How to Walk the World (with Chris Arnade)

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 75 minutes

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Summary

Skip the Mona Lisa when you visit Paris. Don't tour the Coliseum in Rome. Walk, don’t hurry. Chris Arnade speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about a different way to travel. Listen as Arnade shares what he learned from Istanbul's small community mosques and how Avignon's Congolese-neighborhood cathedrals provided moving moments of spirituality. He also explains why Japan and Vietnam's emphasis on community lends itself to more happiness than America's "me-focused" approach, and what gear he carries--and leaves behind--for his extremely long walks through the world. Finally, he offers suggestions for choosing places to eat on the road that can elevate meals into meaningful experiences. This is a thoughtful conversational journey about veering off the beaten path to find home in surprising places.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.2	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econTalk.org.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is June 18th, 2025. My guest is author and photographer Chris Arnotti. His substack is Chris Arnardi walks the world. He was last year in July of 2019 talking about his book, Dignity. Today, and this is his third appearance, today we're going to talk about walking, which Chris does an enormous amount of.
0:57.5	We're going to talk about the differences in daily life and standard of living and aesthetics between Europe and the United States.
1:04.5	And I'm sure other things will come up along the way.
1:07.4	And as I mentioned in a recent episode, because of the war here in Israel, I'm doing this from home.
1:12.2	So please excuse any street noise.
1:14.5	Chris, welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:17.0	And thank you for having me.
1:18.9	Let's start with walking.
1:21.5	You were walking some when we talked the last time.
1:24.5	You were doing a photography project.
1:26.9	I know you've been a walker for a while
1:28.6	but you've become that's kind of your day job what's that about what do you do yeah i mean um
1:36.8	i can't believe it's kind of my day job but it has i'm very fortunate i basically just walk everywhere
1:42.1	i mean i i travel the world as my subsect was called.
1:47.0	It was called Walking the World, but I got copyrighted out of that.
1:51.1	So it's called Chris andotti walks the world.
	...

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