Zero To Travel Podcast Traveling the Equator and Polar Circle (Top 5 Countries to Visit) + How Climate Change Impacts Locals with Gunnar Garfors
What can we actually learn about climate change when we stop reading headlines and start listening to the people living it?
Gunnar Garfors is the first person to travel to every country in the world not once, but twice. He’s a Norwegian adventurer, journalist, and author whose latest project took him across the equator, the Arctic Circle, and the Antarctic region to explore the lived experiences of climate change. His new book, Mellom Linjene (Between the Lines), captures these human stories behind the headlines, showing us how the changing climate is affecting the lives of fishermen, farmers, city dwellers, and Indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest to the ice desert of Greenland.
Gunnar shares his experience researching and writing his book and recounts the very real ways climate change is reshaping the planet’s most climate-vulnerable zones. We talk through five of his favorite countries along the Arctic Circle and the equator, weaving together adventure, personal stories, and eye-opening conversations with locals on the ground.
Gunnar’s first-person encounters with reindeer herders, farmers, fishermen, and locals living at the edges of the world help paint a fuller, more human picture of what’s happening. You’ll hear how polar bears are wandering into villages in search of food, why Amazonian ferry rides matter, and what it’s like to get called out on the Congo River for representing the global north.
How is climate change affecting the places you care about or the way you think about travel? I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you’ll share by sending me an audio message.
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Tune In To Learn:
- Why Gunnar retraced his steps across 21 countries and Antarctica despite already visiting every country twice
- What ticks, shifting seasons, and reindeer behavior are revealing climate changes in Finland
- What a screaming fox in Canada had to say about a massive landslide and how melting snow and rising rivers are reshaping northern communities
- How the Amazon River’s disappearing waterways are affecting transportation, food access, and entire communities
- Why fishermen in São Tomé and Príncipe are traveling farther for fewer fish, and what a disappearing rainy season means for daily life
- What it’s like to spend five days on a cargo barge in the Congo (with very little food and a lot of humidity)
- How climate change is forcing rural farmers in the DRC to question the cause and confront visitors with unexpected responsibility
- Why telling personal stories might be the most powerful way to talk about climate change
- Advice to travelers who want to get out of the Western bubble and witness these changes firsthand
- And so much more
Resources:
- Visit Gunnar’s website
- Follow on Instagram
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