An Old Friend Returns to Women Who Travel

Hi there, I'm Lalee Ari Koglu and this is a very special episode of Women Who Travel as September winds up and the year comes to a close. We are going on hiatus. So what better guests to have on than my very dear friend and a familiar name and voice to any long-time listener, it's Meredith Carey who was my co-host for many years on this podcast and started it with me in 2017. I've spent the last three years hosting this podcast by myself and it has grown exponentially. We've had so many astonishing guests with astonishing stories to tell. We've had everyone from Tracy Ellis Ross to Brooke Shields and so many more inspiring travellers in between, but it all began just me and Meredith in a makeshift studio in the World Trade Centre before Condé Nurse even had a podcast department. I can't quite describe how surreal it is to have you back in the studio, Mayor. It feels so wild and also like we just recorded the last episode that I was with you, like yesterday. Yes, and it was in fact almost four years ago. This podcast was relaunched after your departure three years ago. So much has happened in the world since then. But before we dive into all things pod, I want listeners who might be new to the podcast to kind of know a bit about you and also how we know each other. We met like 11, 12 years ago, Lale was my boss when I was an intern at a weekly newspaper. It was like pure chaos and she was a lighthouse in the storm. And I want to jump in and say to really catch the chaos, I was a 24-year-old boss. I shouldn't have been a boss. We were about a few years apart, but yeah, we were on this crazy journey together and then I went and graduated from college and Lale was still in New York and we kept in touch. And then when she was looking for a job, she reached out. We started working together at Traveler and then when we were thinking about just women who travel in general, we were like, "Oh, we have so much to say because we say a lot to each other. Why don't we say it on a microphone?" Before there was even a podcast, there was a Facebook group. Now 150,000 or so community members strung who swapped travel stories and ideas and tips and really were the inspiration for this podcast. Now, the women who travel universe was kind of born as a whole was after the 2016 election. There was all this energy drummed up for women's rights and yet in the travel space, it didn't feel like we were being spoken to in the way that other parts of media were and we jumped on it. We were having all these conversations in the office all the time about our concerns, about our questions, about our travel queries and we figured if we're having these conversations, other women who are really passionate about travel are probably having them with their friends too and they're just not happening in public and we're missing all of this knowledge sharing by not getting to hear it. And I think when you say knowledge sharing, you know, when you first think of sort of women and travelling and their concerns, it's like safety but it's also about acknowledging the nuances of people's lived experiences and finding ways of travelling that fits those or speaks to those. And I think even when you talk about safety, safety means a different thing to every person who's going and living this life and out in the world and so to get to hear from different women who have different concerns, who are travelling with a family, who are travelling with a spouse, who are travelling on their own, who have different passions that intersect with travel, people could see themselves, we could see ourselves in what they were doing and I think that was really exciting at the time too. We obviously did a lot of brainstorms at the beginning that we also had no idea how to make a podcast. There was not a podcast studio at Condé Nast, I will say, it was a conference room with some phone boards. Yeah, I think we made the most with what we had and I think we made a lot. We made so much. What were the issues you were hoping to cover? We've touched on them a bit but I'm interested to know what was going on in Mayor's mind back then. I wanted to see the breadth of travel. I think a lot of what we were doing in our day-to-day work was a lot of luxury travel which I think is the foundation of Condé Nast Traveler but at the same time women are out there doing all sorts of incredible things and I wanted to see all of them and hear from all of them. I just wanted to talk to people who knew their space so well and be inspired by them. So it wasn't even one specific thing, I wanted to know everything. What were some of those experiences and those women that caught your eye or that you connected to back then? I think when I look back at those early episodes, I feel like I was really talking to not necessarily celebrities but my celebrities, so women like Dolly Alderton, Samantha Brown, photographer Lindsay Adario, people who I really looked up to and respected and was wowed by. You mentioned Lindsay Adario and she's this incredible photojournalist who has covered so much of the world's crises and events over her career and to have her in the studio with us, in the flesh sharing some of those stories with us was so moving and insightful and kind of spoke to the power of travel in another way and it's been in the last couple of years watching her in Ukraine for example, documenting the war there and one of Lindsay's M.O.'s is documenting how war impacts women and the lives of women and she hasn't stopped and I think that for me was a really, really memorable episode. Another person that I was very excited to talk to who we kind of got I think on the brink of her real kind of catapult into a certain level of fame was Michelle Zawner of Japanese Breakfast when her memoir Crying in H-Mark came out. I know you were really thrilled about that one too. So excited and there are all these things that happened behind the scenes. Some of my favorite moments were things that happened before we started recording that were usually related to tech issues. But I just remember Michelle talking about her husband was like cooking a rotisserie chicken incredibly loudly in their kitchen and she had to go get it to stop and we listened to a very, very sweet shout from Michelle and her partner and yeah, I just think back to those moments and it was just a blast to see people kind of in their natural habitat talking about a thing that they really loved, travel. What were some of the areas of the world you wanted to cover because obviously there's the impression that we get to go everywhere and talk about everywhere and that is true to an extent, but I had so much discovery making this podcast. I think it was the places that I knew realistically I probably wasn't going to get to go to places that are 15, 16, 17 hours by flight away from where I live in New York, but also places that I don't have the physical ability to get to talking to Kimmy Werner about going spearfishing deep in the ocean. Realistically that's not going to happen for me. And so talking to these women who are going to places deep into the desert, taking trips that might not be in my passion area, but are so interesting. I love that you used Kimmy Werner who is a free diver based in Hawaii who, I mean spearfishes, she lives a sustainable lifestyle. It's very aspirational in its location and at the sense of freedom and she makes these amazing videos of freediving to what feels like the bottom of the ocean. Realistically I'm never going to freedive deep, deep, deep down into the ocean. I'm a scaredy cat, I get claustrophobic, I just don't think that's for me. And so to hear her describe what it's like to be so many feet below the ocean's surface alone and to come face to face with a great white was terrifying and made my imagination sore. And I think that's another thing that a lot of these women did was they pushed my imagination because they made me think about places that are out of reach to me and also as all good travels should do, pushed my imagination to think about other ways of living, which I also think has been a really amazing part of this podcast because, and I want to talk about it more, there's a lot of this, it's been about being able to see yourself reflected in other travellers in a way that maybe other travel podcasts or media hasn't necessarily done because it's always been represented by the same type of person, which is a white man. I'm reading Billie Jean King's autobiography right now and it's a very trite, well-trodden saying, but at one point she says, "If you see it, you can be it." That was the part that got me so excited to talk to all of these women because I think there was somebody out there that was like, "Oh, I can do this now because I've seen this person do this thing." Coming up, solo travel. We always knew this was an important topic for listeners, but maybe not how significant it was and very much still is. It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes, the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm, but I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong. I know there's going to be a twist when there are massive twists. At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case. I'm Heidi Blake. Blood relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed. You're back with Women Who Travel and I'm talking to Meredith Carey, co-founder of the show. Jessica Nabongo, when she talks about solo travel and if you didn't listen to a very recent episode we just ran with her, she has visited every single country in the world. She is the first documented black woman to do so. She is a powerhouse and the way she talks about solo travel is so interesting and so full of nuance as she does with the countries that she visits. There's no broad strokes. She is so focused on the generosity of people. She doesn't fear Manga, but she also will be very candid about her experiences. She's very open about the fact that visiting every country in the world is no easy feat, particularly if you're a woman, particularly if you're a black woman. And yet it's so full of joy and so positive when she talks about those travels. She made me feel, I mean I've always liked traveling alone, it isn't something that's haunted me that much, but I do feel like she gave me more confidence and more tools to try and do it more. She also talks so much about her high highs and low lows and I think that that also opened the door for us to be very honest with each other about what it was like to travel at all, let alone travel alone. Well then I have to ask, what is it about solo travel that strikes such a chord with you? Oh my gosh. Because you do it a lot. You bring it into yourself to some great places and not to attribute it all to this podcast, but I feel like after we started doing it was when your solo trips really ramped up. Yeah, I'm a very extroverted type A person and for me, I love to be the planner for a group trip. I love to make the Google map, to book everything, to have my little flag and tour guide people around, but there's a lot of pressure put on by my own self. I was going to say, as your dear friend, I'm going to say self-imposed sometimes. Self-imposed always to feel like, okay, I have assembled the right group dynamic. I have chosen the right restaurants. I have picked the right Airbnb. I just want to make sure everyone's having a good time. When I travel on my own, it's like all of that noise just goes away because I'm in complete control and yes, I can be bop to my heart's content, but I can also just sit my butt down and not do anything and not feel guilty at all for doing that, which is not to say I necessarily feel that when I travel with a group, but I may be just more aware of it. And when I'm traveling on my own, I'm in complete control. I am the person who decides whether or not something is good enough for me. And I feel a lot of power and confidence comes from me doing that. I also, as an extrovert, love to meet new people and putting myself out there by myself or I can't rely on my friends or travel companions is always a good challenge for me. And I feel like every time I do it, I think, oh, I should do this more. When are some moments that you feel like you really cracked that? I feel like a couple of years ago, I was feeling really lost or sounds very dramatic, but I think I just kind of like lost a little bit of self-confidence and I wasn't really sure what I was doing with my career or was living in New York. I just didn't know kind of like what I was doing. And so I said, OK, we need to just get out of here. I was like, I had cabin fever and I just needed to get out. And so I booked a trip to Copenhagen and I was there for a week. And I remember just biking every morning. My hotel would have a bike ready for me and I would just bike around Copenhagen, picking up pastries along the way. And I think one of my greatest strengths is my sense of direction. And so being able to like not have to look at my phone, she's in control. She knows where she's going. She's just biking away, wind in her hair, fall Copenhagen weather, looking absolutely stunning, going to, yes, like the popular sites, but also sitting at a bar with a book, eating at Michelin-starred restaurants, just eavesdropping on the people around me. I just like felt myself like coming back into my power and myself was like I was charging up. And I think that's really the power that solo travel has for me. It feels like I can just like become reacquainted with myself in a way that I can't when I'm around other people. But what have those experiences been like for you? Well, as you list out your many attributes as a traveler, it brings to light how different we are. And we've traveled a lot together. This is why we're such good friends. I have a terrible sense of direction. I think I put all of my planning energy into the stories that I report and write and commission. And therefore when it comes to personal travel, I do no planning, just leave it up to the gods. She's vibing. I'm vibing. I have nothing pinned on my Google Maps, which has been pointed out to me by multiple people. I actually have one thing pinned on my Google Maps, and it is a restaurant in the Himalayas. That's it. Nothing else. All up in the old brain. I'm not surprised at all, but also that is wild. But I think and I know that this sounds totally counter to what I just described, but I think when you said about control, that's something I really revel in when I'm traveling alone. Because yes, it's control over my own schedule and my itinerary, whether I want to change my mind and do something completely different that day, but it's also kind of a sense of control in terms of who I am because I don't have to code switch. I don't have to adapt myself for anyone that I'm with, like I'm just me figuring it out in this new place and proving to myself that I can. And sometimes I worry about saying that and it sounding a little infantilizing, like I'm like, are men going around saying how proud they are that they figured out how to get around a place? But I think they are, because being alone in a new place, whether you don't speak the language is intimidating, no matter who you are or where you come from. And figuring out that you can do it feels really, really good, and I kind of can't stop doing it. Are there places that you think this was like the perfect place to go as a solo traveler or places that you think you would love to go back to as a solo traveler that you maybe went to with other people? I think, you know, Scandinavia really having a moment for us because around the same time you went Copenhagen, I took myself on a trip to Norway and Sweden to visit a friend in Oslo and then I went to Stockholm by myself and I think I also was in a slightly wobbly moment in life. There was some sort of crossroads I hadn't quite reached yet, but I was feeling unmoored and so obviously my instinct was to leave it all behind and go travel. And I have such nice memories of just lying by the water in Oslo and being in the parks and Stockholm, going to exhibitions, eating some delicious meals. I went and took myself out for a very expensive omakasi meal, which I don't think I would have ever asked someone to do with me because it was really decadent and kind of irresponsible, but I went and it was like an 11-seater restaurant and it was so fun and it was very rowdy. It had a great vibe. And yeah, I just, I don't know, that was very formative for me. In terms of places, I'd like to go back on my own to, I think, Japan. And I've had some really wonderful solo travel experiences in South America. Often I feel like with this job you have glimpses of solo travel moments and then you're kind of meeting up with someone like a source or a hotel general manager, all these different characters that help you bring a story together, but you get little flashes of being alone and I've had that in Peru, I've had it in Chile, I've had it in Colombia, and I don't know, that continents really become quite close to my heart and I didn't expect so much time there. I recently took a solo one night trip to upstate New York because there is a book village called Hobart that has one diner and six used bookstores and an inn and I went and parked myself there and just shopped, just bookstore shopped my way through 48 hours of being in Hobart and I wouldn't have asked anybody else to do that with me, mostly because I go absolutely feral when I end up in a used bookstore. And you don't want anyone disrupting your rhythm, your flow, your system. I've got a system, I want to touch all the books, I want to sneeze a little bit because of the dust, you know. I want to make me forget to eat and then be like oh my gosh it's 5pm and I've been in bookstores all day, that's my dream scenario and so I had been putting it off and putting it off and thought oh I could fit it into this other trip and then I thought no just go, just rent a car, just go up there for 48 hours, spend one night in this tiny little town and it was so delightful and it really didn't have to be this big trip to give me that sense that I had in Copenhagen and that it sounds like you've had many other places of just being back to me. Well and I think that's a drum we've beaten a lot on this podcast is that when it comes to solo travel you don't have to go to the opposite side of the world for it to count. It can be a day trip to a nearby town, it can be a weekend away in a city in your own country. If you've never done it before and you're listening you can dip your toes in and move slowly. What have been some of the challenges that you've overcome? I think that when we talk about solo travel a lot of the time we are trying to justifiably be very empowering and be very encouraging and say oh my gosh you're going to have the best time, it's going to be amazing, you're going to feel in control the whole time and I just don't think that's true. I think that everyone, even people who don't usually face a lot of feelings of loneliness can end up on a trip and be like okay and now we are on hour 96 of being on our own in a foreign country making all the decisions on our own and so I think that the quote unquote low moments for me have been being like okay I'm feeling a little lonely what do I do now to feel less lonely. A lot of times that means going and sitting in a bar in a restaurant with or without a book talking to a bartender talking to someone at the hotel I'm staying in just having a conversation with a barista just being like there are other people out in this world we can have a conversation with them whether it's out loud or through Google translate or whatever it needs to be. I think those moments still hit me when I'm solo traveling. And then I think when things go awry especially at the airport I tend to panic mostly because I hate to be at the airport so I always am there at the very last minute this goes against my type A planarism. And weirdly I'm quite an early airport person. If I could get through security walk to the Hudson News, get a bottle of water and walk directly onto the plane that is like my ideal timeline I want to spend as little time in the airport as possible and so I can remember on that solo trip where I was in Copenhagen and something happened with my flights and I didn't have a seat on a plane when I got to the airport and it was very chaotic and stressful and I was tired and I hadn't had time to eat breakfast and I was on my own and I didn't have anybody else to like help me problem solve or to hype me up when I was feeling really low. And you're trapped in the web of madness that is airline customer service. Yes and you know it was two different airlines they were talking to each other and there was a big line behind me and the very lovely but kind of efficient gate agent was like I cannot stand here and talk to you this whole time and I just remember sitting on the floor having a little cry and being like okay and we move on. But I think that those moments when things are you know going wrong and you suddenly have lost control after having all of the control from a solo trip those are the stuff. I think I try and do this with the airport and sometimes I'm good at it sometimes I'm not but I just kind of give myself up to it and it's like I arrive and I like surrender myself to my fate whatever it may be and I'm like at some point I'm getting on a plane. It might be in two hours it might be in ten it might be in two days and it's kind of the only way I think I can cope with it is to just really actually relinquish control I think is what I try and do. I think sometimes we get a little worthy when we talk about travel and we use all these words like transformative and life-changing and eye-opening words that I think I've been throwing about quite a lot right now but it can also just be fun. Yeah, absolutely. Much more reminiscing with Meredith after the break. This is Chris Christensen from the Amateur Traveler podcast. The Amateur Traveler podcast is about the love of travel it's about where to go and why you should go there. We're going to open up to you different destinations you haven't heard of or places you have heard of but things you didn't know to do while you were there. Each episode is about 45 minutes long and it's typically an interview with someone who wrote the guidebook on that destination or who has been there or who's a local tour guide or someone who is an expert on that destination and knows how to tell you what to do to get the most out of your precious vacation time. So if you value your vacation time and you want to use it wisely, listen to Amateur Traveler and learn about destinations both domestic and international, places you've heard of and places you haven't. Amateur Traveler has almost 900 episodes talking about different destinations. So if there's a place you want to go, odds are we've already covered it and can help you plan a trip there. Amateur Traveler, subscribe today. Meredith, in the past three years our stories have become more immersive on this show but essentially there's the same continuum. It's always been about stories from women seeking adventure and challenging the status quo or vicariously traveling through other women's stories. Have there been episodes or guests over the years who have shifted your point of view in some way or offered a new way of thinking in terms of some of the topics that we've been talking about? I think an episode that really stuck with me was one we did maybe in 2020 when we talked to Sarah Nelson who at the time I think maybe still is leading the Flight Attendance Union which has an official name which I cannot remember off the top of my head but there's a very lovely acronym for it. We talked a lot about just the work that flight attendants do, the importance of the labor movement in their lives and in the history of flying and in travel in general. And I think I just learned a lot about the work that a primarily but not exclusively female workforce has done and the work that they continue to do in the labor movement. I just think that it's a conversation that continues to come up and I think has been relevant since we talked to Sarah about it and it's really stuck with me and just opened my eyes to a lot of the work that they're doing behind the scenes for women in the workplace everywhere not just flight attendants. When an airline strikes it causes chaos and inconvenience and it can be very distressing for people who are having to travel that day but there is a reason behind the strikes and so I encourage people to read about them, read the reasons why these unions are striking and engage with it even if you don't agree with it but learn about what's happening. Ultimately at the core of this podcast and I think it's origins come out of politics and the things we were concerned about in the world in that moment and that was 2017. That was a long time ago. It was a president who then wasn't president and now is president again. There are lots of discussions about women's rights still which are very much on the table with the current administration but also with immigration, all sorts of policies that impact the people who live in this country, all the people who live in this country and choose to come here. Do you think when talking about travel, does it still feel like an essential vehicle to talk about the greater political moments or injustices that we're seeing because that really was kind of the inspiration for this podcast or should I say the drive? I mean borders, visas, passports, freedom of movement, cultural differences and similarities. That literally is the foundation of us moving around this world and travel, at least the world in which we live today and so there's not a way to talk about it that doesn't touch on what's going on in the US, what's going on abroad. There's not a way we could have or could do this and have these conversations without talking about the reality of life for women and men around the world. That's just the fact. We had a great episode in 2023 and a really fascinating one which was with Sheynaz Habib who is an author, a writer and she had this book out that was examining passport privilege looking at what it is, its history, how visa free access has been granted to some people in the world and others not and she really sort of debunked I think a very limited POV about how you move around the world and my own father who's from Turkey had had his own visa issues over the years so I kind of got a glimpse into how it can be really limiting but it was also surprising, it was a very surprising episode for me. Is there anything as the travel conversation has evolved over the last few years in this ever-changing world from the podcast that you connected to since? I think that some of my favorite episodes have been in two categories because I absolutely have been listening to the podcast. There's kind of the getting the celebrities to talk about travel and kind of shed their shell of PR training and just give in to saying, you know, their experiences and sharing things that you wouldn't have heard otherwise. I'm thinking of Tracy Ellis Ross, I'm thinking of Brooke Shields, those episodes I've really loved. Emma Roberts, I'm just thinking of all these celebrities that it was so fun to hear them talk about this thing that they were really passionate about. You know, one that I always think of in that context is Gabrielle Union who had a travel show coming out where she was visiting several countries in Africa to celebrate her fiftieth birthday and it was a bit of a kind of homecoming trip and it was very celebratory and very emotional for her and she went with her whole family, the whole crew, but she'd been on this press junket when we sat down with her and when celebrities do press junkets, they're often asked the same questions over and over again. I think even if you are the most charismatic person in the world, it's going to wear you down and there was like a moment, I think, where she realized she got to talk about travel and what it meant to her, which meant getting to talk about who she really is and not just some project and it was one of my favorite interviews because she just opened up in a way that I think if you love travel and someone else does... It's an instant connection. Instant connection, instant common ground and travel is cool, you want to show off that you do it. Yeah. I think my other bucket is like the weird, like the witches, the cats, like I have also just loved... The cats, one of our most loved episodes on Instagram. The episodes where it's someone just going all out on their niche, that brings me so much joy and brings me back to why we started this in the first place, that this is a platform for someone to talk about their favorite thing about travel and the tiny little Venn diagram where it overlaps, those episodes just bring me so much joy and get me so excited to have my own little version of that in my life. Meredith, you are obviously traveling the world all the time. You are off to South Africa in a few months. I am. If people want to follow along with where you're going in the world, where should they find you? You can find me on Instagram @ohaythermer. Thanks, guys. As we mentioned over the past few weeks, the podcast is going on hiatus. This is the reason why I bought Meredith back in to have a little bit of a swan song, but women who travel as a universe isn't going anywhere. Go to cntraveler.com for all of your women who travel stories. Sign up for our newsletter, follow our Instagram account @womenwhotravel, where we will be teasing new video content, new storytelling that is much more to come. And for today's show credits, I'm going to throw them to Jew Campfner, the podcast producer who has been intrinsic in so much of the storytelling and reimagining of this show over the past few years. You've been listening to Women Who Travel. Many thanks to Lalee for her incredibly sensitive interviewing, and to our engineers Jennifer Nelson, Jake Loomis, Pranbandi, and Amal Al, who mixes the show every week. And many thanks to Stephanie Kereyuki and Chris Bamman. Nailed it! Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Director of Vogue Runway and Vogue Business and host of the Run Through Podcast. Every Tuesday, join me for the latest fashion news like the shake-ups of Balenciaga and Dior and what's trending in Paris and Milan. You'll also hear interviews with top designers from Mark Jacobs and Rick Owens to Daniel Roseberry, Sarah Burton, and many more. On Thursdays, Chloe Maul, Editor of Vogue.com, and Choma Naughty, Head of Editorial Content at British Vogue, take you behind the scenes at Vogue and share their thoughts on fashion through the lens of culture. You'll hear interviews with some of your favorite stars like Julianne Moore, Pharrell Williams, and celebrity stylist Law Roach. Join us to get your fashion and culture news twice a week. Listen to the Run Through with Vogue every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.