The Trip

Moscow-born foreign correspondent Simon Shuster came to California as a child and returned to Russia as an adult to start his career in journalism. But it was Berlin that gave him a family and became a home base while doing some of his most impactful reporting, from the Trumpworld dealings in Ukraine to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. He and host Nathan Thornburgh talk about all that, and...

Writer, podcaster and Appalachian culinary evangelist Mike Costello drinks with host Nathan Thornburgh at the Lost Creek Farm in West Virginia. Show notes: Lost Creek Farm Pickle Shelf Radio Hour Hawk Knob Appalachian Hard Cider Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes, by Ronni Lundy Mike Costello on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jeffery Lindenmuth and host Nathan Thornburgh sit down for a before-noon blind bourbon tasting at the Pennsylvania offices of Whisky Advocate. Among the topics of conversation: good value whisky, why "burning hospital" can be a desirable tasting note, and why Billy Joel did Allentown so dirty. Show notes: Whisky Advocate Jeffery Lindenmuth on IG Episode excerpt on Roads & Kingdoms Learn more about...

Chicago native Jennifer Neal, author of the forthcoming novel The Colour of Her Blood, has spent her adult life trying out life overseas. In Berlin, she has found a home. For now. Jennifer and host Nathan Thornburgh sit in her apartment in Berlin and drink "hut dream" tea and talk about it all. Show notes: Perfect Dish: Singapore Perfect Dish: Jakarta Jennifer Neal on Instagram Learn more about yo...

Breddo's Tacos in London made a name for itself by combining deep flavors from Mexico with the kind of global inventiveness that London excels at. Nud Dudhia was born for this—born in Zambia, educated in the UK, converted to the joys of al pastor while on a break in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Nud and host Nathan Thornburgh sipped mezcal in the morning and talked through it all. Show notes: Breddos...

Hilary Whitney and Ian Hart make some of the best gin in the world. And they did it, until recently, all from a room in their home in leafy Highgate, north London. Hilary talks with host Nathan Thornburgh there about gin, writing, and seizing the means of Negroni production. Show notes: World Gin Awards 2019 In Our Time: The Gin Craze (BBC radio episode) Flask Fine Wines in Los Angeles (Sacred Spi...

Drinking unique wines in Kreuzberg at the home of Billy Wagner, sommelier and proprietor of Berlin's Michelin-starred Nobelhart & Schmutzig. Episode two of five Berlin episodes on The Trip! Show notes: Nobelhart & Schmutzig Weingut Leiner Eva Fricke Rheingau winemaker profile from Punch The Carton Magazine shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sami Tamimi’s book Falastin: a Cookbook, co-written with Tara Wigley, is part travelogue, part guidebook for the home cook, it’s the first step into the spotlight for Tamimi’s gifted culinary mind and his own personal story. In this episode, he sat down with The Trip host Nathan Thornburgh over some Waitrose prosecco to talk about his life in cooking, navigating the tensions of the Middle East, an...

Oliver Bullough is one of my favorite journalists on earth, most recently the author of Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World. He is an expert at plainly describing the complex ways we’re all being screwed by the shadowy billionaire economy, a skill that is all the more vital during this pandemic which has been so strangely profitable for the elite. Oliver an...

Musa Okwonga's upcoming novella In the End, It Was All About Love is a gorgeous meditation on being a foreigner, and a Black man, in today's Berlin. It's why I wanted to start The Trip's five episodes in Berlin with him: for a relatively recent arrival, he communicates the city on a deep and lyrical level. So we sat together (pre-COVID) in my friend's house in Berlin, drank several Moscow Mules, a...

How do you travel in a world on lockdown? Just start at home. And in this, now, I have a mighty advantage. Because this month, I moved from Manhattan to the Borough of Queens, the most linguistically diverse place on earth. This episode has three would-be guides to this new life: writers Laurie Woolever and Tiffany Langston, along with Astoria souvlaki legend Elpida Vasiliadis. Learn more about yo...

This episode, we’re not talking about how the gifted journalist and traveler Kim Wall died, we’re talking about how she lived. And we’re doing it by talking with journalists Caterina Clerici, Christina Ayele Djossa, and Ingrid Wall—who is also Kim’s mother and author of A Silenced Voice of a new book about her life and work. This episode opens with the beautiful singing of Aidi Songlong, a musicia...

As the pandemic grinds on, I find myself unseasonably emotional about newborns and weddings, like some kind of weepy grandpa. Any good thing to latch on to in these twilight year, I guess. I feel that way about my old friend’s new album. Como Vivir en el Campo is a Madrid-based rock trio, and their drummer is Carlos Barros, who has been both friend and family to me over the years. Carlos has intro...

A bit of tape and a brief message on Bourdain Day 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I know I don’t often cop to it, but this is a travel podcast, and this week, we’re going to travel. Far, far away, to Bali, Indonesia. And we’ll do it through the perspectives of a traveler (Travis Levius), an eater (Duwi Satrio), and a legendary pastry chef (Will Goldfarb). Along the way, of course, we’ll talk a bit about race and migration and surviving cancer, because life isn’t all suckling pi...

Michelle Borok is one of something like 9 million Americans who live overseas—nobody’s quite sure how many there are, nobody cares much about counting them. But one thing is certain: they are a more diverse group than you might think. This week, I’m talking with three American women, writers all—Michelle Borok, Sarah Souli, and Ruth Terry—about what it’s like to be Korean-American in Mongolia, Ara...

The writer and comedian Jennifer Neal used to have a deeply smart travel column for The Root called Blaxit, with one very simple premise: things are just too twisted for Black Americans, so they might, like she had, be feeling the urge to go live in some other, freer country. But where? What is it like being black in different parts of Asia, Europe, elsewhere? Jennifer’s column was a way to find o...

Along with twitterfights, long calls to the unemployment office, and heartfelt conversations with your new sourdough starters, alcohol seems to be a defining obsession of this pandemic. I’ll leave it to the rehab centers and 12 steppers to clean up the mess afterwards; this week, I just need a drink. But not just a box of wine or something, I want something escapist, evocative, alluring. I want a...

Conversations about wet markets with four people who know them very well: Ro Vasquez of Eat Like a Local in Mexico City, journalist Austin Bush in Bangkok, Paul Rimple of Culinary Backstreets in Tbilisi, and Auburn University food historian Xaq Frohlich. If you’ve had the feeling recently everything seems extra bad all at once, in a way that exceeds even your worst and darkest thoughts, well here’...

This week on The Trip, a restaurant opens in Oslo, an Ontario activist wants to reform hospital food, and a New Orleans writer calls out the exploitation of hospitality workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Trip, writer Drew Magary talks about his new novel Point B. Journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan calls from Singapore to talk about her time in a quarantine hotel. Le Monde photo editor Pauline Eiferman talks pandemic photography from Paris. Show notes: Point B by Drew Magary Drew Magary on Twitter  Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan on Twitter Within French Bord...

More than 15,000 people have died of COVID-19 so far in New York City. Marketing director Tamika Hall lost her grandmother to the disease in Rockaway just before her father died of terminal cancer in Harlem. But with hospice services in the city all but suspended, Tamika had to learn on the fly how to give her father a good death. Show notes: Gone from my Sight: the Dying Experience Tamika Hall (@...

Sometime over the last week, after the 7 o’clock cowbells and airhorns and clapping couples on their balconies died down each night, I started to hear a baritone echoing off the sidewall of the hardware store a block away on Broadway and 98th. It wasn’t until Saturday evening, when I walked the dog down Broadway itself, that I realized that this was no mere living room hobbyist. There were at leas...

Now this is a place I never thought we would record from. This is my apartment, on west 97th street, in Manhattan, New York, USA. That sound is our daily 7pm cacerolazo outside. The cacerolazo, the banging of pots and casserole pans, was a South American invention, a form of earshot solidarity for times of government lockdown. I heard it in person a few months ago in Beirut, during their street re...

In the center of Cabot Square in downtown Montreal, there is a high column topped with a statue of the spice trader John Cabot, who landed on Canada’s coast more than 500 years ago. Sitting on the benches all around the statue—unloved, unheeded, unhoused—are the descendants of the people Cabot landed on, a semi-permanent population of homeless, mostly indigenous, mostly Inuit, people who live in o...