Women Who Travel | Condé Nast Traveler

This episode, we join Ashley C. Ford, a writer, educator, and host of the podcast Monumental, and move around the country to find out more about statues, monuments, memorials, and landmarks. Who gets to choose to put them up? And how are our ideas about them changing? Plus, Ashley shares her own personal stories about the monuments that changed her ways of thinking.

Comedian Cat Cohen returns to the podcast with stories of the Edinburgh Festival, a long-awaited trip to Australia after a challenging year, and nights spent on the world’s various comedy stages. Plus, she teases her first album, and looks back on her award-winning standup show The Twist…? She's Gorgeous, which has now landed on Netflix.

In this episode of Travel That Matters, Bruce speaks with Divia, the Global Editorial Director of Condé Nast Traveler, about her home country of India, inclusive of the bustling scene in Goa, the best time of year to visit, where to find the best jewelry, and the thrills of a tiger safari (and how it’s different than the safari experience in African countries).

Divia gives useful tips like how to see India without falling into a tourist trap, if you should see the Taj Mahal or skip it, where to go if you have particular hobbies such as hiking or skiing, and how to find authentic food in India.

Divia also tells us about her favorite Indian dish, mentions a few specific restaurants in India that you'll want to try, and talks about Indian cuisine in London, where she lives today.

Listen to Travel That Matters wherever you get your podcasts. 

Women make up just 7% of truckers in the United States—a number that shows no sign of increasing, even while the industry suffers from a huge shortage of workers. We hear from trucker Desiree Wood, whose job has taken her to 48 states, about the freedom of life on the road, the dangers that herself and women colleagues face, and the joys that come with the occassional return trip home.

Kelsey McKinney has received more than her fair share of salacious tips during her tenure as the host of Normal Gossip. One theme that crops up time and time again? Group travel. This week, Lale chats with the podcaster and author of the upcoming book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, to find out about her own memorable travel escapades, the places she loves for eavesdropping and connecting with strangers, and why she’ll never, ever, go on another bachelorette.

Emma Roberts has acted in TV thrillers like American Horror Story and Scream Queens, as well as movies including We Are the Millers, Valentines Day, and Hotel for Dogs. She also happens to be both an avid traveler and the founder of online reading community Belletrist. Lale chats with the actor about the books she likes to travel with (and where she likes to buy them), her love of train travel, and one of her all-time favorite cities: New Orleans.

With the US election looming, this week’s episode is a dispatch from Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, who is in the midst of touring 114 college campuses and hosting  parties to mobilize newly eligible voters. She shares stories from the road, what she’s hearing from young voters, and how her own heritage influenced her career as a youth vote organizer.

Food has the power to forge connections, and for Palestinian American chef Reem Assil that means using the flavors, aromas, and hospitality of Arab cooking to strengthen and grow her community in Oakland. Reem chats with Lale about her visionary bakery Reems, her family’s Palestinian and Syrian legacies, the surreal experience of winning a James Beard award, and her own personal ties with Gaza.

Earlier this year, New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead reported on the scandals taking place within the British Museum—and its own history of cultural theft that continues to define how we approach it as a museum today. Lale joins Rebecca on the ground in London to learn more about the institution she grew up visiting—and more broadly, how to tackle some of the world’s biggest museums in a way that’s both fulfilling and, well, fun. 

Ever contemplated studying abroad? Charissa Enget needed to find an engineering course she could afford and eventually found one in rural Thailand—drawn in by a scholarship and low living costs. In a listener dispatch, Charissa shares how she learned Thai in six months, made a new circle of friends, traveled around the country in her free time, and finally decided to make Thailand a permanent fixture in her life.