed that you can handle the heat. And I've lived in Virginia a long time. I think for five years, I never turned on my air conditioner because I felt I should get used to it. And I did. When you take the trip as a haul, not just the walk, but the trip, you're not packing very much, right? That's correct.

What is it you wish you could carry, but you can't? It just doesn't work. You know, I would like a few more night outfits. And you say night outfits. What do you mean to dress up? I usually have one go-out shirt. So I want to walk in the shirt. After a while, that gets a bit raggedy.

I feel like I feel a little bit like I also, whenever I'm traveling, I also do attend Mass every Sunday, wherever I am. And I would like to, I famously wear only sandals. Another pair of shoes would be nice to feel less disrespectful when I go to Mass. Is there anything you bring a double of? Like I bring a double pair of glasses. I've never needed them. I bring double tie.

I bring lots of tie pods. Those are my secret weapon typos. I bring backup computer cords. I bring backup glasses. I'm trying to think what else I have a double of. I carry two spare batteries. I've never needed a second one, much less the first one, but I always like to know,

like, you know, I won't run out of power. Sometimes I bring spare chargers for books you use Kindle or how do you do that? I always have one physical book and then my Kindle. I always keep one physical book because I just prefer reading physical books. I always bring my Kindle but try to get by with only physical books. I mean, I think honestly I never regret underpacking. Like I always feel very, I pack remarkably light. And I think that's almost to me if I had one hack to people for traveling.

You know, what I would say is when you get home and look at what you brought and see how much you didn't use, you'll find that you didn't use like a third of what you brought. And you can buy things on the road, you know. If you run out of stuff, like I can't buy that second shirt. And sometimes I have. Now, I did an episode with Paul Salopek. Do you know who he is? No. He's walking around the world.

Literally. But literally in a circle isn't exactly the right word. And he's had trouble with the war or with Russia. China at first was an issue of this was during pandemic some of the time. Are you ever tempted to do that? Yeah, you know, the problem is, is I've looked at paths and I've looked, you know, like I looked at walking across the U.S. multiple times. I don't know how much you're going to learn the third day in a wheat field. One day of wheat fields is good, like two more days.

And, you know, the Gobe Desert's the same. Like, what am I going to learn the 15th day in the Goby Desert, you know? So this whole project started with this idea of walking around the word, literally. And I started saying, well, why do I have to, I just cut out the middle parts, the boring parts and focus on the cities. Because I like people. You know, I'm focused on culture. I'm focused on how people operate. And so I like people and I like being around people.

So I generally do not, you know, the Woody Allen joke is I'm too with nature. I kind of get that. I like small doses of it, but what are you going to learn? Yeah, I'm the same. I go to 14 and like, you know, like if I want to. walk from here to Florida. Like, that's a lot of pine forest, man. There's not much to learn there. What is it you think you learn least well traveling the way you do? You know, it's interesting as I've so, I used to be a, you know, I used to be a macro trader, a macro type trader. And so I used to be very

pop down. And I think I've in some sense, have thrown too much of that away. I think I've gone in too blind without reading, you know, I could do a little bit more background reading in terms of the political situation. One of the things I've learned from my project is most people don't talk about politics, you know, because I only kind of talk about what other people want to talk about. No one talks about politics. You know, I, being in Beijing, Shanghai, maybe it's not the best example because people would say, well, there's a reason they don't want to talk about because I don't think that's it. No, I agree. Yeah. Most of the world. Yeah, you know, I, and so.

Even Idaho. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, 98% of the people aren't political and they don't talk about politics. And so when, you know, I kind of got beat up on social media when people were talking about, oh, oh, my God, Trump's going to be elected. That's going to, you know, the world hates us. No, they don't. I've heard more, you know, when that person said that, I was actually in a compala, a bar in compala with a person, a woman telling me how much she loved Trump. But that was a rare political conversations. most people don't talk about politics.

And so in that sense, I could probably do more reading outside of the conversations about politics. Because I do a lot of these countries, I don't know what's going on politically because people don't talk about it. What other macro views of the world have you revised due to your walking, visiting, traveling? Obviously, particular views about any individual place. But on the whole, humanity. I mean, the biggest change I would say is, you know, I've become religious. Although, you know, that is, that's not entirely just the walking, but that's just. But do you think the walking is fed into it?

Yes. And how is that operated? You just kind of, I think you, you know, part of it was utilitarian is like, if this works for so many people. Like, you know, but also it is a little deeper than that, which is an understanding that people a little bit more complicated than science leads you to believe. And life is a little more complicated. So in that sense, you know, there's, there is something that, there is something that, there is something. to what I would call common sense, folk wisdom. That's just more than, you know, something that needs to be explained away with science or eventually will move beyond. I do think there are very

human qualities that are, you know, I am not a relativist. I might have been, you know, 30 years ago kind of believe in kind of cultural relativism. I'm not a relativeist. I think there are some cultures that are just better than others. I agree with that. I mean, you know, why can't we say that? And I think part, you know, I had started off as a way back when before I found out I was good at math, I started off kind of with the intention of going anthropology. And I basically, you know, as a freshman, I left it after three months because it was just, it was filled with this, you know, this cultural relativism and all the puttides I just thought was absurd. And now, you know, I feel more more certain of that. But I would say the kind of bigger thing I've been thinking about for the last two years. is I've been, you know, a year is I really do think if you would, you know, I was famously six, six years ago, seven years, I would say like what, what elites say doesn't matter. Who cares what people are fighting about on Twitter, but actually, you know.

It does matter, I think, yeah. We elites, and I'll put myself, we as an elite, I'm one, we, we build cultures. We build societies. So we matter immensely. And I've, maybe I've gone. a little bit too far now where I think all the culture is built by elites and, you know, to almost a level of giving excuses to people who aren't elites in terms of their behavior because that's the culture they grow up in. I won't go that far. I think, you know, there is free will and people have, have agency. But I think BCP is an extreme example of what takes place in almost every culture, which is there is a small group of guardian classes. Different definitions and different places who effectively create culture. And most people are not political. And they choose not, the way they choose to live is based not on a lot of decision is based on what culture gives them. Sure, conformity. Yeah. And so I think in that sense, I think what academics do or where elites do, what politicians is immensely important and shapes how societies are built and how they evolve.

putting aside issues of financial security. How many people do you think should do what you're doing? Is it like, oh, there's only a few of us in the world? Or is it some kind of life arb opportunity that say 3% of people actually should be doing if they can? You know, it's interesting is I'm probably going to take a like a six-month break from what I'm doing because I've leaned too far away from reading books. Like I kind of, you know, there's book learning and then there's what I call sarcastic experimental learning, which is kind of what I'm doing. Like, you need both. And so I think if you only do what I'm doing,

you're going to kind of miss out on a lot of the world. Why can't you do both, though? So I once had a trip to Goa, and I mistimed the monsoon, and I could hardly go out at all. So I went out two or three hours a day. That was crushingly sad. I read a lot.

In fact, it was still a great trip. Yeah, no, I mean, I would have to change how I travel, which is part of what it's just me, which is people are expected. expecting content every 11 days based on walking. So, you know, like if I sit around and reading books. But you can write about that too. You have a post on your recent reading. Yeah, I mean, I can. But I do think that you have to do a mixture of both. And I've leaned a little too far into the walking. In terms of how many other people can do it, it's not, you know, it's logistically a hard lifestyle.

Like, you have to be a certain personality. Like, I do not mind waking up in a different bedroom every night. I do I quite you know this might be just a quirk of my personality I do not mind 16 hour flights I kind of look forward to them like you know and I don't fly first class I fly an economy yeah so if you don't 13 hours is my limit 13 is fine past that it wears thin on me but but like it's the time to read you know yeah absolutely I go to the back and you know I know my airplanes now I know exactly where the steward is is this hang out and I go back and I talk to people you know I sit in the back so I actually don't I don't mind Longfaisen. You have to have a personality that enjoys that. I also don't mind. I like talking to people. What is it you learn from stewardesses? You know, I mean, like, speaking of the, you know, just the Faroe Islands example, like I landed at 3 in the morning and she got a friend to drive me to the hotel. So like small things like that. But, you know, in general, they're just, they're just addressing people to talk about in terms of like they tell you about where they grew up, they tell you where to go. I often take some of the information back, you know, I use the information probably in the way they wouldn't think I use information. Like if they told me to go someplace, I may not go there. because that signs like, it's going to be crowded. And I don't like crowds. I just like to hear the life stories of people, you know, how they got into the career they got into

and what they want out of life. And what's their goal here? Why should more people visit the Faroe Islands? It's just, you know, I said I'm too with nature, but I give an exemption for a pharaoh's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. Like, physically it's the most sublime, it has a sublime beauty that I just can't, you know,

that was, I kind of got people who get religious experiences out of nature. It never got old. The beauty. I also think it's just extraordinarily functional. I like functionality. Great seafood also. It's different. Although, you know, all the seafood, have you been?

Of course I've been. How many times have you been? I've been to a lot of places. Have you been? How long were you in Pharaoh for? I think five days, I'm not sure, but less than a week, but more than just a day or two. Yeah, it's, it was interesting. I was planning they'd be there for five days and I canceled my next trip to stay there for two weeks.

Yeah, I can imagine that easily. What I liked most about it was I would just go to the bus depot and get on a bus and just get off somewhere and then walk for four or five hours. And then, you know, I would make sure that I would get another bus back because of the timetables. You can just go, you can island hop and just walk around. I like these incredible, you can't even call them towns, but maybe five homes. Yeah. in a corner somewhere with the world's best view. And the homes are nice.

What I didn't like about it, I'm terrified of heights. And I remember the first day I got there, I walked out of Torshvan across the island to the other side over the mountain there. It was like a eight-mile walk up the mountain and down. Part of that walk, there was some kind of cliffs. And I was like a little bit scary, but I got through it. But I'm like, I'll just take the bus back. That's fine.

The bus was more terrifying than the walk because it would go down to pick up these kids. And they live down at the, like one of those villages. Oh, I did this once. And the road is a dirt road that's maybe, you know, just a car length wide. And this bus is going around the corners. And these, I had to move sides of the bus not to be on the side that was near the looking down the 50. These kids were just like looking down, smiling. I was terrified.

Is Istanbul the world's most walkable city? I think it's one of the one. I would put Tokyo up there. Tokyo wins a walkability award. Istanbul is probably my, it's one of most walkable cities. If it wasn't for the motor scooters, delivery guys, it's got the weather, it's got the beauty. It's got the diversity. It's got the biggest thing what I call for walkability is what I call local distribution, meaning you can always

there's always a shop somewhere. Yes. It's also, I don't know if your experience was this. I just get over to the Asia side. That to me is a much more interesting side and get out of the tourist parts. It's just a very, it's just a wonderful city. It has the history. The thing I like about the history there is it hasn't frozen the city.

They just, you know, like on the European side is that famous wall. I forget the name of the wall that was there, been there to the wall that was eventually breached in like 1453 or whatever, 1456, the northern defense wall, is still there, remnants of it. And it's just used as a car park. There's this 13th century wall that's just used as a car park, which I still think is pretty impressive. So I like the way history is both there, but also not relegated to just kind of a museum-like status. Is anywhere in India truly properly walkable? I've not been since a kid. kid. I canceled this last trip. I was going to go to Mumbai. I don't know. I do a lot of Google

street views before trips. And it looks like part of the reason I canceled my trip, I was going to go in January. I had to cancel for a variety of reasons. I'll go sometime soon. But it looks like it's going to be, you know, it looks like it's going to be hard to walk. I mean, I was able to walk into Jakarta. I was able to walk in Hawaii. I found both of them to be, okay, walkability. Yeah, I agree. How would you compare it to Jakarta? Have you been to both? I've been to both. There's many parts of India. Amritsar struck me as the most walkable part of India I visited.

The Sikhs are a bit like Mormons of India in terms of how they keep the city. It's fairly well maintained. There's pollution issues. There's weather issues. And there's big, you could call pothole, sidewalk pothole issues. So it's tough. Yeah, the pothole issue is, I mean, it's awful in Jakarta. It's awful in Hanoi.

You just have to look down a lot. I'll let you can just break an ankle. Right. And then there's somewhere like Gawa, which is fairly well maintained, but it's just not well set up for walking. You need vehicles to get around. You know, a lot of the developing world, you know, is not intended to be walked. Yes. Like, you know, like, and again, I remember when I was in Hanoi, people become friends with me and they're like, no, no, no, I'm going to take you on a scooter.

I'm not going to why are you walking? Like, you know, I was trying to explain what I was doing. They were like, why would you walk? you know, when you can go on a moped. And that's probably the right attitude, too. I have the view that people should pick out a place where they're quite sure they don't want to go and at least subject to some safety constraint, then go to that place. I agree with that. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of my whole strategy in many ways is, I mean, although spectacularly failed with Phoenix, I tried to. I wanted to be a smart ass and prove that Unwockable Phoenix was, in fact, walkable. And it did not happen. It's getting less walkable, too, right? It was, it was, I mean, but again, it's no one, no one there walks. And no one should walk there. Like, they have no intention to be walkable.

Like, and that's okay, you know, like. At current margins, where is it you think you definitely don't want to go? Where do I definitely don't want to go? Again, put aside North Korea or middle of war zones. I'm kind of burned out on Latin America. I spent so much time there as a. during my banking career, I generally don't find, you know, I think Peru is, Lima is quietly some of the best food in the world. Sure, absolutely.

Like if I had to say where, you know, one of the, one of the, one of, to me, one of the dirty secrets is the food you get in a place is not that much better than you can get in the U.S. And, you know, the average person does not eat that much. Right. The exceptions being France, Japan, Korea and Italy, I think. Italy, yes. Yeah. Yeah, Italy is I put up there as well. In general, I get better, I got better Indonesian food in Netherlands than I did in Indonesia by far. Vietnam I'd also put up there as a place where the food is exceptionally better relative than what you get outside of Vietnam. Latin America just doesn't really interest me in terms of like, you know, I mean, I don't see a lot of variety in the cities. I'm not particularly into, like, I keep on wanting to go. I've had this childhood fascination with Surinam. In fact, last night, it spent about an hour looking once again at flights of Suriname.

I can't pronounce the name of the capital. Parasid. I know. It's funny, just this morning, I was looking up Suriname and thinking of going. Paro. Yes, whatever. The P. I mean, there are direct flights from actually Netherlands, but there's no direct flight from JFK.

You can go to Georgia. But also just, you know, doing lots of pin drops looking at possible places to walk. It's not that interesting. You know, it's kind of spread out. It's hot. But the mix of groups is interesting. The food is good when you buy it in the Netherlands. That's a hope.

So, I mean, I kind of, this morning I booked my next trip. Originally it was going to be Georgetown and then going to, I can't pronounce it, Perra. Yeah. Suriname, yeah. But I just, I just, for whatever reason, it's just, the Caribbean's this doesn't interest me. I don't know what it is. It just doesn't seem like there's a lot of cultural depth there. You know, your listeners can yell at me who are Caribbean.

be in there. But like, I will go there. This is on my list. They're wealthy now. And I think the interesting thing about Georgetown is they have the oil, so you have the economics side. They had 40% GDP growth in the prior year. Got to imagine that changes in place. Just to look at that for me is interesting. Yeah, I mean, and Surinam has a spillover of the same thing, or they're getting like 20% growth? Lower, but still impressive, yeah. So I think that would be, in Latin America, that would be interesting. But in terms of not, yeah, I don't, I don't want to go to South Africa either. I have no interest in going in South Africa. I went to Cape Town last summer.

I was surprised how much I liked it. Okay. I'm afraid to go elsewhere in the country, perhaps, but... I mean, I was... I would say consider it, and I walked quite a bit. I spent six months there as a child, so I don't know. But that was a very different South Africa also. And there were smaller towns where I quite seriously thought of just moving there for a month.

In South Africa? Near Cape Town, to be clear. Cape Town. Small towns of, I don't know, 40,000 people with fully walkable city squares, perfect weather, amazing food, and prices were maybe one-third of U.S. prices with a much higher standard of living. I'm trying to think where else I wouldn't go. I don't have much interest in Scandinavia. I've had good trips there. And Helsinki for walking is one of my favorite cities. Bear Island surprised me. Yeah. I didn't expect to like Fair Island, so, you know, there you go. And for in summertime, it's...

I don't mind the heat, but my wife does. Have you been to the Orkneys? Of course. And? Incredible. Okay. But small. It's not that big a trip.

Because I was thinking of doing an Orkley, Shetland, Farrow trip. I've never been to Shetland, but Orkneys, I'd recommend. You can do that by boats, all three. Oh, yeah, that would be fun. And in Orkne's, to get to the ancient sites in Orknees, I guess you could do it by bus, but a car is useful. And it feels quite Nordic, not Scottish. Right. And that surprised me a bit.

I should have known, but... I mean, very Norwegian, right? That was my sense. Right. Yeah. Iran I want to go to, but I don't have my hopes up. You know, in places I want to go that I, are not particularly easy is basically Russia. I love Russian culture.

Absolutely love Russian culture. I've only been twice. I was thinking about one of the trips I'm trying to book is Belarus. But, again, it's just, it's just hard for a lot of reasons. And there are risks, you know. Yeah. And I don't know if I particularly want to take those risks right now. Yeah.

But I also know, you know, to the questions of issues of political morality, I would say that, again, 98% of people aren't involved in politics. Like, you get to a place and they don't care. Yeah. And so it's kind of, it's unfair to condemn a place based on the elite's behavior when 98% of people don't care. And, you know, similarly, the opposite behavior is, you know, I find a lot of foreigners are very forgiving of American policy because they understand that. that the citizens are not necessarily responsible with behavior of the country. We're very popular in Vietnam, I said.

When I was in Vietnam, people kept asking me, readers kept asking me to write about the political, like, what about the war? And no one talks about it, nobody. Yeah. Like, and I was right next to a, I remember having, you know, talking to some people right next to a,

you know, I was in an outdoor bar right next to a memorial to a Christmas Day bombing we did. And I think whenever we killed like 30 people. And there was this, you know, there was this memorial, including having a, like a jet fighter, part of the jet fighter from the U.S. jet fighter.

No one cared. Why do you like El Paso so much? The optimism is the American dream. So I think the American dream is very much alive in the working class Mexican-American community. And you see that in El Paso. Like you don't have, you know, when I was doing my project on addiction and poverty, El Paso is just fundamentally different. Yeah.

You know, you don't have the despair that you have in places. You know. And a low crime rate, too. Yeah. Extraordinary. And, you know, in some senses, Mexico acts as a roach motel, right? Like, if you're going to do crime, go over to Juarez. So consequently, there's no crime in El Paso.

But it's one of the most optimistic cities in the United States. It has amazing food, by the way. I, you know, I think it's walkable. And I've walked a lot of it. But I can understand why some people might not see that. I find just the colorful buildings. I find the good weather, fantastic weather, by the way, desert, high desert is always my favorite weather, great weather. And again, the optimism.

Like, you know, when you look at working class Mexican Americans versus working class whites, working class blacks in the U.S., statistically all the things are the same except for issues of deviance, you know, crime, addiction, you know, the Mexicans drink too much. Like, you know, generally, you know, it's where someone can come and really feel. And I think a lot of it is, you know, it's the, it's the slope of the curve, not the height. They can literally look across over DeWara's and see what they've got, what they're, what they're, what their, what their, what their, what their, what their, what their, what their, what their life is improved. And that just brings a great deal of optimism. Looking back on your career as a whole, what were the best things about working on Wall Street? Smart people. Smart people. Yeah. I, I, I, I've had, you know, particle physics. Banking. And then I guess, journalism, whatever you want to call it. writing now, a punditry. And I have found in general that the friends, the group of people that

was the smartest, the people I enjoy talking to the most, and I still enjoy talking to most in terms of being able to have kind of discussions that you can talk about anything. Yeah. And not feel like you're going to offend somebody at a level. We're generally bankers. Not all of them. They're like, you know, there is a hierarchy in banking. But in general, I think it was a great way to learn about the world at a very top-down approach. And, you know, people make fun of the idea of, like, becoming a specialist in X for what. But that was the great thing about banking is, you know, all of a sudden you had to learn about oil for three months. He became an expert in oil.

And then three months later, you became an expert on, like, palladium or whatever. And I found that kind of intense, continual learning to be very, very enjoyable. What were the worst things about working there? It was a very narrow view, again, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing now, which was it was very much, you know, the view from the Ramada. It's kind of fly in. You know, one of the things I able to say is that, you know, I stay away from certain neighborhoods in certain towns, and which is generally the wealthy neighborhoods. They're all the same. Mm-hmm.

Like, you know, like, they're all variations. on a theme. The wealthy neighborhood and Sophia is very similar to, like, it's like a little Fifth Avenue. And that's just not interesting. And that's kind of what bankers do when they look at a place. You just go, you know, my joke I used to say about, because I was a, I did emerging markets fix income. So we bond trade in Russia, bond trade in Turkey. It's like, you know, the entire investor base and the bond market of Turkey could fit into this, this restaurant. And they often do. Like, they're all there every night, the same group of people. And it's like, you know, So it's just very limiting perspective.

What's the special role that pigeons played in your career? Hi, John, for asking that question. A lot, actually, I became fascinated with pigeon keeping. When I started this project of documenting addiction, it came basically through pigeons. So during the financial crisis, I would go on these long walks in New York, these 15-mile walks, 16-mile walks. And I became fascinated with the pigeonkeepers. I would see these flocks of pigeons above the air. And then I started documenting and becoming friends with these pigeonkeepers.

And there was an old Italian sport brought over to the Bronx and Brooklyn. And now it's mostly a black and Puerto Rican sport. These guys will find these abandoned buildings and put coops up there and just keep pigeons. I find them to be extraordinarily beautiful. I think it's an art form. They call it a sport, but there's really no goal to it. Like you're not racing. It's husbandry, animal husbandry.

You just keep pretty pigeons. And then every day you fly them. And I found it to be a really wonderful hobby. So I started going all around New York, becoming part of this documentary pigeonkeeper. That brought me to Hudson's Point, which started me on my addiction project. How about snapping turtles? I have two snapping turtles, Reginald and no name, that are in my pond at home. And so for the last eight years, when the summer comes, they come out and I feed them every night.

I find it really fascinating that these two creatures, these two creatures, one of which is probably 40 years old. will live underneath the ice. My pond's frozen right now. We'll be underneath the ice for six, seven months, and then they know when to come, where to come to get hot dogs every, at the same time every year, which I think is a pretty amazing instinctive skill.

What's the best thing about writing substack? And tell us the full name of your substack and how to connect to it. Chris Arnadi walks the world. I would just Google, Chris Arnotti walks the world, the freedom to basically do this, You know, like, I can't believe people are, I'm being paid.

Not tons, but enough to literally walk around the world. Like, you know, it's kind of the perfect job for me. I don't think you could do that with it. You know, there's a, I forgot who it was who wrote about back in the 60s or 70s. Someone who related to the Grateful Dead wrote about the concept that you could, if you just, if you just have 2,000 fans on anything. That's right. You could, I forgot who it was who had that.

Is it Kevin Kelly or? I believe that it was. No, Stuart Brand, I think. Who come up with the concept. All you need is 2,000 people. That's right. Or sometimes one. Yeah, you know, and that's pretty amazing.

Like, you know, there's 5 billion people in the world. Like, you don't need that many people. But it's hard to get, right? It is, but it's not a high, it's not a high barrier. So it's, you know, it's really a niche culture because I have a niche thing, you know, and all you need is 2,000 people. So I really find kind of the substack model of allowing people to build a life based on just finding 2,000 people who appreciate what they do or 1,000. That's a really liberating, you know, notion because, you know, in a big world, you can usually find 1,500 people who have, if you have an, if you have a unique enough interest.

And do you think you'll turn your substack into a book or something else? Or why? So there's no plan per se. No. Like, why would you do? Like, I don't understand. I mean, I don't really understand books. Like, in the sense of like.

But you want to read more of them, right? I mean, I, I like, I'm glad people wrote books in the past, but like, you know, like, I think in many cases, kind of a weekly essay is, or biweekly essay or is kind of the perfect, at least for me is a perfect way to kind of communicate. Do you use AI at all when you travel? I do not. I'm starting to use it now as a copy. It's very good for travel. I started using it as a copy editor. But what do you use it for for traveling?

If I'm just arriving in the city, I will have guidebooks, but I'll ask GPT or Claude, what should I see in the city? And I'll tell it what I'm interested in. It's better than any guidebook. Really? It is. So when you land in the city, what do you tell, we'll say you were going to Xi'an, what would you do?

I would say I'm interested in Chinese history, art. culture and food. So you're a museum guy. I'm a museum guy. And I've been to Shian. You know, but so you go through the museum. That's right. So I do exactly the opposite. I've never been, I don't, the only museums I go to is military history museums. Because I, those are great too. There are histories of all those histories of histories. They're almost museums and museums at this point. So you go through museums. But in China, there are not many good ones to see. But in Xi'an, by far the best thing to see is in a museum. You cannot not go to the museum. I'll see the terracotta warriors, right? So I don't want to, you know, what do you get out of the museum? I love the visual arts. Okay. But so I see what's in it. But it's elites building a narrative.

Okay, okay. If you're interested in that. What can you get out of that? You can't get out of that from a book. The color plates are not very good compared to the actual paintings. So it goes to me, I'm kind of asking what was the Walter Benjamin question? Like, you know, the age and mechanical reproduction. Yeah, the reproductions are terrible.

But in the book, you don't really see the process of defining the history and the narrative and how people respond to it. So did you, you've been to the highest of Sofia. Yeah, sure. Did you get something out of it? Of course. What did you get out of it? The visual splendor of it, which cannot be captured in a photograph. So the aura.

Right, aura. Okay, the aura. Yeah. And that helped you understand it better? I don't know if understand is the word. I enjoyed it. I felt inspired. I shared it with other people who were there.

Yeah. And some senses, I kind of more the, I think you have a reputation of being something of a libertarian, kind of like materialist. Is that fair? I don't know what that means. I'm broadly libertarian. No, but like, I'm almost kind of, you're almost more romantic about it than I am here. Oh, much more, of course.

And whereas I find the museums would be kind of like, eh. And a thing you can do with AI is you can take a photo of any picture in the museum or any bird, any plant, any building. And give the history. And ask it all the questions you want. And that guidebooks cannot do. And that's phenomenal. I mean, again, I love that.

And it's free. I mean, if the margin is free, you have to pay some subscription, but it's not much. So what do you think you'll do next? I'm going to do this for another few years, and then I don't know. Like, I didn't know I was going to do this, you know what I mean? How did it come about that you did this? What was the moment of realization or decision? Life was stressful.

I found I always walked. You know, when I'm at home, I walk, I have a standard 10-mile daily walk that I do, which is very different from my learning walk. It's just therapeutic. around COVID. When COVID happened, I looked at actuary earlier tables and I said, oh, I'm a little bit overweight.

Like, you know, that's not good. And so I started walking 10 miles every day and I really enjoyed it. And then I started saying, well, I should just, you know, I should, I, when I was in Brooklyn, I used to, I walked the entire length of the New York subway system above ground. And I've always been into walking.

And I just realized, hey, I can just, I can, you know, I think I was looking at some plate at table that like, about one and a half billion people live in live in massive cities that we really don't know the names, like, you know, these big sprawling Jakarta's. I'm like, I would like to see that. Like, you know, that's where how, that's the normal experience for most people. And so I just started, I booked a trip to Jakarta and just started walking Jakarta. Listeners, I love Chris's substack.

It's Walking the World. Chris's book I can recommend as well. Chris, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcast. Spotify or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review.

This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowen, and the show is at Cowan Convo's. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.