WanderLearn: Travel to Transform Your Mind & Life

Matt Favero  is the Director of Marketing at  Zpacks , one of my top two favorite backpacking gear companies (Gossamer Gear is the other).  I ask him: How did he get involved in Zpacks? What backpacking opportunities exist in Florida? What’s the dumbest backpacking mistake he ever made? What Zpack product is he most proud of? What is his funkiest item? What makes Zpacks special? What will the 2020...

After graduating from Harvard Business School and working a bit, DJ Didonna embarked on an improbable quest: helping people take months or even years off work. There's nothing wrong with working nonstop for 40 years.  However, paradoxically, taking a sabbatical may be the best thing for your career. DJ wants to help you do what most Harvard Business School graduates don’t know how to do: get off t...

This is one of my favorite podcasts this year. I admire  Mike Spencer Bown . He's been traveling for the last 25 years. He's been to every country. He's the author of  The World's Most Travelled Man . Does he deserve that title? He didn't even pick that title. His publisher did. We discuss whether that topic as well as these topics: How many Canadian provinces are there? He didn't know, even thoug...

Lauren Kahn  has done 72 home exchanges! One way to immerse yourself in a foreign environment is to do a home exchange.  Lauren's blog offers plenty of advice on how to do a home exchange. This podcast comes in two parts. Due to a technical snafu, Lauren thought she lost our first interview. So I interviewed her twice, thinking that we lost the original recording. We managed to recover it. I took...

Over 2.5 million people have read my article, " 10 Reasons Why El Camino de Santiago Sucks ." One of those people is Susan Alcorn, who has hiked to Santiago, Spain 16 different times over 9 different routes. Instead of taking offense to the article, she took it as constructive criticism of the article. We've had a civil discussion about El Camino ever since.  One of my central points is that the m...

Boyd Varty's TED talk about "What I Learned From Nelson Mandela"  made Varty famous. His talk has nearly two million views. His newest book came out this week. It's called  The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life . Varty is a fourth-generation custodian of the  Londolozi Game Reserve . Unlike his ancestors, he's never hunted a lion. Now he just tracks them for eco-tourism. I ask him: What would his lion-...

Few people expect to get kidnapped, but it's good to have some education on how to avoid kidnapping and what to do if you are kidnapped. In this episode 59 of the WanderLearn podcast, I interview Olav Ostad, who wrote  Surviving Kidnappers: Precautions, Influence, Strategic Tools , which I reviewed on my website. You can buy it on Amazon . I ask Olav to share: A kidnapping story with a happy endin...

Donna Colson is one of the five City Council members in Burlingame, California. Currently, she's serving as Burlingame's Mayor. Burlingame is an affluent city with 30,000 residents near the San Francisco Airport. I grew up next to Burlingame. Mayor Colson is running for re-election to the City Council on November 5, 2019. We chatted for 30 minutes about a variety of topics, including: What does a...

Jack Kennedy got malaria in Sumbawa, Indonesia.  After that tough experience, a lightbulb went off in his head. He wondered if, at the cost of a few thousand dollars, he could eliminate malaria in Sumbawa. He founded  Health Access Sumbawa  to eradicate malaria in Sumbawa and far beyond. Can we eliminate malaria plasmodium? What's the best bang for the buck? Bed nets? Spraying?  Is there a malaria...

What would you do if you were caught in an avalanche? How do you minimize your risk when you're traveling in the snowy mountains? Robert Hahn has studied avalanches and still managed to get caught in one.  He works for the  Northwest Avalanche Center .  He shares his personal avalanche survival story. He also shares tips on how you can avoid repeating his fate. After 50 mins, we shift away from ta...

WanderLearn fans get a special chance to  win $1000 in travel credits on TourRadar  by going here: https://www.tourradar.com/wanderlearn About this episode: Jessica Husson was one of two people (out of thousands who applied) who won a round-the-world trip sponsored by TourRadar and Intrepid travel. Jessica and Joan (a Spaniard) starred in some superbly produced videos about their travels. I watche...

Elias Papaioannou is a Professor of Economics at the London School of Business (at the start of the podcast, I incorrectly say that he's at the London School of Economics). Professor Papaioannou has authored the following academic papers on Africa: The long-run effects of the scramble for Africa The scramble for Africa and its legacy Pre-colonial ethnic institutions and contemporary African develo...

You might think that you're a responsible and ethical traveler, but are you really? I talk with  Alexandra Pastollnigg , who is the Founder of  FairVoyage . She climbed Kilimanjaro. She's biked from Cairo to Cape Town. She's gone a few days without a shower. I ask her: Why did your Kilimanjaro trek change your life? Why is earning $2 a day bad if your costs are only $1.80? Is a shitty job better t...

Algeria is Africa's biggest country. It's also been the least touristy North African country for the last 100 years, on average. During Kadaffi's time, Libya received more tourists than Algeria. It's only since his fall that Algeria has become more popular than Libya. In short, Algeria, despite its enormous size (about the size of Western Europe) is largely an enigma. After getting rejected at thr...

Over a decade ago, when I was yo-yoing the Continental Divide Trail, I had a lot of time to think. When I got to a town, I would have all this pent up writing energy that would explode on my blog.  One of my most profound articles was when I contemplated was  what does it mean to be human? In this WanderLearn episode, I read that old article because it's still relevant today (and it will probably...

This is my 50th podcast! To celebrate, I've produced an unusual WanderLearn episode. Instead of one guest, I have two! Instead of one location, we wander throughout Cairo with two Egyptologists of  High-End Journeys : Ramez Salama and Ahmed Aziz.  Ramez appears first in the podcast, but I recorded more of my conversation with Ahmed. Both are fascinating. If you're going to Egypt, you must ask for...

Rejoice Tapon and I host an Ask Me Anything episode on our podcast. The video is only available to my  WanderLearn patrons . In this episode, we discuss: The  Eko Atlantic Project in Lagos, Nigeria Is there going to be an audiobook of  The Unseen Africa ? Why did Rejoice end in prison in Zimbabwe? When I quote someone in The Unseen Africa, were you recording it? How many languages can Rejoice spea...

Whenever anyone has visited over 150 countries, I'm impressed, but probably not for the reasons you think. To get to 150, you had to have gone through some shithole countries. Those countries may not be warzones, but they are sketchy. They may have hard to get visas. They may be dangerous. They're definitely not tourist-friendly. To visit 100 countries, you can avoid challenging countries. However...

Europeans evangelized about Christianity. Nowadays, one European is promoting something more secular: the gospel of basketball.  Meet Tony Rodriguez. For the last few years, he has been traveling through most of Africa with several basketballs in his car and not much else. He really had a shoestring budget. Listen to this podcast to hear how this Spaniard pulled it off. Update: We recorded the pod...

Do you dream of doing a mega-bike trip? Is biking across the United States or Europe just not ambitious enough for you? Do you love repairing flat tires? Then listen to Xavier Himma describe his epic bicycle trip from his home in Canada to southern Argentina. You learn: How many flat tires he got. (Try to guess now!) How a Latino tried to mug him while he was riding the bike! How close he got to g...

Last year, I stayed in Cairo's Sheraton hotel. I spoke with two representatives to learn about the dirty underbelly of running a luxury hotel in Egypt.  I asked them: When was the last terrorist act in Cairo? What's hard about running a 5-star hotel that most people don't think about? How can they run a casino when Islam forbids gambling? At 22:00, when the hotel realizes they won't sell out their...

I love talking with Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) because they offer such a unique perspective on a country. Because they're stationed in one country for two to three years, they are both insider and an outsider. They're an insider because they usually: Live in villages Learn the local language Hang out with the locals so much that the locals start behaving "normally" with them However, at the sam...

Tomas Higbey has been an environmentalist for over 2 decades. In this 45-minute profound and sometimes funny conversation, I debate environmentalism with him to get a rise out of him. Listen to find out what he thinks is the: Most important environmental problem we're facing. Solution to global climate change. Elephant in the room regarding the environment. Urge to reproduce - are men and women di...

A skeptical teenager named Wolf asked me a bunch of questions about Bitcoin, so since his parents are one of my patrons, I am happy to address them. The WanderLearn podcast focuses on travel, tech, and transformation, so Bitcoin fits in there. Moreover, Bitcoin has important travel implications, especially when you go to places that have sanctions and other controls. One hour before I recorded thi...

Frank Isaac was my roommate for a couple of months in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Here are some of the questions I asked him: How is Tanzania's government fighting corruption? Is it working? It seems that African men are rarely at home. Is that largely the case or is that a myth? How are Ugandans different than Tanzanians (Frank lived in Uganda for a decade)? Do Tanzanians date between tribes? How po...