Agora Grand Tour
Is travel "fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness" per Mark Twain, or is it "a fool's paradise" per Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Centries ago, young aristocrats from northern Europe would make multi-year journeys over mountains and lakes, cities and towns culminating in Italy, often as a capstone to their education. Traversing across Chinese speaking lands were similarly favored by youths in the classical era. What's common is that these "Grand Tours" produced some of the towering giants in philosophy, art, literature, politics and science.
Agora recognizes the power of travel both in opening minds and reinforcing prejudices. We belive the beneift of visiting new places only come from journeys that are purposeful, well-curated, well-prepared, and well-companied journeys.
2023 Greece (2 Episodes)
2022 Costa Rica
2019 Agora Grand Tour in Greece (9 episodes)
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
“The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.”
