Pushkin.

Around eighteen sixty nine, doctor Emmanuel Erman, a professor of economics in Vienna, wrote an article which explained that the time and effort involved in writing and mailing a letter was out of proportion to the size of the message sent.

He thought there should be a more practical method for people to share shorter bits of correspondence, and unlike with most op ed pieces, doctor Erman's suggestions moved the needle.

On October first of that year, the Austrian post introduced the correspondence Karta forgive me Fraus Lawson, my tenth grade German teacher.

The correspondence Karta was a rectangular card with space for an address on the front and a message on the back.

Postage was printed right on the top right corner, and it cost half the price of a letter.

Over time, the correspondence Karta and its descendants would become the platform of choice for four humble, braggy words wish you were here the postcard had arrived.

I love the brevity of a postcard.

How the form itself forces you to abandon formalities and cut quickly to your observations and impressions.

And in the hands of an inspired writer, it can quickly transport the recipient to where it was written.

And that's what happened to me when a couple weeks back I received a message from my editor, Julia Barton, who was visiting Morocco.

Tangier sits in the lower jaw of the mouth that bites the Mediterranean off the Atlantic.

I'd never been to North Africa before coming here.

I'm basically chaperoning a trip of teenagers led by my nineteen year old son, who travels the world now but is not fully equipped for the realities of stomach bugs or airports without computers.

I didn't really prepare for Morocco before we left, but fortunately Tangier is a place that forgives ignorance.

The city has been welcoming, or probably has been forced to welcome outsiders forever, thanks to its lucrative geography.

Just one example.

On our way up a huge hill to get tea at the famous Cafe Haffa, overlooking the Straits of Gibraltar, we stumbled upon and Acropolis.

Three thousand years ago, the Phoenicians carved their tombs into the cliffs here.

Those tombs are now just empty cavities filled with rain, water and trash.

But it's still a romantic setting.

You can imagine the Phoenicians winding up here as far as they could get from the center of their empire and just lying down to rest.

But the strangest place I umbled upon was also the closest to our apartment in the Old City, on a short alley called Houda mariqu You get there through a gate called, at least on Google Maps Bobmerican, the American Gate.

Try not to be distracted by the feral cats copulating on the stairs, and head into the whitewashed maze of Tangier's Medina the Old City.

After a couple of twists and turns, you'll find some guards dressed in Universal Guard casual navy blue polyester sacks and sweaters with patches that say US Mission to Morocco.

They stand at the entrance to the only US registered historic landmark in a foreign country, the Tangier American Legation.

I'm fascinated by the official properties of the USA abroad are bristling consulates where cell phones are confiscated at security.

The legation is no longer a consulate that's now in the Moroccan capital Robot.

Now this shard of America charges admission the local equivalent of five bucks to enter, and it houses a museum, a library, and cross cultural scholarship.

The legation building has been in America's hands for more than two hundred years.

So I paid my fifty deer hum and found myself in the entry way of a tasteful villa with a fountain, reading a letter from George Washington to the Sultan of Morocco December seventeen eighty nine.

Turns out Morocco was the first nation to recognize the United States.

Who knew.

There's probably more to unpack about that story, but this museum does not really linger on it or the next two centuries.

It's fast forward up the stairs to World War Two.

We learn all about how Tangier had become a den of spies in the interwar period, and then it turned out to be a great place for the Allies to orchestrate a land invasion of North Africa to keep it from falling into Hitler's hands.

Operation Torch, as it was called, was a big success.

Churchill, Fdr and ad Hoc local informant Josephine Baker all feature in the story, and above a mannequin in a marine dress blue uniform.

We see a traditional Moroccan knotted rug of the US flag offered in friendship after the war.

Geopolitics now complete, You walk through multiple reception rooms with lots of strenuously upholstered furniture and plastic Christmas ornaments, down through a lovely courtyard to the Paul bulls Wing.

Paul Bowles was an American expat who lived in Tangier most of his life.

His nineteen forty nine novel The Sheltering Sky generated a ton of romantic curiosity about Morocco.

William S.

Burrows wrote Naked Lunch Here.

Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsburg and Susan Sontag all came on pilgrimages bulls to float above it all, writing and composing and hauling an Ampex reel to real machine all over Morocco to record traditional music.

I didn't know that much about him, but enough to know what the legation's exhibit leaves out.

His fondness for hash and sex with Moroccan teenage boys, for instance.

Here we just see artifacts of his creative life, his old typewriter and suitcases, book jackets, and sheet music of his compositions.

A sort of Bohemian Rhapsody.

It's pretty surreal to go from George Washington to Paul Bowls in less than ten minutes.

Also very American feeling, because so much of every story is left out.

Who is this museum for?

Later on, I try to read up, irritated by the shallow globs of info I gleaned here.

The Legation's cultural center does good work, such as free Arabic literacy classes for poor women.

An American expat later tells me The Legation Villa is an awesome play for receptions and parties, but the museum doesn't really explain its own existence very well.

Or Tangier.

There's almost nothing about the colonial era when Morocco was divided under European quote unquote protection, and Tangier's situation was even more complicated as a neutral free trade zone from the nineteen twenties to nineteen fifty nine.

What were we Americans doing here besides training spies and mapping Greenwich Village onto Tangier.

As the Moroccan writer Hishamaiedi puts it, I know it's useless to expect cultural criticism from a property owned by the US State Department.

Ligations do not do negation.

I start to figure out who this place is for as I leave the front door and the guards, the cats now sleeping on the stairs, the seagulls squawking over the old Jewish cemetery, and the venders hawking spices and fake hoodies.

As we're sipping mint tea at Cafe Hoffa, staring over the straits, it does become clear the tangier American legation is for me, not me the visitor who would like more irony.

I mean me, a citizen of the USA.

This piece of two hundred year old real estate is a hedge.

I read that Morocco is the largest purchaser of US arms on the African continent.

It's been hosting joint military exercises with US for nearly two decades.

And when my government does something really unpleasant to the Arab speaking world sometimes happens.

At least we have the legation.

We can host receptions in the presence of the knotted rug, stars and stripes, George Washington's vintage letter to the Sultan, and maybe even Paul Bowles typewriter, whatever might help us stay in good standing with our one old friend in the region, our national historic site in Tangier sits at the edge of an empire, like those Phoenician tombs of old, though that when Romans marched in and took over the city, they looted the tombs and removed all signs of Phoenicia.

It turns out Romans were not romantic at all.

A postcard from Tangiers, courtesy of my editor, Julia Barton.

I've never been to Tangiers, but I have wanted to go ever since I read yes Paul bowles novel The Sheltering Sky, and it was there that he made the observation a difference between turists and traveler is that a taurus accepts his own civilization without question, not so the traveler.

And according to that framework, Julia is definitely a traveler.

All right, we're gonna take a break when we get back.

I speak with one of the most talented and cranky travel writers to ever do it.

We are here to accrue unredeemable air miles and tear points, to try to be graded on aeroplanes and in hotels wherever possible, to try to alter our itiners to include Bora, Bora, and to wish that the internet connections were faster and more reliable writer Jeff Dyer joins me after the break, plus actor Coma Domingo stops by to answer your travel questions.

It's a real barn burner today, folks, welcome back to Not Lost Chat, my series of conversations with fellow travelers.

I'm Brendan Francis, Newnham.

And you know, one could argue that this whole chat series was an elaborate excuse for me to speak with one of my favorite travel writers, Jeff Dyer.

Now to clarify, Dyer isn't simply a travel writer.

He's won numerous awards for his books about as photography and film.

He's also written four novels, including the Color of Memory and Jeff and Venice.

His latest work is called The Last Days of Roger Federer, another subject dear to my heart.

In that work, Jeff confronts his own middle age by examining the last days and plays of famous athletes, writers and artists.

But I'm not alone in thinking that it's in his travel writing where he really shines.

And you can find it in collections like Yoga for people who can't be bothered to do it and White Sands.

So when I met with him.

I asked him to start by reading me A Passes from White Sands.

And at this point in the book, Jeff is on the island of iva Ova, nearing the end of his visit to French Polynesia.

I joined some other tourists for a boat trip to a nearby island.

The minivan taking us to the boat was late.

This didn't matter, because when we got to the port, the boat was not ready to sail.

Was the thing about eva Oa.

The huge weight to leave contained within it other little pockets of waiting, so that one was caught in an endless hierarchy of waiting.

I was always waiting for the next bit of waiting, climaxing with the final days waiting, in which I would wait to be transferred to the airport, where I would wait for the plane taking me back to Tahiti, before the wait for the enormous airborne weight of the flight back to La more waiting, and on to London itself.

In a sense, that is what we're here for.

To wait.

While waiting, however, one necessarily ponders other questions, questions that don't go away, irrespective of how long one waits.

Where did I come from?

Where am I going?

How long have I got?

But the answers to those big questions turn out to be small, or at least they have to be itemized in detail if they're to have any chance of doing justice to the big questions.

We are here to accrue unredeemable air miles and tier points, to try to be upgraded on aeroplanes and in hotels wherever possible, to try to alter our itineries to include Bora Bora, and to wish that the internet connections were faster and more reliable.

We are here to suffer terrible disorientation and jet lag, and to be plagued constantly by the desire to be somewhere else, either somewhere else in French Polynesia or ideally somewhere else altogether, preferably nearer home.

We are here to wish we'd brought different books to read, and to wonder what happened to our lost biography of Gogan.

We are here to wish the food was better and not to be afflicted by the torment of heat rash, and to wish that we'd brought some calamine lotion to lessen that forment.

We are here to buy presents for our loved ones, and then to spend long hours constructing excuses as to why this was impossible, because everything into Heaiti is so expensive and there's nothing worth buying anyway.

We are here to be bored, rigid, and then to wonder how it was possible to be so bored.

We are here to wait at eva Oa Airport in the drenching humidity, and to feel definitively what we have felt before, albeit only fleetingly, that we are glad we came, even though we spent so much of our time wishing we hadn't.

We are here to make sure our seat belts are securely fastened, our trade tables stowed, and our seats are in the upright position before takeoff and landing.

We are here to go somewhere else.

Thank you for that.

I feel like this essay, I think, on the one hand, is like later error Jeff Dyer traveling, But it also encapsulates a lot of what you do, which is, you take us on this trip with you.

You talk about the joys and the struggles, you talk about the agony, and yet there's permanent desire to go on.

And I wondered if you could talk about how you gave yourself permission to be open about those things, and how that's played out.

I have this idea, really, it's almost like a contract that I feel that nobody should come out of anything I write looking worse than me.

Really, so I feel that typically the object of the satire in my book is myself.

But certainly one wants to articulate the fact that you know, there's no point shying away from the fact that a lot of the time places are disappointing, and you know the food is bad and all that kind of stuff.

But what is terrible, I think, is if if you go with that as a predetermined setting to sort of take things down, because what you don't want to do is have that kind of that satirical dimension.

You don't want that to render you incapable of responding to the wonder of the world.

Well, something that does appear in your books, even for a reader not doing some literary analysis, I think was captured by James Wood who wrote you up in The New Yorker a few years back, and he described your method, or how he has perceived your method as quote, a loitering investigation, somehow intense and slackerish.

The author not quite pursuing his subject, but hanging around it like a clever aimless boy in a street corner.

I don't know about the clever aimless boy part, but I do think the idea of loitering is interesting.

In a lot of your works, some of fiction, some nonfiction, the character you go to a place post up and just you're kind of present, and you're not You're not there for some adventure.

You're there just to be present.

And I wonder if you could speak to that mode and talk about how your approach used to be about covering a place.

Yeah, I think that's a good summary of what I was doing.

And one of the reasons that I've remained interested in traveling is because we never went anywhere when I was a kid.

You know, I didn't get on a plane until I was twenty two, and my parents, both of whom are dead now, they died without ever having been on a plane.

My pre adult life was so unadventurous.

And then I gradually got into going to places, but I think because I wasn't used to it, I didn't like it because I missed all the conveniences of home and all this kind of stuff.

And then I hit upon a bit later this way of traveling in a way that suited me, which was to go somewhere and then stay for a little length of time so that I wasn't just moving around all the time, which is of course famously tiring.

And then if I rented a place, as I did in New Orleans, I could have my little routine.

I could have my kettle and all this kind of stuff, do some work in the day, which I liked.

So on the one hand, I had all the excitement and thrills and attentiveness that's important of being in a new place.

But I had all the security of being able to lead my normal sort of routine life, and that really suited me.

And that meant that I was, as you said that, you know, without any kind of purpose.

So that was your mode of travel for a while, and you know, it's particularly apparent in your collection Yoga for People who Can't be Bothered.

Now you continue to do travel writing.

Your collection before your most recent book, Waite Sands, was mostly a compendium of travel writing.

And now you're married.

You seem to live a relatively happy, stable life in Los Angeles, and yet you continue to do this.

So why do you keep at it?

Why do you keep traveling?

And I guess my answer to why I kept at it is I always I think I've quoted before that wonderful line of Annie Dillard's where she says, you know, it's a very interesting planet.

We're only here for a short time, so we might as well get a feel for the place.

I mean, it's an utter least stupendous place.

So it seems crazy not to have been everywhere, everywhere that you can go to at least once.

And certainly there are plenty of places that you only want to go to once, And there are plenty of places actually that, having been to once, you think, oh, that really wasn't worth going to.

You know, there's a passage in one of your pieces, and I've been rereading all of them and listening to the audiobooks, so they're all a jumble in my mind.

But you're in North London and you walk by where you think Julian Barnes's houses, another British writer, and you say, you know, I'm sure I'm near Julian Barnes, who writes every day in his desk at his home.

And essentially what you're saying is like, how can you possibly be a writer and just be sitting at a desk at a home in northern London from nine to five, five days a week.

And so I guess the question is which came first for you.

Is it the urge to travel and writing kind of helped fuel that, or you wanted to be this writer and so your responsibility then was to have really taken as much of the world as you can in this romantic sense.

Yeah, this is a really good question, or a really good distinction you raise.

I mean, I guess the first thing I should say is that that was just a little sort of joke of a paradox that I came up with, and I do believe absolutely along with God.

I can't remember who said it now, it might have been Camu or somebody else who said that it's possible to lead a life of great adventure without leaving your desk.

So there's that for me.

I found that by the time my first novel had come out, called The Color of Memory, to set in this one area of London, Brickson in South London, and I didn't really have much that I wanted to say about Britain after that, And from that point on, the two things went hand in hand in that, Yeah, I really wanted to see that the world, and I found also that by seeing the world I would have more to write about.

So the pattern that got repeated quite often is that I'd arranged to write some sort of article about a place, and that was nice because it killed several birds with one stone.

I got paid, the accommodation was covered, all this kind of stuff.

But then typically what would happen is I'd write the piece about the place, and then I'd find that actually the place was far more interesting than I could say in so many words, and so a larger book would come about.

So you know, for example, my wife and I were very keen to go to Varanassi Bernars in India, so I've arranged write an article for a British paper, And almost as soon as I got there, I realized that this little novel I was writing about Venice set during the Venice B and llet.

Almost as soon as we arrived at the guts on the banks of the Ganges in Varanassi, I knew that that book would have to be expanded and there'd be a second part set in Varanassi.

In this epicenter of Hinduism, and so out of an assignment, a straightforward travel writing assignment, very quickly that experience led to something which was going to be incorporated into a work of fiction.

I mean, it was so it's fantastic to be in Varanassi, but it was even more wonderful to go there for me knowing that I was writing about it, because it made me especially attentive to what was going on.

So I was there with my and ten I out noticing things that I might not otherwise have done, but also trying to arrive at a way of understanding of the place, which is in many ways, it's incomprehensibly strange.

I mean, it's just so far out.

And the novel that resulted from that trip, Jeff and Venice, Death and Vanity, it reads like both a travelogue and a novel, a story of discovery.

It's also quite spacey in places there's lots of sex, drugs and prosecco, and most of your writing has a lot of those elements, not always prosecco, And it made me wonder, what does your family make of your writing?

You.

As one gets older, one reflects on one's life, and one of the great privileges.

I think of my life is that I came from a family of non readers, And what that means is that when I sort of discovered this thing of reading, it was a total revel elation.

And then the other thing.

I feel so lucky that my parents, although they read some of my articles, I don't think they ever read any of my books.

And so when I was writing say Paris Trance or Jeff in Venice or any of them, really it was a real sense of liberation that I wasn't having my mum looking over my shoulder when I was writing that stuff.

That was a real sense of liberation.

This all reminds me of something the comedian Pete Holmes once said about how it feels odd bringing your partner home for the first time to meet your parents, because you're basically saying, mom, dad, here's what I'm into, this big reveal of your private life.

Fortunately, my parents don't listen to my podcast, So all right, I want to step back for a second.

You have traveled from Tahiti to n Is to New Orleans and everywhere in between.

What is a lesson that you can pass along to other folks?

What is traveling taught you.

It seems to me one of the lessons of travel, and it's a very very simple one, but it's a profound one too.

I mean, we're all aware of the incredible inequality of wealth in the world.

I was staying one time at the Four Seasons in I think it was Bombay, and it's one of the quirks of where the Four Seasons is this splendid hotel, the right outside it there's this sprawling, sprawling slum, and you know, it really is the case that as you walk around, you're aware that, oh, I actually I've got more value in my hotel safe than these people will probably have in their lives.

So given that terrible inequality, it's amazing really that you don't get robbed all the time.

And of course you don't want to, you know, you don't want to behave stupidly and recklessly.

But generally speaking, isn't it amazing how little we have to fear from other people.

Generally most people are no more thinking of harming us than we would.

Then, you said once, the lesson of travel seems to be so banal but so great, which is the people are just so amazingly decent the world over, which which I've also you know, that's the nature of my show is kind of going into these towns and you kind of want to get invited back to someone's home for dinner to see how they really live.

And it's incredible how often one succeeded.

But it is definitely one of the most powerful parts of it.

Yeah, I mean, that's all true.

Although I mean I'm so keen to not be a sentimentalist.

So while preparing for this chat, I came across a video online of you and the writer Sam Libsite, the lovely and very funny human being that is Sam.

You two are talking and you start talking about Jack Carowack, and Sam was saying that he hadn't read him since high school, and you were saying that you still read him, And honestly, I was a little bit heartened by a response.

Although I haven't read him recently, my primary time with him was spent in high school.

But I don't think I've ever really recovered, you know, I think the ripples from his writing continue to emanate in my life.

So I was wondering if you could talk to me a little bit about your relationship with this patron saint of road trips.

In America.

Yeah.

I mean my experience was similar to yours, and I think I first read him unsuccessfully when I was young.

It was that time at school, you know, when the teachers are all trying really hard to persuade you that literature is not old and boring.

But when they first asked us to read On the Road, they went too far the other way.

It was too cool, so I just didn't get it.

And then I think I successfully read it a few years later, when I was nineteen or twenty, and of course I loved it.

I've ended up rereading On the Road every five years, and for me, it just gets better and better.

I've never grown out of it.

I mean, the book changes as you become more familiar with it.

It just seems to become increasingly increasingly moving and wonderful.

What about it still still grabs you?

Is it the writing itself, the energy, or his role in America in the history of writing.

Well, I suppose I could give you a one word answer to your question what is it about On the Road, And I would say it's the everything about it.

But I guess I should emphasize two things.

One Obviously, as soon as you have an actual physical journey.

Then you have automatic and inherent narrative interest.

You start somewhere and you end up somewhere else, and you start on page one and you end up on page whatever it is.

I think that's a crucial thing, this combination of geographical movement and our movement through the pages.

So there's that.

I think stylistically, it's really I'm in the energy of the prose, and crucially it's lyricism.

It seems to me Karroak is a gorgeously lyrical writer, and of course there's a you know, there's a kind of lyrical excess in it.

But it seems to me a condition of youth in a way is that you're not able to rastion the lyricism, but the abiding thing which gets stronger as you as you age.

It's such a wonderful novel about friendship and loss, and in particular, you know, there's the famous Dean Moriarty Neil Cassidy character, and the sort of poignance of the sense of him being sort of left behind, stranded.

I mean, that really is one of the enduring things about the books.

That's funny.

I don't think of the sadness around Neil I just think of their kind of bonhomie enjoy so let me maybe I'll have to revisit it soon once I'm done reading your latest Jeff, thank you so much for coming to chat with me.

I really appreciated this conversation.

Thank you, Brendon.

It's been a great pleasure.

I've ready enjoyed talking with you.

Thanks.

Hello.

All right, once again, that was Jeff Dyer.

His latest book is called The Last Days of Roger Federer, and in it he discusses, along with other luminaries, the aforementioned Jack Carrouac.

So check it out.

All right, We're gonna take a quick break, and when I get back, I'll be talking to actor, writer and director Coleman Domingo, who will be here to help answer some of your travel questions.

I think it's actually a crime for children to sit in business class or first class.

Do not at me, at him, not me, not lost.

We'll be right back.

Welcome back, everybody.

We've been on a journey this episode from Tangier to French Polynesia to Varanasi, and now we're about to go to Los Angeles, where the actor Coleman Domingo is going to help me answer your travel questions.

Now.

His face might not immediately pop your mind, but you've certainly seen him.

He is a writer, director, and actor who is best known for his roles in Zola, Candy Man, and most recently, he won an Emmy for his performance and You've Fororia, in which he plays Ali, the narcotics anonymous sponsor of Zendaiah's character.

Here's a clip.

You think you're hard hack, I'm harder.

You think you're tough, I'm tougher.

You got clean and want to kill yourself.

Same motherfucking story here.

You want to know why, You want to know why, I'll tell you why.

Because you don't know how to live life.

You don't have the tools.

You're too busy run around trying to bullshit everybody to think in your heart, and you don't give a fuck one of reality.

You give so much of a fuck you get even bear to be alive.

So guess what new rule?

No more waste of my motherfucking time.

You want to use us, But the least you can do is be honest.

Own that ship.

Yeah it is not a romcom.

In addition to Ephoria, last year, Coleman released an animated short film called New Moon, which was a tribute to his mother and a love letter to all black mothers and sons.

And he recently wrapped production on The Color Purple, the newest film adaptation of Alice Walker's book, where he plays the abusive and terrifying husband Mister So Yeah.

He does all sorts of roles.

One nice with Coleman, I asked him how he keeps his head straight while bouncing between such intense and different roles.

It's wild.

You gotta find, you gotta find ways to have light in your life.

And I think that I think that I've been gifted and I'll just say gifted because it's a huge responsibility.

Roles like Mysta and Rustin pretty much in the same calendar year, and they're like heavy duty, heavy lifting work.

And I now have a practice of making sure that I do things like something physical, like I'll go for a run, I become a runner.

Basically, I'll do things to make sure I take care of myself one days off, like I buy myself flowers, I eat really well, I go to amazing restaurants or wherever I am.

And I had to tell my business manager that he was like, well, you know, You're spending is gone up a little while you're in production.

I'm like, yeah, because it's called self care because I have to really have to eat well, I have to nourish my body and my mind in atmosphere, I have to do all of those things.

So that's all a part of the work as well.

That I realized that it can't just be about the work, because if it's just that, I think you may go a little nuts in a way, if you're just in that dark space all the time, Like, if you're going to go this far on one side, you need something to bring on the other.

Um.

Absolutely, I never thought about that, how Like, yeah, you're playing a villain all day and then yes, like maybe I do need to take a bath and have a nice dinner just to remind myself that I'm Coleman, I'm human.

Yeah, that's that's exactly it.

That's why you have to remind yourself who you are actually, Like, I stay in it.

When I'm in it, I'm in it, but I still must come home and take care of this human being that I am.

Yeah, do you still have the show?

Bottomless Brunch at Coleman's Bottoms A bunch of Colemans.

We finished our fourth season and we're transitioning to another show, which is sort of a takeoff of Bottomless.

I'm happy to hear that actually com because I wrote a book called Brunch as Hell.

I've been pretty anti brunch for a lot of my your anti why you hate brunch?

Who hates brunch?

I actually said to people, no one hates brunch.

That's why I had a brunch show.

No one says, oh, I hate going to brunch.

You hate going I hate going to brunch.

I think I think it well, I think it's you have many people they work Monday to variety.

Maybe it's the filly in me.

You have two days off a week.

You're gonna stab one of those days in the heart with a with a mimosa at two pm.

I feel like, um, well, you don't want to you don't want to chill, you don't want to have like Funday Sunday.

Yeah, so what what do you so?

What do you do instead?

You sit mad?

What do you do?

I mean sometimes I do sit mad, but sometimes you know, I work on creative projects for myself.

I cook breakfast at home.

You're not no, no, I'm not buying it.

What you have to do that's still doing creative work.

You're still doing creative work.

You should be doing things like nothing brunches, okay, to eat and drink and talk all right?

That gives me anxiety?

Did you nothing?

So?

Really?

But I liked your calling me on them.

You're not You're not wired.

You're not wired that you're not.

I just feel like, um, I feel like, yeah, I got errands to do, I got things.

Yeah.

Why do you think you still have a lot of this is I'm turning the tables on you.

Do you realize that?

Why do you feel that you have to and now I'm your therapist.

Why do you always feel like you have something?

I don't know.

I feel like maybe, um, I feel those hours by myself like not.

I guess I work sometimes I feel anxious, and when I just have time to myself, I'm less anxious.

And then I feel like then I need to take advantage of those moments and a product and yeah, productivity.

And it's a bit of a curse.

Maybe it's I got I got the flu called capitalism.

Dude, I think you might need brunch in your life.

You could use it, all right, Well if I come through because you own a bars that right in La the Wolves.

Yeah, I'm a co owner of the Wolves.

I'm of a bar in downtown LA and it's a it's a good place to go to brunch.

And maybe if I'm in LA, you can't Yeah, if you're in La, you can't bring anything with you.

I don't want to look over and like, what creative project are you doing over there?

All right, all right, I'll just show up and we'll do it.

So you enjoy travel.

Do you have any broad travel wisdom to share, like when you're when you're going places for pleasure?

Do you have any guidelines?

What's funny?

I do?

I do.

Actually, let me just tell you about my fifty birthday travels.

This will explain everything.

For my fiftieth birthday.

I knew I wanted to spend three weeks in Europe where I don't know, but I did book my flights in and out of London, and then it was about once I'm there, I will go where the weather takes me or where I feel like going.

So I would go from London to Paris, and then I went to Berlin.

I wanted to go somewhere that never been and I was like, huh, is it Prague or is it Vienna, and we looked at Vienna and we're like, let's go to Vienna.

I don't know anything about Vienna, maybe maybe the sausages or a Mozart.

So we booked a flight, got to Vienna, got a hotel, and then was like, we're here, what is this place?

And then we found incredible museums and walks and restaurants and everything and just went down a rabbit hole.

That's what I love to do.

I'm going to a major city, I'll try to find like it sounds very bougie, but I'll try to find like a store like Gucci, so then I know that I'm in a decent area.

If I want a five star hotel, I'll find it near there.

If I want more of a four star artistic like if I go to Mexico City, I'm like, oh, I think I want to be in the ault, so I will look up hipster coffee shops something like that.

So okay, that puts me in Roma.

I'm going to be in Roma then great, so I'll get the hotel there and I'm like, this is the neighborhood I need to be love depending on the experience, so I just put myself in a place and then figure you're like a flaneur who would just stroll around cities.

But you're like that, and maybe with a larger area to rome, You're like, I'll put myself in a place and then I'm gonna go where my instincts tell me to go and just relax.

Yeah.

I support that, absolutely, I support it, and I feel like I'm very like you know, I'm very easy about what it has to be at I think when you have almost low or no expectations of what this city is going to offer, everything, everything is a treat because you take the city as it is.

You know, I do.

I do all right, Coleman, despite your blind spot about brunch, you strike me as a wise man.

Are you ready to help my audience with travel eticet questions?

Sure?

All right?

This first one comes from the Kole from Chicago and Nicole rites.

Recently, I went on a trip with some old college friends.

We went to Nashville for a girls' weekend.

On the first night, we ordered the tasting menu at a Michelin started restaurant, and one of my friends, who has gotten increasingly fussy as she's gotten older, felt ill after our appetizers, so we ended the dinner early and returned to the hotel.

So her friend was like, not feeling great, kind of short circuited their Michelin dinner.

Ultimately, she was fine.

The next night, we went out to see live music, and after one round of drinks, she announced she wanted to leave.

I offered to get her ear an uber, and she was offended that we weren't all ready to leave with her.

What was the right thing to do do when you're making emotion Get her to fuck off that trip?

Yeah, sorry, old friend, Yeah, old friends.

She's changed the way.

She's not like she used to be anymore.

She needs be in bed at nine and she needs her her little meal whatever, whatever makes her feel good.

She wasn't meant to go on this trip.

She should have known.

She should have pulled back.

I'm like, Yo, you get an uber, going to ruin this everybody, And Yo, we're gonna talk Missil the Shout restaurant.

We're going You're gotta be a little cutthroat about stuff like that.

You're like, no, you're you can handle it.

Sorry, that's fair.

I think like you look him in the eye one time, you're like, this is your call, and then after that we're all adults.

Her friend was gonna have a problem no matter what day one.

You should have known what she got sick off the appetizers.

No boy, no Coleman, I agree with him.

No, okay.

This next question comes from Dan from Michigan.

Dan asks, am I obligated to sit next to someone's pet on the airplane?

I think like there might be rules and regulations, but I guess the question is, how do you feel about pets on airplanes and people's politics around them?

Well, I feel like you should get I don't know.

I feel like you should get an alert or something, yeah, to let you know I feel okay with it, And would you want to move or something.

I feel like I feel like it should be known if you bought a dog, you know, if you have a dog or cat, because you could be allergic to Yeah to it.

I mean I am allergic to dogs and cats, but I think that's the same.

Yeah.

I think that's a good thought.

Like I think in the past five to ten years, we've seen pets enter places they never were entering before.

Like, I feel like they just are more restaurants, more cafes, and generally I'm okay with that.

Pets make people happy, but as someone who has allergies, especially on a long flight, sometimes that's the biggest budget purchase of the year as a plane ticket, and to sit next to a cat, I think a little bit of like, now we're at the frit We've been doing this long enough, we need to have some rules and regulations.

So I think so too, that which brings me to something that there has nothing to do with this, but something to do with this.

I think it's I think it's actually a crime for children to sit in business class of first, Okay, all right, why because what do you?

What kind of business do you?

Yeah?

And then a baby there was a baby crying in business class.

I'm like, these seats cost a lot of money and your baby's crying.

I sound like a horrible person, don't I.

But I direct your emails and tweets to Colvid Domingo.

I'm just I've I've this is not my first rodeo going.

I can't go on record somewhere.

I can't go on record supporting that.

All right, So going on to our next question, Um, here we go.

This is from Jacob from Los Angeles.

He asks for Americans abroad, is it better to attempt speaking a few words of the local language poorly, yes, or just sheepishly start your conversations in English and you Nope, you should always try.

You should you should always try.

Otherwise you look like a dumb America.

Okay, don't do that to us.

And yeah, there's enough of us out there already as dumb Americans.

Don't be in the Yeah.

I think what I like bout the question, too, is like should I try poorly?

That at least indicates that you read up on it or you're trying, like that's the the effort is here and they'll they'll appreciate that.

You're like, oh, you came here, you want to speak our language?

How how nice?

You sound?

Abysmal?

But I'm with you.

Um, all right, One last question.

I think you answered this when you were talking about your travel habits, but I'll ask it.

This is from Grant from North Carolina.

When I travel somewhere, I often to the tourist spots or the top destinations of place has to offer.

I want to do more off the beaten path exploring, but I don't know where to start.

Any tips.

Neighborhoods think about the people who live there and start walking more than anything.

When I go to any city, I will just start walking and walk to where you feel safe and get a little lost.

It's okay these days, you've got you can get an uber, you can call it of something.

But people are actually I think people out in the world when you when you travel and know your foreigner.

I feel like people have always been friendly to me and like, if you're friendly, if you're open just saying you need help.

I've gone to remember one with the Marrakesh and I felt like my brain turned inside out because I didn't understand anything, the roads, the way cars went, the way the streets were crowded, you name it.

But I feel like I know that people.

If I I got lost, like in the Sioux I will just go to someone, just go to someone who seemed warm and friendly and ask me.

I believe because I also believe that like what you put out is also what you get back.

I believe that I'm protected and safe in the world, and I think that that's exactly what resonates.

Yeah, and so I will take myself into a neighborhood that I don't know and ask a local, where can you get a good meal around here?

And people feel pride, they want to they will go go down there.

Yeah, it's great.

My mother's family's creation.

And they have a phrase, God protects drunks and idiots, And I feel like I, when you're traveler, you're a bit of an idiot, and and there are you calling me a drunken an idiot?

Is that what you call?

Yet?

Is not?

Yet?

I was I was projecting.

I'm sorry.

I thought this was my therapy imployment.

I'm sorry, it's it's my it's my interview with Colman um No.

But you know, when you're when you're traveling, you're a bit of a ding bat.

And I think that there may be, you know, there could be an aura around you that people will will often help you.

All Right, Well, look, calmen, thank you so much for your travel tips.

Congratulate this is all the great stuff you're cooking up, and you're such a pleasure to chat with.

Thank you for coming by.

This is fine.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Once again, that was Coleman Domingo.

Everybody be on the lookout because he has two new films coming out later this year, Rustin and The Color Purple.

And that concludes our journey this episode of Not Lost Chat.

Thank you so much for joining us.

If you have travel questions, as always, you can email them to me at not Lost at Pushkin dot fm and I'll try to get them in front of one of our future guests, or you can ping me at b f newt him on Twitter.

Pinging is that what that's called?

Sounds better than dming.

Not Lost Chat was produced by Jordan Billy, who, true to form, will be taking a little road trip soon to Asheville, so if you're down there, please roll out the welcome app for her.

This show is written and host by me Brendan Francis Nunham.

We receive booking assistance from the wonderful Laura Morgan.

This episode was edited by Julia Barton, who also contributed that fantastic postcard at the top.

Way to outshine your host, Julia, I've got some work ahead of me for that next postcard.

Our managing producer is Jacob Smith, and our mix engineer and co producer is the wonderful Sarah brugere Not Lost is a co production of Pushkin Industries, Topic Studios and iHeartMedia, who was developed at Topic Studios.

Executive producers include Me, Brendan, Francis Nunham, Christy Gressman, Maria Zuckerman, Lisa Langang and Latommallad.

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It's all really appreciated.

You can sign up for the Pushkin newsletter and find out everything happening over here at pushkin dot fm slash newsletter.

And if you'd like to find some more Pushkin podcasts great stuff happening now, great Stuff on its way, new season of cover you can listen and find them on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

That is it for this episode.

Thanks everybody, bon voyage