The Rich Roll Podcast - ROLL ON: Travel In The Age of Climate Change

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Travel allows you to experience different cultures, broaden your perspective, and gain a deeper appreciation for the world around you. But there is no denying that it also comes with massive environmental costs. Is it possible to travel in a completely sustainable way? And if so, how? What is the best way to move about the globe and make the most of experiences abroad? Welcome to Roll On 2.0, an experiment in documentary-style storytelling in which Adam Skolnick and I ask a big question, investigate that query with several experts, attempt to arrive at a reasoned conclusion, and hopefully entertain you along the way. Today we dive deep into the pillars of regenerative travel—a new movement that aims to heal the planet while exploring it—and ways we can all be better visitors to the places we explore. This episode makes use of Adam’s journalistic prowess, buffered by wisdom shared by experts in the field of sustainable tourism. Special guests featured in this episode include Amanda Ho, Kílian Jornet, Celeste Brash, Mehmet McMillan, Amanda Harris, Paul Feinstein, Robbie Balenger, Paul Hawken and Hugh Garvey. Thanks for your help in making this episode possible! Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: seed.com/RICHROLL Indeed: Indeed.com/RICHROLL Squarespace: Squarespace.com/RichRoll  Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com

The Rich Roll Podcast. Santa Monica. Shit. I'm still only in Santa Monica. Every morning I think I'm going to wake up back in Indonesia, or Myanmar, or Mexico. I lived out of two bags for three years.

No fixed address. No fixed anything. I hid under tarps to sneak across borders. I tiptoed through minefields. Hitched rides on UN peacekeeper choppers. Now, I've been domesticated.

My language skills have frayed. My intestinal bacteria is no longer feral. Even my stubborn insomnia has been fading. I eat better. I think clearer. But I can't help but think I'm getting weaker. Softer. I am more fragile.

There is no doubt that I've lost something essential to who I am. Everyone gets everything they want. And I wanted a mission. And for my sins, Rich gave me one. Which is how I decided to bring my whole family down to a remote corner of Mexico. To a coastline where climate change and natural disaster, migration and crime, have hammered the landscape, the economy, and the people who live there. What is happening?

Adam. I appreciate the creative flair. I don't know how the Rich Roll podcast suddenly got commandeered and turned into the Adam Skolnick travel radio hour. You know, the bougie version of, you know, apocalypse now. Yes, yes. Well, thank you for indulging me.

But listeners, this is the Rich Roll Podcast. This is Roll On 2.0, where we dive into a topic from different angles. And this month, that topic is regenerative travel. It's a great show. It's all coming up in a second, but first. of travel. It's a great show. It's all coming up in a second, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with

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I was. Travel is your career path, right? It was. I was, for the better part of nine years, my main income was Lonely Planet Travel Guide. So I was on the road nine months a year, every year, all over the place. And it defined me, really.

That's what I did. I didn't have a normal life. I didn't have a lot of stuff that I have now for sure. My back door was out into the whole world. Right. Yeah. Certainly I'm somebody who loves travel. I look forward to travel. It's always something that, you know, kind of gets me out of bed excited about what's to come. And I think most people love travel, but here we are in 2023. And I think collectively and individually, we're all grappling with how to be better citizens, how to be more environmentally conscious about our choices, how we spend our time, how we allocate our resources.

And travel kind of presents a problem. It's sort of an elephant in the room, something we don't exactly want to acknowledge or confront head on because it's uncomfortable knowing that that wanderlust or that vacation that you've been saving up for, or that thing on the calendar that you've been so looking forward to has negative consequences for the planet. So that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna talk about it and we're gonna do that

through the lens of a question. And the question is, is it possible to travel in a completely sustainable way? And if so, how, and if not, what is the best way to move about the globe? 100%, one thing I never ever once considered was my carbon footprint. I never once considered the environmental aspect of it.

Not one time. And I'm an environmentalist. It's something I care about a lot. And not one time did I think that this is unsustainable. There's a cost to this that I'm not acknowledging. Which I think really underscores that elephant in the room thing. Absolutely.

Not only do we not wanna look at it, it doesn't even occur to us. But then we have people like Greta who appear, who decide the only way to get to the United States is by sailboat, right? And then we all just sort of descend into guilt and shame over our own choices. And the solution can't be in martyrdom

or just isolationism either, right? I think that as a collective, we need to find productive solutions that incentivize travel, but do it with systems that are incentivizing and kind of provoking regenerative solutions along the way as part and parcel of that process. And we're very far away from that right now, but I think it's important to talk about it and to kind of explore what those solutions might look like, what currently exists

and what might exist with a little bit more imagination, political, civic, and economic will. I love it. And so I believe we're going to start with the benefits of travel. Like, what's great about travel? You know, I think through escaping our mundane, are we able to expand our awareness and our consciousness? It opens up your brain to new possibilities. I also think that it makes you more accepting of other people and cultures.

It's a way to understand and to see that our truth is very different depending on the perspective that you see. When you go to other countries, you visit other cultures, you discover that what you have believed for all your life, like it has different angles and that's key for progress. It's really, it's an expansion of the heart and mind, right? That happens when you have these big experiences. For sure. I mean, incredibly broadening experience. I've been to Beirut twice. I've been to Bahrain.

I've been to threeirut twice. I've been to Bahrain. I've been to three cities in Saudi Arabia. And those experiences really changed me and broadened my perspective on the world and on humanity and how to interface with humanity. We all have lots of kind of preconceived judgments and ideas about how people live on the other side of the world. And until you travel there and sit in living rooms and convene with people in analog one-on-one format, you can't truly understand the similarities and the differences, the things that separate us

and the things that unite us without that, right? So it holds a place of great value for me. And I think a great value in general in terms of the education proposition of travel. You know, I became a writer because I wanted to write my way around the world. That was always the goal. And for me, that's because what I found in myself,

my own life, but also I see it is that in our daily lives, especially in the modern world that we live in, and I think it's even worse now with the phones, we are basically like wrapped in this like cellophane. Our feelings become dominant because there's no place for it to breathe. And you are who you are you're fixed in this world and you know where you live so well that you kind of can move like a shark through it and for me what I found with the best trips

I'm not saying all trips are like this but the ones where you really immerse yourself are like poking a hole in that cellophane and ripping it open so that you are exposed to the world. And so when that happens, you do come back. There is something that happens

that expands your awareness of who you are and a connection to everyone and everything because that oneness is real. Like what you experienced in the Middle East or in the Arab world or whatever. That to me is what's so powerful about it. And that's why tourism is a huge market, right? Let's face it, as we talk about it, there's impacts,

but there's also benefits. I mean, in 2019, before the pandemic, 10.4% of the global GDP, that's $9.2 trillion, was because of travel and tourism. That's tourism market. I mean, that's huge. 10.6% of all jobs in the whole world, 334 million jobs is related to tourism and travel. Visitor spending here in the United States, 1.7 trillion in 2019. Now the COVID pandemic happened and things really declined, like a 50% decline or more in some places.

Many millions of jobs were lost. But what happened when COVID was kind of getting toward, where we decided that we were opening up again is we saw this revenge travel element. So it started to bounce back. So there are positive aspects of travel, I think, we don't want to overlook. Right. So travel generates money, it generates jobs, it generates economic growth. These are all good things, of course. However.

And the United Nations has released a key report on climate change. We need a quantum leap in climate action to combat what we've done. Just one round-trip transatlantic flight emits twice as much carbon dioxide emissions as driving the family car for an entire year. This week alone, more than 90,000 people came to Hawaii. As visitor numbers continue to increase, so does the amount of garbage found along our shorelines. These popular stops are sacred. I hope it's a message to us that we need to do more to save this island.

100% sad, yeah. So obviously there are environmental costs baked into every trip that we take, and we've got to reckon with them. And one is the carbon footprint, right? That's the most obvious one. One of the ways to address the carbon footprint is through this thing called carbon offsets. But what are carbon offsets?

And are they really effective? There's 100,000 flights a day. I don't know if you know that stat, but like every single day around the world, there are 100 hundred thousand flights. This is Paul Feinstein, prolific travel writer and author of Fodor's Travel Guides. And I think that accounts for maybe the same amount of pollution that all the cars account for. Like it's an insane amount of environmental degradation. I hate everything about it. I hate

this idea of carbon credits. I think it's bullshit because it's like it's like saying oh we can be as polluting as we want over here because we're doing all this good stuff over here you're not really solving any problem you're still you're still a problem i've checked out a number of these offset options. It's cheap. Yeah, the thing is like, is this greenwashing just to make us feel better about like jumping on flights here and there? Or is that really making a difference? Like that's something I don't know the answer to. Right, and I think it depends.

You know, the ProPublica did a deep dive into this one market and how basically these contributions were supposed to be preserving and then reforesting an area. And it wasn't working. Now, to offset a six-hour flight, it's like 12 bucks if it's coach. It's like 12 bucks. So it's like you look at that and you think- How can that be right?

Well, you're right. If you look at the cost of the carbon, the amount of people on a plane, how long that flight is, that's how they break it down, $12. I saw it actually priced at just under $4 as well. But if you look at $12 as like that bottom line, that's so easy.

Like you think, well, I wish this was a hundred percent, it worked because it's an easy, it's an easy give. Bottom line is we don't know if the offset thing is productive, is working, especially if you're funneling your money to these organizations online that you've never heard about. And there's just nothing there like the organic label that we can trust yet. It's just not happening. So there isn't some kind of clearing house or place to go where we can say, these are the ones that are doing it right. Right. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, there's some that claim to do it right. But I think this ProPublica story- Which will link up in the show notes. Yeah, yeah. It shows that there's an argument there

that maybe it's not working out. The problem is that restoration is kind of complicated and not every tree you plant is gonna survive. And like, you know, it's complicated and it's hard to do. And there's politics in every region that you might wanna do it in. So it's like, the question is, is that ever really a solution

or is the solution what kind of Killian came up with? Right, so it's one thing to give lip service to how we think about travel and our environmental responsibility. And it's another thing to actually like walk the walk, right? And somebody who's walking the walk in a really inspirational way is a friend of the podcast and perhaps the greatest living endurance athlete, our friend, Killian Journet. But then as athletes, of course, it's all about traveling.

And then it's all about moving because races are all over the world like uh if you want to the ventures projects uh and we have the opportunity and i think that for me the biggest difference it's been like before i was taking it for granted like okay i can go to race in in malaysia in japan in u.s in in australia in south africa in a year. So I was taking this as something that granted because I was an athlete. Well, today I think it's precious like to travel. It means that I will have a footprint. So if I do it, it needs to be something very, very special.

So I think in the last years, that's what have changed the most for me is to change my way of thinking that i'm doing it i'm traveling because i can to i travel as something that i know the the harm of it and i take it as something precious and knowing that more deeply like of course like i have been seeing like glaciers disappearing all my whole life and and see these effects like all the time but to connect that to my daily actions like it took a period of time so um i would say i still like a big footprint and then try to do the other in so I can like use low emission means to go to the races. So mad respect for Killian for, you know, basically taking such

a hard line and being so intentional about how he is thinking about his travel. Like that's a guy who probably could be traveling all the time and going to amazing places and doing all these races. And he's like, no, I'm not doing that. Like that's fucking bad-ass, right? It is. To do that. And I think that it's inspiring for the rest of us

that leads us all to be a little bit more mindful and conscientious. Like when I'm thinking about like buying that next airplane ticket, that leads us all to be a little bit more mindful and conscientious. Like when I'm thinking about like buying that next airplane ticket, I'm gonna be thinking about would Killian do that? Right. And he would probably say no, right? So I'm gonna think twice.

You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I like what Killian had to say though. Like if you limit it to one trip, one big trip, if that's the way you look at things, that makes a lot of sense actually. And you're mindful of where you're going, how long you're going for. Maybe do that trip, make that a longer trip.

I mean, that's kind of a guiding post for me. I'm starting to see and think the same way you are, the way Killian is doing it. Cause it makes a lot of sense. He's not just like, he's obviously thought it out and it makes a lot of sense. Right. What about hotels?

Yeah. Hotels are a mixed bag because if you look at them, when you have a hotel in a remote location, sometimes depending on the level of investment, that will sometimes necessitate and include sewage treatment, alternative energy sources, landscaping, sometimes natural landscaping. So not all hotel developments is created equal, basically. The word sustainable is a buzzword, and there's no such thing in the hotel world. So there are hotels that try very, very hard in a lot of different ways, and there are hotels that are being performative. Once again, this is Paul Feinstein.

So when I say performative, you'll see hotels saying, oh, you know, we use a specific kind of light bulb and we've got rid of single use plastics and and so on and so forth. But then like maybe you're at a hotel in Norway and they have mangoes on the menu. Well, you know what don't grow in Norway? Mangoes. And so to get a mango in Norway, it's got to go on a tanker and it has to go a very far distance and it's the least sustainable thing you could possibly do. Like I haven't seen a hotel figure out laundry yet. Laundry is the least sustainable thing in a hotel. It abuses water. It uses chemicals. it abuses water it uses chemicals it there's a ton of waste uh the energy it takes to run it is prohibitive um so yeah i'm seeing some hotels that are really fascinating you know they have

their own farms and they have you know they grow their own produce and and their own eggs and their own dairy and but you know if it's a five-star location, you really have to educate your guests properly because if that guest wants this thing, they're going to go out of their way to get it. And I don't know, it's just really hard. A hotel inherently is not a sustainable operation. So it really depends on the ownership group to really focus on things that are not just performative like single-use plastic. Well, there's also two other interesting ripples here. In a lot of kind of tourist destination towns,

during the pandemic, a lot of higher net worth people bought up real estate or second homes in these locations to flee their kind of urban primary homes. And that has gone a long way towards, you know, driving the cost of living and the cost of housing up such that the support staff can't afford to live in the locations that serve all of these people, right? So ski towns, et cetera. And that has created a really unsustainable situation economically and it's almost kind of like human rights issue, right?

Like if you can't have a community where the people that basically allow the infrastructure to exist, they can't live there, what does that say about your priorities and the long-term viability or health of that community at large? And that's a huge issue. And then the second ripple being the impact that the rise of social media has had

on driving trends and travel where such a premium is placed on getting that perfect shot or that selfie or that making that real in that exotic location and how that's driving consumer behavior to kind of maybe travel more than one ordinarily should for the purpose of content creation and external validation and like brand building.

Yeah, it's exactly right. And I even talked to Celeste Brash, a fellow writer for Lonely Planet, a colleague of mine back when I was doing the Lonely Planet books, I should say. She and I spoke for a while about this concept exactly. I have felt that a lot of the shift in travel has been less of seeing a country of more like what is there to do in a country rather than what can I learn from a country?

And I feel like travel has gotten a lot less expensive. So it's become open to a wider range of people. a cool thing to do in Instagram, especially obviously is, you know, people showing the photos of them in these places and going to places just for the gram and all of that. It's really changed the type of traveler. Like now I see people who are, who are really there. It's a very self-centered activity where I feel like when I started traveling and sort of up until now, you know, my parents' generation, um, in the sixties and seventies and all of that, um, you know, people were really going to sort of find experiences and meet the people and see different things and see different cultures. And there are certainly people who are still doing that quite a few, but I feel like

the bulk of travelers nowadays are going, it's all about what is there to do. That's what all of my writing, guidebooks, everything now has shifted to, not a guide of how to find out things on your own, it's a guide of telling you what there is to do, what you can do to have funds. It feels exploitative to me. So Hugh Garvey, who is now the editor-in-chief of Sunset Magazine, was my editor at Playboy. And Hugh was the first person that kind of brought to me this concept that travel was broken. This is like in 2015. And his whole thing was everything's the same everywhere. It's all fucking boring. And so I had to, I had to call him. I had to call Hugh and talk about this particular issue

because, you know, I know he was early on on the travel is broken, but also because as the editor of Sunset, he is, you know, helping readers find their way to an authentic experience in the American West. Travel has always been broken. You know, basically the, the vacation was, you know, an invention of the, I believe, you know, uh, late 19th century, you know,

post-industrial revolution, people with time on their hands, and then people who wanted to make money off of people with time on their hands. And so, you know, fast forward to today, we all can travel for relatively cheap from a financial perspective, but at extreme cost to the planet. And, you know, we're such novelty seekers now, both virtually and in real life. And it's almost too easy to go anywhere. All of that said, Adam, then why did you embark on this Mexico trip? What was it about this location that captured you and what did you learn through the process? You know, it's this notion of regeneration and could that, which we've seen in agriculture and is now kind of migrating to travel in that space,

can that address some of these issues that have made travel, I guess, somewhat broken? So when I hear that word regeneration, first I wanna understand what you mean by that. And also I can't help but think, is this just a marketing catchphrase that's been diluted and thrown around just to lure tourists into traveling to some place under the auspices of doing good for

the world when in truth, it's nothing more than just business as usual. Okay. Well, I can define regeneration for you, but I think it's probably better to get the guy who wrote the book, Regeneration, Paul Hawken, who you interviewed in episode 627. And so I figure we should just listen to him say it. Yeah, the goat. I define regeneration as putting life at the center of every act and decision. I mean, that's what regeneration is.

And so looking through that lens, looking through that, you know, seeing the world that way then allows you to reflect, you know, on what it is you're doing or what it is that you're a part of this being done and how it's being done. And it doesn't mean leaving it or quitting it. It means, can we change that? Can we change that? So regeneration is really not about blaming and sort of demonizing those institutions or those economic sectors so much as saying, wait, can we just stop

and go the other way? Can we not regenerate the world and have a GDP and an economy and jobs rather than degenerate it? And the fact is we can. So when we think about solving an intractable problem, like global warming, oh man, it's impossible. What can we do?

And look all these mega institutions and political stupidity and ignorance and so forth. But if we step back and say, well, what are the conditions that create self-organization or self-abnegation that is the destroy that, then that's where we wanna go. And that is the source of change.

Right, so I get the idea of regeneration in general, but how does regeneration apply to our relationship with travel? You know, that's a great question, Rich, which is why I spoke with Amanda Ho, co-founder of the Regenerative Travel Group, which is a group of hotels on kind of what makes a certain resort a regenerative resort and what regenerative travel is and does. You know, regenerative travel is fairly still new as a term, but many hotels have been practicing regeneration for many years. They're just not, haven't been calling it that, you know,

they call it sustainability or being green or eco, but we really believe that you can't be regenerative if you're not sustainable because you have to actually go beyond sustainability to be regenerative. You know, being green or eco is doing no harm. Sustainability is reaching that neutral, but actually regenerating and restoring and replenishing a destination or community or ecosystem is going beyond that threshold of just simply sustaining something. You know, extraction is going to a place and, you know, kind of taking what you can get, you know, from your experience or the

destination, but really not giving back to the community in any way. So I think regenerative travel really goes beyond that to be more intentional and how you interact with, you know, the ecosystem, you go to the people, the locals, and I think it's coming with the mentality of wanting to learn and also honor the sense of place that you're going to. So I think that really is kind of a fundamental part of regeneration because it's really just not about the ecosystem and environmental aspect because all environmental and climate change issues are as a result of people and the pressures that we're putting on the environment. So at the end of the day, it really comes down to the people. night really comes down to the people. That's why I needed to go to Playa Viva because they are a resort that is attempting to be regenerative. So that means, among other things,

100% off-grid solar, no minibar, no air conditioning, no Instagram-ready murals. Although the treehouse bungalows are stunning. They're modeled after the Manta and Mobile arrays that are kind of launched themselves offshore. But what's here is it's just raw nature. And by that, I mean a virgin beach, like a real completely virgin beach. And the best mosquito net technology ever deployed. While the resorts of Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo are doing well again, Playa Viva isn't really in, you fly into Zihuatanejo, Ixtapa, but that's not where

Playa Viva is. It's on the coast about an hour south. And these are pueblos, not on the tourism map at all. We're talking about farming towns where most of the food is exported. There are no grocery stores. The men are basically all gone. They're in the city. They went north to the United States. It doesn't feel dangerous at all, but it does feel forgotten.

And then after an hour, we veer off the main highway. We entered this former coconut palm and mango farm where Playa Viva exists. And it is the opposite of everything that's wrong with travel. It is the anti-Tulum. It is not about the flash and the glam. It's about the roots. It's right off an estuary. They have a permaculture farm that is producing organic food for the whole area. Oh yeah. These tomatoes look fabulous. Yes. Where's the tomato plant? A family bought it. David Leventhal and his wife and her mother, they bought it and have decided

and have used the hotel as a vehicle to help in the education system there, help in the food system there, establishing this organic marketplace and doing real development work. It is like akin to Peace Corps development work where they're working with women to develop things like moringa and turmeric and like these high value crops that can fetch a lot in the marketplace

and can be grown in the household's garden. And so that's the kind of stuff they're doing. It really is Peace Corps-like stuff. I've never heard of it before, of a hotel going that deep with it. Right. The difference being between some kind of lip service, greenwashing kind of thing for PR purposes versus true integration with the community and a real kind of re-imagining of the business model that does just by virtue of operating contribute to the community. Like it's so immersed in improving the wellbeing

of the people that live there and kind of harvesting the best of what's possible to contribute to the betterment of that land and its populous, but also doing it in an economically viable way that makes it sustainable financially, right? And also alluring for the adventure minded, you know, eco tourists like yourself, right? And also alluring for the adventure minded, you know, eco tourists like yourself, right?

Who's gonna choose that kind of place to patronize over, you know, whatever else, you know, going to Puerto Vallarta or whatever. And it's South of Zihuatanejo. So Zihuatanejo is famous for shot tank redemption for where Andy Dufresne and Red met up and built a boat and lived happily ever after. And it's a beautiful town set up on a bay. But when I get there, we get there, we drive in into this, through this estuary where there's actual crocodiles in the estuary there. It's

gorgeous. You really feel like you've hit an oasis and you get to the beach and they have a mile of beachfront. I think a kilometer or a mile of beachfront. That's just, it's a completely empty beach. There is nothing else there. And it's not about the party. It's not about the kind of Burning Man vibes at all. So here is an example of travel done right. And so that's how it looked. And to get out in the ocean there, humpback whales, dolphin pods, huge schools of big fish. I saw a barracuda, amberjack. I mean, they warn you don't go in the water because the waves, but it's a wild part of Mexico that they are trying to bring back. that they are trying to bring back. Yeah, and to do it in the right way, in a way that also speaks to a deeper kind of driver need or desire within us that is seeking a more authentic experience that's more grounded and more kind of connected

with the space and the culture that we're visiting. That I feel, and I don't know, this is just like my projection perhaps, but it seems to me that this is on the uptick, like especially with young people, like do they wanna go to some, I've been to some of those resorts in certain places across the world

where it takes you like a half an hour just to like figure out where the beach is and get out of the building, right? Like, or to be on like some, you know, gigantic cruise ship where it's almost impossible to expose yourself to sunlight because it's a floating ball. Like to me, all of those things are insane and feel like, you know, relics of a bygone era.

And what I'm encouraged by or optimistic about is this enthusiasm or renewed interest in these more grounded experiences and patronizing places like that that are more deeply connected with their communities and not in a greenwashing way, but in a very real way are contributing to the communities around them in a greenwashing way, but in a very real way are contributing to the communities around them in a, in a demonstrable way that is not about like,

you know, trying some marketing plan, but is like integral to why they even exist in the first place. And that's exactly what this place is. So I never even heard of anything like it, you know, and, uh, we toured the farm. We, uh, hung out on the beach. We checked out the turtle hatchery. Um, and you know, towards the end, when we first got there, I mean, listen, it's, it takes when you're, when you've been in the city a long time, you haven't been on the road in a while and you get escorted to your room with no air conditioning and 85 degree heat at night, you know, and like the, they have great fans and all that. And the insects, you know, it takes a minute,

especially with a toddler, cause we don't do that too much. You know, I used to do that with a backpack or just me. And so with the whole, and April and I would do it together, but to have Zuma along, it was fascinating to watch him respond. And his response was pretty quick,

to be the comfort level on the beach, the comfort level with the people. I mean, he belongs in Mexico. He loves it so much. He speaks Spanish. So what I was left with kind of the parting experience was the last swim when I went out, like first we went and watched the turtles hatched

and then walked down the beach and tried to dodge the armada of seagulls that wanted to eat them and terns. And then I went out for a swim and it was in this kind of, there was the bioluminescence in the water. So these stinging little blue things and it's like looking down, it was kind of, there was the bioluminescence in the water. So these stinging little blue things. And it's like looking down, it was kind of green water

because they had the bioluminescence and you just see like sparkling blue everywhere. And diving down and you hear the whale song, like it's like right next to you, like just booming whale song. And those are the kinds of things you come up and you're like, yeah, that's why you travel. You know, we've been talking about regenerative travel in terms of what you can do as a traveler to help a particular destination or to contribute to a particular destination. But, I mean, this is why we do it to regenerate ourselves. I mean,

it's the ultimate regeneration. I mean, that's why I've always been interested in going to new places, new countries, meet new people, learn languages, because it's a shedding of your skin that allows us to, you know, tap into the oneness of everything. Yeah, that's beautiful. What an amazing experience. And also to be able to share that with Zuma at such a formative age, and I feel like that's a situation

or a place, an organization that has figured out how to create and share that experience and do it in a way that gives back to the culture that regenerates the environment, that is sustainable in its practices. And I feel like we need to really figure out how to scale up these new business plans and create incentives for the

tourism industry at large, such that that is the more attractive option or lure for the curious traveler as opposed to the traditional kind of hotel experience. Because I think consumers, if given the choice, are going to opt for this type of experience over that more conventional type of experience. Let's be honest though, it's not the comfort based travel. So not,

it's not going to be necessarily for everyone. And Playa Viva's approach is to not only restore their land, but also to take a watershed approach. The idea is to actually help upstream and help the families and farmers that live all the way up

in the mountains above, which you can see from the beach. And anybody on the river that feeds their estuary is their responsibility in terms of approaching them, getting buy-in from them, trying to help in a way that can be beneficial to the watershed and to everybody involved. And so that is, like you say, a special scope of work. You know, not everyone's going to take that on. And even Playa Viva's own, even though they've done a lot of great work, you can't say that, you know, development work takes a long time. And you can't say they've restored that entire watershed. Sure.

They've restored their part of it. You know, watershed restoration is a whole, is a huge task. And they're on that journey. you know, watershed restoration is a whole, is a huge task and they're on that journey. And coming back from Mexico, you know, it was funny because before going to Mexico, I was so hungry for it. I was so like, you know,

we joke with the Apocalypse Now intro, but like I was fucking desperate for it, man. You're like, I need to go up river. I am Martin Sheen. I am gonna find Colonel Kurtz and he's gonna answer my questions. I needed a mission and Rich gave me one. I need a bald man halfway submerged in the water

who's mysterious. And I need a guy shooting a gun off. I needed it. But coming back- Who's the Dennis Hopper character in this narrative? Zuma. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. Just going off half cocked. Yes. Half cocked running around. Unpredict Okay. Yeah, okay. Just going off half cocked. Yes, half cocked running around. Unpredictable. Turtle, turtle. But then coming back, you know, to soggy California from the sun again, it wasn't necessarily like more travel I craved actually.

It was like the idea of watershed restoration just kept pinging. And what I wanted was a deeper connection to my own watershed. That's what I wanted. That's what I left that place with. And I think that's interesting because I didn't anticipate that.

That's that idea of like, you have to go away in order to realize that everything you were looking for is like in your backyard the whole time? Right, because we don't look at the world as, I mean, we should define watershed. And I talked to Mehmet McMillan, who runs a nonprofit called Wild Places,

who I used to work with at Tree People. And that's what he does is watershed restoration. And he could better define what that is and why it's important. You can think of a watershed as a bathtub almost. And the sides of the bathtub are the edges of the mountain where water falls and drains down towards the bottom where it lands into a river or a stream and makes its way to the ocean. So, yeah, so that's basically a pretty simplified understanding of what a watershed is. It's, you know, an area of land and water that captures the precipitation that comes out of the sky and funnels it into a particular body of water, like a stream or a river.

And watersheds come in all sizes and they're located everywhere. We're all living in a watershed. And I think that it's important that folks understand that even under the concrete and asphalt, there were streams and lake beds and rivers that occupied those spaces and still do, just not as visible to us. You know, those watersheds and those surface waters lead to the recharging of our aquifers, which is where our drinking water essentially comes from. So it's important to recognize that we're all in a watershed.

That's what I wanted. I wanted to go to my own creeks. I wanted to watch that flow out to the ocean. I wanted to see how that, where you live. I mean, that's gotta be a primary. You must see it all the time. Yeah, in Malibu Creek right now. It's like raging right now.

It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, and to connect to it in a real way is something that I'd encourage everyone to do and to find your watershed and to explore it and to connect with it. Because it's like, we don't look at the world that way, but that's all the way the world is made up.

It's kind of the way indigenous communities were founded around the water and respecting that water source because they had to. We're so disconnected from all of that. Going to Playa Viva and seeing that restoration process, it really kind of inspired me to connect again to that idea. So where does all of this leave us? Is travel the great equalizer?

Does it build bridges or is it breeding more inequality and discontent and environmental degradation? I mean, what is the traveler's responsibility in terms of carbon footprint and cultural awareness? Is it all a get what you can while you can sort of free for all kind of thing? Or how can we continue to explore the earth while also walking more gently upon it?

You know, I think there's a few concepts that kind of jotted down when we were talking about, when thinking about this, because obviously whenever we, now we've done two of these, there's no clear answers, right? I mean, that's why we chose these interesting topics because they're not topics that are easily parsed

down to a black and white. There really is nuance in all of this. But one thing I thought of was Killian's concept of once a year, maybe international, otherwise staying closer to home. And so that means local travel. I mean, and you don't have to go far. Like you could travel exploring your own city could be fun. You can be a guest in your own town. You can explore a new neighborhood. You can connect to your own watershed, which I think is a

great way of traveling. So that's one. Yeah. And we talked a little bit earlier about the fact that Yeah, and we talked a little bit earlier about the fact that for the most part, you travel to certain places and you're kind of in and out. But perhaps you can rewrite that narrative and find a way to be more immersive in the community and contribute so that when you leave, you feel like you've left it a little bit better than when you arrived. Yeah. I mean, that's a key Killian concept is if you're going to go to the trouble of getting on the plane and doing the, and, and being part of that footprint, then make sure it counts. Don't just go in and out. Don't just maybe don't do like Killian's not doing a race that he has to go in and out of. I mean, and he's the best. So maybe you pick your spots. Also in terms of carbon offsets, I thought about this a lot. I personally wouldn't use any of those services,

not because I think they're all bad, but because I'm kind of picky with the charitable donations I wanna give to, and I wanna give them to places that I feel like are doing great work. And so that means I want a give to, and I want to give them to places that I feel like are doing great work. And so that means I want a personal engagement with them. And talking about watershed stuff really got me thinking like, you know, a Mets organization is one option, but as he mentioned, every watershed is going to have some organization associated with it. That means every place is going to have a watershed group. So I would encourage you to

look for yours and maybe fund their work unless something's alarming about it. But if you're going to fund environmental work, that's restorative, including tree planting, you know, stream bed restoration, that kind of stuff, then why not make it local? And then every time you do a trip, use that carbon offset formula. If it's 12 bucks for a six hour flight, if it's 50 bucks for a transcontinental flight, then that's what you give to your local group. But you can do both, right?

Like it would be good to purchase those carbon offsets and figure out how to contribute in a more immersive way in the place that you're visiting. And I think it would be beneficial to have a list of links or potential possibilities for that contribution in the show notes to the podcast. So we'll try to compile that. We'll do that.

Yeah, that means you Adam, put that together for us. I knew, I sensed that. Right, you got it? Put that together for us. I knew, I sensed that. Right, you got it? And I think just in closing, it is such a curious thing because I love travel, you love travel, like I do.

I am looking forward to the travel upon us, but I think the travel that has meant the most to me has been the experiences that are more immersive. And then rethinking that quality of immersion isn't necessarily tethered to an exotic location, like the dark retreats come to mind, which we've talked about, right? Like going into a cave, like-

You want that. It doesn't fucking matter where that cave is, right? You're in the dark, right? You want that, don't you? You could build that cave in your backyard, I guess, if you wanted to and create your own dark retreat. But I think what's cool about that is that it's creating a conversation around the caliber

and the quality and the intentionality of the experiences we wanna have with our precious free time, as opposed to going to the all-inclusive buffet, whatever. Like I'm gonna go into the dark and like go inward and learn something about myself to become a more self-actualized person, a better human, whatever, so that I can have a more fulfilling life.

Like that's cool. I think there's a lot of young people who are more interested in that kind of experience, which is not something that like when I was in my 20s, people were thinking about, which leaves me very encouraged and optimistic about the future. And to the extent that we can create systems and incentives

and kind of political economic will and receptivity, like we were talking about earlier around that, I think that we're in a good place of creating a situation in which we are building better travel experiences that are truly regenerative and not regenerative in just name only. I think at the end of the day, I think people are never going to stop traveling. So I think it's more important to actually really consider how you're traveling, what businesses you're supporting when you travel,

because I think you can actually make a much bigger impact by being more intentional and selective about how you're actually going to impact the destination on these decisions you make. My best experiences are always staying in small, locally run places where you have a lot of contact with the owners who usually have their heart and soul in the place. It's how they make their living. That helps you have interactions with the village. You understand what's going on. Your money is going directly to them. You know, if there's some way that you can help out, you might be able to help out a single person. You might be able to, you know, it's kind of the smaller you go, the more impact you're making in a positive way.

This idea of regeneration, the core of it is to experience the inseparability of everything. Thanks to Amanda Harris, Amanda Ho, Celeste Brash, Hugh Garvey, Killian Jornet, Mehmet McMillan, Paul Feinstein, Robbie Ballinger, and Paul Hawken. And of course, everybody here at the studio, Jason Camiolo, Dan Drake, and everybody here who helped make this show possible. Does that include me or no? Is that you thanking me? No, you're like on-air talent. No.

You don't need to be recognized. You're the one fucking talking the whole time. Did you thank me? Why didn't you thank me? Thank you.