OPENING NOTE: This is part two of my interview with Dr. Kaisu Koskela. If you have not yet listened to part one, I highly recommend you go back and do that first, because it provides some really important context for this episode. If you have already heard part one, then please enjoy the conclusion of my interview with Dr. Kaisu Koskela.

Matt Bowles:  As there is an increasing academic interest in digital nomads and studying them. And I’ve met a number of academics that have been doing that. It does strike me that the way that some digital nomad “communities” or “events” or “conferences” manifest is that there is a very disproportionately white customer base there. Let me just give a contrast as well.

So, one of the companies that I have patronized a number of times over the years is called Remote Year, and they are the largest company in the world. That facilitates an international work travel program for remote professionals who are digital nomads and want to live in a different country every month. And they facilitate these international itineraries. The majority of their customer base are women. The majority of their customer base are BIPOC.

And yet when you go to certain events, you just walk in and it’s like 90% white, or it’s like super over male representation. And when you’ve seen these other environments or these other communities, or you’ve listened to my podcast, because the majority of my guests are both women and they’re BIPOC as well, majority. And then you walk into these environments, you’re like, whoa, this really seems to be a self-segregated type of environment. But then it seems that a lot of the academic researchers who are starting to come into the space, especially white academics, may tend to find themselves in these white digital nomad environments, which strikes me that that would likely skew the research on interviewing who these people actually are.

And then we’re in sort of a circular pattern. Right. So, I’m curious about your take on representative samples when researching digital nomads and how some sampling bias like this comes into place and maybe reinforces some of the dynamics that you were just describing that are pushed through the media and other sources.

Kaisu Koskela: Yeah, I think a lot of the research that has been done is unfortunately like survey research or based on Facebook groups, where they get a sample, and they have no idea if that sample is representative. And in fact, they probably believe that the sample is representative because they do think that the vast majority are white and from Western countries and male and techies and whatnot. So, one of the reasons I’m an anthropologist is because I believe we get closer to the truth, because we are among the people, right? I’m an insider researcher. I live in British lifestyle, so I, of course, get a much wider picture of the phenomenon and meet the people, too.

And there’s a lot of subgroups. It just opens my mind when I really actively try and think about who to include in my research, for example, to see how much variety there is. But to me, the whole beauty of the nomad community is that there are people of all sorts of types and ages and languages and countries and ethnicities and whatever genders that I wouldn’t necessarily meet otherwise.

It’s not like my friends from high school still living in the northern Finnish Arctic town. They don’t hang out with 20-year-old coders or people fully 100% into crypto. I do because I meet them, and I find it interesting. And I think that’s the beauty of it, that we can have those experiences, right?

Matt Bowles:  Absolutely. Well, now that these digital nomad visas have been out for a while, I want to ask you about some of the challenges, shortcomings, adverse consequences for the local populations that have been related to digital nomad visas and associated policies. Let’s just say, in terms of phenomena like transnational gentrification and so forth, can you speak a little bit about what has been happening in that regard?

Kaisu Koskela: I think these are separate issues. I think the visas are not attractive. Okay, maybe being in Lisbon now, Portugal being the exception, the visa has been hugely popular, especially because they were offering a very sizable tax cut for people taking it. This is the government’s fault. It’s just been canceled, but now it’s just been brought back last week. So literally there have been elections here, and things have turned upside down again. But I think these are slightly unrelated issues because I said the nomad visas aren’t really attracting that many people. But we do know that we have a lot of places where a lot of digital nomads go where there are issues, especially with transnational gentrification. Meaning that living is becoming way too expensive for local people, especially in the rental market, but also in everything else, too. You see here in Lisbon.

I haven’t been back in six years because, in all honesty, this is not my favorite city, although it is for a lot of people. I don’t like how much it has been changing, so I don’t come too often, but looking around, it’s full of cafes. So, my boyfriend is here from Copenhagen. And in our neighborhood, there’s a Copenhagen coffee shop at every single neighborhood serving cinnamon buns and coffee that is pretty much the same price as it would be in Copenhagen. Like, this is clearly not for the locals.

So, this is happening in a lot of places. Nomads are getting the blame for it in a lot of places, but we have a hard time estimating how many there are really in what location because they don’t show up in any kind of stats. But I would point the finger to over touristification, first of all, and secondly, actually more importantly to local governments, how, what kind of policies they have, especially towards housing policies and stuff that do not safeguard the local population.

Matt Bowles:  I would love to break this down. I think this is a crucially important point, and I think you are such a perfect person to shed a little bit of light on this because of how immersed you’ve been in studying this. So, first of all, can we talk about the concept of over-touristification? Because that has certainly been the framework of the grievances of populations in certain places. Right.

Like in Barcelona recently, I saw that there were protests and demonstrations against the over-touristification of that city, and I’m curious if you can speak specifically about that phenomena and then how it relates to or is different from the short, medium term remote workers that are coming in for more extended periods than what we would typically think of a tourist on vacation and staying there for those shorter to medium term periods, and how all of that is adversely impacting local populations and why it’s adversely impacting local populations.

Kaisu Koskela: So, this is primarily in relation to housing prices. Right? And there are other causes of housing prices globally going up. Anyway, there’s gentrification that’s not transnational, and it’s not to do with foreigners. But I. Let’s say in these cases, Lisbon, Bali, and Mexico City, are prime examples of this happening where people started to like Airbnb rather than hotels. So even if tourists want to stay in an apartment, they want to have a local experience. So, a lot more of them came into the market.

And many countries haven’t safeguarded the local population from this, so they haven’t put taxes. For example, there are a few countries, Portugal included, where I believe you actually pay less tax if you have a short-term rental than a long-term rental. So, you’re going to make much more money out of the short-term rentals. Tourist seasons used to be, let’s say here it’s the summer is the high season, but it’s not the only season anymore. You also get tourists all year round, so that’s pushing people out all year round. Whereas it used to be a seasonal phenomenon where people maybe had to leave their apartments and go live somewhere else, which was already horrible enough, but now it’s all year round and it’s obvious to people who own apartments they can get a lot more money out of people visiting on short term rentals.

And we are talking literally, you can charge $200 a night for someplace where you would use to charge less than $1,000 for a month. These are huge differences. So, a lot of places have come off the market for that reason. And the taxes could help in this. There are other countries that have done so that if you have short-term rental, then you pay a lot more tax, and that dissuades people from doing that. But there’s other countries who do it the other way around, probably largely because a lot of the people in power actually own a lot of these apartments and they want to keep doing it. It’s causing issues with the local population not being able to live in these cities anymore.

And when you think that you are also always going to need the local population to do the jobs for the tourists, where are they going to live? This is not sustainable in any way. They say that in tourism tasks we are roughly at the same level of tourism that was just before COVID which was the highest ever in recorded history. People, even in times of inflation, still seem to have a lot of disposable income to throw around. Digital nomad is being mixed up with this. It’s interesting because of course the nomads are coming here for longer term, and they are the ones who are taking these apartments for longer term. They’re not available for the local population anymore because they are inhabiting them now and normally paying double.

But at the same time, you could say that if there were people who stayed longer term rather than short-term tourists, it would probably be a more balanced situation. But that would mean that you’d have to choose some kind of policy that attracted only longer-term residents rather than the shorter-term. But now governments are trying to get both and that’s causing even more trouble. Like there aren’t enough beds. Malaga, Lisbon, and Barcelona have more tourist beds than local accommodations by now. And clearly, if you think about that, no city should be for the foreigners coming in rather than the locals. So yeah, I do blame the local policymakers. As a nomad, I believe that the only solution, the only thing we can do, is to try and be aware of the local level of pricing and act accordingly.

Just because you come to Lisbon, and you think $1,500 for a studio apartment sounds super cheap to you because that is cheaper than where you come from. It doesn’t mean it’s actually the price you should be paying. Like we should be stingier in a way, which sounds counterproductive, but we should be spending less money to try and keep the prices down in a way.

Matt Bowles:  I want to ask about some of the potential policy solutions to the phenomena that you’re describing with both over-touristification and transnational gentrification. Because it seems to me that certainly there’s obviously local policymakers that are putting forward these policies and trying to attract all of these foreigners to the country and bring in all of these foreign dollars. And certainly, there is a segment of society that is clearly benefiting from that, which is why they are putting these policies out there. And then there is a separate segment of society that is being adversely affected by that. And that segment obviously has less political power and less wealth and less impact on policy, of course. Right.

So, what would be your policy recommendations? If we were concerned about the segments of those local populations that are being adversely affected by this that we’re talking about? What would be the policy recommendations to protect those communities?

Kaisu Koskela: Rent control is one, but then the problem becomes who pays the extra that the person who owns the apartment is now losing because they going to lose out on that because locals will never pay as much as a tourist per night is going to pay. I think a government just have to, let’s say Spain is a good example of this. And this actually does tighter digital nomad visa because as part of a bigger recovery plan of the whole country where they’re trying to become less tourism dependent.

And that in the end is the only solution because of course, tourism money is very attractive to the government and to locals because it is foreign-earned income that’s coming from abroad. So, it’s like gathering the whole wealth of the country. It’s not just money being circulated in different ways, it’s like actually new money coming in from abroad. So that’s why it’s become so enticing to a lot of countries. And they put all their effort into that, and they’ve left all their other industries to disappear.

And Spain, for example, has a big, huge plan. And part of it is this digital nomad visas. They see remote workers in this case as people who could take the place of the tourists but stay longer and also contribute to a society through innovation, by startup culture, by internationalization, all these other human capital benefits that you can have.

Let’s see how well it’s going to work. But this is the way forward is to replace the short-term tourism with someone staying longer. But you can’t really have both because the place is limited, you just can’t attract both, which is what most countries are trying to do. So yeah, rent controls and then also the taxation of short-term rentals. But I was just talking to a friend today about Barcelona when they decided that they’re going to phase out all the Airbnb short-term accommodation rentals within the next five years. They’re not giving out any new permits, and that’s going to release something like 20,000 beds in the city for locals to start living in.

But like, how is this going to work? I only see that this is going to cause a huge black market, like people, surely, because the money is so much bigger in tourism rentals than it is in long-term rentals. So there have to be ways to ensure that long-term rentals actually are lucrative for property owners still to do that.

Matt Bowles:  And I appreciate you mentioning those benefits, particularly about remote workers coming in and startup culture and all this different type of stuff. That is definitely a potential there. And the question is about the benefits that come in of that with the additional foreign capital that’s coming in and everything else. The question is then how is it being distributed and who is actually the short-term and long-term beneficiaries of that, and how can there be more equitable distribution, shall we say, of the benefits and the foreign money coming in and that kind of stuff?

So how do you see with regard to the evolution of these digital nomad visas? What would be sort of your recommendation when you think about five years from now, ten years from now, as all of this stuff that’s now being tested and figured out and oh, there’s these adverse consequences that are happening, maybe we shouldn’t have done it like that, or, oh, these are nothing relevant for actual digital nomads. These are actually long-term remote work visas, and that’s what they are. Instead, how do you see in the future whether you want to call it a specifically a digital nomad visa, but some form of creating a global mobility dynamic which can be beneficial to both the digital nomads and remote workers and also the local populations?

Like how, based on all of the stuff that you’ve seen so far in your research, how could we envision crafting that for a more equitable future of global mobility where everyone is benefiting and it doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive, where someone benefits, and someone loses?

Kaisu Koskela: One of the huge issues, of course, is tax. And currently, a lot of these countries are trying to attract nomads to come in and live in their territory or remote workers to come and live in their territory by giving them a tax break, which I don’t understand. What is the point? So, if you’re going to live somewhere, you should be paying taxes there, right? For nomads, for most of us who are continuously on the road, this is a pain point too, because most of us pay taxes somewhere, but we’re not in that country, which gets annoying when I ask about people. What would you ideally want to happen?

The majority of people say “I would like to pay taxes to where I am at the time”, which you, of course, can’t do. Let’s say I spend two months in Thailand, I can’t go at the border and say “by the way, I was here two months, I would like to give you my tax money”.  But if you could, that would be an ideal situation. So, we’re talking about solutions that are pay-as-you-go in a way, right? Plumia from SafetyWing, they’re working on this solution. Their solution, for example, would be that it’s basically a paid product that certain countries have subscribed to and there’s an outside solution to vetting who gets this visa.

So, you have to prove a certain level of income, which is fair enough for any kind of visa. Normally you have to prove that you have a remote job, for example, and a few other things, and then you qualify for this group of countries where you can go and spend, let’s say three months in each of them and each country would get a certain amount of money out of that, out of the pot in a way. So, you’re kind of paying as you go. So, if you include taxation in that too, let’s say there was a fee for each of the three months and the country is benefiting from that always as well. I think that’s starting to sound a little bit more fair in a way.

And any one of us who is on the road is basically relying on health insurance already anyway. So, we’re unlikely to be using local health care, which is a big worry for a lot of these countries. They’re trying to sort out ways that you could use the local health care and it’s like you’re not understanding that these people don’t want your health care because they have their private insurance already or pension schemes or something like that. I think we should step outside the idea of that. We have out of nation-states, especially in the European context now that they have to be a social welfare nation-state where everything comes from the state where, let’s face it, a lot of the states are failing at this.

Who thinks that they’re going to get state pension, for example, in about 30 years? I think it’s quite unlikely to happen that there’s any money left there. So, most of us have come up with our own solutions to this problem. So, if there was a way to kind of divorce that part of the nation-state and have that as your own capital that you can take and distribute to the places that you go to, then that would be a better solution. But as we stand now because this is talking about maybe a utopian future a bit further away. But as we stand now, I think these countries, as I said, they are not trying to attract a digital nomad who comes only for a couple of months. There’s no point. But I think to make everything above board, most countries should add to their tourist visa.

Take away the mention that you are not allowed to work under any circumstance. Just add that you can work remotely. If you’re working for an entity in another country, you can keep working remotely, because this is what’s happening anyway all the time. There’s no point that clause being there, in a way. So why not take that away and then you could be completely above board and keep traveling with the tourist visas? I think that’s an easy policy solution that should happen. And then at the other end, they should have these longer-term residencies, as I said, but those should be taxable for residencies where you do have to be at the level of the local population in both your rights and your duties.

Matt Bowles:  Well, I also want to ask you for some personal reflections on your digital nomad lifestyle. You have been doing this for a decade now, and I think I want to actually go back because I get a lot of questions about dating and finding love and partnership in the nomad lifestyle. And how does that work if you’re always moving around from place to place, and you have done that? So, I want to ask if you can share a little bit about your experience of how you met your partner, how long you’ve been together, and how you designed that lifestyle together.

Kaisu Koskela: Actually, now being back in Lisbon, it’s been six years since I was last here. Actually, last time when I was here, my now boyfriend and was here on our second date. So, it’s kind of funny to be back with him again in the local hoods. We met in a co-living space in Spain. Have you heard of Sun and Co?

Matt Bowles:  Yes.

Kaisu Koskela: One of the first ones to come out. I was the first-ever guest of Sun and Co when they opened.

Matt Bowles:  Wow.

Kaisu Koskela: Yes. I claimed this title and I lived in this house alone with John, who was managing it for years and years. It was right at the beginning of the time, and I kept on going back. And maybe on my fifth time there, I walk into the kitchen and there’s this guy who acts like he owns the place, but this is my place, and we’re all heading out for lunch in town, for example. And I used to be like, everyone be like, hi, you’re back. And now they all just like, “Nico. Nico”, like, “Oh, yeah, you back?” “Yeah”. Everyone’s greeting him. I’m like, what is happening? Someone’s taking over my house and my town. And like, they act like they are the first one here and they were not. But I got over that and thought, he’s actually kind of fun.

So, my boyfriend is Danish. And yeah, we met at this co-living house, which is highly recommendable. In fact, at that same house, I know three other couples from the same year who met then and also are still together. I think meeting someone living in a house and seeing them from morning to night every day for months before you even realize that you actually like them, is the best way to meet people. Also with nomad relationships, I meet a lot of friends who have met someone, and then they are actually a sedentary person who just want to live somewhere. And I’m like, that’s going to be doomed. If it’s a nonnegotiable for you that you want to be on the road and want to continue the lifestyle, you can’t be with someone who wants to live in one place. To me, it’s a no-brainer.

So, I’m very happy to have met someone else who also had already chosen this for themselves, rather than have to convert someone, which is what people try to do a lot of the time. We are an extremely well-matched couple in our travel style. So, we just go, hey, do you want to go to Greece or whatever and be like, okay, let’s go. So, we never had those bickerings about where to go or have to part ways or whatnot, but we also, if we do have stuff that we have to do, then we can also part ways in meet up again in another country. So, it’s interesting to be in a relationship and travel as a couple nowadays. But I’m very happy that I also did this by myself before that, and also that he did it by himself before meeting me. I think it makes all the difference.

Matt Bowles:  I want to ask if you can give some tips for a long-term nomadic relationship. Obviously, there are a lot of differences when you are a nomadic couple versus a regular couple that lives in one city, and you go off to your separate jobs during the day and then you come back and you talk in the evening when you’re traveling together. And I have traveled with a relationship partner before my ex and I traveled together for three years itinerant all over the world.

And it’s very different from when we were living together in one city before that. You know, I mean, you’re around each other potentially all the time and you’re, you know, living together and working together and, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, I’m curious now for five plus years into the relationship, what reflections you have, lessons that you’ve learned, or tips that you would give people on maintaining a happy, vibrant, exciting, long-term nomadic relationship.

Kaisu Koskela: I think this is the time when I pour myself a glass of wine. But honestly, yeah, we are together 24/7 we don’t work together as in the same industry, but like we’re going to work next to each other by the kitchen table or at the co-working or whatnot. And to be honest, we largely only have mutual friends, which is so bizarre to people who live in more sedentary lifestyles where they like, oh, I’m going out with my friends, and he goes out with his friends and whatnot. We don’t have that. We only have friends who are just friends of both, pretty much. I think the fact that we do take breaks, not deliberately, but like, let’s say I want to go to Finland and visit my family for a month.

Like he’ll come for a week, but he probably doesn’t want to hang around in Finland for a month, or he’ll have to go to Denmark at the same time, we really disagree on where to go because we just want to go everywhere, so it doesn’t matter. But having those times when you actually start missing the other person has been a really good thing for our relationship because we are together 24/7, we do start to miss each other quite soon, but at the same time, we try and keep it always to maximum a month apart. Because after that it starts to get like, well, where the hell are you? Like, I want you here, but if your away apartheid for a month, it’s just like, you know that you want to be with that person, right?

There’s no doubt because you know that you miss them and you know that your life was nicer when they were making you coffee in bed in the morning, for example, or whatnot so I think being secure enough to know that you can have time apart and you can do different. For example, I took this job now, and it essentially could have been that I was forced to be in the Netherlands more. And it’s not like he wants to live in the Netherlands, but. But we spoke about it and said, I’m going to take this job. And he’s like, I will come and support you, but, like, I’m probably not going to move there. And you have to acknowledge that there are also dreams in life that don’t require you to do them as a couple, that you have to do by yourself as well and keep that independence.

Matt Bowles:  Kaisu, when you think back about your nearly 30 years of world travel at this point, how has all of that travel and all of those experiences impacted you as a person?

Kaisu Koskela: I am a much more open person and much more interested in all sorts of people than would be otherwise. I think my mind would be much smaller to the possibilities of what other people can bring to your life. If I had stayed in one place, never mind stayed in my hometown, for example, I’ve learned to talk to all sorts of people and realize that you can get something out of every conversation and every encounter, regardless of the person’s age or where they’re from or where they’re coming from with their political views or anything like that. Out of basic interest towards humanity, you can really open your mind to everything in the world.

Matt Bowles:  Absolutely. And I feel like you study digital nomads, so you probably know this. There’s a number of people that find the concept of the lifestyle alluring. They figure out how to do it. They get into it. They do it for a year, maybe two, three, and then they kind of end up back in a much more traditional lifestyle, job, living situation and so forth. You have been traveling in general for almost 30 years, but you’ve been a digital nomad for about a decade. I have as well. And I’m always curious for people that do it that long. Can you share a little bit just about why you continue to travel, why you are still so passionate about this lifestyle and what travel means to you today?

Kaisu Koskela: I get bored easily if I stay in one place. I think that’s a simple answer to it. I think there’s so much more to see. Of course, the majority of my social life and social circle and connections and friends are also nomadic by now because I am on the road all the time. So, I haven’t really had that stage in my nomad life where I was lonely or didn’t feel like I was connecting with people at a deep enough level or something like that. So, I think that’s like one of the main reasons why people stop, and they also get tired. I think I’m just a good traveler, too. I can sleep anywhere on any plane, or train. I can also sleep in any kind of bed with any kind of pillow. And even things like this get tricky for people.

They really just want their own duvet and their own pillow. If you are like that, you’re probably not going to manage that long. I think you have to be a certain type of person, but you also have to surround yourself with those people because it is about the connections. Like, no one wants to travel in a void where they don’t actually make connections or actually feel like they have people who will have their back if something happens or make close connections or find love or whatnot yourself in situations and seek out those situations where you can actually make those connections as well. I think it is very important.

Matt Bowles:  All right, I want to ask you for one final piece of advice and then we’ll wrap this up and move into the lightning round. For all of the digital nomads, travelers or aspiring nomads and travelers that are listening to this, in this era that we are currently in, of the rising transnational gentrification, these over-touristification dynamics, all this different stuff that we, we have talked about. How can we, as nomads or travelers, be more ethical, sustainable and thoughtful as we move through this world? What types of things should we be paying attention to? What types of decisions should we be making?

Kaisu Koskela: Spent locally. Do not go to a Starbucks in Lisbon because they’re not from here. This is like, okay, Starbucks, don’t go anyway, or consume locally. Go to your local task or go to a local little shop. Try and spread the money because you are basically the majority of what you can do for the places that you’re going to be in is give them money that comes from your paycheck. So, spend it locally. Make sure it goes to the actual people rather than big corporations and whatnot.

So, think about where you’re going to stay. Stay in locally-owned places, eat in locally-owned restaurants, etcetera. Be mindful of the local level of what things should cost and try and not to pay what the locals pay, but like try and not to pay as a rip-off tourist price, for example. It’s not the local’s responsibility to try not to rip you off. It’s your responsibility to try and keep some kind of a sense to that, too. I think also ecologically, of course, don’t fly all the time. There’s no reason. The world is huge and there’s so much to see, but you don’t have to see different continents in the same month. Fly to one continent and then just travel.

If I could, I would just travel by land, to be honest. Because to me, that is the beauty of travel, is seeing the change from a mountain to a seaside and going through places that you never heard of, rather than hopping on cheap airlines from A to B to capital to capital. There’s no point to that. You’re not going to see the whole world any faster. Hopping on transcontinental flights that you are going to take on the local bus to the next village. Change the perspective on that, too, and look outside the box. Don’t go to the obvious spots they already have, as we said, overtouristification. For example, Portugal is not Lisbon. It’s not even Lisbon. Porto and the Algarve and Madeira. It’s got a million other places that you probably never heard of that could be very cool places to go to and could really use the tourism money in very different ways that they do here.

Matt Bowles:  All right, Kaisu, I think that is the perfect place to end the main portion of this interview. And at this point, are you ready to move in to the lightning round?

Kaisu Koskela: Yep.

Matt Bowles:  Let’s do it. Kaisu, what is one travel hack that you use that you can recommend to people?

Kaisu Koskela: Off season travel? Let’s say shoulder season travel. Do not ever go somewhere when it’s the best season to travel there. Travel to another season. Only go to the Mediterranean in April, May, and then again in September, October, and November. Do not go there otherwise.

Matt Bowles:  All right, who is one person currently alive today that you’ve never met that you’d most love to meet? Just you and that person. For an evening of dinner and conversation.

Kaisu Koskela: I would pick someone I really do not understand, like Putin, maybe even Trump, you know, someone that I really just, I could use the time for my own understanding of what the hell is happening in your brain to be doing the things you are.

Matt Bowles:  Kaisu, knowing everything that you know. Now, if you could go back in time and give one piece of advice to your 18-year-old self, what would you say to 18-year-old Kaisu?

Kaisu Koskela: Don’t be so afraid of people or intimidated by people. It’s an age thing anyway. But, like, also coming from somewhere else and going to the big world, I used to be so intimidated by people, especially impressive people. And then you realize at age, everyone is really just a person. And most people are lovely when you start talking to them. So don’t let especially status and things like that intimidate you from asking people questions and getting into their heads.

Matt Bowles:  Okay. Of all the places that you have now traveled to, what are three of your favorite destinations you would most recommend that other people should definitely check out?

Kaisu Koskela: I say go to Greek Islands that you never heard a name of, so I’m not going to name them, but I’ve been to probably 25, 2025 different Greek islands and me and my boyfriend try and go once a year and only pick islands that we never heard of. And every single one of them has been spectacular. Do not go to an island that has an airport. So, any Greek island that has an airport, skip it and go to the next one. Mongolia, I have been there. So, I have traveled by train from Helsinki to Beijing one Christmas, and 48 hours of it was spent in Mongolia. But we didn’t get off it. We just kept on going.

And it happened to be a full moon, and we were going through the desert, and it was Christmas, and there was a dusting of snow, snow on the ground, and there were these yurts with fires outside every now and then in the darkness, and it was just magical. I didn’t sleep at that time because it was so beautiful that I had to stare at it. I need to go back to myself, right. Properly go there. But that would definitely be up on that list. Azores Islands, I do say I hardly give people travel advice because it’s so personal what you’re going to like, but the Azores Islands is so stunning that you cannot like it. And it’s kind of mystical as well.

Matt Bowles:  Well, yeah, I love that recommendation from Mongolia. I was there in 2019. I actually took the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow all the way across Siberia and then down over the border into Ulaanbaatar, and then got to spend some time in Ulaanbaatar. But then we went out into the Gobi Desert, and we’re actually hanging out with the original Og nomads in Mongolia. And they don’t speak English, but we had a translator, and we’re actually able to go into their they call them Gers, which are similar to Yurts, and spend time with actual Mongolian nomads. And it was a really fascinating conversation because we were sort of saying, we’re nomads too, but just a different type of nomad.

But conceptually, we were, like, super interested in asking them questions. We were like, teach us the ways, because, you know, how do you all the same questions people ask us, right? How do you find love and partnership if you’re always moving around? How do you build community and have connections with people? Like, all the stuff that people ask us, we’re like, teach us the ways. So, it was a super special and wonderful exchange. And I have such fond memories of Mongolia. I love that pick.

Kaisu Koskela: Oh, I need to go.

Matt Bowles:  Yeah, you do. All right, last question. Kaisu, what are your top three bucket list destinations? These are places you have not yet been, the highest on your list and you’d most love to see.

Kaisu Koskela: So, I’m obsessed with Tuvalu. I’ve been obsessed with them for about 20 years. Remember when the Internet came, and every single independent country got a country code. Tuvalu got given TV, and they started selling this thing, and this is the only thing they ever had to sell because before that, they were completely reliant on British foreign aid and didn’t have an industry, and they started selling this thing.

So, I got interested in them on that. But then, of course, now we know that it’s one of the first countries that’s going to disappear from the world with the rising of the water level. So, I would love to go visit before it’s gone just because I’ve so long followed them in. You know, I could talk about them for hours, but I won’t now. But I followed them for so long, and I feel like almost like a sole connection to the country, and I know it’s going to disappear. So, I think that’s a definite bucket list thing.

Let’s drop Mongolia back in there because clearly, I need to go back there because it’s also made an impression already. And then out of, like, things that I haven’t done, I’ve never been on one of these hot air balloons right on anywhere. So, either, like, on a safari situation where you get to go quite close to the animals because they’re not afraid of it or spectacular sight somewhere. I’m afraid of heights, but, you know, you can’t let that stop you. I think that would be cool to experience.

Matt Bowles:  That’s a great pick. I was just in Tanzania, as we were talking about most recently. I was there about two years ago, and I went on a sunrise hot air balloon ride over the Serengeti, and it was magical because it’s completely silent and you’re just floating, and there’s, like, hippos jumping out of the river just playing with each other. And you are just floating over this and just seeing all these animals in their completely natural habitat, and it’s much less disruptive than driving up to them in a jeep or something like that, and you’re just floating in silence over the Serengeti and watching these animals in their natural habitat, it was absolutely magical. So, I think that’s an amazing pick.

All right, Kaisu, at this point, I want you to let folks know how they can find you, follow you on social media, connect with you, learn more about your work and what you’re up to. How do you want people to come into your world?

Kaisu Koskela: LinkedIn is a good place. I update what I do, especially professionally and in the nomad sphere quite a bit there. And if you’re really interested in my academic research, it’s under my name. All my publications and more professional work is there.

Matt Bowles:  All right, we are going to link all of that up in the show notes. So, you can just go to one place at themavericshow.com. There you’re going to find direct links to everything we have discussed in this episode, as well as how to follow and connect with Kaisu. A big shout out to Becky Gillespie for letting you use the microphone. If anybody has not heard of the Becky Gillespie Maverick show interviews, we’re going to link those up in the show notes as well. And a big shout out to Rossana Lopez for connecting us and introducing us. That was also an amazing Maverick show interview. We’ll link that up in the show notes. If you have not heard the Rosana Lopez interview,

Kaisu, this was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Kaisu Koskela: So much fun. Thanks for having me, Matt. I think we could fill another hour, but yeah, this is good.

Matt Bowles:  We’ll do the other hour in person the next time we hang out over wine. But this was wonderful. I appreciate you coming on the show and good night, everybody!