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Contributor

 

About:

Nick is a writer based in Andorra. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, Slate, Word Vietnam, and many other places.


Below are some fun facts and quirky questions to understand Nick Slater better:

 

🍽 What person living or dead would you invite to your dream dinner party, and why?

 

Ibn Battuta, the 14th century Moroccan explorer and travel writer sometimes called “the Islamic Marco Polo” (though he covered around 117,00 km compared to Polo’s 24,000). He traveled from North Africa to China over the course of several decades, visiting the most spectacular cities of the Middle East and Asia—as well as many of its most barren deserts—and writing a fascinating account of his journeys, titled “A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling”.

 

🎶 What is your theme song?

 

Roger Miller’s 1965 hit, “King of the Road.” It’s an ode to the early 20th century hobo lifestyle, filled with understated humor (“I’m a man of means / by no means”) and gentleness (“I know every engineer on every train / All of their children, and all of their names”). Miller’s voice is gravelly and earnest, the baseline is tremendous. It’s the audio equivalent of leaning back in a lawn chair on a hot summer’s day with a beer in your hand and nothing to do for the rest of the day.

 

🇰🇭 Where is the best destination you’ve been to and why?

 

I answered this question because I wanted to take the opportunity to say how much I wish we’d stop thinking about travel in such a limited and needlessly competitive way! It’s like trying to compare your child’s smile to your mother’s cooking to your spouse’s emotional support to a whole bunch of other things from wildly different categories. Having said that, if you ever have the opportunity to visit Cambodia (almost any part of it), I’d highly encourage it.

 

đź’¸ If you had one wish to improve the world, what would you change?

 

A wealth cap. There is no good moral argument for why a tiny group of people should have more money than they could spend in a dozen lifetimes, while billions of others struggle to feed their families. To anyone who’d argue the contrary, I invite you to visit a slum or refugee camp—or even just the poorest neighborhood in your city—and explain your position to someone who lives there.

 

🤿 If you had chosen another path in life, what might you be doing now?

 

Sitting in a decompression chamber for the next 24 hours after pulling a shift of deep sea welding. I’m still bummed I missed my shot to become a technical diver (this is a young person’s game) but life is full of curveballs and who knows what weirdnesses might transpire in the years to come. 

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