"I can't imagine giving somebody advice to do what I'm doing. My needs and predilections probably, you know, don't match anybody else walking across New Jersey or down to the local convenience store," he says. "Look up. Don't always look down at your feet, which is a tendency to do when you're walking, right? Take a look around now and then ... And don't walk too fast."
Paul Salopek is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and National Geographic fellow who, at the age of 50, set out on foot to retrace the steps of the first human migrations out of Africa. The project, dubbed the “Out of Eden Walk,” began in Ethiopia in 2012 and will eventually take him to Tierra Del Fuego, a distance of some 24,000 miles.
Calling in just as he was about to arrive in Xi’an, he and Tyler discussed his very localized supply chain, why women make for better walking partners, the key to crossing deserts, the most difficult terrain to traverse, what he does for exercise, his information prep for each new region, how he’s kept the project funded, which cuisines he’s found most and least palatable, what he learned working the crime beat in Roswell, New Mexico, how this project challenges conventional journalism, his thoughts on the changing understanding of early human migration, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links.
Recorded October 13th, 2022
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Photo credit: Matthieu Chazal