This is a segment of episode 362 of Last Born In The Wilderness, “Tourism Is A Prism: Cultural Homelessness & The Consequences Of Hypermobility w/ Chris Christou.” Listen to the full episode: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/chris-christou

Learn more about The End of Tourism and subscribe: https://www.theendoftourism.com / https://chrischristou.substack.com

Chris Christou joins me in this winding discussion to explore the subjects and themes raised in his phenomenal podcast, The End of Tourism, described as “a project about the deep causes and consequences of tourism, wanderlust, spectacle, exile,” and “an invitation into the local resistance and resilience movements in the face of each of these things.” In my discussion with him, Chris reflects on the historical moment he chose to begin this project: during the earliest waves of the global pandemic, at a time when global tourism effectively collapsed.

“[Locals] are also now experiencing this sense of, what is home? Where is my home? Am I a homeless person within a place that apparently has all this culture? So, that’s arrived, and that’s there. Part of the dilemma for local people, that largely goes unnoticed, is that it’s not new. It’s not five years old. It’s been around for a while, and it’s just now becoming noticeable to people, and because of the cathartic short-term memory of twenty-first century society, culture, or people, there is an unwillingness and inability to recognize what’s gone unrecognized. And I think that in order to understand the patterns in all this and the way the light shines off that prism, and see what’s to come, we have to be able to understand what we couldn’t see 10 or 20 years ago, and understand why we couldn’t see it. So, suddenly, it’s all here; the dilemmas are in our face now, but nobody is willing to ask how it got this way because then they might actually be implicated in how it came to be, and then they might actually be responsible. And I don’t mean guilty; I’m not talking about guilt. I’m talking about our ability to respond to what’s happened and what’s to come.”

Chris Christou is a writer, educational curator, and activist. Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, he moved to Oaxaca, Mexico in 2015 after a decade of delirious wanderlust. In 2016, Chris began concurrently working in and writing about the tourism industry, founding Oaxaca Profundo, a deep learning organization focused on food culture and radical hospitality. In 2021, alongside friends and strangers, he organized and launched the End of Tourism Podcast. He is the author of a book of poetry entitled the Black Braid of Memory, as well as forthcoming books on the psychedelic culture, the unauthorized history of tourism, and radical hospitality. Finally, he is a student of all things chocolate and cacao-related.

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