Episode
Does travel actually broaden the mind?
- Published
- Jun 13, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2640
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.newstatesman.com/podcasts
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Summary
"The traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see." Andrea Wulf joins us to discuss her new book The Traveller , about George Forster - the forgotten naturalist who sailed with Captain James Cook at seventeen and came back convinced of something radical: that all human beings are equal. We ask why that idea was so scandalous in the Enlightenment, why Forster has been largely written out of history, and whether travel really does broaden the mind - or whether, as G.K. Chesterton suggested, it might do the opposite.