Chris Arnade on Walking Cities

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm chatting live and in person with Chris Arnotti. Chris has a long, interesting, and varied history. He started with a PhD in particle physics from Johns Hopkins, was then a bond trader on Wall Street for about 20 years, had a life course shift around 2011 where he started traveling around lower-income America, and he became quite famous for what you might call photojournalism. Journalism, his writings about lower-income America and also Trump voters. He published a very well-known book called Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. He is now, I would say, obsessed in the good sense with a new project, which is walking both walkable and non-walkable cities throughout the world. And he writes a Substack about his walking and his travels. Chris, welcome.

Thank you for having me.

If you had to live in either Beijing or Shanghai for 10 full years, which one would you pick and why?

You know, I thought I was actually thinking about that a lot on the airplane. I couldn't come up with an answer. I think Beijing ultimately because there is just more there. Shanghai I had a better experience in.

I think the reason I liked Shanghai more initially was just because of my location. I had a good location. I was right next to People's Park and I kind of had a good 4 or 5 days. Beijing grew on me with time though. I just thought there was just more there.

I think I would much prefer Beijing. It feels more intellectual and there's a greater variety of Chinese foods there.

Yeah. You know, uh, the food part, I didn't do as much time as I usually, usually do in a city when I was in both Shanghai and Beijing.

I usually try to spend at least 10 days in a place. And in both cases, cuz of visa constraints, I was there for 6 or less days. But the food thing to me was interesting was I felt very much like What I had hoped to find in China, I didn't find, which was I thought I was going to have like a Taipei-like experience where there was just going to be a variety of different foods all over the place on the streets.

And I didn't.

I ended up finding that it was just, I was eating in mall food courts.

It felt very similar. Like there was a lot of diversity there, but it felt very hard to choose because there was just all crammed together in these small food courts.

If you had to explain the fundamental difference between the residents of the two places in as small a number of dimensions as possible. How would you explain it to an outsider?

In those two?

Beijing versus Shanghai.

I don't have a good answer to that one because I don't feel like I know it well, either of them well enough.

How would you do it?

Shanghai, what is status is money and conspicuous consumption. In Beijing, what is status is power. In a funny way, that intersects with making the city more intellectual, having better bookstores, and having ties to more of China. Shanghai is more tied to the outside world, which is maybe better for the city, but for me makes it less interesting.

You know, it was interesting because I didn't get as much of a sense of those places as you did.

I felt the overwhelming feature to me, and what kind of frustrated me in some ways, was how similar Shanghai and Beijing were, that they were kind of inscrutable to me at the level I do things.

And a lot of that to me, you know, maybe the way I approach kind of learning, which is just simply walk.

15 miles and they're not particularly walkable cities.

And that's one of the things I've come to have to deal with in my project is I walk to learn, but some places that's not the actual right approach.

And in both cases, the analogy I use, 'cause I walk 15 miles in Beijing or 15 miles in Shanghai, and I kept on saying that it felt like I was in one of those cheap cartoons where the background kept repeating.— it was kind of frustrating to me in the sense of I didn't feel like I got a sense of either place, at least at the granular level, like I usually do from when I do what I do.

And I don't know if that was kind of intentional. Is that's what kind of how the cities are designed to kind of like, you know, to be uniform, to kind of to remove any differences.

I think parts of Beijing are designed to discourage protests and demonstrations, and that correlates with being hard to walk. It doesn't explain the whole pattern.

I mean, I think that there's a lot, you know,— I was thinking in particular of that approach when I've been reading James C.

Scott, who writes a lot about kind of the idea of kind of, you know, control, regulation as control or top-down regulation as control.

And that's certainly the case in Beijing where you, like, you know, gone are the small winding dens of kind of small neighborhoods because those are hard to control. They're much easier if you replace them by, you know, 50-story towers with a mall next to it.

And surveillance.

Yeah. And surveillance. What struck me when I was in Beijing is not so much the difference between Beijing and Shanghai, but how top-down regulation is often designed very intentionally for control. Beijing in particular feels that way.

And that's kind of what frustrated me initially was I had just kind of said, because I kind of do all these kind of something seat of the pants, I just do.

So I landed and I said, "I'll just walk to Tiananmen Square." Well, you just can't do that. You know, I did that once.

I actually— it wasn't easy.

I got there even though I didn't— I had found out along the way that you had to— I went through 6 security checks or 5 security checks, and I was supposed to have had a QR code where I'd signed up for it, and I didn't. I just kind of like walked by. I just, you know, so I kind of came up with what I wrote about was there being kind of what I call a totalitarian anarchy, which is there— I think they intend to be controlling, but they just don't pull it off very well. They're just too incompetent to pull it off.

Some of that's a bit deliberate, though. I think they feel that if people people have a sense of partial freedom. They can control them better along the dimensions they want to, and they're probably correct.

I mean, that's kind of what I thought about with the firewall, right?

Which is, you know, everybody has a VPN and everybody knows everybody has a VPN or so that there really isn't a firewall.

But it's kind of like, it's kind of like, you know, the idea that you regulate people by making sure the people who are the most ignorant can't possibly deal, you know, like the people who don't have enough get You can't get enough together to figure out how to get around it.

Don't get around it.

And the VPN is also a way to monitor them, right?

Yes, exactly.

Yeah. You can't actually trust the VPN supplier.

I don't like to be conspiratorial because I think that's often wrong, but I did notice my VPN kind of clunked out at very odd moments. Like I was there during the actual election.

I was in the US election.

Yeah. When I was following it, I noticed that my VPN went out at very inopportune times.

Like when, you know, when there was kind of stuff going on that, probably wouldn't have been fun to watch or wasn't convenient.

So, you know, so you think they actually—

the loosey-goosey approach is actually intentional?

I'm not sure they have the option of cracking down entirely, but I think they have come to terms with the partial controls and they found that it's still working. And until it starts not working, don't try too hard to fix it.

What do you think ultimately is driving them, though? Like, what is their goal here?

Well, when you say them, if you mean the CCP, The inner committee of the CCP, I think it is to make China, quote unquote, a great nation again, to drive the United States out of Asia, to have much of the world kowtow to China, to have China be rich, never democratic, and stable. Now, all that together is probably impossible, but it's not a crazy set of goals. They're not my goals.

I mean, what struck me was, and one of the things I wrote about on both the pieces was I just kept thinking of them as a guardian class, kind of incorporating Plato's Republic.

They really do think of themselves as the guardian class whose goal it is to build the best society.

I just don't know what they're working towards because if they're working towards kind of a fully material, increasing material wealth, they're doing that, they're doing well.

But if the endpoint is someplace like Korea, Korea is famously not particularly happy.

Yes. I don't think that's their goal, but I think they want China to be happy enough I don't think they're not altruists. I just think it's a very nationalistic view of altruism where Chinese lexically come before other considerations and anyone who's ethnic Chinese ultimately falls under their purview, which is also different than say an American view.

I mean, I'm going back again 'cause I find it so fascinating because I don't understand it to the well, to the degree I feel like I understand other places. Like other places I come away with a pretty, pretty quick sense of describing a town in some ways, but both Beijing and Shanghai just felt a little bit, and I don't know, maybe it's the scale, because again, they're not really smart places to walk.

Right. I find it's oddly like America in a number of ways. I think you've written about this too. Yeah. Inward-looking, large, self-confident, business-oriented, pretty friendly, pragmatic. But I think a lot of the CCC plan is improvised rather than planned. So something like the fertility crisis, I think they were not expecting. Really, no one was. They don't know what to do. They'll try different things. And the larger the scale at which you operate, the more the so-called plan just becomes improvisation.

And again, it's also, it's the problem that comes with top-down management, which is sometimes you just get it wrong.

Yeah. Long-term, you just get it wrong.

And I think they're deathly afraid of disorder and civil war given their history in a way we are not.

But to me, what's interesting about it is how explicit the top-down organization is at the built level as well as at the cultural level.

Everything is micromanaged, but again, with a loosey-goosey approach to give a little bit of wiggle room. But the image I'll always have of at least Shanghai, one of the initial images, Asia has very rambunctious cities and a lot of— the kind of what I like about Asian cities is they have kind of an organic street life, kind of low regulatory organic street life. That is gone in China. And so I, you know, I had to have gone from like Taipei to Shanghai to see that, that lack of organic street life is intentional. And like, they've like, we don't like this, you know? And so they, there was this neighborhood, I was walking through Shanghai where they had Bought up the entire neighborhood, had been an old neighborhood, and it was going to be slated for development into kind of a business park style living.

And they had replaced where there had been stores with murals of store life.

Like, you know, it was like, it's just kind of too, too spot on for what they're doing, which is replacing, taking, removing actual organic street life and replacing it with cartoon images of it.

You should try Kunming, by the way, if you haven't been there. It still has organic street life, as does much of Western China. It's more fun. It feels less authoritarian.

I'm going to Xi'an next trip.

That also has organic street life.

It's a bit harder. The further west you go, the harder it is to get a visa.

Yes, but you should be able to get to Kunming without problems. And Xi'an, try the cherries. They're fantastic. Now, which is more interesting in a major Chinese city, a McDonald's or a KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken?

Everybody told me KFC and I stuck with McDonald's because of my past history with McDonald's. But what struck me about Beijing and China, both in cases was it's the one time on my trips. I famously have become kind of online the McDonald's guy because I read a lot about McDonald's in the US and the role of McDonald's in the US. And whenever I go overseas, people expect me to use McDonald's, but I just don't use them because people don't use them. There's alternatives in Japan at 7-Elevens and izakayas and other countries as other forms of kind of what I would say kind of third spaces, organic third spaces.

In Beijing, it was McDonald's. And it was interesting.

It served the same role it does in the US for very different reasons, which is in the US, McDonald's is the place people go because it's the one function—

because it's functional relative to the neighborhood. McDonald's in Beijing, people go because it's dysfunctional relative to the neighborhood in terms of regulatory rate. You just can go and relax. People say that I did.

I went to a few KFCs to use a bathroom, but I do not— I don't like fried chicken.

I just did not like it. I don't like fried foods in general, so I didn't really spend time there. I just found myself spending a lot of time in the McDonald's in China. And, you know, I find them to be really wonderful places.

My favorite McDonald's in the world is in Auckland, New Zealand, which is the world's largest Polynesian city. And McDonald's there often serves as the center for Polynesian gatherings, not just Māori, but Cook Islands, Tongans, Fiji.

Yeah, I could see that.

And if you're ever in Auckland, it's Phenomenal McDonald's.

You know, the mixing that takes place in McDonald's is just, you know, is absolutely amazing.

You know, in the US it's absolutely amazing and it's similarly across the world. But again, a lot of other countries have other things that serve that role.

And so where's your favorite McDonald's in the world?

My favorite McDonald's in the world, the one I probably use the most is in LA.

But where in LA?

East LA.

I don't remember the name of the street. A lot of my book was written in it. It's kind of in the Mexican, East LA Mexican neighborhood. Neighborhood.

I forget—

That should be a good one.

The name of the street is on the tip of my tongue.

It's just, you know, there's just an organic life there that is just absolutely wonderful.

And I just learned so much in that, you know, I would—

because when I was in the US doing my project, I would literally just sit in McDonald's at night and type up my notes, you know, and that's where I got so many of my stories would ultimately come from just being in McDonald's for not trying to get stories. And it's funny to look back on that period because You know, when I was doing this project on addiction and poverty, I would talk to people and then I'd meet them in McDonald's and then I would take them outside the McDonald's to photograph them because it just didn't seem photographic, you know, like, but then I was like, wait a second, this, you know, the fact that every, I'm meeting everybody in McDonald's, that's the story. It's just such a great community center for so many people.

Why is Seoul, South Korea possibly your favorite city?

It's got a, it's got a functional dysfunction. It's a little bit more dysfunctional, a little more less uptight than, than Tokyo, but it has a lot of the same positive qualities of, of, of Tokyo, which is this, it's very, it's very safe.

It's very efficient. It's got an amazing food scene.

If you like food, it's very active, but it's a little bit quirkier to me than, than Tokyo.

And I feel like it's a little bit less known and I kind of enjoy that, but also, you know, I just find. When I'm in a place, I like to get into a regular walk and they just have a—

I happen to have a 10-mile walk there I absolutely love.

Like, I just do it every day when I'm there. It's along the revitalized—

it had been an old drainage ditch and they—

it goes underneath subways and it goes underneath interstates and now it's just this beautiful reclaimed 10-mile walk.

What I like there is that the food scene is not Instagrammed to death. So you can find an obscure place that's more or less undiscovered and it can be very good. In almost any neighborhood.

I, the, you know, the, the, someone asked me about the best food and I think if you measure the best food by the kind of the, the median food, like, yeah. Yeah.

You know, I, I actually think Japan is still higher than Korea that way on this.

But they have the worst food also.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, they, they, you can get some really disgusting things there. Disgusting. I, I had a, I had the night before I got on a 15-hour flight, I had chicken sashimi. I, there should, you should not have chicken sashimi. You should not have chicken sashimi.

I've refused. I saw it and I was like, no, I, I didn't.

I had 2 pieces down before I realized what it was. And I'm like, okay, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. But it wasn't good.

Like, it doesn't look good either.

Even for the risk, it wasn't good. Like, you know, I'll take a risk if something tastes good. Also, some of the fried foods Japan, Japanese have is just, just— Koreans have some weird food. Like, you know, one of the things I like about Japan is I can go to the 7-Elevens and get a good sandwich.

Yeah. Very good food.

Sandwiches in the Korean 7-Elevens have a lot of sugar in them. Like sugar when mixed with ham, things like that.

But I actually think Japan has better food than Korea, but I agree with you that the Koreans, the Korean food scene is less understood by the West. And I think it's less precious, but you know, some of the best food I've had in the world is in just small places in Japan that are just, you know, off the beaten track.

Yeah. Now when evaluating cities, how much do you take weather into account? So I've been to Seoul at the end of November, which is not even the worst of the winter. And it was awful. It was truly freezing.

I love cold weather though.

So I was just in Seoul 3 days ago.

Yeah.

And it was, when I got up in the morning, it was 18 degrees and I love that.

So I like cold weather, but I, if you don't like cold weather, don't go to Seoul. Like, um, it can, I mean, the thing is the wind, the winds come off the mountains and it's really cold.

Like when the winds come off, it's, it's just really bitterly cold.

And how much do you count air pollution for? Because that's going to hurt China, right? So yeah, for walking especially.

I actually put together a metric on walkability.

I had, I think, 7, 8 categories and I put climate, climate, climate and crime and pollution are, are, are, are 3 big factors. Like I think people don't forget about like, you know, I, I famously rank relative people, people got on my ass for right for ranking LA relatively high as a walkability.

Oh, I put it near the top.

Yeah. But it's got great weather and if you can deal with some of the distances involved in LA and lack of density, it's just a really wonder. It's got a massive, a fantastic bus system that, you know, part of the part of being able to walk is when choose not to walk, you can just jump on public transportation.

So it's got a ubiquitous bus system that can get you pretty much everywhere. It's got great climate and it's also just, it's just a visually impressive city. It's got, you know, it's got good skies.

It's just like, it's a very enjoyable place to walk and it's got an amazing food scene. It's got a better food scene than almost any place in the US. Sure.

Yeah. So I once walked across São Paulo, which in retrospect was insane. I wouldn't do it today.

Yeah. That's not, that's tough.

It's tough.

Yeah. Do you remember which direction you walked?

No, but it was a very long walk. And then, you know, the murder rate then was much higher, but street problems were much less frequent.

You know, I've always found that I generally, a lot of the locals tell me not to go where I go and I've never had a problem.

I think if you are, I mean, I have zero, you can look, I have zero jewelry on. I never wear jewelry. I dress very simply and I've just never had a problem. I think Latin America is one of the few places, and Latin America, Africa are some of the few places where there are real problems. And you do have to have a little bit of common sense. I walked all over Lima, Peru when I was told not to, and I was fine.

That's okay.

Yeah.

But what's your nomination for the least walkable city?

I mean, Phoenix is pretty bad.

And the rest of the world, where, where, what was, what was the lowest ranked on mine?

I think it's Dakar is your lowest ranked.

Dakar is the lowest.

But I don't find that so bad.

It was partially the heat. And also there was a safety issue, which is it's not actual violence.

It's just the risk of a miscommunication going very badly. When you're in a neighborhood where you're a slum, basically where you're one of the few white people, it's not that I feel threatened by being robbed. I feel threatened that something can be just miscommunication. Like, why are you here? What are you doing here? And so that can spiral out of really control if you don't know, if you don't speak the language.

Dakar was really, really tough.

Kampala was really tough to walk.

Why is that? I've never been there.

Again, these are cities that are not meant to walk. Locals don't walk them, you know? And so people would look at me like I'm crazy.

Like, so, because first of all, you can jump on a hack bus, so why would you walk?

Right.

Or the boda bodas, which are, you just jump on the back of a motorcycle, which I won't do. I did it once and I'm like, I'm not doing this.

This is, this is just a really dumb risk.

Yeah, I wouldn't do that.

Yeah. It's like, it's, I almost got killed in the first time I did it. But they do it. And so consequently, people— there's not much, there's no walking infrastructure. And when you do walk, you're at risk of being hit by a motoboto or like a, or, you know, people will walk outta, outta necessity, but there's just no infrastructure, absolutely none. And then you, you have, you're gonna get hit by a car.

You're gonna get hit by a car or, or a motorcycle.

You just—

Rio for me would be the least walkable. Yeah. It's very dangerous. But on top of that, there are so many, places or walks in. There's mountains, there's tunnels.

Yeah. I mean, I, I have not in this recent project gone to Brazil to walk, partly because when I was a banker, I spent a lot of time in Brazil. And so I don't really want to go back.

I would imagine that São Paulo, just connecting dots, São Paulo is a lot more walkable than, than Rio.

Sure.

Rio is just, there's just no-go zones.

Like it's just literally those are dangerous.

And also you have, you know, The topography of a place does determine its walkability.

Yeah.

Like, you know, and certain cities are just disjoint and it's really just hard to walk.

One of my favorite cities in the world, and I quite enjoyed walking, was Amman, Jordan.

And I would encourage people who listen to this, that it's, it's, it's, you know, people always like what's undiscovered place.

It's relatively really undiscovered place.

And it was safe.

You know, I went into some very quote rough neighborhoods, but that I was, you know, even though I was open about, open to people that I was Jewish.

And that most of the Arab world is quite safe.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Just assalamualaikum. And you know, you know, you're, you're good, but it's 8 hills. Like there are, there are climbs I was taking that I was just, just absurd. Like I'm walking up basically 60 floors of steep flights and then, you know, you're, you feel like a hero and then a 50-year-old, 60-year-old woman comes right past you who's been doing it all the day with like stuff on her back.

I don't know if you've ever been there, but one of my favorite walkable cities was Alexandria, Egypt.

I have not been.

Because you have both the waterfront and streets with interesting buildings. And when I was there, at least it was quite safe. It probably still is.

I also do these long walks where I, like, I walked across England and I walked across Japan, kind of what I, I walk the Rhône Valley and I walk the Rhine Valley, kind of what, you know, 200-mile walks while I'll do over the course of 2 weeks. I've been trying to, that's one of the ones I want to do, which is to walk from basically down part of the Nile, you know, from Alexandria down to, down to Cairo in that region.

Yeah. What's the greatest purely physical problem you have with all your walking?

Heat, usually heat exhaustion.

Yeah.

Because a lot of the interesting places are in very hot parts of the world.

Heat never bothers me. I feel very lucky. Uh, it's cold I hate.

Dehydration and heat are, are my big problems because again, places I find really interesting tend to be in the, near the equator. So I, I don't know, I don't know how old you are, but as I've gotten older, I just can't handle the heat.

63.

Yeah. Okay. So it's, I'm, I'm impressed that you can handle the heat.

And I've lived in Virginia a long time. I think for 5 years I'd never turned on my air conditioner cuz I felt I should get used to it. And I did. When you take the trip as a whole, not just the walk, but the trip, you're not packing very much, right?

That's correct.

What is it you wish you could carry but you can't? It just doesn't work.

You know, I would like a few more night outfits.

You say night outfits, what do you mean to dress up?

I usually have one go-out shirt, so I want to walk in the shirt. After a while that gets a bit raggedy. I feel like, I feel a little bit like— I also, whenever I'm, whenever I'm traveling, I also do attend Mass every, every Sunday wherever I am, and I would like to—

I famously wear only sandals. Another pair of shoes would be nice to feel less less disrespectful when I go to Mass.

So is there anything you bring a double of? Like, I bring a double pair of glasses. I've never needed them.

I bring double— I bring lots of Tide Pods. Those are, those are my secret weapon, Tide Pods. I bring backup computer cords. I bring backup glasses.

I'm trying to think what else I have a double of.

I carry two spare batteries, kind of.

I've never needed a second one, much less the first one, but I always like to know, like, you know, I won't run out of power.

Sometimes I bring spare chargers. For books, you use Kindle or how do you do that?

I always have one physical book and then my Kindle. Mm-hmm. So I, I always keep one physical book because I just prefer reading physical books.

I always bring my Kindle, but try to get by with only physical books.

I mean, I think honestly, I never regret underpacking.

Like I always feel very, I pack remarkably light and I think that's almost to me, if I had one hack to people for traveling, you know, what I would say is when you get home and look at what you brought and see how much you didn't use, you'll find that you didn't use like a third of what you brought.

And you can buy things on the road, you know, like if you run out of stuff, like I can buy that second shirt.

Yeah.

And sometimes I have.

Now I did an episode with Paul Salopek. Do you know who he is?

No.

He's walking around the world.

Literally.

But literally in a—

Yeah, yeah.

Circle isn't exactly the right word, but, and he's had trouble with the war, with Russia, China at first was an issue. This was during pandemic some of the time. Are you ever tempted to do that?

Yeah, you know, the problem is, is I've looked at paths and I've looked at, you know, like I looked at walking across the US multiple times.

I don't know how much you're going to learn the third day in a wheat field.

Like one day wheat fields is good. Like two more days. And you know, the Gobi Desert's the same. Like what am I going to learn the 15th day in the Gobi Desert?

You know?

So this whole project started with this idea of walking around the world, literally. And I started saying, well, Why do I have to— I just cut out the middle parts, the boring parts, and focus on the cities because I like people. I'm focused on culture.

I'm focused on how people operate. And so I like people and I like being around people.

So I generally do not like—

the Woody Allen joke is I'm too with nature.

I kind of get that. I like small doses of it, but what are you going to learn from a forest?

Yeah, I'm the same.

I go to a forest and like, you know, like if I walk from here to Florida, that's a lot of pine forest, man. There's not much to learn there.

What is it you think you learn least well traveling the way you do?

It's interesting as I've so, I used to be a macro trader, a macro type trader. And so I used to be very top-down and I think I've in some senses thrown too much of that away. I think I've gone in too blind without reading. I could do a little bit more background reading. Reading in terms of the political situation.

One of the things I've learned from my project is most people don't talk about politics.

It's because I only kind of talk about what other people want to talk about.

No one talks about politics. Being in Beijing, Shanghai, maybe it's not the best example because people would say, "Well, there's a reason they don't want to talk about it." I don't think that's it.

No, I agree.

Yeah.

Most of the world. Even Idaho.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, 98% of the people aren't political and they don't talk about politics. And so when, you know, I kind of got beat up on social media when people were talking about, oh, oh my God, Trump's going to be elected. That's going to, you know, the world hates us. No, they don't. I've heard more, you know, when that person said that, I was actually in a Kampala bar in Kampala with a person, a woman telling me how much she loved Trump. But that was a rare political conversation. Most people don't talk about politics. And so in that sense, I I could probably do more reading outside of the conversations about politics 'cause I go to a lot of these countries, I don't know what's going on politically because they, people don't talk about it.

What other macro views of the world have you revised due to your walking, visiting, traveling? Obviously particular views about any individual place, but on the whole humanity.

I mean, the biggest change I would say is, you know, I've become religious.

Although, you know, that's not entirely just the walking, but that's just—

But do you think the walking is fed into it?

Yes.

And how is that operated?

You just kind of, I think you, you know, part of it was utilitarian is like, if this works for so many people, like, you know, but also it was, is a little deeper than that, which is an understanding that people are a little bit more complicated than science leads you to believe. And life is a little more complicated. So in that sense, you know, there is something that there is something to what I would call common sense folk wisdom that's just more than something that needs to be explained away with science or eventually we'll move beyond.

I do think there are very human qualities that are—

I am not a relativist. I might have been 30 years ago, kind of believe in kind of cultural relativism. I'm not a relativist. I think there are some cultures that are just better than others.

I agree with that.

I mean, why can't we say that?

And I I think part of, I had started off as a way back when before I found out I was good at math, I started off kind of with the intention of going into anthropology. And I basically, as a freshman, I left it after 3 months because it was just, it was filled with this cultural relativism, which I just thought was absurd. And now I feel more certain of that. But I would say the kind of bigger thing I've been thinking about for the last 2 years is I've been, a year is I really do think I think if you would, I was famously 6 years ago or 7 years, I would say what elites say doesn't matter. Who cares what people are fighting about on Twitter?

But actually, you know.

It does matter.

Yeah.

Elites, and I'll put myself, we as an elite, I'm one, we build cultures, we build societies. So we matter immensely.

And maybe I've gone a little bit too far now where I think all of culture is built by elites. Almost a level of giving excuses to people who aren't elites in terms of their behavior because that's the culture they grow up in. I won't go that far.

I think there is free will and people have agency, but I think CCP is an extreme example of what takes place in almost every culture, which is there is a small group of guardian classes, different definitions in different places, who effectively create culture. And most people are not political and they choose not— the way they choose to live is based not on a lot of decision, it's based on what culture gives them.

Sure, conformity.

Yeah, and so I think in that sense, I think what academics do or what elites do or politicians is immensely important and shapes how societies are built and how they evolve.

Putting aside issues of financial security, How many people do you think should do what you're doing? Is it like, oh, there's only a few of us in the world, or is it some kind of life arb opportunity that say 3% of people actually should be doing if they can?

You know, what's interesting is I'm probably going to take like a 6-month break from what I'm doing because I've leaned too far away from reading books.

Like I kind of, you know, there's book learning and then there's what I call stochastic experimental learning, which is kind of what I'm doing. Like you need both.

And so I think if you only do what I'm doing, you're gonna kind of miss out on a lot of the world.

But why can't you do both though? So I once had a trip to Goa and I mistimed the monsoon and I could hardly go out at all. So I went out 2 or 3 hours a day. That was crushingly sad. I read a lot. In fact, it was still a great trip.

Yeah. Oh no, I mean, I would have to change how I travel, which is part of what it, part of it's just me, which is, people are expecting content every 11 days based on walking.

So, you know, like if I sit around and reading books—

But you can write about that too. You have a post on your recent reading.

Yeah, I mean, I can, but I do think that you have to do a mixture of both.

And I've leaned a little too far into the walking in terms of how many other people can do it.

It's not, you know, it's logistically a hard lifestyle. Like you have to be a certain personality. Like I do not mind waking up in a different bedroom every night. I do.

I quite, you know, this might be just a quirk of my personality, personality, I do not mind 16-hour flights.

I kind of look forward to them. Like, you know, and I don't fly first class, I fly in economy.

Yeah.

So if you don't—

13 hours is my limit. 13 is fine. Past that, it wears.

Yeah, I mean, no, but like it's the time to read, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

I go to the back and, you know, I know my airplanes now. I know exactly where the stewardesses hang out. I go back and I talk to people, you know, I sit in the back. So I actually don't mind long flights. And if you got to have— you have to have a personality that enjoys that. I also don't mind. I like talking to people.

Like, what do you, what is it you learned from stewardesses?

You know, I mean, like speaking of the, you know, just the Faroe Islands example, like I landed at 3 in the morning and she got a friend to drive me to the hotel. So like small things like that. But you know, in general, I just, they're just, they're just interesting people to talk about in terms of like, they tell you about their, where they grew up. They tell you where to go. I often take some of the information back, you know, You know, I use information probably in the way they wouldn't think I use information. Like if they told me go someplace, I may not go there because that signs like it's gonna be crowded and I don't like crowds.

I just like to hear the life stories of people, you know, how they got into the career they got into and what they want out of life and what's their goal here.

Why should more people visit the Faroe Islands?

It's just, you know, I said I'm too with nature, but I give an exemption for Faroes. Gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous.

Like physically, It's the most sublime. It has a sublime beauty that I just can't, you know, that was, I kind of got people who get religious experiences out of nature. It never got old, the beauty. I also think it's just extraordinarily functional. I like functionality.

Great seafood also.

It's different. Although, you know, all the seafood, have you been?

Of course I've been.

How many times have you been?

I've been to a lot of places.

Have you been to, how long were you in Faroé for?

I think 5 days. I'm not sure, but less than a week, but more than just a day or two.

Yeah. It's, it was interesting.

I was planning to be there for 5 days and I canceled my next trip to stay there for 2 weeks.

Yeah. I can imagine that easily.

What I liked most about it was I would just go to the bus depot and get on a bus and just get off somewhere and then walk for 4 or 5 hours. And then, you know, I would make sure that I would get another bus back because of the timetable. You can just go, you can island hop and just walk around.

I like these incredible, you can't even call them towns, but maybe 5 homes in a corner somewhere with the world's best view. And the homes are nice.

What I didn't like about it, I'm terrified of heights. And I remember the first day I got there, I walked, I walked, I walked out of Tórshavn across the island to the other side.

Ride over the, over the mountain there. It was like an 8-mile walk over the, up, up the mountain and down. Part of that walk, there was some kind of cliffs and I was like a little bit scared, but I got through it.

But I'm like, I'll just take the bus back.

That's fine.

The bus was more terrifying than the walk because it would go down to pick up these kids and they lived down at the bottom, like one of those villages with 6 houses.

Oh, I did that. Yeah. Did this once. Yeah.

And the road is a dirt road that's maybe, you know, just a car length wide. And this bus is going around the corners and these— I had to move sides of the bus not to be on the side that was near the looking down the 50. These kids were just like looking down, smiling. I was terrified.

Is Istanbul the world's most walkable city?

I think it's one of them. I would put Tokyo up there. Tokyo wins the walkability award. Istanbul is probably my— it's one of the most walkable cities. If it wasn't for the motor scooters, delivery guys, it's got the weather, it's got the beauty, it's got the diversity.

It's got the biggest thing what I call for walkability is what I call local distribution, meaning you can always—

there's always a shop somewhere.

Yes.

It's also—

I, I don't know if your experience was this. I just get over to the Asia side. That to me is a much more interesting side and get out of the tourist parts. It's just a very city.

It's just a, I mean, it's just a wonderful city, has the history.

But the thing I like about the history there is it hasn't frozen the city.

They just, you know, like on the, on the European side is that famous wall.

I forget the name of the wall that was there, been there to the wall that was eventually breached in like 1453 or whatever, 1456, the northern defense wall. It's still there, remnants of it. And it's just used as a car park.

Like, you know, there's this, there's this 13th century wall that's just used as a car park, which I still think is pretty impressive.

So I like the way history is both, both there, but also not relegated to just kind of a museum-like status.

Is anywhere in India truly properly walkable?

I've not been since a kid.

I canceled this last trip. I was going to go to Mumbai.

I don't know.

I do a lot of Google Street Views before trips, and it looks like part of the reason I canceled my trip, I was going to go in January. I had to cancel for a variety of reasons.

I'll go sometime soon, but it looks like it's gonna be, you know, it looks like it's gonna be hard to walk. I mean, I was able to walk into Jakarta.

I was able to walk in Hanoi. I found both of them to be okay walkability.

Yeah, I agree.

How would you compare it to Jakarta?

Have you been to both?

I've been to both. I've, as many parts of India, Amritsar struck me as the most walkable part of India I visited. The Sikhs are a bit like Mormons of India. India in terms of how they keep the city. It's fairly well maintained. There's pollution issues, there's weather issues, and there's big, you could call pothole, sidewalk pothole issues. So it's tough.

Yeah.

The pothole issue is, I mean, it's awful in Jakarta. It's awful in Hanoi. You just have to look down a lot or else you can just break an ankle.

Right. And then there's somewhere like Gowa, which is fairly well maintained, but it's just not well set up for walking. You need vehicles to get around.

You know, A lot of the developing world, you know, is not intended to be walked. Yes.

Like, yeah. Like it's just—

Quite the contrary.

Like, you know, and, and again, I remember when I was in Hanoi, people become friends with me and they're like, no, no, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take you on a scooter. I'm not gonna— why are you walking? Like, you know, I was like trying to explain what I was doing. They were like, why would you walk? You know, when you can, when you can, when you can go on a moped. Like, you know, and that's, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's probably the right attitude too.

I have the view that people should pick out a place where they're quite sure they don't want to go, and at least subject to some safety constraint, then go to that place.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of my whole strategy in many ways is, I mean, although spectacularly failed with Phoenix, I tried, I tried, I wanted to be a smartass and prove that unwalkable Phoenix was in fact walkable and it did not happen.

It's getting less walkable too, right?

It was, it was, I mean, but again, it's a, no one, no one there walks and no one should walk there. Like they're, they have no intention to be walkable. Like, and that, that's okay.

You know, like at current margins, where is it you think you definitely don't want to go?

Where do I definitely not want to go?

I, again, put aside North Korea or middle of war zones.

I'm kind of burned out on Latin America. I spent so much time there as a, uh, during my banking career.

I've, I generally don't find, you know, I think Peru is, Lima is quietly some of the best food in the world.

Sure. Like absolutely.

Like if I had to, if I had to say where, you know, one of the, one of, to me, one of the dirty secrets is the food you get in a place is not that much better than you can get in the US. And you know, the average person does not eat that much.

Right.

This, the exceptions being France, Japan, Korea, and Italy, I think. And Italy.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Italy is, I'd put up there as well in general.

I get better, I got better Indonesian food in Netherlands than I did in Indonesia by far. Vietnam, I'd also put up there as a place where the food is exceptionally better relative than what you get outside of Vietnam. Latin America just doesn't really interest me in terms of like, ah, you know, I mean, I don't see a lot of variety in the cities.

I'm not particularly into, like, I keep on wanting to go.

I've had this childhood fascination with Suriname. In fact, last night I spent about an hour looking once again at flights to Suriname to Parrot. I can't pronounce the name of the The capital, Para—

I know where you— it's funny, just this morning I was looking up Suriname and thinking of going.

Para—

yes, whatever. It's a P city.

I mean, there are direct flights from actually Netherlands, but like, but there's no direct flight from JFK. You can go to Georgetown, but also just, you know, doing lots of pin drops, looking at possible places to walk. It's just not that interesting. You know, it's kind of spread out.

It's hot.

But the mix of groups is interesting. The food is good when you buy it in the Netherlands.

Yeah. So, I mean, I kind of, this morning I booked my next trip and originally it was going to be Georgetown and then going to, I can't pronounce it, Para.

Yeah.

Suriname.

Suriname. But I just, for whatever reason, the Caribbean just doesn't interest me.

I don't know what it is. It just doesn't seem like there's a lot of cultural depth there.

You know, your listeners can yell at me who are Caribbean. But like.

I will go there. This is on my list.

They're wealthy now.

And I think the interesting thing about Georgetown is they have the oil, so you have the economics side.

They had 40% GDP growth in the prior year.

Got to imagine that's incredible.

Just to look at that for me is interesting.

Yeah. I mean, and Suriname has a spillover of the same thing, or they're getting like 20% growth.

Lower, but still impressive. Yeah.

So I think that would be in Latin America.

That would be interesting.

But in terms of not— yeah, I don't want to go to South Africa.

Either. I have no interest in going to South Africa.

I went to Cape Town last summer. I was surprised how much I liked it.

Okay.

I'm afraid to go elsewhere in the country perhaps, but I mean, I was, I would say consider it. And I walked quite a bit.

I spent 6 months there as a child, so I don't, I just, I don't know.

But that was a very different South Africa also. And there were smaller towns where I quite seriously thought of just moving there for a month In South Africa? Near Cape Town, to be clear, basically Cape Town. Small towns of, I don't know, 40,000 people with fully walkable city squares, perfect weather, amazing food, and prices were maybe one-third of US prices with a much higher standard of living.

I'm trying to think where else I wouldn't go. I don't have much interest in Scandinavia.

I've had good trips there. And Helsinki for walking is one of my favorite cities.

Faroe Islands surprised me.

Me.

Like, I didn't expect to like Faroe Islands, so, you know, there you go.

And for in summertime, it's, uh, I don't mind the heat, but my wife does and they're great.

Have you been to the Orkneys?

Of course.

And?

Incredible.

Okay.

But small. It's not that big.

Because I was thinking of doing an Orkney, Shetland, Faroe trip.

I've never been to Shetland, but Orkneys I'd recommend.

You can do that by boats, all three.

Oh yeah, that would be fun. And in Orkney, to get to the ancient sites in Orkney. I guess you could do it by bus, but a car is useful. And it feels quite Nordic, not Scottish. And that surprised me a bit. I should have known, but—

I mean, very Norwegian, right?

That was my sense. Yeah. Iran I want to go to, but I don't have my hopes up.

You know, in places I want to go that are not particularly easy is basically Russia. I love Russian culture. Absolutely love Russian culture.

I've only been twice.

I was thinking about one of the trips trying to book is Belarus. But again, it's just hard for a lot of reasons. And there are risks, you know? And I don't know if I particularly want to take those risks right now.

But I also know, you know, to the questions of issues of political morality, I would say that again, 98% of the people aren't involved in politics. Like you get to a place and they don't care.

And so it's kind of, it's unfair to condemn a place based on the elite's behavior when 98% of people don't care.

And similarly, the opposite behavior is I find a lot of foreigners are very forgiving of American policy because they understand that the citizens are not necessarily responsible for the behavior of the country.

We're very popular in Vietnam, I found.

Yes. When I was in Vietnam, people kept asking me, readers kept asking me to write about the political, like what about the war?

No one talks about it. Nobody.

Yeah.

Like, and I was right next to a, I remember having, you know, talking to some people right next to a, you know, I was in an outdoor bar right next to a memorial to a Christmas Day bombing we did. And I think whenever we killed like 30 people and there was this, you know, there was this memorial including having a, like a jet fighter, part of the jet fighter from the US jet fighter. No one cared.

You know, why do you like El Paso so much?

The optimism is the American dream.

So I think the American dream is very much alive in the working-class Mexican-American community. And you see that in El Paso. Like you don't have, you know, when I was doing my project on addiction and poverty, El Paso is just fundamentally different. You know, you don't have the despair that you have in places, you know.

And a low crime rate too.

Yeah. Extraordinarily. And, you know, in some senses Mexico acts as the Roach Motel, right?

If you're going to do crime, go over to Juárez. So consequently, there's no crime in El Paso, but it's one of the most optimistic cities in the United States.

It has amazing food, by the way. I think it's walkable and I've walked a lot of it, but I can understand why some people might not see that.

I find just the colorful buildings.

I find the good weather, fantastic weather, by the way. Desert, high desert is always my favorite weather. Great weather.

And again, the optimism, when you look at working-class Mexican Americans versus working-class whites or working-class Blacks in the US, statistically all the things are the same except for issues of deviance, crime, addiction, the Mexicans drink too much.

Generally, it's where someone can come and really feel, and I think a lot of it is literally, it's the slope of the curve, not the height.

They can literally look across over to Juárez and see what what they've gotten, how their life has improved. And that just brings a great deal of optimism.

Looking back on your career as a whole, what were the best things about working on Wall Street?

Smart people.

Smart people.

Yeah.

I've had, you know, particle physics, banking, and then I guess journalism, whatever you want to call it, writing now, punditry. And I have found in general that The friends, the group of people that was the smartest, the people I enjoy talking to the most, and I still enjoy talking to most in terms of being able to have kind of discussions that you can talk about anything and not feel like you're going to offend somebody at a level, were generally bankers.

Not all of them.

They're like, you know, there is a hierarchy in banking, but in general, I think it was a great way to learn about the world at a very top-down approach.

And people make fun of the idea of becoming a specialist in X for one, but that was the great thing about banking is all of a sudden you had to learn about oil for 3 months. You became an expert in oil and then 3 months later you became an expert on palladium or whatever.

And I found that kind of intense continual learning to be very, very enjoyable.

What were the worst things about working there?

It was a very narrow view again, which is why I'm doing what I'm doing now, which was, it was very much, you know, the view from the Ramada.

It's kind of fly in, you know, one of the things I will say is that, you know, I stay away from certain neighborhoods in certain towns and which is generally the wealthy neighborhoods.

They're all the same.

Mm-hmm. Like, you know, like, like they're all variations on a theme. The wealthy neighborhood in Sofia is very similar to—

it's like a little Fifth Avenue, and that's just not interesting.

And that's kind of what bankers do when they look at a place.

You just go— my joke I used to say about— because I did emerging markets fixed income, so we bond trade in Russia, bond trade in Turkey. It's like the entire investor base in the bond market of Turkey could fit into this restaurant, and they often do.

They're all there every night, the same group of people.

So it's just very limited.

Perspective. What's the special role that pigeons played in your career?

Hi, John, for asking that question. A lot, actually. I became fascinated with pigeon keeping when I started this project of documenting addiction.

It came basically through pigeons. I, so during the financial crisis, I would go on these long walks in New York, these 15-mile walks, 60-mile walks, and I became fascinated with the pigeon keepers. Keepers. I would see these flocks of pigeons above the air, and then I started documenting, becoming friends with these pigeon keepers. And they were— it was an old Italian sport brought over to the Bronx and Brooklyn, and now it's mostly a Black and Puerto Rican sport. These guys will find these abandoned buildings and put coops up there and just keep pigeons in there.

I find them to be extraordinarily beautiful. I think it's an art form.

They, they call it a sport, but there's really no goal to it.

Like, you're not racing, it's just, it's husbandry, animal husbandry. You know, like, you just keep pretty pigeons, and then every day fly them. And I found it to be a really wonderful hobby. So I started going all around New York, becoming part of this documenting pigeon keepers. That brought me to Hunt's Point, which started me on my addiction project.

How about snapping turtles?

I have two snapping turtles, Reginald and No Name, that are in my pond at home. And so for every, for the last 8 years, when, when the summer comes, they come out and I feed them every And I, I find it really fascinating that these two animals, these two creatures, one of which is probably 40 years old, will live underneath the ice. My pond's frozen right now. We'll be underneath the ice for 6, 7 months, and then they know when to come and where to come to get hot dogs every, at the same time every year, which I think is pretty, pretty amazing instinctive skill.

What's the best thing about writing Substack? Um, and tell us the full name of your Substack and how to connect to it.

Chris Arnotti Walks the World.

I would just Google Chris Arnotti walks the world, the freedom to basically do this, you know, like I can't believe people are, I'm being paid not tons, but enough to literally walk around the world.

Like, you know, it's, it's kind of the perfect job for me. I don't think you could do that without, you know, there's, there's a, I forgot who it was who wrote about back in the, about the '60s or '70s, someone who related to the Grateful Dead wrote about the concept that you you could, if you just, if you just have 2,000 fans on anything, you could, you could, I forgot who it was, who, who had that.

Is it Kevin Kelly or?

I believe that's, it was.

No, Stewart Brand, I think.

Who, who come up with the concept. All you need is 2,000 people.

That's right. And, or sometimes one.

Yeah. You know, and that's pretty amazing. Like, you know, there's, you know, there's 5 billion people in the world. That's like, you don't need that many people.

But it's hard to get, —right?

It is, but it's not a high— it's not a high barrier. So it's, you know, it's, it's, it's really a niche culture because I have a niche thing, you know, and all you need is 2,000 people. So I really find kind of the Substack model of allowing people to build a life based on just finding 2,000 people who appreciate what they do, or 1,000, that's a really, that's a really liberating, you know, notion because, you know, In a big world, you can usually find 1,500 people who have, if you have a unique enough interest.

And do you think you'll turn your Substack into a book or something else or? Why? So there's no plan per se?

No, like why would you do, like I don't understand.

I mean, I don't really understand books like in the sense of like.

But you wanna read more of them, right?

I mean, I like, I'm glad people wrote books in the past, but like, you know, like I think in many cases, kind of a weekly essay is, or biweekly essay, or is, is kind of the perfect, at least for me, is a perfect way to kind of communicate.

Do you use AI at all when you travel?

I do not. I'm starting to use it now as a co— I, I take that back. It's very good for travel. I started using it as a copy editor, but you, why, what do you, what do you use it for, for traveling?

If I'm just arriving in a city, I will have guidebooks, but I'll ask GPT or Claude What should I see in the city? And I'll tell it what I'm interested in. It's better than any guidebook. Really? It is.

So what do you, so when you land in the city, what do you tell, we'll say you were going to Xi'an, what would you do?

I would say I'm interested in Chinese history, art, culture, and food. So you're a museum guy. I'm a museum guy. And I've been to Xi'an and, you know, but so you, before, you go through museum.

That's right. So I do exactly the opposite. I've never been, I don't, the only museums I go to is military history museums. 'Cause I, they're basically, those are great too.

They're, they're histories of propaganda, which I love.

The one in Tokyo is incredible. Like, they're almost histories of histories. They're almost museums of museums at this point. So you go through the museums.

But in China, there are not many good ones to see. But in Xi'an, by far the best thing to see is in a museum. You cannot not go to the museum to see the Terracotta Warriors, right?

So I don't want to, you know, what do you get out of a museum?

I love the visual arts. Oh, okay. But— So I see what's in it.

But to see it in per—

But it's elites building a narrative.

Okay, okay.

If you're interested in that.

What can you get out of that that you can't get out of that from a book? So I guess—

The color plates are not very good compared to the actual paintings.

So to me, I'm kind of asking what was the Walter Benjamin question, like the age of mechanical reproduction.

Yeah, the reproductions are terrible. But in the book, you don't really see the process of defining the history and the narrative and how people respond to it.

So did you, you've been to the Hagia Sophia?

Yeah, sure.

Did you get something out of it? Of course. What'd you get out of it?

The visual splendor of it, which cannot be captured in a photograph.

So the aura. Right, aura. Okay, the aura. Yeah. And that helped you understand it better?

I don't know if understand is the word. I enjoyed it. I felt inspired. I shared it with other people who were there.

Yeah. In some senses, I kind of more the, I think you have a reputation of being something of a libertarian kind of like, materialist. Is that fair? Oh, I don't know what that means. No, but, but I'm broadly libertarian. Yeah, but no, but like I, I'm almost kind of, you're almost more romantic about it than I am here. Oh, much more. Of course. And whereas I find the museums to be kind of like, eh.

And a thing you can do with AI is you can take a photo of any picture in the museum or any bird, any plant, any building and get the history and ask it all the questions you want. And that guidebooks cannot do, and that's phenomenal.

I mean, again, I love that.

And it's free. I mean, at the margin, it's free. You have to pay some subscription, but it's not much. So what do you think you'll do next?

I'm going to do this for another few years, and then I don't know.

Like, I didn't know I was going to do this, you know what I mean?

This, how did it come about that you did this? What was the moment of? Realization or decision? Life was stressful.

I found I always walked.

When I'm at home, I walk.

I have a standard 10-mile daily walk that I do, which is very different from my learning walk. It's therapeutic. Around COVID, when COVID happened, I looked at actuarial tables and I said, "Oh, I'm a little bit overweight.

That's not good." And so I started walking 10 miles every day and I really enjoyed it.

And then I started saying, "Well, I should just, you know, I should—" I'll—

when I was in Brooklyn, I used to—

I walked the entire length of the New York subway system above ground. And I've always been into walking. And I just realized, hey, I can just—

I can, you know, I think I was looking at some table that like what, about 1.5 billion people live in, live in massive cities that we really don't know the names.

Like, you know, these big sprawling Jakartas.

I'm like, I would like to see that. Like, you know, that's where— how— that's the normal experience for most people. And so I just started, I booked a trip to Jakarta and just started walking Jakarta.

Listeners, I love Chris's Substack. It's Walking the World. Chris's book I can recommend as well. Chris, thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler Cowen. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm @TylerCowen and the show is @CowenConvoes. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.