Matt Bowles: My guest today is Jason Moore. He is the host and creator of the award-winning Zero to Travel podcast, which has over 12 million downloads and over eight hundred five-star reviews. On the podcast, Jason shares thoughtful interviews, unconventional perspectives and actionable advice to help you travel the world on your terms. After traveling the world for a decade, Jason currently maintains a base in Oslo, Norway with his wife and two kids.

Jason, welcome back to The Maverick Show, my friend.

Jason Moore: Thank you very much for having me here. Good to be back, as always.

Matt Bowles: I am so excited about this conversation. You and I did our first interview a little over two years ago. And at that time, you had probably 8 million downloads on your podcast. Now you have 12 million. So, you have been doing really exciting stuff. I, of course, am a listener to your show as well. And I want to dive into some of the stuff you’ve been up to with the podcast. But I also want to talk about some of your travel experiences that you’ve had as well since our last show for people that haven’t yet heard the initial episode, I’m going to link that up in the show notes.

I think it’s a great primer for this one because we went through your whole travel journey and 10 years being a nomad and hitchhiking across Scotland and all kinds of incredible travel stories and everything else. And so, for your background and all that kind of stuff, I want to link that up in the show notes and encourage people to go listen to it.

I just re-listened to it recently, and it is a really good episode. So, I want to encourage folks to hear more about you and your background from there. But in this interview, I want to just dive into some of the stuff that has gone on since our last interview. I think I want to start by asking you about your recent trip to Rome with the family and going into a little bit of the family travel. Obviously, you did a lot of single travel in your life. And now that you’re married, you have two kids, can you share a little bit, maybe just start with the Rome trip and then talk a little bit about family travel in general? How do you structure a trip like that for the kids and how did it go?

Jason Moore: Sure, thanks for asking. Yeah, and I will preface this with if you’re listening right now and you don’t have kids, I don’t want your eyes to glaze over maybe you will in the future, maybe not but either way try to keep it interesting for everybody here. But when you have kids a lot of the travel revolves around seeing family.

I think at that point, at least it does for us. I’m based in Norway, like you mentioned, but I’m originally from the States. So, my family’s back in the United States and they want to see their grandkids and I want to see them. So, when we’re traveling, a lot of times it’s to see my wife’s parents. We just got back from a trip visiting them.

They’re in Norway here, but it’s a bit of a road trip. And then going back to the States, seeing my parents, seeing my sister, seeing my nieces. That sort of thing. So, this Rome trip was to celebrate my wife’s 40th birthday, and we haven’t done a ton. I mean, we’ve done, certainly, we have, seeing family, we’ve gone to Mexico with them, we’ve gone out to Colorado with them but, it’s different. They’re a bit older now and it’s always changing as their ages change. So, this was the first non-family trip we’ve done in a while where we’re getting on a plane and it’s like a proper here. We’re going to another country. We’re going to show up. We have to find our place to stay. We have to like figure it all out.

It was a lot of planning man but let me say the caveat with this is it’s Rome. So, if there’s certain things you want to do, and you want to actually get into them and you don’t want to spend half the day waiting in line, it’s one of those places where you do have to if you’re hitting some of the main sites. It’s a good idea to plan things out and I’m generally more of a spontaneous traveler, but I do think that’s a good travel tip if you’re going to a place like Rome or you know one of these places where you know it’s going to be a lot of people even though it was the off-season. And you don’t want to wait in line for multiple hours. You’re going to have to lock in the Vatican Museum ticket entry without the line thing. You’re going to have to lock in the Pantheon thing unless you want to just stand there and wait for hours. So it’s worth it to do and because my wife had never been, she wanted to see a lot of those things and I think one of the big things I learned on this trip is to just don’t expect the kids to have the same feeling that you have to be in a 2000-year-old historic building where you’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is just incredible”.

You know their level of appreciation is going to be perhaps on a different level. So, for me, it was going in and seeing the Pantheon and being in and looking at the dome. And I’ve been there before and it’s always spectacular. And for them, the thing they’ll probably remember is coming out afterwards and pushing their hand on the water fountain and it’s spraying on a bunch of strangers and us getting dirty looks starting to get in this water fight on the streets of Rome.

That’s like the stuff that they’ll remember. They won’t necessarily remember this architecture and that’s okay. It was really just about being together and having an adventure together and spending time together. My one, I wouldn’t say regret, but I wish I’d gotten them involved a little more in the navigation around the city, like I want to get them involved with this is what’s happening, we have to go there.

I think one of the things I’m trying to teach my kids about travel is that it’s possible and that you can have an idea, and this is really about anything not just travel, that you can have an idea and then you can be like, “All right, well, how would we actually do that?” And then you can list out some practical steps and start working towards that and I think that’s an empowering mindset to have.

So, it’s fun, man. I mean, it’s fun. Like the pre-stuff is fun because you’re kind of planning, you’re getting excited. We watched a couple of YouTube videos on What not to do in Rome, The Top Common Tourist Scams, and things like that. The whole process from leading up to it to going to then coming back and having the memories I think it’s a lot more work to travel with kids, and you can’t expect to do all the things you want to do but it’s also worth it.

Matt Bowles: Let me ask you about the bigger picture of parenting and travel more broadly. When you think about raising your kids at their current age and moving forward, how do you think about integrating travel into their lives as a parent?

Jason Moore: It’s a good question. It’s ever-evolving, I’d say, because, in some ways, I don’t know what that’s going to look like. Like one of the examples of that is I recently had a meeting with the principal of my daughter’s school about having a family gap year next year. We’d do like a three to six-month, maybe 12-month thing, probably more like three to six months because it seems pretty feasible for everybody. The type of break where we go and it’s not just traveling. You’re past the traveling like we did in Rome where that was like a four-day kind of trip and you’re into the, hey, we’re living on the road for a period of time because I do want them to have that experience.

“I” want them to have that experience. That’s already perhaps the wrong mindset, right? Do “they” want to have that experience? And it’s hard because I see the value of both the nomadic existence, which I got to experience after I’d finished college and stuff like that, and also the stability that I had growing up where I grew up in the same suburb of Philadelphia, went to the same school, all that.

We talked a little bit about this on my show. If you want to hear our conversation, you can go check that out because we’re doing a little show trade thing here, with you and how your upbringing was. You were moving around every seven years; I think you said at least. And so I guess my broad perspective on this is just being in tune with them and integrating it, but also making it sort of a natural part of things and also not them understanding that “Hey, not everybody gets to do this. We are privileged that we can fly”. And that’s some of the things we talked about before we went to Rome. Like, we’re lucky we can get these plane tickets, get a place to stay and go to Italy. This is like some people’s lifelong dream that they never get to accomplish and we’re just getting to be able to do this.

We have a passport that allows us into this country, all of this type of privileged stuff that needs to be acknowledged around it. And I think that’s a big part of this too. Going back to the gap year thing I met with the principal, it’s just not going to work because of the laws. And I don’t want to get into the particulars because it’s not going to be interesting for the listeners.

But the bottom line is we can’t save one of our kid’s spots at school for three months, even. It’s not going to work at least this year, but it might work in the future. And, you know, and then we have to make a decision. And for us right now, the decision is based on them having stability and just being like, okay, I know through my podcast and through my life that this is a possible lifestyle to live, but is it going to be worth going for three months or six months right now?

And then coming back and then having them be in a different school and different schools from each other and all that stuff. It’s not going to be worth it, in our opinion. That’s what I mean. It’s like influx kind of, you know, I’m open to a lot of things. I think the main messaging is going to be hey, we’re lucky to do this when we get the opportunity to do it Let’s just show the gratitude and also just try to give them an experience and not try to have too many expectations As travelers all the things that we want to do and just let them take in the experience for what it is and let them share their thoughts around it and what it might mean to them rather than trying to impose our worldviews onto it.That would be kind of the overarching themes, I suppose, at this moment. But hey, we could talk in two months, and it can be perhaps a different answer. That’s the way life is.

Matt Bowles: Well, I’m curious about how that’s gone so far and the type of feedback you’re getting from your kids so far.

Jason Moore: My daughter and I went on a trip with her when she was two with my business partner at the time. And I just thought, oh, this is kind of a cool tradition. I’ll do one with my son somewhere. And it’s fun for me because I have the flexibility to travel around and he’s still in daycare. So, I’m like, why don’t we just go to Estonia and just check out Talin and see what kind of trouble we can get into together, a little girl fashion boys’ trip?

So, I’m having a lot of fun scaring my wife right now. Oh, don’t worry I’ll leave them locked up in the room when I go out at night to check out the nightlife. I’ll be back and let you know, I’m kidding obviously. But I’m starting to freak her out so that’s pretty fun. Yeah, so I want to do this as a tradition where I take one of the kids just me and them on a trip and we go somewhere together and have an experience together, and that doesn’t have to be grand.

Estonia might sound really exotic for some people, but I wanted to go to a new country I’d never been to. But from Norway, it’s only an hour and a half direct flight, and it’s a fairly affordable place, and hotels and stuff like that. So, it’s a pretty doable trip from where I’m based. And so, yeah, who knows? I don’t know. But I am excited about this tradition of having the one-on-one kind of trips with my kids. And yeah, seeing where that goes, literally where it goes.

Matt Bowles: What type of impact do you think travel is having on them? Maybe because of feedback that they’ve given you already, or if they’re too young for you to even assess that yet, what type of impact do you hope that it will have on them as they get older?

Jason Moore: I don’t know what kind of impact it’s having. I mean, they’ve already been to more countries then, and probably not a ton by European standards, but she’s going on eight and she has been to, I don’t know, we count like six or seven countries, something like that. I didn’t go to another country besides the United States until I went to Mexico for spring break when I was 18. And then it wasn’t until I was like 24 that I went to another country.

And so, this is completely different than the way I grew up. So, my kind of thought on. How it’s impacting them is I don’t know because they’re five and seven right now. But even though I use the Rome example in the Pantheon of like, they’re like ready to get out. And my sons like to get ready to get out of there. He’s bored by the building or whatever. We’re looking at a Michelangelo masterpiece, you know, in some church. And he’s like, you know, I want to go look at the stuffed animals on the souvenir cart. It’s just like, all right, well, that’s cool. And I get it. And I don’t expect him to be interested in the same things I’m interested in.

But at the same time it’s all going in there, Matt. Like, you can see it. It’s all of the impressions and sort of the vibe and the, the fact that you’re just in a different place where people live differently and they’re speaking a different language and that’s just around you and it’s foreign. It’s all going in how it comes out I don’t know. My job is to just maybe hold some space and let it go in and then see what they take from it.

Matt Bowles: For parents who have young kids and might be a little bit apprehensive about taking them on an international trip, what tips do you have for parents?

Jason Moore: Well, planning can be helpful when you kind of know both, I’d say, but if you’re going to a place, like I said, like Rome, where it’s certain things you want to see, it’s good to lock those keystone points in or whatever you want to call them. Like if you’re going to Paris, you want to go to the Louvre, just set it up and pick a day and make it happen. But I would say outside of that It’s really not trying to do too much I mean in a way we might have done too much in Rome but that was because also my wife wanted to see some of these things, but the kids will be, I mean I remember being in Mexico City with my kids and we just wandered around. We had like some churros and one day and then we went to a playground, and it was just us and a bunch of other Mexican families with their kids playing at a playground. And that’s the kind of stuff kids aren’t going to really care as much about the sites as they are just like spending time with you and just hanging out and so if you can get into that mindset of let’s just whatever maybe we don’t have to see everything in this city.

Maybe it is just about seeing one or two things and the rest of the time we’re just kind of wandering around and just hanging out and going to some playgrounds, all that kind of stuff. I think that’s a cool way to approach it and not have too many as one theme if I’ll give you the big takeaway, it would be don’t have too many expectations. It’s just like a lot of the things you want to do are probably not going to happen, and just go in and not have too many expectations, and just enjoy your time together, and go for it.

It’s a lot more work. I mean, as parents listening will know, but again, I think it’s worth it in the end. Some people will say like, well, they’re not going to remember it, and this and that, but that’s like saying, well, if you just never, hugged your kid. They won’t remember it. Well, they might not remember it, but it’s certainly going to impact them, right?

Matt Bowles: Well, let’s definitely also talk about podcasting. You are the host of the Zero to Travel podcast, which now has 12 million downloads. I, of course, am a listener of your show. And the first question I want to ask you about is how you consistently find such amazing guests. Because for people that haven’t listened to your show, you have a really diverse array and, in some cases, you will interview really high-profile travel legends, like Rick Steves has been on your show, and people that have a really high, almost like travel celebrity profile.  And then, in other cases, you will interview people that I have never heard of, don’t necessarily have a high public profile, but are absolutely fascinating, thoughtful and substantive people. And I’m like, wow, that was a really interesting person. So, I’m curious when you curate your guests, you obviously are very discerning, you have a very high-quality control threshold for the guests on your show, and yet you continue to source these really fascinating and interesting people. So, I’m curious if you can share a little bit about how you consistently find your guests?

Jason Moore: Thanks for all the kind words, by the way, and you were a guest twice. So, you know, you can go into that slot of amazing guests. So, kudos to you. It’s really just about my curiosity about the person. And of course, marrying that with how this conversation can provide value to the listeners. And trying to just bring those two things together, it’s like scratching my own itch of like, “Oh, I really want to learn more about this person’s life and their story, and that’s going to be fascinating for me”.

And then through that, also, what kind of actionable type of practical stuff or just mindsets or new perspectives or whatever, can we pull out from this conversation that can allow the listener to perhaps change their day, change their life, you know, who knows? I mean, it’s just really, these conversations are about getting new perspectives. I think when all is said and done,

Matt Bowles: How are you identifying the people though? Are you coming across them and reaching out to them and saying, “Hey, my name’s Jason and I host this podcast? I’d like to have you at the show”. Are people looking for the show and pitching themselves to you, and you’re evaluating a bunch of people who have applied to be on the show?  Do you have your network now, which is very expansive, personally introduce you to people that are one degree of separation?  Like, how do you actually come across the human beings that appear on your show?

Jason Moore: All of the above. Literally all of the above. And I think one of the things I always love to hear from a guest, it’s one of the things that gets me the most excited with a guest is when they say, “Oh, this is my first podcast. I’ve never done this before”. I’m just like: “Yes. All right, cool.” It’s literally all of the above. And it’s just, again, going back to that filter through which you have all of these different avenues through which you can get guests. But, you know, it’s the curation part, and is there an angle here? Is there a deeper story to tell? What is it? How can we create a valuable conversation?

So, coming from those three spots you mentioned, coming across things, and then, if I come across an interesting story, I’ll just add it to I have like a whole list in Asana of people that I might want to have on the show. So, if I’m just perusing the internet and I come across something interesting or an interesting book or whatever, I’ll just drop that into the potential guest list.

And then I get pitched because I’m fortunate that I’ve been around doing this for a while. So, I get some pitches and things like that. So, then some of those people and yeah, some introductions here and there. And it’s just a combination of those things.

Matt Bowles: I also want to ask you about mastering the craft of interviewing when you listen to someone that you are really impressed with as an interviewer, what impresses you about them for you as a listener, what makes a masterful interview.

Jason Moore: I think it’s being able to sense that the two people that are speaking have been able to establish a connection and on some level, they’ve perhaps been able to forget they’re even recording a podcast at a certain point. It’s just like, it’s two people talking and some of the best podcasts, and I wish I had the ability to do this, I try to do in-person interviews when I can find people and the right circumstances and things like that. And they’re always my favorite to do because it’s just a totally different dynamic. If we were sitting in a room together, then doing this online like we’re doing now, it’s just different. I wouldn’t say it’s better or worse.

I mean, we’ve had some incredible conversations with the internet and online stuff, but it’s really nice when you can do it in person too. I would love, I’d love to do more of that. I think it comes down to seeing how an interviewer might frame something. The types of questions that they ask and the ways into different subjects are things that I pay attention to if I’m listening to somebody else and if I see, or I hear, for example, somebody, an interviewer, breaching a sensitive topic and how they navigate their way into that in a way that’s not putting the guest off because there’s a lot of psychology to all of this, right?

So it’s learning the ways in and how people build rapport, make people comfortable, how it transcends an interview and it becomes just a conversation between two humans and we’re getting to know each other and we’re also having a conversation, like, you would maybe on the road and you meet somebody and you’re like wow that was like I just had this coffee and we had this super cool conversation and that really filled me up. That just makes me feel good when I learned so much personally from it and then got the privilege to share it with others and have them hopefully benefit from the conversation in some way shape or form. That’s the thing that gets me off so to speak when it comes to podcasting.

Matt Bowles: When you think back over the last 10 years, as you’ve done so many interviews and honed the craft, what would you say has evolved about your interviewing skills over the last decade when you look at your own personal evolution and your improvement in the craft?

Jason Moore: I haven’t thought about that too much, but just off the top of my dome, hopefully I’m a better listener. I would like to think that I’m a better listener. And I think it’s good to have the old adage where it’s like you have the script and then you can throw it away type of thing. I’m becoming much more comfortable with that and then just having the conversation that I’m interested in having even if it’s almost unrelated to travel and I haven’t gotten negative feedback from that even though I have a travel podcast.

I think that I’ve got some interesting shows coming up about, for example, I haven’t mentioned this on the show, but there’s a guy that had a near-death experience. And so, we’re talking about his trip to the other side. So, you could say it’s travel-related, but just fascinating to me. And you know, I’m more willing to just kind of have those conversations that are fascinating to me and hope people are interested in those too and willing to throw out some of the scripts.

I mean you can get questions from all over the place. So, I think that this is the type of stuff that can help anybody in life whether you’re an interviewer for a podcast or you’re just somebody who wants to have more meaningful deeper conversations. It’s just having access to some questions that are just kind of thoughtful and get people maybe past their automated response.

The biggest, most challenging interviews are with some of the people that are like Rick Steves. They’re so used to getting into their talking points. They’ve just done so many of these things. And then the challenge is how do I get that person off of their sort of their normal talking points and like the sort of stories they come back to a life if you’ve heard multiple different interviews with them. And it’s much easier in some ways to have a natural conversation with somebody who hasn’t done a podcast because they’re just there and they’re just talking and sharing their story as opposed to somebody who’s media trained or has done so many of these things. So, yeah, I think questions that reflect your curiosity in that person and then really earnestly listen in a way that people understand that you care what they’re saying and that you’re interested. Those things transcend podcasts. I mean, that’s the stuff that makes up great conversations amongst humans everywhere.

Matt Bowles: Yeah, I think that’s a really key thing for me too, in terms of choosing people to be guests on your show, that are people that you really want to have a conversation with, that you think are very interesting people. You want to learn from those people and have that conversation with them. I agree with that entirely.  In that spirit, I’m curious when you think back over the last 10 years of doing your show, what are some of the things that you have learned from your guests? Are there any things that come to mind?

Jason Moore: I mean, so many, so much, you know, and what’s interesting is it all hits you at different times. So, I could probably go back and listen to an interview I did three years ago when I was doing it three years ago was hitting me at another time in my life. And then something they said that I maybe not even didn’t even pick up on then is something that’s having the biggest impact coming out of the conversation now if I relisten to it.   So, in that way what you’re asking is a complicated question. But also, when you talk to so many hundreds of people like I have about travel there are of course some prevailing themes that I think rise to the surface some of the more valuable life lessons I would say, I think people that are flexible when it comes to travel that have found different ways to kind of keep it going.

They not only had the desire to travel in the first place, but then they found all these creative ways to kind of figure out how to do it. And then inevitably, they had to pivot and kind of change things and kind of go with the flow. But the one consistent thing was the travel aspect. I think that that’s been a really big theme with the show is hearing how people have been able to adapt but keep the value of travel prominent.

And then some of the more popular episodes, these transition to travel episodes I’ve done where I’ll interview somebody like the week, they’re quitting their job to go travel the world. And then, you know, I’ll interview them a year later and then we’ll mash it all into one episode. And I’ve done several of these.

I have tons of them because they take so long to put together, but those episodes have been really powerful and they’ve really resonated with listeners because you get to hear a lot of the mindset of somebody who were all the fears and kind of like where they’re at with those decisions and then how it actually played out later on and what they learned from the travel. And if those fears were founded or unfounded and how their perspective has changed and you can really see the impact that travel can have on somebody’s life when you listen to one of those episodes and everybody’s going to have their own journey, their own version of that.

But I think episodes like that really empower people to take the next step and be like, okay, this is something that I want to do. And now I see how this can impact somebody and even though a lot of it’s unknown, there’s most likely going to be a positive impact. And I don’t think I’ve talked to anybody who has said they have regretted their choice to go travel, even if it didn’t work out. So that’s something.

Matt Bowles: Well, you mentioned your Rick Steves interview and tried to come up with questions for him that he hasn’t been asked a million times. And when I listened to that interview, one of the questions you asked him, I thought was really brilliant. And I want to actually turn the tables now and ask you.

And the question is, if you had a teleportation device that could immediately move you from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world, how would you structure your ideal day being able to be one place for breakfast and then zap yourself somewhere else in the world for a late morning and somewhere else for lunch and somewhere else for dinner and zip around the world? All of the time zones being aligned. How would you, Jason Moore, structure your ideal day around the world with this teleportation device?

Jason Moore: Thanks for shouting out to that question in that episode. So, I knew you were going to do this. And so, then I stole it and did it to you on my show. So, if you want to hear Matt’s answer to this and he didn’t expect it, which was perfect, which is what I love.

But yeah, so this is obviously an unfair question. And there’s a couple ways to design this. I could have designed this in the way that my inclination is what I kind of did, which is basically took experiences I’ve had and I’m reliving those same experiences. But I could have also designed this in a way where I, if I actually had the teleportation device, I would probably maybe just go to like five or six or seven new places that I’d never been. But then I couldn’t really tell the story. So, I’m going to play with that a little bit and talk about some of the experiences I’ve had and that were so fulfilling that I’d probably go back and do them again. But just know, there’s a second teleportation device day out there, and I’m going to all completely new places that I’ve never been before.  So, I’m just going to throw that out.

Matt Bowles: Noted.

Jason Moore: Okay, cool. One of the most sort of relaxing, coolest mornings I’ve had traveling, and I always love when I can get up really early, and it’s like by noon you feel like you’ve lived like a day and a half of life, because you’ve done so many awesome things. And this happened, in Hawaii at one point.

I remember I got up at 6 a. m. It was in Waikiki and the Philadelphia Eagles, my football team, were playing. So, I got up. I had a greasy spoon breakfast and then I watched the Eagles play and I think they won the game. So, it was like three hours there. Then I went surfing and I had an amazing session on like a long board with like mellow waves and bathtub warm water.

And so, by like, you know, 11 or 12 o’clock, it was just, wow, this was just already an epic day. And so that’s what I would do. I mean, I could do the greasy spoon somewhere. I might just take the device and pop, just be like, “Send me to a Greasy Spoon somewhere in the Midwest, sit me at the counter, give me like a salty waitress that’s like a little bit sassy, and let’s just do like the Greasy Spoon breakfast thing”, maybe on the East Coast, because she might be a little bit sassier than the Midwest waitress, I don’t know.

So do the Greasy Spoon thing, and then do a surf session in Hawaii, which will be the morning lunch. And I went surfing, remember? So, I’ve done an activity. I’m pretty tired. So, I’m probably going to be, you know, maybe I’ll take a nap somewhere, perhaps in a luxury hotel. It doesn’t even matter where it is cause they’re all the same, right? And then I’m going to go for lunch.

I live in Norway and one of the things I miss the most is Mexican food. So, I’m probably going to have some Mexican food. Maybe I’m going to go to Santa Fe, New Mexico or somewhere where I can get like a red and green chili on a burrito, smothered type of things like that for lunch.

Somewhere in the Western U.S., maybe Arizona, I don’t know, maybe like a desert view type of situation. And then in the afternoon, I’m going to go on a nice hike, most likely in Patagonia, somewhere in Argentina. And I could stick around after that and have steak and some kind of meat dish in Argentina. Or I could steal one of your ideas and go to India where I’ve never been and have an Indian meal. That could be really cool.

And then after dinner, I’m going to go see Pearl Jam play somewhere in Brazil or Italy. Some places where the crowd is going insane, and they chant and there could potentially be a riot. You just don’t know. You know that kind of mayhem type of thing. place, you know, I feel like that type of show environments, either in Southern Europe or South America, I don’t know.

And then at the end of the night, I’m wearing the t shirt actually from this, one of my favorite brew pubs of all time. Although I’m, I’m on a cleanse right now. I’m not drinking, but I would head to the mountain sun in Boulder, Colorado, and I’d have all my friends there from Colorado and from that area we’d meet up and just hang out, enjoy the rest of the night there. And then we could, after that shuts down, maybe go to Las Vegas just for the sheer novelty of it. You could tell I probably, missed the U.S. a little bit. That was U.S. heavy.

Matt Bowles: It was U.S. heavy, man, but I appreciate that. Jason, another question that I want to ask you is related to travel ethics. And I know that not only do I consider you to be a very thoughtful person, but I also know that you interview a lot of really thoughtful, conscious, and substantive travelers on your show who also have reflections on this. And so, I’m curious at this point, particularly with the surge of digital nomadism after the pandemic and all of that kind of stuff, I’ve been trying to think through some of the increasingly important ethical issues.

And I want to get your opinion on some of these, you know, some of the things, for example, that I’m observing as I go around to some of these digital nomad hubs, go to a place like Lisbon or go to a place like CDMX and there’s real gentrification dynamics that are happening there. That are having adverse effects on local folks or go to a city like Venice, and you see the impact of over- touristification there and so on and so forth.

There’s also obviously an environmental impact of course, of the travel that we do. And I’m curious at this point in your opinion, and you can speak about any and all of those issues that you want, but what tips do you have for how we as travelers can be more thoughtful and conscious as we move through this world and make travel decisions?

Jason Moore: Listen, I just talked about a four-day trip we took to Rome or whatever, where we flew there. We flew back. I’ve had people on the podcast like Alistair Humphreys. He’s a pretty big inspiration for me as an adventurer from the UK, and he has biked around the world and he’s do all these crazy adventures.

And now he’s just committed to not flying. And he’s even written a book called Local, which is all about heat. Explored just one square kilometer. He got like a map that has one square kilometer of where he lives and spent like a year exploring that one square kilometer. And so if you think about how small that is, for somebody who’s been traveling all over and then coming back to that, you know, I’m not going to say I’m not going to fly anywhere, but I think the starting point for a lot of this conversation, what I would encourage people to do is just what you’re doing right now and what I’m trying to do, which is just have an awareness around these things, right?

It kind of starts with the awareness first. I’m not going to sit here and preach and try to give a bunch of tips. I think we all as individuals can do things, of course. We could take longer trips. We could, like when we’re flying back to the U.S., we’re staying for three weeks. That’s more ideal than what we just did to go to Rome and I kind of felt bad about that. But at the same time, we chose to do it and I don’t have statistics in front of me, but I’ve been chatting with a lot of travelers. And one of the things that has kind of been pointed out by a lot of avid travelers and maybe this is more to their benefit, but a lot of the environmental impact is to really cut down to the level that we need to it has to be systemic change. There has to be some kind of policy change and you know the individual traveler certainly makes a difference maybe not getting on the flight, but we have to do a lot more than just refrain from flying as the individual traveler here and there doing that. That’s not to discourage people from doing that because I think it’s a noble act. But systemic change is kind of where it’s at and how do we do that? I mean, you’re talking to the wrong person. I’m just a podcast host. I don’t know what the answer to that question is, but I do think as individuals, the most important thing we can do is have awareness around it and talk about it. And that’s what we’re doing now.

It’s what I’m trying to do on my show is have these conversations and get people thinking and get people considering the impact they have.  And maybe not going to the over touristed place, maybe staying longer, if you can. Maybe taking the train instead of flying. There are things we can all do. I think we know that. And there’s things we can do when we’re at home too, like recycling and stuff like that. We can travel with water bottles like this, for example. I mean, all of those things are tips. They’re like simple things we can do as individuals. But for mass change, there needs to be a bigger shift, and I’m not really sure how to accomplish that.

Matt Bowles: Jason, let me ask you one more question and then we’ll wrap this up and move into the lightning round. I am curious for you how your view of travel has evolved over the years. And why you’re still so passionate about it today, both the actual act of traveling yourself, but also talking about it. I mean, you are really, really passionate about it and you’ve been passionate about it over a long period of time. It hasn’t faded for you. So, I’m curious if you can share a little bit about just reflections on that and then what travel means to you today.

Jason Moore: I mean, I think being passionate about travel is almost the same as being passionate about the world, about humanity, about animals, about culture. I mean, that’s what it is that drives us, right? We want to learn and discover places and maybe our place in the world through that, which might sound cliche, but you know, that’s a part of it, certainly. The world’s a fascinating place, is it not? So, it’s very, you know, I’m fascinated by the world and I’m fascinated by people and those two things are where all the conversations happen on the podcast. That’s what it’s all about, right?

I would say I don’t know if my approach to travel has changed at all. I’m still as fascinated as ever by the world if not more it’s like the more, you know, the more you don’t know kind of thing, right?  Like you just can’t possibly soak it all in and so I feel talking about it on the podcast gives me a chance to just always be learning more about people and about the world. And that’s how I can grow as an individual through that and hopefully people listening get value like I said.

In terms of my personal relationship with my own personal travels, I’ve gone through the nomadic, I don’t want to say phase, but I’ve been a nomad before it wasn’t a phase, it was my life, and now I’m settled down and I have a family and there’s all these different seasons in life.  And I’m in a different season now and one thing that I’ve taken away from that is that I love that I can still be around travel, talk about travel, learn about the world, learn about people, help other people travel. Even if I’m not traveling, I always got excited when people would ask me about a place, about how to do this or that in travel, because I was doing so much traveling. And maybe I was talking to somebody who wasn’t. And getting a chance to share advice on how they could do it too always excited me. And so that was the genesis of the whole podcast, you were to travel, it was like, let me share all the resources and information that has helped me and I’m just still excited about that. What’s nice about having done a lot of traveling is that I don’t feel like having a family. I was ready to have a family and live somewhere. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on traveling because I did it and you don’t want to feel like you’re missing out on something because you’re doing something else if you want to go travel, go do it find a way to do it. But I’m content like not traveling as much and just talking about it and helping other people do it.

And that’s like, for me, it’s been a really cool place to be.

Matt Bowles: Well, I’m a big fan of your show. As you know, we’re going to link it up in the show notes so that everybody else can check it out as well. Or wherever you’re listening to this, just type in Zero to Travel and subscribe to Jason’s show. You will not be disappointed, definitely one of my favorite podcasts.

Jason, I think that’s a great place to end the main portion of the interview. And at this point, are you ready to move into the lightning round?

Jason Moore: That’s my sound effects.

Matt Bowles: I appreciate that, man. I appreciate you adding that sound effect. We’re going to drop in our own sound effects right here.

Let’s do it. All right, Jason, what is one travel hack that you use that you can recommend to people?

Jason Moore: Well, I have three.

Matt Bowles: All right, we’ll give you three.

Jason Moore: I can share. I mean, we could go like, oh, well, how are you going to, you know, getting upgrades at a hotel, or cheap flights, or this and that. I think I’m trying to give some overarching things here, and one of them would be to just ask. Ask for the thing that you want. Ask for the upgrade at the airline counter or the hotel. Ask for a seat by the window at the restaurant or whatever. Ask for, you know, even if it says reserved on it, you know, you’d be like, well, are those people coming in anytime soon? You know, would it be possible? Like we’re going to be, you know, I mean, you just don’t ever know what you can get unless you ask.

And you can ask in a nice way where you’re just being respectful. You see the other people that you encounter as fellow humans, just trying to get through their day and, you know, have good positive interactions. And you can be one of those positive interactions and still ask for something. So, I’ve just gotten, I couldn’t even tell you how much money I’ve saved over the years by just asking for extra discounts on rooms or car rentals.

You just never know. So, sometimes I’ll make a joke about it. Like at a rental car thing, I’ll be like, “Oh, do you guys have like the super-secret button you can push on the computer that gets you to like the extra discounts?” If there’s anything you can do, just, you know, and you just kind of like being playful with it, and you just never know. So, ask. That would be a big one.

Another practical thing, I hold up this water bottle, this platypus water bottle, these plastic water bottles that just fold up. Those are nice to have on a trip, you know. I have like the Nalgene bottles, and I have the other sort of steel bottles and things like that. But these sort of fold up plastic water bottles are so great. I’ll fill this up in like, taking this skiing, like I’ll just stick it in my pocket when I’m skiing, have something, and then when it’s done, it just, it’s light, it weighs like nothing. Hiking, you know, all, all this. So, this is like, a great water bottle to have, and you should have a water bottle with you, for reasons that we shared before.

And then, lastly, I would say going back to the beginning of the interview just trying to limit your expectations around a trip because I think that some of the most magical moments come out of it’s not like the necessarily the things you planned or you had high expectations for it’s more like all of the stuff in between you can relate it to music.

Sometimes they say the most powerful notes are like the silence in between the notes, right? That’s kind of what creates the drama and the music. And you could relate that to travel and say maybe the silence between the sites is where you find the little gems and the meaningful moments and things like that.

And so, I think just limiting expectations, maybe not planning too much, being open as we discussed, being flexible. If you want to live a life of travel, if you want to fill your life with travel and just being flexible with how you do it and what that means, and don’t rule out what’s possible. Don’t be like, oh, that doesn’t, it’s too expensive or whatever.

Like there’s so many ways to travel. It’s all possible. It’s all figureoutable. People have done it before. It means you can do it too. And having that mindset I think is empowering.

Matt Bowles: You live in Norway. I have never been to Norway, but I am aware that it has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world as well as a number of other extraordinary things. I think some folks are a little apprehensive maybe to planning a trip to Northern Europe because it is known as being one of the most expensive regions in the world. And I’m wondering if you can share any budget travel tips for how folks can visit Norway without breaking the bank.

Jason Moore: Well, let me first say that it’s probably one of the best times to visit the Nordic countries ever because of a couple of things.

First of all, the currency, at least at the time of recording, if you’re coming from the States, it’s very much in your favor. I mean when I came here it was half of what it is now. That means whatever you’re paying for a coffee here now was double the price in U.S. dollars. And that’s a huge difference.

So, look at the currency exchange right now and understand if you’re coming from the states we’re using that example. That’s very much in your favor. Secondly, dispel the myth that you just said that it’s expensive and you can’t afford it because that’s what a lot of people say. And again, going back to what I said before, it’s like any place else, it depends on how you do it.

Granted, yes, it is expensive. If you want to go out and have a night out where you’re drinking beer in Norway and you’re spending 10 to 15 dollars a beer, you’re going to be like, “This is crazy!”. But if you’re willing to maybe, do it differently, maybe this is a trip where you’re like, you know what? I’m not going to drink on this trip and that’s going to save me at least a thousand dollars while I’m in Norway because I’m just going to try to do it differently.

I’m just using that as an example or I’ve never camped before, but maybe this is the time to open up camping. So, if you want one budget tip be open to camping. I mean, there’s tons of camping places here and there’s also free camping. There’s something called Allemannsretten, which is basically that everyone has the right to travel freely and stay where you want in nature. And really the only restriction is that your camping has to be 150 meters away from an inhabited house or cabin. And so, if you’re going to stay in this that same place for more than two days, then the landowner must give you permission, but if you’re like up in the mountains or something that it obviously doesn’t exist.

And so, it’s like typical stuff, like go to grocery stores, maybe, you know, cook your food. If you got some camping stuff going on, you’re not spending any money for accommodation. That might be something that people aren’t willing to do. But if you want to save money in Norway, eat at the grocery stores, go camping, or maybe stay at camping places, get cabins, take trains, you know, instead of like renting a car, there’s a lot of ways to do it.

Matt Bowles: All right, Jason, at this point in your travel journey, what are currently your top three bucket list destinations, places you have not yet been that are the highest on your list you’d most love to see?

Jason Moore: That’s hard. It would be really nice to go to Australia and New Zealand. Haven’t been, I know that’s two there, but I’m cheating. I’d love to do the camper van thing around New Zealand specifically.

Namibia, I’ve just heard so many wonderful things about and have never been and haven’t done much exploration on Africa like you have. So, I’m really curious to get there. I could say South Africa as well. Could be the third one.

I had on my list originally Japan. I had been in Tokyo for a handful of days, but that’s it. So, I don’t feel like I’ve done Japan. There’s a lot more in Japan. I want to do.

Matt Bowles: All right, Jason, we have now come to the most important question of this interview. I’m about to ask you to name your top five hip hop emcees of all time. But before I do that, can you share a little bit about the role that hip hop has played in your life and what you love about the art form of hip hop.

Jason Moore: Yeah, I used to exclusively listen to hip hop. I’m older, so I’m from what they call the golden age. That’s when we grew up. Yeah, he’s raising the roof right now. Matt is here. And so, it was huge. I mean, talk about traveling.

It was like traveling vicariously to neighborhoods and places that you knew nothing about that you were, I mean, just listen to like N.W.A.’s music. Like listening to N.W.A. in junior high and high school was like learning about the real America. In some ways, like the America that I didn’t see, that I didn’t really know about.

And frankly, I mean, there weren’t a lot of ways to learn about the culture and what was happening at that time in different places. So hip hop was a way, in some ways, it was a way to experience other places and understand that there was so much more going on in a bigger world out there. And then just then, I guess I’ve realized pretty recently I must, this still carries with me because I’m, I play in a rock band here, I don’t know if you know that, I write songs and things like that just for fun. And I love playing with words, I guess, and hip-hop was such a cool expression of language. I just really loved listening to the way people would play with words when it comes down to it. That and the music that would drive it and I just like I couldn’t imagine listening to anything but hip hop from the time I was in like fifth grade, I think fifth or sixth grade until Pearl Jam – Ten came out which was 12th grade for me.

So, it was like a solid like almost my entire junior high school was exclusively hip hop. I was in a hip-hop band. I started writing rhymes myself and I now reflect on that and realize, “Oh, I’ve kind of always just naturally gravitated towards songwriting”. And it happened to be hip-hop. Now it’s more like maybe an Americana country or something like that, but it opened up a lot for me creatively. It opened up a lot for me in terms of other things that were going on around the world. It opened up a lot for me energetically, I guess you could say, it was just a huge part of my life.

Matt Bowles: Now, you have millions of people who have downloaded and listened to your podcast. Have you ever publicly named your top five hip-hop emcees, or are we breaking an exclusive here on The Maverick Show today?

Jason Moore: No, I can say this is an exclusive.

Matt Bowles: This is an exclusive for the first time ever, Jason Moore, who are your top five?

Jason Moore: If you want a nice podcast teaser, I will tell you that my number one, I was in a room with once and I had a funny story about, but my top five hip hop emcees of all time, I can’t say they’re in order. Although I do have a number one, but I have to say, Rakim. A double from EPMD.

Always loved his voice, Ice Cube. He’s just unbelievable. This is where it gets tricky because I had Beastie Boys/LL Cool J here. You know, Beastie Boys, I know it’s three of them, but I always appreciated, what I appreciated about them was their sort of goofiness and their willingness to include these sorts of random goofy references in their rhymes. So I appreciated them.

And my number one, Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest. I’m a big Q-Tip fan. Always loved Tip.

Matt Bowles: Okay, so where and when were you in the same room with Q-Tip?

Jason Moore: Well, a couple times. I used to work on music tours. Q-Tip was actually one of the acts for a couple of the gigs. So, I got to work with his management and stuff like that because I was doing a lot of the hospitality stuff.

Well, two things happened. One, he one time left his iPod in the green room and so I had to deliver it back to his hotel. So, I was walking down the street carrying Q-Tip’s iPod and I was like, oh man, talk about having a moral and ethical dilemma. I was like, I really want to see what his top 25 played songs are. Or does he have like some new tracks on here that he’s making that I could listen to right now? This is unbelievable. I’m holding Q-Tip’s iPod. Um. And so that was, I didn’t look, and I didn’t want to, that’s an invasion of privacy, and I wouldn’t do that. But man, was I really curious.

And then, when I first saw him at the first gig, he was back in the green room, and this guy was like my emcee hero. He still is one of the best emcees, like an incredible musician, just incredible. I really look up to him. You walk into a room and all of a sudden one of your heroes that you’ve spent hundreds of hours of your life listening to is standing there for a bowl of nacho chips and you’re just in the room alone together. And the look on my face must have been so I was like totally shocked, but his interpretation I think was that because all he did was, he said, “Could I have some of these chips?”

And I was like, yeah, of course, you know, and that moment, I just like, he was probably just like, Oh, am I supposed to be back here right now? You know, I don’t know what he was thinking. And I was just thinking I was just in shock of like one of my heroes. And in that moment, I just wanted to say: “Oh, your music meant so much to me. I just so appreciate you as an artist”, and, you know, all those things.

Maybe I should have just said that really quick. But I was so nervous and just whatever that I just was like, yeah, of course. And I just like, Also, when you’re working in hospitality like that with artists, you really should keep it professional and not intrude too much on their space, you know be getting ready for a show and stuff. You don’t want to maybe be having those kinds of conversations, you know, but man, I was such a massive fan and so I just in hindsight, man, I wish I just said a couple quick thank you to him because his work has meant a lot to me over the years. But yeah, that was kind of funny.

Matt Bowles: Well, I appreciate you sharing that story, man. I think that is a great way to close out this episode. I want you to let folks know, Jason, how they can find you, follow you, listen to the show. How do you want people to come into your world?

Jason Moore: Yeah. I mean, if you search Zero to Travel on any podcast app or Spotify or wherever, you’ll find the show. If you just go to zerototravel.com, you can sign up for the newsletter, which is free, or zerototravel.com/newsletter, which is maybe easier because it’s just an ending page for the newsletter. But I sent out a newsletter once a week and it’s all kinds of random stuff, you know, around travel, but also thoughts, musings, life stuff, you know, stuff that hopefully will give you some food for thought for the week.

And it’s free as I mentioned. And also, you’ll find out what the latest episodes are so you can stay in touch there.

Matt Bowles: Awesome, man. Yeah, folks, definitely give the Zero to Travel podcast a listen. If you like what you hear, definitely leave Jason a rating or review on whatever platform you listen to, because that helps the show out a lot.

And he puts a lot of very hard work into the podcast. So, I think you’re going to appreciate it. Jason, this was amazing, brother. Thank you for coming on the show.

Jason Moore: Thanks for having me.

Matt Bowles: All right. Good night, everybody.