The Trip

Here, to ring in this new year, is an ode to what should be the next great culinary star from the country of Georgia, the perfect vessel of unadorned cholesterol, the cosmic collision of flour, butter, egg and cheese: Khachapuri. Links: R&K weeklong culinary journeys: The League of Travelers Georgian market tours: Meet Me Here Tbilisi Mexico City Market Tours: Eat Like a Local Market Tours everywhere else: Culinary Backstreets Taste of Persia: A Cook's Travels Through Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now that it's cold and flu (and COVID) season, it's time for Georgia's Dayquil of the gods: the pomace brandy called Chacha. Host of The Trip Nathan Thornburgh explains its appeal. Seize the chacha by Ansel Mullins Nikalas Marani on IG Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Trip from Roads & Kingdoms and host Nathan Thornburgh is back, with a tight new format, plus lots of distilled alcohol and Soviet helicopters in Georgia's Caucasus Mountains. The Light of the Caucasus: Photographs by Yuri Kozyrev Georgia: Q&A with Photographer Natela Grigalashvili Abkhazia: Paradise Lost Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roads & Kingdoms online R&K Instagram Return to Catalunya video series with Bourdain and Goulding Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Holding a diverse community together in a time of gathering threats is no easy act. Barcelona's Chief Rabbi thinks he's up to the task. Prior Chief Rabbi of Barcelona “Europe is Lost” The Hidden Stories of Barcelona’s Jews Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

21st generation winemaker Pepe Raventós talks about his family's 500 or so years of Catalan winemaking. Raventós i Blanc’s Sparkling Wines Rudolf Steiner lecture trashing wine Penedés tourism site   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking Scotch and talking to a man who is really, really excited about Big Tech. Zoltan Istvan homepage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking coffee with Eva Castillo, New Hampshire immigrant rights activist Mira Coalition homepage Rincón Zacatecano Puerto Vallarta restaurant Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gary Hirshberg was a key early supporter of Barack Obama in New Hampshire, and as chairman of Stonyfield Farm, is an icon of the business of organic food. The Trip met up with him just before the 2020 primary to do shots of probiotics and talk politics. Stonyfield Farm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking baijiu with Tom Tillotson, whose family has presided over the midnight vote in Dixville Notch, NH for six decades. Show notes: Mitch Moxley's Baijiu piece for California Sunday magazine Tom Tillotson’s China Ski Tours website Balsams homepage Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lebanese wine expert and podcast host Farrah Berrou takes The Trip Into the Beqaa Valley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

L'Orient-Le Jour columnist Gilles Khoury has a keen eye for the lives and aspirations of Beirut's citizens. He took The Trip to The Egg, the heart of Beirut's popular uprising and anti-corruption campaign. Show notes: Tripoli Ka’akeh bread--a favorite dish of the revolution L’Orient Le Jour The Assassination of Malcom Kerr Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking Aged Negronis with Jade George: Publisher, Gourmand, Revolutionary Show notes: The Carton store in Hamra Bar Ferdinand, Beirut Kalei Coffee House Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking with Chyno, the MC who brought battle rap to Beirut. Get Mamluk, his latest album, here. Show notes: Mamluk, Chyno’s new album from Warner Music Middle East Chyno Instagram account The Arena Battle Rap League IG account Roads & Kingdoms story on the Arena Battle Rap highlights: Supernatural versus Juice Blaze Battle 2000: Eyedeaz v Shells Scribble Jam: Eminem 1997 Lebanese-American MC Dizaster versus Canibus More revolution music: Age of the Pimp, Egyptian revolution anthem from Ramy Essam Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anissa Helou is the author of nine books, and a leading voice of culinary sophistication for the Middle East and beyond. Host Nathan Thornburgh and Anissa shared strong, cloudy Arak in Beirut and talked about Syria, Lebanon, food and feminism. Show notes: Anissa’s blog Anissa’s Instagram account Feast: Food of the Islamic World Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A conversation, over some very dank weed, with Tijuana- and San Diego-based muralist Panca. Show notes: Klover dispensary homepage Panca homepage @aypanca on Instagram Panca's upcoming installation at the New Childrens Museum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A conversation in Tijuana with Gera Gámez, deportee and coworker at the legal advocacy group Al Otro Lado, before Gera's untimely death. The work he was doing continues, however, and please donate to Al Otro Lado if you can: Show notes: Al Otro Lado homepage How to volunteer for Al Otro Lado How to donate to Al Otro Lado Police reporter Margarito 4-4’s Facebook page Tijuana Esta Alerta, Jesús Aguilar's News Site on FB Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalist Jorge Nieto invites The Trip to his home at the Otay Mesa to talk about being a fixer and journalist in one of the world's most dangerous countries. Show notes:  Gustavo Solis on Tijuana fixers Piper French’s interview with Jorge Nieto on Roads & Kingdoms R&K's Unbylined series featuring Q&As with fixers around the world Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking mezcal old fashioneds with Ruffo Ibarra, a chef at the vanguard of Tijuana's remarkable reinvention. Show notes: Oryx Capital, Ruffo’s flagship restaurant Cengrow organic farm Gustavo Arellano on the legend of the Donkey Show San Diego Union-Tribune on refugees and chefs aid Ruffo Ibarra IG account Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking cactus-laced "green juice" with iconic cross-border designer Edoardo Chavarín. Our lovely sponsor this episode: Palate Club Show notes: Edoardo Chavarín site Edoardo Chavarín Instagram Article about Chavarín’s coffee shop Rodrigo Roji, tattoo artist and collaborator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when a celebrated travel writer finds herself suddenly, inextricably homebound? This is not a COVID story. Jodi Ettenberg's health struggles pre-date the pandemic, but her philosophical approach to frailty and flightlessness has lessons for us all. Show notes: LegalNomads.com 12 Years of Legal Nomads post Jodi Ettenberg’s Instagram The story of her cerebrospinal fluid leak Why We Get Jet Lag… and 5 Tips for Making it Less Painful 2012 Q&A with Jodi Ettenberg on Roads & Kingdoms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mohawk recipes, resistance and more good medicine with Tiffany Deer in Kahnawake, Quebec. Show notes:  Kahnawake Visitors Center Skywalker exhibit at the 9/11 museum Mohawk Girls trailer Article about Beans, the movie that Tiffany Deer participated in Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking vodka soda and talking growing up Anglophone in Quebec with one of the world’s top Freddie Mercury cover singers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking coffee with Nakuset and talking about her childhood as an native adoptee in the dark chapter of Canadian history called the Sixties Scoop. Show notes: If you or someone you know is in distress, please reach out for help or just a conversation: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Stolen From Our Embrace, a book about the Sixties scoop, forced assimilation, and the indigenous children who survived it. By Suzanne J. Fournier and Ernie Crey CBC mini-documentary Becoming Nakuset Talkback session about the film with Nakuset and fellow Sixties Scoop survivor Daniel Milner Christopher Curtis’ stories for the Montreal Gazette Donate to the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You want to figure out a place you really don't know? Bring a journalist some beer, and press record. Our first of five episodes in Montreal starts right there, with Patrick Lagacé. Show notes: Le Quebec Maintenant show Patrick Lagacé’s columns at La Presse News report on police surveillance of Patrick Lagacé Patrick Lagacé’s (doctored) Wikipedia page Globe and Mail column by Patrick Lagacé Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Architect-turned-artist Ana Aragão is known for riffing on the skyline of her city or on the Tower of Babel or other astonishments of architecture, then infusing them with a bit of magical realism—earthquakes, apocalypses, worlds without gravity. In this episode of The Trip, she drinks port wine with host Nathan Thornburgh and talks about Porto and the power of imagining. Ana Aragão Instagram Real Editors Ship by Paul Ford Ana Aragão at TEDxPorto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking sugary island punch in Porto with a pioneer in food tourism, Culinary Backstreets' Ansel Mullins. Show notes: Culinary Backstreets home page News report of the Istanbul 2003 bombing Culinary Backstreets Porto food tour Paul Rimple on Giorgi Iosava Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Photojournalist Eduardo Leal drinks vinho verde with host Nathan Thornburgh and talks tourism, gentrification, and those mounds of meat and cheese called Francesinha. Show notes: Forcados “The Bull Wrestlers of Portugal” photoessay Eduardo Leal stories on Roads & Kingdoms Eduardo Leal website Festival de Cinema de Aventura in Matosinhos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Muthoni Drummer Queen on creativity, colonialism, and Kenya's place in the world of music. Show notes: Muthoni on IG Muthoni’s music on Spotify Muthoni’s official site Blankets & Wine Concert Series Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Talking African stories, LGBTQ rights in Kenya, and surviving cancer with Kevin Mwachiro. Show notes: Nipe Story, podcast hosted by Kevin Mwachiro Java House, Kenyan coffee chain Video interview from Berlin with Kevin Mwachiro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nairobi-based food obsessive Joshua Obaga chews khat with host Nathan Thonburgh and talks about the roots and culture of Kenyan cuisine. Show notes:  Joshua Obaga’s Instagram Chewing Betel Nut in Myanmar from Roads & Kingdoms Article on Joshua Obaga’s art Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A conversation in Havana with singer/songwriter/promoter—and daughter of Cuban rock royalty—Eme Alfonso. Show notes: Havana World Music Festival Eme Alfonso video project: Para Mestizar Eme Alfonso on Instagram Eme’s album Voy on BandCamp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Filmmaker and journalist Shravan Vidyarthi drinks with The Trip in Nairobi and talks about Kenya's 44th official tribe—Kenyans of South Asian descent—and about his project on the martyred photojournalist, his uncle Priya Ramrakha. Paul Theroux on Priya Ramrakha (New Yorker) Priya Ramrakha: The Recovered Archive (Book) Intersect, a global production company founded by Shravan Vidyarthi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new generation of Cuban activists is questioning everything, including the heavy, meat-laden Cuban diet. Nancy Cepero, vegan chef, queer anti-racist activist and artist, is proud to be counted among them. Nancy Cepero artwork for sale Nancy Cepero on Instagram Nancy Cepero on Tik-Tok       Grados Restaurant Havana Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Trip's five episodes from the heroic city of Nairobi start strong with a rum dawa and a conversation with iconic Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu. Show notes: Announcement of Wanuri Kahiu’s upcoming feature adaption of The Hate U Give Rafiki trailer  TEDx Wanuri Kahiu talk Kenya Supreme Court Anti-Homosexuality Ruling Hajooj Kuka’s documentary Beats of the Antonov  Afrobubblegum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Food writer, podcaster and producer Chris Ying explains why he doesn't mourn the Mission's good old days Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mónica Baró is an independent journalist, a difficult thing to be in a country where the authorities patrol public information like sharks on the reef. She and The Trip's host, foreign correspondent Nathan Thornburgh, talk about their respective arrests in Cuba, and about why she does what she does, despite all the risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

La Cocina is a heroic San Francisco non-profit that helps women—mostly immigrants and women of color—start and sustain their own businesses in food. La Cocina's Emiliana Puyana is ideally suited to help them realize their dreams. So we drank negronis in 2019 and talked about it all. Links: La Cocina’s website We Are La Cocina: Recipes in Pursuit of the American Dream Por Una Cabeza by Carlos Gardel La Cocina Gift Boxes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The artist behind the Remember Los Siete project talks about the resilience of her native Mission District. Remember Los Siete video Rememberlos7.com Brava! For Women in the Arts Bio Page Vero Majano on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ailed Duarte is co-founder of La Marca studio, which has helped bring tattoo art, once illegal throughout Cuba, into the mainstream. She and host Nathan Thornburgh talked at the first-ever international tattoo convention in Havana, about the robust art and precarious commerce of Cuban tattooing. Links: La Marca Instagram La Marca Homepage Huck Magazine feature on Mike Magers’ tattoo photography Mike Mager’s bookstore Doctor Lakra tattoo artist IG Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

My final Iraq episode is a necessarily intense conversation with Ahmed Najm, whose life changed when ISIS kidnapped his brother Kamaran Najm, co-founder of Iraq's Metrography Photo Agency, in 2014, Kamaran still hasn't been found, but his brother has become an invaluable guardian of his brother's life work and legacy. Links: Episode excerpt on R&K Metrography IG Metrography Website Rough Translation: The Search, a two-part series on Kamaran and Ahmed Roads & Kingdoms IG, Metrography Takeover Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Behind almost every great piece of war reporting is a local fixer. In Mosul, that fixer was Sangar Khaleel, whose LandRover and endless contacts kept him and the journalists he worked with safe through Iraq's darkest days. Show notes: Sangar Khaleel Instagram West Mosul Music in the Ruins Sangar and Jane Arraf’s NPR report on Syrian ISIS nostalgia NPR’s Rough Translation podcast with Sangar: DIY Mosul Kurt Schork Award page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Telmary Díaz is one of the most innovative Cuban artists of the last two decades. She's also a really good person to drink rum with in Havana to talk about music, migration and more. Show notes: Telmary: Libre (music video) Telmary & HabanaSana YouTube channel Annia Linares: A Mi Manera Santiago de Cuba Rum Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking tea and talking about long-term thinking in Kurdistan's capital city with civil engineer and sustainability expert Basima Abdulrahman. Show links: Basima Abdulrahman’s KESK Green Building Consultancy Basima Abdulrahman profile on Auburn Website City of Erbil website Basima Abdulrahman’s TEDx Nishtiman speech Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cengiz Yar is an acclaimed American photojournalist and photo editor, He is also a longtime colleague and, for this podcast, our guide to northern Iraq, during Ramadan in 2019. He mixed us some excellent Old Fashioneds with Black Jack Jordanian whiskey and talked about war, peace and growing up Jersey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking deeply in Berlin with Anton Newcombe, talking about growing up in Newport Beach, making his way to San Francisco, and everything in music from contracts to creativity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chef Katie Button and her husband run an Asheville, NC restaurant group that includes Cúrate, one of America’s finest Spanish restaurants. In this interview recorded in 2019, she talks about making bagels in biscuit country, and how restaurants can be better workplaces for women. Show notes: Cúrate Restaurant Katie Button’s Announcement about the Closure of Button & Co. Bagels Vegetables Unleashed El Bulli Foundation Asheville’s Downtown Welcome Table Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A deep conversation about moonshine and life in Appalachia between host Nathan Thornburgh and his longtime Appalachia-whisperer Kevin Forrester outside of Damascus, Virginia Show notes: Abingdon Vineyards Channels State Forest Damascus, VA Kings County Distillery “Moonshine” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Moscow-born foreign correspondent Simon Shuster came to California as a child and returned to Russia as an adult to start his career in journalism. But it was Berlin that gave him a family and became a home base while doing some of his most impactful reporting, from the Trumpworld dealings in Ukraine to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. He and host Nathan Thornburgh talk about all that, and about their similar life paths, from the nostalgic center of Berlin. Show notes: Meine Bar Berlin Simon’s recent investigation into Rick Perry’s oil dealings in Ukraine The podcast version of that investigation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writer, podcaster and Appalachian culinary evangelist Mike Costello drinks with host Nathan Thornburgh at the Lost Creek Farm in West Virginia. Show notes: Lost Creek Farm Pickle Shelf Radio Hour Hawk Knob Appalachian Hard Cider Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes, by Ronni Lundy Mike Costello on Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jeffery Lindenmuth and host Nathan Thornburgh sit down for a before-noon blind bourbon tasting at the Pennsylvania offices of Whisky Advocate. Among the topics of conversation: good value whisky, why "burning hospital" can be a desirable tasting note, and why Billy Joel did Allentown so dirty. Show notes: Whisky Advocate Jeffery Lindenmuth on IG Episode excerpt on Roads & Kingdoms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chicago native Jennifer Neal, author of the forthcoming novel The Colour of Her Blood, has spent her adult life trying out life overseas. In Berlin, she has found a home. For now. Jennifer and host Nathan Thornburgh sit in her apartment in Berlin and drink "hut dream" tea and talk about it all. Show notes: Perfect Dish: Singapore Perfect Dish: Jakarta Jennifer Neal on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Breddo's Tacos in London made a name for itself by combining deep flavors from Mexico with the kind of global inventiveness that London excels at. Nud Dudhia was born for this—born in Zambia, educated in the UK, converted to the joys of al pastor while on a break in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca. Nud and host Nathan Thornburgh sipped mezcal in the morning and talked through it all. Show notes: Breddos Tacos Bill Esparza’s Taqueando Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas The ‘mad clammer’ Roddy Sloan Cat & Mutton, the pub where Breddo’s was born Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hilary Whitney and Ian Hart make some of the best gin in the world. And they did it, until recently, all from a room in their home in leafy Highgate, north London. Hilary talks with host Nathan Thornburgh there about gin, writing, and seizing the means of Negroni production. Show notes: World Gin Awards 2019 In Our Time: The Gin Craze (BBC radio episode) Flask Fine Wines in Los Angeles (Sacred Spirits US distributor) Bounty Hunter Wine in Napa (Sacred Spirits US distributor) The New Gin Craze by Oliver Bullough in Roads & Kingdoms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drinking unique wines in Kreuzberg at the home of Billy Wagner, sommelier and proprietor of Berlin's Michelin-starred Nobelhart & Schmutzig. Episode two of five Berlin episodes on The Trip! Show notes: Nobelhart & Schmutzig Weingut Leiner Eva Fricke Rheingau winemaker profile from Punch The Carton Magazine shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sami Tamimi’s book Falastin: a Cookbook, co-written with Tara Wigley, is part travelogue, part guidebook for the home cook, it’s the first step into the spotlight for Tamimi’s gifted culinary mind and his own personal story. In this episode, he sat down with The Trip host Nathan Thornburgh over some Waitrose prosecco to talk about his life in cooking, navigating the tensions of the Middle East, and why hummus alone won’t solve our problems. This episode was previously paywalled on Luminary Podcasts but is being re-released now, free and for the people. Show notes: Sami Tamimi’s books: Falastin: A Cookbook (with Tara Wigley) Ottolenghi: the Cookbook (with Yotam Ottolenghi) Jerusalem (with Yotam Ottolenghi) Other links: How we met: Sami Tamimi and Yotam Ottolenghi Give Chickpeas a Chance Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oliver Bullough is one of my favorite journalists on earth, most recently the author of Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World. He is an expert at plainly describing the complex ways we’re all being screwed by the shadowy billionaire economy, a skill that is all the more vital during this pandemic which has been so strangely profitable for the elite. Oliver and I met up in London in 2019 and for this vodka-fueled conversation about the wild world of global cash. This episode was previously paywalled on Luminary Podcasts but is being re-released now, free and for the people. Show Notes: Subscribe to Oligarchy: Oliver Bullough’s newsletter for Coda Story Oliver Bullough’s books: Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation Let Our Fame Be Great: Journeys Among the Defiant People of the Caucasus Michael Lewis’ books that Oliver mentions: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine Liar's Poker Other links: Winners Take All Billion Dollar Whale Say Yes To The Dress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Musa Okwonga's upcoming novella In the End, It Was All About Love is a gorgeous meditation on being a foreigner, and a Black man, in today's Berlin. It's why I wanted to start The Trip's five episodes in Berlin with him: for a relatively recent arrival, he communicates the city on a deep and lyrical level. So we sat together (pre-COVID) in my friend's house in Berlin, drank several Moscow Mules, and talked about schnitzel, football, and what Musa calls the psychogeography—emotion imbued even into the cobblestone—of Germany's capital. Show notes: Stadio: A Ringer football podcast hosted by Musa Okwonga and Ryan Hunn Musa on Instagram Rough Trade Books (you can pre-order Musa's novella here in November) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do you travel in a world on lockdown? Just start at home. And in this, now, I have a mighty advantage. Because this month, I moved from Manhattan to the Borough of Queens, the most linguistically diverse place on earth. This episode has three would-be guides to this new life: writers Laurie Woolever and Tiffany Langston, along with Astoria souvlaki legend Elpida Vasiliadis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode, we’re not talking about how the gifted journalist and traveler Kim Wall died, we’re talking about how she lived. And we’re doing it by talking with journalists Caterina Clerici, Christina Ayele Djossa, and Ingrid Wall—who is also Kim’s mother and author of A Silenced Voice of a new book about her life and work. This episode opens with the beautiful singing of Aidi Songlong, a musician who sings a traditional Moso music style called ahabhala. Christina Ayele Djossa reported on this remarkable matrilineal ethnic group who live near China's border with Tibet. Show notes: A Silenced Voice: The Life of Journalist Kim Wall  Christina Ayele Djossa on Twitter Christina Ayele Djossa's BBC report on the Moso music style, produced with funding from the Kim Wall Foundation Caterina Clerici homepage Kim Wall and Caterina Clerici on Haitian Tourism for Roads & Kingdoms Kim Wall Memorial Fund at IWMF  Kim Wall Memorial Fund: Donate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the pandemic grinds on, I find myself unseasonably emotional about newborns and weddings, like some kind of weepy grandpa. Any good thing to latch on to in these twilight year, I guess. I feel that way about my old friend’s new album. Como Vivir en el Campo is a Madrid-based rock trio, and their drummer is Carlos Barros, who has been both friend and family to me over the years. Carlos has introduced me to many things, not least the nearly inexhaustible pleasures of Julio Iglesias’ album Hey. He talked to me from a village in Aragón, Spain about the process of making the album, and about how they were aided by the great global collective subconscious. You’ll see. Also in this episode, a conversation with American artist Aaron Firestein in Bogotá about what the US can learn from Colombia. And I’ll have a bit of good news about The Trip podcast, this very podcast, at the end of the episode. Show notes: Como Vivir en el Campo Bandcamp Aaron Firestein IG Where to Invade Next by Michael Moore Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A bit of tape and a brief message on Bourdain Day 2020 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I know I don’t often cop to it, but this is a travel podcast, and this week, we’re going to travel. Far, far away, to Bali, Indonesia. And we’ll do it through the perspectives of a traveler (Travis Levius), an eater (Duwi Satrio), and a legendary pastry chef (Will Goldfarb). Along the way, of course, we’ll talk a bit about race and migration and surviving cancer, because life isn’t all suckling pig and ginger flower daluman, even in Bali. Let’s start with Travis Levius, a luxury travel writer who has covered Bali for Conde Nast Traveler and other publications.  Show notes: Travis Levius homepage Room 4 Dessert Bali Duwi Satrio IG Perfect Dish: Jakarta with Anthony Bourdain, Jennifer Neal and Duwi Satrio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michelle Borok is one of something like 9 million Americans who live overseas—nobody’s quite sure how many there are, nobody cares much about counting them. But one thing is certain: they are a more diverse group than you might think. This week, I’m talking with three American women, writers all—Michelle Borok, Sarah Souli, and Ruth Terry—about what it’s like to be Korean-American in Mongolia, Arab-American in Athens, and Black American in Istanbul, watching all this nonsense from afar. I’ll start with Ruth Terry in Istanbul, who talks about anti-blackness among white Americans overseas and about her dreams for what travel writing could become in a post-lockdown world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The writer and comedian Jennifer Neal used to have a deeply smart travel column for The Root called Blaxit, with one very simple premise: things are just too twisted for Black Americans, so they might, like she had, be feeling the urge to go live in some other, freer country. But where? What is it like being black in different parts of Asia, Europe, elsewhere? Jennifer’s column was a way to find out. I recorded with Jennifer in Berlin for a pre-COVID episode of this show that I hope we can play soon enough, but this week she connected me with someone she had written about in her Blaxit column: Reggie Robinson, a African-American native of Dallas who is a middle-school history and English teacher and a longtime resident of Korea and now Taiwan. I had originally wanted to do an episode about Americans abroad generally, but that will wait. For now, as the police are rioting through my city and our nation, and as our miserable president says all the quiet, dirty parts of America’s social contract out loud, I’m glad to be able to spend the entirety of this episode with Reggie and his unusual vantage point from the other side of the world. Show notes: Blaxit: Seoul Edition by Jennifer Neal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Along with twitterfights, long calls to the unemployment office, and heartfelt conversations with your new sourdough starters, alcohol seems to be a defining obsession of this pandemic. I’ll leave it to the rehab centers and 12 steppers to clean up the mess afterwards; this week, I just need a drink. But not just a box of wine or something, I want something escapist, evocative, alluring. I want a cocktail dammit, something with some class, and this week I’m taking the Trip to Angola, Japan and Austria to get it. That means tequila cucumber elixirs with Ioanna Morelli, in Hokkaido, Japan. That means a Sichuan Daiquiri with Alexa van Sickle in Vienna, and, to start it all off, a beachfront gin-and-hot-pepper drink in Luanda, Angola with Claudio Silva, the founder of Luanda Cocktail Week.  Show notes: Luanda Night Life (publication) 20 Things to Know Before You Go: Luanda by Claudio Silva Luanda Cocktail Week Gyu Bar Niseko Early Bird Sapporo The Sign Lounge Vienna Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Conversations about wet markets with four people who know them very well: Ro Vasquez of Eat Like a Local in Mexico City, journalist Austin Bush in Bangkok, Paul Rimple of Culinary Backstreets in Tbilisi, and Auburn University food historian Xaq Frohlich. If you’ve had the feeling recently everything seems extra bad all at once, in a way that exceeds even your worst and darkest thoughts, well here’s a theory: maybe it’s because everything is related. It’s all one sweater, and this global tug on a single thread just unwound the whole damn thing from. So the big issues—from climate change to corruption to racist bullshit—have just been laid naked by this pandemic, and they there flashing us right outside the window, all at the same time. But if we know now that it’s all related, we can perhaps contemplate how to win these longstanding battles in the years to come. And one of those battles will be over markets, the subject of this week’s episode. Traditional markets like the wet markets of Asia are being labeled as the enemy, when in fact, they are our once and future salvation. This episode opens with the sound of the quotidian pre-quarantine bustle of the Deserter’s Bazaar in central Tbilisi, Georgia. It’s the sound you get when a butcher named Jumber with forearms like fire hydrants makes short and joyful work of a side of mutton inches away from the person who is going to take that meat home to cook for their family. That sound is precious, that sound is endangered, that sound needs your attention and protection, in the Republic of Georgia or wherever you are.  From Roads & Kingdoms, this is The Trip: The World on Lockdown.  Show notes: Breathless Australian 60 Minutes Wet Markets in Bangkok investigation Culinary Backstreets Tbilisi tour How to butcher a side of lamb at Tbilisi’s Deserter Bazaar (video) Eat Like a Local CMDMX Austin Bush website The Food of Northern Thailand by Austin Bush Xaq Frohlich’s writings on Roads & Kingdoms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Trip, a restaurant opens in Oslo, an Ontario activist wants to reform hospital food, and a New Orleans writer calls out the exploitation of hospitality workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on The Trip, writer Drew Magary talks about his new novel Point B. Journalist Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan calls from Singapore to talk about her time in a quarantine hotel. Le Monde photo editor Pauline Eiferman talks pandemic photography from Paris. Show notes: Point B by Drew Magary Drew Magary on Twitter  Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan on Twitter Within French Borders, Le Monde photo series curated by Pauline Eiferman Pauline Eiferman on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More than 15,000 people have died of COVID-19 so far in New York City. Marketing director Tamika Hall lost her grandmother to the disease in Rockaway just before her father died of terminal cancer in Harlem. But with hospice services in the city all but suspended, Tamika had to learn on the fly how to give her father a good death. Show notes: Gone from my Sight: the Dying Experience Tamika Hall (@LadyBlogga) on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometime over the last week, after the 7 o’clock cowbells and airhorns and clapping couples on their balconies died down each night, I started to hear a baritone echoing off the sidewall of the hardware store a block away on Broadway and 98th. It wasn’t until Saturday evening, when I walked the dog down Broadway itself, that I realized that this was no mere living room hobbyist. There were at least a dozen people, properly spaced, including a Mt Sinai ambulance crew on break, who had come to hear this man sing out from his little French balcony on the fifth floor of his building. You forget living uptown sometimes that Broadway Street is also that Broadway, and so it turns out that this man, as I read later, is Brian Stokes Mitchell, a legend, a Tony-Award-winning actor. I don’t go to musicals and I didn’t know his name, but I’m fairly certain now that he must be some kind of superhero: He was diagnosed with Coronavirus less than three weeks ago, battled high fever for over than a week, and then, the moment he was better, flung open his windows and every night onward sang The Man of La Mancha as a tribute to his city and to the people who are busy saving it. The choice of musicals seems right for the moment. Coronavirus has made us all so small and absurd; our little homes are our kingdoms now, many of us have lost our jobs maybe our careers, and our carefully constructed hauteur has been, at least for now, laid low by elemental fears about health and survival and family. We are the butt of this joke, we are all the hidalgo Don Quixote. And yet, like the deluded nobleman, here we are still toiling and declaiming and tilting at a future that appears to be mocking us. I’ve got three guests on The Trip this week. There’s journalist April Zhu, on the phone from Nairobi, talking about her feelings during this uneasy moment in Africa-China relations. There’s Brian Ashcraft, an author and editor at Kotaku, who has lived in Osaka for almost twenty years, on the surreal pain of losing his father in Texas while he is stuck in Japan. And the first guest you’ll hear from, my old friend Jason Rezaian, talked to me about little lessons for quarantine that he picked up in solitary confinement as a political prisoner in Iran.  This is Nathan Thornburgh, and from Roads & Kingdoms, you’re listening to The Trip: The World on Lockdown. Now, here’s Jason Rezaian: Show notes: Jason Rezaian full episode on The Trip: Episode 25 Jason Rezaian at Washington Post April Zhu portfolio site Shimura Ken English Lesson Brian Ashcraft’s Saké Bible (pub date Aug 2020) NY Daily News on Brian Stokes Mitchell’s nightly performances Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now this is a place I never thought we would record from. This is my apartment, on west 97th street, in Manhattan, New York, USA. That sound is our daily 7pm cacerolazo outside. The cacerolazo, the banging of pots and casserole pans, was a South American invention, a form of earshot solidarity for times of government lockdown. I heard it in person a few months ago in Beirut, during their street revolution. It had already spread across the globe, even ahead of the virus, a contagious good, a clanking cri de coeur of all those who want to think up a better world. Our family is, thankfully, in good health. Many of our friends are not, though they have largely been able to slog through their fevers, uncounted and untested, in their apartments. A couple weeks ago, I thought about fleeing New York. We saw what was coming: we took our kids out of middle school a few days before the school system shut down. But the panic that gripped me left soon enough, and reason took over. I knew from talking to my aunt in Madrid that it was people like me, panicky city-dwellers who wanted to wait out the pandemic in the countryside, who actually helped spread the disease. So I stopped googling rental cars and with my newfound moral resolve I wrote an essay for The Atlantic Magazine about the selfish folly of escaping New York City in the middle of the pandemic. The title, which my editors overruled, was going to simply be: I’m not fucking leaving. Now I am faced with a similar question, about this show, actually. This show has had its share of pivots over the last couple years, from the death of its co-creator on down the line, and in light of a total and indefinite lockdown, it did cross my mind last week to just fold it up. But I can’t. The world and the people in it are too fascinating, especially now, when every country on earth is facing the same problem all at once. So, The Trip will continue. Instead of the old format of a single in-depth, in-person interview each episode, this version will checking in with a handful of people around the world each week to hear about their lives in lockdown. Seven minutes or so each from each person, just enough for a flavor of their lives in this moment. The scheduled guest for this week, according the old calendar of The Trip, was going to be Berlin-based author Musa Okwonga. Instead he’s on this episode telling me what he’s going to wear to dazzle Berlin the day the curfew breaks. Saba Imtiaz, an old friend of Roads & Kingdoms, calls in from Karachi in part to tell the story of a pigeon who became too bold in the empty streets. That aunt in Madrid I mentioned before, Alexis Meyners—she’s technically my aunt but she’s my age and she’s a close friend—talks to me about falling in love with her neighbors during their long and harsh confinement. And chef Magnus Nilsson, late of Fäviken restaurant, a favorite collaborator of mine, talks about disease and rebirth in his apple orchard in southern Sweden. The Trip is now available on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your rating and review make a huge difference. I’d would also love to hear from you directly on Instagram @nthornburgh or on Twitter. I’m looking for more people in more places to check-in with around the world under lockdown, from Boise to Baku. If you know a person with a good lockdown story, or if you are one yourself, let me know. We will meet you there. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the center of Cabot Square in downtown Montreal, there is a high column topped with a statue of the spice trader John Cabot, who landed on Canada’s coast more than 500 years ago. Sitting on the benches all around the statue—unloved, unheeded, unhoused—are the descendants of the people Cabot landed on, a semi-permanent population of homeless, mostly indigenous, mostly Inuit, people who live in or around the square. This episode was recorded on Canadian Thanksgiving, a holiday that is all too similar in its origins and implications to the U.S. version. What am I thankful for? I’m thankful for a holiday that, in its sheer gouty revisionism, offers at least a chance to raise a question that all non-native people in the Americas should ask of ourselves more often: what the fuck? What have we done? What the fuck are we continuing to do? Canada may have a cuddly reputation down in the States, but there’s blood on this corner of the commonwealth. And even, as you’ll hear in this episode, in those moments where the country has flashed good intentions, they’ve often been built on the backs of some deeply racist shit. The land theft, the political pillage, the cultural erasure, are an ongoing multigenerational trauma, as my guest on this episode puts it. Her name is Nakuset, a name that she had to reclaim after growing up as an adoptee in a Jewish family in Montreal. She not only has a profound and moving life story, she is also the longtime Executive Director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal. Together with one of her collaborators, David Chapman, whom you heard delivering McDonald’s like some kind of hamburger Santa Claus of Cabot Square, Nakuset is also the driving force behind the new Resilience Montreal center. That center will be right across the street from the statue of John Cabot, and it is no less a monument. A monument to community, a monument to older and better values than settler capitalism, a monument to the incredible survival skills of native Canada, a monument to Resilience. All of this plays out in Nakuset’s professional life, and it plays out in her personal life. So I should also warn that we are going to laugh and joke and drink our mocha and coffee and we’re also talk a bit about a suicide. If you, or someone you are close to, are in distress, please take a moment to reach out for help. I’ll put some resources in the show notes. If you or someone you know is in distress, please reach out for help or just a conversation: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Stolen From Our Embrace, a book about the 60’s scoop, forced assimilation, and the indigenous children who survived it. By Suzanne J. Fournier and Ernie Crey CBC mini-documentary on Nakuset and Sonya Christopher Curtis’ stories for the Montreal Gazette Donate to the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ah, chatting about the weather. A bit of timeworn small-talk, favored by fumbly podcast hosts everywhere. But that pleasant chill in the air in Nairobi in early summer; that is at the heart of everything we’re going to be talking about over the next weeks here in Kenya. That cool climate, it seems, was Nairobi’s original sin, the thing that first drew British civil engineers to build a rail depot here in 1899. Pity the poor colonizer, who had been trying to subjugate so many peoples in the unbearable heat. Here at more than 5800 feet above sea level—way higher even than Denver—the air is dewy and lovely and it makes perfect sense that it would make an appealing homebase for your average gin-soaked sadist from Old Blighty looking to queen over all of East Africa. So Nairobi was born as a European city, and this whole region of East Africa became known as the White Highlands, where the land was stolen from the Masai and Kikuyu with such vigor and arrogance that, well, you had the Nandi resistance and the Kolloa Massacre and the Mau Mau Uprising and finally a free Nairobi, capitol city of the independent Republic of Kenya. Its airport was built in part by Mau Mau prisoners held by the British in ghastly conditions, and today the airport is named after freedom fighter and first president Jomo Kenyatta. That’s just the first taste, for any arriving visitor, of the conflicting strands of DNA that weave around each other throughout this city. My first attempt to untangle it all starts with Wanuri Kahiu. When we put Nairobi on the calendar, she was the first person we thought of having on the show. When she said she lives in Karen, a particularly dewy and green district of Nairobi with a view of the Ngong Hills, that’s where I decided to stay. She is a leader that way, through her work and in person, she communicates this sense of humor and lightness mixed with intimate moral urgency, a push to see the world as she sees it, knows it, films it. If you are a fan of film and disturbed by censorship, you’ll know her film Rafiki, the first Kenyan film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, even as it was it banned by the Kenyan authorities for reasons relating to, well, gay-ism. But as you’ll hear in this episode, the fights she fought with Rafiki are still ongoing, and so are her triumphs, which will be coming, with more of that quiet and effective force, to your favorite streaming platform soon. Welcome to Nairobi, this is first of five episodes from this city, each featuring a different interview with artists, filmmakers, journalists and musicians. Show notes:Rafiki trailer TEDx Wanuri Kahiu talkKenya Supreme Court Anti-Homosexuality RulingHajooj Kuka’s documentary Beats of the Antonov Afrobubblegum For more episodes of The Trip, visit luminary.link/thetrip Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the next two weeks, this show will be in Philadelphia, to give a taste of this fine American city. Over the past few decades, Philadelphia has had real problems, but also a lot of image problems: a local police detective decided to label a whole part of the city’s north as the Philadelphia Badlands and just last week someone noticed that Google Maps was still actually labeling it that. Which is bullshit. Back when I was a reporter covering the northeast U.S., I dipped into Philly quite a bit, from the upscale Gayborhood in Center City to, yes, that 25th police district in North Philly, and it’s a hard town not to like, from grit to Gritty. The place I got to know back then is well represented by this week’s guest, fashion designer Walé Oyéjidé, a Nigerian-American designer, writer, musician and lawyer whose designs, under clothing label Ikiré Jones, have appeared in Black Panther and elsewhere. The man is good with a strong drink in the morning (The Trip editor Tafi Mukunyadzi fixed us up with some caipirinhas), he’s got strong ideas about how fashion can engage with the global south, and he was a pleasure to talk to. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want to know the best thing about Gardena, in south central Los Angeles, I’ll tell you. I think it’s Diana’s, a Mexican lunch counter with apocalyptically good machaca and fresh masa sold by the kilo. It’s especially good if you can meet Yukio Iwamasa there. Yukio, an artist and entrepreneur approaching his mid-80s, lives around the corner from Diana’s, in the house where he spent half his childhood, back when Gardena was a Japanese-American enclave filled with strawberry farms and Buddhist churches.  For this final episode from Los Angeles, though, I wanted to talk to Yukio about the other half of his childhood, the part where he and his family were imprisoned for being Japanese-Americans, locked away in Manzanar in the middle of the desert for four years during World War Two. In its own grim way, it’s a distinctly American story. And it’s a personal story for me—Yukio is my father-in-law, the grandfather of my children. His testimony about life in the camps is important to hear—for them, for me, for any American who didn’t live through it.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The last time I had seen Kris Yenbamroong, he and his partner Sarah St Lifer were giving me a ride into downtown Chiang Mai from a village on the outskirts. I had thought about interviewing him in Northern Thailand, since we were there, and since his Night+Market restaurants in Los Angeles are nominally Thai places. But the more he talked about his restaurants, and about himself, it was clear, as we put it in this episode, these aren’t Thai Restaurants. These are LA restaurants.   That’s why, for our second of three LA episodes, I’m so psyched for this conversation. California plus Kris, that’s what makes Night+Market. We talked about that combination, about why wines are such a huge part of what he does, about how he ambushed Jonathan Gold at a public event and ended up having him be a huge Night+Market fan.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Los Angeles is a place that is too big, too deep, spread too thin under the marine layer and above the concrete culverts to give you, the visitor, any idea of what the hell is really going on. I didn’t know that the first half-dozen or times I came, and I didn’t understand the place at all. And if I’ve learned anything in the decades since, it’s that you need your people. The ones who have found their place in the basin and can bring you along and communicate their vision of what Los Angeles means to them. So now I’ve got JR in Manhattan Beach, Mike in West Hollywood, Yukio in South Central, and, increasingly Carolina Miranda--my former colleague at Time Magazine--for everything east of the 110. In the next few weeks, you’ll meet some of these people—my people—in Los Angeles, and I couldn’t be happier starting here in East LA with Carolina. She is deeply influential writer, culture hawk and collective bargainer at the resurgent Los Angeles Times. We’re drinking this juice from her front yard, spiked with prosecco, and talking about porn theaters, old-school donut shops, and what Latinos in the southland have to teach us all.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In just one week we'll be launching with Luminary Audio. Visit luminary.link/trip to keep drinking, talking, and traveling with us.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are in mid-city New Orleans with Dr. Howard Conyers, host of the PBS show Nourish, a rocket scientist by day and whole hog barbecue pitmaster by night and by weekend. If we have to have only one more episode in this flagrantly fabulous town, then we’re glad it's with Dr. Conyers. He is originally from the deep South, the rural South, but he chose to make New Orleans his home after Katrina. We talked about that move and about how black pitmasters are reclaiming barbecue and about exactly what space engineering and fire-meets-pig engineering have in common. Episode 34 Show Notes: Check out Dr. Conyers’ PBS show Nourish.Stay tuned for updates on lawyer and food historian Adrian Miller's upcoming book on barbecue called Black Smoke. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New Orleans is so old, so fine, so big in the culture, and so vast in its disappointments and its triumphs, that it feels odd to mention just one side of the crescent kaleidoscope. But we have to call out one thing that has long attracted us to the city: New Orleans is like Disneyland for day-drinkers. In other cities, we sometimes have to apologize a bit for asking our guests to drink before sundown. When The Trip editor Tafi told this week’s guest, the food lawyer Pepper Bowen, that we were interested in a little midday hard alcohol, she wrote back immediately: “Sounds Festive!” That is our kind of lawyer, our kind of town. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is nothing more political, fascinating, uplifting, infuriating than school. The country we are as reflected in our education system is not always how we would like to think of ourselves. But the reflection is true. Take Nathan’s city of New York—last week the city’s best public school (Stuyvesant) sent out 895 acceptance letters for the class of 2023, but only 7 of those went to black students. SEVEN. In a school district where almost 70% of the students are black or Hispanic, it is outrageous. But it’s not just New York, it’s everywhere, including one of America’s greatest cities, New Orleans. A majority black city, that still failing its African-American students in some very important ways. The Trip is going to do three episodes from New Orleans, all with African-American guests—an artist, a lawyer, and a rocket scientist/BBQ pitmaster. It feels especially right to start this week in a school, talking with artist and author L. Kasimu Harris who has made education a centerpiece of his work in some very surprising ways. There were hard conversations in the Big Easy but Nathan and his guests had a good time nonetheless. Episode 32 Show Notes: See more images of the heroic teen leading the education rebellion in Kasimu’s War on the Benightedseries. Keep an eye on Kasimu’s other ongoing project: Vanishing Black Bars and Lounges. We highly recommend that you watch Treme, HBO’s drama series set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The morning after a wedding—any big party—is usually a little groggy. It’s not necessarily unpleasant, especially if it’s February in Thailand and the air is a little bit cool and very humid, and you’re kicking around in a quiet village along the Ping River with someone like Francis Lam. Francis, besides being a classically-trained chef, former New York Times columnist, lauded cookbook editor at Clarkson Potter, and host of The Splendid Table on American Public Media is also one of the truly good people in the world of food and letters. So, Nathan was pleased, not just to get some good stories from his time in Thailand, but also to be able to annoy the living shit out of him with one very trashy word—a portmanteau, really—near the end of the show. Nathan may not be an adversarial news magazine reporter any more, but it’s good to know that he can still piss an interview subject off for business or for pleasure. Episode 31 Show Notes: If you’re not already listening to Francis Lam’s weekly radio show, what are you doing with your life? Head over the The Splendid Table. Influential chef Andy Ricker’s roster of Thai restaurants: Pok Pok Check out the lovely Khun Narata's Instagram. Bangkok-based Austin Bush's book dives into the cuisine of northern Thailand: The Food of Northern Thailand Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Trip host Nathan Thornburgh would not be the first person to admit to falling deeply, darkly in love with the markets of Southeast Asia. There’s just something about the slurry of exhaust, sticky air and stickier rice, knockoff Premier League kits, fresh fruit, and dried worms, wild lime leaves, mango hawkers, and sausage mongers. They hit you in all the senses. They imprint on your brain. And nobody has helped Nathan and countless others decode that imprint and make sense of those markets more than Naomi Duguid—a guide, savant, author, and all-around bridge from West to East. Naomi basically invented a deeply popular genre of book: the wandering, anthropological journalistic cookbook. With classics like Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Burma: Rivers of Flavor, and Taste of Persia. Of all the places she could have settled on Earth, she settled in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where she lives half of the year. That’s why Nathan, oh so thirsty at the end of dry January, chose Naomi to help him break his fast with fermented sticky rice wine and that delightfully downmarket thing they call Thai whiskey, which is actually rum. Episode 30 Show Notes: Hot Sour Salty Sweet Burma: Rivers of Flavor Taste of Persia  Salt: A World History  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this week’s episode, you’ll hear the bird call of the Asian koel, but the real soundtrack of Bangkok is the internal combustion engine: the mopeds and the Mazda 2s. It’s a city of perpetual motion. Just be sure to look both ways before crossing. This is the first of three episodes we’ll be running from Thailand.We’re starting off with Tom Waller, a Thai-Irish filmmaker who took me for a classic Bangkok morning fix—roadside Thai iced tea—and chatted with Nathan at his home studio about a big film he’s making, The Cave. It’s the only Thai-led film in the works about the dramatic Tham Luang cave rescue in Chiang Rai. They talked about smog, tea, and filmmaking in the Kingdom of Thailand. Episode 29 Show Notes: The Last Executioner Mindfulness and Murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shinji Nohara has been making good things happen for visitors to Tokyo for almost two decades—ever since a lanky camera-shy writer named Anthony Bourdain arrived with Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins to shoot their first television episode ever. Shinji was the fixer for that episode. First, he found out what Tony’s food-kinks were, and then he delivered those deepest desires in one single sizzling experience that, by Tony’s own admission, changed his life. That’s Shinji’s job, and nobody does it better than him. So of course, on a layover from Bangkok earlier this month, I asked Shinji to jury-rig two hours of wish fulfillment for me. In this case, it was a layup for the man: a bowl of Setagaya ramen, an extremely cold and fresh beer, and a deep conversation with Shinji in Haneda airport’s new terminal is, to be totally honest, my dream breakfast. Episode 28 Show Notes: A Cook’s Tour Kitchen Confidential Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This podcast episode should have porn, right?” It’s an odd but necessary question to put to my old friend and former TIME Magazine colleague, Tokyo-based business journalist Toko Sekiguchi. But she’s a gamer, that Toko, and for this episode, falling close to Valentine’s Day, she’s taking us inside the world of Japanese Love Hotels. Toko and I have done this before, four years ago, while I was reporting for Matt Goulding’s book Rice, Noodle, Fish. But Japan is always in flux, and the infidelity industrial complex keeps on growing. So she and I are back. As a warning, just in case the last 26 episodes of this show haven’t made it clear: this is not appropriate content for children. Or even for spouses. Discretion advised. Episode 27 Show Notes: Rice, Noodle, Fish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chef, author and former human rights campaigner Yasmin Khan seems to have a mission statement very like our own at Roads & Kingdoms. That is, pay attention to what’s on the plate in a way that might spark some change and bring people together (and have a damned good time doing so). There aren’t many books that try to do all of that as gorgeously as Zaitoun, Yasmin’s new book about Palestinian cuisine. We met a while back at the Roads & Kingdoms office in Brooklyn as Yasmin somehow hacked a pretty decent Old Monk hot toddy from our office kitchen. Her book Zaitoun is out this week in the United States, and we’re a better country for it. Episode 26 Show Notes: Yasmin's gorgeous cookbooks Zaitoun: Recipes and Stories from the Palestinian Kitchen The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen The Roads & Kingdoms Perfect Dish series with Anthony Bourdain and Yasmin Khan: Perfect Dish Okinawa Perfect Dish Tokyo From the closing notes Midnight in Chernobyl: The Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham BUY THIS BOOK TOO. It's excellent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Iranian-American Jason Rezaian, native of Marin County, was just trying to report on the daily lives and hopes of the people of Tehran. But as his gripping new book Prisoner details, he instead ended up in the notorious Evin Prison, a chess piece in an international showdown between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States. He sat down with host Nathan Thornburgh over classic Cokes and talked about the day he and his wife were arrested, what he thinks of his captors, and his stubborn hopes for Iranian society. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You’ve seen this man's illustrations on the cover of TIME magazine or Der Spiegel, or on signs wherever the Trump-phobic meet and rally. His depictions of the 45th president as an ISIS executioner, a klansman, or just a melting orange mess do exactly what he intended. They provoke, they inform, they communicate the loud perils of our moment, wordlessly. When host Nathan Thornburgh started The Trip podcast with Anthony Bourdain a year ago, he knew exactly who he wanted to get to design our logo: Edel Rodriguez. Edel joined Nathan in The Trip’s Brooklyn studio to drink a bunch of bullshit coconut waters, and to talk about how his childhood in Cuba prepared him for becoming as Fast Company has called him, the Illustrator-in-Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not all revolutionaries wear bandoliers full of bullets. Some of them tend beautiful little gardens next to a wooden cottage they built in a neighborhood called Dandelion. That’s the kind of revolutionary that Tanja Fox is. Tanja has spent her entire life living a little bit differently, in one of the world’s most fascinating districts, the commune of Christiania in Copenhagen, Denmark. As a social experiment Christiania has been remarkably resilient, a bit of squatted military base turned hippie utopia that has lasted more or less independently almost 47 years now. As you’ll hear in this episode, is under threat like never before, from the twin menaces of a hardcore narcotics trade and, increasingly, mass tourism. Tanja and Nathan sat in Tanja’s house last spring, while birds plucked from a Disney film serenaded them, and talked about how to live your politics in one of the world’s great, complicated social experiments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of host Nathan Thornburgh’s New Year’s resolutions is to stop just stepping past all the human misery in New York City and actually think about helping. But how? Jennifer Ching might know. She’s an immigrant, a Harvard grad, a lawyer, and now the executive director of North Star Fund, a community foundation that focuses not on just giving money, but also giving power, to the oppressed and the underserved of New York. She and Nathan drink Flor y Machete herbal tea (from an activist herbal collective of course) and talked about the joy of pushing for longterm systemic change in an era of fresh daily outrages. Read more about North Star fund, and goddamnit just donate if you can. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For 25 years, photographer Yuri Kozyrev covered conflicts from Afghanistan to Chechnya, Iraq, Libya and beyond. His combination of frontline fearlessness and human compassion won him the highest awards in his industry. And then, he chose to stop covering war. He talked in Moscow with host Nathan Thornburgh, who worked alongside Kozyrev throughout Russia and the Caucasus while they were both at TIME Magazine. They talked about the late great Stanley Greene, about traveling with mujahedin, and about why it was hard to quit war for good. For more from this extraordinary journalist, see a glimpse of Arctic: New Frontier, a project supported by the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, which funds investigative work on human rights violations, geostrategic and environmental issues around the world. Or check out Yuri's work on returning ISIS widows in Chechnya for Roads & Kingdoms. Or, alternately, watch a 2008 TIME Magazine roadtrip video from Russia with Thornburgh and Kozyrev while reporting on Putin's Person of the Year package. There is a camel in it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Matt Orlando has worked at some of the great restaurants on this planet. Per Se in New York; The Fat Duck in the UK; Noma in Copenhagen, where he was head chef under Rene Redzepi. But it wasn’t until he opened his restaurant Amass—and looked in his own dumpster—that he found his true calling. As you’ll hear in this episode, his vision for a zero-waste restaurant is idealistic, inspiring, and is somehow also super delicious. Host Nathan Thornburgh sat down with him in Galway—the last of The Trip guests from Food on the Edge this fall—at a very early hour and drank instant coffee with him. Because, you know, world-class chefs demand a hot cup of Bewley’s coffee crystals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Journalist Michael Snyder writes about food, conflict, the environment, and fishing. That slurry of interests brought him to the Bolivian Amazon for an investigation into the invasive Paiche, a hulking, invasive fish that is destroying old ecosystems and building new economies. In this episode, host Nathan Thornburgh talks with Michael about the resulting Roads & Kingdoms feature Invasion of a River Fish, and they get to the important business of both insulting the fish's intelligence and explaining how it ended up for sale in your local Whole Foods. Read the condensed transcript of the conversation on Roads & Kingdoms  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This year's Emmy Awards were a big night for the people who worked with Anthony Bourdain, with Emmys going to Roads & Kingdoms, Zero Point Zero, and—for his own brilliant show—to W. Kamau Bell, who had traveled to Kenya with Bourdain for a recent episode of Parts Unknown. They are two very different hosts with very different shows, but they shared a common drive to make important television that is entertaining as hell. Bell talked through all this with Nathan Thornburgh while sipping on an arsenal of Japanese energy drinks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the great shortcomings of northern Europe—an otherwise pleasant place with soft sunsets and universal healthcare—has always been the utter lack of quality Mexican food. Rosio Sanchez, a celebrated restaurateur and chef from Chicago who has worked at some of the best restaurants on earth, is changing that. She talked with Nathan about living in Copenhagen, cooking fjord shrimp in salsa diabla, and what authenticity means to her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan "the Automator" Nakamura is one of the great music producers of our time. Someone who, like Brian Eno or Phil Spector, changed the sound of an entire decade. The fact that he did it as an Asian-American breaking into hiphop way back in the early 90s, well, there's a story. Automator mixed some excellent negronis at his studio in San Francisco and talked with Nathan about his unlikely path to hiphop immortality and why he's owning his Asian-American identity now more than ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shannon Martinez is the chef behind the famed Smith & Daughters vegan restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. After soiling a couple Bloody Marys with Ireland's cheapest vodka (Huzzar!), Shannon and host Nathan Thornburgh talk about everything from meat-free pub fare to sharpie skinhead diets and why vegans just want to get drunk and screw like the rest of us.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michelin-starred chef and author JP McMahon talks with host Nathan Thornburgh on the eve of his annual Food on the Edge conference in Galway, Ireland. Topics include Dingle Gin, Anthony Bourdain, and why McMahon left his kids at the bar with his credit card. Also on the conversational menu: pickled heron, swan pie and other delicious cruelties of yore.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Somewhere in a hotel room in central Moscow, steps away from a frenzied nationalist Victory Day rally, Nathan shares a mini-bar white wine with writer Alexa van Sickle and talks about her sorta-homeland Austria. Her epic roadtrip story, Farewell to the Alps, took her across her country in search of beer, wine and booze. Along the way there is plenty of thinking about nationality, belonging, doctored wine and subpar whisky. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Niki Nakazawa's path took her from the northeastern US to Mexico City to Oaxaca, from art to food and now to Neta, a mezcal brand devoted to supporting small producers. She talks with host Nathan Thornburgh about the future of mezcal and why Mexico is a great place for hustlers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Paulina Garcia grew up in Saltillo, in the north of Mexico. But when she and a group of friends began looking in their early 20s for a life with a bit more meaning and mission, they ended up in Oaxaca, in Mexico's southern mountains, baking and canning and pickling and generally breaking the Internet with their beautiful food. In this episode, Paulina talks mushroom tea, coyote skins and how her group of Norteños ended up so far from home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samin Nosrat grew up in Southern California, hearing plenty about the flavors of Iran. But her path took her to another country, Italy, where her perspective on cooking and living changed forever. In this episode, Nathan shares a bottle of Italian amaro with Samin in a corporate conference room, way too early in the morning, as they talk about cocktails, careers, and Samin's gorgeous new Netflix show Salt Fat Acid Heat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Nicole Choi's mother went through a bruising round of chemotherapy in Maryland, she craved nothing more than an old postwar Korean cornbread. Nicole set out to recreate it for her. Read her essay on R&K. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Asya Khramchenkova is an owner of the legendary Bar Khroniki in Saint Petersburg, As such she's the best person we can think of to talk about the borderlands between Finland and Russia, their culture, and their alcohol. She sat with host Nathan Thornburgh in the Leningrad Documentary Film Studio with a few swiped shot glasses and together they drank their way through smoked apple cider, heavy California-style IPA beer from Karelia, and caraway spirits that will knock you off your barstool. Listen for the conversation and for the Russian contact high. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the first episode of The Trip after the death of his partner Anthony Bourdain, host Nathan Thornburgh communes in a squatted Beverly Hills hotel room with two people who knew Bourdain well: chef José Andrés and Roads & Kingdoms co-founder Matt Goulding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A conversation with foreign correspondent Anup Kaphle about his favorite foods growing up in Nepal, and why his parents refuse to cook them anymore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roads & Kingdoms co-founder Matt Goulding had one last chance to win over the Spanish girl he was hoping to date. So he hopped in a car with her father Angel, drove south for six hours to the cave community where Angel grew up, helped slaughter a pig, and met Chacho, The rest is history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"Crispy, spicy, crunchy." The very hungry writer Saba Imtiaz talks with equally hungry host Nathan Thornburgh about how the KFC Zinger Burger became a breakout hit in her native Karachi and why zinger is now a generic term for spicy chicken sandwiches throughout Pakistan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join foreign correspondent Mitch Moxley on a hunt through Havana for a pre-Revolutionary Cuban porn star whose enormous, umm, talent made him the stuff of legend. Superman, as he was known, appeared in Godfather II, was the object of Graham Greene's obsession, and was both victim and symbol of the amoral mafia-run hedonism of Batista's Cuba. And then, Superman just disappeared. Mitch Moxley unspools myth from legend on his way to finding the only known evidence of Superman's, umm, gift.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They call it the Turning of the Bones: a joyous, drunken festival in Madagascar that keeps the dead close to the living. War correspondent and photojournalist Jacob Russell brings humor and heart to this story from the ceremony and what it taught him about his own family's response to death and grief. Also: lots of drunken trumpet playing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the first episode of The Trip, R&K editor Cara Parks casts a skeptical eye on her colleague's self-indulgent voyage of hallucinatory discovery through the Amazon. Turns out, she may have a point. Music by Dan the Automator, podcast artwork by Edel Rodriguez, introduction by Anthony Bourdain, hallucinations by Nathan Thornburgh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An early look at The Trip, a new podcast from Anthony Bourdain's partners at Roads & Kingdoms, an online journal of travel, food and politics. Hosted by foreign correspondent Nathan Thornburgh, each episode dives deep behind the scenes of a reporting trip somewhere in the world, from Havana to the Himalayas, from jungle hallucinogens to Andalusian cave cooking. Get ready for the ride. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices