Earlier this month I recorded an episode of Lisa Francesca Nand's BIG TRAVEL PODCAST, and it's out now on all podcast platforms.
This is what the podcast blurb says. Quite how you can resist listening to it after reading this, I just don't know!
A school trip to Communist Russia left LBC’s Iain Dale hooked on travel. He’s since learned fluent German, been chased to the Austrian border by a Hungarian prostitute, been guarded at gun-point in Lebanon, done things he doesn’t feel he can tell us in a Miami Hotel and, as one of the UK’s foremost political commentators, feels Washington DC is almost an ancestral home. A sharply humorous insight into the world we live, angry tweeters, anonymous trolls, the importance of languages and why we can’t just all get along.
On this episode we cover:
His new book Why Can’t We All Just Get Along; Shout Less, Listen More
The decline of social discourse
Online anonymity leading to unnecessary aggression
Angry tweeters and anxiety
Unfollowing Owen Jones due to the abuse he gets
Lisa wanting to give Owen Jones a cuddle
The need to understand people who have differing point of views
The people being frustrated with politicians
The virtual disappearance of deference
Twitter being addictive but sometimes a nasty place
Online abuse upsetting even the toughest of skinned
The need to have a decent debate from both sides of an argument
Being The Big Travel Podcast’s most organised ever guest
Growing up on a farm
Only having one family holiday as a child
His husband hating holidays!
Coming back 3 days early from Cape Cod
Being on the same flight as was later involved in 9/11
How the homebodies have done better out of lockdown
Not going out for over 100 days due to shielding!
His side-line selling political mugs
Being like a convent school girl released after lockdown!
Lisa drinking out of a talkSPORT mug
Lisa and Ian Collins on talkSPORT
The teacher who took the school to communist Russia
The overnight train to Moscow
Almost preferring Russia under communism
The ‘sliding doors’ trips to Germany that completely changing his outlook
Being the first person in his family to go university
Does university give you an edge in critical thinking?
The University of Easy Access
His farming parents backing his non-farming ambitions
Being ‘totally useless at sciences’
The book Travellers in the Third Reich being an excellent account of Germany in between the wars
How learning languages changes the mind-set
The optimum age to learn a new language
Arabic, Mandarin, Spanish all should be taught in schools
An unlikely 1980 Cosmos coach trip to Italy
Venice, Florence, Rome, Capris
Being 6ft 2 meaning
Doing the For The Many podcast with Jacqui Smith
Being surrounded by gun toting Lebanese soldiers in Beirut
The rather frightening entry to Lebanon with the SAS
Being the first British person in Beirut since John McCarthy visited
Don’t go anywhere without the SAS
Dom Joly talking about Lebanon on The Big Travel Podcast
A road trip to Vienna
Stumbling into communist Hungary
Heading to Budapest before the first McDonalds got there
Being cashed out of town by a Hungarian prostitute
Lisa’s strange night of avant garde jazz in Budapest
Going to both Azerbaijan and Armenia when they hate each other
Tourism police in Cuba
Outrageous antics at a gay hotel in the Florida Keys
Apparently gay man can have right-wing views – who knew!
Being hapless in airports
Getting to airports 5 hours (!) before the flight
His nieces calling him Uncle Herod
Feeling Washington DC is almost an ancestral home
Attending Trump’s inauguration
Staying in the best hotel in Uganda…
…while David Cameron (then Prime Minister) stayed in a shack
Being a Tory candidate in 2004
People in Cromer in Norfolk staring at a black man
Lisa’s terribly embarrassing story on the night of the Brexit night vote (tempting to edit it out but I left it in!)
Cliff Richard’s Miss You Nights in crocodile country in the deep Australian outback, hundreds of miles from anywhere
If you want to listen now just click HERE.
