Today, Explained - Vacation ... all I ever wanted?

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

🎵 Now that I’m away, I wish I had stayed. 🎵 Vox’s Allie Volpe explains why travel feels like such a mess right now (and how to make it a bit better). And the New Yorker’s Agnes Callard makes the case against travel altogether. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Vox’s first-ever travel guide answers some of the biggest questions about navigating the world, the country, and your own backyard: https://vox.com/how-to-travel-now Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh my god, Lexi, how was your trip to Italy? Every single influencer and TikToker who put the Amalfi Coast on my For You page over the last two months deserves jail time. Why? What happened? First of all, it's impossible to get here. You have to fly into Naples. Then you have to take a train from Naples to Sorrento. Then you have to stand in 90 degree weather waiting for a ferry to get on a ferry with all of your luggage. Mind you, we've been in Europe for two weeks. Ugh, that sucks. But at least you're in Italy, right? This? There's no streets here. There's no cars driving. So you have to walk up 160 stairs to get to the top of this gorgeous,

gorgeous, gorgeous area with these beautiful views. And then also all the power went out because the Amalfi Coast doesn't have the infrastructure to support this tourism. Oh, my God. Coming up on today, explain to vacation all I ever wanted. Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. This NFL season, get in on all the hard-hitting action with FanDuel, North America's number one sportsbook. You can bet on anything from money lines to spreads and player props,

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Is it Today Explain or Today Explains? Explain-da. Explain-da. Vox's Ali Volpe. Have you traveled at all this summer? Not this summer, but I traveled over the winter. I did a trip right before Christmas to Paris and a couple places in Brussels. How were your flights? So getting there was fine, and getting back was kind of a nightmare. We had like a very

short layover in Dublin from Paris, and so the flight was delayed getting to Paris. There was a line at baggage check like 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to board. No one had checked their luggage yet. And that flight was delayed. So we were delayed getting into Dublin and we only had an hour. So by the time we landed, the next flight was supposed to be boarding. And I just had a meltdown. I start crying. I'm sobbing because there were no other flights back to Philadelphia where I lived for at least another day. So Allie did what we all do. She ran through the airport looking like a crazy person. I'm crying. I'm running. I'm looking a hot mess. I'm throwing my passport at people. They're just like,

go, go, you crazy woman. I throw my passport at this poor worker in the airport. And she's like, ma'am, you need to calm down. And I pulled the, you don't tell me to calm down. I'm missing my flight spiel. So she gives me my pass and I'm running up and down the airport, like screaming, like, where's B-52? And no one is helping me. And now I hold a grudge against Irish people. Just kidding. They're all very nice. But that was stressful. I did make it home, and it was terrible. We have both had some experiences, and I think you and I and probably everybody else listening can attest that disruptions to travel do seem particularly bad this year. However, is that data or is that anecdata? Are things really as bad as we seem to be experiencing or

feeling? It does seem to be anecdata. Our colleague, Wizzy Kim, just reported that like slightly more than 19% of flights were delayed last year. And in 2018, only 17% of flights were delayed. And so far this year, 22% of flights have been delayed. So it doesn't really seem to be that big of a difference. It just feels like it's a lot worse. My first flight was canceled due to weather. My second flight was canceled because of a drunk guy on the plane. My third flight was canceled because they couldn't find crew. Like, I cannot do this anymore. I'm traveling with my son who has autism,

and this is too much. What causes delays and cancellations? Why does this happen? Yeah, so as of late, around the July 4th holiday, there was a bunch of delays. From L.A. to New York, another nearly 7,000 flights delayed. Almost 1,200 canceled as airlines struggled to recover ahead of the looming holiday travel surge. But it seems that it's mostly weather issues that have been impacting these flights.

Those lucky enough to get a seat didn't get that far either. Fully loaded planes sitting still as they wait in vain for takeoff clearance. A bank of dark clouds right in their way. And this can have a ripple effect. If your flight is delayed, then the next flight is delayed. And there also seems to be a shortage of air traffic controllers as well. So there is some personnel issues that are impacting this. United blamed a shortage of air traffic controllers for its weekend problems, but then suffered its own operational meltdown. But it largely seems to be weather, since that is very uncontrollable. Weather's always been an issue for airplanes, right?

It's always something that has existed. Right. And I think we're now just more attuned to climate change and some of the disasters that we are now experiencing more often because heat waves and smoke from wildfires can also impact whether flights leave on time as well. For the Philadelphia airport, no incoming flights. And you can see in these live pictures why. It is because of the low visibility and the poor air quality caused by the wildfires in Quebec. So I think as those things continue to ramp up, it will continue to be more of a problem. What should people know about delays?

You wrote a very good piece, and you walked through what people should do. There were many things in there. I'm a frequent flyer. There are many things in there that had never occurred to me. So run through what people should know if their flight is delayed. Yeah, if your flight is delayed, first of all, download the app for your airline, turn on the notifications so you can continually be updated on what's happening. So if you haven't left your house yet or your hotel or your loved one's home and your flight is delayed five hours, great. You've got a

little extra time to hang out, to chill, or it could not be so great because you have to check out of your hotel. But at least you know. For delays that extend overnight due to controllable issues, that is something like the crew is not there. They have to clean the plane. So not something like weather. Many airlines do offer complimentary hotel accommodations. And you can find all that out on the DOT airline customer service dashboard. We just launched a new website, flightsright.gov. Flightsright.gov. It features a dashboard we created last fall to give travelers more transparency in the airline's compensation policy.

Psst, it's actually flightrights.gov. But, you know, the big airlines, American, Delta, Spirit, Southwest. So those airlines provide free hotels and transportation to the hotel as well. But again, extreme weather does not fall under that controllable reasoning. So unfortunately, you're kind of out of luck. But it is worth asking if you can get a hotel accommodation, because what's the worst they can say? No. Is there any way to shorten these processes? I mean, the two things that I think people will complain about all the time are long waits at the airport and long waits, long waits when things go wrong. What makes it shorter?

Anything? It seems that if you sort of take things into your own hands, which is very unfortunate, and sort of do all the legwork like on an app versus like waiting in line at the airport. It'll be faster to try to do it yourself on an app or on a kiosk. Or even if you call the airline's international number because less people will be calling that line. It just unfortunately seems like you kind of have to take things into your own hands and maybe find some other flights that are comparable and see if you can get on those or find in a partner airline and see if you can get on one of those flights. Let me ask you about another travel piece you wrote for Vox about us. Now, I'm choosing my words very carefully here.

For a long time, I think there has been a perception of American travelers as ugly Americans, that we're not very sensitive about other people's cultures. We barge into things without really knowing what our surroundings are. Do you think that still happens? And for people who would like to not be the ugly American, what have you found works? I think that trope still exists. I think now that people are more aware of it, hopefully they are trying to change their attitudes a little bit. But I don't know if you saw recently, there was a PSA from Amsterdam sort of telling young British men, do not come here to be rowdy. We don't want you. So I don't think it's just Americans, but there is a sense of rowdy tourists going into a place and sort of disrupting the way of life for locals.

And I think we have to just be mindful that this is somebody's home. This is where somebody lives. And you wouldn't want someone to come to your home and scream outside of your window all hours of the night. So I think it's worth considering the culture, the people, and the earth, the environment. So you don't need to, you know, travel halfway across the world to encounter a different culture or a different ecosystem. This could happen, you know, in your own backyard, essentially. But to just be really aware and really respectful of other people's lives and how they do things. You and I have just talked about a series of annoyances about being

offensive, about trying to be inoffensive, about running through airports, about weeping, about strange people sometimes like, I don't know, jacking your stuff, leading you down alleys. What is the case for actually doing this? I think there's a strong case for travel to sort of open ourselves up to new experiences, new people, new ways of life. Even if we're just learning a couple of phrases

in a new language, that is something life. Even if we're just learning a couple of phrases in a new language, that is something we didn't have before. I think it's really crucial to sort of get out of our own heads, our own bubbles, our own ecosystems, and see how other people live. It can make you more empathetic. It can make you be thankful for what you have and see how other cultures live, especially in Europe, which maybe isn't as car-centric as things are in America.

It can make you reconsider how you want to live your life. I think it's really valuable and you get to eat really good food. Vox is Allie Volpe. Allie, thanks so much for taking the time. We appreciate it. Thanks so much. Coming up, a philosopher, a real-life philosopher, makes the case against travel. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket.

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane. 531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. Agnes Callard, philosopher. You recently wrote a weekend essay for The New Yorker. It's called The Case Against Travel. Sum it up for me. What's your case against travel? It's basically that people imbue travel with a kind of magical aura of transformation and virtue as though it were some kind of admirable achievement to travel. And I argue that there's not much reason to believe that that's true. There are two possible sources for that kind of idea of virtue. One of them is that you have special experiences that you wouldn't otherwise have.

And the other is that you connect to the great sea of humanity in ways that you otherwise wouldn't be able to do. With respect to the first thing, I think insofar as while we travel, we seek out experiences that we don't usually have, which is true. We do do that. People go to organ concerts when they travel. For some reason, you're in Europe, you go to an organ concert, even if at home you would never go to an organ concert, right? So you go to an organ concert. I give the example of going to a falcon hospital in Abu Dhabi. So we do go to the, let's say, locations where these unusual experiences would be located. But because these aren't normally things we do, we don't actually have the psychological faculties for having the relevant experience.

We don't know how to experience the experience. You don't know how to listen to the organ concert or look at the paintings that you would never look at except when you're on vacation or care about falcons if they're just not something that you care about. So that's the first argument that these sort of transformative experiences don't transform us because we don't know how to experience them. And the second is that travel is not actually very, let's say, friendly and humanistic. Rather, when we go somewhere, we adopt the attitude of sort of spectator, almost like we're watching a movie, except the people

around us are not in a movie. They're doing their real life stuff. But we're sort of staring at them and we're dissociated from them, not part of a community with them, even though we're right near them. Okay, you wrote quite a bit about the visit to Abu Dhabi. Can you tell me what happened there? I was there for a conference, and I got an email before the conference started saying, here are some things that people do in Abu Dhabi. There was like a list of a couple of things, and one of them was the Falcon Hospital. So I was like, okay, I guess I should go to this Falcon Hospital. Now, I'm someone who doesn't like animals, non-human animals. I like human beings, but basically all non-human animals kind of creep me out. And I don't like to be near them, to be around them, interact with them in any way. And so you might think it was odd that I

chose to go to this Falcon Hospital. But my reasoning was the reasoning of a traveler. Well, I shouldn't be limited by my usual tastes. So I go to this Falcon Hospital. But, you know, my reasoning was the reasoning of a traveler. Well, I shouldn't be limited by my usual tastes. So I go to this Falcon Hospital and there's a tour. They give you a tour. And as I'm being led through various, like, informational panels and exhibits, and finally to the part where there are actual falcons and you can have a picture taken with one on your arm,

I'm adopting this sort of passive deferential attitude where it's like, well, I guess this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And I, someone who would never want a falcon to be on my arm, I'm just kind of going along with the group and like presenting my arm to be in falconed. And that seems to me to be quite characteristic of how travelers behave. We're a little bit like zombies. My editor pointed out this morning that my Instagram profile picture is me with a very large parrot on my arm in Tbilisi, Georgia. And that I am grinning very widely. Okay, I was having fun in that moment. Seconds later, the gentleman who had thrust the

parrot onto my arm tried to extort a large amount of money for me, and I was not exactly thrilled. And I will say that I see what you're saying about there being ups and downs, but there wasn't up. There was a brief moment where I was like, I'm standing here on a bridge in Tbilisi with a parrot on my arm. Damn, that's cool. Did you ever have that kind of feeling? So I'm really interested in how you described that feeling, right? So you described it, I'm standing here on a bridge in Tbilisi with a parrot on my arm, which is interesting. It's like it has in itself a kind of alienated character. You're like, here is an example of me enjoying traveling. And you yourself during the moment are having that very thought. So I think that there is this kind of quixotic

attempt at the authentic when we travel. Like we're trying to have the experience that is characteristic of the place that we're in. But we're doing that from the point of view of like not having much of an idea of what that would be because we're not from that place. And so we're constantly asking ourselves, is this it? Is this it? Is this the moment? Is this the moment we're having fun? Is this the moment where I'm doing the authentic thing? And maybe some of those moments you answer to yourself, yes. You're like, oh, okay, this must be it. I've got the parrot on my arm. I'm on the bridge. I'm in Tbilisi. There we go, right? And that's how you record it to yourself in those terms. Yes, I hear you. Yes, and what's the downside of that?

A lot of people misinterpreted this essay as telling people not to travel or saying that travel is bad. As I acknowledge in the essay, travel is fun. And not only is it fun, but it is a time when we permit ourselves certain sorts of indulgences that we otherwise wouldn't. So, you know, some of them as simple as not working, but also eating at restaurants a lot. So we don't normally, I mean, I don't normally eat at that many restaurants, but when I'm traveling, I'm like, oh, what the heck, you know. Even when I could just buy grocery food and have it in my hotel room, no, I'll think, oh, it's okay for me to go out and eat out every meal. It's okay for me to spend every single moment just like entertaining myself. So we have, there's a certain kind of self-indulgence that's characteristic of travel that's going to pretty much guarantee that travel is fun. So do I think there's something wrong with that? No, I think that's fine. I think some of life is going to be self-indul But one kind of marker that we do think of it as something to be proud of when we shouldn't is just the stories that we tell. Like, we're very ready to tell stories about our travels,

kind of like showing off about them. And at least in my experience, like, we are less excited to hear those stories. So they're not actually very good stories. Only the people who tell them think they're good. It's like telling people about your dreams. It may have meant a lot to you. It is never going to interest anyone else. I remember when my parents went to Paris for the first time. I was maybe, I don't know, 10 or 11.

This was a big deal. We didn't have much money, and it was, like, their first time going to Paris. And they also, for the first time, got a video camera. And this was like a big deal in the whatever, like late 80s. And they took this video of these ducks in a pond somewhere in a park in Paris. And you didn't see any Paris. You just saw these ducks. And they recorded it for like 20 minutes. And me and my sister had to sit there and watch these ducks. And we're just like, what sister had to sit there and watch these ducks. And we're just like, what are we looking at?

It's just ducks. But my parents thought it was so special. Because they were French ducks. They were French ducks. But what's really interesting, I mean, are you American? I thought you were French for whatever reason. My name sounds French. I'm originally Hungarian.

Okay. Okay, gotcha. You know that being an American, there's this sense that when you go to a place like Europe or South America or Asia, you are experiencing culture in a different kind of way, right? You're examining, you're experiencing a culture that's much older than American culture, that's much older than the kind of American culture most of us are experiencing every day. Do you buy that going out and experiencing another culture does something that makes a person, I don't know, I think we think of it as smarter or more educated or more worldly even. Do you buy that? I'm a bit skeptical. So I think that a culture is something of very high order of complexity. So like learning is really the attitude that or let's say the activity that corresponds to experiencing another culture. That's it's hard and you have to learn. And, you know, to begin to understand another culture requires like learning stuff about their history, maybe reading some of their literature, experiencing their art. And like, I think perhaps if like a lot of those activities went together with travel and the travel part was just the sort of laying your eyes on the things that you had already kind of educated yourself into understanding the

significance of, maybe it would add a little something. But I guess I think just showing up and then looking at the monuments or something like that, I'm skeptical that it does very much. I mean, if you're from a small town and you're the only person in your small town that has been to Paris, that's going to be a kind of claim to fame for you. And people will see you as more worldly just because you can make that claim. That's exactly what in the piece I talk about Johnson advising Boswell to go to China because his children will have bragging rights. So his children won't actually be more worldly, right? But they'll come across as more worldly because they'll be able to say, my dad went to China. What was a trip that you took where you're like, I enjoyed myself and I

feel like I took something away from this? I tend to travel when I have another reason to be in the place as well. If I'm just doing travel for kind of the reasons I give in my piece, I end up feeling a bit, this feeling of like anomie, like kind of wandering emptiness. So this December, I was in Israel for the first time. And I was there to have a workshop on my book manuscript and to give some talks. But of course, I was going to also see stuff in Israel. And I went to, you know, the Wailing Wall.

And I'm not a very observant Jew. And I was, like, mostly going there as, you know, this is an important site. But like when I actually showed up there and I saw, you know, there's a part for the men where the men pray and there's a part where the women pray. And I felt like this like almost magnetic pull that I had to get closer to it. And so like I went into the part where the women pray and I walked up and eventually there was like a spot at the wall and I got up to the wall. And I like the second that my head touched the wall, I felt like I need to touch it. My head touched the wall and I just started crying and it was such a shock to me. I was like, what is even happening? But I had this feeling of like, oh, like, this is the place where my people come to talk to God.

And I didn't anticipate that I would have that response at all. So that's in a way the war experience of travel is seeing something that to you is really new. And I think that a lot of times we kind of shoot ourselves in the foot because we travel to places with a pretty high anticipation of exactly what's going to happen. And then holding that experience hostage to it has to fit the thing that I thought was going to happen in this place. And what to me was meaningful about that experience is like I had no way of anticipating that that's what I would experience when I was there. It was genuinely something new. Agnes Callard is a philosopher. Today's episode was produced by Hadi Mouagdi.

It was edited by Matthew Collette and fact-checked by Serena Solon. Patrick Boyd is our engineer. I'm Noelle King. And I was wrong. It is not a parrot on my arm in the picture. It's a peacock. The parrot is on my shoulder along with a small monkey. It's Today Explained. you