Money Travels: Does Travel Really Broaden the Mind?

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1:37Hello and welcome to Slate Money Travel. I am Felix Salmon. I am here with Emily Peck of Axios. Hello, hello. I'm here with Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times. Hello. This week, we are going to debate the proposition, travel broadens the mind. I have heard this since I was a wee bairn, as they would say in Scotland, but I don't know if it's true or not. And I'm going to take a quick sort of vote at the beginning here. Emily, yes, no. Elizabeth, yes, no.

2:16Elizabeth Spiers: I mean, it depends person. So I would say broadly, yes. Broadly, yes. Broadly, yes. I think I'm a yes person. As someone who has traveled a fair amount, I was just talking to my sister recently, and we realized that both of us have been to seven continents, which is kind of fun. um we i can't remember a time when traveling didn't help me learn something new about how other people see the world um and i do think that international travel is better for that than domestic travel. And I guess one of the super interesting things as an immigrant for me is that, can you possibly even say that I've spent the past 27 years of my life traveling?

3:20I've been living in a foreign country for most of my life. Is that all travel? No. See, this is the key distinction. I was just thinking about this in preparation for this podcast. I was thinking. We like it when you think, Emily. Yeah. So there's a difference between traveling and going somewhere to live. Okay. And then that's a huge distinction. If you are temporarily going to live somewhere else, like we read pieces, Shana, our wonderful producer, shared some pieces about students living abroad and how that expands their minds and is really good for you, gives you the chance to immerse yourself in other cultures, experience real new things.

4:03I think that does broaden the mind. I agree. Traveling, like going for a week to a new country or place and seeing the requisite sites and being a tourist, even a special tourist who's seeing the fancier sites or not seeing sites, I don't think that broadens your mind. In fact, I don't know what it does, except I think one of the pieces we read said it was like a boomerang. You go somewhere and you come back and you are unchanged. And all that's changed is now that you're boring your friends and family with pictures and stories about wherever it is you went.

4:37Elizabeth Spiers: I think it depends on where you're going and what you're doing while you're there. Because first of all, you could go for a week somewhere that's meaningful to you, or you're going with some express intention of learning something. And then I think you can come back changed. but a question I have for you Emily give me an example of that because I'm interested in what you have in mind there well one example is in my late 20s I went to Thailand and Cambodia and I ended up staying in Cambodia for two months but at the beginning of that trip I went on a tour with some UN officials to some of the Khmer Rouge sites with people whose ancestors were killed there and I think that was a eye-opening and incredibly transformative experience for me.

5:29Elizabeth Spiers: And if I had left after that, I would have been in the country for four days, but it would have changed me. So I think it's a little bit different, of course, whenever you're dropping it to New York and going and seeing the Empire State Building and Lion King and leaving. I think that's a different thing. That's a kind of just tourism for its own sake. One of the words that both of you used, which I think is an important one in this context is see. And we find that word in the word sightseeing. I don't think that seeing something can broaden the mind. I think we're probably in agreement on that.

6:04I think if I look back to all of the things I've learned from traveling, it's always from talking to people and watching and experiencing how they interact with me and how they interact with the world and um and so just like going somewhere and ticking a site off your list there was a wonderful new york magazine piece recently about tourists in kyoto who they're apparently like five places in kyoto you have to go and all just like ticking off these five places is unlikely to achieve much but the more that you are willing to embed yourself in the unfamiliar and specifically interact as an equal with people who aren't you know your nationality who don't speak your language and so on and so forth like i think that is much more likely and i think elizabeth to your point even just a few days of that can um have a real make a real difference how do they are skeptical i don't know i mean i i don't want to pry elizabeth but how did it change you what changed actually from four days i think it was the experience of being around

7:28Elizabeth Spiers: people who had this kind of generational trauma that I couldn't fathom myself. And I don't think I know anybody who's close to me who has experienced anything like that. And it just felt like something that was so much bigger than the minute experience that I was seeing. I wonder if there are also people who have that experience when, for example, they go and see an incredible natural landscape and they're not used to it. That can be a transcendent moment. So I don't think that it's really about the time that you spend somewhere. I think it's the quality of time you're spending and what you're doing with it.

8:07I think, and this is an interesting pushback to my thesis that seeing things isn't going to change you, which I think actually I do agree with. I think back to my trip to Antarctica and And yeah, the people I was with on that boat were not unfamiliar or life-changing to the degree that they really changed me very much. But the continent did, and the spectacular nature of it, and the way that there's really nothing else like it on the planet, did have a real effect with me. And, of course, to some extent, the famous charismatic megafauna that it boasts. But the continent, you know. It's like taking mushrooms.

9:00You're like, everything is different now. It's a little bit like taking mushrooms. My eyes have been opened. A month later, it's gone.

9:06Elizabeth Spiers: There are people who would argue that that is a kind of travel. No, I mean, there are people that quite really, I think it does. and I think that someone like Michael Pollan will tell you that it does. I think it depends on you and your personal context. I think if you have not really been anywhere in your life and you go and see something radically different even for a few days, you know, that can be a transformative experience. I don't think that travel by itself without intention or context, you know, is good or bad. It's sort of what you make of it. And I do agree with Emily's sort of pushback on the, you know, sort of checking things off a list style travel, which I think of more as casual tourism than anything.

9:53Elizabeth Spiers: I don't think that that's really a life changing experience. Yes. And again, in general, I think that's correct. But I would also say that, aside from Antarctica, one place that everyone should go, like literally everyone should go, is Ravenna in Italy to see the mosaics there, which are just mind-blowing in the best way. They're astonishingly beautiful. They're incredibly ancient. They're extremely profound. No one knows how to make anything like that anymore. Um, and there is, you know, it is something approaching that kind of transcendent experience and it is amazing. And I think, yeah, one hour in one of those churches can, can change you in a meaningful way.

10:47Now I'm not saying here transformative, like my thesis is always, you know, travel broadens the mind by some increment. You know, I'm not saying it changes who you are as a person in perpetuity, but at the margin, it changes you and nearly always for the better. Yeah, I mean, you're really honing in on something here. There are transcendent experiences that you can have whilst traveling, whilst taking mushrooms. They're not transformative in and of themselves. To truly change yourself is another endeavor entirely and isn't going to come about from going anywhere. The second idea I wanted to just float is that there's something so elitist about a conversation that's like, only through travel will you understand other people's.

11:41Only through travel. I feel like this is choose from. But only through travel done the right way. I feel like this is choose from. Oh, my gosh. You've managed to roll out. I've aligned Felix and Elizabeth. This is amazing. You've managed to roll out two straw men in the space of, like, 30 seconds. No one is saying that travel is permanently transformative. And no one is saying that only. I said it just said it. She said I was changed by the experience. I said it can be. I said it can be. It's not. You took the tour and it changed you. You said that. But changing.

12:13Elizabeth Spiers: I did not say that all travel is transformative. Number one, you didn't say that all travel is transformative. number two number two she like i think we haven't really arrived on a common definition of transformative here but like permanently changing who you are as a person is different from broadening the mind and and so i'm just trying to stick to the narrower the weaker form of this which is just broaden the mind broaden the mind and then and then certainly certainly neither of us would say that only through travel can be can this be done like this is this is a statement that literally no one has ever made ever like you can you can you can have your mind broadened by reading a good book yeah that's on my notes to talk about you because a lot of a lot of the the um the scuttlebutt on travel is it helps you develop empathy because as felix was saying earlier you can like meet other people and experience other cultures and therefore develop some kind of empathy, which I don't really buy.

13:17I think that's better done through books than traveling someplace, being the outsider, and people are not going to necessarily treat you like an insider. There is a veil between you and the local culture, which is transformed just by you being there. So you can't really enmesh in it. No, absolutely. I'm not suggesting for a second. straw manning but you're straw manning again like no one is saying that you can travel somewhere and like become enmeshed in a community that is not how it broadens that is not the mechanism but so you're just saying like you go somewhere and you see pretty stuff and it's cool that's what you're saying no wow i feel like you haven't you haven't accurately described what we're saying

14:05Elizabeth Spiers: once in like seven times built like an army of straw men i am the only one we're being overrun by straw man here it's amazing no you go somewhere you look at no you go somewhere and you look at the mosaics and wow like that's the the equivalent of saying i went somewhere i looked at pretty stuff and it made me go wow cool i don't does that is that broadening the mind i don't know maybe we need to maybe you need to go to ravenna emily i have to go see the tiles maybe we need to dial it back maybe you need to go down into the new york city subway and but like i like the new york city subway no but actually you know not to jest about this but very serious if you walk along the tunnel that connects the bryant park subway station in new york to the times square subway station in new york you i'm not saying this with absolute certainty but i'm saying with like at least a 50 probability you will have a really important high quality immersive artistic experience it's like it's a really there's this amazing series of knit cave murals and they continue on and that everyone i know who's gone down that tunnel has like texted me afterwards and being like oh my god you've been down this tunnel it's amazing and it's a one of the most successful pieces of public art that i've ever encountered and it's there for two dollars 90 you can enter the subway and it has this amazing feeling of like you just kind of stumble across it by mistake it's not somewhere where you like have to get on a plane to just see the cave murals in the 42nd street connector you know it's um there's this weird feeling of like oh wow who knew about this and um and that's i think the best way to see it actually is without going there deliberately we're just kind of like stumbling across it one day um and so yeah that i think counts as one of those wonderful little moments but generally my conception of the salutary effects of travel is not you know see a mosaic see a piece of art by nick cave see an iceberg it's much more just watch how people interact, watch how they live, learn something about, you know, how people pay each other, I think is a really interesting thing that I've learned.

16:47Like, you know, like, look at, say, gas stations. The first time you go to a gas station, and you, you know, in a foreign country, and you pull up and you pump your gas and there's no, like, asking for a credit card or anything first, and they just, you know, trust you to, like, pump your gas, and then once you've pumped it, you go in there and pay for it. You're like, oh, there are cultures of trust where this works perfectly well and is perfectly fine. And I feel like those little things can help people learn about the range of ways in which people inhabit the world. And one of the things I did want to ask you about specifically, Emily, was this question of whether that kind of experience is something that is much less likely to happen with domestic travel, or whether it's just, you know, I mean, we were talking a little bit earlier about when I went to Laredo, Texas, to give a speech once.

17:59And I really came back buzzing about Laredo and how interesting it is, how architecturally interesting it is, how demographically interesting it is, how it sits right on the border in super fascinating ways. And everything I learned from talking to a few of the local captains of industry there. um and i i you know and i it changed a lot of my priors i personally learned a lot from that but it is probably the least one of the least american places you can find in america almost it almost counts as a foreign country slate money is sponsored by monarch which is an app that helps you with your finances i was just reading a wonderful research study basically saying that the peak of our financial decision-making lifetime normally comes in your early 50s, which is exactly where I am.

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21:52So my question is like, my question is domestic travel in particular. Is that like a weak tea version of the travel that Elizabeth and I are talking about? No, absolutely not. The United States is massive. You were just talking about your travels to Alaska, which is in the United States as well. There's so many places to see. And I suppose broaden your mind about the fact that people live differently, look differently, have different habits, all of that. I mean, I travel an hour from my house and I'm like, oh, interesting.

22:28Elizabeth Spiers: You can see that in media coverage of different places in the country. If you go read like a Deep South local newspaper and look at how they talk about New York, you would think it was on a different planet and vice versa. You know, New York media publications have a habit of parachuting in reporters to rural places in the country. And they behave like they have culture shock. doing that. And sometimes they do. I mean, if you know people who have moved from a big city to a rural area or vice versa, these places are so much different than each other than, say, New York would be from a lot of big European cities.

23:09You just get a different feeling and a different vibe. I remember the first time I traveled south and I was just like, everything, you know, I was just like a teenager. I was like, everything is different here you know the plants are different the sky looks different people talk differently i mean very true anywhere it's yeah you can buy a soda something totally different

23:30Elizabeth Spiers: yeah what the hell do they call a soda right everything in the south is a coke it doesn't matter if it's actually a coca-cola you order a coke at a restaurant and they say what kind and you say pepsi you say coffee are they using real cane sugar in the soda depends you know um yeah i do agree and and yeah if like traveling when i've been in the south i've again like there's definitely been times when i'm like whoa yeah and and in a good way and it's one of the things I love about travel. But then I guess that raises the next obvious question, which is if you can get the same mind-broadening effects from domestic travel as you get from international travel, is there any real reason to travel internationally at all?

24:23I know what Emily's answer is to this. I mean, look, what do you want me to say here? I think it's nice that for people who can afford to travel internationally, I think that sounds great. And they should go see how other people live. And that's fun. But why do we need to make it into something extra special, transcendent? Why do we need to be... There's your straw man transcendency again. But it does seem like travel is an inherently unequal thing, right? There are a lot of people who can't really afford to travel or do much of anything. It just seems like it's one of those things where it's like, you haven't lived if you haven't traveled.

25:09But it's like a code for saying you haven't lived if you haven't amassed enough money to take special trips all around the world.

25:16Elizabeth Spiers: Well, I think you have to remember that part of the pitch of the military is see the world. And if you are in the military, you are probably going to travel internationally whether you choose to or not. But so I don't think it's that elitist. You know, I understand the kind of travel that I think we're talking about where you go to an expensive city and stay in a nice hotel and see some art. That's probably true. That wasn't the kind of travel that I was talking about. Yeah. I think that's what Emily's talking about, though. The travel that broadened my mind the most was definitely the ultra cheap, you know, backpacking through Southeast Asia in the early 1990s for$5 a day.

25:54You know, that is probably, I think most people who, you know, would agree that that is much more effective at immersing you in a different culture than staying in a luxury hotel on a beach somewhere. Do you think that makes you a better person if you travel? Do you feel like, am I strawmanning? It's a question, a real question. Sometimes people who travel make you feel like, well, you're not as good of a person as me because you haven't seen as many things. So that's two different questions. Like, does it make me a better person than you? No. Does it make me a better person than, you know, counterfactual me who hadn't traveled?

26:41Yes. um like for instance i have always been incredibly grateful that i didn't get into oxford and wound up going to glasgow university instead because i know for a fact that going to glasgow and experiencing that made me a much better person i would have been if i'd stayed in that kind of London-Oxford conurbation bubble, upper-middle-class thing that I grew up in, you know? So 100%, it makes one a better person. It doesn't make it be a better person than the person who hasn't traveled necessarily.

27:22Elizabeth Spiers: I think, and I don't think these are really moral valences, but I think, you know, it is indicative sometimes of how much curiosity somebody has. Also, I think, you know, I got on a plane for the first time when I was 20. And the second time from Birmingham to North Carolina to go back to college. And the second time I got on a plane, it was from Atlanta to Italy to go do study abroad, which I was only able to do because it was actually cheaper for me to do study abroad as a financial aid student than it was to stay at Duke for a semester. But as a result, that felt like a life-changing experience for me because I had not had access to any kind of different environment in that way.

28:12Elizabeth Spiers: So I think it really depends on the person and your baseline context for what you know and what you've experienced. It depends on the person, baseline context, where you go, what you do, how long you stay for. you know because you you can travel and go somewhere and have a similar experience to what your life is like at home if you don't yeah you can and and i would when i first moved to new york i used to tell people that i felt that new york was basically west london like they were very it's not quite so much anymore but certainly at the time they felt like two different halves of the same city a lot of the time so there are ways of traveling and winding up exactly where you started.

28:54You know, if you're an American and you travel to Berlin and you hang out in Prenzlauer Berg the whole time for eight months, like you're not going to experience anything particularly alien or weird, or even, you know, many people speaking German. So, this whole question is, well, I don't know if it's a straw man, but the whole question, it's too broad. There is no yes or no. No, but I think I will come out and say that the answer is, I think this is where I'm going to land on the answer to this question. I think the answer is yes. I think the degree to which travel broadens the mind varies wildly.

29:37I think sometimes it is minimal, and sometimes it is deeply profound. And it is to some extent possible to seek out the deeply profound or the maximal end of that but it's not something a lot of people do and that's fine but it's not necessarily the primary reason why people travel i think the primary reason why people travel is just that they have a vacation and they want to have a break from their day-to-day like to the end you know it's fun and they and they want to lie on the beach or whatever right so or they want to take their kids somewhere nice you know there's a lot of reasons for traveling which aren't about broadening the mind and that is 100 % fine.

30:19I'm not going to get snobbish and go, well, if you can't broaden your mind, then you shouldn't do it. But I would say that sometimes it does to a greater extent. Most of the time it does to some extent. And that is one of the, you know, at the very least ancillary benefits that you get from it. You see, I like that this is a video podcast so that we can we can see emily just kind of shrugging um yeah i mean i think i i aired the points i needed to make that it can be really elitist it doesn't have to broaden your mind and typically it doesn't it's okay to just travel for fun you don't have to make like a whole thing about it and definitely it's yeah makes you special it can broaden your mind, especially if you live in the place rather than just visit a place.

31:12That's a key differentiator when we talk about travel. Living in New York for 20 years, I'm sure has done a lot to actually transform you versus, you know, if you came here for a week and went to see, what'd you say, Elizabeth? The Lion King. The Lion King.

31:26Elizabeth Spiers: Now I yell at people to walk faster. That's my key transformation. Also, now I call it New York. When I arrived here, I called it New York. Aw. One of the pieces we read said, Socrates said that philosophy is preparation for death. For everyone else, there's travel. What does that mean? That piece was written by Agnes Callard in The New Yorker, where she was arguing against travel. And she's written a book about Socrates, and she's obsessed with Socrates. So I feel like her entire thesis might have been reverse engineered from that quote. It was the kicker quote. I was like, wait, what? Because she starts to argue towards the end that travel is like experiencing death.

32:12And I was like, what? I could kind of vibe with philosophy as a way to like trial balloon death because you're kind of like thinking of big ideas. But travel? I don't get it. Is it because you're in a new place where you don't really live, so you're not there? You're like a ghost presence?

32:28Elizabeth Spiers: She had a lot of straw men in her piece. she sort of made the argument that reasonable argument that people who make travel their entire identity are kind of insufferable, which I don't disagree with. But I don't think that's an indictment of travel. I think that's an indictment of those people. Yeah, I do think again, it's easy to argue against a spectacularly tiny minority of people who think that they're better because they've traveled or who keep on boring you with details of their travels or, you know, so on and so forth. I very much hope that I am not one of those people. And I don't think that those people are in any way representative of travelers in general.

33:13Okay. Okay, good, good. Now I think I understand the death thing, though. It's like, because you don't live in a place and you're visiting it. So you're like a ghost in the place. And that gives, it's a trial balloon to death. So that's where I'm landing. I'm landing with Agnes. Oh, I mean, like, we should all get some practice because we're all going to go there eventually. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, so even though.

33:36Elizabeth Spiers: That's a trip you don't come back from. And even though. It does transform you, though. It was. Absolutely. Even though it was an anti-travel piece, I feel like that is an argument for travel. We all need a little bit of practice before we die. Sure. So we all agree then.

33:55It's just like having a heart attack, really. All right. I think we will leave it there. Let us know on slate money at slate.com. If you think that Emily was 100 % spot on here and especially email us, if you are listening from some profoundly wonderful and remote place that we should all travel to. Thank you very much to Shana Roth for producing and the whole slate team. and we'll see you back on Saturday with a regular slate money.

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