You Be Trippin' - Vagabonding in Paris, France w/ Rolf Potts | You Be Trippin' with Ari Shaffir

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Follow Rolf on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/rolfpotts/ Don't forget to vote for your favorite Trippy nominees below!! https://forms.gle/g5VrsDRu5D5WwNii8 On this episode of You Be Trippin', Ari Shaffir meets up with travel legend Rolf Potts in Paris to take his writing class and wander the city. They roam to the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens, and even stumble into some spontaneous dancing. Along the way, Rolf breaks down his travel philosophies from The Vagabond’s Way: why wandering beats any rigid itinerary, and how picking a simple travel hobby (like hunting for record stores or chasing down the perfect fridge magnet) can turn any trip into an adventure. They dig into escaping the rat race, embracing freedom on the road, and letting curiosity guide your days instead of your calendar. Now get lost! You Be Trippin' Ep. 99 https://www.instagram.com/arishaffir https://www.instagram.com/youbetrippinpod https://arishaffir.com Chapters 00:00:00 - Introducing Rolf Potts! 00:42:34 - Architecture & Language 01:03:08 - Food, Culture & Spontaneous Dancing 01:34:29 - Travel Rituals 01:54:08 - Creation of The Vagabond's Way 02:30:54 - Phone Addiction 02:42:53 - Get Out of the Rat Race 02:55:28 - Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

where you've been and where you're going this is our east travel show yeah we're going to talk about travel today it's you'll be tripping yeah hello everybody welcome ralph pots back on the podcast thanks for uh i don't know inviting me this is our first post-pandemic uh conversation yeah no we had a remote conversation about israel but that's right that's been a our only non-in-person conversation. That's right. I was thinking about that, too. That was for your podcast?

That was for my podcast. What's it called? Deviate with Rolf Potts. Which I've been on twice. Yeah. No, more than twice. Really? Yeah. I need to go back and listen to the one we did on souvenirs because I had this bag of rocks

that I have to like mark and put in something and I've lost the memory of where they I've lost the memory of all my rocks. Yeah. That one about travel has made me think about the, the, um, Ruta de, what? whatever in Israel. Oh, right. Yeah. No, I walked, I tried to walk from, from Nazareth to Jerusalem and almost made it.

I had to start hitchhiking. Yeah. But it got me thinking how there's like those hikes in so many countries. Yeah. These like multi-day hikes. Yeah. Just for a pilgrimage, but like just anything. Yeah.

My Israel one was special because I sort of wanted to do it Jesus style. Yeah. Oh, I would have loved to have seen. and those pictures of people carrying the cross the whole way. Oh, it was so weird. Jerusalem is such a weird city. It really is. Yeah.

And no, it was, there was Jerusalem syndrome. Do you know Jerusalem syndrome? Yeah, where you feel like Jesus once you're there? Or Moses, if that's your, if that's your, um, proclivity. Okay. You just feel spiritual, right? Yeah, and then you decide that you need to stay on the street corner and screaming at people about how spiritual you are.

I love Christians. Well, actually, we're in Paris now. We're in Paris. Let's start this. Yeah. Okay. No, but there's Paris syndrome, too. Which is what?

Well, people come to Paris. It's usually East Asian people, and they come to Paris, and they have all these dreams built up about how wonderful Paris is. And then they smell dog piss in the alley, and they run into somebody who cheats them out of a few euros. Or they go down, they take a wrong turn, and they're in some area that's not very pretty, and they sort of have a nervous breakdown because their expectation does not meet up to reality. It's called Paris Syndrome. It was first diagnosed. I actually think it was diagnosed in the 60s.

It's in my book, actually. There's a chapter about about... Well, it's a new book out right now. This is the advanced copy? The Vagabond's Way. Vagabond's Way. A follow-up, I don't know. Spiritual successor to Vagabony.

Way longer of a read. So what you're saying is you haven't finished it yet. I have not finished. I read the other one in fucking two days and on a beach. This one has taken me weeks ahead. Hopefully the young people will keep up with this one. But actually, you're in this and you haven't even read your chapter yet. I have not gotten through yet. Can I guess what the quote is? Sure. Yeah. Is it is it, um, don't be an

asshole? No. Oh, okay. You've always repeated that one. It's more zen. It makes you sound really smart. It makes you sound really profound. Hell yes. I don't know if I can give it away now. No, by the time this comes out, I will have read it and I will say what it is unless you want to talk about it. You can be part of your intro, right? Um, but I did want to point out that we've You've actually, you've been on my podcast like three or four times because you've bought me mushrooms on one of our podcast recording sessions through Los Angeles. Live. I texted or made a call. Yeah.

That's right. A mushroom deal. And for you, that's no big deal. But at the time, I had never done it before, right? And so then the next season, my next season began with us sort of breaking down how the mushroom experience went. Yeah. And so, yeah. Yeah, so not only have we had podcast sessions, we've had drug deal podcast sessions.

Have you done since then? Yeah. Nice. You like them. I do. Thumbs up. And that was part of our conversation. I sort of grew up in the middle of the country and I was, you know, the people who used drugs

to me seemed like losers who weren't headed anywhere. And so I sort of was very arm's length about it. And then I had conversations with you and then Tim Ferriss, who's actually done a lot of science with mushrooms. And then finally it's like, well, yeah, okay, I'll do them. And you bought them. You bought my first set of mushrooms live on a podcast. And that happened. I mean, we can talk about psychedelics on this podcast, but we can talk about Paris and travel as well. Yeah, we're in Paris. I'm here. I've never, you know how you're like, you talk about how you're like drawn to certain places randomly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've just never been drawn to France or Paris.

I was the same way. You and I have a backstory for Asia. Both of us have been to tons of Asia places. before Paris. I dirtbagged all through Asia before I came to Paris for the first time. Yeah, I talked to Louis Sikia. I was like, tell him I was taking this trip. And he was like, my first time I thought you traveled. I'm like, yeah, I goes, but you haven't been to Paris? And I'm like, I don't know, man. No. It's such an American thing. We're very Eurocentric, right? And so people assume, I think especially people who are born into sort of the privilege of travel, like their parents traveled and stuff, then Europe is where you go. It's where you go for finishing school or whatever. It's where you go for a study abroad.

Um, whereas privilege travel in a certain sense, you know, well, it's just too, it costs too much. It costs too much. Yeah. And so literally I've been around the world. I've been to Paris many times because I teach you class here, but I've never been to Norway ever, right? Well, when you're a dirtbag backpacker, $10 for a beer. Are you kidding me? Yeah, no way. I could live for a day in Thailand. I could have three meals. Yeah. For that price. So my wife has Norwegian cousins. So we're going there after this and it'll be a first. And so I'm sort of in this. second half of life phase of my travel career where I can actually afford to go places. I don't have to sleep in a hostel.

And that's exciting too. That's the cool thing about going to, you know, either going to a place for the first time or coming back with money and having both the dirtbag experience and the sort of... It's way different. Long, I mean, it's, I, my friends always call me cheap just because of the racial parts of it. And also, because maybe I am. I forgot about that. That's a stereotype.

right are jews still cheap yeah we're not letting that go midwesterners are cheap um it's weird i was in scotland and they were like uh somebody was like scots are cheap and i was like oh yeah they go like yeah we have a joke like uh how was the copper wire invented and i was like i've heard this joke it was go ahead and they were like two scots fighting over a pence i'm like that's not the way i heard it's not at all the way i heard it so this makes the scots the jews of britannia no i think so they're the Jews of Britain yeah but more fighty the Scots are scots are tougher okay but in the cheapness aspect I guess no I think there's northern Europeanness to this because my mom is of like northern German extraction and and they just don't spend money on things at all yeah which could

be like if you grow out with Holocaust shit too or it's like it's like defeated peoples so were the Jews not considered cheap before the Holocaust I think they were I don't know maybe it's sort of being an outsider community like sort of it's the whole diaspora thing like well in in in chinatown they say uh the chinatown bank in new york has the most um wealth of any bank in america because the chinese people the immigrants they sleep tons all they do is put it in the bank right yeah yeah they're not taking it out they're not they don't have a zero belt they're just like put it in there put it in there put it in there and i don't know where that comes from this could be your travel book you like look in the anthropology of cheapness yeah you know you could

Take away the Jewish stereotype and just say there's an anthropological reason why this happens. Yeah. I'll call it, it's not just us. Right. Well, there's, I talk about Benjamin of Tudela in the book. Have you gotten to the Benjamin of Tudela? Like the great Jewish traveler from the Middle Ages? Yeah.

He actually traveled from. I saw Levy was in there, something Levy. Levi. Oh, Levi Strauss. Levi Strauss. The anthropologist, yeah. No, but Benjamin of Tudela. He was from Spain, he was a Spanish Jew, and he made his way, he made it probably to Baghdad,

but every city had a Jewish community, even back then, this 1,000 years ago, maybe a little less than a thousand years ago. And so his travel account, and what I talk about in the book is that by the time it got to Baghdad, suddenly India is way more exciting than Baghdad, which was more exciting than Marseille. Well, he didn't go to India and he didn't go to China. And so he's basically saying, well, in India, they embalmed their dead with spices. And you can see your great grandmother and sit with her and as if she was.

is alive. Well, he just heard that about these places. And so in China, it's like, to protect themselves against Griffin, sailors pretend to be seals. My point being is that, my point being in this book is that his stories were great about places he had not been. The places he had been, he sort of had to be honest about what he saw there. And so usually in the cities he went to, it's like, oh, well, the Jews live like this in Marseille, or they live like this in Beirut, like this in Baghdad and then suddenly things got really technicolor in India and China because he didn't actually go right so literally he didn't actually go well he was just telling stories about what it's like because he heard things yeah yeah right so basically he was talking to sailors in Baghdad or Basra right

who were saying yeah I went to India and they embalmed people with spices and you can sit in a room with your embalmed great grandmother well that's probably not true right right or these things like it's a I guess but not I asked um I was talking about a friend of mine at New York County Club and I just saw on my calendar we were scheduling something and I saw Battle of the Boyne is a day Okay.

My calendar, some of my UK like calendar stuff still in there. Boynt, how do you spell that? B-O-Y-N-E. Oh, I don't know that. Yeah. And anyway, so then we saw this Irish comedian from Ireland.

And I was like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow for Battle of Boin? She was like, the what? And I was like, Battle of the Boyne. She goes, oh, why did you hear that? And I'm like, I don't know, what is it? She goes, I don't really know. but the idea that they all know everything about you know what I mean is it specific to

Ireland or specific to the UK I think it's Ireland but it might be the UK I'm not really sure but the idea that it's like they do this I thought maybe it's going to be a battle that the Irish lost and I think it might have been I don't know but but when you hear about it's like oh they do that there it's like no they have done it there is different than a consistent they do that there yeah well I don't know you live in New York so I've never seen somebody get pushed on the subway right but that's the thing they do there right yeah yeah no well that's that's what travel on peels you know that i'm sure i don't know what lies you're you're in paris for the first time right yep so what stereotypes are you bringing to paris

um i haven't seen the rudeness okay no i have seen it a couple times um on the plane was the first one really yeah the plane the guy was immediate like the stewardess guy was uh that's wrong word he was like back up with his hand motion were you on air france yeah okay um he was just over it yeah Well, it's got to be stressful to be a flight attendant in this day and age. And then one restaurant a little bit where it was just like, but I think it was also like a burn-in turn place where it was just like, oh, this is a tourist. They don't care. Generally, they've been very friendly and nice.

Yeah, no, we found that too. And in fact, there's this stereotype that French people are really bad about responding to English, you know, if you try to want to speak English, they want to have nothing to do with you. I think if you throw out the bonjour, you know, you know, desolets, jean no, I don't speak a clear that you're, that you're being respectful, but you don't know the language, but you are respecting and apologizing,

then they're like, oh, how can I help you? You know, that. Yeah, I've heard that. I've also just had people just break it and they get it what I am and they just break in English when I've tried to be like, may I have in Spanish, in French? And they're just like, hey, it's one cup. Has Spanish come out of your mouth since you've been here?

Yeah. Yeah. Every time I've, every time I've been in Spanish-speaking countries before I come here, I open my mouth. I'm trying to speak French, and it's just Spanish is coming out. Yeah. Yeah. Any, it's like a non-this-place word. So it's hoblar comes out too much. Yeah. When, what's the, how do you say, I don't speak French? Do you speak it? I know another way to say it. I know another way to say it. jenna parleu i don't i i ne is don't yeah

yeah i parle oh parle okay yeah i try and then hublar just comes out yeah yeah people don't stink right the horrible stereotypes about french people um stink uh well they do walk around with baguettes under their arms

they do it's pretty cool to see that yeah but not with berets The brays are gone. No, braes are done. Uh, do they, shorts, like you're wearing pants, I'm wearing pants. I assume that everybody wearing shorts is a tourist in this town. Yeah, I, so this is what I do. You talk about this a little bit in this book, I just got to this section.

Hey guys, breaking into today's episode to let you know a little bit about the guest, Rolf Paz. My favorite travel writer, my favorite writing teacher. He's got a, well, this, okay, I don't know where to start. Um, he's got a travel writing memoir class in Paris. every year, that that's where I was when we did this episode. You should take the class. Small Brain an American took it. Baltimore bankrupt took it.

I took it. It's great. Like, it's legitimately just a great way to get your writing together. And just like, and first of all, it's just so freeing. It's just like this amazing literary journey through an amazing city of Paris every year. You should sign up for it. If you're thinking about it at all. if you have memoirs to write travel or otherwise um and it's just a sick way to spend two weeks

in this in just an amazing city pariswriting workshops.com is the website sign up for it he's also a writer of two uh my favorite books uh vagabonding that i first read and got to know him um on an island in cambodia i read it and i was like oh i'm i mean i was already doing long-term travel right then but it just like unlocked every detail on it actually and the vagabond's way this book, this episode's all about that as we move through Paris. If you're watching, if you're listening to this one on Spotify, by the way, head to YouTube more than any other episode we've ever done. This is one

that we did all over the city of Paris. It really gives you a look of what that city is. And the vagabond's way, it's just, it's one page per day, 365, 366, no, 365 and a quarter days, just a fun thing. I was 15 of those little chapters into, you can skip around, 15 chapters into that, and I was like, I got to get lost again. But the vagabonding gave me something that I used for this podcast more than anything, which is there's a piece on it.

It's like 10% getting ready to travel, 80% traveling, 10% coming back. And the 10% coming back and had this thing where it said that no one's going to be interested in your travels. Just get ready for that. No one's going to be as interested as you are in these amazing places you've been.

Oh, what a fucking cool dog in the back of a pickup truck. I mean, even this, if you're watching right now, even this, you tell somebody how was Patagonia, it was amazing. I was maybe going to be the title of the podcast. It was amazing. That's what everyone says.

The views. You couldn't wrap your head around it. And you can't. You can't. And so you tell people about this and go, oh, wow, cool. Yeah, no, I took a drive once in the Midwest. It was really cool. And he's like, dude, don't change the fucking subject.

The few people are interested. Sal Volcano will sit there and listen to every detail I have about a trip. And he's interested. What did you eat? Oh, my God, that's crazy. What did it taste like? How did you know to try that? Oh, I would never try guinea pig.

I would never try Chantacurros. beetle larva. Anyway, I'm interested. I'm interested in talking about my own travels, but also in hearing about other people's travel. So is Rolf. So that get ready to have nobody listen to your stuff? Well, that's what this podcast is all about.

I'm one of the people who are interested. Please, tell me about it. anyway take his writing workshop in paris it's great i think chad might have done it too uh chad wallin um paris writing workshops dot com sign up it's in the summertime it's just a magical time to be in paris i'm definitely going to go back they have a beginner class and they have an advanced class i took the beginner because that's all it could work out and i got a ton out of it i mean it helped my stand up and help the writing that I'm still trying to get done, just immensely. Then you guys, I don't know, if you're looking for something to do, also, it's so fun,

you meet other people, you meet other crazy travelers who have tales themselves and they're all just trying to express it. God, I can't wait to get this book of stories out for you guys. Anyway, let's get back to the episode. Please sign up, episode 99. This episode, maybe you know, it's a dead week and why I made you like, there's no real point to put out anything. week because everyone's off in between Christmas and New Year's, and I was like, well, let me put up one of my classic skeptic tank episodes, which is this, that maybe people don't know about, and it fits perfectly well with travel. So this is the first one. I'm going to do that every year. That's it, everybody. Next week, we're going to have the Trippy Awards, the 2025 Trippi Awards.

The award winners will be out next week or the week after, probably next week. hawk there's hawks everywhere here it's crazy you see him once in a while ripping fucking some animal some poor sucker just ripping them apart and they're just cash

they fly and you look down the whole time like who can I kill whew um by the way this is my whole fucking drive every day it's been seven days already of just this it's getting better and better as I drive south

um all right let's get back to the episode to Paris uh Yeah. Also, I've got stuff. Please subscribe or wherever you're watching or listening. YouTube, Spotify. I think those are the only places. And take Rolf's class. It really is crazy. By the way, this is fucking every direction. Actually, let me show you here. This is fucking every direction. There's nowhere where this fucking view is not crazy.

Okay, back to the episode. Sorry to break in for so long, but I had to tell you about Rolf's class and his two great books. Vagabonding and the Vagabond's Way. There's also Marker Pohl that didn't go there. A souvenir. I didn't read Marker Pohl that didn't go there. But I haven't a souvenir. It's also very cool. It's a clue. Whatever.

Anyway, that's it, guys. Follow Rolf Potts on Instagram. Rolf Potts. Oh, and listen to his podcast, which I've been on a couple times. Deviate with Rolf Potts. Start with my episodes. Deviate with Rolf Potts. God, why don't I not push that more?

All right. Bye, everybody. Back to the episode. Back to Paris. Back to Rolf Potts. Look at this. I mean, if I zoom in, it doesn't get new. worse. It just gets better and better. Damn. Oh, fuck. Eight minutes. Okay. Back to the episode. Again,

the book is the vagabond's way by Rolf Potts out now on Valentine's Books. Yeah. In bookstores everywhere. What's that? There'll be an audio book of it. There will be an audiobook. I haven't recorded. As of this session, I have not recorded the audiobook yet. I did a chapter of my friend's book, same talent. He had different comedians read different chapters. And the feedback was comedians don't know how to read. Okay. Because we're all doing it for the first time. We're like reading it as we're reading it.

No, it's a different, it's a different vernacular. It's a different kind of thing. And one challenge I'll have with this book, I'm like, I was just saying some French words horribly just now. This book is full of foreign places and words. And so I'm going to hire an assistant to help me pronounce all. Like, it's one thing to see them on the page, but or to read a travel history and then realize that, oh, this is an Arabic word. How do you actually pronounce the syllables? in this way.

It is a, well, we can talk about us as we go. I say we go out in France, sorry, Paris, and just do this, yeah, just do this as we go and like, see a little, if you're watching on YouTube, come, come visit Paris with us. And we'll just do this as we go. But this is a travel tip a day is pretty much. Right, for, yeah, but it's not like where to get a baguette in France type travel tips. It's more existential and consistent.

conceptual stuff. It's like, this is your only life. If you want to travel, this is maybe why you should travel. When you come to another country, this is sure you can buy, you know, a baguette in the store or a souvenir. But maybe you should get off of the tourist assumptions and do things that you would, that would surprise you. Yeah. So here is. Yeah, it's great.

It really has already gotten me like the fever back to like get the fuck out of town. There was something in here that I saw that, that, it is. is talking about cultures and stuff like that. Instead of, I forget what it was, instead of like looking at a, what's up dude, naked dude. I'm not even going to look. I don't know, around the courtyard.

If I saw a dick. So we're in like a fifth floor French apartment and we can sort of see into many people's houses here. We really can. I was walk around naked after my shower and I realized across the street. Other people are just smoking out there. I'm like, well, I could see them perfectly.

Right. of course you could see me perfectly no and actually that's that's a weird thing about walking at night in a city like this is that you sort of have a window into people's lives um as you walk down the street because we these people don't live with big lawns around their houses i guess new york like that i mean i've seen people fucking okay yeah i've pulled up a stoop across the street and pretended to type of my phone just looking at people on the first floor with window I don't have you been seen fucking like this must have been yeah I must have been you just do the math on that and you begin to wonder are there buildings taller than your window anywhere nearby you then yeah you've been seen right yeah anyway here's what I was going to say it was something about I forget the how it came up but it made me think of this how you have to look at the customs and stuff so one of the things I do is how do they dress in blank like Dominican Republic they don't wear shorts right yeah and so I was like oh shit So I don't want to be an outsider.

Yeah. Same thing here. And it's the only reason I'm wearing a t-shirt is because my other one is stinky now. Right. But no print t-shirts. Well, I wore a button-up. Yeah. Just, you know, because we're going to be out and about in Paris.

You got to wear a button up and roll up the sleeves. Well, I don't know if the rolling up the sleeves is a thing, but that's what I did because it's a little warm today. They said Parisians would, they don't even wear short-sleeved button downs. They would wear long sleeves and just roll up if they have to. No, well, they say, like, in America, we have casual Fridays. Oh. And not only, I read this in a book that was published 20 years ago, but not only is that not a thing here that, but like someone who has like a New York level of casualness is either American or they are mentally ill in Paris. Like there's no, either it's a tourist who is like that casual or they are a crazy person who's walking around the street with their shorts and their t-shirt that says, go Mavericks or whatever.

Right. Yeah, it said, it said, it's said, oh, mind's me. It was in Myanmar, we're, like, this, like, army guy was, like, following us around talking to us. In English? A little bit, broken English. Uh-huh. And we're, like, humoring him. We just gotten chased away from, like, a, like, an army, like, holdup or something like that.

They were, like, get the fuck out. Whatever. They were, like, in no uncertain terms, like, you got to leave. All right. Anyway, so this guy kept talking to us, and we're, like, trying to humor him. And then at some point, we're sitting in a restaurant. He's with us. And some other guy comes over.

where he's like, that's man, he is a fool. I'm like, oh, he's half retarded. So it's a crazy guy. Yeah, I'm like, oh, no wonder he's talking to us. Huh. He just found an old army jacket. Well, good for him. He got us.

Yeah. Yeah. And he probably, he probably, maybe in a culture like that, tourists are kinder to him, you know, that they don't know that he's mentally handicapped or whatever. And so they, they, he likes that. You know, he's, he's humored. Yeah.

In his neighborhood, people are tired of him. And his crazy stories and it's like visions. Yeah. Yeah. But I read here, no shorts. If you have to wear a t-shirt, it cannot have any writing on it or no bright graphics. So I only pack plain t-shirts. Yeah.

I suspect that's changing because I've seen so many NBA stores here. Have you noticed that? Especially I'm in Little Africa. Okay. Where I'm staying, a little West Africa. Well, that could be a multicultural aspect of the city that, that as immigrant communities become more a part of the French mainstream, it's less formal in that old European way.

And so I've literally seen like three stores in this neighborhood that just sell MBA here. Yeah. And there's more French people, Boros Dio, and like there's a few French basketball players. Yeah. Well, they played pretty well in the Olympics. The French national team does pretty well. Because they play together. We have infighting, just like in America in all aspects of our lives.

Right. maybe that'll unite us is once we start really losing in the Olympics we did it just made us like hate the Olympics like oh this doesn't mean anything it's crazy that the end that the America would never just crush in basketball well this is a famous I mean basketball is close to my heart because James Naismith wrote the rules of basketball in my home state in Kansas and Kansas is the reigning national championship champions of the NCAA but I actually I'm an Olympics nerd so I know this, 1972, the Russians won for the first time ever. Nobody got close to beating the Americans. Then there's sort of a shady British referee. You can look this up. And he basically gave

the Russians a second inbound when the game was over. Like the inbound of the ball missed the basket and the game was over. Americans were celebrating. You can find this on YouTube. And then and then this ref is like, no, no, no, no. And that has to be replayed. So they did another inbound through the ball all way up the court the guy laid it in russians beat the americans 1972 in the big's first time by one by one yeah i think it's before the three point shot wait wait what he was on the take i don't know i don't know and i'm sorry for any brits in the audience but it was something was suspicious um that this supposedly neutral well i don't know it was the cold war so maybe the british guy was was citing i don't know what happened but it was a really weird it's never been explained why the russian

needed it or the so was his reason yeah it was the reason for another new inbound do they not Wikipedia could tell us I'm sure but for for an insane reason they decided to give them a second chance and they won and since then we've lost the gold many times now no but once we got the dream team in 92 yes in 92 there was a run of like oh hey we're actually going to use pros yeah and then it was like game over right it was who's going to win the silver was the question right why didn't that maintain i mean when you see who's you see the other players the other team it's like they'll have two NBA players and we have 12 of the 15 best players yeah so like how in the fuck do they lose i don't know i haven't followed the olympics closely

how did it go in the last olympics america won right i don't know we lost once i remember in like the panama game or something like some like some non like olympic and then we lost the It was a Puerto Rico once. This was like 10 or 12 years ago. It's because the guys know how to play as a team. Well, no, yeah, seriously. Well, this is the metaphor. This could save America.

So if we lose enough Olympic sports that we should be winning, it'll make us realize, well, maybe we should be a little bit less narcissistic about it. Maybe the right will start being like, actually, we should use trans. If we're going to get some golds. Maybe it's such a good idea. As long as they can set a good pick, right? Yeah. As long as they can post up.

Dude, I had this secret player I'd do my buddy Steve Renazisi When you'd pick up It's like not illegal But it's just for it was just give a nod It's the Princeton back door I don't know the Princeton back door You're just like baskets over there

Mm-hmm You like you'll go out to get up To get an outlet pass And then the defender will be too close But I will not intend to throw it And then defender sees oh I can get that So we'll make a stab at it And you just take off towards the basket

So it's the fake pass Fake pass and drive the And drive. Yeah, when it's 10, 10, you got one point to go. Nice. It's just like you look at Steve. And I was like, hey, oh, guys, left side, go to the left side. And it's just, it's an easy to every time.

That's how those other players know. Farmer high school basketball star, telling it like it is. Anyway, let's get out there with our jeans. Yeah, we're definitely we're shorts. We've got our jeans. We're going to be sweating a little bit. Yeah, we're going to be Flemering. You and I have talked about Flemering.

I love it. I tell everybody about it. I'm not going to try to pronounce it. You want to describe it? Oh, well, it's when you're walking through the city, not in a utilitarian way from point A to point B, but just seeking experience. You're walking and you're sort of following the mood of the city through the city looking for something new. And metaphor, one metaphor that's been used, a famous book was written by Edmund White,

who's a gay author. And he says, it's like cruising. But instead of cruising for dudes, you're cruising for experiences. And you're just walking through the city, not because this is the main boulevard or because I want to go to the chansalise but i'm just going to walk through the city and see what catches my and follow that instead and so we can do that a little bit i have some ideas for where we can set up it's like it's also if you have like a direction we're like eventually i'm going to head up over there but then if you're not in a rush which you always are in new york where it's like oh what's this

street and then you're like well i'll cut back eventually and it's a good traveler strategy because there's all these prescriptions oh we if you're in paris you have to go to this place You have to go to this restaurant. You have to go to this park. But if you allow yourself to Flannur, and this was invented in France in the 19th century, it was sort of aristocratic men, you know. But now it's a tool that anybody can use.

Just let go of your expectations, let go of where you think you're supposed to go. And just, if this catches your eye, follow it. Do you still do the thing where you ask your students to follow a color of the city? Yeah, yeah. Hey, I tried that in New York. Yeah.

There was a lot of crossing back and forth on the street. Really? It was like yellow. I was like, oh, there's a sign that we get there. I was like, oh, there's another one. And then you're like, oh, okay, there it is again. And then like, not the same one, but it's like we never went further than a block. Yeah.

No, that's color tracking. That's psychogeography. That also comes from Paris. The idea, it's called the Delive. It's the drift. You drift to the city and you play games with the city. And so instead of just following the tourist map, you follow the color pink or you follow something interesting. My wife and I saw there's all these, the chate noir,

Have you seen it? The black cat, that famous picture, like that Art Nouveau era picture of the black cat. And every tourist shop has that picture. And I'm going to go off camera real quick because basically we bought a shot glass. Of one of those? Because they're everywhere. Yeah, what is that from? I don't know.

Actually, we need to look this up. But it just, we realized that our psychogeographical strategy for Paris was finding pictures of this cat. And if you're in a tourist district, I swear to you, every tourist shop. in Paris, it has a postcard. Yeah, I've seen a thousand people have on the walls. A cigarette. I'll let you hold that in the lens. It's like the most borrowed sense of like space and what's it called?

It's like an old, maybe an art nouveau poster or yeah, it's a historical poster that's like over 100 years old, but it's so popular. It's like the scream or other famous pieces of art or like the Mona Lisa, right? But I swear to you This is our psychogeographical strategy the last few days You can't find a souvenir shop in Paris Without this on something It's on socks It's on cigarette cases

It's on T-shirts It's on everything Who buy shot glasses by the way Besides you for the lark of it But like who the fuck is doing so many shots at home Just right out of college Fucking idiot is buying shot glasses Well right out of college

That's it Yeah No, we actually, my wife and I are going to use this shot glass. So what besides a canter holder? Well, no, we might use it to mix cocktails or to humor our guests or something. It is good. That for measure. It's a good measure.

But yeah, no, we don't line up shots back home. Yeah. Now, this is, yeah, what is the culture? Well, actually, it is a measuring device. Certainly this was invented. And actually, my wife was just here. She was talking about her Norwegian relatives drink aquavit out of a wooden shot glass. that they strapped to their neck with a leather strap.

And so I think shots are about measuring it, right? So you have the liquor in a glass. I'm spitballing here. I don't know this for sure. But it's like you can't drink too much. So this paces your liquor consumption, right? Sure. But you're going to have that at home?

It's just weird. And it's a standard for merch is the shot glass. But no one I know ever use the shot glasses at home. I've used shot glasses before I'm sorry But I mean Kansas truck Not in the regular sense

But no I wrote a book about souvenirs as you know And shot glasses sell Because they're small Yeah Because you can fit them in your bag And sometimes they're kind of funny And you give them to your friend

It's like great And then you put them on a shelf And they stay there forever They're good for the like the Ha ha thanks And then that's it That's all they need to be there for Maybe

Yeah this could be It's a weird souvenir That's always a T-shirt should I get? You can wear that forever. Yeah. No, t-shirts are great. No, shot glasses. There's probably people with, like, houses full of old shot glasses that they never use. Yeah. They should create a holiday, like a special day where you actually use your shot glasses. Like where you create a social event where you're forced to use your souvenir shot glasses. Burning Man, that would be nice to burn him. Film me up. Burning Man, but for shots. I'll do this. Now you take my shot glass.

Yeah, that's like the janky burning man. Instead of building sculptures and doing mushrooms or something. There's a stay fair in 1974. Thank you. You just do a shot. You actually buy specific booze. Now here's the question. Do you buy fancy booze or just like low shelf booze for a shot holiday? Right.

Interesting. So I brought my friend, Joe DeRosa, he opened up a sandwich shop slash bar. And I got him some mamaana from Dominican Republic. I don't even know what that is. It's a bunch of sticks and flavored twigs. and anise and whatever and then you put a little bit of wine and rum. It's a drink. Yeah, it's a drink

and a little honey. And then you let it sit for about two weeks shake it up a few times. So I was like, hey, you can use this in your bar. But he couldn't sell it. And then he figured out, he's like, oh, we need to have like a section of shots from around the world. Okay. And so now he has a whole section of like, and so that sits in it. So people are like, oh, okay. Now it's a selling point. But that's a shot. Mama would be a shot.

I like the shot around the world. it needs to be a pretext to do something interesting or just a challenge to do something irresponsible so i like that i keep i keep talking you it feels like you want to leave rie no i do but this is also interesting are we grinding are we going to edit some of this out no we're not adding anything like our first podcast went four and a half fucking hours dude that was that was too long that was the gold standard it won't go that long yeah well but we stuck in tomkins square apart that one this one we're going to go all over the city of paris maybe we'll see we'll see we'll see what happens if it doesn't work out if i don't get stuff too self-conscious

then we'll just come back here. But let's go Flanora. Let's go explore a little bit. Let's go Flanora some shit up. Yeah, you can tell them. This will spark whatever. But anyway, the book, guys, I'm too. So, well, we'll talk about the chapters are later, but I'm, I can explain the

day, January 29th, January 30th, January 31st, February 1st, one page each. You'll talk about it somewhere else. Sure, yeah. But it's 366 pages, one for each day of the year, has a, a quote about travel and a reflection about travel. And it's, but it's not just about what things to buy in the city. It's like how travel can change your life basically, you know, why you should travel? If you've dropped about travel, why should travel now?

This is one I'm going to ask you about later. There's an uncertainty about travel that affects, so he starts with a quote, you love travel writers. More than anyone I know, you love travel writers. I am one. I know. I mean, you love comedians, right? I know, but I'm a, but I don't watch as much stand up as.

as you read travel. There's an uncertainty about travel that affects even season travelers. To travel is to make yourself vulnerable, leaving with your papers and plastic, the high-tech security of your home and wandering sumptuously among imperfect strangers.

You know who wrote that? Thomas Swick. Damn, dude, nice. I'm buddies with Thomas Swick. Yeah. Really? Oh. It's like you quoting, you know,

one of your friends. Or whatever, per Christ, sure. Yeah. I am drunk. it's that it's how to like how to be in a place rather than just like vulnerable to a place I think sort of in the social media culture we have now everybody wants to be right all the time nobody wants to be vulnerable nobody wants to make mistakes and learn from them unless they're performing making mistakes and learning from them whereas the best part

of travel is just that you're an outsider you don't know anything and so if you can't embrace you're not knowing if you can't just sort of be willing to be an outsider who's sort of lost all the time, then travel isn't going to be as rewarding. And that it sort of puts you into this childlike state again. Suddenly you're this kid, you don't understand what people are saying. They're using these big words. You've studied your French and suddenly you can't really understand anybody beyond,

hello, how are you doing? And then suddenly you're vulnerable to a place in a new way. And so I think as travelers, I hope even seasoned travelers, and you and I are pretty seasoned travelers, of not losing that vulnerability where you are willing to just fuck up and learn from it and deepen your life this guy um i was buying a pouch of uh tobacco and here in paris yeah and i haven't the last time i brought one's some croatia i think a long that's and that's the only other time so i'm like i don't know how to do any this so i'm like tabak and the guy's like okay and then like what i asked him if he speaks english he was he was asian so no right he speaks that

and then maybe and then french he goes no so he like got our way through it he goes uh you want to lighter. I'm like, oh, yeah. So you're at the tobacco, the tobacco shops are called to which kind? And I'm like, oh, he goes, this kind? I'm like, sure. Yeah, I'm not going to fight you over it. Because I don't know what I'm looking for. Sorry to interrupt, but you are, your aim here is to become a smoker. You've gone your whole life without smoking. Oh, no, no. I was a smoker for a while. I'm just going to go back to it. Oh, you know about that Kentucky bird? Find us smooth tobacco. You got me filters. Yeah, dude, it's French as shit, bro. Here's this book you told me about.

Field Notes, great, durable. Oh, yeah. No, I have one of those. Anyway, at the end of it, yeah, I saw a post and I need a durable notebook. This field notes thing is it. It's fucking whatever. Yeah. That's great.

Did you find that in a store or online? It took a lot of looking and then I did find it in a store. Those are great. I wrote to the people online. I was like, do you make more of these? And they're like, no. And then I found at a store and I bought the shitload. Good call.

Anyway, at the end of it, tobacco, filters. lighter papers and then he goes like this and I'm going to shake his hand and he was like he was like the credit card but you can either be really shitty about it or you could be like this is fun whatever all right fun mistake you were talking about the the guy following you around in Myanmar people come and said oh that's the town fool yeah well in a way the tourists are the town fool like you you get the privilege of being the fool yeah all day long laugh about it And then you're also seeing beautiful things and eating beautiful food, too. Yeah.

On the road away from our routines, our life becomes inseparable from possibility itself. Damn, dude. This shit is making me want to get out there. But you're right. It's not like, here's where to eat and so-and-so. Here's how much you should pay for, you know, weed in Denmark. Right. It's just how to live out there.

Yeah. And it ties into that vagabond idea of time wealth is like time is really all we own. And if you're not spending your time in a way that makes you happy and deep your life, then think about it. Do you want to travel? Then you travel, you know. People put off travel for bad reasons. They don't have enough money. They're scared of speaking other languages. I think you'll see, we have another week in Paris, sorry, but my French is horrible, but I enjoy being here. And if you're willing to be a fool, if you're willing to not know, if you're willing to be in between spaces, it's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. I could fucking go into this a lot.

I'll do some of my favorite quotes later. All right, let's get out in fucking Paris. All right. Let's get outside. Next stop, outdoors. We are now at. Hallet Royal. Yeah.

This is gorgeous. What do they do here? Is this the Royal Palace? I have no idea. All right. This is the thing about like cities that you think you know pretty well. Yeah. Is that if we were in the fifth arrondissement of Paris, I could.

A rondismont. Okay. And I'm probably mispronouncing. And I apologize in advance for everything I mispronounce in French, even though we're in France. Fuck those people don't apologize to them. No, but it's the Palermo. This is like the first, the second, Nolitanese, Mon. It's like on, this is the right bank.

I know the left bank of Paris. And that's the great thing about travel is that you can go to a city multiple times and still know nothing about neighborhoods that you don't have a lot of experience in it. So obviously, this is a tourist friendly part of France. We are maybe five minutes from the Louvre. I've never been here before. Really? Yeah, I've ridden my bike outside many times with my bike.

They have these little Villebes, little city bikes here. So this is, yeah. Yeah, this is brand new to me, and I am ashamed as a travel writer to not really know what the Palais Royal is all about. That's got to be Royal Palace, right? It's got to have something to do with the monarchy years ago, because look at this. Yeah, I mean, this is like, commoners can't live here. This is for the people. You know, I love to in classical, like, art, which has really started here, right?

And it's in a big way. Well, in Italy, yeah. Yeah. It's all rich people doing rich people shit. Yeah. It's all, like, lounging and stuff. It's never toiling. Oh, no.

Or rarely. yeah actually rich people doing rich people shit it's very much a part of Paris and I'm not an expert on this city but I think one of the reputation for rude Parisians or snobby Parisians is that the upper class Parisians sort of want nothing to do with tourists understandably and you know the people you end up running into in time like this we're here in late July are going to be in the service industry probably everybody who can leave the town is they're in their yeah they're in their summer home someplace yeah and so it's actually a pretty friendly time to be here people try to speak english and uh they're open to you but this was built by people who wanted nothing to do with tourists i mean when you just think about you ever see like pillars like this and just like how the fuck now i could see it but like how was this before electricity how was this built well i think they were trying to imagine emulate the the Greco-Romans, right?

They are trying to emulate earlier generations. That's what the fountainhead is a lot about, where it's like quit trying to do what other people have done. Is that an architect? Yeah, it's the architectist, but it's really nothing about architecture. Right. No, so I don't, actually, my wife and I have been wandering around the streets recently,

and there's all these amazing cathedrals that are clearly not used as churches anymore. But there are hundreds of years old, almost a thousand years old at least the original edifice and it was made to sort of give commoners a place to look up to you know like god is magnificent because of this cathedral building and you go in and it's yeah it's it serves a different function i mean now stateside churches are like shopping malls and there's a you can get a latte at the outside in the yorks is the bottom of a building oh is it yeah it's just like especially the puerto rican ones um it's just like it would be a store and it's just a church and the people live above.

Right. Yeah. If I was a theologian or if I was a social scientist, I could tell you why exactly it's shifted from an edifice of power, a place like Notre Dame, which took them centuries to build and it's beautiful. And actually all the churches here are pretty beautiful, but they're also a little creepy and they're a little empty. Yeah. And they're full of candles and really weird art. But that's from a time when if you didn't have much in life, you go to church and you saw this art that was amazing in a church that it took 100 years to build and it made you feel like you're in the presence

of something greater than yourself whereas now you can go online and find anything and so the mega churches have big display screens and rock bands or in New York basements or whatever so it's easier by the way I took centuries to build Notre Dame and took Jews minutes to burn it back down

we called it Jesus too So here's what I was going to ask you, though. So we found, without using your phone, we found kind of where you were aiming for, the Pallade de Royale. Yeah, yeah. What is it when you travel? There's this thing of learning a phrase that you can use over and over again. Like today, somebody asked me if everything was okay, a waitress. And then I went inside to pay.

I got from hand motions go inside to pay. And then when I was paying her, the major D or whatever or the manager said the same phrase. And I was like, oh, I know what that is now. Is it duck cold? Is it duck hole? Maybe. I already lost it. But just in that second time he said it, I was like, you're also asking me is everything

okay. I get it in like, you know what I mean? Right. When you hear something enough times, there's a lot. Well, you get those patterns. It's a state of deep ignorance that you have as a traveler and you're just trying to find patterns that you find familiar. You know, I think that's why people, they go into the Louvre and they go straight to

the Mona Lisa because that's the only thing they know about art history is that that's where they're supposed to go. So pattern recognition, I think, is a big part of being a traveler, that you're looking. there's a phrase that phrase helped me last time um how can it help me this time yeah and and then oh i i sort of recognize this neighborhood or i ordered this in a cafe the last time and it was pretty good i saw this guy ordering this and so there's some there's sort of a sweet hopeful possibility-filled ignorance in being a traveler in another culture for sure but it's what i'm talking

about is the joy you get from like oh i know how to get from my flat to here now without looking at my map. Right. Or like I got home from the canal, St. Martin Canals. Oh, you're out by the canals. Uh-huh. But it was like a 10, 12-minute walk, but the first few times I'm like, I got lost and I looked at my mouth, like, let me put it away for three minutes and I'm getting lost in those three minutes. Right. But last night, I was like, no, I know how to get back. And it's just like, oh, cool. I know a little bit of this area now. It feels good. I think allowing yourself to get lost allows you yourself to learn where you are, right? If you're just always following your phone and your phone is telling you what to do, you don't learn, you don't imprint on your

hippocampus how to actually find a place right and so you don't learn the lesson um so on every continent of the world i've been lost enough to figure out where i am right being lost is good it goes back to that vulnerability thing of sort of being able to make mistakes as a traveler makes you a better traveler you know uh yeah what it's almost like the mistakes it's what you're looking for they have this theory and comedy where it's like if you go into a bad situation an annoying like a wedding or someone you don't want to go to or something like that like well at least you'll get a bit out of it but like you can't actually intentionally enter into a shitty situation just for a bit it has to be thrust upon you well there's a travel writing thing to that too that bad travels make better stories than good ones right yeah right

and so you're going to go out and seek a misadventure you're going to make yourself vulnerable in a dangerous way are you going to fuck up all the time you know like how what's the line between experience in a culture and sort of creating an incident that you can write about so it happens in other ways too that must be there must be a common temptation as a comedian to like to milk a given situation from material date a crazy lady on purpose yeah or like to go on the sixth date with the crazy lady right let me see how deep she goes right where normally it's like yeah there's no way but in that situation as well there could be some material here yeah

I think it's a way to just to justify bad decisions. Like, I'm already going to make this, but I'm like, eh, well, it's a tax write off, you know? Right, right. I didn't thought it that way. You actually can deduct a shitty date when you're like, I'm definitely going to write a bit about this. So, like, I'll deduct this from my bill.

Oh, I hadn't thought of it in those terms. Yeah. That date could be written off your taxes if it's a part of your bid. Yeah. I think, though, too, I was just talking to somebody about the travel writer Paul Therood. You know, Paul Therou? I've heard of his name before and I've seen a lot of you quoting him a lot

And he's been on my podcast a couple of times The Vagabond's way The Vagabond's way Available in bookstores everywhere No but he is famous Famously cranky as a travel writer He's a curmudgeon He doesn't like that he has opinions about everything

And I was just of the The impression that Well that's just You know that's how he travels It's like the worst thing you can be as a travel writer Is a person without a point of view You know without an opinion Like it's trying to do

race yourself from the narrative doesn't really work because that's journalism that's journalism yeah travel writing is about being vulnerable and making those mistakes and showing yourself well paul through shows himself as sort of the guy who has an opinion about everything but somebody explained to me that that is his persona that person to person he's actually a pretty sweet guy but he's this he's this more opinion guy who so he pops more on the page in his book he's the guy who is expressing his impatience with his tour guide in china whereas I would imagine the parallel in comedy is that you sort of have a persona too

you know that it's not just you're going on the sixth date with the crazy lady for material not that I'm saying and you've done that before but also you are in you're entering this heightened version of yourself there's sort of this narrative ari that is the person to whom this has happened in life

and it's not the same as the actual Ari Shafir but it is the comedic persona Ari and that's you leave out the parts where it's like and I tipped him at the end You know, you just leave that out. You just like, or it's also like wish fulfillment where it's like, I wish I could have said this and this and this to him. So now I can because I was having these thoughts.

Paul Thoreau's like, I'm having some of these thoughts. I'm also like, well, he did show me this place. That was really nice. But it's like, leave that out. It's not fun. That's interesting. Yeah. No, I think it's a similar narrative persona.

And I think this is obviously that we have social media personas where we're a little bit more handsome and a little bit smarter than we are in real time. Oh, that's how much we should talk about. And so you have your community persona where you're, You're sort of more acerbic, you know, you're more mean-tempered than you are in real life. Travel writers are actually sometimes more smart, like all this stuff that I, like, I don't know this. If I was to write an essay about this place, I'd do the research afterwards and give it. I mean, that's one thing about one awkward part of talking to you in real time in France, which, in Paris, which is city, I feel like I know well. I'm mispronouncing phrases.

You know, there's still wide swaths of French, most of French that I don't understand at all. Much of mistakes. And so I'm a very, yeah, it's weird. There's my ratio of linguistic, you know, perfection to time spent in a place is pretty low here. Like my language skills are pretty low considering how much time I've spent here. Unfortunately, like most of the time I come here, I'm teaching travel writing in English to English speakers. And so I don't really have time to go and make those mistakes that a language learning needs to make. So my Korean, my Arabic, my Spanish is much better than my French, which is terrible.

But that's part of being here. It's sort of fun to be optimistically ignorant of the language in a place that's this interesting. Yeah, you need to struggle through something. You need to have a guy to learn any part of the language. Duolingo is nice, for sure. Dualingo to me is like, I'm learning Spanish a little bit through it. But like I've did about 10 days so far of French on Duolingo just to learn a few things. It helps for sure.

It fills in the gas. But it's like Central Park is like, I need some nature. Central Park will buy you like two days of like not go crazy. Right, right, right. And then it's like, I actually have to get to the woods to get myself for like a month. Right, like, real nature. So like, dual lingo is like, all right, fill out some gaps. But like, you have to go and learn, make mistakes.

A dual lingo is the central park in this analogy. Yes, exactly. Or having somebody there to translate for you or having a guy who speaks English at a shop. It's like what you actually need is the guy like, I don't speak any English. So in French or whatever language. And he's like, you're going to have to struggle through this. And then you can like learn a word or a phrase. Well, they say that the best way to,

really learn language is preferably when you're young go to a foreign country and fall in love or like try to try to court someone you're attracted to and like if you can learn enough to start a conversation with a woman you consider cute then that's just more impetus like if they I took Spanish in high school I was terrible at Spanish if they just brought some cute Spanish speakers in the winner over game yeah right then it's like oh this is why you learn another language right so you come and maybe like I'm here for the first time with my wife right and she's good she studied dualingo before she came she when she was in Germany she learned German through that so I think what's that through that app no well through a combination

Central Park and the forest right okay but I think it's actually through through wanting to keep my wife's respect that I'm going to become better at French because she's going to outpace me in French very soon probably on this trip her French is going to be better than mine well It's an analogy I think I was telling you before we started recording. It's just like I spent a long time as a bachelor and I just never committed myself in a certain way. And I'm married at the right time. It all worked out. But in a certain sense, I haven't committed to myself to Paris in a way that it also involves learning the language.

And maybe now that I have committed myself to a woman in life, maybe now I'll commit myself to a language and maybe it'll be French, you know, that I can, you were talking about how you need Hebrew. You know, Korean. Well, I have get by Spanish. I have get by Korean. I can impress people by reading Hangul, which is like you reading Hebrew, right? But that doesn't get me very far. My vocabulary in Korean is not very deep. Hongol is the language? Yeah, it's the alphabet that they, it's very easy to learn.

What a useless language to learn. Korean? Yeah, how many countries speak it in? Well, just Korea, but... And what a dumb thing to learn. Well, I mean, Spanish, Arabic, what English, of course, if you don't speak English already, I'm fond of Korean. And this is the sad thing is that I go to a Korean restaurant in America and I throw out some Korean and they just roll their eyes and start speaking English. No, really?

Well, I mean. They don't laugh and be like, cool. Sometimes. Like, actually, I was in Astoria Queens once and I went to a restaurant where there wasn't English on the menu. And so I was ordering for the menu in Korean because I could read it and understand. And that got this grudging respect that I wasn't just the moron who'd wandered in and they had to get the English language menu for him. And that was kind of fun. But usually, this is another thing about a culture where everybody is ethnically the same.

Like, they're, there's just Koreans and non-Korean. There's not, it's not a multicultural country. And so for a white guy to walk in and start speaking Korean is a little bit weird. And if he's not fluent, then you're sort of wasting their time, you know, that they would rather practice their English on you than to bear your bad Korean. And so I have some friends who married Korean and speak it pretty well. But I just... It's nice when you say thank you or say Kapunkap or whatever in Thai. They go like, hey, nice.

It's just like a little smile. Yeah, but Thai is a little bit more laid back culture too and a little bit more friendly and conversational and informal. I don't know. I'm not an expert on Asian cultures, but just in my experience, my Kupkung, my Kupkong goes further than my Kamsamina in Korea. Interesting. Because Koreans would rather practice their English than

then endure your horrible Korean whereas ties are just rolling with it a little bit more that's my experience guys it's been so long as I've been to both of those places it's been like the 20s video series you've got to see it's this white guy ordering Chinese from a drive-thru in like fluent Mandarin

oh really? Or Cantonese I think Mandarin and then he gets to the front you know like you order then you get to the front and the guy's like looking like who's in the car like what the fuck then he's like you say that and then they go like they bring people out like come here talk talk they can't get

over it. Yeah, no. We just don't see people like you speaking like that. There was a celebrity when I was in Korea. He didn't just, he married Korean, but he, his wife was from, from South, the southern part of South Korea. And they have, it's like the Texas drawl of Korea. So he learned Korean fluently, but he also spoke in this Busan Saturi, this Busan dialect.

Wow. And so it's like having an Asian celebrity in Kansas who speaks really deep southern drawl or deep Texas accent and so people just loved the guy because he spoke vernacular Korean fluently usually that's not the case usually it's the American is trying to learn it's hard to learn because Koreans would rather just flip over to English because they're better at English than you are to Korean I know somebody lived in Barcelona and one of their friends took English class when they were I guess a year abroad in Alabama so their Barcelona English was Southern it was just like

Where did you pick that up? There's this Australian, this white Australian hip hop woman who was studied abroad in the American South. Yeah. She does that I'm so fancy song. I'm so, uh. Sing it, sing the whole thing. I'm not going to sing. Show the dance.

A song I barely know on your podcast. No, but I think that basically her experience, she sort of picked up this southern drawl lilt that sort of gave her cred hip hop wise, but she's an Australian, right? Oh, is it the one with the big ass who married the Laker? Yes, that's exactly who it is. And I'm, yeah, I'm showing you, like, I'm an old guy. I'm a guy in his 50s who, for me, that's young people music, but it probably happened like 10 years ago. What was that name of his song?

Fancy, I think it's called Fancy. That'll be the episode music. Her name starts with an A, right? Damn. Oh, no, no. Iggy. Iggy pop. No, no.

Iggyzilia, something is Elia. Iggy Azalea. Is Iggyzalia? Yeah. Dude her Swaggy, Swaggy, P, that was her boyfriend, had this thing where he was doing, they were swimming with the dolphins and dolphins are weirdly territorial. And they do this thing where he was convinced, he was like, he'd grab me by the bathing suit and he was dragging me down, trying to kill me so he can make time with Igizalia.

No kidding. Yeah. And then I looked it up and there's other stories of that where dolphins are like, let me just kill this like, well, animals can be assholes like, yeah, no, we anthropomorphize animals. Yeah, we're always trying to make them into humans, but they never dickhead humans, right? That's just like the nicest humans. That's true. We project sort of this childhood optimism on the animals.

I was actually at the Giudan de Plont across the river yesterday. There's a zoo there. It's one of the oldest zoos. In fact, it used to have... I went there. Is that by the botanical gardens? Yeah, it is the botanical gardens? I was there yesterday.

Okay. Did you go to the zoo? I went by it, but then it was like... Did you see the wallabies? Yeah, the wallabies and the pigeons are like fighting for the wallabies food. And it's like those dickhead pigeons are. stealing the wallabies food and and probably the wallabies have their own assholes right you know the wallabies are dick being there's like kangaroo those are yeah the jews of the kangaroo

world have you have australia yeah oh yeah yeah i have video of a wallaby jerking off at the zoo in the melbourne i think right behind me it was great it was like two minutes long he was just going for it i was looking at him was looking at me well we're watching those wallabies yesterday's Those guys have to be pretty bored. You know, the pigeon's stealing their food, gives them something to think about. Yeah. Anyway, we went from Igia Azalea,

who I know nothing about, except that I think she was an exchange student in the American South, and that gave her the vernacular that allowed her to pass as a hip-hop artist. That's so cool. It's so cool to get, like, that version of what English is. Yeah, well, yeah.

Well, one thing I also heard on this trip to France is that French people for generations didn't want to speak English to Americans because they didn't speak it well. They didn't want to be the Pepe de Pue, you know, French speaker. I could be completely wrong. It's something I heard a couple of days ago, but there's sort of an honor in France and a formality in France where, well, it's probably why I'm not very good at French is that I don't like making mistakes, right? Or yeah, it's why like in a cultural like Korean where you can really be insulting to someone if you're using the wrong verb with someone who's older than you.

And I got, yeah, it's okay in Spanish. Always used to fall back on that and people like, well, it's like, it'll be like, they're like, don't call me, sir, I'm 24. It's better to do error that way than the other way. Here's one about like cultural things. So I read this thing on Paris and it said, there's certain thing, like don't smile at people.

It's just not something French people do. And if you're smiling at a woman that's you hitting on her. So she's going to expect you to ask her out next. And if you smile at a dude, he's going to be like, what are you trying to pull? so they're not rude, they just don't smile. Same as Russians, just don't smile. It's cultural.

This happens, my students, my, I used to have younger, like college age students, and the women, they'd get in the cab or they'd see somebody on the street and smile, and that is not done here. You don't smile at a stranger, right? Or when you get in a cab, when the guy says, yeah, come sit next to me, you say, no, screw you, I'm going to sit in the back, or I'm going to know that in a cab. And so just some weird things have happened. And basically American insouciance, American nonchalance and friendliness and informality

is unfamiliar in France. And so people may mess up by being too informal. Yeah, I keep watching these dogs struggle over this grading every time a dog is over the grading. Oh, yeah. We're actually sitting like 20 feet above a really gross concrete. Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. It looks nice on camera. It's pretty disgusting.

Yeah. Yeah, the sitting in the backcars. I saw once in Cambodia, some woman accused the waiter of being racist. because it wouldn't bring the check just to a white lady and that is here too they won't get your check unless you say let you sit here

oh that's that you read it as rudeness or like why is he ignoring me when it's like you pay for the table like enjoy that's a great lesson travel and Paris is a great city for that I talk about this in the new book they don't chase you out they let you just sit there

roll cigarettes well we're in efficiency culture and so it's just like let's turn some people through whereas this is more of an esthete culture. You know, you're enjoying your meal. You're not going to rush through your meal. You're going to enjoy your meal and you're going to enjoy the company that you're with. And so for years, I have a chapter about this in the new book that basically, yeah, product placement.

The Vagabon's Way by Rolf Potts, available in bookstores now. In my new book available in bookstores now where people, like my students will come to Paris and it's like, I want to see Paris. I want to be stuck in this restaurant. The waiter won't bring them in my check. And it's like, no, no, this is Paris. Like the slow meal, the waiter who will wait to bring your check until you ask for it. That's the experience of Paris. And it's actually the best part. Like, you rushing off to see the Louvre is not as Parisian as you having a lunch that lasts three hours.

It's almost like if you're bored, fill it in with a statue slash the Louvre, slash whatever. It's like, I don't know, it's like, then go and then go back out. That is all I was trying to do here in Paris is sit at coffee shops, do some writing, some cafes, drink coffee, and just like chill. And it's been very nice. It's been exactly what I was hoping for. And the outside table and just. smoke. You don't want to skip the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or whatever. I mean, it depends on how many times you've come here. But like yesterday, my wife and I, we watched cross the river.

We went all through the fifth, Hollandezmont. We ate it closer to Lillas, which is where Hemingway ate. And it was a very, oh, what are they doing? They try to hit pennies on top of there. And so we walked through these tourist districts. You give it up. Yeah. Close. Close. There was a nice family trying to land. pennies on this pillar and I because it's done it in the past it's got to be a thing right yeah but there's there's tons of pennies down there yeah it's littered is it littered with small change it looks pretty gross down there I wouldn't want to be the guy who

picks up the change from down there anyway so this morning my wife went out my if I went out just looking for cheese and that's that was very pleasurable to go from from majeure to fromage we actually went to a patisserie we went to and they're just there's all these businesses that we went to a place that sold fruit and we just had the best cherries ever the best peaches ever and so it was a very french morning we didn't go to any tourist attractions we were just trying to buy some cheese and like the presentation of fruit and cheese and wine and food in general of pastries is at a level that does not exist anywhere in the united states and we were just randomly walking through a

neighborhood where you want to take you don't want to be the guy who takes out his his phone and takes a picture of a bunch of fruit but you sort of do because it's beautiful because there's an there's an aesthetic to everything from Israel I'm just like they're bigger here and you want it to Henry Rollins was talking about I know you're like a fan of his yeah he's in the book yeah yeah a few times yeah he's talking about maybe it was him with someone else just the things you see instantly and he says markets are a great way to feel like you're in another country outdoor markets or I was talking to somebody and he was like just that the cab

are shaped differently or colored differently and it's like they're not right homeable things you know but it makes you feel like you're in another place those little differences buying cheese or whatever like the process of it no I quote in the new book I quote Anthony Dura the

novelist the American novelist like you're in Italy and like the police sirens are in different tone yeah here yeah and the sea is not cold it's calledata or whatever you know it's hot and so these small it's like it's actually In the same chapter, I talk about Pulp Fiction, like Vince Vegas, like, it's the small differences. You can order a beer in McDonald's in Paris, you know, that it's, that part of being another place is not just the giant monuments, but it's the small differences that make everything different.

And in France, beauty is a big part of this city and this culture. And so their fruit is going to be laid out in a way that is mind-blowingly beautiful compared to American fruit. or fucking Chinatown or like in China or a lot of Southeast Asian country where it's like the market's just like it's just here it's on the street right right they're not really making this nice presentation and wiping stuff down there are some pretty amazing pyramids they're they're doing some some um physics of physics oh in Asia I don't want to knock Asian markets but there's something very delicate and beautiful about food presentation in this place and I realize I sound like a weird American who's celebrating France and a very

cliched way but it my wife and I this morning literally the home with a very satisfying morning shopping for cheese we ended up buying a bunch of fruit and a bunch of pastries and a bunch of patte right and that was as French as any of the monuments you'd have stood in line for it's nice yeah I feel like that food here is one of the art forms oh absolutely it's just like they take a care in it it's just yeah even serving the food yeah you're Your waiter is going to serve food with a pride. They don't serve the appetizer in the main dish at once, you know, where you order a bunch of stuff in America.

Just like, here's everything. I'm like, come on, man. Like, give me a second. Let me finish this. They really like let you, I don't know, they space it out. Well, also the recommendations. If you ask the waiter for recommendation, he's going to know if the fish is good or like where the food is like you should listen to your recommendations. Actually, I made the mistake once of being in a restaurant in Montreal.

No, yeah. French. place and like asking the waiter for his recommendation and then ordering something else no faux pa if you're gonna ask you have to do what they say he was don't ask and it's like dude I've been in the kitchen I know what's good today then why even ask yeah yeah what you want is like is like someone just justify what you're already saying you know where you're like is linguine or the we're ever really better and you want them to say ravioli and they go oh linguine or this you go I'm still

got the ravioli like well then why if you ask you have to do what they say right That's my, I don't know. Well, that's part of the METI here. It's part of the professional pride of, like, the waiter who brings you your food is that he's taking care of you. You know, he's the guy, he's on your side. He's going to make sure that your culinary experience is the one that you're looking for. There's not a tipping culture here. You can tip.

They don't even put it on the bill. Like, I thought there was a place where the IVA is included, but it's not. I thought it was, yeah. And so it's not unusual to not tip at all. Yeah, they just don't expect it. They don't expect it. They appreciate it when you do. But that's not what they're working.

for they're not here to try and make a bunch of money before they go to something else right that like again I'm I'm being the American who sort of talking out of his ass about France but it's professional pride is a different level for a waiter for example in a place like this here's something taking parts of culture and bringing it back to your your standard life okay so like in Cambodia slash Vietnam they have these meals at last for like two, three hours. It's small little pieces that you'll put on a little grill on a bucket.

You've seen those? Yeah, I mean, it's really common in Korea where you're cooking on your table. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Or here, I started to, even when I ate, like, ordered a Krak mansour or whatever, I was like, I'm wolfing it down when I'm like, wait, wait, I'm going to be here for two hours. Like, why am I wolfing this? Like an American?

I'm, I've been here for four days and I'm still trying to slow myself down. I'm still hurrying, I'm hurrying through walking. I'm hurrying through eating. I'm hurrying through drinking a cafe. You don't drink the cafe just to caffeine. Yeah. You drink it to watch the street scene outside you. Yeah, you want to just, it's a shot pretty much.

You want to like get through it, but you're like, wait, this is just to keep me here. Yeah, yeah. It's the pretext to sit and enjoy this moment. Yeah. And again, I'm not introducing anything new. Generations of American travel writers have bloviated about how the refinement of French cuisine and cafe culture. but it's true that it's not just about the food it's about time it's about slowing your life down and savoring something because we don't do that enough in america we don't really savor things

we rush from one thing we're trying to pack things in in fact i quote a uh swiss korean um philosopher in the book about there's two different kinds of time that there's the active time and i think it's the via activa and via contemplate uh contem my latin is not very good ladies and gentlemen content anyway it's like there's moments he says you can't you can't add your life by adding adding moments but by stretching moments out by savoring the moments it's and this is a horrible paraphrase but it's basically it's through the experience of duration that life becomes enjoyable not through the experience of instances like so one beautiful experience that last two hours is better than a bunch of 10 minute experiences that cannot

be savored because you haven't taken the time to savor them. And so I think that one thing that French Parisians do better than Americans is savoring moments. It's savoring a walk, savoring a coffee, savoring a dessert or a meal, or savoring a conversation, for example. Maybe podcast culture is bringing that back to America that we can just... Long form instead of 22 minutes out of 30. Well, that's it. I've felt self-conscious many times that I'm going down rabbit holes, but you don't edit your podcast. So we're just sort of enjoying a conversation. Yeah. Yeah.

You'll have gems. Right. And it's my job as one of the worst hosts in podcast history of keeping it on focus. Well, I'm trying to see what's going on in the background of us. Actually, I'm not used to doing these video podcasts. I think this might be the first time I've done a video podcast out and about in a city. Not self-conscious here. Nobody's bothering us.

Nobody's bothering us. But as a travel writer, I feel like I should be offering something of value about Paris. And I'm just sort of bloviating. Well, we're going to talk about travel in general. Yeah, no, no. I'm more of philosophy. a travel and the specific travel guy. Like, I'm not going to recommend the best place to get a, you know, a baguette in Paris,

but I could tell you about how slowing, how Parisians experience time in a way that's so if I, when I, okay. Instructive. So when I got to recommend something to somebody, I'll try not to say specific places. Maybe I showed you this quote by, um, Ogloturchik, church, check, Olegat, Tchik, whatever. It's not ringing the bell. But it's about how travel writers have responsibility to not ruin places. by naming them.

Oh, okay. This place, the words out, you know, the Eiffel Tower, the words out already. But a restaurant in the 10th Army is like, nah, don't let people walk in your shoes. Like the point is, when you're in France, make sure to get some baguettes at a boulangerie. They're so fresh. Right. Not go to this one. Yeah.

Yeah. But how much more satisfying is it to accidentally discover the best baguette you ever had as opposed to looking at your app or getting your recommendation saying, oh, go to this one? one and then you go there and it's four point six that's four point five and then it's full of tourists and whereas you're just randomly walking the streets and then it's like that smells good yeah i'm just going to order what this bag it costs less than a dollar are you kidding me discovery is worth at least three like points on a if it's it was more 4.2 to a 4.6 you know on like just because i discovered it yeah oh it makes all the difference and especially if it's like some little mom and pop

place in a back alley and they've never seen a tourist before that wouldn't have happen in a town like this is the biggest tourist town in the world but you're in some place and you find a place and it's yours yeah and the people are really interested in you and they haven't seen a tourist in two months and I'm sure this happened to you in Ecuador sometimes oh yeah people like what the fuck are you doing here no Myanmar more certain places more but it's like what because it we don't especially in Southeast Asia or in Africa I'm sure we're like you look like you're not from here yeah yeah and so it's easier for people like hey what's your what's your deal well I think you and I both like Asia because we're

obviously not from Asia right and so it's sort of like being a celebrity like a celebrity with other baggage you walk in it's like oh you're not from here yeah let's practice of English on this dude uh-huh and so so Europe I'm still getting used to traveling in Europe in a sense because because I don't necessarily look like I'm not from here you know people come up and they quite understandably start speaking to me in French, even though I'm not near or fluent. And so I sort of have to make that transition, whereas nobody does that as much in a place like Cambodia or Thailand or Korea, because obviously I'm an outsider. And so that's a different travel experience, too.

And the thing you said about Namibia, too, I think it was Namibia where the ones who polish the stones, was that Namibia? Yeah, yeah. Where they said at some point they stopped seeing you as, I'm paraphrasing, they stopped seeing you as fish. Yeah, as a mark. I'm not going to buy anything. So at some point, like, well, who's this person then? Yeah. And they were great. company because their English was good and they were sort of bored and then they don't usually get to have a conversation it's sort of a negotiation and once they realize one you're not going to buy anything but two you're going to stick around for an hour anyway and of course I did buy anything buy some things at the end but then they're engaged and it's like well it beats talking to the other souvenir vendor who is the only other person on the skeleton coast at this hour so yeah tell us about the politics in your country or what what you like to eat or how you like Namibia do you have a $20 bill can I see it what Yeah, like, wow. Let's move on.

When we pick up next, I want to talk about hobbies. I want to talk about how this book came together. Yeah. And I want to talk about if you as probably a great traveler still get nervous. But we'll talk about that. See, this is like the opposite of, like, I would be nervous on my podcast if I wasn't hitting my bullet points. But you're, you welcome tangents. Yeah.

All right. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen. I know where we go. Let us talk for a second about the power of chance when you're traveling, of just wandering upon things. We turned around the corner and there's a bunch of French people. What kind of dancing is this? Swing dancing, ballroom dancing? I think it's just sort of old-timey.

Just old-timey. It's an old-timey shit. No, but I've seen this in other parts of Paris, that there's just places where people would dance in the public. I think I saw it a couple days ago. Yeah. Was it by the river? Yes. Yeah.

It was smaller. It was only a few people. but um there's something that travel uh getting lost something that affords you was just the it'll just like give you stuff and we turned around the corner and this was here yeah this is not where we're headed this is not where we're headed i have never seen this i i relate this sort of dancing to a very specific part of paris on the river where it happens every night but how cool is this that People are just enjoying dancing for free in the street on, what is this, a Saturday? Yeah.

Yeah. Have you ever come across something here or another place where it's just like, oh, what is this? Like suddenly there's a tomato festival or at its best, always, at its best, that always happens. Yeah. It's just, I just feel like it's a gift that you only get. So, you know, the Jewish or the Old Testament, like God did impart the Red Sea? until the guy took his first step into it. Okay.

You ever hear that? It sounds vaguely familiar. They were stopped. They were leaving. They got to the Red Sea and they're like, fuck, the Egyptians are coming. Like, we're trapped. And once he stepped this. This one guy's like, well, we gotta go somewhere.

And he went and then it's God saying, hey, you took minute effort. I'll split it for you. I feel like you travel. There's that same thing where it's like you got out there. Yeah. Right. Well, that's something we were just talking about. That if you're going, if you're always going from point A to point B in order to get from

point A to point B, be you're not going to see what everything that's in between right yeah and so this is literally we're going to point be we're in the palais de royale we're going to live which isn't far at all we turned a corner and suddenly um there's people probably some of them are tourists but i would reckon most of these are french people um although it's a it's a saturday in july so a lot of people are off on vacation but uh who would know how to dance like this I don't know It's so cool

I like it Yeah Have you ever had that Or you just like come across it besides this But like not even a dance party But just like At it's best I've been in India

I've been I turn the corner And there's a wedding And then I'm watching the wedding And it's like Hey you want to come to the wedding And it's like sure Yeah

I think in countries that aren't as industrialized That has happens more often right they're not industrialized so it's rare I think we live more compartmental lives in industrial cultures that it's they're less open to strangers right and actually we could dance here if we wanted to but uh this is this is for sure anyway it's all comers yeah it's in public um yeah I mean you you have examples certainly yeah or like in Hong Kong I remember like you see like the Filipinos dancing and they get I talked

to the Hong Kong people I knew they were like they get one day a week off and they they party so they're out by the ocean or the river or whatever and they're just like they're going for it but like you have to just come across no one's that's not a tourist up so there's no one's like on the itinerary to go watch them party right yeah no there's no there's no guidebook yeah list this or you come across a game like a like a sports event where you're like what is this like oh they all play volleyball here sports is a great example and in fact I think I've told you before I got my ass handed to me in volleyball in Cambodia on a field where I was the tallest guy by a head and that was kind of fun to get

destroyed in volleyball also when I was in Myanmar I know you like Myanmar it's a story I've told before but I was one thing led to another and this guy said you want to come to a play well it's this all-night festival like basically I was there's no story that's in the book but I was I asked an old man for directions and or actually asked an old man what this noise was this really loud noise singing coming from some some temple I asked when it was, he wasn't sure what it, he didn't speak English, he took me to his grandson's school, I spoke to the students, the students took me to the festival and there's this crazy performances going on, including, I mean, there were marionettes, there are puppet shows, magic

shows, comedians, believe it or not, and there was a drag cabaret. There's like a trans cabaret show that is not in the guidebook, I swear to you. Yeah. But it was just there. And this was like before trans anything was in a conversation, in public conference, conversation in the United States. I turned to the kid beside me and it's like, this is what I think it is. It's like, yeah, it's escape way. It's, you know, it's, it's a performance, you know. And so they were fine with it. And I, and I wouldn't have found that in the guidebook that basically, I accidentally stumbled into this performance that was not created for my benefit. Where was this? In Myanmar. In Myanmar. In Myanmar. In Began. Wow. Not Began. It's in Pekoku,

which is near Began. Okay. Yeah. And this wasn't created for tourist benefit. I think this is a local thing. It's just like we got doing the square. Some people really know what they're doing. Some people really know what they're doing. It's pretty badass. And I'm really enjoying themselves. I'm not going to take you on the dance floor.

All right. If my wife was here, I would pull her on the dance floor. That guy's good. That guy's terrible. That guy's really good with the shorts and the baseball cap. Damn. Yeah. Anyway.

This is the Lindy hop or something from like 100 years ago. Yeah. This is one where it's like, especially if you're at that cafe, we're like, oh, sick. like just sit there and watch that yeah no this is yeah I've seen this Lindy hop yeah something like that sometimes you get invited in

and it's open and nobody's nobody's keeping score like it's not a dance studio you can dance poorly that's how Bergheim was I wasn't dancing Bergheim I mean these people are enjoying themselves oh yeah for sure the chick in the blue dress is like her dress is made for spinning oh look at that

all right let's go to the next spot all right tell yeah it's so cool I wish I could dance like that this is actually easier than Latin dancing in my experience really are we still rolling yeah um Latin dance like this is basically the one to one two one beat we're used to whereas like salsa is the one to pause it's like there's sort of a rest to beat. And so you could learn this, Ari. Yeah. You could learn this in a month.

You could also in Latin America, it's called the Vuelta's, the turns. Like how, like, wow. See how they're spinning each other? Yeah. Those are actually pretty easy to learn. What? And since this is North American music basically, this sort of jazz-derived music, you can keep the beat more easily because you grew up with this sort of beat.

And I'm not a musicologist either, so I'm not sure what kind of beat it is. This dude's sick. Yeah. What? They know what they're doing. He knows what he's doing. I was like I ever not get laid. He should never go a single day without getting laid in his life.

No, if you look at this and it's even more obvious in the tango parts where these like these craggy old men are dancing with these live beautiful women because they're good dancers. Ferris talked about it to me when he took tango and whatever in Buenos Aires. Yeah, he goes, it's the silver foxes. All the women were like, I want to dance. with that guy because he knows what he's doing because he's been doing for 40 years well also Latin dance is is very much led by the male there is no egalitarian dancing that you the woman follows what the man is doing and so if you have a less experienced male dance partner it's not as fun right if he knows two moves and can barely keep the beat

then it's not as fun as having that silver for that old guy and you'll see it when you go down the river and see the tango dancers that basically these these old men who have are nothing to look at but are good tango dancers they're they're who all the women want to dance with yeah i'm not saying that they're having love affairs but they are good let's go back in here yeah uh i went to uh dude you remind i don't know if you have this problem where you remind me of um stories yeah yeah yeah like talking about travel goes like oh yeah i had one time oh that reminds me of this one time no that's that's the beauty of travel is that everything connects because we saw this, I thought of something in India, you thought of something in Myanmar,

I thought of something in Myanmar. Yeah, yeah, right. It's like one step, one step. So it's all like, and then my mind, I'm a little bit jet lag, so I'm not as sharp. Like, I can't think of like the six greatest times I've stumbled into a festival. Like I rolled in the Cairo once while they were having, well, it was Ramadan, right? And so you walk down the street and they have the, I forget what it's called now, but it's the sundown dinner.

It's the alfittre or something where you go and you have, you dine together. because you're not allowed until the sunsets you're not allowed to eat but people are really hungry by the end of the day in Ramadan and so it's pretty easy to get invited to these these feasts especially you're not being a dick about it you're not swilling your water when other people can't but no it's these moments and weirdly enough often they are religious you know these occasions wherein somebody is celebrating a Hindu holiday or a Muslim holiday and suddenly you're invited to be a part of it yeah all right No, no, stay. Keep on. Okay. And actually, this happened to me when I was in Jerusalem. It was, what's the day when everybody draves themselves on flags and they walk around with the Star of David and the Flyers? Yomha Atzmaud or Yom Ha'amah Shoa, Yomotsmaud, the Independence Day.

Yeah, okay, yeah, it was Independence Day. And it's sort of the Fourth of July with the Star of David. And it's just a lot of Israelis out having fun. And I don't look very Israeli, but I was invited to walk along. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think there's something about, it's, it's, I write about it in the new book, available in bookstores everywhere. It's communitas, right? The vagabond's way is communicatoss, the idea that you might not speak the same language as this person.

Usually it's felt among other travelers is that you're sharing the same experience. You're not, even if you don't speak the same language, you're doing the same thing together. Like when I was in Sri Lanka, I did the hike up Adams Peak. Have you been to Sri Lanka? No, and looked at at Syri Gaya? Or is that a different one? Segueria? Oh, Segueria.

Segueria is great, but this is different. You know, Adam's Peak is the second tallest mountain in Sri Lanka, but it's holy. And the Hindu thinks that it's Shiva's footprint. The Buddhist think it's the Buddhist footprint. The Muslims and the Christians think is Adam's footprint. Just some dude named Bill. What is interesting is that everybody is making the same hike. It doesn't matter what you believe in, that you're all walking up the mountain in the middle of the night,

sweating, breathing hard. and that creates communitas. It creates the idea that regardless of what language you speak or your approach to this place is that you're sharing the communitas of that experience. And so I would imagine if you were an attractive woman, you could go up to a Silver Fox tango dancer. Her dancer here.

And even without language, you were part of the communitas of what this is. Yeah, you've got to be part of it. It's like, you ever hear of Sleep No More? Yes. Yeah. So if you're lucky while you're in sleep more, if you're dressed up,

one of the actors will take you into another room when you get to have this special scene. Right, yeah. And a Silver Fox, growing up to a woman, going, come in. That's like that moment. We're like, you're part of the culture. That's almost like an institutionalization of what can happen in this situation where you're invited to the wedding or you're invited to dance by this craggy old guy

who's actually really good at tango. And that creates this community class. It's not cerebral. It's not about you sharing ideas or a language. It's about you sharing an experience. And that makes it different. Dance is a great example of this, but also, like religious festivals or other things like I'm thinking of a thousand things at once

but actually the physical act of something it's like a hike or a pilgrimage part of the pilgrimage is spiritual but part of it's like me walking across Israel part of it is just the physical act of doing it and if there are other people doing it as well you share that with them even if you don't share other things with that's some you wrote it back in the new book too vagabond's way available now guys just buy it just click on the bottom link and buy it But like, it's great. It's easy fucking reading. One page per day.

You can stop at any moment. People with short attention spans. Yeah, I've told you, for a pothead that's been addled with fucking loss of brain cells. It's great. Read a page a day and think about it. Yeah. But that, that gift. That pilgrim who went from Ul.

I just read that one to Jerusalem. And as soon as he started going, he's like, fuck. He didn't say that. But he's like, what am I doing? But it's that sense of travel. It's like, forget the reason you're doing it. He's going for religious reasons. But it still was like that same like, ooh, the understanding.

unknown. Yeah. That was still present. He was literally, he was barely outside the gates of his hometown. It's like, what am I doing? This is the dumbest thing. I would, if I didn't look like an idiot, I would go back right now. Well, he ended up taking, he ended up walking to Venice. He took a boat to Jerusalem. Oh, that resonated with me. Yeah. Because I, my first day in Myanmar, I was like, I made a mistake. I have to come back. Yeah. And the same thing where he goes, if not for the shame I would feel. Yeah. I told people I'll be gone for a while. I would have, I would have just gone back. Yeah. And that's the thing. And I think it's, I think it's good to give yourself permission to feel that.

Yeah. I think nobody's the perfect traveler. Nobody always knows the perfect place to go. That unless you feel that shame. We would never have seen this. There's no way you could stumble upon this. It's not by chance. You would have to research dance.

Maybe there's a Paris app that shows you where the public dances are going on. Whenever they have these in New York. I'm like, how do they know about this? They have these in Washington Square Park. I'm like, who tells people about this? Well, I think if you're in the dance club, of course you know about it. Yeah, right.

If you're in the club. Yeah. So I was in Medellin and we went to a nightclub, a Cuban dance nightclub. It's very modern city, I found. Oh, yeah, it's great. And me and this girl in my class and her boyfriend, we all went. And it was like this one dude was so good at dancing and we were like, I'm like, I'm like, get him, get him to ask you to dance.

She goes, I'll try, I don't know how to do it. And he would just go up to women and he would just like stand over them and like, and he knows he's the best dancer and he was like, walk around. And then he would stand up to him and just go like that and they were just go. They were waiting for him to ask. She went back. I left. If she went, she stayed like a month.

She goes, I went back. She goes, that guy asked me. And she goes, he just throwing me around. Yeah, that's so much pleasure for that guy. Yeah. That's what he's good at. Yeah. It's like the guy who can fix your garage store is going to offer to fix your garage store.

The guy who's good at dancing, he has so much pride in that. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to show you how to do this? You're like, yes. And look at all the pride that's behind us, you know? Yeah. That it's basically you've learned a skill. You've learned a craft. You've learned an art.

And it brings you pleasure. This is another another Parisian thing. It's one thing to watch your screen and get pleasure from Ari's comedy special. But it's another thing to physically come and dance. And do it. Yeah. And dance well. That's the fun thing that we discovered by accident here.

The best rendition of a story I ever told was I was in an outside lands in San Francisco music festival. And I was on a shuttle back to, I was a talent, quote unquote. And so we're in a shuttle back into town. It's from Golden Gate Park. and so it's some agents and some like maybe a band or two you know but nobody big but we're in the shuttle with me and my comedian friend and like eight of the people we don't know from different walks somebody goes does anybody know any stories and I go oh I am uniquely enabled in this situation and I was just told a crushing story about shitting myself in Australia you were the best dancer in

that van yeah it was like it'll never be this good again yeah let's move on all right hobbies when you're traveling. Yes. So one thing Henry Rollins does, I've talked to you about what I do is trying to find some dump fridge magnet, you know, but Henry Rolls just likes going to record stores. He's super new records. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah.

And some people like going to art in a place, museums. We are now at the Louvre, maybe the most famous museum in the world, possibly. I would say so. Yeah. And the most famous single piece of art, they say that 80% of the people who go into the Louvre every year, And this is millions of people go to the, to the Mona Lisa. Yeah. That's all I would do.

I would just go in there. And then somebody told me, it was like, the Vanessa Miles is there too. I'm like, heard of that one. I heard of that. That's the one without the arms, right? No. Like that guy with a dick. No, but I mean, that's the whole thing, not to do overkill,

but that's when you have expectations. When you know what you're in there to see, it makes it be lying to the Mona Lisa. And it's like, then they're all disappointed. Well, of course, you know, why would you have that much expectation about the Mona Lisa? It's not that big, right? It's too small, right? It's like not big enough. And then like you're in this Museum of Great World Art.

If you're so focused on the Mona Lisa, I think it's something else. But again, if you're, maybe if you're a chemist and you're thinking about how the paints were different in the medieval era while they were painting these pictures and how the paint may have changed over the years. Yeah. If you're a security guard and you're looking at how the security guards are, how the security guards are, you know, dealing with people in this situation. I'm not saying that everybody has to channel their job into. to travel but um she's doing it but it's a good principle yeah yeah yeah i love it it's so cliche that it's fun i took a picture right there of some woman making her boyfriend take the picture of hold my hand as i walk away yeah yeah with the ring or without no travel has become so much more

performative because of things like instagram like who would have thought to do the hold my hand thing 20 years ago right it's the new version of it if if a tree falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it it's like if i didn't take a picture did it even happen true story about paris is that if you walk on bridges, they've actually had to take the fences off bridges because so many people are putting padlocks on them, the love locks. They're selling into the river. And I read articles about how the ancient habit of putting your lover's name on a lock and put it on the bridge didn't happen before 2010.

That is a brand new thing that became a total, everybody's doing it, so I'm going to do it. I'm here with my girlfriend who I might be broken up with another week, so I'm going to do it type thing. And so Yeah, I think conformism It's the perfect example. They sell them three pounds, three euros. You can get a luck. Now, so that's an institutionalized thing. If you come here in the year of 2005, nobody was putting a love lock on bridges.

Why? Not because it wasn't a good idea because it's kind of cool, but then everybody's doing it. Now that they have these plexiglass walls on the bridges because the wire ones were being torn down by the weight of all these padlocks. That's interesting. Yeah. So, and yeah, so a lot of tourist rituals are now photographic tourist rituals. Like, I'm sure since we've been here, different people have been holding the pyramid in their hands.

Yeah. That is, it's a tourist activity that only exists for the, for certain cameras. And so, of course, they didn't have this pyramid here. Sometimes they'll have, yeah, exactly. Sometimes they'll have like a picture plaque in certain places in, in a beach town in Spain. They had that, like, this is a good. spot to take a picture. Yeah. It's part of the government has generated these signs. Well, this is another thing that that's in my book is that before there were cameras,

you used to bring a sketchbook, right? And the guidebooks to places like Paris would say, if you have your sketchbook, go to this overview, and it's a good place from which to draw a picture of the city. Right. And so visuals have always been a part of how travelers have traveled even before cameras. And so literally people would exchange tips, on the best place to draw a sketch of, oh, this is before the Eiffel Tower, but of the Sen, you know, maybe from, Mart was probably not there,

or the Sackercru was not there either, but just you're sharing ways to capture a certain place in a certain moment, yet you're back in the day, you're drawing it instead of taking a picture. And so there's an exercise, we might do it in class this week. Instead of going and taking a picture of a place, spend two hours in a place, draw a picture of it, and how does that experience,

how does it affect your experience? of it because you have to notice more. You have to slow down and see more and notice more. And so that's another way. I was thinking of that trying to sketch something where I'm like, I don't know how to do it. Because I saw these people in the Mose d'Orsay, I'm like, what if I just join it with them?

There was this dunk contest at University of Maryland, and I was like, I'll line up and try it. And I mean, I didn't even get to the net height. And I slammed it backwards and I was like, did it go? I was like, shut up. I don't know. I'll try it. I'll write a sketch. Yeah. Well. Are you doing one?

Am I doing a sketch? A sketch? A sketch? Yeah. Oh, I was thinking comedy sketches for a second. As the teacher, I usually don't do it, but I should. Yeah, you should. Because it forces attention.

Actually, it's another way of getting out of what you think you're supposed to do. And what I found with my students is that they'll come to a place like this and they'll start sketching. And then tourists will come up to them because they want to know what is important. And they become a tourist attraction in their own right because suddenly it's like, why are they concentrating? Why are they paying so much attention to this thing? I just walked by. This must be an important one. This must be a thing.

And maybe that would happen less likely here. But no, it's the thing. It's again, back to time. It's a way of slowing down time. It's a way of forcing yourself to spend. You can take a better snapshot of this in a second than you could for two hours of sketching. But you'll experience more in two hours while you're forcing yourself to sketch. Yeah.

So what hobbies? Now, I'm afraid that this did not go on. I'm always afraid I didn't press record. What hobbies do you have on the road to get you moving? That's a good question. Is it going? It is. All right.

Yeah. Do you have anything like that or not really? Not like food. Part of what it made an interesting, this long walk for cheese this morning with my wife was that she really loves cheese and that sort of structured our walk, that she was looking for the good cheese. Yeah. And she was looking up words for some.

certain kinds of french cheese that's not my thing actually walking food is a good one food is a great one actually running sometimes i'll go for a run uh just as as sort of a fitness thing um it's funny that like the fact that we're here with microphones gives us a kind of authority and people are being very polite and differential that reason um and so it's yeah it's almost this cunitosh it's like look up danio johnson that kind of music it's very sweet that people are trying not to walk in our field of vision here sometimes i'll be shooting a movie in new york and i'm like hey don't go yet and i have to be like fuck off i'm not in this movie right going home right no you don't get to do give me a coke then right i'm my sad card yeah um so yeah what do you got besides

going to get promage there must be stuff that drives you around i mean walking running i'm i'm a great walk until your day and becomes interesting guy um yeah that basically you just get out and go just and go. In fact, that's a great way to spend your first day in a city is just start walking around. You get lost enough times and pretty soon you stop getting lost because you know where you are. So, dude, I was starving. I landed. I went back to my place. Here in Paris. I'm Paris. Yeah. Took a nap. It was an overnight flight. Took a nap till about 4.35. So I'm like, I woke up and I'm like, what day is almost over? It's not almost over. The sun says 945 or something like that. So I'm like, oh, get out there. And I'm fearful of opening my mouth and seeming like a foreigner.

Yeah, yeah. And so I'm just walking and walking. And then eventually my stomach gets the better. I'm like, I have to do this or I'm going to just be hungry. And then eventually you're like, you know, go through it. You just deal with it. So is. But being out, walking is like, I have no options here.

Right. I'm saying walking is a good one. No, walking is always good. In a way, that's a cheat answer because walking, whatever your hobby or obsession is walking is always sorry I was talking with my microphone down here walking is always a good option because it just takes you into places you hadn't expected to be do you have a hobby do you have an operating principle do you seek out comedy stuff or do you yeah sometimes I'll go see a comedy show I just found one in my neighborhood here okay

that's a good picture it's on there but I got to check it out a foreign comedy is fun mm-hmm it doesn't happen in a lot of places so there's no sense of looking for it But there was one in Ecuador, for sure. But it was all like one-man show stuff. There's some in Norway. I don't know. But thrift stores, no, maybe I don't have one that it's like a go-to one,

like record shops, like with Rollins. It occurs to me that I feel bad that I don't have a quick answer for you, but I think as a travel writer, I'm always looking for different frameworks from which to experience a place. So as a travel writer, like when I was writing my souvenir book, that was my thing, souvenirs. I wasn't typically a souvenir guy, but suddenly I was having these really interesting experiences with souvenir vendors who weren't used to people being curious about them, right?

Right. And so I think it's sort of an automatic cheat as a travel writer that I always am able to, whatever operating principle of my story is going to be my excuse. That's going to be my hobby. Right. But it's always walking to an extent, but it's always something within the framework of the story I'm trying to tell. So for one book, it was souvenirs. there's a different frameworks like once I tried to I just wanted to walk into the desert in fact that cover of vagabonding is from that day that I just walked in the desert I just wanted to feel

what was like to be in a sea of dunes and that was my operating principle and it worked pretty well yeah I guess mine are food get get try some flavors of the place and get that dumb fucking fridge magnet but that's more just to get me out of the apartment just to get me like moving no i mean that's why this week we'll talk about psychogeography that just the idea that you're going to follow a color or you're going to follow a smell or you're going to find ways to play games with the city because that will reveal things like we accidentally stumbled into people dancing which was awesome we didn't even need a psychogeographical principle we were literally trying to come here but we accidentally found this cool dance experience and psychogeography is

It's a way, it's called psychogeography. It's a way of tricking yourself into stumbling into those experiences because you're following the color pink. You're following the smell of baguettes. You're following some principle that doesn't really make sense, but it yields rewards. You know, like my wife and I were looking through this chate noir, this old magnet that's in all the souvenir shop. So suddenly we're looking for black cats.

And that's our operating principle, that we're looking for black cats, but suddenly we're seeing aspects of Paris. Let's go find one of these. and fill in whatever these is. That's the X. Exactly. And in a way, that's a better travel principle than your tourist map. And I don't want to knock tourist maps.

Let's say we stopped. And let's say somebody, let's say you and I were dating and somebody who's like, hey, do you want to come dance? Right. And we were headed to the Louvre to actually go in. Right. We would need to be able to go, yes, fuck the Louvre. I'll go back tomorrow. Yeah.

Forget whatever reservation I had. We can eat anywhere. Right. Because you've been invited into some chance encounter. So you've got to like. you ever hear that that story of a man was drowning it's like a bibley story man was drowning and then uh somebody came by in a rowboat and said hey do you need help because no god's gonna help me you heard this one yeah and then and then a ship went by is like god all hate me it's like

i sent you a boat i sent you a ship sent you a whale like yeah then there's this none who keeps praying to win the lottery yeah every day she prays to win the lottery day like day 200 she's praying god you forsaken me why haven't won the lottery in the heavens open up and god says buy a ticket so i forget what point we're we're trying to illustrate with this some sort of be able to say fuck the louvre yeah i'm staying in this no basically the louvre is an outline of there's what you've come here for and there's what the place has offered you and if you can't embrace what the place has offered you then um you're selling your experience short you might have a perfectly good experience of the louvre you might see this artwork that you sort of studied about in

our history class then you're missing out on the dance you're missing out on the dance you're missing out the crazy guy who wants to show you his pet. Yeah, I had two things to see in Southeast Asia, Bagan and not Hoyon with the big, Oh, the Sean State place, the boats. No, that was in Southeast Asia. That's only in Myanmar. I'm talking about all the Southeast Asia.

Oh, so in Vietnam. Oh, and you're what? No, Vietnam. They had those big pires of like islands. People go out there, not Hoyon. Oh, in Vietnam. Yeah, the, the, the, the, yeah, Hoyon in the northern in northern Vietnam yeah in the bay how long bay how long bay yeah two things

I want to see in all of Southeast Asia while I was there I ended up saying begon not the other one but the whole trip was one of the greatest trips of my life because it was like that's a fucking framework I think until you discover that by accident until you're like sitting in in the hostel or the guest house and you're hearing somebody a couple tables over talking about this amazing experience that they had last week and it's like hold on where did that happen yeah really that's just up the river from here I'd never this is what happened to you with Segueria in Sri Lanka, is that I didn't, Segueria is this hilltop, this plateau top fortress in central Sri Lanka.

That's just this amazing feat of human, like how they got water up there. Urban engineering and aquatic engineering, I had no idea it existed until I went there. And then I'm there, it's like, why did I not know about this place? And I think if you allow yourself to stumble into those places and to listen to where other people have gone and to allow yourself to make mistakes and to just say, yeah, I will go dancing instead of going to the Louvre, then that's when travel really becomes interesting. You see the, he was like, how long are you going to be here? I'm like, I don't know, like Asia, like a few months, I don't know.

You go see the Komodo dragons. I'm like, I've always been into those. Where are those? It's like two islands over. The island of Komoto, right? What? I'm like, okay, new fucking plan. Yeah.

Yeah, it's nice when it fucking rewards you like that. Yeah. Let's one more thing and then we'll move on. How does book come together? Well, it came out of the pandemic. Okay. Like a lot of great art, Will? This is a thing.

It's actually a long answer. Should we do the whole answer here? Let's save it for somewhere else. Okay. I'll definitely come back to that. Because it's tied into my entire life, as you might have gathered from the entries in the book. Yeah. I mean, there's some of you in there for sure.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's not completely you. It's also like what you look. But I've also been keeping notes on everything I've read as a traveler for 25 years. And I've been keeping really nerdy, obsessive notes. And so it shows up in the book. But what interests me.

of travel is just that the human texture of travel of how it changes people's lives and forces them into situations they wouldn't have considered before. And people who traveled in Japan 800 years ago or either 3,000 years ago have had the similar human experience that we have. Simple the human experience. Exactly right. It's not the same thing, but it's a similar human experience being in the unknown. Yeah. And being forced, this is why a pilgrimage was interesting, that a lot of pilgrims, they would leave their smell of little village in Europe and they would go and they might get drunk for the first time. And they might, you know, commit adultery on their spouse, but they're having these new experiences. And it was all the act of doing

it was spiritual and existential and life changing. Now, I'm not expecting, I'm not suggesting that you go and arbitrarily get drunk or cheat on your spouse on the road. But travel forces you into new realms of experience that are just not possible at home, no matter how open-minded and open-hearted you are at home. So people ask me this and always surprise at the answer, and I'm going to ask you too, do you get nervous when you go traveling to a place for the first time or when you go on a long-term travel? Are there still fear or nerves or is it all done? I would say it's all done for me. And it's interesting because I'm traveling with my wife internationally for the first time and she's really good at languages. I've accepted that I'm bad. And so she is nervous about French

in a way that I've never been nervous about French. Because she's nervous about French, she's actually going to become a better French speaker than me very soon. But I think the nerves are a good thing. It's almost like performance. Sometimes it's good to be a little bit nervous for a performance, it's good to be, it's okay to be nervous as a traveler as long as it doesn't preclude you from doing something interesting and daring and vulnerable. Right. But like, I always tell, but I'm like, you should feel nervous. It's completely the unknown.

I do it every time. Same thing with psychedelics. But like, you're fine with mushrooms. I'm like, no, I get scared every time I have a thing of mushrooms in my hand. I'm frightened. That's interesting to hear. But like, yeah, I've done it a bunch. I know how it's going to go.

But like, I got to reassure myself. Same with travel. Like, I will find this thing to do. I think that's good for the discipline of doing it. that yeah no no i think i think nerves are a good thing uh that it can't hurt to be nervous as long as the nerves don't preclude you from doing it right it's good to be nervous right so right so nerve wracking they're like no way no fucking way yeah yeah we sat there in uh ecuador they had one of these like you know not bungee things but the zip line across this

canyon yeah where was this Ecuador near banos yeah um it's a root to the waterfalls Ruta da, I forget, Ruta da, I don't know, the waterfalls, root of the waterfalls. You can take a bike, it's just downhill the whole way, and then take a cab back up. And anyway, we saw this thing, we stopped, we were like pondering it for like 45 minutes.

Like, I don't know, is this even safe? It's $10. That's not enough to be safe. Right. And then you're like, fuck, but that's like, we're going to regret not doing it, but still I don't want to do it. And then eventually it was like, one of us like,

so let's just do it if we're going to be doing it. And like, bach, and just talking yourself into it, it's fun as shit. Yeah. But we could have easily been like, nah. And usually that's the case. And usually that's the case. Usually what? You go, nah?

No, usually it's totally worth it. You know, that the anxiety is part of the process, but having done it is so much, it's so, I mean. Plus a negative of not having not done it. The first time I had been bagabonding is 23 years old. I lived in a van. It was safer, cheaper, and easier than I would, that any of my, my fears would have imagined. And now everybody does that the van life thing, but that basically it's so, actually,

it makes it more rewarding. When you do have, when you are anxious, the beautiful moments are more beautiful just because you, you didn't go into them with confidence and the privilege of thinking that you deserve this, that you sort of, you allowed yourself to have, there's a lot of gratitude among travelers. You're on the other side of the world, and maybe this happens a lot early in your travels, and you're just so thankful that you're here, you're smelling new smells, you're new food.

It's cheaper, it's more beautiful than you thought it would be, and you're just grateful. And it's good to exercise your gratitude muscle, I think. There is something like that. You're right. To stop, be like, oh, cool. I'm at this spot. I've seen this in books.

But now I smell it. Right, now I smell it. And it's like, this is cool. You can stop, right. It's fun to be like, this is cool. Or sometimes it's like, I never saw this in a book, but it's sort of cooler than I imagined anything in a book would be. Yeah.

Oh, interesting. All right, let's go somewhere else. Then we'll talk about how you got into this book. All right. Yeah, no, I can give you the whole story. Okay, cool. All right, we're back. I do love the people like, I'm messing up your thing.

I'm like, this is not on TV. Right. It does not matter. I was just thinking that this, the video aspect of this lends a weird officialness to this. It's like I almost feel like I should look into the camera like I'm presenting a documentary or something. Yeah.

So I always resisted this because I felt like it would make people feel like they're performing instead of like being natural and it's something I do when I was just doing audio too is I'll just talk to them for like 25 minutes about nothing and then I'll get into like how to just survive Tower 2

or like you know or like I say like you're rape when you were a kid or like you know whatever but like I try to get them to like forget that they're holding a microphone right and this makes it harder right

when I'm in a more comedians are used to it now so that's easier but when when you're in a studio I'll like set them up and then press record before people even get there Okay. And then I'm like, hey, sit down.

You want some coffee or something like that? And it's like, no, we're on. No, I'm tempted to talk to camera sometimes. No, I know the feeling, though. So it's like natural to sit and talk to each other like this, like you're in a car. It's done them in cars, too. That's a good one. Well, we've done two together in cars.

We drove around Los Angeles twice, one of which involved a mushroom deal. One of which involved the mushroom deal. That's right. We talked about it already. How are we looking? We're good. I shouldn't tilt this, but I did anyone. Does everybody know where we were at, Luxembourg Gardens?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. In the sixth, Alondizmont, the classic, we're on the left bank of the Sen this time. Yeah. These, I believe, were originally built as Royal Gardens. Again, I'm not the, I'm not going to give you facts. I'm just going to sort of riff randomly. You don't know Rick Steve's? He's like the PBS travel guy.

He's a nice guy. I've met him. But he is very much sort of, here's going to be an hour about a place and you're going to come home with specific ideas. for how to travel to this place. Whereas I'm much more of a big concept travel guy, like a life philosophy travel guy. And it occurs to me, this is the first time I've talked with anyone,

like officially for a podcast about my new book, available in bookstores everywhere. Vagabonds Way. You don't have my schick down yet. Like when you interviewed me about vagabonding, Vagabonding had been out for 15 years. And so I sort of knew my talking points. Oh, tell them what happened after we did the podcast.

We saw I sold a lot of books That's right skeptic think bump I've told you guys in the past That's what happens Skeptic Tank bump Yeah Is this skeptic thing book And I think I told you before

That I sort of have this this RA fandom Which is like Oh I read your book It was great I haven't read a book in 10 years But I read your book and I liked it Whereas the Tim Ferriss is like The crowd is like

Oh I read 10 books this week And Vagabonding was one of them So it's like the Those people are too smart The straight A students of life Listen to the Tim Ferriss show I liked him But his fucking audience is dorks.

The C minus of life are the skeptic tank people. I read their book four times because I don't remember reading it each time. But they're very sweet people. Your followers are very sweet. Yeah, I've got pretty lucky with that. Yeah. Okay. But like I don't have my schick.

So like you're asking me questions about the book and I keep forgetting to actually talk in that nice concise way that makes people interested in my book. Well, no. I'd rather. Okay. So you are going to get a schick eventually. That's what I found in like anytime a big thing happens in like in like, Medians eventually they get like Rogan had this thing with Carlos Mency and eventually Radio interview start asking him and he was himself at first and then he was less himself and then it was just here's the routine

I'm sure you get that with your students or when you do like public speaking in colleges we're like yeah this is already set right actually I recently spoke at my own colleges one of my first post-pandemic events and you have your stick that works there might be an equivalent in comedy that you know what people respond to you know what gets people excited and so for that book I've been I've been talking about for 20 years now. I know what people get people excited about that book. But for the new book, like my stick isn't down yet. And so...

So great. So now you're more natural. More natural is the way to go. What's rogue got a stick? You start going like, don't ask you about this. I just have a... You can just hear another interview already.

Right. Right. Anyway, I'd rather get you into your stick. This is the raw version. Not only is it on audio, but it's on video too. This is sort of the raw, raw, not really knowing how to answer his questions.

Yeah, later when he has a stick and he's like made up details, you can be like, no, that's not true. I saw the original story. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, how did this book come up, come about? Because you have this long history with vagabonding.

Yeah. Not the verb, but the book. Yeah. Where it is, it is, my friend says it like on your tombstone. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's in your Wikipedia is the new version of that. It's my, it's my career book. It's funny.

It's my first book. Vagabond's Way is my fifth book, but it's just what people have responded to. And still people are responding to it 20 years on in the same way that they did before. It's universal. people get excited about it um and so actually this this ties into our friend tim ferris that i i asked him like what should i'm thinking about writing vagabond than i thought right no good guy good guy um but i said like i'm thinking about doing vagabond too vagabonding two what do you think because at the time um i was thinking well maybe tim could just publish it we could be an audio book that tim has

proprietary what's that that's what he told me to do to do to publish self-publish To self-publish. Did I tell you that? Yeah. Okay. You're like, what are they going to offer you? You have your own fan base. Well, that's true.

That's true. That you could self-publish in a way that's going to be way more remunerative. You might not get your Times review, but you basically, you're automatically going to sell the books to the people who are skeptic tanks fans, for example. Yeah. So, but, and Tim said, yeah, don't water it down. Don't write vagabonding, too, in a way that waters down your message. You've all read in a book. What does that mean water it down?

Well, it's not like, right, sort of say the same thing. in a slightly different way, in such a way that people will buy the book, and it's like, eh, I kind of like the first book better. Right. And so then, yeah, and so I was a little bit disappointed by that, because I thought he'd be excited, and he's like, he would be- Because he loved the first book. Because he loved the, he published the audiobook. Like, Random House didn't use their rights to publish an audiobook.

And so he said, you know, those rights have revert to you, why don't you let me publish your audiobook? And so he did. For vagabonding? Yeah. Wow. And so it makes a lot of sense. So I thought he would be all over Vagabind, too, and he gave me what turned out to be good advice, which is just like, yeah, don't say the same thing twice with a different cover.

Think about this. Yeah, truly people do that, where they're just like, let me rehash this thing. This, like, great thing I did. Well, like, almost every movie franchise has diminishing returns every time they make a sequel, right? Dinosauru, whatever the fuck it is. Yeah. It's like, oh, whoa, they got loose again. And there's books, I'm sure that there's comedy routines that are sort of, guys are talking about the same thing they were talking about 10 years.

ago and it's not as funny but it's safe right it worked and so they keep it going and so i wasn't sure what to do for a while and then i started reading uh the the daily stoic you know right holiday uh he was just on rogan uh really maybe two months ago uh he's a young guy he's just he's barely into his 30s but his thing is stoicism he's the philosophy of stoicism he wrote the obstacle is the way um stillness is the key. He's been on my podcast. And there's just the, actually, was he quoted in vagabonding? No, but he's quoted in this book. Okay. And so, yeah. I've heard about stoicism recently. What is it? Well, it's, it's the old, it's the old Greco-Roman philosophy of that you can't control your circumstances, but you can control how you react to your circumstances. And so it's just this idea of

think before you act, calm your passions. And he wrote a book called, Rand Holliday wrote several books about stoicism, but he wrote one, it was called The Daily Stoic. It became a bestseller because it came out the year Donald Trump was elected. People were really nervous about Trump. Stoicism says you can't control your circumstances. You can't control how you react to them. That's kind of Buddhist, too, right? It's very, it has a lot of overlap with Buddhism.

It became popular with professional athletes, like Aaron Rogers, the Packers, has been on Instagram showing his copy of the Daily Stoic, right? Oh, interesting. And so basically, it's every day of the year, for a leap year, 66 chapters, Ryan had a quote from a Stoic philosopher and then a meditation on the quote that sort of maybe brought in an example from sports or from Teddy Roosevelt or the Bible or something. So basically each day of the year, you have meditation on Stoic philosophy that sort of meant for self-help and so sort of make your life calmer and more focused. And so I ended up basically, long story short, pitching a travel version of the Daily Stoic

where every day of the year I have a quote by a philosopher. philosopher, a travel writer, a poet. At one point, I quote you, Ari, not in the epigraph. But, and then I have a meditation on that quote. So, yeah, they go. It's kind of like early Seinfeld when he would do a bit and then the whole episode was something to do with that theme of that bit. Yeah. And then they stopped that after a couple years. But like, it is exactly that. Right. And so, so it has, it's not vagabonding too, but it's very much of the ethos of vagabonding. But basically each day has, so basically January is about inspiration for travel. February is about planning for travel.

March is about getting started in travel. And so basically the year cycles through the phases of a journey. This is overlaug bonding a lot because sorry to interrupt you. Because like it vagabonding split into three groups, getting ready, small chapter, traveling, 80% of it coming home, another small chapter. Yeah. Yeah, vagabonding is 11 chapters sort of bookended by leaving and coming home. This is similar. So December is mostly about keeping the.

journey going once you're home yeah how do you keep the vibe yeah something i'm trying to do when i got back from ecuador is like how do i keep that equator vibe that freedom yeah that i like like how do you keep it introduce stuff to your neighbors or like there's you got almost be mindful about it yeah and and but then it's the ecuador vibe but it's not specific to ecuador because if you wanted that vibe you would stay in ecuador but like the idea that waking up and not knowing what's going to happen but being excited about it and walking across town and saying i I'm going to, that's wedding music. I'm going to stop at this wedding and watch.

And if somebody invites me to join, then I'm going to join this wedding, right? It's giving yourself permission to do whatever to, you know, again, walk until your day becomes interesting, letting yourself not be bound by your plans, but whatever is exciting in your life, right? Yeah. And so that's December in this book. Like November is about sort of the long haul and the decision to come home. The middle chapters are about the meat of the journey. like early in the journey your your vibe is going to be a little bit different than when you've been traveling for a long time yeah and so march is getting started it's those first impressions it's being excited about everything but by the time in this vagabond's way by the time you're in june july august you're in your more seasoned part of travel and it's like well how can i experience something in a different way so something you wrote in here that i've gotten to already i've done the as of now i've read the first whatever first two days into march you're in a march yeah so you read the first the first one first, basically the pre-travel stuff you've done.

Yeah, but something in there was the more you're traveling, the better you're going to get at it. Yeah, yeah. The, oh, my bus left an hour early or, oh, my bus leaves four hours late. That's me saying it. It's like, shit like, uh-huh, I've dealt with us. Yeah. Not a big deal.

Yeah. Well, there's also, is it the mediocre now brain chapter? Maybe. The idea that you can plan your travels, but now is your mediocre now brain. It's not going to be as experienced. It was his name, I think her name was Julie Roxanne Gravorkin. I was on her podcast, her and her husband's podcast. And I was talking about this, about how you're smarter once you leave.

Like your first week of travel, you're going to be smarter. You could read an encyclopedia about France. Once you've been in Paris for a week, you're going to be so much smarter. Yeah. And so she said, well, it's your mediocre now brain, you know, that why should I plan my trip around my mediocre now brain? as it understands France or Cambodia or Australia when I'll be so much smarter after one week in that country. The comedy version of that is people make these catchphrases

when they're three months in a comedy. And then they're 10 years in end season now. And then it's like, why are you still honoring this fucking dork open micer that decided something? He was a loser, dude. You would have, if he said, how to you now, you'd be like, get away, you suck. But you're doing whatever he told you.

Hmm, hmm. And the mediocre now, he says, that's what I remembered. It was like all these decisions comedians made before we knew what we were doing. Right. And it seems like good advice at the time. But basically, and this is, it's sort of honor your future self that you can study the heck out of your travels, but until you're out in the road making mistakes, you're going

to be smarter every day of your journey than you are when you're planning your journey. And so unless you allow yourself to make mistakes, like if you plan this very detailed itinerary in Ecuador, six months before you get there, then you're on. in Ecuador and you realize that it's way cooler than you thought it was, but you're stuck in your old, mediocre now brain. You're not in the smarter everyday person that is on the road and that is traveling. Is this making sense? Yeah. No, it totally is. Yeah, totally is. So that's when you're like, oh, I'm supposed to do this thing, but you're like, no, no, I know, that's not the thing you're supposed to do. Well, it's like, it was just like now, we were walking to

the Louvre and we found people swing dancing in a courtyard and they were not tourists. They were French people swing dancing and doing it well. And we stopped and watched it because, yeah, your mediocre now brain is looking for the Mona Lisa when travel has gifted you with the dancing in the courtyard near the loose. There's some guy who can never stop thinking about is we're going up to where I found that the fool guy. We're getting on a bus. There was another bus that left, I guess, before the advertised time. And this dude was screaming about it.

He's all right, checked out of my hostel. What the fuck am I supposed to do? these people the bus stop like they're in their minds like dude the bus is not turning around right so i don't know what you're screaming about i have no power to help you here and me and my friends are just kind of like smiling at them and it's like i don't know them in the stay in fucking whatever city it was nang shui for an extra day just stay an extra day you just got some it's like i would know better there's a chapter in the book about this okay go home or or stay you know like there's a chapter of my book that it's i didn't set out to honor my father-in-law but i did

because my wife has this story about when they went to, they were going through Italy, they got to the airport at, I don't know, Milan, and her dad read 1,500 as 5 o'clock instead of 3 o'clock, right? I've been there, done that. And we've probably all done that, right? And so instead of... Can't they just use our American system?

Well, instead of getting an airport hotel and waiting for the next plane, he said, let's just go to the Alps. So they drove up to this place called the Osta Valley, and they stayed in this enchanted, mistrouted place. and part of the fun of being there was that it was an accident and that they hadn't gone there

to find the Osta Valley that they had gone there because dad screwed up and missed the plane. But he was willing to say no let's just let's don't stay by this let's use this mistake as an opportunity to do something amazing

and so they were not knowing where they were going they drove in the Alps they stayed in this little valley and it was enchanted. It's one of my wife's favorite travel experiences because her dad messed up but was willing to turn it into something better. Yeah, there's that too, right?

The ability to turn something into a positive. Yeah. Where it's like... Yeah, so you miss your bus. Well, stay in the village, make a friend, you know? Yeah, right. Get in a soccer game. Try it.

Eat that guinea pig that you didn't think you were going to eat before. Try it now. I knew I was going to eat it. Right? Yeah. Okay, so... So you're rolling a cigarette with a microphone. You want me to hold your microphone so you can roll your cigarette?

It's okay. I rest it here. I'm the worst of this in the world. I can go in a monologue. I don't know if you... No, I'm the... No, I'm listening. I'll break in.

I'll just keep fucking these out. I've already lost two papers. So pandemic comms. Have you been thinking about this type of thing for a while? Well, this is the deal. It's the commonplace book. I think, have you and I talked about the commonplace book before? What's a commonplace book?

Well, this is another Ryan Holiday thing that basically during Renaissance times, the aristocracy would keep a commonplace book that you didn't have access to a thousand books. So if you read a book that moved you, you would write your favorite quotes into your commonplace book. Basically, it's a notebook where you, you stored your knowledge, right? So you would take a book from the, from the library in the center of town, you would read it, you would copy all the best quotes

of Dante into your commonplace book, and you would have them for the rest of your life. Early Napster. You would just take it. Maybe, but you wouldn't, you would transcribe it. And so you were, as you were transcribing it, that forced you to think about it in a creative way.

And then you had these quotes, and then suddenly your Dante, your favorite Dante is in a commonplace book that you had in your own house. Thomas Jefferson had one, Leonardo da Vinci had one. All of the great men of the Renaissance had commonplace books. Well, without knowing, and Ryan Holliday, because he writes about the Stoics,

writes about commonplace books, and he keeps them on paper, I, as a young nerd with my Apple 2E computer, or my Commodore 60, or not my comment, gosh, my Mac classic computer, I would keep it on my hard drive, right? Right. So I've been saving quotes since the mid-1990s about everything that interests me. No wonder, because you have so many quotes. Yeah, yeah.

And so vagabonding has a lot of quotes, and that came out of my commonplace book. I love that aspect of it, because that came out of that. So you would just go to your old book? I didn't know it was called a commonplace book. I didn't know that Thomas Jefferson and Da Vinci kept a commonplace book. I was just saving these quotes because I didn't feel like I was smart enough to, like, quote them at memory. So I would hold onto these quotes from Walt Whitman, you know, from Annie Dillard and other people who are in that book. And so I wrote vagabonding maybe seven years into my commonplace.

book. I wrote this 25 years into my commonplace book. It's a lot bigger. And so it's a lot deeper than vagabonding, right? So I think not to discourage people from behind my, like your 20 year old who just wants to get excited about travel is going to read vagabonding in two hours and hit the road. Actually, a 20 year old also read this book, but it's going to, it's harder to read because it's a page a day. There's a lot to think about on each page. Can you understand this stuff before you've been on some sort of long-term travel? Well, as with vagabonding, hopefully you read it once and get excited, then you read it again when you get home and it's like, oh, of course.

Like there's two ways of understanding it. There's reading it to get inspired and there's reading it to understand, right? So there are, this book is pretty dense. It's denser than vagabonding. It's harder to read quickly, but it's more likely to be a book where you read a page or two a day and then think about it for the rest of the day and then it builds up over the course of a longer time right this is our this our first walkthrough person yeah it's not bad no worries not de problem um what would you tell yourself at 26 that you can tell yourself now like if you

went back in time that it keeps getting better that there's there's about travel there's nothing to rush that about travel is that you don't need to burn your candle now that you can have an amazing experience and it doesn't have to scratch it off your list that you can go to paris have an amazing experience you can go to mongolia and it doesn't have to just be oh now i don't have to do that anymore you can come back to a place that basically you can i'm not saying that you always have to go back to the same places but that as you get older travel gets better because you become a more complex, grounded, and let's face it, self-confident person.

When I was 26, I'd like to think that I was smart and hopeful, but I just had less life experience. I had self-confidence, you know, that all these years later, I'm better equipped to be a traveler. And I miss being a traveler in that everything was new. Everything was new. When you're like that young, it's like, what the fuck is it? What's Korean barbecue?

And it's straight to your heart. Everything moves your heart. Your first country is just like, my wife, my wife is the same way, that she went to drama school in London, and she had things that happened to her in London in her early 20s that will never happen again,

because it happened to the young her. And there's things that happen to me in Thailand, in Korea, in India, that I can't compete with those because I'm an older version of myself. He goes, you know, I've been in the Nick Adams stories. He was like, you know, I've been, which is just him, I guess.

Um, I've been around the world. I've had, I've had beautiful women, wives and girlfriends, but everybody's like, nobody compares to that young papusa, his word, uh, when I was, you know, when we're both 16 in the woods, it was just like, yeah, it's like wild. Well, there's a first love aspect of this, you know, that you can't, you can, you can, you can retrospectively be annoyed by your first love, but your first love affects you in a way. Yeah. That stays with you, right?

Even though you would never make that choice now. Well, your early travels, especially the ones that you, when you're traveling for yourself with your own money on your own initiative. Yeah. That just, it goes straight to the heart. And it feels like Indonesia and Myanmar, there's places you've been, Thailand maybe, that are special to you because those were your first true vagabond experience. Yeah. I don't know if it's like, do I love Myanmar because of my first spot or because it's so foreign, so like wildly undiscovered? Yeah.

And I don't know. Well, that really shifts you out of your comfort zone, too, that I think, and of course, as we all have our travel first loves, Asia will always be my travel first love because I was young when I was there. And maybe Europe would be it if this is where I came. But because I was so obviously not from there because I was so confused every day, it really forced me to make sense of things. and I don't know it was fun like when I was living in Korea I was stressed out a lot that's a workaholic place

because I was working I was working as an English teacher there oh did you finish you finish one I think so buddy I think so this is your new affectation is rolling your own I did it just for friends 25 minutes to this is the longest one's ever taken I've never had I usually have a table you are holding a mic and trying to thank you I appreciate it

I appreciate it it's funny at the Louve we had see how it smokes maybe a thousand people were walking through the camera and you know like a few dozen of them decided not to walk through the camera we've only had one person walk through the camera here she noticed too yeah and then she felt bad oh that's good I didn't see her face yeah no she she apologized but it's like it's fine it doesn't matter yeah um so how how long did it take in a second yeah how long did it take to write this um eight months so so this in this I I don't know if I've said this in this podcast yet.

I also met my wife during the pandemic. Interesting. And so two months in the pandemic, I had a blind date with a woman where we had to stand 10 feet apart. We still didn't know how it was, so it was the fucking weirdest things part of it that's gonna be part of our history.

Yeah, yeah. It'll be tough to remember like, why are they like in the metro? We're like, why these seats so far apart? Like, oh, they took out every other seat and they haven't put them back in yet. Yeah, I haven't been on the metro yet, so I haven't seen that.

They have barriers up. You can't push anybody. It doesn't, It doesn't make me feel like I'm home. Right, right. No, I haven't, and I'm not super fond of the metro because it's such a good walking city. Paris is such a good walking city. But during, and this, I'll remember this the rest of my life that I was a grizzled bachelor going into the pandemic.

And then two months in, I swiped right on Bumble, which I don't usually do in Kansas. And then I met my soulmate, basically. And then I was instantly. What Kansas is more of a J-Date place? I have a story about J-Dade in Kansas because I was just curious about who what Jewish people are looking for love in Kansas so when on J-Date I said I'm not Jewish

I'm not looking for Jewish I don't want to convert I just wanted to see who was out there and it's all like really stressed out university professors at Kansas State University or something they're just not a big indigenous Jewish outside of Kansas City in Wichita there's not much of a Jewish population there and so my wife who had been living in Berlin for a long time

went home to be with their parents during the pandemic. And so at the time I lived next door to my parents. And so our first date, my parents were there. Our second date, her parents were there. We couldn't touch because the pandemic. And so it was very Victorian. What's that? It was a death sentence if you got it.

Well, at the time, I didn't want to kill my parents. I didn't want to bring some random bumble match onto my property, introduce them with my parents and have my parents. and have my parents catch COVID and die. And have that the reason you're going to die. It's just like, it's so much different. In retrospect, it seems silly. Like, I was washing doorknobs.

On our first two dates, we were washing doorknobs. So we were washing groceries. We were washing groceries. I had to wash my dog down. If someone else pet my dog, I'd go take her straight to the shower and shower myself. In retrospect, it's an absurd thing. But that is the circumstances. It was that then under.

In our minds, it was that. Yeah. God. Yeah. And so basically, I fell in love. And so then my fiance, at the time, fiance said you fired your agent 10 years ago and you haven't gotten a new one like your last two books have been unagented and it's like yeah and she's like find a new agent

ralph you have the lack of drive of a stand-up comedian you really do have that lazy spirit of a comic it took me like 19 years to build a website no well i thankfully had a friend years ago who helped me uh probably my cigarette i did roll it myself right right right Nice job. No, but actually I, and I'm also a little bit like I like to change the subject. I like to wander around and get lost. So I wrote, my third book is about the ghetto boys. You know this, right?

I wrote a 33 and a third book about the ghetto boys. What's 33 and a third? Oh, it's a series of books by Bloomsbury Academic about famous music albums, right? What's 33 and third and third besides one third? It's the revolutions per minute of a long playing record. 33 and a third revolution. per minute and so they named this series of music books but like I made no money from that book and and actually I wrote a book about the ghetto boys I

didn't write a book about like some super popular band from the 90s it was this obscure Houston Bushwick boys yeah Bushwick Bill Bill and who else obscure ginks and Willie D. Scarface who's probably the most famous and then DJ Ready Redd two of those guys are now deceased anyway so so I wrote like my third book is about a gangster rap album that nobody listened to to and was really offensive, but I thought it was interesting because on my first vagabonding trip, I went to Houston not to see the Johnson Space Center, but because I wanted to see Fifth Ward that was the ghetto boy sang about, right?

Okay. So this is why, this is in the no agent side of my career. Nobody's read that book because it's, I'm proud of it, but it's about a weird topic. It's about psycho, it's the psychogeographical approach to Houston. Basically, this ties into what we were talking about before. But that's what you're into. So travel writing and the travel industry, you talk a lot about this, where it has, And that changed the idea of travel.

It tells you, you can't go to Houston for that. You have to go for barbecue. But it's like, be true to yourself. Like, this is what I'm interested in. So why to do these other things? That's why I have a book about a gangster rap group because when I went to Houston, I was mostly interested in seeing these neighborhoods

that they rapped about. And so I went, so I went to those neighborhoods. And it was interesting, and it was interesting going back to those neighborhoods 20 years later and researching the book. because why shouldn't you go to a place of a part of the town that's called Dangerous? I mean, you wouldn't go there in the middle of the night, but you go there and go to a barbecue risk? No, it's actually, it's gentrified a little bit, but it's just, it's a poorer part of town, and poor people have to eat, so you go to a restaurant there, and this is a crazy thing.

I don't think it made it into the book. I met dudes on horseback. We were sort of just like black dudes in the neighborhood riding on horseback. They have horse clubs in Houston, in the poorer parts of Houston. Black rodeo people are some of the most interesting. And it's part of the culture. So basically, I was able to see a side of Houston because of the ghetto boys that nobody ever seeks out unless they're poor people living there, right?

And so my point is not to be a voyeur going into the poor part of Houston, but it's like I really wanted to see what it was like in that part of Houston. Okay. But if you're into art and you come to Paris, it's obviously set up for that mostly, right? Yeah, if you're into, I'm trying to think a small, New York has this, Berlin has it, Berlin has it a lot, there's something, whatever you're into, there's a scene. So there's a ping pong scene in New York. Yeah. And so if you're way into ping pong or jazz. There's ping pong tables about 300 yards that way, outdoor ones. If you bring your paddles, you can play. Wow. In Luxembourg, near Luxembourg Gardens. So yeah, so you did travel in Houston to honor what you're into. I did at the time. Like I was living in a van. I was 23 years old. It's like I don't want to go to Johnson Space Center at NASA interests me, but the ghetto boy scared me. Like I've listened to this album and this is I really wanted to see what they were. It was like they were singing about this neighborhood as if it was the land of mortar or something. It was so over the top, right? Anyway, that was my, this is all an illustration of why I'm not a very good professional writer is that I wrote a money that I made a book that I made no money on that's about an obscure. Houston gangster rap group that I was interested in when I was 23, but my wife said, why don't you get an agent? Why don't you write a book that is successful as vagabonding instead

of just writing these weird random books? My souvenir had the same publisher as a ghetto boy's book. Well, here's the problem with any artist, writers are. It's that you get influenced to do what's um one would get influenced to do what is uh financially better for you yeah yeah but that's not what you would do artistically if it was like there's no money in this you would do what you're interested in right so way to follow your fucking art man yeah in in a weird way um you know but then also i was telling my wife it would have made sense if i would have met her 10 years earlier like i could have gotten married when i was 40 instead of 50 um she says it would have been a bad time to meet but so yeah, I wrote some weird books. I wrote a comic book. But then I read the Daily Stoic. I

got a good agent and then I realized I've been sitting on these travel quotes. I've been thinking about travel for 25 years. I've written one successful travel book. What if instead of going broad I go deep and each day has its own, each day of the year has its daily stoic style lesson about travel. And so I pitched this book. It sold very quickly. One advantage of selling a book that sells 300,000 copies is that your agent can just go to your publisher and say, by the way, do you want another book by this guy who's, who's thrown 300,000 copies, right? It's way easier to take a chance on that. Yeah.

It would take a chance on some guy. So it was easy for me to sell this book because random house is like, oh, yeah, you're right. This has sold a lot of copies. Yeah, we'll give him another book. So then basically I had all these quotes and ideas in my Commonplace book, and I spent eight months. Actually, I got married. I said, can you let me have a honeymoon? And they said, sure. Kiki and I went to Colorado for a honeymoon.

And then I came back and started writing. And when she went to Brooklyn to pick up her things, she had an apartment as an actress in Brooklyn. That's where I met her. Yeah, where you met her, I was writing chapters of the book in the pickup while we were driving from Kansas to Brooklyn. So this book, part of it was written in Colorado, part of it was written in Kansas, part of it was written in Brooklyn on I-70 in Ohio. Do they give you a, when you were writing a book, do they give you a deadline and say, we want this many chapters by this? So it's like you have to follow their schedule. Yeah, but it's funny.

Writers are so flaky that they sort of give you sort of fake deadlines. It's like, we won't this book by October. Well, I didn't, I wasn't finished with the book by October. It's like, I can maybe get it by November. It's like, yeah, fine. And then in November, I wasn't done. This is November 2021. They're like, yeah, that's fine.

So I handed him the manuscript on December 21st and they're like, cool. And then basically the book is coming out of October 2022. they sort of tricked me, they basically gave me a one year ahead of publication deadline, knowing that most writers are going to turn them in way late. So I was two months late on my deadline, but I was still like four months sooner than most writers would do it because artistic temperance are not very good with the organization.

And so my wife will tell you, like I was writing seven days a week those last two months, but I've got it done. I'm happy with the book. This is my first hardcover book. Like this is an advanced reader's copy. This is my first book that will be. Ari has the special advanced readers edition.

You will not be getting the copy with this black letter in our top saying advanced uncorrected proofs, not for sale. Not for sale. We'll see about that. October 4th. So let on eBay when I get hit by a bus. But yeah, this will be a hardcover book. So this is like, this is my first grown-up book. Like I was a kid.

I was barely out of my 20s when Bagabond and came out. I was just happy to have a book. Now, yeah, like they have. hired an artist to make the cover the the the cover of it's it's a fictional place they basically wanted to create desired it's like an old 1930s travel poster um but instead of putting a person it's just like they wanted to create a landscape into which you can dream yourself this reminds me of two spots in the world really yeah edinburgh uh there's a arthur seat uh holly holly rood park arthur seat is at the top of hollywood park uh um if you go over the

back side there's this old kind of ruins of an outlook post and you can go see oh that's awesome where you would do that down there and then also maybe camelback mountain or somewhere in in near phoenix okay there's like one of these like stone structures and you just sit out there and smoke a jay and just like yeah you know be still enough where the squirrels or chipmunks come right up to you okay because like you haven't moved in too long right um yeah both those places more edinburgh because the green. Well, that means it's working because we made it intentionally non-specific because you could put a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it, but it's like, well, it's a book about basically we designed the cover and they actually hired a British artist to make this cover, unlike

Vagabonding, which is like a picture of me on a $5 camera that somebody had taken, one of my friends had taken when I was walking through the desert. And so we decided to create a cover that would make people dream themselves into this landscape so that ideally when someone's really this book there might be reading about a Japanese traveler from 800 years ago or Thomas Swick who wrote a book 10 years ago but they're thinking about their own travels and that's why vagabonding was successful I think because people read vagabonding and I talk about my own experiences but they dream their own experiences same with this book that hopefully when people read this book they'll think yeah this could be me yeah this may have been a traveler who lived 500 years ago

and he was feeling nervous about going to Jerusalem out of the city of um and I feel nervous about this but travelers have always felt that way it's relatable yeah it's about the human experience of what it's like there's a theory I made for stand-up where instead of going like hey men do this just go I do this and then the men can relate yeah but you're not you're not alienating the women because some women also relate yeah you're like you know whatever the thing is you do it's like oh 80% men but 20% of men look I've never done that well there's there's a lot of women quoted in this I intentionally got a lot of and global writers as African writers There's Chinese and Indian and Japanese writers.

So basically what I tried to evoke without going straight out and saying it is that the human experience of travel hasn't isn't that different from continent to continent and century to century. It's easier to travel now, but what's special about travel hasn't changed since the 15th century or the first century. So there's one in, I think, vagabonding one, let's call it that. Right. um that is about um addiction to internet and when you're on the road and i think i've told you this like one time my danish friend um spent all night up on facebook not you it was just one night she did it and wasn't able too tired to go out on our trek with us the next day wherever we went um it was in me and mar and it's like hey if she's like and for what to to check in on shit

like dumb shit from back home it wasn't like i was doing business or anything like that. It was just an addiction. You wrote about some guy, super rich guy who got a train, I think, across America, and he brought his stenographers where he could get all the news. Yeah. That's in this book. That's in this book.

It's in this book. It's in the other one, too, I think. It's J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan. And he, this was more than 100 years ago. So he got like a teletype machine. He could do cable grams from his train car in Egypt. He went to Egypt, and his companions were like, what the hell is wrong with

JP he's just in his train car sending telegrams on the internet all day he was keeping up with his stocks he's like worried about his stock prices and it's like this is this is the pyramid this is the ancient genius of humanity and you are inside your car because it's convenient sending cable grams right yeah and so that's why I have my phone in my pocket right now this came and actually I don't have my data plan so smart smart because I only works with Wi-Fi I put my put mine on I was like I'll let me make sure I have whatever I called whatever and I was like what a mistake yeah because now I can go on and check instead of like, oh, I'm in a cafe.

Let me see if I can get on the Wi-Fi and return something real quick. But in between, I can't. And then I'll just have to figure it out. I fucked up. The only time it was good is when I was down to like 1% battery two days ago. And I'm like, oh, shit up. I just got to find a metro station and figure it out. Yeah.

But that's also your head is down so much when you have your phone. When your head is up, suddenly it's like, are they rock and roll dancing in that square? Is this guy painting a picture? What is that? Yeah. Suddenly, you're, we're so. So I used to see the world through this screen that you're not seeing the world that's right in front of your eyes, right? I do a thing where I'll check, I'll just check a YouTube upload of like, let me see if it's doing like with views and some, just to see what it's, what the numbers are like.

And I was going to see what last week's podcast was. It was in my flat. And I went to look and I stopped myself. There's only a few moments where I win, you know, I'm like, what are we doing? It doesn't matter. It's going as it's going. And I just slammed it and just went out and went to a cafe. Yeah.

But, like, what do you, like? Well, you're looking at the stats your life. I'm wasting your time. I look at my podcast stats too. But at home, in fucking an hour outside of Wichita, fine. What else is going on? The grass is going to grow regardless if we watch it or not. No, but, like, no, one way thing about having my first date with my wife on my own deck

is that we can go out to that deck and there's a beautiful view and we can just sort of breathe in the moment. And actually, the reason we read the Daily Stoic together is we wanted to have, we wanted to start each day, like reading to each other. So we read like, Mary, Oliver poems or Ticknot Han meditations or stoic meditations and it forced us to be in a place and it occurred to me just now it's been a while since I've sat this long in Luxembourg Gardens yeah and I've seen all these it's a touristy place but it's gorgeous though I mean we're looking

the other direction but it's beautiful away from the camera as well and so by the nature of having a conversation with you and this is a performed conversation but I'm able to to be still in Luxembourg gardens for the first time in a long time. And my wife and I figured out a way to be still on our own porch by reading poems or meditations to each other. And it forces us, well, actually, you used to do this with cigars, that it forces you to be still and endure a moment. You got an hour.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so probably six days a week, we still try to do that to read to each other. And it forces us, it forces us to be in a moment and experience in it. And similarly, traveler is the same way. And so that's in boring. Kansas that's in my beloved home state that doesn't have this excitement going on so why on earth

would you wake up and look at your phone and have the rest of your day dictated by that right it's easier said than done to put your phone down but you have this you know why do you need i went on love line once and um and um dr drew told me something about he called marijuana addiction i've already heard him say this and i was like hey i got to stop you like because i've heard talk about that and he goes oh okay he goes sure he's your friends with jo rogan right i'm like yeah And he goes, so, listen, Rogan and you are, I'm sure you can, like, smoke weed and write a new bit or go out and do your chores. Because there's a lot of people who can't smoke weed and stay in their apartment all day, don't do anything, play video games. And, like, their day passed them by when they wanted to do something.

Right. And he goes, that's the addiction when it's getting the way of your life. And this cell phone addiction, that's what it is. It's like, I know that I'm only in Paris for two weeks, 13 days. And every moment I'm on this dumb. thing unless it's straight for work where i can justify it it's it's an addiction taking you out of it's not helping you it's hurting you and it's an addiction which previous generations of travelers were not tempted by jp morgan was the the patient zero of this he was rich enough to put a telegraph

in his train car in egypt and that ruined his trip people were with him like this dumb ass didn't see any of egypt because he was worried about the same shit as at home actually this came up recently I have sort of a weed specific thing in vagabonding where it's like weed is like TV. You know, you can do it, but you don't need to do it. You don't need to enhance every experience. I've recently felt a little bit bad about this. It felt like that was sort of a pushback against the baby boomer travelers who came before me when I wrote the book. And they're like, dude, you know, well, I wanted to push back against that and say, you don't need, you're in Thailand.

You know, you're in New Zealand. You don't need to smoke weed to enhance this moment. And so I have that, it doesn't say don't smoke weed, but it says, you don't have to smoke weed. You're not in Dayton, Ohio. And so, I'm glad you brought that up. Like, I started writing an essay. You told me some good advice of, like, I gave you a chapter and you're like, oh, half of these are like essays. Yeah.

Like, take this out. And he goes, but you're like, he, you're like, don't lose it. It's a good essay. Yeah. You know, embellish that. And then you have an essay separate from your story. Right. And so I was writing up this essay of worst travelers and Chinese, number one.

And then I was writing, I was like, that's not to say they're all, I have met two different Chinese person. And one was in Pi, these two Chinese guys away from their group, you'll rarely find them. Got me high. And we talked about what parental expectations in China and felt like that. So it's like, if I'm seeking out weed, it takes me out of the thing. If it's like comes up, sure, sure. it's cool man you know if you're in amsterdam it's like absolutely going to a coffee shop that's a good point that's a good point no it but it is it's almost like it's like a cell phone

in that you have dumb habits at home with your cell phone you're watching the same dumb instagram accounts why should you look up instagram in paris if you smoke weed because you hate your job and you're bored in ohio or texas why would you do it because you're not bored here right and so maybe if yeah if it catches you by surprise if there's this cool chinese vagabonding vagabonder who comes and says you know let's let's smoke a joint and talk about life then that is a better opportunity than using it as the crutch right and I'm not saying that it's not this is not exclusive to weed and smartphones it's it is any habit that you bring with yourself that is getting

in the way of the raw vulnerability of travel right but you're putting you're throwing a joint or a cell phone screen between these new experiences that you could be having right yeah you'll see it like some chuds like like hey we're all going to smoke weed. I'm like, I'm in the middle of a conversation. And I've done it where I'm like, oh, let me make sure I smoke. Right. But it's like, no, you fucked up.

But other times, like, I'm bored. Like, you want to smoke weed? Like, sure. And it goes back. How old were you starting smoking weed? Late college. And then, like, only a couple times. And then, like, once I became a comic.

A lot of friends in junior high who smoked weed, which is when I sort of decided that that I wasn't going to do it because I didn't want to be like those guys. And then, but then I think a lot of people start smoking weed so young that it's like their TV or it's like their smartphone that they very unimaginatively do it. They do it because they're bored. Yeah. And yeah, so it was interesting to hear you say the Dr. Drew thing because a part of me feels bad, you know, now that wheat is legal. But I think it still can be a traveler's crutch in the same way that a smartphone is a traveler's crutch or the desire to have an ice cream cone or a pizza when you're in a country that doesn't really make ice cream or pizza, you know. I had to stop. I was getting ready for my special. I had to stop smoking weed for about six weeks.

Okay. Because I was coming home in Jacksonville back to my apartment or my Airbnb I was staying in. And I was going to smoke. Jacksonville, Florida is where you filmed it. No, no. I was just getting ready. And it was one of the weeks I had on the road. No.

Underrated town, though, the beach there is nice. But I was like, I know what's going to happen. I'm going to smoke weed. I'm going to watch Family Guy. And I have to go over my notes. I have to go over this and, like, say what's, like, extra and what's not. and I won't do it if I get high. So I was like, oh, I'm not going to get high tonight.

And then I was like, what am I doing? This is too important. I got to not smoke weed until I'm done with the special. Well, good for you. Yeah. When did your special come out? Before this comes out, I think, or right around when it comes out. Ari Shafir-Jew, guys, watch it now.

It's available on smartphones, computers, and television sets. Yeah. On platforms everywhere. On platforms, yeah. And then we might do. I'm going to try and talk you and do an event with me in KGB in New York on November 14th. I'm going to do it with or without you. I'm going to do it.

If I'm there, I'll do it. If you can join me, yeah. Absolutely. So you wrote this book. Maybe by that time you will finish the book. I will. You will have found the quote word. I love it, dude.

It's really interesting. And it's also really good right before bed reading. Yeah. Well, it's really dense. Again, Vagabond, you can blow through an afternoon. You would be cheating yourself by blowing through this in an afternoon. But it is written in stoner-sized chunks. Yeah.

You ever do this thing where you're like reading a book and you get to a chapter and you leaf ahead to see how many pages it is you're like oh i don't have 29 pages in me right now right this is one page yeah no i do that with kindle sometimes it's like i have 15 minutes left in this or 15 is it minutes or pages anyway it's just like nah where this is there's one page one day to think oh are they closing down they're closing down the park well i guess there goes our luxembourg what's it what time is it it must be the the clock is ringing that the police are going to kick us out of the yeah i mean Do they know we're filming in a United States podcast?

All right. It's the podcast, please. No, it's 9 o'clock and they're telling us to leave. It's 9 o'clock? Yeah. God, it stays light out here. Okay. I want to talk a little bit about, we can go to a cafe,

about the coming home and how little everyone cares because I have started a podcast called Ubi Tripping that you will do. Oh, is that the name of the podcast? You be tripping, yeah. I'm standing up out of the podcast. the frame of the camera, I want the cops to know that we do mean to leave. Yeah, you got to like make efforts and like, right.

No one gives a fuck about your travels. You wrote about it in vagabonding. I'm assuming you're going to write about it here. Oh, when you come home and nobody gives a shit. Yeah, yeah. I care still and I want to hear people's travel stories. Okay. So that's what it is. That's because you're a traveler. Maybe. No one gives a shit and I

give a shit and you can talk to me. I'm not to change a subject to talk about work shit. Yeah. People who haven't done it don't get it and so that's why they're bad to bring it up with but yeah i mean i think the question like for our travel conversation this podcast is when it's already nine o'clock when do we end because what can you not talk about like we've barely talked about three countries right now so where do we leave off we're so rudely chased away by those it was the nine o'clock we walked like probably five miles we walked out of the park we walked so much looking for a cafe

that was not packed and we failed we failed and now we're on a famous pedestrian bridge that crosses from the left bank to the right bank of the sand river of the sand river why is it called left bank of right like when that is north and that is south I don't know so that's north I'm not sure maybe it's a it's like upstream downstream thing maybe maybe it curves up over there left bank I don't know I feel like I'm failing my like the 101 north goes directly west for a while right but then eventually cuts back north maybe it's that i think maybe it flows out this way into the atlantic eventually and so the left bank would be when you're going downstream the left bank would

be the left while downstream i don't know i'm babbling about things about which i do not know but it's fun to speculate on your podcast so let's let's get to the end of it um you got to get the new book vagabond's way to me it's it read a lot like vagabonding in the way that it filled me with this sort of like, oh, shit, I got to get back out there. It's philosophically, it's philosophically the same as vagabondy. It just goes, it goes deeper in different ways, you know. It takes 365 little themes and meditations about travel, and it goes deep with them. What are the sections?

They're split up in the two-month sections. January, February is preparing. Yeah, inspiration and planning. Getting started on the road, getting started on the road, then part of the long haul. Well, actually, it's funny. I've sort of said that I didn't, Tim Ferriss told me not to write vagabonding, too. And I thought, okay, that makes sense. Then I wrote this, but it has a lot of parallels to vagabonding.

Yeah. Structurally, it sort of also deals with different phases of the journey. It's also very much about time wealth and spending your time well and finding experiences that go beyond expectations. But yeah, time wealth is huge. The idea that time is really all you own, that you're given so much time on earth and you should find ways to make. it rich. Yeah, there was a quote, a section, or a day about Chappelle and how he walked away from $50 million. Yeah, yeah. And I remember this. And it hit me that the same thing was happening. To me, I had a small section of it where I'm like, no, you're not going to tell

what I'm just like stop my show. But everyone said you have mental disorders because how else could you walk away from $50 million? Right. And it's just like the quote was not from him, but for someone else, like if you're a ladder of success, if you've reached the top of your ladder success and you don't feel fulfilled. Maybe your ladders on the wrong building. You hung it against the long wall. That's actually Thomas Merton. He's the same guy who said, people ask me if I've seen the real Asia. Actually, it's all real to me, right? Well, he was a, he was a trappist monk. And he also wrote this, it was a famous quote that if you get to the top of your ladder success and you're not happy, it's probably leaning against the wrong wall. That's a paraphrase. And so what happened

with Dave Chappelle, I remember when this happened, and you probably know him professionally, but he had this huge like this unprecedented offer for Comedy Central and then he left he didn't fulfill it he went to South Africa and people said oh he's on drugs he's suicidal whatever and then years later it's like no I was just trying to like I didn't feel happy I was super successful but in a way that meant nothing to me and I just wanted a place to be away from this milieu of success and think about things and I think feel like he sent it himself In my, I don't know Dave Chappelle at all. He's way more successful, not financially. He moved back to Ohio. I moved back to Kansas. He moved back to a place where he was comfortable that had a connection to his youth. And he raised his family, you know.

I went back to Kansas after traveling the world. I've written more books, but I found a place that is more in accord with my time wealth, which is different from being a successful author. It's one thing to be a successful author. It's another thing to be a happy author, right? And so I found ways, oh, here's the party boat. Is the, the, uh, oh my god, japonishes. Yeah, so it's like a, it's like a party booth.

They always scream underneath each bridge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, because it echoes back on them. That's why. I was like, did they tell them to scream? It's like honking in a tunnel, right? You ever been with one of those people who honks when they drive through tunnels? Yeah, it's very annoying.

It's very annoying. Probably especially in the New York adjacent tunnels. Oh, this is Eiffel Tower, tip top of it. Yeah, and it's going to glitter. It glitters on the hour. Do you know what? I'll check my time. yeah on every after dark every hour it starts to glitter oh it's 1007 so it just

stopped so i missed it fuck um anyway to finish that that dave chappelle had the trappings of material success but wasn't happy and i think i believe that he found a way to be happier and do his own thing um and i think it's that same thing is where is your ladder of success which wall is your ladder of success leaned against because if it's not leaned against a wall where you feel good about yourself when you're at the top of the ladder. Maybe you should find another wall to lean the ladder against. Duncan Tustle told me this, a Buddhist and comedian. When I was fighting with Comedy Central a little bit,

they were trying to rush me into new seasons of a show. And I was like, I want to do things. I want to see. And Duncan was like, so you want to go see the world. I'm like, yeah. And he goes, and they want you to not see the world. And I'm like, yeah. He goes, I mean, do we have to keep talking?

I was like, you're right. That's a very, very well done Duncan. That's very wise observation. Because, and I think the entertainment industry doesn't realize, well, there's people who play the game and people who don't. And actually, I think you found ways to be successful in a way that and be true to yourself, right? That you, this podcast being one of them, you know, having, sort of connecting with your fans in a very specific way meant that you didn't have to be beholden to whatever Comedy Central wants you to do.

There's also like, I had this yesterday, I have a clarity. I don't know if you get this when you're traveling. Just maybe it's because you're away from all the noise of home, the drama, the politics, the news. But like, I'll just have moments of clarity when I'm gone. And one of them two days ago was like, I'm trying to plan this like, I want to tour Europe, but it's been a while. But also I'm so far behind and touring America and all the spots I want to do there. And there's more money to be made in America. And then it hit me like, I'm going to Europe in April.

I'll still make more money than I made when I was five years in a comedy. Like, what am I even talking about? I'm gonna go see Europe again. I'm gonna go to Finland for the first time. Like, why would I not? That's a good thing to keep in perspective. You know, I think that there's a certain, we both sort of have artistic pursuits that are rewarded

by certain types of public exposure and financial reward. I think a lot of vagabonding people are working in jobs that they're sort of ambivalent about. It's not their dream job. But then it's like, where are you gonna split? What's gonna make you happy? Is it the beige house in the suburbs? Yeah.

You know, is it having your kids in the baseball league that costs $2,000 a season? Like, what is it? Yeah. And so I think. You're going to remodel your bathroom again? You're filling a hole, dude. Well, no, that's it. And so I think that there's sort of a person who's not necessarily following their artistic ambition, but is playing the game of success.

We have to think about where your ladder is leaning on that, too. It's like, yeah, sure, you could get a 3,500 square foot house in the suburbs, or you could just live. simply or you could move to Southeast Asia for half the year or you should you could move to Paris and some of my former students do this you know they move well they have they have friends who say well you know we travel for two months a year we're based in Paris but we travel to come house sit for us and you can stay there for free and so there's just anywhere in the world there's ways to finagle a more location independent life I mean if you have kids it's a little bit more complicated but yeah it is more complicated with kids for sure read there's ways to do it

I've seen people travel with families. Oh, yeah, and I've seen people travel well with families and travel happily with families in ways that are cheaper than sending your kid to boarding school. So I guess, all right, yeah, exactly. Damn, there's more I want to do with you, but like, I want to. Are we running low on battery? No, it's just going long, but like this, all right, let's try to keep going. Well, you could edit it from, I don't know. It's not that.

I can split into two podcasts. Maybe I'll do that. People listen to it. I feel like 5% of people are listening now versus who started with it. Right. There's a, shit. I want you to describe this. There's a feeling of freedom that I've not been able to describe to people that comes with,

that I found later a complete lack of responsibility that you get while you're traveling. Where I don't have to go anywhere. I don't have to see anything. I'm free to go and do whatever I want. So, like, it's this feeling. I don't know. I don't know. You know what I'm talking about?

I do. And it dovetails with, like, the vulnerability and the willingness to not plan that we're talking about. Because it's one thing to wake up in a city like Paris and have 10 things on your to-do list. It's another thing to wake up, go down, drink a coffee, and just sort of let the day happen. Yeah. And realize that I can do whatever the hell I want.

Like, nobody here knows me. I could talk to this pretty girl or I could go to this rock concert. It's, and I think you feel it strongly when you, in your early days as a traveler, like in your youngest days as a traveler, but I often find myself trying to recreate that where it's just like, I want to have that day that is special and nothing counts. And because nothing counts, anything can happen. You just, yeah, you just, you can go and do whatever. I'm, I just, it's just, I, it's, I, it's, I, it's, I, it's, I, I, it's, I, I, I, I, I, it's, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

Money has never bought me that. I guess enough money that I could not have to come back to a job has bought me that, but it's not that much. Use what money you have to buy yourself the time freedom to do what you love. Yeah. And maybe it's not travel. Maybe some people don't love it. Some people like don't care about it.

Some people don't care about the outdoors and some people do. But man, it's just great when you have nowhere to go. It happens after like a week or two usually. Yeah. Well, your initial anxieties wear off and pretty soon. Yeah. you are fully present and you realize you can do anything yeah anyway I love it I got to figure out a way to really describe it to people right all right let's wrap it up we can

do one more location too but I mean we can go back to the apartment and find a cafe I mean this is pretty classic but I don't know if that's a lot's a way to wrap up in the sunset I feel like they can see us okay the cameras now are fucking crazy but anyway the book is the Vagabond's way. Guys, just get it. There's a link at the bottom of the screen or the bottom of the podcast. You can buy it, Kindle, audiobook, or the real book. You can't fit it in your pocket and walk around with it, but like the other one, we can't roll it up and stick it in there, but it's great. It's great reading. And it has already gotten me, two and a half chapters in has gotten me the fucking right away, though. It was like, I got to get the fuck out of here.

Yeah. If you, yeah, if you dream of travel, it's a book for you. Yeah. Or if you, if you, you know someone who does it's the yeah get it for that i've bought vagabonding for a bunch of people where i'm like just i think you'd love this you should read it i know you've talked about wanting to go to new zealand or something like that just read this book and see what it does to you i feel like this will do that same thing yeah i say in the introduction chapter if if you stop reading it because it it doesn't fit in your bag for a trip you've decided you could no longer take then this is your book yeah then then the book has done its job right yeah huh anyway travel's amazing It's cool to be in Paris doing this.

Thank you for getting me here. I would not have come without you. You bet. Well, let's have you write some kick-ass essays so you can have your book. We'll come back and we'll do a podcast about your book. There you go. Thanks. Your travel book.

Yeah. Deadline actually very much helped me finish a little bit of it. What did? Deadline. You got to submit this by this date. I'm like, I'll work on that. The process is so much different for what you're versus comedy, you know.

Yeah. it's a different monster all right bye thank you all right thank you yeah oh oh my god look how Well, that is the episode, everybody. That's so fucking cool. Oh. It completely flipped over. It's the fucking Titanic.

Look how so blue on the bottom. Whoa, you see that one? What the hell? Whoa. It's like fat chicks having a bath. Like the fucking kind you cut out of, like out of the house with a crane, that kind of fat chick, having a fucking bath.

You got to put them in a lake to get... Whoa! Okay, well, thank you, Rolf Potts for coming in. Go to his writing workshop in Paris every summer. Oh, my God. It's the best. You guys should really take it. He'll tell you how to express this stuff.

I don't know how to express nature other than in videos or pictures. Activities and stuff, yeah, but not nature. Whoa, calving. C-A-L-V-I-N-G. Take his Paris Writing Workshop like I did, like Small Brain and American did. Every summer in this city that this episode was in, go to pariswriting workshops.com. I am going to go back to another one. I loved it.

You should do. His podcast Deviate with Rolf Potts. I've been on a lot and his books, The Vagabond's Way, when you want to feel it, you know. Vagabonding, when you want to plan it, and Markerpola didn't go there when you want to hear about it. Instagram at Rolf Potts, follow him, let him know that you love this episode and how cool he is, ask him any questions.

Damn, that was cool. And YouTube at Vagabonding, 2007. He's barely on YouTube. Guys, by the way, I should tell you, I don't think I've ever told you this before. Happy New Year's, by the way. I'm on, you know, a lot of comics, they, they won different platforms. It was, Dane Cook won MySpace.

Chris Dileo won Vine. Joe Rogan won podcasts. I want to win none of those. Who won YouTube? Andrew Schultz? Well, I'm fixing to win all trails. I'm on all trails. You should follow me. I've never told anybody. I'm on all trails. Follow me at Ari Shapir. I've got a ton of reviews on there of stuff like this. I'm on this trail right now.

It's actually the most up-to-date way to find me. By the time this comes out, happy New Year's, I'll be, you know, I won't be here anymore, but AllTrails, I'll post this today. You'll know exactly what day I did it. Yeah, AllTrails.com slash, well, I don't know what it's a slash, but Ari Shapiro. Find me on there. I think I got a picture myself in front of Machu Picchu. Another hike I did that's on all trails. Thank you very much for Alan Caffey for editing this episode. This is so cool. How crazy this is how much different Patagonia is. From the intro bumper to the now bumper to the outro.

This is all part of the same region, more or less. Alan Caff for editing today's episode, YMH for producing the episode and all episodes. Um, next week, uh, Katie Nolan will be on and we're going to talk about all the barriers to, um, to, to, to traveling yourselves as a New Year's resolution episode. Um, the trippies will be in two weeks, because I won't have time for it. But, uh, happy New Year, everybody. Thank you for a successful 2005. Uh, and that reason this isn't nominated for best pictures or best episode, um, is only because it was a reboot from, uh, Arishira Skeptych. Hey, now defunct podcast.

That was so cool. that was cool oh that's so cool you can like hear parts like smashing oh please subscribe wherever you're watching and listen guys this is a this is a youtube podcast i don't know anything it's more of a youtube podcast in this one all right well thank you very much ralph pots the fucking man if i'm a uh if he if he's a tent travel i'm like about a seven or six and a half i travel for comedy i'm at 14 but like for life i'm nothing god damn you know tim ferris owes his whole fucking career to rolfe thoughts he credits her with it he's been on brof has been on the timers podcast a bunch because tim was like reading vagabond and he was like

freed me i would like to say that about myself too but i was already in cambodia four months trip while i was reading it but it did like legitimize what i was doing god damn this is cool my hands are cold. Let's call this an episode. Um, I'm done. Thank you very much. Okay. Hey! Fuck. Yo! Dude, does that work? Yo! This place rules! Next week! See you guys! Wow!