- Speaker #0
Welcome to the Winging It Travel podcast with me, James Hammond. Every Monday I'll be joined by guests to talk about their travel stories, travel tips, backpacking advice and so much more. Are you a backpacker, gap year student or simply someone who loves to travel? Then this is the podcast for you, designed to inspire you to travel. There'll be stories to tell, tips to share and experiences to inspire. Welcome to the show. Hello and welcome to this week's episode where I'm joined by Neil Laird who is a TV producer, novelist, documentary maker and an avid traveller. Neil is an LBTQIA plus multiple Emmy nominated director of historical films for Discovery, BBC, PBS, History Channel, National Geographic and many others. He's produced programmes around the globe featuring various things like the Egyptian tombs, lost Mayan cities etc and for 25 years he's travelled the globe making non-fiction films about the ancient world. Today I've discussed Neil's eye-opening backpacking trip, which I'm really keen to hear about, what it's like to make TV documentaries worldwide, and why he has changed courses to now write novels. Neil, welcome to the show. How are you doing?
- Speaker #1
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.
- Speaker #0
So where are you right now?
- Speaker #1
I'm in Brooklyn, New York, which is home. I'm going to keep the media companies, yeah. But I always, itchy feet, I'm always ready to go somewhere else.
- Speaker #0
Do you have any other bases worldwide?
- Speaker #1
I don't. New York is my home. That's where my husband is, and that's where the business is. and every couple of weeks I'm on a flight. I'm off to Turkey next week for a month. It's just a wanderlust that basically, as we'll talk about, I was able to incorporate into my career, thank God, because I don't know what I'd do otherwise. I'd dry up and tumble away if I wasn't booking a flight somewhere on Expedia. Will Barron God,
- Speaker #0
you sound like me in terms of I need something booked. David Elikwu Exactly. Will Barron Do you know what the biggest question is? How do you get that job? or that income that correlates with travel. That is the big question, right? If you can get those two things combined, if you're a traveler.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. And I lucked out in that I did it with my TV work. But even then I realized, you know, I also realized as I got older too, is traveling for work is a lot less fun than traveling for fun. So there is work travel. I work in television and people say, oh my God, you work for National Geographic, you work for Discovery. Can I carry your bags? I'll do anything. I said, you know, honey, you do not want to travel me, but I'm in three days in Morocco to shoot six hours of television and I'll be working around the clock and I'll be knackered and I'll, and it was like, you know, everyone's going to be grumpy because they're working too long. It's a great eye opening. It's a wonderful way to see the world, but it is work.
- Speaker #0
Will Barron Yes. That is interesting because I listen to a podcast every day about football, right? So I'm a big soccer fan, if you like. But they're talking about this perceived thing about sports people, especially soccer players. They travel to play football, which is true. They travel around, they play games. They say people think, oh, it must be amazing to get paid that much money, but also to play a sport and see the world. But they're like, we don't see the world. We literally fly in, go to a hotel, train, play the game, fly back in the evening or that early next morning. They don't see the place.
- Speaker #1
All my friends who work in the travel industry, too. They're the airline students, whatever. It's like, you're going to St. Lucia today for two hours.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly. I would, as a kid, think, oh, yeah, football players, they must like to see the world all the time.
- Speaker #1
Remember when we were kids and we thought how amazing travel was? My first trip abroad, and I forget, was to England when I was a student. And just going to London for a semester was so far-flung and so exotic, which you would never, as you know as a Brit, would use exotic in Britain in the same term anymore. But to me, as an 18-year-old kid from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, trust me, it was the world. So the idea that you're getting on a plane and going somewhere was so wonderful. And the only thing about traveling as much as we do is after a while, I wouldn't say it becomes rote, but the magic wears off and you recognize another airport, another delay, another customs, another. And I love when I get there, but you can't step in that same river twice.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Do you think you're forever chasing that first hit of maybe like Culture Shock or? just something that's a bit really mysterious, a bit out there. Do you think we're always chasing that now?
- Speaker #1
I certainly am. I know we don't want to talk about where my travel began and we can always back up, but I can certainly think I remember the moment where I kind of felt I want to do this forever. And it was an unrealistic thought because it was impossible. I'd go broke, but I was backpacking to the Middle East and I was in eastern Turkey on my way to the Iranian border. And I was alone. And this was 92, 93. So it's been a good while. And I realized that this is before internet, before cyber cafes and all that stuff. All I had was a lonely planet and my ticket home and a passport. That was all that Neil Laird had. They found my body. That's all they would know to identify me. The dental records or whatever. As I was working my way to the border, I kind of recognized I got lost and left a town I wasn't expecting to go. And I was standing on some train platform thinking like I never heard of this town until this morning. And here I am alone. I never felt so free and so unburdened in my life. Once the fear went away and I realized the Turkish are such wonderful people. I didn't feel in any way threatened by what I was meeting. But there I was floating. I was floating and I was in this place. alone and on my own. No one had any idea where I was, what I was doing, and it didn't matter. And I was making this shit up as I went. And I've been trying to recapture that moment for the last 30 years. And it's not easy, of course, the more you travel, because of course, you become more cynical, you become more comfortable. When you go on a television like me, they fly your first class somewhere. So it's no longer the sense of, oh my God, the eye-opening experience. Suddenly we're in Iran.
- Speaker #0
So do you think the only way to maybe get near that is to go to places that are bit left field so maybe like you now going to canada for example is not going to be thrilling right but if you if you drop yourself now into someone like i don't know venezuela or somewhere like completely out there and that sort of trip is loose a loose trip maybe a hitchhiking whatever do you think you need that sort of test to get back to that you know what you do but i also realize it's kind of hard to replicate that because i would
- Speaker #1
touched down someplace in, I don't know, in some Indonesian island that I've never been to before. And I'm starting to look around. I'm thinking this reminds me of Honduras mixed with Morocco, whatever. So I have so many memories. They blur together. So it's hard to find the completely undiscovered that sense. I remember my first trip again to the Middle East. I flew into Tel Aviv and I was taking it. I don't know why my friend was meeting me in Cairo and I saved, you know, $6.50. by flying to Tel Aviv and taking a 14-fricking-hour bus down to the Sinai Desert. Because that's what you do when you're a kid. You have no idea. But I remember as I flew in, I was landing in Tel Aviv after one of those overnight flights, and I started to get this fear. It was the first trip abroad, except for the UK and Western Europe, which is the way it doesn't count. I was trying to get really nervous, like, how am I going to find a bus depot? How am I going to find money? And there was a sense of... palpable fear that was overcoming. And I remember there's this Israeli guy sitting next to me and I'm asking him about money. And I'm asking all these questions. You can see the fear in my eyes. You'll figure it out. You'll figure it out. It's okay. And I got there and I figured, find my way on a bus and I went to the bus station. And I remember reaching out. I put a big fistful of money in front of some Iranian guy who was like selling me a shawarma or whatever because I was so hungry. And I gave him, it was probably like $172. And he took one. He took one bill and put my hand around and says, you be careful with the rest. And I could see that man's face because he was so tender to me. But I mention this because that was 92 and I had not traveled again to Israel until now. I'm a showrunner, executive producer on TV shows and was flying over to Israel to do a show, History Channel, called Digging for the Truth, which is an archaeology show that ran a good while. And this time again, if it wasn't first class, it certainly was, you know. with all the bells and whistles and it was very comfortable and i remember as i'm landing in tel aviv again for the first time in maybe 20 years i tried to get very nervous as i land and started getting very very uncomfortable and i'm thinking like what the hell have i forgotten the script is in order that i forget the car name for the equipment i'm going through all the natural stuff that i'm thinking you know what about the shoot did i get wrong it was only as i'm landing and i see the landscape of tel aviv on the swimming pools and the regular houses at the penny jobs and i realized i am tapping into the fear that little kid from 1992 who is coming back to this place and it was a bittersweet feeling because i was such a different person yeah the fear was there but the fear wasn't real once i realized there are people waiting for me at the airport to take me to jerusalem where the camera crew was waiting so so although i was going back i realized how much i had changed and i missed that first trip I kind of wanted to be lost and afraid. I want to be sitting there next to holding a fistful of shekels and being scared shitless. And of course you can't because the great gift of travel is after a while you start to suss it out and it starts to make sense. But that's what drives travel for me is that sense of the unknown. And there might be something out there still I bump into that defines it. But as I've gotten older, I realize it's kind of hard to replicate that sense of novelty.
- Speaker #0
Yes, and I'm the same as you. I've dropped myself into El Salvador in November and I'm overlanding on my own to Mexico City. I'm like, I've not been to Central America. I've been to South America, but not Central America. El Salvador has kind of recovered from its troubled past, shall we say. So I'm like, there's a bit of fear there. You know, I'm on my own. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
it's still a little dodgy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Speaker #0
But I just need to go and... Just need to go and do it and see what's going on.
- Speaker #1
Are you going to be chasing that same dragon as I am?
- Speaker #0
There's probably a tiny bit in there, but most of it is intrigue because El Salvador, in my eyes, has always been off the map. For a generic traveller, now is a good time to go. So I'm intrigued to see what the country is like. I'm excited to go and test out what their customs are like in terms of getting the chicken buses, getting the coffees, and going to beach towns. That's a real big intrigue to see what it's like. But there is a tiny bit of... I'm trying to chase that like 2013 Bangkok trip where no smartphones.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
I was going on.
- Speaker #1
Bangkok was yours. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also a scary city for the first time.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. Also, let's not coat this as like a different era, but smartphones are a real thing, right? You know, before you mentioned 92, 93, I mean, that's before internet, but, um, yeah, even 2013 when I went, smartphones were just coming in, but they weren't as widely used as today. So that's a big thing because now, If I get stuck and I've got an eSIM, I can at all costs just check out Google, right?
- Speaker #1
You can always find out where you're standing on the map. You can call your friend at home and say, well, you go online and tell me where you go. Me and Mark tell me which way I go left or right. Yeah. It's wonderful because it allows us to do these things without the sense of fear. But those of us who knew what life was like before then, it's the sense of like anything else and nostalgia, what was lost, which is very much youth.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, youth. And I guess you can't underestimate the age factor, right? You do get older and more experienced. That's just like...
- Speaker #1
And then you asked before, you know, am I still chasing that? Yes and no, because I still travel all the time. But now, you know, I'm 57. My husband's in quite the adventure travels. I might go to groups of holidays. So we very much want to just go, you know, rent a place in Crete for two weeks with an infinity pool overlooking Knossos. And then maybe go for an hour and come back for cocktails. Because after a while, you want to be comfortable. So there's a certain stages in your life. I'm glad I did it when I was 23. Because at 53, I'm not sure it's quite as comfortable living in a two-star hotel somewhere, you know, in a shithole in Guatemala with a mariachi band playing right in front of your room. So as you get older, standards do increase.
- Speaker #0
Is there a country you travel to later in life that you kind of wish you went to when you're younger? Just because you can imagine what it might have been like back in the day.
- Speaker #1
It's a very good question. Someone asked me recently if I've ever had disappointing travels. And there's no country I wish I hadn't gone to because you always find something. But I guess one country that my vision let me down and what I wanted was Vietnam. I had been there. And this is like 15 years ago. So I can only imagine it's changed since then. But of course, Vietnam to Americans is like India to you guys. you have this attachment because we screw the country up so badly. So there's deep implications about Vietnam means to an American, but even beyond the war years, it always struck me like a North Korea or an Iran, a place that you could never go to because it was verboten and it was off limit. So we always imagine as a beat or two behind culturally, which is rubbish because they, they move on. We just don't talk. They just don't talk to us about it. So, but I went to Vietnam. I was. very disappointed in how commercial it was. We were walking ATMs, everything was very much about what they'd sell you and what shop they can take you in. And I had wanted Myanmar, which I'd been to a few years before, Burma, which is totally off the beat of my favorite countries, because it's so fucking repressive. You know, it's like, you can't get in there. So therefore, I really are walking into the past. I was expecting that from Vietnam, and what I saw in Vietnam was a culture that very much righted itself. and figure out capitalism and figure out how to commoditize. You can do tours of the DMZ Bridge, you know, which is all a construction because the DMZ Bridge was blown up by the Viet Cong in 1969 or whatever. It's all games, it's all smoke and mirrors. And I was deeply disappointed by my experience and wondered what it would have been 10 years like earlier. I got there too late.
- Speaker #0
Will Barron So you said 15 years ago, yeah, I went in 2013. And The thing I remember the most about maybe other people's perceptions was there's a group of American guys on a tour to Halon Bay. And they obviously just landed and straight on the coach, right? So I'm getting their first reactions to what they're seeing on the road. And it generally is, these guys are quite young, but like they're generally saying, oh, wow, they've got like houses like we have at home. They've got the high rise buildings that we've got at home. They couldn't believe how. I don't know what you say, but just how built up it is. It's just a normal country. It's not like maybe what you read about or hear about from 40 years ago. So they were shocked probably as much as you were in terms of they figured it out.
- Speaker #1
And I think it's because certainly as an American, we didn't talk about it. We had no quotient ties. We automatically assumed that America did give you aid and you were stuck in the middle ages and you couldn't possibly progress. Well, this proof positive that other people give aids and they can create their own world. So I think a lot of it was that idea that thinking because it was off our view screen, therefore it didn't progress at all. So Vietnam very much is that place. Oh, no, no. This country has done just fine without. Thank you very much. Yeah. It reminds me that the world does go on and that what we want to see on a holiday sometimes that doesn't. compete with what people who live there want to see and what they expect. They want progress. They want the march of time. We want a holiday snap that we can show our friends and say, there's the pyramid. Don't look at the McDonald's sign behind you. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
exactly. Yeah. Vietnam's an interesting one. It's actually an easy place to travel. It goes in the easy list. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
It does. Exactly. And look, I mean, the Vietnamese were lovely. I mean, they were very hard sell, but I make the same thing in India and Egypt and Africa and places too. But I was just expecting something that was, yeah, that was more sort of antiquated and more exotic. And in my mind, it wasn't. Myanmar was, and even parts of Laos and North Cambodia and stuff were more Southern Vietnam. Vietnam is very much right itself. It's become very commercialized.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, and I think Laos was an interesting one. I had no idea what that country was about before I went, so that was completely new. I took that...
- Speaker #1
bus from northern vietnam to laos oh yeah yeah well there's chicken but they move on so slowly and so slowly and then they'll stop and i'm gonna know where you don't know why it's because like some local guy you know if someone's delivering toothpaste to his house or whatever so they'll wait for a half hour so some guy can come and collect those groceries it's a wonderful thing yeah and obviously patience is so important important and i tell so many of my friends who do not travel that way that one thing you need particularly in the middle east or southeast asia is a buckle of patience because things are not going to move on your clock same as uh south asia so like nepal for example when it's a bit further middle but their
- Speaker #0
roads are horrendous so if it's 120 miles it's going to take 12 hours right because they stop in yanawa it's just it is long you just need to keep it together Try and just stay calm.
- Speaker #1
And just recognize this is part of it. Part of the thrill was understanding what a chicken bus in Nepal was like. On your GPS map, it only says 60K. Yeah, I know. So why did it take 12 hours?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, Google's telling me two hours, but we're four hours in.
- Speaker #1
Exactly.
- Speaker #0
Strange.
- Speaker #1
If you go to Philadelphia in 90 minutes, why does it take me so long to get from one part of Nepal to the other?
- Speaker #0
But I'll tell you, you mentioned Middle East. We went there last year. That was a new area of the world for me. Apart from Lebanon, which was an interesting experience, the rest of the countries I went to were very, very well done in terms of the roads. It was like clockwork, which maybe wasn't a shock, but it was like, oh, wow, you can travel quite easily here in terms of the roads, be driving, road tripping, or getting buses.
- Speaker #1
I don't know how long you've been traveling, but we all kind of look back. I do think the road systems everywhere have probably gotten better because there's more travelers going to these places. I think of Costa Rica as having the worst roads in the world. And yet Costa Rica now is a paradise for middle-class Americans, and everything is paved. you know, it was down there last year for the first time in 10 years. And first trip you could entire buses could disappear in potholes. And now it's just smooth as ice. Yeah. So I think because obviously these countries, I think part of it comes back to, we're talking about where the world has opened up in a way where it's easier to travel these places. So people were traveling to Cambodia and they're traveling to Costa Rica and they're traveling to Indonesian place. They wouldn't otherwise, but there's so much simpler to do. All you do is go on and book a ticket. So I think the infrastructure has risen because of that. Certainly roads and airports and things like that. They have changed so exponentially when I first started traveling.
- Speaker #0
I'd say at least you have that experience because you traveled in the early 90s, right? So you've got best of both worlds where you just know before and after, where I think for me, most of it has kind of been pretty easy with that sort of stuff.
- Speaker #1
It's all about timing, I think. And I was going to mention documentary because... One of the things I emulate, one of the things I would love to have done, I tried to make a documentary about this, but I couldn't sell it because the time, right after 9-11, the timing was wrong. But it's always been fascinating about the old hippie trail.
- Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. Okay.
- Speaker #1
And the overland route to Asia. You started the pudding shop in Istanbul. You get a magic bus. You get rid of your money and you slowly work your way overland. Yeah. Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and then in the Goa or Kathmandu. So I... Before I went network and started working for Discovery and BBC and all those places, I made an independent film and I was trying to sell it. So I flew to Kathmandu and I flew to go interview some people who took the hippie trail and never returned. Yeah. And they're pretty space cakey selling crystals or selling weed they bought in Sri Lanka or whatever. They weren't studying the most. upstanding citizens, but they found the most. And I became fascinated about what it would have been like to recreate the old Dippin'Trail. I was born in 66, so this is before my time. Before I was aware these countries existed, the road was already closed. By 79, you have what? You have the Iranian Revolution, you have the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, you have the Kashmir War, everything closes. So that window, the road to Kathmandu was only 10 years, but what What those people, what that generation before us had was they saw a world that only existed for 10 or 12 years where East met West and they were embracing. It was before the Ayatollah, it was before Saddam, it was before the Soviets and Americans and the Taliban and all this stuff happened. And the stories I hear from people who took the trip, it was so transformative that many didn't return. I would love to retrace those steps and meet some of these people if they're still alive. I mean, so long now it's hardly possible. But they went up the mountains in Nepal and, you know, following the Beatles to Rishikesh. They started making rugs in Tehran and never came back. They find themselves in this world that there's two worlds came together in what was essentially a very, very peaceful way before it all went to shit. What those people would have seen compared to the way I saw it, my generation and their generation, is so much different.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. In India. And this must have been... somewhere in Delhi but we met two French ladies and this was like eight years ago and they're in their 70s I think and they're meeting back to where they were when they've done the hippie trail right they're like in their mid-70s they're laughing and joking they speak good English and they were talking to us about this hippie trail where they drove from Paris east and we couldn't believe what we're hearing exactly what you just said about you know back then before 79 you can just drive through everyone's friendly no problems people help you out the amazing things that he's doing.
- Speaker #1
James was supposed to be Shangri-La. They invited him. They waited for you on the border with bags of opium and said, welcome, my friend. It was that kind of paradise. And yet, things changed so much. And what's fascinating to me, at least, is that I think it might resonate greater in Western Europe and England, but in the States, no one's ever heard of the betrayal. Because it was never really documented, people didn't take cameras and things, so they didn't make films. It was a phenomenon, very brief, that disappeared. It didn't really have any great resonance. A lot of people came back and got the job at the bank and forgot about it. But to me, I remember I was in Peshawar years ago. I was out of Peshawar in Pakistan. And this was, again, 2002 or 2003 or whatever, when I was doing a film over there. And one of the locals, talking about the hippie trail, one of the locals said, oh, you should see the hippie graveyard. And they took me up this mountain pass where there used to be an ashram. And there were about a hundred people. a hundred or so graves of all Westerners. Tim Simmons, you know, Carlos Swanson or whatever. These kids that died, mostly probably from overdose or drug abuse or whatever. Because your demons will follow you in these places. But here is an entire graveyard of young American kids, probably in their twenties or thirties, that just didn't make it back. It's a whole story that's untold. Good and bad. It's not known.
- Speaker #0
Wow. That would make the...
- Speaker #1
nostalgia a bit more realist right yeah it's not all fantasy exactly i mean it's you know you had to trust yourself because i talked to people when i did the documentary in the trailer i talked to people who did it and you know people died along the way on their own devices or one guy pissed off a warlord in afghanistan or maybe it was iran and you know his friend got beheaded i mean those things happened out there it was but it wasn't like the world we know today and the place that i love more than anything else is the middle east egypt is my happy place and and um I do love Syria and Jordan and Iran, but Egypt particularly. And I love the Middle Eastern culture and Arab sensibility. And there's all the things that we certainly don't hear about growing up. We think they're all just out to destroy us and that they're all just either Islamic fundamentalists or they're all living in the 1200s. It's simply not true.
- Speaker #0
Absolutely not true.
- Speaker #1
Some of the most wonderful, embracing people in the world. I just adore that part of the world. So I try to bring that into my books and my films as much as I can. I try to focus. When I go to Egypt, for example, I do a lot of shows in Egypt. I'll focus on Egyptologists, and then I'll focus on the experts, whether restoring the Sphinx or they're doing some work down in Luxor from the tomb. But I always try to find the locals as well and try to have an Egyptian voice too, which I get the locals. Because they're the ones that mean something, the ones that connect to the land. And every plot share they found is from their ancestors. And it's just like, it'd be wrong not to tell their story.
- Speaker #0
yeah i'm the same as you i try to podcast when i travel with locals i'll try to find some who are willing to come on the podcast and talk about their local area what we should do shouldn't do if we're a tourist and stuff like that just to get the real word of mouth really because you can read so many books about it or blogs but you can't really know unless you speak to the local people
- Speaker #1
They will look at that book and say, oh, they're still telling that story. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
yeah, yeah. And the hippie trail, I went to Rishikesh because I had to go to the Beatles ashram. That's the only reason I went there.
- Speaker #1
I didn't go there. I did a show on it years ago. It's science channel. It's all derelict now and tumbling down. Yeah, it's totally abandoned, right? So it's the moment in time.
- Speaker #0
That's a hippie place, Rishikesh. You've got those classic Westerners just staying there doing yoga every day.
- Speaker #1
Exactly, exactly, yeah.
- Speaker #0
Interesting place. Okay, we didn't actually get back to your early life. Was there travel interest when you were younger, before you went on your trip to England?
- Speaker #1
I mean, yeah, England was again, I think, any sort of like sheltered kid who watches too much PBS and you know, growing up on Monty Python and episodes of the Avengers or whatever, you know, England to me was like, oh my god, this is far flunger. And I loved it. I studied there in film. But how I got into the Middle East and history was really purely by accident because I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker. I was always in the emirate of film, cinema, narrative films. I grew up on The Epics, Lawrence Arabia, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Those are my go-to movies. Oh, The Good, The Bad,
- Speaker #0
and The Ugly. One of my favorites.
- Speaker #1
Oh, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is a flawless movie. I'd just sit here and watch it. You could start playing it now, and I'd shut up and just watch it. It was that good. And again, what Leone does is he takes you in this world of the Civil War, and it's just amazing how transportive it is. But that was my love of history and exotic locations. It was all very much in feature films. But then... I got my master's or undergrad degree in filmmaking in the late 80s from Temple University in Philadelphia. And then I moved to New York thinking that I would become Martin Scorsese overnight. And that didn't happen. You know, I was a poor schlub on a walkie talkie on a grip truck at two in the morning. So they didn't steal it somewhere in the bowels of Queens. And I clearly was a bit disillusioned. I was not exactly skyrocketing to the top. And I was lucky to have that work because many times I didn't have work at all. So. without any money, I would go to the New York Public Library because it was air-conditioned and it was free. And one day, out of boredom or out of curiosity, I picked up a book off the shelf about early Neolithic humans, or the rise of Neolithic culture, which I did not get into my small Catholic town in Pittsburgh yet. And some penny dropped. There was something about that book that I did not know about this world, about how civilizations started, that I resolved to teach myself. civilization, you know, through the New York Public Library. And I had a lot of time on my hands. So I did that for months and months. And then when I finally got to Egypt, when I finally got to the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, I got stuck. I became so fascinated by those great civilization cultures. I just said, screw it. I'm not going to wait, you know, for the phone not to ring. So I hopped a flight over to the Middle East. I flew to Tel Aviv. We toured that kind of story. I took a picture there down to Cairo with my friend. Two weeks in Cairo. And then he flew home because he had a job and I didn't. And then I backpacked through Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Israel, for about four or five months until the money ran out. And I was in the clouds. When I came back, when I finally realized I had to go back and actually do something, I resolved to find a way to get back here that will pay for it. Yeah. Documentary film. So I went back and got my master's degree in documentary cinema within FSM History. I made my thesis film on the great Sphinx of Egypt. And I knew some people on the Antiquities Board through some colleagues. And I went over there with student equipment and just bummed around the Sphinx for a while and watched the people restore it. And it was a style eye-opening. And then I was able to sell that to the Discovery Channel, which is pretty good for a 23-year-old kid who's making his thesis film. I actually sold it to TV. So I've been doing it ever since. So basically, I chased that idea of... travel. It has informed my life in such phenomenal ways that I wouldn't be here talking to you now, certainly as a TV producer or a novelist, if it wasn't for just saying, screw it, I'm going to go do it. And I backpacked and I found a way. I was fortunate. I certainly had help and timing was right. And I think the film also was good, but I was able to parlay that into a career where ever since then, by and large, the networks have been paying for me to go on these trips.
- Speaker #0
And you mentioned you're going to... to Turkey next week pre-recorded um what I noticed when I went to Turkey last year was that the Anatolian Museum was pretty cool is that the one is that the one in Ankara yeah yeah yeah
- Speaker #1
I've not been there in years I love that place Shadow High Oak and all those early cultures I need to get back out there and see that yeah I absolutely adore it yeah Turkey's one of my favorite places
- Speaker #0
Yeah. And again, I went to Shuttle Hike. I did a show about there years ago. And Gebootea, how do you say it? Gebootea, I thought I said it wrong, but you know about it. It's like, it's a archaeological site older than Stonehenge that is one of the earliest clocks. It's 10,500 years old. They just found that in the last 15 years. And just tells you how long civilizations have been around. I love those moments in culture and history. It was the first time. People ask me, why Egypt do you love so much? Because they did it first. And they did it so outrageously big. You look at the bloody pyramids, look at Saqqara, you look at the tombs of the kings. What they were thinking, how did they pull this off? The Romans were fine, but the Romans were all just a bunch of engineers and they were all blueprint and they had a bunch of slaves from Nubia doing it. The Egyptians had gods and demons and this sense of otherworldliness. Not that I believe there's anything going on except for hard work by humankind. But that's why I love those first cultures. Like... the Anatolia Museum or whatever. Someone created cities. Someone created the first mayor. Whatever it is. Oh my God, so I've been there and seen all that stuff. That's what drives me today. It may not necessarily be going to a city or a place that I haven't been to before because after a while I wouldn't say it's the same, but you start comparing, again, Honduras to Myanmar for ridiculous reasons that are rolling in your head. But when I see some ancient ruin or some windswept site on a hill somewhere, even in Ireland or whatever, I think, how did this happen? What happened here? The mystery there drives me to dig into it.
- Speaker #1
So you mentioned a backpacking trip. So are you going to revisit some places on this Turkey trip?
- Speaker #0
Well, I've been to Turkey so many times and I was just in Turkey two years ago. Again, staying with friends in a very lovely pool and getting somebody to drive us around. It's so We went to Ephesus, went to Troy, you know, that stuff ended up in Kos for a very comfortable week. This trip, I've made a thousand hours of television over 25 years, and I love the business. I started having an itch to tell other stories in different ways. And nonfiction TV is a very different beast, of course, than fiction or anything you can play with the facts. You can fit it with the facts. So I started writing novels four or five years ago, two novels that I didn't sell. One about the hippie trail and one that all took place in ancient Egypt. And then the third novel finally got some legs, and that's called Primetime Travelers. And I think it worked because it takes both of my worlds, both of my careers, and blend them together. It's about a TV crew that travels through time. And it's more Neil Gaiman than it is part of history. Because it's very cynical. It's making fun of the business and all the behind-the-scenes stuff. As well as going back to Indonesia, the Rams of the Great, the 12 Gates of the Underworld. The second book is about Pompeii. which comes out in September. So the same crew goes back primetime Pompeii. And I know so much about that because I've made so many films about, I know what happened in Pompeii by the hour when the Puma stones started to fall, when the earthquakes happened and the fires began, when the pyroclastic flow began at 6.50 AM on October 24th, 1989. I know all that shit in my head, but I want to weave it into a good, fantastical story. So there were drones and camera crews and a cheesy TV host. that looks like an Indiana Jones wannabe from Burbank. So I'm taking all my cynical TV road and throwing it into the past and then in way over their head. And I wrote the first draft of that book by renting a little villa on the Bay of Naples, just a few subway stops from Pompeii. So I would get up every morning and I would make my coffee overlooking the bay. And then I would take the train into Pompeii and wander around and just write stuff down and came back and I wrote that into my novel the next day. I fly by the seat of my pants. I don't outline anything. And I got the first draft done. It was still a chunk of nonsense, but there was some good nuggets in there. So that is my MO going forward. So the third book is Primetime Troy. So I'm renting a villa, not in Troy, because as we know, Troy is a bit of a cesspool. It's pretty boring. I'm taking a place a bit further south and I'm renting a little bit just by myself for a month and a bunch of Greco-Roman ruins around and I'm going to write. I have my book. I have a copy of the Iliad and I've got a copy of all the histories all ready to go. I have some experts that I know is going to throw me or show me around some ecological sites. I'm just going to throw myself into that world and write that first draft. That's why I'm going to therapy.
- Speaker #1
So you're combining your novels, combining sort of the truth in terms of history, but also your take on it in terms of what you've experienced in your career in TV. Yes. And it's kind of half serious, half jokey, right?
- Speaker #0
Very much because once you get. You know, once the pyroclastic flow is coming down the mountain, it's no longer a comedy. People do die in my book. But, you know, but it's not jokey, tongue-in-cheek comedy where it breaks a fourth roll. It's about, you know, I went out of my way to make sure the characters in my book, the four main crews, the cameraman, the... The director, the cheesy host, and the sound guy are all real people. And they all have a life outside the page. So I try to bring emotion to that. Because that's what makes a book work. You have to make sure you care about the characters. So some may die, some may live. And I very much want to make an emotion in that regard. But also, because I'm able to graft the cynicism and the jokiness of today and of television onto the past. I mean, the first book is about them taking the 12. bars of the duat the underworld looking for a lost mummy you know following the boat of rams he's the great so clearly it's a total farce and a fantasy but yet all the 12 gates of the mythology i meticulous research that is in that book it just happens to be a
- Speaker #1
cheesy host from burbank california but that's to get him to the next gate okay um in terms of your tv career what are some of the myths that maybe people think you probably like the real good things you mentioned travel is obviously not sometimes as glorious you're there to work essentially but is there any other myths that maybe people think that it's a great line of work but actually you know what it's not as good as you think it's work and particularly more and more so budgets
- Speaker #0
have shrunk and time has shrunk so you're sent off to shoot a film an episode of a film and you only have four five days in the field to do it and you got envious people would get all the way from the top of egypt down to luxor and back again so you're working your butt off and what that does is and i think that surprises people the most is these shows at least the shows i do for discovery and history and geographic they're all very heavily pre-scripted oh so we are not flying by the seat of our pants we are not making up on the fly we can't afford to We know there's an expert that's going to meet us at the Cairo Museum at 12.15 on Tuesday. We have him until 1.15. These are the questions we have to ask. And this is the question he has to end with. So it throws to the next scene. And then we get the plane and go to the dig site in Cairo. It looks or whatever. We meet the expert that answers that question. And we know we need three things from him. The three mysteries we want. So we can shoot the other stuff and see the dig site. But we know at the end of the day, he has to ask a question that throws us at four. So it's all sort of a blueprint that you follow. Now, invariably, things change. Experts don't say the things you want to, particularly if you're there for a tomb opening, you're there for an archeology. I did a lot of shipwreck shows where they're diving in ROVs. You don't find it. I did a bunch of shark wig shows, which are more different, but you don't get sharks. So then you have to think on your feet. But that's 20% of it. At the end of the day, you have to go in the field with an approved shooting script by the network. And you can't really, really fall too far from that because that's what they hired you to do. That's where they put their money.
- Speaker #1
Will Barron And how different is it now with the streaming services and social media and people's short attention span? Nick Neuman Oh,
- Speaker #0
it's far worse, far worse, across the board. It's far worse because so many people are out of work. Will Barron Yeah. Nick Neuman I mean, I lost my job at Discovery last year because my network, the Science Channel, went away. So me and 30 people were all got pinch slips last summer as well. And we'll... planet many other networks because the streaming services mitigate that many hours so rather than making four or five nights on a grid of hours you need five or six hours for your netflix for your hbo max so less product means less people to make it yeah so camera people shooters uh sound people fixers all that stuff you need far less of them showrunners um the budgets are smaller they wait longer before they renew something so thousands of people that I know are out of work across the industry. And it's inscripted too. It's a dying industry in many ways. It might write itself in a way, but it's shadowed its former self. It feels like we're inundated with programming when you flip on Netflix or Macs, but think that seven or eight networks combined to like one row on your, on your, on your screen. So, you know, an entire network has been reduced to one line on Netflix and all the jobs that go with it. And conversely, to your point, tastes have changed. And I can't argue about that because I recognize we can be the grumpy old men and say, why can't they make films like they did in 1802? What's wrong with them? Attention spans are shorter and people do not want to sit there and watch a two-hour film about the rise of the Bronze Age or whatever. They want to get in and out in 10 minutes or shows about space. They want to get right to space and see the International Space Station. They don't want to spend 10 minutes with people on the ground. and the verite, getting ready for the blast stuff, all the stuff that we grew up with. So people were very, very impatient. And I think that's one of the hardest things as a creative person is to recognize, well, you can't teach them to be otherwise. People like what they like. This is where people are today, younger people, a 15-year-old kid. is not going to enjoy what we told them in 1998. They're going to want a different storytelling. And another reason is why I went to novels, I think, because I can create my own space and I can create things in a way where television no longer satisfies.
- Speaker #1
Where does YouTube fit into this?
- Speaker #0
YouTube's a very big thing. YouTube's very small. I mean, I do a bunch of YouTube videos for my books. You know, it's a lot of the self-promotion stuff because one of the key things I do in both my books is I have a very strong gay angle. because I'm gay and I want to tell positive stories about the ancient world. And one thing I realized as I do all these archaeological films is that times are often much better for same-sex unions than they were now, and certainly in the ancient Near East and such. So I want to tell those stories, both with my characters and the past. But one thing I do to supplement that is I do a bunch of videos for Amazon or for YouTube. TikTok and Instagram, which is two minute videos about gay history. I just did one today. I just posted just before we talked about Julius Caesar, was he gay or not? And I just kind of talk about these things and I set them up there and they get a lot of followers on a curiosity and try to make sure I give positive spins. But that's the attention span of a lot of the YouTube and that stuff is they want the smaller things, a little bit of information, but conversely, you don't have to be that fancy. You don't need drone shots and million dollar budgets. I have a green screen over here. I stand there and I shoot some images. I saw a few pictures of Augustus Caesar in the background and it's out the door. So it's liberating in a way.
- Speaker #1
Is it a threat to TV though?
- Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely. TV, look, I don't know if you have younger nephews or kids or whatever, but you talk on the cable TV, they don't even know what it is.
- Speaker #1
Oh yeah, true. It's all YouTube for the younger nephews.
- Speaker #0
The one thing that I've most successfully been working on the last couple of years of discovery, the dimension sharp point, which, you know, you probably know is like it's on right now. I think it's just ended and it's the biggest week of the network for discovery. It's the highest profile, highest ratings, million dollars some per hour, whatever. It's big, big stuff. You talk to someone under 20, they never heard of sharp point.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Already, even the biggest week on the biggest network is fading from view. Something will replace these things. And so. I don't believe that creativity and storytelling will go away. It's been around since Homer or cave paintings. But the stories that we grew up on are going to be told in a very different way. And whether the Luddites follow or whether we join them and tell the stories the same way remains to be seen.
- Speaker #1
I wonder if social media will stay as well.
- Speaker #0
It's a good question. I don't know. Social media may get bored about... They won't have time for a two-minute video about Julius Caesar. That may be too much time. you get you get a chip in the head and you can blank and you can see that you want to know about julius caesar and in a second and you can move on i have no you know again i feel like i i i'm embracing social media because in my new career as a novelist i kind of have to and that's a good way of getting marketing out but it is not necessarily a language that speaks to me yeah like a lot i think a lot of older storytellers i like the old school stuff so i can only imagine it will become antiquated too and the kids being born today will look at Instagram and say, that's grandpa shit. Will Barron
- Speaker #1
God, makes you feel old. Has there been any dangerous locations that you've filmed in or hairy moments?
- Speaker #0
David Elikwu I've been lucky in that I've never really felt uncomfortable or felt like me or my crew was put at risk. I was arrested once in Spain. That's only because we were diving illegally on Iraq with our film gear, and that kind of sucked. But no, you know, I've been to some places that don't suck. People would think about Sudan and the Middle East and Iran. It's something that you shouldn't go to. But I've met nothing but wonderful people. They want to show you around. They want to invite you into their country. Of all the places I've been, the only time my film gear was stolen, the only time a car was broken into, and it sucked. underwater housing and all our camera gear was stolen was in Windsor, England.
- Speaker #1
Oh, God.
- Speaker #0
We were coming from a dive on the English Channel. We stopped somewhere for like, you know, sushi in Windsor. It was on the way back to London. Someone broke into our car in the car park and stole a bunch of shit.
- Speaker #1
Windsor's supposed to be posh.
- Speaker #0
Precisely. So I'm saying it can happen anywhere at any time. You just don't know. But luckily, I've never felt, you know, inshallah, I've never been in a situation where I felt like. My life was in danger. I really shouldn't be here. Either traveling as a tourist or traveling as a film crew. And for some crew, of course, you recognize that you're sitting down with a lot of gear and stuff. Yeah. The other time that actually the gear was stolen, actually, I was doing a geographic show years ago in Romania. about the gypsies. And it was about Outcast, a show called Taboo. And we're talking about Outcast around the world. And we're talking about the poor gypsies of some small town remaining to be forced outside of their town. So we went over there. We found the people. We're going to do a film with them. And we went to scout the location. We came back and the gear was all gone. And the gypsies had stolen it. And they said, we'll give it back to you for this amount of money. These are our protagonists. So I called. Geographic in DC, they wired some money over where we went on.
- Speaker #1
Easy money, that is. Crikey.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. They're going to do that again. Nothing.
- Speaker #1
They can't believe it. And what about as a gay producer, though? I mean, do you have to be careful in some countries of your sexuality and stuff like that?
- Speaker #0
I certainly do. I don't talk about it a lot. I think as a Westerner, as we know, when we travel, we're given a pass because we're seen as somebody who wanders in and wanders out and we're not part of the culture. And I certainly don't. pursue that when I go there. When I'm traveling with my husband or whatever, I'm not showing outward displays of affection, but I would do that as a straight couple either. What I find more interesting than a threat to me is when I travel, particularly in the Middle East, I think of Turkey and I think of Iran. I think of Southern Cairo, Southern Egypt, is how often I get hit on by men. If I'm walking around alone, I get hit on all the time. And I can't say it's because of my shocking good looks. I just happen to be the man that's walking down the street, the white guy walking down the street from somewhere else. And what it says is the repression is there among the locals, where they cannot be themselves. So they know they can hit on the decadent westerner that's going back to New York in a few days because there's no residue there. They know that we'll be interested because we have no shame. Or they also know, again, there's no knock-on effect. And I find that deeply sad because you can tell in the eyes of a lot of these people, that just the only way they can kind of find any kind of affection and scratch that ish, they very much want to because I do know that the oppression is real. It's really there. They certainly can tell their clan or their tribe or their people that they're gay. I have friends in Cairo and friends in Damascus that are very Western and so are their parents and they're gay and they come out. But it's not like over here. you have to have this entrapment in Cairo. A friend of mine who's Egyptian, who's gay, and he's out. He luckily wised up before it happened. They have entrapment on Grindr, which is one of the gay apps, a hookup app. And people will say, oh, let's meet you at the coffee shop or whatever. And it's the police. And they shake you down, they put you in prison, they show that they're actually doing something for Allah or whatever, the government, the Imam or whatever. It's just a way to just basically... It's the right, probably no different than the right over here in the States too. Those people can't very much rule and they want to bow to them. But to answer your question, I've been fortunate where I've never felt threatened or ostracized or hated for being gay. And I don't necessarily promote it, but I do see the repression all the time and the people that very much would love to be on a flight back to New York with me. So they would love to be one of them.
- Speaker #1
Hey, just a quick one. I just want to say there are many ways to support this podcast. You can buy me a coffee and help support the podcast with $5. Or you can go to my merch store with the affiliate link with TeePublic, where there's plenty of merch available to buy, such as T-shirts, jumpers, hoodies, and also some children's clothing. Thirdly, which is free, you can also rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser, or GoodPods. Also, you can find me on social media on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. Simply just search for Ringin'It Travel Podcast and you'll find me displaying all my social media content for travelling, podcasts and other stuff. Thank you. God, someone mentioned the same similar story actually to you. But he is straight, but he said he got hit on a few times, could be in taxis, could be whatever really. And he was quite surprised and taken aback by that because these are the same sort of countries where you wouldn't really expect it.
- Speaker #0
It wasn't like they knew I was gay. I don't have a, you know, a sign on my head saying gay. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So I'm sort of trying at everything, a law of averages, and eventually some guy, some girl, it wasn't me either that they picked up on it. But clearly, and I do think it's A, because of the sense, there's nothing to lose necessarily with the Westerner. Because they're not part of our, they're part of our world. So they don't try on anybody. And I do that, and it's probably true. I mean, we have a much more loose moral code than some of these more conservative countries, sexually, and in terms of who we can love and how we how we show our affection. So they probably figure it's worth a shot. For every 10, there might be one.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. I don't blame them. Yeah, yeah. You traveled to over 70 countries or maybe to 70. What three are your favorites?
- Speaker #0
I always hate these questions because it's all about the time of the day. Certainly Egypt is the top because Egypt has my... hard. Egypt has a special place. It has given me so much both of my first films and that's where I was when I recognized how much I love that part of the world. I love places. I've always attracted more to places that have great archaeological sites as well as the culture that can blend the two. So, you know, I'm less interested in the Tokyos that are all steamy metropolises and the New Zealand, which is nothing but, you know, windswept mountains. They're both lovely, but I need a mix. So let's see. So I'd say I very much love Burma, Myanmar, whatever they're calling it today, particularly because of Bagan and Mandalay and some of the sites. Yeah. Have you been to Bagan?
- Speaker #1
Yes. Probably one of my favorite areas in the world.
- Speaker #0
Phenomenal, right? Unbelievable. It's hard to believe we don't know about it. It should be as well known as the Tower Bridge or the Eiffel Tower. It should be iconic in terms of what people think about it as cultural touchdowns. And no one knows about Bagan. It's amazing. And when I was there, again, partially it's because of the government, but I had so much less stuff to myself. People were friendly. Food was amazing. It was gorgeous and tranquil. I love the Buddhist, the feel of Buddha. I'm not a spiritual person. I'm not a Catholic. When you're in that part of the world, you walk into a Buddhist temple, there's a reclining Buddha and you hear the birds chirping and it's open to the jungle. There's something very inviting about that. Unlike the Notre Dame when it's flying buttresses or a mosque that's all... hidden in darkness it's inviting as part of the landscape so i clearly love that part of the work and i think i have a great affection for peru too not just machu picchu but i think the landscape of peru and cusco is just fairy tale beautiful and i can go back there every time i never get tired of that cusco is one of my favorite cities or towns yeah love that place you get it right yeah yeah yeah and you know it's a tourist town in a way but it doesn't matter because it's just so transparent
- Speaker #1
boarding isn't it oh it's just a bit of a dream but began if people i know right now is an interesting situation not sure if it's the best time to go to myanmar if you can to get an e-bike or a scooter to drive around began yeah i do not know what yeah what the situation is now even when i did it this is 15 years ago i
- Speaker #0
went through maybe you just do i bought a ticket in phnom penh i did a puddle jumper over to um um what's the capital rangoon and then did it and then came back because you don't want to give money to the people, you know, the junta that's in charge. It's tough because invariably money's going to go in their pockets. So it is definitely a moralistic choice as well as it is. But if anyone once has wanderlust and they want to see something that they won't see anywhere else, Urba is the place.
- Speaker #1
And for Egypt, do you think people are scared to travel there?
- Speaker #0
They always are in Egypt, always.
- Speaker #1
I get the impression that people are a bit nervous about going there, you know, but they find it edgy or not sure how to do it.
- Speaker #0
I've been there a dozen times, 15 times, some over the years, and there's never a frigging good time to go to Egypt. Just like you said, I wouldn't go to East New York myself right now tonight. You know, East New York's never going to not be East New York.
- Speaker #1
Yeah.
- Speaker #0
So I think it all depends on what your risks are. But I always tell people, if you wait for things to settle down, you'll never see the pyramids. And then things are fine. You know, nothing is ever a hundred percent safe, but I guarantee you, that all... the places i've been to i've never had any issues you fly in the security is great yeah you got the hassle of getting around but it is a very inviting open country and they very much want to make sure that you are taken care of so like when i'm on my shoots or even on holiday i took a bunch of friends one of a bunch of friends there a few years ago and there were probably people six or seven of us and they always have an armed guard with you when you're seeing the pyramids or whatever a group of four or more will have a security guard which is strange because you don't really need it. And usually it's an 18-year-old kid with an AK-47. I'm not sure how safe it is having this charming but pimply kid with a big gun in front of you on the van. But I guess it tells them that we value you and nothing's going to happen to you. It's always a good time to get eaten.
- Speaker #1
That's a strange vibe that we had that in Lebanon where we sat down to have some Lebanese pizza in this restaurant on the street. And then this guy with his family next to us had a gun that's hanging by his... by his belt right i'm like oh is this is this a good thing or a bad thing i don't know you just got to go with it and you don't want to ask you do not want to butt in and have it yeah no question stay in your table i'll stay on mine i will mind my p's and q's you do that too yeah smell eat your pizza say hello you'll be fine right never wait to travel if you want to travel someplace go yes that's my moral there yeah and i think because of where we live and the media coverage there are some certain areas of the world where people are a bit more hesitant, should we say, to maybe take that leap. You are now a novelist. I know you mentioned it before.
- Speaker #0
I am now.
- Speaker #1
Why did you transition out of TV to be a novelist?
- Speaker #0
I think so. When we touched on it before, I want to tell stories in a different way after so many years. I love documentary. It's in my soul. But I also, after all my travel and all my experiences, I just want to have some fun. I want to lighten up a little bit. And I know it wouldn't be something serious. I don't want to write, you know, Shuggy Bane or whatever. I want to write, you know, something that's light and fun. effervescent and i but i want to take all my stories that and and tell something but i but i remember when i started writing the first novel two things happened 2016 where i've been talking about i had a novel in my head about ancient asia for years and my husband was sick of hearing about it you know just friggin do it and then i remember in 26 things two things happened early in the year that made me change that one i turned 50 and i realized holy shit there's less years behind me there had to be the back and then two my great hero david bowie died and I grew up with Bowie. Bowie was just, you know, every album was a new world and I couldn't wait for the next one. He always challenged me to take to this place. Even though I knew every disc he ever put out, when I read his obituary, it reminded me how fearless the guy was, that he had no problem reinventing himself and taking risks and jumping off a cliff on each and every album, the 26th album. And I'm thinking, I hate David Bowie, but if he can do it 26 times, I can freaking do it once. I'm going to write this. damn novel. It's a great one. And it was a struggle and I had to teach myself a new way of storytelling because all the stuff I learned as a TV producer, some of it helped in terms of cast and effect, signposting and cliffhands and all the stuff that works in television. But it's a different language so I had to teach myself the literary, the internal stuff, the point of view. I had to start from scratch and it was exhilarating and frustrating at the same time. And the first one I... I think it was good, but I wasn't able to sell because it was too quirky. I wrote the one about the hippie trail a little closer. And finally, I think I found that magic stuff in my third book where I mentioned I mixed the two. And I could bring out the humor that I have because I think I have a very sharp sense of humor in my writing. And I couldn't do that when it's all historical pieces.
- Speaker #1
Yes.
- Speaker #0
So that one kind of opened up a different chance of me talking about the insider behind the scenes of television, but also all my love. And that's the one that I think that sort of. caught the attention. That's why that one was published first. And that's why it's a series of books. So, Primetime Travelers will go back in ancient history time and time again to make films. And it won't be about epoch moments. You know, Ancient Egypt, second was Pompeii, the third one is Troy. I have no idea where it'll go from there. But it's nice and returnable and it's fun. And I can kind of get lost in this stuff and hopefully tell a fun yarn that's like, it's a beach read, but you gotta learn some stuff.
- Speaker #1
you're going to pick up a book and it's going to be a romp but at the end of the day you'll know about how pompeii exploded yeah that's that's like the perfect combo right if you're looking for that kind of thing yeah yeah absolutely because i think history is important but i guess especially younger generation they do get bored don't they so you need to entertain them in in
- Speaker #0
the middle part somewhere or at least in the middle of the sentence or whatever you know what i what i did learn from telling was really helpful and all my books if you were to read one they never slow down Again, I have the emotional stuff, but there's always someone plotting. There's always, you always have two or three things going on. Very much like a film, very much like a TV show. If you watch a show and there's always three or four stories, there's a lot of cross-cutting and different POVs. It's sort of cinematic in that way. So I would say it's relentless because that sounds exhausting, but there's never a quiet moment. At the end of the day, like my shows, they're meant to entertain and educate at the same time.
- Speaker #1
Next question might be, I don't know if it's a difficult question, but let's take the passion away for a second and monetary wise. Going away from TV must be quite a big decision because I can imagine it pays quite well. So was that a big decision?
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, I'm making like, you know, $6.50 writing novels or whatever. The China I'm paying is not much. And I still do work in television as a freelancer, even though I work with the networks. I just finished a project for History Channel. Yeah, I'm after turkey, which I'm definitely off the clock. I'll come back and I'll hit up my friends and say I'm home. And of course, if that job comes along and the VP job that pays so well, it's going to be hard to say no to it because I still want to buy that beach house somewhere along the Mediterranean. So I'm not ready to like teeter off in poverty just yet. But I need to find a way to have those two love a dovetail. But I still enjoy television. It's not like I gave one up for the other. I just wanted to tell stories in a different way as well. And it's true. Books do not sell. Our books do not pay the money you make after all the cost of marketing and book design and all that stuff. I can buy a pizza. A good pizza. A good pizza, man. In Sorrento, but it'll still be a pizza.
- Speaker #1
Will Barron Yeah. And writers say this all the time, right? So where's the incentive in terms of, let's take the passion out of it because people love writing, but in terms of career, it seems like one of the hardest careers to get into is writing books.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, it's foolish. It's foolish. My dad, God bless him, he's 89 and now he's still worried, you know, I'm 57. You're looking for work, right? You're not going to do this novel stuff all the time, right? Yeah, don't worry, Dad, I got some money to save. He thinks I'm a 16-year-old kid again, you know. And in a way I am because it is sort of foolish. It's like I certainly didn't go into this for the cash. All my novel writing friends do not. Even the ones that get big book deals, by the time it comes out of it itself, there's no guarantee the next book comes out. I'm doing it right now because I love to do it. What happens a year or two from now, you know, financially becomes unfeasible and the books don't start making a bigger profit. I don't know, but I do know in a way that I feel like I've worked pretty hard in networks and I made good money doing networks being an executive producer. So I'm not struggling, but I want to try something new. It reminded me when I went into filmmaking to begin with, it was for the sheer. Talk about the thing that's so challenged, the freedom of walking in a small town in eastern Turkey and being free and being lifted off the ground. It kind of went down the career sometimes,
- Speaker #1
too.
- Speaker #0
It's easy to be stayed. So for now, I'm letting myself drift a bit. We'll see what happens. Hopefully my dad won't listen to this. He goes, I told you. I knew you weren't making any money. But why a podcast for you, if I can ask one more question? Because again, I can't imagine this lucrative either. What does a podcast give you?
- Speaker #1
No. not lucrative not not a minute anyway i think podcasts and books are probably the same where the joke is you can't make any money in it right don't expect that yeah yeah youtube maybe is a because i do youtube as well right i do youtube for my travels that's a different beast but also it's a beast that you can have some markers to hit you get your subscribers you get your hours in right press yes on the making money you get ads in there's a path there even though it's quite hard but podcasting is a bit of a wild wild west yeah right i love speaking to people yeah yeah yeah lots of people the worst bit about it is the editing and the i guess the organization of it yeah yeah this is the best bit right so yeah don't you have somebody else to help you with that or when we say goodbye oh you didn't know no no all myself that's no fun that's why all these you know pitching
- Speaker #0
myself in a book i have my social media guys 28 year old kid who understands tiktok and oh yeah I just gave him a video today about Richard the Lionheart. He's going to post tomorrow. I stood in front of the screen screen. I gave my spit up to him and he will post it. He will add the music. He will cut it. He will find an image of Richard the Lionheart and put it up there for me. I just can't be bothered with that shit.
- Speaker #1
I don't blame you.
- Speaker #0
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
I think the first thing I would do when I outsource stuff would be something like that, right? Social media. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
It's intuitive to them.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. I tried to combine travel and podcasting last year. A lot of lessons learned, a lot of interesting things. So I'm taking those into the future. And yeah, next year will be interesting, I think. If you want areas of the world, I don't know if this would be any interest to you. There's like three areas of the world for my trip last year. I went to 20 countries. And the ones that still get downloads, like loads per week, is places like Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. They're the three that just seems to resonate really well.
- Speaker #0
That's fascinating to know. Why wouldn't they all be living in Taiwan who do that? Or if there's people in Sioux Falls, Iowa that are fascinated by it?
- Speaker #1
No one from those countries listening, so it's well-It's got to be elsewhere. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, you never know until you do it. I know that Discovery Channel, whatever, we had a list of historical time periods that we would do or wouldn't do. Or Animal Planet had a list of dogs rate, but cats don't. What is it? It's like- birds rape but horses don't or something there actually isn't doing a don't list before you put money into something civil war rates but the revolution war doesn't one were two race the world war one doesn't ah so freaking arbitrary but there's a list yeah the master list that you know and there's money behind it so it
- Speaker #1
seems to be pretty evergreen too i don't get it and in terms of uh youtube because i've started that recently right so i've kind of post um travels gone into like my archives and create a script and stuff like that right so the countries or places that get really high traction are paris venice you know the classic travel places right so last the two places recently is beirut i guess it's topical uh because i went there last year again right and then Carpathos Island in Greece, which no one's heard of. So I guess people are trying to set up those Greek islands that no one's heard of. So if you look on a map between Crete and Rhodes, there's an island called Carpathos, and that's there. Well worth visiting.
- Speaker #0
I've never heard of it. I've never heard of it. Have you been there?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, yeah. Went there on my own for two weeks. Loved it.
- Speaker #0
All right. Okay. Wow.
- Speaker #1
I recommend it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. We're coming towards the end. I've got a couple more questions, and then we'll...
- Speaker #0
delve into my quickfire travel questions i've got up here any travel plans apart from turkey this year going into next year um turkey certainly is the big one um when i get back my husband and i will head over to berlin because i like to do like he's a big art guy we're going to go see the hans the franz hall show it's this open there so we'll sit over there for a week and and hang out there which is a fun city um but that's probably it for this year we usually go in way and on again since you know I'm no longer getting a big paycheck from Discovery. It may be Newark, New Jersey.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Gary in Connecticut. Exactly. Okay. Oh, yeah, that reminds me. Do you know the place up in New York State called New Pouts? Oh, yeah,
- Speaker #0
I've been to New Pouts.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, we went there last year on a road trip. We thought it was a hippie town, and it is. It's pretty hippie. Well,
- Speaker #0
yeah. It is more hippie than if you've been to Woodstock and I can store it. That's all fake hippie. That's all like, you know, that's... shopping mall you know hippie like the kind of shit you would you would buy somewhere in a mall in cleveland so the sun is definitely set on on uh woodstock so new policy is a better place ah interesting okay i love both because i'm a hendrix fan so i went to bethel woods oh yeah yeah yeah lastly where can people find you any social media any linkedin any website yeah um my book is on amazon.com primetime travelers and i'm at neil lair.com i think it's not from my newsletter there And then I do videos on gay history because it ties into the book, Gay Underscore History at TikTok and Instagram. I think it's ancient gay history or something there. So Facebook author. So all the usual places. You Google Neil Laird or Primetime, I'll pop up somewhere. Will Barron.
- Speaker #1
I'll put the links in the show notes so people can click on those.
- Speaker #0
Will Barron. That'd be brilliant. Thanks. I'm going to go ahead and get going. writing these books quickly is and the same characters i love to hear from people what they think about where they want to see the characters go i'm about to go to turkey to write book three so what do you think about carol the camera woman and eric the host you know so if anyone does read don't be afraid to track me down and give me thumbs up or thumbs down what they like they don't like because it
- Speaker #1
is always evolving and always moving and i love that engagement okay awesome righty-o got some quickfire travel questions these are normally some of your favorite things worldwide I've already heard that you don't like favorite things, so it could be interesting. It's travel question time. We mentioned your three favorite countries, but if you were to go to two or three tomorrow that are new, new places in the world, and there's no rules, you can go anywhere, what three countries are you going to go to?
- Speaker #0
I still haven't made a stance. I would love to see a stance. There's countries, the steps. The place that I would... always love to go to and never will of course because of history and time is afghanistan i have a great affection for the afghan history and i'm fascinated by probably when i was writing the hippie trail book and hearing about people who went there i would love to see some of those remnants of what's there but of course such a war-torn ugly place now that i can't imagine but that certainly is one of those places it's always been high modest i say probably somewhere in central africa i haven't been to i'm just looking at the places on the map that i haven't been to yet and just see if i can sort of like discover that young kid again somewhere in the jungles of Congo.
- Speaker #1
Will Barron Yeah. Okay. And what about three favorite cuisines worldwide?
- Speaker #0
David Schawel I mean, I think, I mentioned before, I think Burmese food, there's noodles and peanut sauce. I think the best food I ever had every day when I was in Burma was just phenomenal. And it was like, two pennies, everything was so fresh and so tender. So I could live that kind of food all the time. I love my Middle Eastern food. I love my... my olive oils and my my copter kebab so i'm always happy to put my butt down somewhere in a cairo in a in a cafe in cairo or lebanon or whatever my favorite recent probably because i spent you know a month in naples all that food so it's good italian food i mean you can't beat it that's an easy one but it's like i know it's a popular one yeah yeah yeah okay if you could sit anywhere in the world with a cup of coffee and
- Speaker #1
watch the world go by where are you going to sit
- Speaker #0
I've done that twice now I'm gonna do it again next week is that Mediterranean view there's something about that eastern Mediterranean even the western Mediterranean that speaks to me looking out over that Mediterranean Aegean sea knowing all that culture that existed watching a sunset disappear behind roads or whatever it's just I never get tired of that I'm the most creative when I'm just watching something just like Homer talked about you know the sunset over over uh the city of troy it's like i'm always chasing that okay and tomorrow if you're going to live somewhere for a year and that's any place you can go to where you're going to live so from the greek island i think just because again where my heart is it's like a small one like the one you mentioned i have to look into that one it won't be spritz or mcdonough there's gonna be some place where there's some some crusty guys playing backgammon and there's one or two coffee shops and a gorgeous view I can be left alone for a while.
- Speaker #1
Okay. If you do go to Karpathos, they do one of the shortest flights in the world, which is to Kasos Island. And Kasos Island is even smaller. It's one little, barely a town. You've got the old guys playing their little games by the water, the blue buildings, the white buildings, some Greek food. It's a dream. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
You guys do me a favor and send that information. We have to wait. Yeah, yeah. I'm the kind of guy that writes that shit down and goes there.
- Speaker #1
Okay, cool. Are you a sunrise or sunset person?
- Speaker #0
I'm up very early. I do my creative work in the morning. I get up when the sun comes up. I love to see a beautiful sunset, but that's with the wine in my hand and wine down. But morning, when morning rises, so do I. It's already late for me. It's like, well, you know, 9.53 here in New York and it's like, oh, it's also late. Will Barron
- Speaker #1
Is there anywhere in the world that you traveled to, I'm probably already asked this really, that you didn't like or you wouldn't go back to?
- Speaker #0
No, you know, people do ask us those questions. I think travelers ask themselves because I'm so embarrassed by time and place. Again, I didn't like Vietnam for what I saw there. I wasn't too keen on Guatemala because I did see a lot of violence, not towards me, but it was a very ugly experience. And it was very short crime ridden in Guam City and stuff. But again, it could be different three years later. So I would never write a country off or people off. I think I certainly have my affinity for certain. cultures and certain sensibilities and sense of humor that other countries don't have. I'm a big fan of Eastern Europe, for example, because they never crack a smile, but I would not go back to Poland. It just wouldn't be high on my list. I'd rather go to Green Dot than you mentioned earlier. Will Barron Okay.
- Speaker #1
This might be a tough question. If you could pick a favorite landmark, it could be nature or manmade, what are you going to pick?
- Speaker #0
Nick Neely Because I've seen so many. Clearly it's Egypt because Egypt just speaks to me. There's a temple in the middle of Egypt that very few people go to, go to Abydos. Have you been there?
- Speaker #1
No.
- Speaker #0
It's about an hour north of Luxor, several hours from Cairo. So it's in middle Egypt. Yeah. And it's a beautiful temple of Seti, which goes back to the New Kingdom. And what's amazing about it, it still has the roof on it. And when you walk into it, it still has the painting on it. So you can walk in there, but I've been stepping back 3,000 years. And every time I do, I still get shivers because I feel like this is as close as I'm going to get to finding that portal to the past. That's where my first book takes place. That is the portal to the ancient world of prime time travelers. And because it speaks to me so much, I never get tired of walking around in Abidos. It's just one of those places very few people know about because it's just not convenient. People go to Cairo and they fly down to Luxor and then back home again. But if you're there for a while, I recommend everybody take a few days to go to Abidos. It's mystical.
- Speaker #1
Wow. I've never been to Egypt, so there's a shock.
- Speaker #0
Oh, then I've got to help you out. You give me your Greek name, I'll give you my Egyptian name.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. Okay. Last question is, if someone's listening right now and a bit nervous about going to Egypt or Middle East or anywhere in the world or they haven't traveled before, what advice would you give them to say, you know, put that flight, get out there and travel?
- Speaker #0
I mean, exactly what I started saying. If you believe in it, do it now. I mean, there's other ways to do it. You can always do a tour group if you're worried about doing it alone. You can always find somebody to take you around, you're paying on your costs. But certainly with the Egypt, and even like Iran and places like that, if you can get in, the sense that people are so embracing that it really isn't dangerous. All I can say is, we're going to be just this, don't wait, just go, just figure it out. Figure out your comfort level and go. Because once you do, as you also know, once that itch is scratched, it itches the rest of your life. And you have no idea what wonders await us. You take that leap.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you are off if you do that first leap. That's it.
- Speaker #0
Exactly. You are constantly moving. You get home, you're jet lagged. You get out your computer and say, where am I going to next?
- Speaker #1
Welcome to our world. It's been a great chat. Thanks for coming on the podcast. Real engaging. Love talking travel. And I think you're going to provide listeners with a lot of nuggets there that are going to get them thinking.
- Speaker #0
I hope so. Thanks for having me and great questions.
- Speaker #1
Cheers, Dean. Thank you.
- Speaker #0
Cheers.
- Speaker #1
Thanks for tuning in to the podcast episode today. If you've been inspired by today's chat and want to book some travel, if you head to the show notes, you'll see some affiliate links below, which helps support this podcast. You'll find Skyscanner to book your flight. You'll find Booking.com to book that accommodation. Want to stay in a super cool hostel? You'll see Hostelworld down there too. You'll find Revolut to get your travel card sorted. Click the GigSky link to get your eSIM ready for your trip. And more importantly, you'll find Safety Wing Insurance to get that travel insurance for your trip. There are many more to check out. So when you click that link and book your product, a small commission goes towards me and the Wiganet Travel Podcast. Thank you in advance and enjoy your travels.
