LA: And it’s only by getting access to travel that she was able to see that.
TJW: Absolutely.
LA: Earlier on, you mentioned, I guess almost like the weight of, as a traveler, feeling compelled to change people’s perceptions of what an American traveler is and how they move around the world. What can listeners learn from the way that you travel and that you’ve evolved as a traveler, as you’ve got more and more experience doing it and ask those hard questions?
TJW: We try at The Wandering Scholar to be as intentional as possible. We don’t want to discourage people from traveling, but we do want to encourage people to travel with their politics and to ask themselves questions about the impact that they’ll have on the places that they go, and also to educate themselves about how these kinds of places are trying to manage tourism in sustainable ways. So Venice, for example, is just a place where people often go to have particular kinds of moments on bridges, but the city of Venice asked people not to stand on bridges, but you wouldn’t know that looking at Instagram, because you have so many people who are standing on bridges trying to get that perfect photograph, and it’s such a beautiful city. How could you not? But that’s something that the city does not want people to do. So how do you reconcile those two things?
LA: All right, well, to wrap things up, you are talking to me from New York City, where I also am. We talked so much about traveling and using travel as finding a sense of home. I know that you haven’t necessarily found it in your travels. So many of the people that we were talking about at the beginning ended up returning to New York or have roots in New York. Does New York feel like home in some way for you?
TJW: That’s a great question and a tough question. I think it does. And I think there’s a reason that so many of those people come back to New York, right? Because there is so few places like it. I don’t want to say there’s no place like it, but it is a place that, for now at least, still nurtures and embraces and celebrates a certain kind of creativity and originality and possibility. It allows for dreaming in a certain way. It’s also a really diverse city, and that is no small thing. What New York kind of represents is just this place where people have always come from all over the world throughout its history. It’s a history that is made by newcomers and remade over and over again by newcomers. And so I really love that about New York. It always makes me feel like anything is possible. So for now, at least, it is home.
LA: Tamara, thank you so much. This has been just a fascinating journey through parts of the world, and also just, I’ve loved hearing you talk about yourself as a traveler and kind of guide us as to how to do it the right way, or at least try to. So, thank you so much. If people want to follow along your work and your travels, is there anywhere on the internet they can find you?
TJW: Well, one place where I am spending a lot of time these days thinking about the kinds of things we’ve been talking about is the Substack for my nonprofit. It’s called Postcards from TWS. Postcards from The Wandering Scholar. And that’s a place we’ve been putting out monthly content that really embodies our vision of engaged globally competent citizenship. I’m not a social media person beyond that, but it’s been a really compelling place to think and to imagine and just to recognize that we’re all works in progress and there’s no single way of moving through the world. And that’s a thing we’re talking about and thinking about together.
LA: I am Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus and James Yost. The show’s mixed by Amar Lal.
This episode was produced by Michele O’Brien. We have production support from Pran Bandi and Vince Fairchild. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast’s Head of Global Audio. See you next week.
