{"id":2339,"date":"2014-07-21T10:46:58","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2339"},"modified":"2014-07-21T10:46:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-21T17:46:58","slug":"notebook-on-cities-and-culture-s4e47-waking-up-in-the-unknown-with-jim-benning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=2339","title":{"rendered":"Notebook on Cities and Culture S4E47: Waking Up in the Unknown with Jim Benning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2340\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/jimbenning_600.jpg\" alt=\"jimbenning_600\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/jimbenning_600.jpg 300w, http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/jimbenning_600-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimbenning.net\">Jim Benning<\/a>, travel writer and co-founder of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.worldhum.com\">World Hum<\/a>, home of &#8220;The Best Travel Stories on the Internet.&#8221; They discuss why Mexican food on other continents sucks so bad; the nature of a &#8220;weather lifestyle&#8221; site he previously edited; the old question of travel versus tourism; his relationship to the label of &#8220;travel writing&#8221;; whether hatred or love for a place can produce anything but uninteresting writing; our need for &#8220;hidden gems&#8221;; how Los Angeles offers the world within it, yet rewards travel outside of it; that feeling you get upon first waking up in a completely unknown city; the American traveler&#8217;s anxiety about entering a foreign McDonalds; his multimedia production &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimbenning.net\/stories\/multimedia\/starbucks-vs-the-traveler\/\">Starbucks Versus the Traveler<\/a>&#8220;; the English and American traditions of the travel writing of ignorance; the rant for a single-language world he found in his old diaries; the lost world of the Pan Am vacationer and the United States&#8217; &#8220;new humility&#8221;; LAX and the many other ways that Los Angeles seemingly hasn&#8217;t internalized its own status; the obsessions, like surfing, that take you places you wouldn&#8217;t have known to go otherwise; having a relationship with a place as you would a person; his mid-1990s Orange County &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jimbenning.net\/stories\/my-drive-thru-life\/\">Drive-Thru Life<\/a>&#8220;; his search for the stories that make him feel like he feels when he&#8217;s traveling; and where in town he currently goes for his tacos.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Download the interview\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/traffic.libsyn.com\/colinmarshall\/NCC_S4E47_Jim_Benning.output.mp3\">here as an MP3<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0or on\u00a0<\/span><a style=\"color: #555555;\" href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/notebook-on-cities-culture\/id266539442\">iTunes<\/a><span style=\"color: #000000;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colin Marshall sits down in Santa Monica with Jim Benning, travel writer and co-founder of World Hum, home of &#8220;The Best Travel Stories on the Internet.&#8221; They discuss why Mexican food on other continents sucks so bad; the nature of a &#8220;weather lifestyle&#8221; site he previously edited; the old question of travel versus tourism; his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-los-angeles","category-notebook-on-cities-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2339"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339\/revisions\/2341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}