900 - How To Be A Better Tourist With Cameron Hewitt

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Novelcoronavirus, Health, Publichealth, Covid, Globalhealth, Coronavirus, News, Health & Fitness, Education, Medicine, Covid19, Science

4.8 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

About this episode:

Travel can open our eyes to the world and make us better global citizens. But there’s no denying the environmental impacts of travel. Plus, with climate change happening everywhere, it’s becoming more difficult for tourists to predictably see and do some things without factoring in extreme weather. In this episode: how travelers can be more mindful and a look at how a travel company is thinking about the industry’s carbon footprint.

Guest:

Cameron Hewitt is a travel writer and photographer, and for the last 25 years he’s been a co-writer for Rick Steves’ Europe, one of the biggest names in travel for guidebooks, public television, radio, and tours. You can follow his adventures on Instagram and Facebook.

Host:

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Show links and related content:

Our Climate Smart Commitment—Rick Steves’ Europe
How a traveler’s mindset can grow your understanding—Rick Steves, TEDxSeattle Salon

Transcript information:

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:08.0	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:19.0	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh.edu.
0:25.9	That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:33.8	Hi listeners, it's Lindsay Smith Rogers.
0:36.1	And before you book a flight and pack a suitcase for summer travel, you might want to listen to this episode.
0:41.6	Cameron Hewitt is a travel writer and photographer. And for the last 25 years, he's been a co-writer for Rick Steves, Europe, one of the biggest names in travel for guidebooks, public television and radio, and tours.
0:53.5	Cameron joins us to talk about travel and
0:55.7	climate change, how travelers can be more mindful and good citizens of the world, while also
1:01.1	being prepared to contend with changing conditions and how they're thinking about ways to
1:06.0	grapple with the carbon footprint that comes with travel. Let's listen. Cameron Hewitt, welcome to public health on call.
1:13.3	How are you? Excellent. Thank you so much for having me. We are so excited to talk to you. Could you tell us
1:18.6	a little bit about yourself to begin with for our audience? Absolutely. Yeah, I've been working with
1:22.8	Rick Steves Europe for about 25 years now, and a lot of you might know Rick Steves is one of the
1:27.1	United States most respected authorities on European travel. I'm the editorial and content director there, but that basically just means I get to travel a lot. I spend about 100 days a year in different parts of Europe. Mainly I'm writing and researching and updating our guidebooks, but I've also worked as a tour guide and I've also helped out some with Rick's public television show along the way.
1:45.4	Where's the most recent place you visited?
1:47.3	I just got back a couple weeks ago from a three-week trip to Spain and Morocco.
1:51.9	Wonderful. Well, the topic today is actually a little bit outside of the norm of what we have been talking about on public telephone call, but we're thinking about travel.
2:01.6	And, you know, a lot of people might be planning some trips for the summer, you know, particularly
2:05.8	to Europe.
2:06.7	But one of the other things that we talk about on this podcast a lot is things like climate change
2:10.5	and being mindful of being kind of global citizens.
	...

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