Zero To Travel Podcast

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You're listening to the zero to travel Podcast where we explore exciting travel based work, lifestyle and business opportunities helping you to achieve your wildest travel dreams. And now your host, world wonder and travel junkie, Jason Moore.

Jason Moore 0:22
Hey there, it's Jason with zero travel.com. Welcome to the show today, my friend. It's an extra episode this week and it's a special treat. I'm going to do things a little bit differently. I want to share a preview of a new podcast I'm excited about it's called not lost. And I'll tell you about it in a moment. But how this all started is the company that CO produces this podcast, Pushkin industries. They also make one of my other favorite podcasts that I listen to regularly called broken record. It's a music podcast. And they have a travel podcast now. And I love to support quality travel podcasts, anything that gets people excited about getting out on the road themselves. I'm all about it and the premise of not lost. This podcast you're going to hear a clip of today is a fantastic one. I wish I thought of it myself. Each week journalist Brendan Francis nunim takes you around the globe uncovering what each new place has to offer. But the twist is to really understand what makes the place tick. He sets out to try to get invited to a stranger's house for dinner. I mean, I think that's something a lot of us travelers do. And I have done and have had those experiences. And that is such a wonderful way to learn about a place by mingling with the locals. And I love this, this concept of trying to get out there and get invited to a stranger's house for dinner. And to learn about our place through the people that live there. And in this series, he travels to places like Bozeman, Montana, Mexico City, New Orleans, and other destinations where he's joined by guests to do all the fun things we do when we travel, right, drink, dance, eat and learn as much about themselves as the places they visit. In this preview today. You're about to hear Brendan and his guest, Daniel Henderson arriving to Chile, Montreal after a will say memorable Uber drive, they navigate the icy streets to visit the Museum of Fine Arts and learn about local history from a Montreal born and raised author. I'm excited to share this preview now. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. You can travel the world and hear more episodes of not lost wherever you get your podcasts. And I have included a handy link in the show notes. You can just click that'll take you right to the podcast and you can subscribe over there. Enjoyed this clip and I will see you on the other side

Daniel Henderson 2:38
I'm shaving engineers.

Brendan Francis 2:40
What is that thing? It looks like a little magic marker for princesses.

Daniel Henderson 2:44
It's like supposed to be used for bikini shaving.

Brendan Francis 2:47
That was shaved. I didn't know that women have those. We have a lot of secrets, man.

Daniel Henderson 2:51
We got a lot of tools in the tool belt.

That's a tool for below the tool belt.

Not in my case, because when I go out of my house, I can actually see my chin hair is in a better mirror than the one I have in my house. And that'll hit up a hotel and I'll turn on the magnifying mirror and be like Oh, there's the forest of pears and I shave while

Brendan Francis 3:09
this is the unvarnished travel show.

Daniel Henderson 3:11
I don't wear makeup but I will shave a chin here

Brendan Francis 3:21
this is not last

Daniel Henderson 3:26
look amazing. All the words overalls and jumpsuits now

Brendan Francis 3:29
a travel show about going places define yourself. Each week, a friend and I go to a new place and try to get invited to someone's house for dinner. I feel like you were the turtle back on purpose. That's been my signature move. I'm Brendan Francis nuneham. And that's my friend Daniel Henderson.

Daniel Henderson 3:48
Are all business

Brendan Francis 3:49
there's no booze man. We've just met up at Trudeau airport just staring at the people coming out of the plane. They look Canadian like us but they don't they look better they look like they have health care Episode One Montreal. I think calves are this way module

Daniel Henderson 4:13
freezing Why did we come to Montreal in the dead of winter?

Brendan Francis 4:22
Well, because most travel shows would come here in Springer's fall. Yeah,

Daniel Henderson 4:27
I mean you're talking to someone who flew in from Los Angeles. I have a bag of my Birkenstock sandals in it because that's what I was wearing this morning

Brendan Francis 4:34
but I wanted like authentic Montreal man like I think like this This was separates the Canadian Wheat from the Canadian chaff. So we need to establish on this ride that you're a TV writer. I am like audio journalist person. And we're both single we're on the wrong side of 35 We're looking for connection creative meaning a handhold in this madman The world was my

Daniel Henderson 5:01
only plan was to get on a plane and show up.

Brendan Francis 5:05
It's rad to see you. And I think we're gonna have fun. So basically, I need to do this travel pod thing. We also have some people we're gonna meet very excited. And I would like to hopefully insinuate herself into someone's home to have dinner because I feel like that's the real way to meet them.

Daniel Henderson 5:20
When you say it like that. I can't imagine anyone else. Anyone turning us down.

I'd like to insinuate myself into your Oh,

Brendan Francis 5:28
I'm gonna switch mics. So don't say anything interesting. First. Where are y'all from?

Daniel Henderson 5:35
I'm from LA. Okay.

Brendan Francis 5:36
I'm from New York.

Unknown Speaker 5:38
Okay. So that there is the Olympic Stadium. And you will see we are actually on an island, which is beloved by Charles cool because we, you know, we, we are like Americans without the baggage, we can watch it look kind of live. And it gives you across the border. But with the scene, like, you might even think I'm from Jersey. I thought you were from New Jersey. That's what an Anglophone Quebec or sounds like,

Brendan Francis 6:10
can you say quintessential Quebec or Anglophone sentence?

Unknown Speaker 6:13
All right, let's go get some poutine. Oh, you tried to smoke meat? I did get some bagels. Yeah. Yeah.

Brendan Francis 6:22
What about what about if you're just talking to your family or friends on a Sunday? Well, since

Unknown Speaker 6:26
I have three teenagers, I don't talk much to them because they're teenagers. But here you'll notice all the signs that we have around. They're all French. But if you notice, there will be some parts of it in English, but they have to be. This is a law. A third of the size. We've got the office doula, long, France, the French police. Yeah, go around and go into your establishment and measure your sign and make sure you're going for all Yeah, we've we've tried to secede from Canada. What does real close? It was like 549 51. It was like, every all day, the head offices and companies just up and left. And the wealth left. And so what remained was nice, beautiful, easy to live lovable Montreal. This is it. All right. My tour is and I don't I'm Uber Darrell. Thank you.

Brendan Francis 7:34
Watch yourself in the eyes. You're welcome to grab my arm here for these icy regions. Here's

Daniel Henderson 7:41
where it gets treacherous, though, because now it's snow on top of ice. I think you just

Brendan Francis 7:45
have to walk like an old person your entire walk.

Daniel Henderson 7:49
I just want to point out that a small child ran past us like she was just walking on grass. Just fully ran past us while we take our old bones down the street.

Brendan Francis 8:05
In my high school yearbook caption, I wrote a message to my unrequited crush. It said, Dear e are artists loft in Canada weights. I'd never even been to Canada, or loft. But somehow I had gotten this idea that it was a place for culture, romance, and affordable real estate. Three things I still longed for. He's married now with two kids. But at least I made it to Canada, op ed in the dead of winter with my friend.

Daniel Henderson 8:34
Oh my gosh, there's a cat cafe 10 feet from our door.

Brendan Francis 8:38
That's insane. Danielle and I drop off our bags and head to the Museum of Fine Arts as good a place as any to learn about Montreal's creative roots.

Unknown Speaker 8:45
So it was a city where it was like much more important to be a sculptor than a doctor is really cool. Whatever that is taught last time is here. My name is Heather O'Neill and I'm a local Montreal author.

Brendan Francis 8:57
He's kind of like Giacometti's a little bit right. Yeah, like with the skinny elongated limbs.

Unknown Speaker 9:02
This is Louie R Shambo. He has sculptures in parks too. I believe this is like such a style. I always liked it. But my dad would try and show me like this is crap.

Daniel Henderson 9:13
I love the idea of him bringing you to all these works of public art just to point out how horrible terrible

Unknown Speaker 9:19
phony phony.

Brendan Francis 9:20
So we're making our way into the Quebec arts pavilion. You're not a historian and you're not responsible to explain all this to us. If you read anything you encounter the quiet revolution. Is there a way to summarize pretty quickly the kind of what that was right here now.

Unknown Speaker 9:39
We'll just go to the 60s when it started. All sorts of good jobs in Montreal and all the executive jobs were held by English speaking people. And a lot of the companies were they were all owned by Anglophones, and they would only give English speaking citizens the jobs And then what happened was there became began to be a cultural movement where they decided we're just going to overthrow this predicament we're in.

Brendan Francis 10:11
So French, like the lower class. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 10:15
the lower class, francophones were like, this is just enough. One of the big movements was they, they made education, all the universities free. So you ended up with this, like massive class of young people who came from working class backgrounds, but were incredibly educated. And so obviously, that created like radical thinking.

Brendan Francis 10:36
So we're in this permanent exhibit called the age of the manifesto. Do you recognize any of these?

Unknown Speaker 10:41
Oh, yeah, this is Rhea Powell, who Yeah, is sort of our Jackson Pollock. He's incredibly well regarded in Quebec. Even someone myself who came from as lower classes you get in the city, I still went to McGill University in had like a top rate in education, and then was, you know, kind of thrown back on the street corner. And I was like, What do I do? I've just read a lot of Henry James. So there's this kind of irony. And there's a humor when you're able to suddenly talk about your odd down and out predicament, but in the language of like, literature, and so then it becomes everything kind of becomes like tongue in cheek and absurd. And you kind of have this like Beckett like feeling. Beautiful.

Brendan Francis 11:29
Well, thanks so much for meeting us today. Oh, that's fun. What's what's going on tonight? What are you up to?

Unknown Speaker 11:36
Oh, I have like a deadline.

Brendan Francis 11:40
I'm asking because we're kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party. Because it's a place where you can genuinely get to know people instead of just being tourists. You know,

Unknown Speaker 11:50
I would love that. But I have like a chihuahua who is aggressive towards dogs, but it would just over overwhelm him. I

Brendan Francis 11:59
think, Okay.

Unknown Speaker 12:00
I'm sorry. Like, I It seems rude.

Brendan Francis 12:03
I know. It's okay. Canadians are nice, but

Unknown Speaker 12:05
apparently they're no but if you bring people by dogs gonna bite someone. Okay,

Brendan Francis 12:10
that would not be a good outcome, but you have health care for those people. What is your dog's name?

Unknown Speaker 12:17
Hamlet.

Daniel Henderson 12:25
I don't spend as much time thinking about how I'm gonna die alone when I'm traveling.

Unknown Speaker 12:30
But I get to travel with someone I

Brendan Francis 12:31
love. Oh, see, we I love you too. And also we get to eat as much

Daniel Henderson 12:36
beer. I love you, too. Makes a lot of therapy bills behind that. You're so

white. I love it. Nice. It's a nice to kind of it's nice

Brendan Francis 12:45
to travel with money. This is a real sailor wrong. Thank you. When my last radio show, and did fairly abruptly I was a

Daniel Henderson 12:56
little concerned about your mental health. Yeah,

Brendan Francis 12:57
I was I was a little bit lost. You know, I went from having this rad show where I spoke with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Scarlett Johansson to my Delhi guy being the only person I spoke to on any given day. Yeah. But now with this show. Trying to get myself back out there isn't exciting. Let's play a game. Like let's just name what comes to mind when we think of Montreal. I definitely think of poutine Of course. Leonard Cohen.

Daniel Henderson 13:29
I think you guys they're everywhere.

Brendan Francis 13:33
There is just that kind of French, like undercurrent where you're like, ooh, la la.

Daniel Henderson 13:37
What is it like an 80s Perfume commercial. Please never say that to a woman.

Brendan Francis 13:43
I want her to say it to me

Jason Moore 13:58
there you have it. That was a preview of not lost from our friends at Pushkin industries. I want to quickly thank them for their support of this show. You can hear this full episode of not lost as well as the other episodes. Wherever you get your podcasts just search not lost. Or you can easily click the link in the show notes below. That will take you to the show. This is a great travel podcasts. I'm hooked and it reminds me of what I love most about traveling just how it changes the way we see the world and ourselves. So please subscribe, enjoy it glad to have been able to have the opportunity to share this show. Like I said I love promoting high quality travel podcast that keeps people excited to get out on the road help us learn about this ever changing planet we live on. So thank you so much for listening today. And I'll see you next time Cheers.

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