The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

403 Off Season Travel

With high tourist numbers in some popular places making travel less enjoyable, it only makes sense that there's an increased interest in off season travel. Choosing a sho

402 Ireland: Chats with Locals

Ireland and the Irish - we all have a story to tell, right? In this episode I get the insider stories from Ireland - both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - f

401 Travel-Related Careers

About one in ten jobs across the globe are in the travel industry, but from the hundreds of conversations I've had over the years, I've learnt that the paths to working i

400 Forty Questions for Four Hundred Episodes

Episode 400 ... what?! Back in 2016, I certainly didn't imagine I'd reach Episode 400, and yet, here we are. It seemed something to celebrate so I asked my dear friend Sa

399 Impacts of Childhood Travel

For those of us with the great fortune of being taken travelling in our childhood, I'm certain that there are many ways this impacts our lives - changing our mindset and

Book Club 26: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

This special episode is the audio of the livestream of the July 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about book "Travels with Charley" by John St

398 Conservation and Tourism

We all want the places we visit to exist for longer than our lifetime (and hopefully MUCH longer) - right? Conservation in the travel space can mean a bunch of things, an

397 Travel Dramas Always Teach Us Something

Things inevitably go wrong when we travel - some big, some small, occasionally some trip-ending, but most travel dramas seem to end up being great stories we tell later a

396 Spending A Year Abroad

If you have the opportunity to spend an extended time travelling - like an entire year - I say, grab it! In this episode I chat with three people who’ve had the good fort

395 Cultural Deep Dives

Learning more about a place when we travel there is something that always gives me a thrill, and in this episode we take a cultural deep dive into three very different as

394 Unusual Accommodation

Where do you sleep when a trip takes you away from a standard hotel room? This episode features some of the more unusual kinds of places we can stay on our travels - some

393 Taiwan: Chats with Locals

Taiwan is starting to gain more attention as a fascinating place to visit: it's a great blend of delicious food, interesting history and culture, beautiful landscapes and

392 What You'd Tell Your Younger Travelling Self

If you could go back in time and tap on the shoulder of your younger self as you backpack around the world, what would you say? I've been pondering this question and aske

Book Club 25: The Venice Hotel by Tess Woods

This special episode is the audio of the live-streamed May 2026 meeting of the Thoughtful Travellers Book Club, chatting about "The Venice Hotel", a novel with very thoug

391 Enviable Travel Jobs

It's easy to be a little envious of anyone who gets to travel to interesting places as part of their work, but when the work itself is also truly fascinating, then I thin

390 How to be a Good Volunteer Abroad

The world of volunteer tourism is a tricky one. Getting the balance right between enabling people to volunteer in another country, and meeting the needs of the places the

389 How Travel Transforms Our Thinking

The more I travel (and the older I get!), the more I realise how little I know, and how wrong I've been about so many things! In this episode, I chat with three guests ab

388 Iceland: Chats with Locals

Iceland is a place many travellers dream of visiting; if, like me, you've been lucky enough to see Iceland, you probably desperately want to return. In this Chats with Lo

387 Ten Years of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast

A decade ago to the day - 25th March 2016 - I launched the first episodes of The Thoughtful Travel Podcast. Somehow, I have just kept interviewing great people about thei

386 It Could’ve Been Much Worse: Surviving Travel Dramas

Some travellers have a much keener sense of adventure and embracing physical risk on their travels, and others just stumble into a travel drama they didn't anticipate; we