How to stop worrying about the ‘right’ way to travel
Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Author Shahnaz Habib has lived all over the world from Kerala, India to New York City, and being at home and a visitor in so many places made her wonder: what’s the difference between a traveller and a tourist? And where did we get our ideas about the right way to travel, anyway? In her new book, Airplane Mode she asks these questions and delves into the history of travel writing, ultimately looking for a way to jumpstart our imaginations to go beyond rigid itineraries dictated by outdated guidebooks.
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Links (all FT links get you past the paywall):
– Airplane Mode: an Irreverent History of Travel by Shahnaz Habib is available now in the US and comes out on August 7 in the UK
– Our columnist Nilanjana Roy wrote about Airplane Mode here: https://on.ft.com/4d0SsGK
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Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, listeners, this is Lila. A quick note that I will be off after this episode for August, |
| 0:07.5 | but we are planning a lot of really great episodes for you while I'm out. We've got some of our |
| 0:11.6 | favorite guest hosts to come in. We have our menswear expert and host of Unhedged Rob Armstrong, |
| 0:17.1 | host of the FT News Briefing, Mark Filipino. We have our food and drink editor Harriet Fitch Little. |
| 0:21.9 | It's going to be great. |
| 0:23.1 | I'll be back soon. |
| 0:24.0 | I hope you have a wonderful August. |
| 0:25.8 | And in the meantime, you're in excellent hands. |
| 0:37.4 | Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos. |
| 0:41.3 | I have some questions. When we travel somewhere, should we be seeing the popular tourist sites or living like a local? Is it okay if we sleep late or skip that famous bakery? What even is actually authentic? And why are we |
| 0:56.1 | chasing it? These are questions that a lot of us quietly ask ourselves when we travel, but don't |
| 1:01.7 | always really wrestle with out loud. My guest, Shana's Habib, does wrestle with it out loud. |
| 1:07.4 | She wrote a whole book about it, which recently came out and I love. It's called Airplane Mode and Irreverent History of Travel. |
| 1:14.5 | Shannaz is from Kerala, India. |
| 1:16.7 | She's lived in Turkey, spent a lot of time in the Middle East, and her home is now New York, |
| 1:22.0 | so she's felt like a local and visitor in many places. |
| 1:25.2 | And because we're in the middle of summer in peak trip season, I've invited her on to give us |
| 1:29.8 | some new ways to think about how we travel and think about what we want from it. |
| 1:34.0 | Janaz, hi, welcome to the show. |
| 1:36.2 | Hi, pleasure to be here. |
| 1:38.0 | We're so happy to have you. |
| 1:39.8 | I wonder if you could start maybe by telling us a little bit more about yourself. So we have a sense |
... |
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