Women Who Travel Podcast: Our Favorite Stories From This Year

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To wrap up 2024, executive producer Stephanie Kariuki joins Lale in the studio to look back at some of their favorite episodes over the past twelve months—from actor Emma Roberts on her love of train travel and Normal Gossip’s Kelsey McKinney on the perils of group travel, to three photojournalists on documenting life during war in Ukraine, Yemen, and Gaza.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi there. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and welcome to an episode of Women Who Travel, where we're looking back at the year and talking about some notable episodes. Even better, I'm chatting with our Executive Producer, Stephanie Kariuki.

Stephanie, you came on board in the spring. Before we even get into the episodes, I want to know, what sort of traveler were you before you started and what did you know about the podcast?

Stephanie Kariuki: I love traveling. I think I've been to somewhere around 20 countries. I was born outside of this country.

LA: Wait, where were you born?

SK: I was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and lived there until I was six.

LA: I didn't know that.

SK: Yes, and I go there all the time.

LA: Oh, that's so cool.

SK: Yeah, I still have family there. And I love travel, it is a way to connect. It's a way to learn not only about the people and the places that you're going to, but about yourself. And I've just, to come here and to get to work with Condé Nast Traveler is a dream in a lot of ways. So, I'm so glad I'm here.

LA: And you're on the other side of the glass today.

SK: I know, it's weird.

LA: What a thrill.

SK: Sorry. What kind of traveler were you before you worked here?

LA: Oh, great question. Well, I definitely wasn't quite as obsessive as I am now. Always pretty adventurous, always kind of what I wanted to spend my money on and any sort of disposable income I had. But working at Traveler and talking about travel as much as I do definitely makes it suddenly seem more possible, which I think is something we always want to do with this podcast. And hearing all the sorts of stories that we have on this podcast always makes me itch to do more of it.

SK: I know. My parents recently were planning a trip to Italy and I just was constantly combing through our episodes to try to be like, what other things should I recommend? And I'm really glad we're talking about recommending episodes, because that's how I find the next place or the next thing that I really want to do. You know?

LA: Staying on the topic of travel, of your own travel, I mean, you've clearly done so much. What do you want to get out of your experiences? You were born out of the US so you have connections to other places. How do you think that contrasts from what you think listeners are looking for?

SK: I think my experiences have shifted as I've gotten older, as I've come into different points in my life. In my teens I traveled a bit, and that was mostly about my parents and them just wanting me to experience cultures outside of myself. And then obviously, like I said, I was born outside this country. So travel, when I was really young, it was immigration. It was very much like, how is it like to live in a place called America? Which seemed so foreign at that time and so far.

So to me, what does that mean, in terms of alignment to a listener? I feel like we all have such a different experience of travel and all of us on the team try to bring that into the episodes. And so, how do we take what my relaxation versus your vagabond reporting trips, versus our producers' obsession with Vegas, and make that into really dynamic, interesting stories? That's what I want to do, and whether that's through celebrities or individuals or through solo storytelling, that's what we do. That's what we do best.

I know this whole episode is dedicated to our favorite episodes of the year.

LA: We've come with three choices to talk about. We're going to run through these episodes in no particular order, because it's hard to pick a favorite, and so I don't want to rank them. We'll hear some excerpts, if you've heard the show before, it'll be a recap. Think about it as like those episodes of Friends when they'd show all of the best moments from a season around Christmastime.

SK: Memories.

LA: Exactly. One of my favorite episodes was actually with Kelsey McKinney, she's the host of Normal Gossip.

SK: God, I love that episode too.

LA: I love that podcast, I've loved what Kelsey's doing. I think the way that she tells these stories is so skilled and funny and entertaining, and I think that travel and gossip have this inherent tie.

SK: Yeah, absolutely.

LA: And when we were talking about having Kelsey on, it was like, are we just trying to get Kelsey on because we're obsessed with her podcast and what she does? But there was so much to talk about, and particularly when talking about group trips, I struggle with them.

Kelsey McKinney: What we get the most stories about are places that people go on planes. In general, if you are getting on a plane, that means you are trapping yourself somewhere with other people. So I think if you're trying to avoid a gossip-filled trip, what you want is a place where you have the ability to remove yourself from the situation at any time, which means you are taking a train there or you are driving. So, I think what I am advocating for in an anti-gossip trip is like a perimeter of 90 miles from where you live.

LA: So, essentially like an escape route?

KM: Yes. I am saying, take a weekend trip. Don't go for a week to Morocco with people you don't know.

LA: Yeah, don't take over a riad in Marrakesh-

KM: Yes, exactly.

LA: ... with 25 of your closest friends.

KM: No, do not do that.

LA: One of my favorite parts of the episode was talking about eavesdropping in restaurants.

SK: Oh my God. When she said that that's what she does?

LA: Yes, and I was like, okay, I kind of do this too. But then this became a bigger conversation about how you connect with people when you're traveling and connecting with strangers.

I'm a writer and a reporter when I'm traveling, so I've had to get really good at talking to strangers, but it doesn't come naturally to me, and I think a lot of people when they're traveling have the same.

KM: I love to gab.

LA: How do you get talking to people?

KM: I am not great with foreign languages. I speak Spanish, that's about it. Right? If I can talk to someone in the language that they speak, I want to. So I'm like, if I'm somewhere where someone speaks Spanish, I want to gab it up with them, I want to know what's going on with them. Right? You're catching me at a time where I've traveled recently, which is not always true, but last week I was in Paris and we went to this dinner that was at this little French restaurant. The tables were so close together, they had to move them to get you into the booth, right? And the woman next to me didn't speak French, her whole table spoke French, they were all talking to each other. She spoke Spanish. So I was like, "What's up, babe?" Right? We could talk to each other, and that's how I learned that her husband speaks French because his ex-wife lived in Paris. I learned all these things about them.

LA: Oh my God, is this how she's at, this rude table that's not including her?

KM: I know. I know, her own husband talking to other people in French and not her. And I was like, "Well, I'll talk to you."

SK: I do think Kelsey does a really good job of being lighthearted and fun, but also speaking to some real issues.

LA: And I think it's an example of an episode where it just kind of shows the breadth of the show. We have these super immersive ones where you are in Antarctica, or we'll talk about this a bit later, but you're talking to someone who is describing what it's like to be out in the field as a war journalist. And then you have the Kelsey episodes, which is just like good old chit-chat about a shared love of something.

SK: God, I love chit-chat. Oh, my god.

LA: Yes, yes.

SK: And that actually leads perfectly to one of my favorite episodes from this year. It's the conversation you had with Emma Roberts, who is an incredible actress. But what I learned in that conversation that I maybe didn't know is how much of a bookworm and travel addict, essentially, that she is. She was so excited talking about her trip to New Orleans and her different ways that she likes to travel and how she overcomes the fear of flying to go places, especially within the context of her job. It's a great interview for anyone who might be interested in just books and travel in general.

LA: I feel like Emma kind of captured that a little bit, like reading a book can take you back to just the sense of being in a place or the smell of it or who you were in that moment.

SK: Yes.

LA: And the way that Emma was talking about reading on Trains, for example.

SK: Which she talked a lot about because BELLETRIST, her book club, had a collaboration with Trainline, and they do a lot of work with books and travel in Europe.

Emma Roberts: I won't name names, but there are some books that I've been so excited to bring on a trip with me, and then I realize 60 pages in that we are not a match. And so then I will pass it on to somebody else and hope that they're a match. So I have shed a few books in that way, but if I love a book or I finished a book, I will not give it away. People will ask to borrow my books and I'm like, "I'll order you a copy," and they're like, "No, I'll just take yours." I'm like, "No, you won't. You can't."

LA: I've never not been burned by lending a book to someone. I don't think it ever gets returned. It's not very generous of me, but, you know?

ER: It doesn't get returned.

LA: You mentioned Hemingway, and A Movable Feast, which I also read as a teen, struggled with and then managed to crack it a few years later. Are there any other authors or books you've read on a recent trip that you, I guess, is a match for you?

ER: Well, another book off of our list, The Talented Mr. Ripley. I feel like most people know that as the movie, myself included. And when I found out that it was not only a book but a book by Patricia Highsmith, who is iconic, I was so excited to read that and I was excited to kind of discover it later after I'd already seen the movie. And so for me, that had to make the list. I mean, it's just such a classic thriller, and-

LA: And such a, the ultimate travel story as well.

ER: Totally.

LA: And travel movie. I mean, oh.

ER: And I feel like it's for anyone, like your mom, your brother, your friend. I feel like everyone gets something out of that book. And let's be honest, I do watch the movie for a bit of fashion inspo before a trip.

LA: Another thing I really loved about that conversation is going back to having celebrities on podcasts. You're like, okay, what am I going to relate to, in terms of a celebrity traveling? That the way they move around the world and experience the world is inherently different from me, and that can be financially, but also just by the sheer role of being famous. And yet with someone like Emma who clearly just loves travel and is curious and interested in it and interested in the places that her work takes her, that to me is relatable.

SK: If I were to kind of move forward from Emma, another kind of experiential travel episode that I know we both loved, but especially you, was the Rebecca Mead one, right?

LA: Oh my God, I loved doing that episode. I mean, firstly, Rebecca Mead is a fantastic writer for the New Yorker. Rebecca's been on the podcast before a couple of times, so we'd already developed a bit of a rapport and a relationship. So it was really nice when I was home in London, she lives there, to actually meet up with her and record an episode that was out in the field. It also was just so special as someone who's grown up in London to be in the British Museum before it opened for the first time in my life.

So we're in the reading room. Rebecca, you look slightly awestruck.

Rebecca Mead: I am a bit awestruck. I mean, it's so big. It's so big.

LA: It's huge.

RM: Okay, so this was built in the 1850s in what had been the empty courtyard.

LA: I'm sort of imagining Karl Marx in here, or Virginia Woolf, it's extraordinary.

RM: Well, if you spend a lot of time in a library, it's not just a place for work. It's a place for socializing and catching people's eye and deciding who you're going to go out and take a tea break with. So, I like to imagine Karl Marx not only writing Das Kapital here, but also deciding, having a chat with someone around the corner or going for a pint across the road.

LA: I got to see things I've never gotten close to in there. It felt like such a privilege and also, a really interesting way to thoughtfully enter a space that is deeply contentious. There are so many conversations around the purpose of the British Museum and why certain things remain in it.

RM: With the Parthenon sculptures, which are in the next room, there's obviously been a lot of debate about whether they were taken with permission, how far the permission extended? Were they allowed to take stones from the ground? Were they allowed to take things off the building? Were the people who granted permission in a position to grant permission anyway, given that they were in occupying power? I think the museum is in the process of trying to come to an accommodation with the Greek government, which has been asking for them back for a very, very long time.

LA: I feel like she gave me such an education, but yet it was still fun, it never felt dry, which it could. I mean, honestly, I think when we were first coming up with the episode, I was like, is a museum tour going to be the most thrilling piece of travel for audio?

SK: Totally.

LA: But it was, and part of that is a testament to Rebecca, who was a great guest.

SK: And part of that is a testament to our amazing producer, Jude, who-

LA: Oh my God, absolutely.

SK: Yes. I think that what was so good about that is we really help the audio come to life. It's one thing to record in the studio in a very sanitized space like we are right now, but it's another thing to do it out in the field.

LA: Often for Condé Nast Traveler, I am on a reporting assignment. We operate a little last minute sometimes at the magazine, but it takes me to amazing places. This year alone, I've been to Kosovo reporting on the techno scene, I was in Namibia, I was in Botswana. I'm going to the Turks and Caicos soon for a quick story. And I also went to Jamaica, and I was also doing some research for a music package we were running for Traveler, and that's how I came across the singer, Lila Iké, and she's from Kingston.

LI: So the song's about me falling in love with somebody who was already with someone.

He loves a [inaudible 00:15:13].

LA: She's super cool, very up and coming, and it suddenly became a moment where I was like, oh, this doesn't have to be one story, this can also be a podcast episode. So we got Lila on and she was a guest in mid-August.

SK: I really loved how she was able to just connect her roots with her mom and just being a child.

LI: It's very green. There's a lot of fruit trees, there's a lot of mountains. It's very cool. So, sometimes even if you look on the map of Jamaica and you zoom into Manchester close to where I'm from, there's literally sometimes a permanent fog over the area because it can get really cold. I'd be putting on my uniform and I'm freezing. So where I was raised in my great-grandmother's house, behind our house, there's just a huge farm with sugar cane, orange, grape, everything you can think about, like it's clean air, the people are polite because it's country, everybody knows everybody. So you'll never walk around the community and somebody's not saying good morning or whatever pleasantries.

SK: Learning to go out into the city and leaving home and getting on the stage for the first time and singing and being recognized for her talent, and I just loved the way she talked about Kingston.

LI: All the artists that was blowing up out of Kingston, out of Jamaica, they were living in Kingston. It was a norm to just go to a concert and be able to just see them hanging out, even if they're not performing. There's this venue called Jamnesia, and it's on the beach. It's like a family-run area, it's literally in their yard. They have a home, their home on the beach, there are a bunch of... It's like a surfing musical family. It's a open mic space, you can just go and anybody can hop on the stage and do whatever. It's like a melting pot situation.

There is a way to meet in the middle like a Jamaican girl making music that's rooted and grounded in Jamaican roots, but still have influences from other songs.

LA: Obviously, the weather in Jamaica is fabulous-

SK: Perfection.

LA: ... most of the year round, but that episode to me felt so summery as well. It was hot weather, it was partying, it was music, it was being on the beach. But that's another thing I love about this podcast is being able to be transported to a season or a time of year that feels like an escape from where you are.

Coming up, the seasonal shows and the episodes that are tied to some important anniversaries.

I'm back with Women Who Travel's, Executive Producer, Stephanie Kariuki.

SK: Hi.

LA: In June and July, we had some shows that were about swimming and living by the North Sea and midsummer celebrations in Denmark, something that always fascinates me, just Scandinavia in general. I know you really connected with those.

SK: Yes, yes. One of my choices for my favorite episodes of the year, it's actually an episode that started to happen before I got here. It was about wild swimming and it was super immersive, as a lot of our episodes are, but because of, I think for me, something you'll learn about me is I really love water and the waves. And it was about a woman traveling within the UK who was kind of going from pool to pool and really experiencing swimming from area to area. It's really a trend that's growing it seems. And the journey that she goes on, it's full of grief, but it's also full of giving yourself grace, emotional challenges.

Speaker 7: It's amazing that water in different places often feels very different. Sometimes water can feel very sticky or balmy or salty, sometimes it feels very cool and crisp. And the water that day when we were in Scotland, on the surface, the sun was up so high that the water appeared almost black, like a very dark well, but then when you were in it, it was completely clear, and I like that about water that the expectations when you get in are always very different.

I thought that I would do grief so well by doing all of this cold water swimming that I would be fixed by the end of this adventure, and I haven't got to that feeling. I feel better, I have a lot more compassion for myself. I feel like I really appreciate what a brave person I am, and I'm glad that I don't feel fixed, because that would be feeling quite far away from Tom.

So I'm okay to be here, but what I set out to do and the feeling that I have with me now and may be quite different, but I think what I've also come to appreciate is how wonderful it is that when you go for a swim, there are lots of other people that have their own stories that are also trying to be really well and they're outside whatever time of year, whatever the weather, making that commitment. And that's really nice and something that I need to remind myself to do a lot more.

SK: It's really indicative of the range of human emotion, but very much about swimming and the relationship to swimming in a way. I am not doing it justice right now, honestly, and it's a repeat for a reason. I also want to bundle this with the third choice that I really enjoyed making this year, and that's the one with Esther Yu. Esther is someone who you interviewed who went to Europe to go get her eggs frozen because the cost of it in the US is just so expensive, and she was able to find a way to do it in a much more accessible and affordable way.

EY: Taiwan, for how progressive they are, unfortunately if you're not married, then you're not allowed to freeze your eggs as a single female.

LA: Wow.

EY: It's again, huge learning experience. The issue is that in a lot of Asian countries or Southeast Asian countries, their healthcare system doesn't really make it accessible to single women. So any of my friends from Taiwan, Singapore, China, if they didn't go to Cambodia or Thailand to do this reproductive tourism, they had more confidence in the European medical system, and that's really why Europe was the number one destination that I found.

LA: What did you land on, and why?

EY: Denmark is the number one country just because of the huge amount of investment that the government has put into reproductive health and science there. And then Spain was the second country at the top of the list in Europe for reproductive sciences and reproductive services. I landed on Barcelona.

SK: Her experience of traveling to a place and getting something like that accomplished and done and then reflecting on it and where she wants to go next, was I think in a lot of ways what the foundation of what the show's mission is. It's about as a woman, what we sometimes have to endure, and also about the way we have to travel in some ways to get to the ends that we can't get to in our country or in our home. I think also with Esther, what I really enjoyed was just her candidness and her openness.

EY: So I went in, changed out, got into the room, and I was thinking, okay, 30 minutes and I'll find out what the results were. They put me under and I woke up about 15 minutes later. I didn't have any pain, I have any discomfort, and to have 16 eggs frozen was a very happy result for me.

SK: I think at the end of the day, this podcast is partially meant to take those topics and put them on the table so that way we can have more conversations.

LA: I love that and totally agree, and I think it's almost like at some points, sometimes it's using travel as a way to talk about these bigger topics. And as a woman in my 30s, I have a lot of friends who are talking about it.

SK: Same.

LA: And the paths that they're exploring or taking, and so it felt very relevant to me. There was also an investigative element to it, which I really enjoyed, and that's props to our producer, Jude, who is incredibly skilled at putting those sorts of ambitious episodes together. And one that is truly one of my favorites and one that I am most proud of is where we spoke to two photojournalists who have been documenting what happens on the front lines in conflict zones. So, we had Anastasia Taylor-Lind, who reports on the ground in Ukraine.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind: People who live along the contact line know very well the sound of an incoming shell, it whistles. And as she turned to run into the house because she knew it was close, it landed in her backyard and two pieces of shrapnel hit her in her left buttock and at the top of her spine. And it took several hours till she could be evacuated and taken to hospital in Pokrovsk. And we went to hospital with her, she was having the dressings on her wounds changed. I made a picture of her lying on the hospital gurney in a room with a soft blue wall and this also soft summer light coming in the window, and she had to lie on her stomach while her bandages were changed.

LA: We also had Cairo-based, Nariman El-Mofty, who's been traveling through Yemen and Sudan.

Nariman El-Mofy.: There was this one five-year-old girl who had her leg amputated in Gaza, but it was amputated really badly. One of the doctors said it was like a butcher did it because of the circumstances, and there was no alcohol, so they couldn't clean it. So her leg had this fungus from the bottom and they had to do another amputation. It was really, really tough, for sure.

LA: Do you think photographs telling this sort of story can help shift perspectives?

NE: I don't really believe in changing the world, but I think it kind of humanized it in a way to people, of the suffering of these children and women who are civilians.

LA: They were modest about the dangers that they endure and have lived through in the name of their work. And I think what was also so compelling to me was they were using their work to tell stories of the people who were impacted by war, as well as those who were fighting it.

SK: I thought it was incredibly ambitious and truly important in the ways that it was able to kind of give a window into the work of these women that you know exists, maybe because of the movies or just you might be somewhat informed and you see the photos as you're reading, clicking through your news articles. But you don't really get to hear their stories, and it was the kind of thing that makes me really proud to work here because it's like, I don't hear that story anywhere else. You know?

LA: A mission of this podcast is to tell stories from unique perspectives and from voices that don't necessarily get heard in the travel space, and I think when you talk about war journalism and photojournalism, it is and has been, at least on a surface level, very male dominated, but women have always been working in this field. There are all these different ways to talk about these topical moments.

And staying on the topic of Gaza, we also had Palestinian-American chef Reem Assil, talk to us a few months ago. I really, really enjoyed that conversation because she was so thoughtful in the ways in which she approaches cooking and community, and how Arab recipes and Arab traditions, when it comes to food can foster community in her hometown of Oakland, which is the other side of the world.

Reem Assil: I'm really trying to be a pioneer and to forge that path, that I think my expression of feeding my community through this beautiful gift of Arab hospitality, that I continue to learn about every day. On a good day, I'm walking in and all of that is in sync, our community members are coming in, we're rolling in the dough, quite literally, rolling out the dough and rolling in the dough.

LA: Love it.

RA: That said, on a really hard day, my restaurants can be really empty and I'm constantly facing what's good for business versus what's good for my people.

LA: Unfortunately, I'm caveating this with you not being the first Arab owned business to experience this, but there have also been campaigns to drive you out of business.

RA: Mm-hmm.

LA: How do you face that and get through it?

RA: I think I have what I like to call, my people's spirit of sumud. In Arabic that means steadfastness or steadfast resilience. The backlash that I have felt against me for being Palestinian, people are always like, why are you so strong? It's so inspiring. And it's like, I don't really have a choice, right? As kind of the position that I have, I have to keep going.

SK: Reem was able to talk about what it meant to be Palestinian and identity, but also think about her own relationship to just community and her own relationship to joy. It was really, it had range and I think that is so important when we're talking about these "important topics," we have to be more nuanced and I'm really proud of us for having Reem on to do that.

LA: I think we've talked about a few very different types of episodes and themes that we keep coming back to in the podcast. Another theme that we revisit a lot and that I know a lot of listeners are passionate about is solo travel. So, that we actually did three sequential episodes about it, and we'll hear more about that after the break.

Stephanie, it was your idea this year after you joined, actually quite shortly after you joined, to introduce a solo travel series.

SK: Yeah, I got in. I was like, we must do the solo travel.

LA: To do it, and I was like, this feels like a shoe-in.

SK: No, it's true. I mean, I think for me, solo travel is such a big part of the show. There's so many people who are curious about it and who maybe just haven't done it and want to hear from people who have. The three stories that we did highlight were really different in their own ways but were each of a person or an experience that you could learn from, whether it was Christie who went to South America, Zakiya, who had a work trip in Cannes.

LA: And then there's Preet, who did a trip that I was obsessed with listening to.

SK: Even though the exact trip of solo skiing in Antarctica isn't very relatable, the idea of being comfortable literally alone, unable to talk to anybody for days.

LA: I think one other thing I loved about the Antarctica episode, which really is one of my favorites of the year, is for as much as I want this podcast to act as inspiration and a guide for how to have similar travel experiences yourself if you're a listener, there are some places and some ways of experiencing the world that likely most of us aren't ever going to get to do. Antarctica being one of them. The fact that we could have someone on the podcast who could tell us what it felt like and what the cold felt like and what the landscape looked like, was I just thought really quite magical. Even if it was really quite frightening to hear her tell some of her stories.

SK: Yeah, I know. I'm getting cold thinking about it.

LA: I know. One spoiler was when she was so sleep-deprived, she started hallucinating.

SK: Yeah, the hallucinating is pretty wild.

Preet: The first trip I'd lost about 10 kilograms. Second one was 20, it was a bit more. I was quite sleep-deprived towards the end, and I started hallucinating. And I remember having this little old lady with me. I had a dog with me.

SK: Oh my God.

Preet: Yeah, so vivid hallucinations. And the worst thing is, I thought I was dreaming and I just couldn't get out of my dream. I didn't understand why. Just before that, I'd seen people coming out of the ground, and the worst thing is, I remember patting myself over and thinking, it's not me. Something else is going on here, but I'm not the problem.

So from November to January, which is the summer seasons in Antarctica, they will drop me off in a good weather window, and then they're the ones that'll pick me up as well. I remember hugging, so Rob Smith, who was one of the people to pick me up, who's one of the guys for the logistics company, giving him a hug and just bursting into tears and-

LA: Just having that human-

Preet: Yeah.

LA: Human touch.

Preet: And I remember saying it was so hard over and over again.

LA: It must have been weird to be surrounded by people.

Preet: Yeah, so it was three people there to pick me up. And I was helped with everything, like literally bending down to take my skis off. Someone was there to help me get my jacket on, and then they had their tents up. So I then went and sat in Rob's tent and he made me a hot chocolate because they'd asked me a few days on the satellite phone what I wanted, and basically I was starving. I was like, carbs.

LA: Give me a burger.

Preet: A cheese and Slummy sandwich, cans of Coke, Snickers. So he was just feeding me. He gave me pain relief, which was one of the things I wanted. And so I don't know how long we sat for, but it must've been maybe an hour, maybe a bit more, and we got in the Twin Otter, the small plane. And I remember it stopped to refuel a place, and at that place there's a little port cabin where there's a toilet where you can sit on a seat. And obviously I haven't sat down to get a toilet for 70 days and I needed to go, but my exhaustion was more that I didn't want to leave the warm plane, so I just stayed in.

LA: This has flashed by. I think we both approve of our choices.

SK: Yeah.

LA: We seem to be excited about lots of the same things, and so Stephanie, I do want to know. Looking ahead to 2025, a year that I can't quite believe I'm saying out loud, what's your vision for the podcast? What do you want to do? What are you excited about?

SK: Wow. I mean, speaking of series, I want to do another series. I think we did a great, I'm proud of our solo travel series and I think that we could probably learn from it and also do even more interesting series. I love when I hear you come alive with a guest, and especially when it's a conversation like this and finding more ways that we can have you in the room with a person talking about a real experience, so yeah. What's your vision? What do you want?

LA: All of that, we're aligned. I mean, I think that on location is so exciting to me. And of course, one of the most important parts of the mission is to share stories from our Women Who Travel community, and if you have your own story to share, get in touch with us. Follow us on Instagram, get in the comments, join the Women Who Travel Facebook group, which is a huge community unto itself and is filled with solo travel tips, among other things. If you want to hear an episode again and get inspired, you can go to your preferred podcast platform and tune in, leave us a review, tell us what you want to hear in 2025. You contribute to this podcast as much as we do and we want to hear from you. Please get in touch with us with your own travel stories. You can email us at womenwhotravel@CNTraveler.com.

Thank you for listening to Women Who Travel, I'm LA, and you can find me on Instagram @LaleHannah. Our engineers are Jake Lummus, James Yost, Vince Fairchild, and Pran Bandi. The show is mixed by Amar Lal at Macrosound. Jude Kampfner of Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. Stephanie Kariuki is our Executive Producer, and Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's Head of Global Audio.

Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler


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