#031 The Road Less Travelled With Santayana and David Farley
David Farley and Monica McCarthy at Caveat. Photo by Phillip Van Nostrand
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
This episode kicks of The Happier Hour Season 2 as well as our conversations on DISCOVERY. You’ll learn how travel writer David Farley and the philosopher George Santayana can help us find more meaning in our lives by looking at how and why we travel. You’ll also hear unconventional advice about travel writing and the ways in which travel has the ability to transform us. #thehappierhour
The word Travel derives from travail, meaning to suffer or toil.
Four types of travelers: the Pilgrim, tourist, nomad, explorer
1893 Santayana experienced metanoia, the ancient Greek term for a change of heart. Three events preceded his metanoia:
the unexpected death of a young student,
witnessing his father's death
and the marriage of his sister Susana.
To travel is to dispel the mists of fable and clear the mind of prejudice taught from babyhood, and facilitate perfectness of seeing eye to eye. - Thomas Cook
What gives travel a value is fear. - Albert Camus
Enjoy the world, travel over it, and learn its ways, but do not let it hold you … . To possess things and persons in idea is the only pure good to be got out of them; to possess them physically or legally is a burden and a snare. - Santayana
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. -Santayana
THE HAPPIER HOUR LIBRARY:
By David Farley:
An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town
Underground Worlds: A Guide to Spectacular Subterranean Places
By George Santayana:
Other books mentioned:
“Where is a place that has inspired you to change something about your life?”
About David Farley
For the last 15 years, David Farley has been wandering the globe in search of fascinating stories about people, food, religion, history and sometimes how the all intersect. Farley has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Prague, Rome, Berlin, and he currently resides in New York's West Village -- at least when he's not trying to sleep on a trans-oceanic flight. He's the author of two books, Underground Worlds: A Guide to Spectacular Subterranean Places and An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town, which was made into a documentary by the National Geographic Channel. His writing regularly appears in AFAR, National Geographic Traveler, and the New York Times and his stories have been published in the annual Best American Travel Writing anthologies.