Hi there, I'm Lale Arakoglu, and on this episode of Women Who Travel,

we're moving around the country to find out more about statues, monuments, memorials and landmarks.

Who gets to choose to put them up? And how are our ideas about them changing?

Monuments are about learning and remembering what happened here, or at least at their best,

that's what they're meant to do.

My guest is writer and podcast host Ashley C. Ford, whose work I've been following for quite some time.

We are talking about travel today, but through quite a specific lens, you're the host of PRX's

monumental.

What does the podcast and the theme mean personally to you?

I think that talking about monuments, memorials,

the landmarks that we pay attention to

help us tell our own story in this country,

I have always found monuments and memorials to be so fun and curiosity-inducing. As a kid, I would run to

every plaque. I would run to any monument, especially if I could touch it. Which often you're

not allowed to do. Which often you're not allowed to do. But it helps,

especially when it comes to kids who have a more tactile discovery button, you know, like me.

That's so funny, though, because I feel like the sort of cliche of being a kid when you're

traveling or like anywhere with your parents is having to stand while they read the plaque.

And yet you were the one that was running towards it.

Yes.

What was that curiosity?

Because clearly you've carried it through.

...