Going Places

Today is our final episode of this season! Thank you so much for staying with us, listening to us, sharing your words of encouragement with me, and spreading the word about our show. For two years now, I have been asking every guest who comes on the podcast two questions: What gives you hope ? And which place are you going to next ? I started asking the hope question because I needed to find that...

Today, we’re speaking with Lindsey Danis, a queer writer of fiction and essays whose writing has appeared in AFAR, Fodor’s Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, Longreads and more. Lindsey’s book (Out) On the Road: The Radical Joy of Queer Travel is out this month. In it, Lindsey weaves personal experience with data and interviews, and offers readers a framework for planning travel, navigating risks, and b...

Did you know that only 15% of African safaris are Black-owned? Since their colonial origins in the late 19th century, the safari operations on the continent have largely been headed by white men, with local communities rarely seeing the benefits. (This extends beyond safaris to luxury tourism in Africa, which has been linked to extractive practices and degradation of local habitats.) Mitti Hicks i...

Marinel de Jesus is a social entrepreneur and former human rights lawyer who advocates for justice in the mountain-trekking industry. Nearly a decade ago, she left the courtroom to imagine what it would take to travel through the lens of equity and dignity. In 2024, Marinel spent over 100 days walking the Great Himalaya Trail with Mingmar Dolma Sherpa, the first Nepali woman to guide 100 days on t...

We're celebrating a very special milestone this week: Going Places turns one ! We're building a home for decolonial storytelling, a place where we travel through a lens of equity, justice, and humanity and ask hard questions about who gets to tell the story of a place and who benefits from the traveler's presence there. We have ambitious goals for Going Places, and we need you. That's why we're ru...

The narratives that claim Muslims are "new" to Europe are in part fueling the Islamophobia we see on the continent and across the globe today. But what if we knew and celebrated the fact that Muslim people have always been an integral part of the European story? In Part 2 of our conversation, Tharik Hussain—an award-winning author, historian, and journalist—returns to help us dismantle the long-st...

For over 1,400 years, Muslims have been an integral part of Europe’s story, yet their contributions to the continent’s development and history have been pushed to the margins or erased altogether. Today's guest is bringing some of these forgotten stories back to the forefront. Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author, historian, and journalist based in the UK who specialises in global Muslim heri...

Travel is a tool for validation, a way to say "I see you, I hear you, and your story matters." Today's guest, Muna Haddad, has built her long career in tourism around this principle. Muna is a powerful maker of change in the world of travel and someone I admire deeply. She is the founder of Baraka Destinations, an organization creating tourism experiences in Jordan’s secondary, forgotten locations...

Our first guest this season is Lale Arikoglu, the Director of Special Projects at Condé Nast Traveler and host of the award-winning Women Who Travel podcast. Lale has been working as Condé Nast Traveler editor for the past ten years, and her reporting has taken her from horseback riding in Patagonia and hiking in the Andes to sailing down the Amazon River, chasing the Iditarod in Alaska, and clubb...

Welcome back to the new season of the Going Places show! This season of Going Places is all about changing narratives. From who gets to tell the story of a place to revealing the hidden history of Muslim Europe and elevating the people who serve as the backbone of the trekking industry, you'll hear voices, perspectives, and stories that will provide a deeper understanding of places and cultures ar...

Happy New Year! Today, we're speaking with Dr. Anu Taranath, a speaker, facilitator, and faculty member at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she teaches about global literature, race, and equity, and directs study abroad programs on human rights. Anu is the author of Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, a book that puts our movement across the world in a larger cont...

How do a nomadic Costa Rican-Polish-American and a British-Pakistani raised in Saudi Arabia start a travel company together? Today, we're going to find out. We're speaking with Sibu Szymanowska and Hira Aftab, co-founders of The Hybrid Tours, a travel company that uses the power of travel and storytelling to challenge stereotypes and foster connections with activists, refugees, and changemakers wo...

Today, we're speaking with Vanessa Abbe, a travel advisor who joined me on my last group trip to Jordan. Travel to Jordan has dropped 90% in some cases in the last two years. In this conversation, I wanted to hear Vanessa's take on what it’s like to travel to Jordan for someone who’s never been, as we experienced the country largely empty of tourists together.  We are running a 10-day trip to...

Today, we travel to my favorite place on the planet: the desert of Wadi Rum in southern Jordan, to meet Ahmad Mara'yeh, a Bedouin man and co-founder of Rum Planet Camp. We are returning to Jordan next June! Join us June 5-14, 2026 on a 10-day trip to this country we love so much. We'll visit the Dead Sea, Petra, Wadi Rum, Amman, and many off-beaten spots in between. And yes, we will also stay with...

One in three women worldwide has experienced physical or sexual violence (that’s according to UN Women). Yet, this rarely gets discussed outside of specialized circles. Today, we’re going to fix that. We're speaking with Megan Ryder-Burbidge, a global advocate for women’s equality and the co-founder and CEO of Sororal, a feminist travel company and advocacy brand reshaping how women experience the...

If there is one episode you listen to this season, let it be this one. It revolves around these questions: how do we heal the world? How do we practice love? Today, we're speaking with Hadar Cohen, an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic, and artist whose work focuses on multi-religious spirituality, politics, social issues, and community building. Hadar comes from a 10th-generation Jerusalem family with l...

Today, we're sharing a preview of the kinds of conversations we have during our monthly First Fridays group calls inside our paid Going Places members' community. You’ll hear from our paid members Dr. Anu Taranath, a University of Washington professor and lecturer on human rights, who wrote a book called Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World, and Dee Flower, a former park ranger a...

Today, we’re flipping the script and bringing you a conversation I recorded with a dear friend of mine, a longtime Palestinian activist Matt Bowles, for his podcast, The Maverick Show . On his podcast, Matt interviews people who work at the intersection of travel and activist spaces. On it, you’ll find interviews with people like Imani Bashir, a Black Muslim American who advocates for more Black p...

Today, we're speaking with Farah Cherif D'Ouezzan, an intercultural educator and founder of the Rabat, Morocco-based Center for Cross-Cultural Learning, which has been bringing groups of students and adult learners to Morocco for 30 years. Farah’s academic research focuses on religion, gender issues, youth participation, and cross-cultural understanding. She’s also the author of Speaking from With...

Today, we're speaking with Tasneem Alsultan, a Saudi-American photographer known for her work on gender and social issues in Saudi Arabia and the region. Tasneem is the first Arab woman to become a Canon ambassador. She has primarily worked with The New York Times and National Geographic, but as you’ll hear in this episode, she has largely stopped collaborating with Western media outlets that...

Welcome back to the new season of the Going Places show!  In the last few years, our show has undergone a transformation. As we continue witnessing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and the dehumanization of entire groups in the media, we’ve questioned our role in travel media and felt powerless and hopeless to make any meaningful change. This show is our antidote to that h...

Did you miss us? We missed you! In this episode of Going Places, I share updates on the podcast's return, my work on the book proposal (ICYMI: I'm writing a non-fiction book), and why independent journalism is more important than ever. I talk about our upcoming season, in which you'll hear interviews with a Saudi photographer, a Moroccan professor, and so much more, and share our plans for future...

Today is the last episode of the season! I hope you enjoyed spending your time with us. We’re taking an eight-week break, during which I will focus on completing my two book proposals. Wish me luck! We will be back with new episodes in September. The ability to go anywhere is something that many of us probably don't pay much attention to in our day-to-day lives. If we have a powerful passport like...

Today, we’re speaking with Matt Bowles, a longtime Palestinian human rights activist. With a Master’s Degree in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Matt has over two decades of human rights and activism experience. He led activist delegations to monitor human rights abuses in the north of Ireland, co-founded an organization to stop U.S. aid to Israel, organized solidarity delegations to t...

Today, I'm sharing a story I wrote for the Adventure Travel Trade Association in 2024. It's about Yuimaru , the Okinawan spirit of cooperation that helped Okinawans move on from the tragedy of World War II. Okinawa is a small subtropical island in the East China Sea, halfway between China and Japan. In 1945, it endured one of the worst battles of the war, known as the Battle of Okinawa, during whi...