ROLL ON: Travel In The Age of Climate Change

The Rich Roll Podcast. Santa Monica. Shit. I'm still only in Santa Monica. Every morning, I think I'm going to wake up back in Indonesia, or Myanmar, or Mexico. I lived out of two bags for three years. No fixed address, no fixed, anything. I hid under tarps to sneak across borders. I tipped towed through minefields. It rides on UN peacekeeper choppers. Now, I've been domesticated. My language

skills have frayed. My intestinal bacteria is no longer feral. Even my stubborn insomnia has been fading. I eat better. I think clear. But I can't help but think I'm getting weaker. softer. I am more fragile. There is no doubt that I've lost something essential to who I am. Everyone gets everything they want. And I wanted a mission. And for my sins, Rich gave me one. Which

is how I decided to bring my whole family down to a remote corner of Mexico. To a coastline, for climate change and natural disaster. Migration and crime have hammered the landscape, the economy, and the people who live there. What is happening? Adam. I appreciate the creative flair. I don't know how the Rich Roll Podcast suddenly got commandeered. Turned into the Adam Skolnik Travel Radio Hour. The

boozy version of Apocalypse Now. Yes, yes. Well, thank you for indulging me, but listeners, this is the Rich Roll Podcast. This is Roll On 2.0, where we dive into a topic from different angles. And this month, that topic is regenerative travel. It's a great show. It's all coming up in a second. But first, we're brought to you today by seed. You know, it's super wild. Although

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As your career path. It was. It was. I was for better part of nine years. My main income was lonely planet travel guide. So I was on the road nine months a year every year all over the place. And it defined me really. That's what I did. I didn't have a normal life. I didn't have a lot of stuff that I have now. For sure. My

back door was out into the whole world. Right. Yeah. Certainly. I'm somebody who who loves travel. I look forward to travel. It's always something that kind of gets me out of bed excited about what's to come. And I think most people love travel. But here we are in 2023. And I think collectively and individually we're all grappling with how to be better citizens, how to be

more environmentally conscious about our choices, how we spend our time, how we allocate our resources and travel kind of presents a problem. It's sort of an elephant in the room, something we don't exactly want to acknowledge or confront head on because it's uncomfortable knowing that that wanderlust or that vacation that you've been saving up for or that thing on the calendar that you've been so looking

forward to has negative consequences for the planet. So I think that's what I think is the most important thing to do. So that's what we're going to do today. We're going to talk about it and we're going to do that through the lens of a question. And the question is, is it possible to travel in a completely sustainable way? And if so, how and if not,

what is the best way to move about the globe? 100%. One thing I never ever once considered was my carbon footprint. I never once considered the environmental aspect of it. Not one time. And I'm an environmentalist. I care about a lot. And I'm not. One time, did I think that this is unsustainable? There's a cost to this that I'm not acknowledging. So which I think really

underscores that elephant in the room thing. Not only do we not want to look at it, we don't. It doesn't even occur to us. But then we have people like Greta who appear who decide the only way to get to the United States is by sailboat. Right. And then we all just sort of descend into guilt and shame over our own choices. And the solution can't

be in, you know, we're just isolationism either. Right. Like I think that as a collective, we need to find productive solutions that incentivize travel, but do it with systems that are incentivizing and kind of provoking regenerative solutions along the way as part and parcel of that process. Yeah. We're very far away from that right now. But I think it's important to talk about it and to

kind of explore what those solutions might look like. And what might exist with a little bit more imagination, political, civic and economic will. I love it. And so I believe we're going to start with the benefits of travel. Like what's great about travel? You know, I think through escaping our mundane, are we able to expand our awareness and our consciousness? It opens up your brain to

new possibilities. I also think that it makes you more accepting of other people and cultures. It's a way to understand and to see that our truth, it's very different depending the perspective that you see. When you go to other countries, you visit other cultures, you discover that what you have believed for all your life, like it has different angles. And that's key for progress. It's really

an expansion of the heart and mind, right. That happens when you have these big experiences. For sure. I mean, incredibly broadening experience. I've been to Beirut twice. I've been to Bahrain. I've been to Three Cities in Saudi Arabia. And those experiences really changed me and broadened my perspective on the world and on humanity and how to interface with humanity. We all have lots of, you know,

kind of preconceived judgments and ideas about how people live on the other side of the world. And until you travel there and sit in living rooms and convene with people in an analog one-on-one format, you can't truly understand the similarities and the differences, the things that separate us and the things that unite us, without that. Right. So it holds a place of great value for me.

And I think a great value in general in terms of the education proposition. Of travel. You know, I became a writer because I wanted to write my way around the world. That was always the goal. And for me, that's because what I found in myself, my own life, but also I see it, is that in our daily lives, especially in the modern, modern world that we

live in. And I think it's even worse now with the phones. We are basically like wrapped in this like cellophane. Our feelings become dominant because there's no place for it to breathe. And you are who you are. You're fixed in the world. You're in this world and you know where you live so well that you kind of can move like a shark through it. And for

me, what I found with the best trips, I'm not saying all trips are like this, but the ones where you really immerse yourself are like poking a hole in that cellophane and ripping it open so that you are exposed to the world. And so when that happens, you do come back. There is something that happens that expands. Your awareness of who you are and a connection

to everyone and everything because that oneness is real. Like what you experienced in the Middle East or in the Arab world or whatever. That to me is what's so powerful about it. And that's why tourism is a huge market. Right. Let's let's face it. Like as we talk about, there's impacts, but there's also benefits. I mean in 2019 before the pandemic, 10.4% of the global GDP,

that's $9.2 trillion. Because of travel and tourism. That's tourism market. That's huge. 10.6% of all jobs in the whole world. 334 million jobs is related to tourism and travel. Visor spending here in the United States, 1.7 trillion in 2019. Now the COVID pandemic happened and things really declined. Like a 50% decline or more in some places. Many millions of jobs were lost. But what happened when

COVID was kind of getting toward where we decided that we were opening up again is we saw this revenge travel element. So you know, it started to bounce back. So there are positive aspects of travel. I think we don't want to overlook. Right. So travel generates money. It generates jobs. It generates economic growth. These are all good things. Of course, however. And the United Nations has

released a key role in the United States. The key report on climate change. We need a quantum leap in climate action to combat what we've done. Just one round trip transatlantic flight emits twice as much carbon dioxide emissions as driving the family car for an entire year. This week alone, more than 90,000 people came to Hawaii. As visitor numbers continue to increase. So does the amount

of garbage found along our shorelines. These popular stops are sacred. I hope it's us that we need to do more to save this. So obviously there are environmental costs baked into every trip that we take. And it's we got a wrecking with them. And one is the carbon footprint. Right. That's the most obvious one. One of the ways to address the carbon footprint is through this

thing called carbon offsets. But what are carbon offsets? And are they really effective? There's a hundred thousand flights a day. I don't know if you know that stat. But like every single day. Around the world there are a hundred thousand flights. This is Paul Feinstein, prolific travel writer and author of Photos Travel Guides. And I think that accounts for maybe the same amount of pollution that

all the cars account for. Like it's an insane amount of environmental degradation. I hate everything about it. I hate this idea of carbon credit of carbon credits. I think it's bullshit because it's like it's like saying, oh, we can be as polluting as we want over here because we're doing all this good stuff over here. We're not really solving any problem. You're still you're still a

problem. I've checked out a number of these offset options. It's cheap. Yeah. The thing is like is this greenwashing just to make us feel better about like jumping on flights here and there. Or is that really making a difference? Like that's something I don't know the answer to. Right. And I think it depends. You know, the pro publica did a deep dive into this one market

and how basically these these contributions were supposed to be preserving and then reforisting an area. And it wasn't working. Now to offset a six hour flight. It's like 12 bucks. If it's coach, it's like 12 bucks. So it's like you look at that. And you think. Well, happy. Right. Well, you're right. If you look at if you look at the cost of the carbon, the amount

of people on a plane, how long that flight is, that's what that's what it comes. That's how that break it down. $12. I saw it actually priced it just under $4 as well. But if you look at $12 is like that bottom line, that's so easy. Like you think, well, if I wish this was 100% it worked because it's an easy, it's an easy give. Bottom

line is we don't know if the offset thing is productive is working, especially if you if you're funneling your your money to these organizations online that you've never heard about. And there's just nothing there like the organic label that we can trust yet. Right. Isn't there isn't some kind of clearinghouse or or or place to go where we can say these are the ones that are

doing it right. Right. Not that I'm aware of. I mean, there's some that that claim to do it right. But I think this pro public a story. Which will link up in the show. Yeah. Yeah. It shows that that's there's an argument there that that maybe it's not working out. The problem is that restoration is kind of complicated and not every tree you plants going to

survive. And like, you know, it's complicated and it's hard to do. And and and there's politics in every region that you might want to do it in. So it's like the question is, is that ever really a solution or is the solution what kind of Killian came up with. Right. So it's one thing to give lip service to how we think about travel and our environmental

responsibility. And it's another thing to actually like walk the walk, right. And somebody who's walking the walk and a really inspirational way is a friend of the podcast and perhaps the greatest living endurance athlete, our friend, Killian Jornet. But then as Adelaide's of course, it's it's it's all about traveling. And then it's it's all about moving because races are all over the war like you want

to the bentos projects. And we have the opportunity. And I think that for me, the biggest difference, it's been like before I was taking it for granted, like, okay, I can go to raise in in Malaysia, in Japan, in in US, in in Australia, in South Africa, in a single year. So I was taking this as something that granted because I was an athlete. Well, today

I think it's precious. Like to to travel. It means that I will have a footprint. So if I do it, it needs to be something very, very special. So I think in the last years that's what you have changed the most for me. It's to. To change my way of thinking that I'm doing it. I'm traveling because I can. To I travel as something that I

know the the harm of it. And I take it as something precious. And knowing that more deeply like of course, like I have been seeing like glaciers disappearing or my whole life and and see these effects like all the time. But to connect that to my daily actions, like I took a period of time. So I would say I still like a big footprint, but I

try to live in my international travel to once a year. I'm then try to to do the other in. So I can like use low. And he's gonna be institute to go to the races. So mad respect for Killian for you know, basically taking such a hard line and and being so intentional about how he is thinking about his travel. Yeah. That's a guy who probably

could be traveling all the time and going to amazing places and doing all these races. And he's like, no, I'm not doing that. Like that's fucking badass. It is to do that. And I think that it's a very inspiring for the rest of us that leads us all to be a little bit more mindful and and conscientious. Like when I'm thinking about like buying that next

airplane ticket, I'm going to be thinking about would Killian do that. Right. And he would probably say no. Right. So I'm going to think twice. You know, I don't know the answer that question. I like what Killian had to say though. Like if you limit it to one trip, one big trip. If that's the way you look at things, that makes a lot of sense actually.

And you're mindful of where you're going. How long are you going to be thinking about that? What are you going for? Maybe do that trip, make that a longer trip. I mean, that's that's kind of a guiding post for me. I'm starting to see and think the same way you are. The way Killian is doing it. It makes a lot of sense. He's not just like.

He's obviously thought it out. And it makes a lot of sense. Right. What about hotels? Yeah. Hotels are a mixed bag because if you look at them, when you're when you have a hotel in a remote location, sometimes depending on the level of investment, that will sometimes necessitate and include. So it's treatment, alternative energy sources, landscaping, sometimes natural landscaping. So not all hotel developments is created

equal basically. The word sustainable is a buzz word. And there's no such thing in the hotel world. So there are hotels that try very, very hard in a lot of different ways. And there are hotels that are being performative. Once again, this is Paul finestein. So when I say performative, you'll see hotel. He's saying, oh, we use specific kind of light bulb and we've got rid

of single use plastics and so on and so forth. But then like maybe you're at a hotel in Norway and they have mangoes on the menu. Well, you know what? Don't grow in Norway. Mangoes. And so to get a mango in Norway, it's got to go on a tanker. And it has to go a very far distance. And it's the least sustainable thing you can possibly

do. Like I haven't seen a hotel figure out laundry yet. A least sustainable thing in a hotel. It abuses water. It uses chemicals. There's a ton of waste. The energy it takes to run it is prohibitive. So yeah, I'm seeing some hotels that are really fascinating. You know, they have their own farms and they have, you know, they grow with their own produce and their own

eggs and their own dairy and. But, you know, if it's a five star location, you really have to educate your guests properly. Because if that can be done, you know, you know, you can't do that. So if that guest wants this thing, they're going to go out of their way to get it. And I don't know, it's just really hard. Like a hotel. You know, inherently

is not a sustainable operation. So, you know, it really depends on the ownership group to really focus on things that are not just performative like single use plastic. Well, there's also two other interesting ripples here. And a lot of kind of, you know, tourist destination towns during the pandemic, a lot of higher net worth people bought up real estate or second homes in these locations to

flee their, you know, kind of urban primary homes. Yeah. And that has gone a long way towards, you know, driving the cost of living and the cost of housing up such that the support staff can't afford to live in the locations that serve all of these people. Right. So ski towns, et cetera. And that has created a really unsustainable situation economically. And it's almost, you know,

kind of like a human rights issue, right? Like if you can't, if you can't have a community where the people that, that basically, you know, allow the infrastructure to exist, they can't live there. What does that say about your priorities and the long term viability or health of that community at large. And that's, that's, that's a huge issue. And then the second ripple being the impact

that the rise of social media has had on, you know, on driving trends and travel where, you know, such a premium is placed on, you know, getting that perfect shot or that selfie or that making that real and that exotic location. And how that's driving consumer behavior to kind of maybe travel more than one ordinarily should for the purpose of content creation and, you know, external

validation and like brand building. Yeah. It's exactly right. And, you know, I've even talked to Celeste Brash, a fellow writer for Lonely Planet, some colleague of mine, back when I was doing the Lonely Planet books, I should say, you know, she and I spoke for a while about this concept exactly. I have felt that a lot of the shift in travel has been less of, you

know, seeing a country of more like what is there to do in a country rather than what can I learn from a country. And I feel like travel has gotten a lot less expensive. So it's got, it's become open to a wider range of people. And it's also become sort of a cool thing to do in Instagram, especially obviously is, you know, people showing the photos

of them in these places and going to places just for the gram and all of that. It's really changed the type of traveler. Like now I see people who are who are really there. It's a very self centered activity where I feel like when I started traveling and sort of up until now, you know, my parents, Jen, I feel like I'm going to travel. I get

engagement training, wanting to do myland work and put on my suit and so on. So I feel like, my mind is doing the same thing, um, I'm so embarrassed, I got my body here, my phone's just like I feel like there now that's what all of my writing, um, guidebooks, everything now has shifted to, you know, not a guide of how to find out things on

your own. It's a guide of telling you what there is to do, what you can do to have funds. It feels exploitative to me. And his whole thing was, everything's the same everywhere, it's all fucking boring. And so I had to, I had to call him, I had to call Hugh and talk about this particular issue because, you know, I know he was early on on

the travel is broken, but also because as the editor of Sunset, he is, you know, helping readers find their way to an authentic experience in the American West. Travel has always been broken, you know, basically the vacation was, you know, an invention. Of the, I believe, you know, late 19th century, you know, at post-industrial revolution, people with time on their hands, and then people who wanted

to make money off of people with time on their hands. And, um, so, you know, fast forward to today, we all can travel for relatively cheap from a financial perspective, but at extreme cost. To the planet. And, you know, we're such novelty seekers now, both virtually and in real life. And it's almost too easy to go anywhere. How many of you out there have been pondering

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you learn through the process? You know, it's this notion of regeneration. And could that, which we've seen in agriculture, and is now kind of migrating to travel in that space, can that address some of these issues that have made travel, I guess somewhat broken. So when I hear that word regeneration, first I want to understand what you mean by that. I can't help but think, is

this just a marketing catchphrase that's been diluted and thrown around just a lure tourists into traveling to some place under the auspices of doing good for the world. When in truth, it's nothing more than just, you know, business as usual. Okay, well I can define regeneration for you, but I think it's probably better to get the guy who wrote the book regeneration. You know, Paul Hawkins.

Who you interviewed in episode 627? And so I figure we should just listen to him say it. Yeah, they go. I define regeneration as putting life at the center of very act and decision. I mean, that's what regeneration is. And so looking through that lens, looking through that, you know, seeing the world that way, then allows you to reflect, you know, on what it is you're

doing, what it is that you're a part of this being done and how it's being done. And it doesn't mean leaving it or quitting it. It means can we change that? Can we change that? So regeneration is really not about blaming and, you know, sort of demonizing, you know, those institutions or those economic sectors so much is saying, wait, can we just stop and go the

other way? Can we not regenerate the world and have a GDP and an economy and jobs rather than degenerate it? So the fact is we can. So when we think about solving an intractable problem like global warming, oh my, it's impossible. What can we do? And look all these mega institutions and political stupidity and ignorance and so forth, you know. But if we step back and

say, well, what are the conditions that create self-organization of self-abnegation, that is the destroy that, then that's where we want to go. And that is the source of change. You know, that's a great question, Rich, which is why I spoke with Amanda Ho, co-founder of the Regenerative Travel Group, which is a group of hotels on kind of what makes a certain resort, a regenerative resort, and

what regenerative travel is and does. You know, Regenerative Travel is fairly still new as a term, but many hotels have been practicing regeneration for many years. They just haven't been calling it that. You know, they call it sustainability or being green or eco, but we really believe that you can't be regenerative if you're not sustainable because you have to actually go beyond sustainability to be regenerative.

You know, being green or eco is doing no harm. Sustainability is reaching that neutral, but actually regenerating and restoring and replenishing a destination or community or ecosystem is going beyond that threshold of just simply sustaining something. You know, extraction is going to a place and, you know, kind of taking what you can get, you know, from your experience or the destination, but really not giving back

to the community in any way. So I think Regenerative Travel really goes beyond that to be more intentional on how you interact with, you know, ecosystem you go to, the people, the locals. And I think it's coming with the mentality, and wanting to learn, and also honor the sense of place that you're going to. So I think that really is kind of a fundamental part of

regeneration because it's really just not about the ecosystem and environmental aspect, because all environmental and climate change issues are as a result of people, and the pressure that we're putting on the environment. So at the end of the day, it really comes down to the people. That's why I needed to go to play a Viva because they are a resort that is a tentative resort. So

that means, among other things, 100% off-grid solar, no minibar, no air conditioning, no Instagram-ready murals. Although the treehouse bungalows are stunning, they're modeled after the Manta and mobile arrays that are kind of launched themselves offshore. But what's here is it's just raw nature. And by that I mean a virgin beach, like a real completely virgin beach. And the best mosquito net technology ever. And the best

mosquito net ever deployed. While the resorts of extopa and zee-wattaneo are doing well again, pli-viva isn't really in, e fly into zee-wattaneo extopa, but that's not where pli-viva is. It's on the coast about an hour south. And these are pueblos, not on the tourism map at all. We're talking about farming towns, where most of the food is exported, there are no grocery stores. The men are

basically all gone. They're in the city. They went northeast of the United States. It doesn't feel dangerous at all, but it does feel forgotten. And then after an hour we veer off the main highway, we enter this former coconut palm and mango farm, where pli-viva exists. And it is the opposite of everything that's wrong with travel. It is the anti-talume, you know. It is not about

the flash and the glam. It's about the natural illusion of the land, it's about the natural shadow. It's about the roots. It's right off in estuary, they have a permaculture farm that is producing organic food for the whole area. Oh yeah. These tomatoes look fabulous. Where's the tomato plant? A family bought it. David Levin Thal and his wife and her mother, they bought it. And have

decided and have used the hotel as a vehicle to help in the education system there, help in the food system there establishing this organic food. Marketplace and doing real development work, it is like a kin to peace core development work where they're working with women to develop things like moringa and turmeric and like these high value crops that can fetch a lot in the marketplace and

can be grown in the household's garden. And so that's the kind of stuff they're doing. It really is peace core like stuff. I've never heard of it before of a hotel going that deep with it. Right. The difference being, between some kind of lip service, greenwashing kind of thing for PR purposes versus true integration with the community. And a real kind of reimagining of the business

model that does just by virtue of operating contribute to the community. Like it's so immersed in improving the well-being of the people that live there and kind of harvesting the best of what's possible to contribute to the betterment of that land and its populace. But also doing it in an economically viable way that makes it sustainable financially. And also alluring for the adventure-minded eco-tourists like yourself

who's going to choose that kind of place to patronize over whatever else going to Port of Iarta or whatever. And it's south of Zewa Tenejo. So Zewa Tenejo is famous for shot-ank redemption for where Andy Dufraine and Red met up and built a boat and lived happily ever after. And it's a beautiful town set up on a bay. But when I get there, we get there.

We drive into this through this estuary where there's actual crocodiles in the estuary there. It's gorgeous. You really feel like you've hit no aces. And you get to the beach and they have a mile. It's a mile of beachfront. I think a kilometer or a mile of beachfront. It's a completely empty beach. There is nothing else there. And it's not about the party. It's not about

the burning man vibes at all. So here is an example of travel done right. And so that's how it looked. And to get out in the ocean there, humpback whales, dolphin pods, huge schools of big fish. I saw it by Rikuda, Amberjack. I told you don't go in the water because the waves. But it's a wild part of Mexico that they are trying to bring back.

Yeah. And to do it in the right way. In a way that's also speaks to a deeper kind of driver need or desire within us. That is seeking a more authentic experience. That's more grounded and more connected with the space and the culture that we're visiting. That I feel and I don't know. This is just like my projection perhaps. But it seems to me that this

is on the uptick, especially with young people. Do they want to go to some? I've been to some of those resorts in certain places across the world where it takes you like a half an hour just to figure out where the beach is and get out of the building. Right? Or to be on some gigantic cruise ship where it's almost impossible to expose yourself to some

of the places that you're going to be in. It's a sunlight because it's a floating mall. Like to me, all of those things are insane and feel like, you know, relics of a bygone era. And what I'm encouraged by or optimistic about is this enthusiasm or renewed interest in these more grounded experiences and patronizing places like that that are more deeply connected with their communities. And

not in a greenwashing way, but in a very real way. They are contributing to the communities around them in a demonstrable way that is not about like, you know, trying some marketing plan, but is like integral to why they even exist in the first place. And that's exactly what this place is. So I never even heard of anything like it. You know, and we toured the

farm. We hung out on the beach. We checked out the turtle hatchery. And, you know, towards the end. We first got there. I mean, listen, it takes, when you're when you've been in the city a long time, you haven't been on the road in a while. And you get escorted to your room with no air conditioning and 85 degree heat at night, you know, and the

like they have great fans and all that insects. You know, it takes them in, especially with a toddler, because we don't do that too much. You know, I used to do that with a backpack or just me. And so with the whole and April and I would do it together, but to have zoom along, it was fascinating to watch him respond. And his response was pretty

quick, you know, to be the comfort level in on the beach, the comfort level with the people. I mean, he belongs in Mexico. He loves it so much. He speaks Spanish. So what I was left with kind of the parting experience was, um, was the last swim when I went out like we, we first we went and watched the the turtles hatched and then walked down

the beach and tried to dodge the armada of seagulls that would eat them. And turns and then we then I went out for a swim and it was in this kind of there was the bioluminescence in the water. These stinging little blue things. And it's you like looking down. It was kind of green water because they had the bioluminescence and and you just see like sparkling

blue everywhere. And diving down and you hear the whale song like it's like right next to you like up like just just just booming whale song. And those are the kinds of things. You come up and you're like, yeah, that's why you travel. You know, we've been talking about regenerative travel in terms of what you can do as a traveler to help a particular destination or

to contribute to a particular destination. But I mean, this is why we do it to regenerate ourselves. I mean, it's the ultimate regeneration. I mean, that's why I've always been interested in going to new places, new countries, new people, learn languages, because it's a shedding of your skin that allows us to you know, tap into the oneness of everything. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. What an amazing

experience. And also to be able to share that with Zuma at such a formative age, you know, and I feel like that's a situation or or a, or a, or a you know, a place, an organization that is figured out how to how to create and share that experience and do it in a way that gives back to the culture that regenerates the environment that is

sustainable in its practices. And I feel like we need to really figure out how to scale up these new business plans and create incentives for the tourism industry at large such that that is the more attractive option or lure for the curious traveler as opposed to the traditional, you know, kind of hotel experience. Right. Because I think consumers, if given the choice, are going to opt

for this type of experience over that more conventional type of experience. You know, let's be honest though. Like there is, it's not the comfort. Based travel. So not it's not going to be for necessarily for everyone. And play of even as approach is to not only restore their land, but also to take a watershed approach. So that the idea is to actually help upstream and help

the families and farmers that live all the way up in the mountains above, which you can see from the beach. And and any anybody on the river that feeds their estuary is their responsibility in terms of approaching them, getting buy in from them, trying to help in a way that can be beneficial to the watershed and to everybody involved. And so that is like you say,

a special scope of work. You know, not everyone's going to take that on. And even play of EVA's own, even though they've done a lot of great work, you can't say that, you know, development work takes a long time. And you can't say they've restored that entire watershed. Sure. They've restored their part of it. You know, watershed restoration is a whole is a huge task and

they're on that journey. And coming back from Mexico, you know, it was funny because before going to Mexico, I was so hungry for it. I was so like, you know, we, we joke with the apocalypse now intro, but like, I was fucking desperate for. I need to go up river. I am a machine. I am going to find Colonel Kurtz. I need to answer my questions.

I needed a mission and rich gave me one. I need a bold man halfway submerge in the water who's mysterious. And I need a, you know, I need a guy shooting a gun off like. I need it. But coming back to the Dennis Hopper character in this narrative, Zuma. Yeah. Okay. Just going off half cock. Yes. I've got unpredictable. But then coming back, you know, to

soggy California from the sun again, it wasn't necessarily like more travel like craved actually. It was like the idea of watershed restoration just kept paying. And, you know, what I wanted was a deeper connection to my own watershed. That's what I wanted. You know, that's what I left that place with. And I think that's interesting because I didn't anticipate that. Like that's that idea of like,

you have to go away in order to realize that everything you were looking for is like in your backyard the whole time. Right. Because because I was looking to find a watershed, and I talked to Matt Mcmillan, who runs a nonprofit called Wild Places. Who I used to work with and treat people. And that's what he does is watershed restoration. And he could better define what

that is and why it's important. You can think of a watershed as a bathtub almost. And the sides of the bathtub or the edges of the mountain where waterfalls and drains down the water. And towards the bottom where it lands into a river or a stream and makes its way to the ocean. So yeah, so that's basically a pretty simplified understanding of what a watershed is.

and rivers that occupied those spaces and still do just not as visible to us. Those watersheds and the surface waters lead to the recharging of our aquifers, which is where our drinking water essentially comes from. So it's important to recognize that we're all in a watershed. That's what I wanted. I wanted to go to my own creeks. I wanted to watch that flow out to the

ocean. I wanted to see how that, you know, you where you live. I mean, that's got to be a primary. You must see it all the time. Oh, right. And yeah, in in Malibu Creek. Yeah, yeah, like raging right now. It's amazing. It's amazing. Yeah. And to connect to it in a real way is something that I'd encourage everyone to do and to find your watershed

and to explore it and to connect with it because it's like we don't look at the world that way. But that's all the way the world is made up. It's kind of the way indigenous communities were founded around the water and and and respecting that water source because they had to we're so disconnected from all of that going to apply a Viva and seeing that restoration

and process. It really kind of inspired me to connect again to that that idea. So where does all of this leave us is travel the great equalizer. Does it build bridges or is it breeding more inequality and discontent and environmental degradation? I mean, what is the travelers responsibility in terms of carbon footprint and cultural awareness? Is it all get what you can? Well, you can sort

of free for all kind of thing or how can we continue to explore the earth while also walking around the water? And then we're just going to be able to do something more gently upon it. You know, I think there's a few concepts that kind of jotted down when we were talking about when thinking about this because obviously whenever we now we've done two of these,

there's no clear answers, right? I mean, that's why we chose these interesting topics because they're not topics that are easily parsed down to a black and white. They're really, they're really is nuance and all of this. But one thing I thought of was staying closer to home. And so that means local travel. I mean, and you don't have to go far. Like you could travel exploring

your own city. Could be, could be fun. You can treat, you can be a guest in your own town. You can explore a new neighborhood. You can connect to your own watershed, which I think is a great way of traveling. So that's one. Yeah. And we talked a little bit earlier about the fact that for the most part, you travel to certain places in your kind

of way in and out. But perhaps you can rewrite that, you know, narrative and find a way to be more immersive, you know, in the community and contribute so that when you leave, you feel like you've left it a little bit better than when you arrived. Yeah, I mean, that's a key Kylian concept is if you're going to go to the trouble of getting on the

plane and doing the and being part of that footprint, then make sure it counts. Don't just go in and out. Don't just maybe don't do like Kylian's not doing that. A race that he has to go in and out of. I mean, and he's the best. So maybe you pick your spots. Also, in terms of carbon offsets, I thought about this a lot. I personally wouldn't

use any of those services, not because I think they're all bad. And talking about watershed stuff really got me thinking like, you know, a Mets organization is one option. But as he mentioned, every watershed is going to have some organization associated with it. That means every place is going to have a watershed group. So I would encourage you to look for yours and maybe fund their

work unless something's alarming about it. But if you're going to fund environmental work that's restorative, including tree planting, you know, stream bed restoration, that kind of stuff, then why not? Make it local. And then every time you do a trip, use that carbon offset formula, if it's 12 bucks for a six hour flight, if it's 50 bucks for a transcontinental flight, then that's what you give

to your local group. But you can do both, right? Yeah. It would be good to purchase those carbon offsets and figure out how to, you know, contribute in a more immersive way. Yeah. In the place that you're visiting. And I think it would be beneficial to have a list of, links or, you know, potential possibilities for that contribution in the show notes to the podcast. So

we'll try to compile that. We'll do that. Yeah. That means you had to put that together for us. I don't work. I knew I sense that. Right. You got it. Um, you know, and I think just in closing, you know, it's, it is such a curious thing because, you know, I love travel. You love travel. Like I do, I am looking forward to the travel upon

us. Um, but I think the travel, that has meant the most to me has been the, the, the experiences that are more immersive. And then rethinking. That, um, that quality of immersion isn't necessarily tethered to an exotic location. Like the dark retreats come to mind, which we've talked about, right? Like going into a cave. Like you want that. Doesn't fucking matter where that cave is, right?

You're in the dark. Right. You want that. You can build that cave in your backyard. I guess if you wanted to, you know, do and create your own darker treat. But I think what's cool about that is that it's creating a conversation around the caliber and the quality and the intentionality of the experiences we want to have with our precious free time as opposed to going

to, you know, the all inclusive buffet, whatever, right. Like I'm going to go into the dark and like go inward and learn something about myself to become, you know, a more self-actualized person, a better human, whatever, so that I can have, you know, a more fulfilling life. Like that's cool. I think there's a lot of young people who are more interested in, in that kind of

experience, which is, you know, not something that like when I was in my 20s, people were thinking about, which leaves me very encouraged and optimistic about the future. And, uh, to the extent that we can create systems and incentives and, you know, kind of political, economic will and receptivity, like we were talking about earlier around that, I think that we're in a good place of creating

a situation in which we are building better travel experiences that are truly regenerative and not regenerative and just name only. I got the end of the day. I think people are never going to stop traveling. Um, so I think it's more important to actually really consider how you're traveling. What business is that? Business is your supporting when you travel, because I think you can actually make

a much bigger impact by being more intentional and selective about how you're actually going to impact the destination on these decisions you make. My best experiences are always staying in small, locally run places where you have a lot of contact with the owners. If you usually have their heart and soul in the place, it's how they make their living. That helps you have interactions with the

village. You understand what's going on. Your money is going directly to them. You know, if there's some way that you can help out, you might be able to help out a single person. You might be able to, you know, it's kind of the smaller you go, the more impact you're making in a positive way. This idea of regeneration, the core of it, is to experience the

inseparability of everything. Stewarding the future of how we will use bacteria to restore and sustain human and planetary health seeds DSO one daily symbiotic combines 24 clinically verified and naturally occurring probiotic strains with plant-based prebiotics. Go to seed.com slash rich role and use the code role for 25% off your first order. Thanks to Amanda Harris, Amanda Ho, Celeste Brash, you garbage. Harvey Killian Jornay, Momet Mcmillan,

Paul Feinstein, Robbie Ballinger, and Paul Hawking. And of course, everybody here at the studio, Jason Camillo, Lo, and Drake, and everybody here who helped make this show possible. Is that include me or no? Do I use that? You think of me? You're like, on air talent. No. You don't need to be recognized. You're the one fucking talking the whole time. Did you thank me? Why didn't

you thank me? You're the one that left me. You're the one that left me.