Episode 211: Travel, Tourism, and Home in a “Post-Pandemic” World with Chris Christou

In this episode, Kimberly and Chris dive deep into the impact of travel on their lives and the consequences of tourism in places they call home. As two world travelers, who have each spent a decade living abroad, Kimberly and Chris consider what they have learned about home, hospitality, and culture from places far from the lands they were raised. They discuss how the pandemic impacted travel to where Chris resides in Mexico, one of two countries that kept its borders open? How Air BnB’s, second homes, and passive income have changed the real estate landscape for future generations? They wonder what it would look like to re-imagine the set of relationships and responsibilities one has if they “belong” to their neighborhood? They ask what if we imagined both our “leisure” and our “work” as connected to the place we live? And how does the question of confinement to home, so relevant to new mothers, show up in the “post-pandemic” summer of 2024?

 

Bio

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

 

What You’ll Hear

• Being at home in other places
• Are places “back to normal”?
• Are we “post-pandemic”?
• Mexico as an escape route for coping with Covid culture
• How is a sense of home impacted by tourism?
• What does it mean to be forced to stay at home and the response is to get as far away as fast as possible?
• Wanderlust - wanting to be everywhere and by virtue of that not wanting to be anywhere
• How much of tourism an unwillingness to be where one is?
• What does it mean to consider what the place you call home needs? And what you can offer that place?
• I don’t think you can be responsible to a place if you’re elsewhere
• The history of mobility in north American Culture
• How to re-neighbor
• Seeing places as temporary makes them disposable
• How the pandemic led to lots of profit-driven real estate aquisitions
• The impact of Air Bnbs in tourist destinations
• Do we make our homes for ourselves or for our parents and others we want to welcome people
• How do locals become second class servants or mascot for Instagram world views?
• Dehumanization is a two way street in the tourist industry
• Leaving one expensive city for a less expensive city you bring the landlords with you.
• The un-sustainability of second homes
• Hospitality is complex - learning a culture to invoke hospitality with the stranger
• How difficult staying at home is for a new mother?
• Feeling confined when trying to make home with a baby
• Having family in and of two cultures
• Travel vegans vs. living it up

Resources

https://www.chrischristou.net/