I came across a few articles over the last few weeks that piqued my curiosity. From exploring the sun, the Drake Passage, people missing their cruise, eradicating diseases and the Panama Canal, I hope you enjoy this dive into the different ways we as travelers can be invested in what’s going on around the world.

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Salutations and shit, folks. Welcome, welcome, welcome to this year's first episode of Travel and Shit, where I, your host, D. Carrie, have an experiential conversation about the nuanced ways that travel intersects with regular life. I hope that you have all had a beautiful, warm, safe, and healthy Christmas. Hanukkah.

going for quite some time with the podcast. And I hope you join me along the way. Honestly, that is where these episodes come from. I randomly see something that makes me curious. and sometimes I dive a little bit deeper. I personally, if you don't know this about me, I can make anything about travel. And so I tend to see, the dots connected quite easily. And over the past couple of weeks, I came across a couple of articles.

that I wanted to share with you guys. So to start the year off, we're going to do a little bit of current events. Now I personally have migrated over to Blue Sky. I'm not active on Twitter anymore. My handles there are the same, so it's just Travel and Shit podcast. I think it's .bluesky, however they do that. And I want to say also like Dcary or underscore Dcary.

It's in the description box. Also in the description box is a link to the articles that I will be referencing for this episode. So to dive right in, let's start with space. So I came across, and these, I found all these articles on Blue Sky. They are all from CNN, NBC, CNN, NPR. I want to say one is from the New Yorker Curbed.

Well, I'll note it when I mentioned the authors of the articles, but the first one is titled On Christmas Eve, NASA's Parker Solar Probe got closer than ever to the storm. Now, this one is a TED radio hour. So it's a longer podcast. And then I guess they truncated it into a blog or I guess a written article. And this was by now.

forgive me with these names, I'm going to do my best. This is by Manoush Zomorodi, Katie Montalione, Harsha Nahada, and Sanaz Meshkampur. And there is also the ability to listen to this as a TED Radio Hour, which is a podcast that I actually subscribe to.

and I scrolled past it earlier, I think yesterday morning, but then took a pivot to Criminal. I love Criminal. That is another podcast. I feel like it's from the serial umbrella or it might actually be like a tent. I really don't know, but Criminal is a new favorite podcast. I've been following them and subscribed to them for years and just never really tapped in. But it's basically like not true crime, like it's true crime, like crime, like travel and shit.

how I just have random nuanced conversations about travel, but that may not necessarily seem. It's not about the destinations. Criminal is episodes about something that happened either illegally, criminally, somehow referencing the legal system. They are incredible stories. The episodes are generally less than an hour. Some of them are a little bit more. Y'all, they are so good. There was one about this drug ring on like these

white fraternities that were selling, what are those pills? I'm about to say Zyrtec, not Xyrtec. Maybe Xanax, I don't know, like a prescription pill, like they had a counterfeit ring going, one kid died. Then there was another kid that was selling coke, wild. And there was actually a, it's referenced, or guess referencing, but there's a book about the shit too. Incredible episode. So many good ones. So that is definitely a podcast that I would recommend.

But Ted Radio Hour also has great programming. I, along with my partner, we listen to NPR in the car. Like I enjoy it. First of all, they also have really good sound design in terms of their musical selection. They've got great tunes, great tunes. But to the point, NASA's solar probe, Parker's solar probe, so...

I love everything Celestial, I love stars. I'm not going to be reading the articles to y'all. I'm leaving the links in the description box, giving you a gross overview, if you will. What is so interesting is, wait, I had actually sat and highlighted all of this and it did not update, which I'm very disappointed about, but let's get to, okay, so on December 24th.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe will get closer to the sun than any human made object ever has before. Wild. Like the sun is a star. The sun is what keeps us VFOK alive on this planet. Like the sun, big important, right? And in terms of research and information, there is just so much that we can learn from the sun, apparently. That's not what my degree focused on. However, it's something that I've always kind of been curious about. And I personally,

the solar system and we've got a device that's like doing its own rotations around it. Wild. It's actually also self, what do call it, like self-guided. Like it has to be autonomous. it's, this was wildly interesting to me and I didn't know necessarily if it was going to be interesting. And that is my point about leading into curiosity.

I was so glad that I clicked on this because as I was reading through it, it was like, no, like this is a big fucking deal. I don't understand what all we're exactly going to learn from it. But this is wildly fucking interesting. And as a little aside, if any of these topics are interesting to you as well, shoot me an email, dcarrie at travelandshippodcast.com, because I'm hoping to do like more of a deep dive on the majority of these topics. Like they're really interesting.

It became the first space spacecraft to enter the sun's atmosphere, known as the Corona, about 6.5 million miles from the sun's surface. Crazy. Every three months, it completes a full revolution around the sun, gradually getting closer to the sun. This year on Christmas Eve, is expected to, and it did, get approximately 3.9 million miles from the sun's surface while traveling about 430,000

miles an hour. What is so interesting to me is then we're gonna scroll down, scroll down, scroll down. here are my highlights. So they actually had to find like the right materials to, it's about the size of a small car, which also that's pretty small. I guess you would think you would want it to be kind of small just because that's, I don't know.

I just think that that kind of makes sense, right? You don't want anything too big, because I feel like that's more ways for something to go wrong, but what do I know? But it took me a while to figure out the appropriate materials, because what do you send to the sun? It's the sun. And y'all, like, we're wildly far from the sun, and we already get burned. You understand what saying? Like, we're on the planet. This is like in the sun's ass. So this is, I'm very excited about this. I hope you can tell. So.

What is interesting about the way it's designed, here's a quote from the article, the heat shield surrounding the probe reflects light, absorbs heat and is cooled by a network of water-filled pipes. And I thought it was interesting that in the article they were saying how the, I guess, engineers tried so many different liquids to see like what would be appropriate to like cool the surface and make sure that the radiators were functioning and working. And it's just regular H2 the fuck O.

2000, maybe 13, like when I put something in, I actually had some peer reviewed articles that came up on the first page. there was more scholarly searching. Like I feel like Google has drastically decreased. And that's why it grinds my fucking gears when somebody says Google it or just look it up, do your own research.

That's not acceptable. Especially, especially if you are a learned person. Like if you are, what's the word, not a professional, but like an expert on a topic, I feel like you're more likely or less likely to tell somebody to do your own research or to Google it because you understand how trash the research or the information that Google is going to pump out is going to be. I've heard countless stories of people saying that.

When they Google something, the top answer that AI comes up with is absolutely fucking wrong or that it's like trash, incomplete. So this kind of shit, going to the sun, doing actual useful research, this is what I think AI should be doing. This is the kind of technology I would rather hear more about. But that's me. That's D. This is a me thing and y'all are free to think what you want. So that was incredible to me. It has to be.

autonomous because there's nobody there to go up there and fix it. If there's a problem, it's got a problem solve on its own. And that's what I really, really, and truly think. Like technology doing things on its own should be doing on their own, not like down here with us. Cause like we're that collateral kind of damage when they take over. Anyway, so that is wild to me. And so where's the part about the information? this is what they're actually doing.

Ro Wafi is the last name. He says, or they say, the data we are getting from it, it's so loaded with knowledge, with new things that we need to investigate, that it's going to take us decades from now to look into it.

I am, this is something that I would personally like to follow. Like I would love like a Google alert for updates as to what are we learning from the sun? Because ultimately like the planet, the way humans are doing with it, we're doing ourselves a disservice. Climate change is a truly large issue and best case scenario, we can learn something about the sun and figure out after we kill this planet, like where we might be able to exist someplace else.

Or we may be able to figure out a way that we can, I won't say like reverse the damage, but like mitigate the damage that we've done or just, there's so much that can be learned from this. And I just think it is incredible. And so they were saying that the goal of the data is to provide some insight into some of the sun's mysteries, like how to mitigate the impact of geomagnetic solar storms, which often disrupt life on earth.

by knocking out important communication, GPS satellites and the such. So again, like we wouldn't have life here without the sun. So knowing more about the sun is completely beneficial to us. So that's the first article that I was so tickled that I actually clicked on and was like, yeah, this is wild. And so we've never been this close to the sun. Best case scenario, we're gonna get even closer. And I don't know.

how close we could possibly get before it stops sending back information. exciting. So this next one, y'all, it's giving telenovela. It's a long read. However, absolutely fucking worth it. Might be a long read because I was fake working and I actually like reading it at work. So if you're just sitting and reading it through, maybe not that long, but I was also at work when I was reading it. But heads up, I had to Google.

because when I clicked it initially, I think it was like a free gift article that somebody had posted. I don't know if that timed out, but when I went back to like kind of review it and go over it or just to be able to have the link, I realized that I couldn't access it anymore. So I Googled or asked YouTube like how to access or bypass a paywall. And so you can go to archive.ph. There's a little search bar. You click the link, you copy the link.

of the article that you want to bypass the paywall on and they do the work for you. So try that if you can access it. episode, this article is by Bridget Reid from the New Yorker Curved. I guess the New Yorker has an article called Curved and yeah. So I already have my own personal qualms about cruises.

I think they are large Petri dishes. I personally would rather fly to a destination that I'm interested in so that I've got my own personal autonomy. can come and go as I please and I'm not worried about being back on time. However, I recently, I think I mentioned it in a couple of episodes ago, my cousin is planning a cruise for his wedding.

rush for me to like go to. But had I had the option, would like to see, right? But cruises don't really do it for me, but it was like one of those things where I kind of felt like, all right, don't yuck it until you try it, right? So I'm not going to completely shit on cruises, but baby, after reading this article, I wonder why y'all even bother. So the title of this is, They Missed Their Cruise Ship. That Was Only The Beginning.

Nine stranded passengers made a mad dash across Africa to meet back up with their boat.

After reading all of this, could never, so spoiler, most of them was talking about, oh yeah, it is what it is, I can't wait to go on another cruise. A bitch, what? If I went through all of this, you couldn't put me on another cruise. Absolutely the fuck not. This shit was fucking nuts. there were, and what I really appreciated about the article also, shout out to Bridget Reid, girl, you did.

or I don't know if you identify as a woman, girl, you, and I mean like gender inclusive girl, respectfully, you did a phenomenal job with this because they also gave a lot of information about cruises. What is it called? Like force majeure, like act of God. And then also cruises tend to be, like they're businesses.

corporate, if you will, they tend to be incorporated in countries and primarily, I wanna say operate out of the Americas, it seems, but they're incorporated in countries where it's very laissez-faire. They get away with so fucking much. They have it set up, so it's kinda like everything is on you. I think you have to sign a cruise contract.

There's no real, also you're on open water for most of that shit. who is reporting the number of deaths? Who is reporting the number of injuries? I think at one point, I don't know if it was in this article or if I had heard it separately, I think at the time like 20 people had gone overboard and it's just like, well, how long do they have to wait before they decide, can't find you, gotta go? Like what protocol is there to dictate how extensively they look for you?

medical conditions, what are their responsibilities to you in the occurrence of some type of medical emergency or outbreak? Y'all, they got it. It's a business, it's a corporation. They are always going to win. It's like HR at your fucking job. They don't give a shit about you. It's all about the company. And this was such a wild article. So while they did a great job of following the people,

And then these people ended up going, I think on like Good Morning America at some point. And most people were just so like, sorry, that's a you thing. We don't give a fuck that you're like stranded on like the second smallest country. They were stranded off of, let me find that, Sao Tome. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but it is an island 190 miles off of the coast of West Africa. It was a group of eight, six Americans and two Australians.

plot twist, they ended up finding another woman who suffered a seizure and was like not even completely in charge of her capacities. They were kind of like, all right, yeah, we're going to go. But then they ended up finding this other woman that was like stranded from the cruise. okay, running it back just to give you a, how does it start? They ended up booking a tour, not through the cruise because as everybody knows, there's air quotes here.

Even I know and I had never been on a cruise, but when you book through the cruise, if for whatever reason you are late, that ship will wait for you. But if you do not book your excursion with the cruise, then you up shit's creek. There's no obligation for them to wait for you. They're not going to. So these people ended up having like a vehicle malfunction. They ship broke down and so they had to wait.

for the company to send another car and then to drive them back to the shore or to the port so that they could try to meet the ship. They had missed their all aboard time apparently by like an hour. They got there, they were relieved again, air quotes, to see that the ship had like been anchored a couple of miles off of the coast. But now they had to figure out how to get to the ship.

So they ended up speaking to whomever was on land. They got the Coast Guard that was gonna ferry them out there. But then it's just like, all right, so one lady was on a motorized scooter. Now this was when there were just the eight Americans because that ninth American that was mentioned or the ninth passenger, if you will, that was mentioned in the title wasn't even part of this initial group of eight people. So Shorty was about to be left had these people actually gotten permission to board when the Coast Guard.

actually ferried them after charging them to get back on. So, and it was a lady that had a motorized scooter. Apparently they had to like toss her into the boat. Novella, okay? So they got onto the little Coast Guard boat. They brought them all the way out there. One lady was on the phone with Norwegian, and this was a Norwegian cruise.

She was on the phone with like their emergency line and the lady on the phone is telling her yeah The only way we can get in contact with the ship is by email. Okay, shorty. Thank fucking email them So somebody had tried to email them I guess from the Coast Guard boat blah blah blah blah blah turns out the captain said no, they were refused Permission to get back on the boat. So now what so now they going back. This isn't like you're in Mexico and you You know miss like docking in Cozumel

or something, like you're in West Africa and you're in like one of the second smallest countries in Africa. So like the infrastructure is not exactly the same as someplace that is very used to sustaining and accommodating tourists. So here these people are, like I said, they ended up going back to, I guess, a tourism company or they went back to some place.

establishment and after all that, only one person or one couple's credit card was working. So they ended up putting accommodations for all eight or nine of them on this one couple's fucking credit card. Like, excuse me? Like you can't even pay for your room. Baby, you hear me? Stress. Now mind you, this is like a cruise I believe that left.

from like South Africa. This wasn't like, you know, US Virgin Islands. This wasn't Bahamas, Bermuda. This was, let me, wait, let me see. If I can find where it was.

Okay. The trip they were on a brand new 21 day journey from Cape Town to Barcelona with stops in Angola, Cote d'Ivory, Ivory Coast and São Tomé was self selecting for customers who had long graduated from the usual ports of call in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. So there were, what did I say?

Okay, so this group knew that the number one rule of getting to the ship don't be late, because the ships don't wait for their passengers, unless it's common cruise knowledge, if you book an excursion through the company, but the eight were not on a, yeah, and so they weren't on a Norwegian tour, I'd already mentioned that. But thankfully, what I didn't know was that when people miss the boarding, somebody ferries the passports back.

to the people that are being left behind. So that was an interesting plot twist. So this guy thankfully had their passports, but, so then that's another wild thing to me. So like when you board the ship, I guess you give these people your passports so that in the off chance that like something happens, they can get them to you.

But it's like, okay, so now just your passport comes under your medication, your phone chargers aren't there. God forbid, like imagine being on your period and now you don't have like no access to sanitary pads, no napkins or nothing like that, or no tampons or anything like that. Even like, girl, okay. One of these people was a pregnant woman. I think she was a doctor. Another person was a 79 year old with like gastrointestinal issues. So his meds were on the boat. He ended up getting wild sick.

All of your clothes are there everything that you need is on the ship Without you and so these people went on this harrowing journey Across Africa trying to find the ship. There was a point where they ended up making it to another port of call somebody ended up getting Wi-Fi or like a signal went on the Facebook or whatever for the cruise and they learned there that the ship was going to bypass the

that port. So they ended up spending all this money, all this energy, all this time getting to what they thought was going to be the next port of call. And the ship wasn't even going to fucking be there. And so they called Norwegian again, talking about, yo, so what are we going to do? Is it stop? yeah, it's going to stop. There's one that's like, no, they're telling, we're seeing updated live on Facebook about the cruise that it's not going to be there. Baby. These people was stressed and they ended up like I mentioned earlier,

going on like Good Morning America or something like that. And they thought that they were going to get some type of urgency behind their request to get in contact with Norwegian because even if they made it to the portico where the boat was going to be, they still needed express permission apparently from the captain to let them reboard on the boat. And so remember that's email.

And so they had done all of that from jump, but then they hadn't heard back. So now they're still putting all these efforts into trying to get to wherever they think they can meet the boat, but they're still waiting on permission to find out if they'll even be able to get back on. It was wild. And through that whole telling of the story, Bridget held it down. And then there were so many things coming up and out about cruises and how there are no real regulations because these companies are.

incorporated in countries that you have maybe 80, 90 % of cruisers may be American. I'm spitballing on numbers. I don't remember what the specific demographics were, but let's just make the wild assumption that that's true. so you figure like in some types of your travel endeavors, when you go certain places, there are certain protections that you have when you spend your money with certain companies doing certain things that you think would be upheld.

or honored and cruises don't really seem to give a fuck about you. And it is a really, really interesting story. I highly recommend checking this one. Just like, I'm looking like they paid for everybody's hotel. And then it was like, what happens if the next place that you get to, like y'all still gotta eat, right? If there's no running water on the Island, like.

or in the accommodations that you choose, like, what are you supposed to do? What are you gonna eat? What if you have dietary restrictions? Yeah, tap into this one. This was so good. And then remember, I told you, they found another passenger that had had like a medical emergency. She was on a, what do you call it? A crew sponsored trip and she ended up falling or something. And wherever she went to, to get medical attention.

They misdiagnosed her or something like that. One of the ladies that was there, I think she was the doctor that was pregnant or whatever. She ended up like, the lady had her cell phone. Miraculously it worked. I think she got in contact with the woman's daughter and she was just like, wait, she's not talking? She's a chatty fucking Patty. What's going on? Something's wrong. Turns out the lady had a stroke. But it was like, Tap in. It's wild. It was such an interesting read. It's an easy read, it's long.

but it's fucking good, trust me. that one, again, I'm good on the cruises, I am good. So keeping in the theme with ships and the ocean, this one is called, like going to the moon, why is the world's most terrifying, why this is the world's most terrifying ocean crossing? Shout out to our good sis, Julia Buckley, again, sis, gender inclusive.

Don't know how you identify, but this was another really interesting, it was about the Drake Passage. So, it is 600 miles of open sea and some of the roughest conditions on the planet with an equally inhospitable land of snow and ice awaiting you at the end of it, Antarctica. So, this was another really interesting article. This was written for CNN and I, okay, so the Drake Passage is,

actually a body of water that is connecting the southern tip of the South American continent with the northernmost point of the Antarctic, yeah, the Antarctic peninsula. What I learned is that that peninsula isn't even Antarctica proper. It's just like a little peninsula that when people say they're going to Antarctica, that's where they end up going. it takes up to 48 hours to cross it.

And it is harrowing. They can see waves up to 48, 50 feet. And there was a note in here that did a comparison. So where is it? Do do do do do. Okay. So let me just read this part. This did a nice little explanation. So it says at around 600 miles wide and up to 6,000 meters, nearly four miles deep.

The Drake is objectively a vast body of water, to us that is, to the planet as a whole less so. The Antarctic peninsula where tourists visit isn't even Antarctica proper. It's a thinning peninsula rotating northwards from the vast continent of Antarctica and reaching towards the southern tip of South America. The two pointing towards each other, a bit like a tectonic version of Michelangelo's creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel. I thought that was a really great.

clarification of where it was and what was going on, right? And so that apparently creates a pinching, a pinch point effect with the water being squeezed between the two land masses. The ocean is surging through the gap between the continents. And it is the only place in the world where those winds, well, there was another section about wind. this is the only place in the world where winds can push all around the globe without.

hitting land and land tends to dampen stores. And that is according to oceanographer Alexander Brearley. Hope I pronounced that right. So there's then another part of it that talks about like those, I think it's longitude.

Latitudes, excuse me. Winds tend to blow west to east. yeah, longitude is the long way, latitude is laying down. So winds tend to blow west to east, he says, and the latitudes of 40 to 60 are notorious for strong winds. They've got nicknames and all that jazz. Skipping down, it says, with no land to slow them down at the Drake's latitude anywhere on the planet,

Winds can hurdle around the globe gathering pace and smashing into ships Wild you hear me wild. So this was another article that was really fucking interesting Okay, so here's another explanation. So kinetic energy is Converted from wind into waves and builds up storm waves those can reach up to 15 meters or 49 fucking feet He says although before you get to alarmed

No, that mean that mean that the mean wave height on the Drake is rather less four to five meters or 13 to 16 feet. It's still double though. However, what you will find in the Atlantic by way of comparison. So that's the part that I was really looking to find that still double what we're used to here on the East coast where I am. Insane. Like the ocean to me is terrifying.

And there's another quote in here where I think one of the captains that is familiar with doing the Drake Passage is like, the ocean is always going to win. Like the ocean is always stronger. So we take great precaution and great care. And what was really interesting was that they were explaining the satellites and some of the measures and how frequently they will check the weather, that there are like research ships that are going through and then there are passenger ships and that they are.

I won't say that they're necessarily willing to sail in different conditions because either way, they expressly said that anyone traveling through is going to be safe because they put so much effort and research into navigating traffic, excuse me, weather patterns and conditions to make sure that however they pass through, it's going to be safe for them.

But then there's also really interesting information about what to do during motion sickness and seasickness. This was a really, really interesting article. I greatly enjoyed it, even as some person, I would never do it. I would never do it. But for some people, that's part of the thrill, like the absolute danger or the peril, if you will, involved in this journey is a lot of why some people want to go to Antarctica by ship.

That's not me. I'm good. I don't want to do that. then they do another explanation about there's even underwater mountains below the surface. And so those waves are hitting that it's rustling up water from like the ocean below something about vortices, which bring cooler water from the depths of the ocean. And that goes a long way as to cooling.

or not even necessarily cooling, but just towards the planet's climate in general. So this part of the world affects so much more of the world. Y'all, the natural world that we live in, it's like you travel all over the place and sometimes you don't necessarily think about the natural differences. Just like what effects of nature play on some place on the other side of the globe. It is...

whether or not you were selling goods, you would either... So if you wanted to get goods to North America, if you wanted to get them to the United States in particular, you could dock in, well, along the Atlantic, east coast of the Americas and well, of the United States. And then you could just travel across the country by land.

to get to the West Coast, California and where else. Or you could go the long way, which also added thousands of miles and months to your journey, excuse me, and traverse through the Drake Passage, which as we know now is very, very tumultuous. It's a wild fucking ride. And so apparently, was it there? No.

Yeah, there's a monument at the southern horn of South America, I believe, that honors a lot of the sailors that passed, that died, trying to make the journey, I think over 10,000, if I'm remembering appropriately. Like, that's the number that's sticking out about this article. And they, until the Panama Canal was opened,

had to traverse that way to get to the West Coast. So it was really interesting, especially the parts about how they suggested battling motion sickness and the type of equipment and the levels to looking into what is going on with the weather in terms of navigating. Like sometimes they may postpone or push up their trip.

It was very interesting to me. And this one, kind of knew it was going to be interesting to me because I'd heard of the Drake passage and I wanted to have clarity as to what it was and what was going on. And maybe I wasn't disappointed. So again, link in the description box. This was another really well done article. Julia Buckley for CNN. That was very enjoyable. And like I mentioned, the next one is about the Panama Canal. And all these articles were from roughly like the last, I think like

two or three weeks. I think they're all from like mid or late December, early January. So this next one is, what's the history of the Panama Canal and why is Trump threatening to retake control of it? This is a little geopolitical. And again, I think that all this travel that we do around the world, a lot of times we don't necessarily think outside of our vacations. There are relationships.

between the different countries that we go to that for a lot of us aren't front of mind. We know that we can go, well, if you don't know, you can go, I want to say to the, ooh, I should also put this in the description box just for clarity. think it's this something like not the border tourism. I can't remember what it is, but there's an agency in the United States that will basically tell you what the travel threat.

level is for a different destination. Like some countries are like a four where it's like, hey girl, don't go. You're going at your own risk. It's wild over there. You're safer staying where you're at or going someplace else. And then there are other countries that have really low threat levels, like a one or a two or something like that. But what's wild is you may know one thing about a country and then you say to yourself, well, why is that not reflected in the rating? So it seems like some of the countries it's like,

geopolitical is not necessarily, sometimes it could be a little funny style. I remember thinking that about some of the ratings for some countries like, I'm not going there or what's so unsafe about this place? Is it that they're not like your bestie kind of thing? I don't know. It's interesting. But damn, I always forget what this website is and I know that I've linked it

in another description box, I'll figure it out and throw that down there. But with the Mr. Trump coming back into office, was a lot of what he says just doesn't make sense. No subject verb agreement. He's saying a lot of words and they don't mean things. And so there's been quite a bit of talk of trying to buy back Greenland or take back.

Panama Canal or what was the other foolish thing he said? the Gulf of America changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America the entire fuck like Fuck Nega really any who So after all of that and as someone who wants to visit Panama, I was curious as to you know, what matter of fact What is the deal with the Panama Canal?

Also, I remember there were issues with the Panama Canal or was it the Suez Canal? There was one canal where the ships were, I think it was the Panama Canal, because there were issues where the water levels were dangerously low. So I think a bunch of ships had gotten stuck a few years ago. Y'all remember that? I remember that. Don't remember where it was, but all of those light bulbs went off. And so I was just like, Ooh, I'm gonna get into this one. So this is written by Michael Williams. This is another CNN piece.

This was interesting and what I appreciated about it was that it actually gave a little bit of the history of the Panama Canal and it has been tumultuous over the course of a lot of its existence and our IP to President Jimmy Carter, but he has a role in this also. So it says,

Mr. Williams saying here, before the canals completion, ships traveling between the East and West coasts of the Americas would have to sail around Cape Horn on the Southern tip of South America, adding thousands of miles and several months to their journey. The Drake Passage. So we was just talking about this. So before the Panama Canal, if you was trying to get to the West coast, you was either going all the way across the country by land, or you had to sail around the entire.

continent of South America as well. So this was a big deal. In the early 20th century, Roosevelt made the completion of the passageway a priority. Initially, the territory was at the time controlled, but now this was another thing that was a little like shady to me, but what does it say? The territory was at the time controlled by the Republic of Columbia, but a US supported revolt led to the separation of Panama and Columbia.

5,600 people were estimated to have died during US construction of the canal. That was really interesting information to me. One, because, and then it had me thinking, like, I really wonder what the propaganda back then was. Like, did they really go into it saying, we're helping the Panamanian people, or not even the Panamanian people, because were they even Panamanians at that time? I don't really know, but.

Did they go into it on some, freedom should ring and democracy should exist in other places. You know what I mean? Like that whole, we're here to help, but in reality, we're here, I'm leaving here with something. We gonna get something out of it. It was giving like, we're doing this so that we can benefit. And so for a while, I think it was the US that was in control, right? It was important during World War II. It was...

that led to several deaths in the canal zone. And there was a severing of, brief severing of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Let's see. here's the part about Jimmy Carter. Thank you, Mr. Williams for this. RIP, Mr. Carter. A lot of people think you were a great guy. Seems like you might've been one. Cause this seems pretty humanitarian, if you will. Years of negotiations for a more equitable agreement led to two treaties.

and so then he says, we have controlled a 10 mile wide strip of land across the heart of their country, and because they considered the original terms of the agreement to be unfair, the people of Panama have been dissatisfied with the treaty. Carter said in remarks to Americans after the treaties were signed, it was drafted here in our country and was not signed by any Panamanian. So, hello, logic. That seems reasonable to me.

I understand, but of course, this is when it goes on to say that presidential nominee or presidential, what do you call it? He was running for president. Reagan was just like, I don't fuck with that mode of thought. This is our shit. We did the work and it's kind of like, bro, but like it's in the middle of their fucking country. Like this might not work. So it seemed like it went well. Let's see, where do we pick this?

There are a lot of geopolitical things there. They talk about different tensions politically between the US and Panama through different regimes that were in place. And so it's.

Trump's talking about China has a lot of control over Panama's like chill. They don't. That's not what's going on. their rates are not a whim. And as per the Panamanian president, like, cause Trump is talking about, I feel like it's unfair and y'all are charging us too much considering we've been like so generous to y'all or some wild shit like that. Like stop, stop.

What do I know? I'm just a girl. And my degree definitely didn't cover any of this. But this was really interesting to me because geopolitics play a role. This is something that could now turn into, okay, say less. Now tourists on a US passport have to boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Or like these types of, you know.

back and forths between countries don't always end up as nothing. A lot of times these have greater implications for tourism as well as just like the way people in different countries live their lives. America is this big and bad country and a lot of other places, you know, don't necessarily have the same freedoms or luxuries and things that we do and don't necessarily have the, I guess, bully power of

that our government does. So it's, for one, terrifying to me to see how Trump coming back into office with all of this like wild shit that he's talking about is really going to play out in terms of our relationships with other countries. And also it just, also I love history. hearing how some of these things started out or how some of these relationships began,

with other countries is also like, I did not know, especially considering Jimmy Carter was involved and the fact that the Panama Canal has been something that I've always heard about, but just didn't really know anything about. So Mr. Williams, this was a fun article. Thank you for that. Interesting. Interesting. And I'm curious to see how that shapes up, especially considering global.

Global warming and climate change, like again, ties back in. What's happening in one part of the world has a greater effect in other locations. If this continues to be an issue with the water levels, what does this mean for prices in terms of goods that we tend to use a lot that can't get from one side to the other side? If they now have to go across land or even further and go through the Drake Passage, or if now they're

flying or paying for greater loads to go from the East Coast to the West Coast and vice versa, I assume that it works both ways, then what does that mean for us as consumers? So many things are interconnected and that's one of the really incredible things that I love highlighting here on Travel and Shit because travel is so much more than vacation. There is so much more.

to being in one country and then going to another country than being there for vacation. There are things that happen in terms of the travel space that aren't necessarily just about the destination. These relationships matter. Parts of the globe having economic troubles end up impacting other locations, weather patterns, extinct or almost extinct species end up changing food cycles and food chains. heard Cal...

California squirrels was fucking eating meat now, some of them.

There's obviously, COVID is still around and then you've got a bird flu now that is of concern in the States. You've got, what was it? Disease X, I think that's going on in Congo. Monkeypox is popping up. HIV is now becoming more prevalent in places like the Philippines and there are other hotspots in the world where there apparently is a cure for HIV.

But we all know that pharmaceutical companies are never going to let that really be accessible to the masses. again, disease, as we know, doesn't stay in one place. We are a global community. People are traveling all the time. And so just because something is prevalent or happening in another country doesn't mean that that may not end up back over here. Also, just because things aren't a

problem for us here doesn't mean that they're not a problem in another country. So in terms of traveling, these are also things, medical issues and medical concerns of other countries. You might want to just, you know, pop them into your mind or just be abreast, be curious again, lean into curiosities. You'd be surprised what pops up and you realize, this might be something that I should pay attention to. I want to pay attention to.

or somebody that I care about might wanna pay attention to because they've got some reason to be interested in it. And I'm just curious for the sake of being curious, but then again, the light bulbs are going off and I'm seeing the dots being connected. But this was a really interesting article because it, and it focused mainly on this, this was a wild, I'd never heard of this shit. Let me see if I could just scroll down to the part where,

I had red eyes and then it was just wild. okay, here we go. Let's just start here. The source of their pain was a condition called trachoma. And I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And this is in Pakistan. And I'm gonna go back to the countries that eradicated disease, but trachoma was one that was eradicated in Pakistan, Pakistan, my God, Pakistan, but through extensive measures and it took...

a while. took a, I don't know if it...

Okay, took them more than 20 years, but they were able to eradicate a disease that was really problematic for the people that lived there. And one of the things is that they, let me just start here. So the source of the pain was a condition called trachoma. It's a bacterial infection. And when someone is infected repeatedly, upward of 100 times, that right there stopped me. That brought pause because in my mind I'm like, what do you get infected with that many fucking times?

Like, why are you getting infected with something that many times? I'm thinking to myself over the course of my entire life, am I even going to have a cold a hundred times? Like, does that happen? Is that like, I'm curious to like how many times someone gets a common cold in life. Is it upwards of a hundred times? People are being infected with something. This is a bacterial condition. Bacteria we know we can mitigate, right? But again, different places.

different norms, different cultures, things aren't the same everywhere. And so people were getting infected upward of a hundred times and it cause, it can cause their eyelashes to turn inward and scratch the surface of the eyes. It's painful and can cause blurred vision and eventually irreversible fucking blindness.

for nearly two million people around the world, dracoma leads to visual impairment. That's a lot of people, two million people. And so this gentleman, Mr. Khan, I do not say his full name here, it's further up in there, but...

It was, and then they talk about like how, like the steps that they took. The first step was to relieve pain. The second stop was to stop the bacteria. And the third was to prevent infection. And so they detailed like what each step like entailed, what issues kind of came along with those things. And it was, and so what, so let me just add in here. The reason why,

they were getting infected so many times was, let me see if I can find where that was. Most of the infections happen to preschool aged kids. They're affected every week or every couple of weeks. And that's why they're infected so many times because it starts so fucking young. You have a lot of weeks of life in your, a lot of weeks of life in your life. And so it follows.

This was an area for a while at the time that they were trying to eradicate it when they began their efforts. Apparently people were, these are poor people who work in like rice fields and what was the other thing he was saying?

because I thought that part, you see the rice, sugar cane and wheat fields. And so a lot of people would end up being affected later in life and not being able to see. And of course now if you can't work, now you're not making any money. So this was also now contributing to people with like lost wages and stuff. So.

layers on layers. Not only are you fucking miserable because the feeling of like your eyelashes constantly scraping your corneas, I cannot imagine how uncomfortable that is. You get an eyelash in your eye, a one. Can you imagine them growing inward to like consistently be in your fucking eyes? Like red, itchy, pussy, gross. And so unfortunately at the time, hygiene.

was a huge factor. They ended up also trying to use, I think it was azithromycin, which is an anti-back, not an antibacterial.

Damn, what is it called? It's an antibiotic. Right, that's the word right there. To stop the infections and interrupt the spread, health workers administer the antibiotic azithromycin. And often the pill is given once a year for several years and they ended up giving it out at schools, in mosques, and door to door. So that was being used for a while, but then an episode after a while like typhoid became an issue. And so...

but it was also like, was considered XDR. Let me see where that was. It became an issue with the antibiotics because, yeah, then typhoid interrupted their progress. XDR was extensively drug resistant typhoid. And unfortunately, what was working for that strain of typhoid was azithromycin. So if we're using it for the trachoma or

the disease with the, yeah, the trachoma, then I think it became an issue for the typhoid. Now, I'm not exactly sure where the issue arose. Like, was it because the supply just wasn't there? But if it was like a drug resistant, was it because they, I think it's because they were taking the erythromycin for the trachoma, it then wasn't working to combat.

typhoid so it became a alright so peep game if we can't heavily administer it and we have to reserve it for it to be used to combat typhoid because typhoid will kill you that should have fucked you up gone and unfortunately while trachoma is uncomfortable and very painful and leads to very severe not results but results like it leads to blindness if you know it gets bad enough

you're not going to die. So it became one of those things like, got to make a call. And so it was a difficult decision, but they ended up not using and holding back their erythromycin for use for typhoid instead of trachoma. However, another part of what their efforts entailed was hygiene. So because these were poor rural areas, indoor bathrooms were not the norm.

open defecation was the norm. And they ended up trying to introduce toilets to people's homes. But you got to keep in mind norms aren't the same everywhere. So for a while people were just like, what the fuck is that? That seems unsanitary. And so they had to introduce it into schools and put them in mosques and larger shared spaces so that people would kind of get used to it. And then they did a lot of education with children and getting them involved and hand washing.

face washing with soap, like kids are gonna touch everything. And so if they're touching other kids' faces and they're touching the pus and the residue and whatnot from the bacteria, so bacteria was spreading because hygiene was not exactly prevalent in these areas. And so they found out, plot twist or spoiler, that hygiene ended up really, cause they thought there was gonna be a problem having to pull back from using the erythromycin, but.

the hygiene actually really did an incredible job and they were able to eradicate this disease. So it was really, really interesting to have like a look behind the curtain, if you will. You can visit these countries and these are the things that aren't going to necessarily be readily spoken about because they don't wanna stop whatever tourism dollars that they're going to get. But again, if you are globally interested, like things like this might matter to you and it mattered to me.

So I was hoping that you would enjoy that. there were other, scrolling back up, nine other countries that wiped out diseases. Let me get to that, what those were. Here's the list of this year's honors. Thank you, Mr. Emmanuel, or Emmanuel, person Emmanuel, Gabriel, for this. Okay, so Cape Verde and Egypt became malaria-free. Brazil and Timor-Leste.

That was another thing, that was another rabbit hole that I was gonna dive into because I have no clue where that is or what that country, what are those people like? Where is it? But those two countries eliminated lymphatic filari... Filarisis?

Fil-a-ri-asis. Fil-a-ri-asis, that's what we're gonna go with. And that is a disfiguring parasite that causes a condition commonly known as, I wanna say elephantiasis. Elephantiasis. So they got rid of that. Jordan became the first country to ever be certified as leprosy-free. Interesting.

Chad got rid of one form of human African tryponemiasis, I think, or sleeping sickness. Tryp-uh-no-so-mi-us-is. Tryp-uh-no-so-mi-us-is, I think that's how you pronounce that, or sleeping sickness. And Pakistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, and India, all three of those countries, eliminated trachoma, which causes

blindness. So, and there was another,

Yeah, and it took Pakistan more than 20 years to wipe it out. But it has got to be something to be an individual involved in this type of research, this type of community outreach, to be able to say we were successful, regardless of how long it may have taken. Think of all the different lives that are saved, all the families that are kept safer, and the people that get to extend their lives and really impact the world in bigger ways.

just like little butterfly effect things, like one child doesn't suffer or die of this, or one child doesn't lose a parent, or have to be a nursemaid to a family member, and they get to do anything else in the world that ends up being...

butterfly effect and influential. That's what I was looking for. Influential to something else. Just like all of the different little ways that this can positively go, like disease. Just even being comfortable and not having a recurring condition or like a debilitating medical issue allows you to space to do more, to work or to educate yourself, be able to go and attend school. I don't know. My brain is just, again,

The dots are very easily connected and there are lots of light bulbs in here. But that's enough for this week. I really enjoyed those articles and I highly encourage you guys follow your curiosities. Travel is so much more than vacation and I can make anything about travel, but I'm sure that if you guys look into more things that pique your curiosity, you'll see that travel is right around your corner and you can be traveling all over the world without actually leaving your seat. And also just being

universally curious ends up giving you things that you're more interested in doing while you travel. It brings new places to your awareness that you may not have known about and become interested in traveling to. And it also just opens you up to what other people in the world are dealing with. Are they similar to you? How different from you are they? And what kinds of things can you personally possibly have any type of effect on in helping in some way possible?

So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I'm looking forward to this year sharing with you guys some projects that I have been working on. I know that I was quiet the last couple of weeks, but I enjoyed my holidays and I actually am this close to finishing something that I am really, really, really fucking proud of. And I hope you guys end up being proud of it also. I will hopefully be able to bring that to you guys before the month ends, but.

Excuse me, I'm in no rush. I'm enjoying the process of this project. And that has been something that I have been missing. This podcast is a labor of love. I don't get paid to do this. I actually spend quite a substantial amount of money to run the podcast between hosting sites and other little things that I don't even use that often, but come in handy when I do decide to tap in.

And I recently started working on this project and I've been having a good fucking time. And those are feelings that I want to chase. So I look forward to being able to share this with you. I hope you guys enjoy it when I finally bring it to you. And we'll end it there. I'll see y'all next week and we'll do this again. I got some really fun guests coming up. I can't wait for you guys to hear from them. And until then.

Be safe guys and stay curious. Bye.