The Globetrotting David Goldberg

We could not pass up the chance to meet a person who's done that , and that person is our guest today David Goldberg . David knows everybody and he has been everywhere . David is true , he's an academic , he's an entrepreneur , he's an advisor to world leaders and international organizations . He was the founding chairman of the Digital Media Platform , lensdrop .

He is also a director at Altura Airlines , where he's currently building an all business class airline . He teaches international affairs to the youth of America . He was a Eurasia fellow at Harvard University , a Fulbright recipient .

He has helped develop national programs in India on global education and conflict resolution , way , way back when he was an intern at the White House in 2002 , a topsy-turvy time to be an intern , but then again , isn't every time a topsy-turvy time to be an intern at the White House . And to top it all off , he is going to be knighted in Italy next month .

David first , welcome to no Show . Second , who is knighting you and why are they knighting you ? That is amazing . That is a first for the show and a first for us . I don't think we've ever met anybody who's going to be knighted .

It was actually originally founded and funded by the Medici's and approved by Pope Clement IV , I believe , and since then they have been knighting people who are making significant contributions to society and since 2015 , they've expanded beyond Italians to all people across the globe who are making large contributions in a variety of different capacities , not just in the

European theater . So it's great to happen and I'm really excited that it'll be happening in November .

On October 6th was the day that we left , and what I have not really heard anyone talk about is the coincidence of that was the and you can't see me , but in air quotes right , it was the celebration of Egypt's victory over Israel , which succeeded Gaza Strip .

So I guess I was not as caught as off guard after learning of that coincidence right , it's a monumental day . And then monumental events followed , and so , yeah , it was a terrible day . We were taking off from Cairo .

The pilot came on and said we're normally going to leave to the east , but today , to avoid rocket fire , we're going to fly over Libya , to which everyone cheered . For the first time in the history of aviation , getting in and out of the world's most challenging countries . That was child's play . There was really nothing to it a little extra security .

I'm really interested in hearing David tell us some of your experiences getting in and out of the world's most difficult places .

And getting out of the country and into the country , at the time that I went , you were stopped by the border guards and you were asked a number of questions to the granular detail of what you do for your work and your job and your living , and where's your business card and your website , and they go on and on and on , and you're standing there at the

airport hoping that this questioning will end prior to the departure of your flight . It's all happening in English and sometimes there's a language barrier which makes things much more difficult , so Libya would be the one place that that has happened .

There are a bit other places that you always hope that there's no problems getting out of , particularly certainly in North Korea when Americans were allowed to go to North Korea .

Right now there is a ban that Americans cannot go to North Korea , but at the time that I went , they're very , very careful about the pictures that you take and what you have on your camera and what's on your at the time , your SD card , and so I made sure that I was following those rules to have no problems upon exit .

But you had to be very , very careful there .

There are official rules , but what helps the most is to try to talk to someone else in a perfect world that holds the same passport as you , because that's the only thing that matters . And what was their experience ? That tends to be the most important .

I'll also say that your demeanor , your behavior , your ability to communicate with officers at the border is extremely important . It can make things go much more smoothly or much more difficult , based on how you are and how you're behaving and how you're interacting in the relationship , though brief , that you create with that immigration officer .

And while I think there are certainly places that maybe a few weeks ago I would have had no hesitation or reservation to enthusiastically tell people to go to , that today I certainly would , particularly some in the Middle East I wanna tell people that the world is a very big place . It is far bigger than you ever could imagine that it is .

There are many , many , many wonderful places that you can go that have absolutely no problems , and if you come from a big city that maybe has its own problems , you're probably gonna be able to go somewhere that's even safer than the place that you live . So my first piece of advice is to absolutely 100% go .

My second piece of advice is you have to tune into the networks . There's tons on Facebook . There's tons of communities that exist within different cities . There's some in New York . If you can get to the previous travelers that have done things , they can connect you to this guide , to this contact , to this driver , to this fixer .

It's way more important than any lonely planet or voters or fromers or guidebooks that we used to have . Far more important is the experience of people who were actually on the ground recently and had this person at this WhatsApp number . Help you do what you need to do .

You see the world , you get some context and you tolerate a lot less complaining from yourself and those around you when you're reminded how small our problems really are , and I was overdue for that .

And that's one of the beauties of travel you get to take yourself out of the place where you're so comfortable and you can put yourself into a place where , wow , I can see through the eyes of other people , I can have conversations from perspectives I could never have imagined , even if there's language barrier , and you're trying to communicate .

And that's the greatness of travel and it's the reason I encourage everybody to go wherever it is that you can go or you desire to be .

You know , I think as Americans we kind of universally right now are thinking about the idea of democracy and how that idea , depending on your history in this country and with this country , can feel like it sort of lives in a bubble .

Oh , this is what my idea of democracy is , and I'm curious when you sat with these young people in a country that we've had a charged relationship with over the last 25 years , what was it like ?

The US was still on the ground and speaking to these young people about democracy , their desire to know more and their want to understand how places like the US built their own democracy over 200 years and what lessons they can learn . It was invigorating , it was refreshing .

They all wanted to take some of what I was showing them about what we have done , not trying to say this is what you have to do , but this is what our history has done for us . They wanted elements of that in their own country to be able to build a stronger , freer , more democratic Afghanistan . And that was a room that was completely equal in gender .

The women were participating , the men were participating , they all listened to each other . It would be a room , I think , that would be unheard of today in Afghanistan , and they want a better Afghanistan for themselves and for their children , and one that is deeply involved in the fabric of the global community .

And I have the hope that , even though there has been tremendous steps back from that vision , I still know that those young people are there and that they're going to lead the future of that country .

That's what he was writing about , and it's now owned by the Taliban and it's running about 20% occupancy . He says that half the hotels sheen leaders are only you know . Only about half are turned on to save electricity .

The properties HR manager carries an M4 assault rifle and a Glock and has bomb making skills , and when I read stuff like that , weird as it sounds , it makes me want to travel . I want to go where even the long arm of the IHG SOP machine can't reach , and I feel like talking to you , I may have a kindred spirit .

So what does the business travel world need to learn from you the hotels , air government agencies when you go into what most people would think of as the most unsavory , risky places on earth ? What is the business side of travel need to hear from you ?

And you know , one of the things that the the , the contacts , the fixers in Afghanistan will tell you is we don't want to tell you where you're staying and they always want to put you up in a small hotel because they're safer , right ?

People don't know the names of those hotels and , as as you pass them , you know the history that's happening and I remember driving in Afghanistan , pass some of those more Western brand hotels and thinking to myself they have such history , they become so much of a center of what happens in a city .

But , in terms of your question , what does the business community have to learn ? I think there's a lot . The first is they have to make it easier . It's very difficult when every airline is following a different set of rules and a different set of practices and a different set of procedures .

It's gotten a little bit better , but sometimes you can get your online boarding pass and sometimes you can't . And sometimes you really do need three hours before going to an airport and sometimes you don't .

So I think if there was a standardization across airlines so that websites look similar and that their practices are similar , I think that would be very helpful . Secondly , there has to be a digitization . Some airlines have picked up on this and some have not , but I would love to see I can scan my passport into every airline and every airline .

If I do my steps correctly , I can get to that online digital boarding pass and I can use it . That's that's one , but in a different vein , I also think that the business community can also find out that loyalties are people who want to be loyal to a brand .

What I have spoken about with with people in my travel circles is they quite frankly , honestly , don't feel like they're getting enough . I'm hearing oftentimes I've stayed loyal to this airline and they've changed their program and now my points don't have value . Delta just went through a major situation there and they tried to fix it somewhat .

Same with hotel chains . It takes so much for me just to get my one free night . I'm not loyal to them , so I hope that they'll develop programs that help people to become more loyal and want to be more loyal when you were a kid .

I'm making this big project for this oak tag board thing for my school and I loved it . When I was in college , I happened to come across this program called Semestracy , where you get on a ship and you go around the world . At that point they were still sailing around the entire world .

Now they've reduced it slightly just because it's so expensive across oceans , but they're still an incredible program . I actually circumnavigated the world and we started in Vancouver , british Columbia , canada , and we ended in Miami .

The long way , 27,000 nautical miles , and that was the 9-11 voyage , because we left just before September 11th and September 11th happened when we were just outside Japan and we docked in Japan . I think it was September 13th of 2001 . And when I was on that voyage I became so in love with travel and I come home and I actually did it again .

I did another one of their voyages . I loved it . I convinced my university to keep giving me credit . It was this great thing . A couple of years later , one of my sister's friends says to me so I heard , you're going to every country in the world .

I had never thought about it , I had never said it , I don't know where she got it from and I thought you know , that's kind of a cool idea . I'm going to do that and that's how it happened , david .

Would you do it ? And if you did it , what would be kind of the your demand of how you'd want it to change before you took the job ?

I have been to the most impoverished villages on the planet in Congo , in Mali , in Burkina Faso , in DRC , democratic Republic of Congo , in Angola and there is so much good work , but then on the needs to be done , and then , on the other hand , I work with amazing young people every single day of my life and there has to be a connection between those amazing

, energetic , hungry to make a difference in the world young people and all these places in the world that needs it .

There are lots of organizations doing it , of course , and there are lots of universities that are playing an important role , of course , and the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps are playing an important role , but I think we need to expand it dramatically . And I really would love to see is we have an unbelievable problem with college costs in the United States .

Take tens of thousands of dollars off their college costs . Find a way to do it , mr President , if they're willing to give you two to four years in the Peace Corps .

They want to check Instagram , they want to get a snap , they want to go on to X or Twitter , whichever you want to call . They want the answer immediately and to understand that problems are complex and they go back decades and sometimes send insurries .

That these are not simple problems to understand is probably the most important lesson that I hope that they learn from me that it takes a long time to understand where these come from . They have deep national feelings , deep identity , deep history that need to be handled very gently . I try to impart that to them every single day . It is a challenge .

It has gotten far worse over the years . They want that answer immediately , solve the problem . But with the right guidance and the right direction and the right support , you will see students change their perspective and begin to understand . Hold on . This is not so easy and the best way to do that is to put them into those roles .

It's the old law school way of doing things right Mock trial or something that really resembles that , make them play that ambassador or that president of that country .

Give them some simplified or documents that show what they have to deal with and when they have to do and they have to personify that role , it begins to click and they begin to see the world as a much more complex place . And these problems , as those solvable , are much more difficult than they first thought .

But it's a left right opening bag , it has great organizational compartments and it has withstood 191 countries of extraordinary abuse , so it's a great bag , e bags .

So by no means am I telling people to go to Mali . But if you're asking me for a country which surprised me and I think is incredible and hopefully one day will be at a safety point that people can go back , that answer would definitely be Mali .

You go to these towns like Dijene , these gigantic markets in front of gigantic , beautifully maintained mud masks , and if you go on a Monday , the entire city is one gigantic marketplace where all the women are wearing beautiful colors and there's fresh food and you can get anything you want .

The roads are dirt , there's no cars going through it and it's like you're in a movie and right now , at least when I went two years ago , you know there's almost no Westerners there . There are some hotels that they used to tell me it used to have rooftop bars and things .

That certainly is not the case anymore , but everyone welcomes you and they want you to try their food and they want to teach you about Mali and history , even when there's a language barrier . It's just this energy . You know who could spend a whole day in a market that you can do in two hours if you just walked ? I did and I loved every second of it .

There would be one country that really surprised me about how incredible it was and beautiful driving on the roads and seeing the rolling grass and the beautiful villages , and how wonderful everybody was with fresh fruits , and I hope that the politics there and the safety situation there can get significantly better so many more people can experience what I did Be

honest .

I know the Thai government is working on that . I'd also say a place like Machu Picchu in Peru , which I hear now has limited numbers , but it was so many people that you would climb to the top and you hope you don't fall off because there's so many people .

One of the things that scares me in the travel world that I have not done and I'm certainly not capable of it , is you . I don't know if you've seen these pictures of Mount Everest and there's like lines of people to get to the top . I mean that is a failure of government , right ? They need to restrict that , they need to control that .

There are ways to do that . There are countries that do great jobs at those kinds of things and I hope they do , because that's not what you want to see . You know people waiting in line to be in very difficult situations in one of the hardest hikes in the world .

There are hundreds , if not thousands , of islands that are great , that are not Santorini or Mekinos or Eos , which people know of . So oftentimes it's not that hard to get away from the mass tourism if you just look slightly , and now there's so much information about it , david .