LA: And such a, the ultimate travel story as well.
ER: Totally.
LA: And travel movie. I mean, oh.
ER: And I feel like it’s for anyone, like your mom, your brother, your friend. I feel like everyone gets something out of that book. And let’s be honest, I do watch the movie for a bit of fashion inspo before a trip.
LA: Another thing I really loved about that conversation is going back to having celebrities on podcasts. You’re like, okay, what am I going to relate to, in terms of a celebrity traveling? That the way they move around the world and experience the world is inherently different from me, and that can be financially, but also just by the sheer role of being famous. And yet with someone like Emma who clearly just loves travel and is curious and interested in it and interested in the places that her work takes her, that to me is relatable.
SK: If I were to kind of move forward from Emma, another kind of experiential travel episode that I know we both loved, but especially you, was the Rebecca Mead one, right?
LA: Oh my God, I loved doing that episode. I mean, firstly, Rebecca Mead is a fantastic writer for the New Yorker. Rebecca’s been on the podcast before a couple of times, so we’d already developed a bit of a rapport and a relationship. So it was really nice when I was home in London, she lives there, to actually meet up with her and record an episode that was out in the field. It also was just so special as someone who’s grown up in London to be in the British Museum before it opened for the first time in my life.
So we’re in the reading room. Rebecca, you look slightly awestruck.
Rebecca Mead: I am a bit awestruck. I mean, it’s so big. It’s so big.
LA: It’s huge.
RM: Okay, so this was built in the 1850s in what had been the empty courtyard.
LA: I’m sort of imagining Karl Marx in here, or Virginia Woolf, it’s extraordinary.
RM: Well, if you spend a lot of time in a library, it’s not just a place for work. It’s a place for socializing and catching people’s eye and deciding who you’re going to go out and take a tea break with. So, I like to imagine Karl Marx not only writing Das Kapital here, but also deciding, having a chat with someone around the corner or going for a pint across the road.
