The Fool’s Paradise: To Where Does Travel Lead? with Krishnan Venkatesh and David Carl

Continuing the Conversation: a Great Books podcast by St. John’s College

Why do writers travel? Why do some authors write their most influential works in foreign countries? Does the unknown bring new insights and transformation, or do new lands provide nothing more than romantic myths for the imagination? In the essay Self-Reliance, Emerson says "Traveling is a fool's paradise . . . My giant goes with me wherever I go." Is he right? Or is getting lost the best way of finding higher truths? In this episode, Santa Fe host Krishnan Venkatesh joins tutor David Carl in a conversation that explores Carl's journey as a writer who travels alongside these larger, universal questions, taking us from his time as a boy in rural Oregon, to Paris, to India, and ultimately back home, to ponder these questions at St. John’s College.