Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Alex Borelli asks, What is a place you’ve visited that you’ve discovered doesn’t match the popular perception (dangerous, unfriendly people, etc.)?

There are a lot of places that fit this bill. What most people know about a place comes from the news and the only thing the news reports on is bad news.

Most people don’t realize that life goes on in most places and the day-to-day reality for most people isn’t the worst things they see on the news.

The further away people get from a place, the less they know about it and the more they paint with a broad brush. I remember when there was an ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and people were canceling trips to Cape Town because they were both in Africa.

Sierra Lenoe is closer to London than it is to Cape Town, but people don’t bother to see that level of nuance. They just lump all of Africa together.

Many countries with murder rates, like Honduras, actually just have high murder rates in one city, and even then, just some neighborhoods of the capital city.

The rest of the country doesn’t reflect this high crime rate.

We don’t paint with such a broad brush the more we know about a place. If you live in a big city, you know there are neighborhoods you don’t go to, even if they happen to be near where you live.

That same level of scrutiny is lacking when people view the rest of the world they aren’t as familiar with.