323: Visiting Libya in 2025 and Lessons from Growing Up as an Iranian Refugee with Yooshita

323: Visiting Libya in 2025 and Lessons from Growing Up as an Iranian Refugee with Yooshita

Author: Matt Bowles: Full-Time World Traveler Since 2013 February 10, 2025 Duration: 50:24
Learn about growing up in Iran, being a refugee in Europe & ethical considerations when traveling to low income areas. ============================ Get the Monday Minute my weekly email with 3 personal recs for travel, culture, and living beyond borders you can read in 60 seconds. ============================ ON THIS EPISODE Yooshita joins Matt and they start off talking about how they met at the Extraordinary Travel Festival in Bangkok and connected around their shared human rights activism. Yooshita then talks about her recent trip to Jamaica, including both the importance of getting out of the tourist areas and the ethical dynamics of visiting low-income or high-crime areas. Next, she describes her recent trip to Libya in 2025 and why it was so special to her. Yooshita then talks about growing up in Iran until the age of 13, and the experience of her family applying for refugee asylum in Europe. She reflects on what that experience taught her about the way refugees are treated, and what she learned from the other refugees she met during that time. Yooshita then describes her experience culturally acclimating to Austria as a teenager, confronting stereotypes about Iranians, and later working at an NGO to help religious minorities emigrate from Iran. → Full show notes with direct links to everything discussed are available here. ============================ FREE RESOURCES FOR YOU: See my Top 10 Apps For Digital Nomads See my Top 10 Books For Digital Nomads See my 7 Keys For Building A Remote Business (Even in a space that’s not traditionally virtual) Watch my Video Training on Stylish Minimalist Packing so you can join #TeamCarryOn See the Travel Gear I Use and Recommend See How I Produce The Maverick Show Podcast (The equipment, services & vendors I use) ============================ ENJOYING THE SHOW? Follow The Maverick Show on Instagram and DM Matt to continue the conversation Please leave a rating and review — it really helps the show and I read each one personally You can buy me a coffee — espressos help me produce significantly better podcast episodes! :)

There’s a certain texture to life lived in motion, a collection of stories that emerge not from postcards but from the messy, beautiful reality of planting roots in foreign soil. The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders captures that essence through long-form conversations hosted by Matt Bowles, who has been navigating the world full-time since 2013. This isn't a guidebook podcast; it’s a series of intimate dialogues, often unfolding casually over a shared bottle of wine, where the destination is understanding. You’ll hear from a diverse range of voices-expats, digital nomads, women forging paths abroad, and diaspora storytellers-each sharing the raw, unfiltered nuances of what happens when you cross borders for good. The focus is on the human narrative beneath the itinerary: the cultural misunderstandings that become breakthroughs, the loneliness and liberation, and the profound ways a global life reshapes identity. Listening feels like pulling up a chair at a cafe somewhere in the world, eavesdropping on a conversation that’s equally about internal discovery as it is about geographic change. Matt’s own experience as a long-term traveler informs these discussions, steering them toward the substantive lessons learned far from home. If you’ve ever wondered about the true weight and wonder of building a life between cultures, this podcast offers a genuine, thoughtful window into that journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

The Maverick Show: Global Travel Stories & Life Beyond Borders
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