Latest news with #Steves
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Rick Steves Says Trump Is Taking 'From The Fascist Autocrat's Playbook'
Rick Steves, travel writer and host of PBS's 'Rick Steves' Europe,' said when he reads the news about President Donald Trump, he's reminded of Adolf Hitler. 'Every time I read the news, I think, Well, that's exactly what Hitler did, or that's exactly what Mussolini did,' Steves told Vanity Fair in an interview published Wednesday. 'You've got to intimidate people at the voting booths. You've got to be able to disappear people into some kind of concentration camp or a prison in another land. You just look at any news flash that deals with how Trump is taking or consolidating his power, and you can see that it is from the fascist autocrat's playbook.' In the interview, Steves — who, in 2018, released his one-hour special 'The Story of Fascism in Europe' — said countries that struggled with democracy 100 years ago have things in common with countries struggling with it today. He listed out the things someone would have to do to overthrow the government, like 'tell lies repeatedly,' 'discredit journalism,' target higher education and the courts, and 'create an external enemy.' Trump has threatened to cut federal funding for public media, which includes PBS and NPR, claiming they are 'biased' media. According to his May executive order, 'Government funding of news media in this environment is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.' In response, NPR and three Colorado public radio stations are suing Trump. Steves told Vanity Fair that public media, which he said is meant to educate the people, is a 'hurdle' and threat that Trump has to get rid of in order to accomplish his goals. 'And why wouldn't he be threatened by public broadcasting?' Steves said. 'Public broadcasting is a thoughtful oasis in our media landscape that does not have an agenda other than enlightening the electorate so that we can make smart decisions and have a stronger democracy. That's something that I celebrate.' He continued, saying that he's been an 'active champion' of noncommercial media because the alternative has to be profitable, which no longer makes it news, it makes it entertainment. 'There's only one place where news is not trying to be profitable, and that's NPR, and that's the most dangerous media for somebody that wants to get rid of truth,' Steves said. 'And Trump cannot accomplish what he wants to accomplish as long as we have the truth.' Steves said he's hopeful about America, but at the same time, he's worried Trump is playing a game of Hearts. 'We're at a point right now where everybody at the table is realizing, Wait a minute, is he shooting the moon?' Steves said. 'Does he have what it takes to get there?' he continued. 'Is there any way we could stop him? He's got smart people working with him, and they know what they're doing, and they know exactly what it takes to shoot the moon and for them to scare people in power, to intimidate a legislator or a judge to not do what they know is right.' 'I don't expect normal citizens to stand by their principles at the endangerment of their families — that's a nice thing to aspire to, but in reality, it's a rare person who has that much courage, and you can't fault somebody for worrying about their family and laying low. And Trump knows that,' he concluded. Randy Rainbow's Revelation About Trump May Surprise You As Kids' Book Comes Out Trump Wants Crypto In Your 401(k) Plan NPR And 3 Local Stations Sue Trump Administration Over Funding Cuts
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Yahoo
The One Simple Rule Rick Steves Advises Everyone to Follow When They Travel
Long-time travel writer and TV host Rick Steves is your man for all things European travel. Not only can he tell you where to go and what to do there, but he can also give you tips on anything from health and hygiene to safety when traveling. And out of his entire library of travel wisdom, there is perhaps one piece of advice that he considers most important: pack light. In a video posted to his TikTok (@ricksteveseurope), Steves says you'll be better off if you can limit all of your belongings to a carry-on-sized bag—that's 9x22x14 inches. Yes, he means everything. This includes your toiletries, shoes, chargers—try to get everything into that one small bag. The reason for this is that travel, especially international, often requires walking long distances (sometimes in the heat or on uneven terrain) while lugging your baggage, and doing so will be a heck of a lot easier if you pack light. Steves makes a good point by saying, 'You'll never meet a traveler who brags: 'Every year, I pack heavier.'' As a former world traveler myself, I can't attest enough to the truth of this; you will never regret packing less. Related: We've Got Your Vacay Covered With the Ultimate Packing Lists for Every Type of Trip Although it may give you peace of mind to bring anything you could ever need and more, the reality is that you won't end up needing or using most of it, and it will just add extra pounds to your bag that you'll wish you didn't have to carry around. What about a small bag and a personal item? More bags still mean more space taken up, whether that's when you're pulling your luggage through tight, crowded city sidewalks or storing your stuff on the floor of a hostel room. It's best to have everything kept together in one spot. If you prefer to bring a carry-on-sized roller bag, that's okay, but Steves carries it all in a backpack. I, too, have always found backpacks to be best for serious traveling. To test out your limits, Steves recommends packing up everything you think you need in the size bag you think you need it in and either walking around your house carrying it all with you for a while, or even going into town to carry it around for a few blocks. It's very likely that at some point on your international travels, you'll have to spend some hours carrying your luggage around in between flights/hotel check-ins, etc. If it's not comfortable to have it all with you while sightseeing, you should scale back your belongings. Related: 45 Travel Essentials, According to Flight Attendants, Professional Packers and More What you absolutely need to bring will depend on where you're going and when, but it's always best to stick to the bare essentials. Creating your own sort of travel capsule wardrobe is helpful for this; bring clothing items you can mix, match and layer instead of bringing multiple full outfits. Of course, having fewer clothes means you'll need to do laundry more often, but this is not the end of the world. Pro tip: bring a travel laundry bag to separate your dirty clothes from the clean ones and easily tote your laundry to the laundromat. The same goes for cosmetics and toiletries; the reality is that you can often find what you need once you get to your destination, so you don't always have to bring everything with you from home. Bringing only a carry-on also reduces the risk of your luggage getting lost or stolen. And, of course, you'll save money! 'It's not a hardship to pack light, it's a sort of enlightenment,' Steves states. Related: I Traveled the World for 2 Years With This Backpack and It Still Looks Brand New
Business Wire
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Wire
'A Minecraft Movie: Block Party Edition!'
BURBANK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Calling all Steves! In the middle of its record-smashing run in theaters, Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures invite fans back to the theater to experience 'A Minecraft Movie' together in a whole new way! You know the moments. You know the lines. You love the songs! Now it's time to get loose, laugh out loud and belt out those lyrics like a true diamond-tier fan. On Friday May 2, fans across North America and in select international markets can embrace the film anew by singing—or meme-ing—along with their favorite moments from the movie. 'A Minecraft Movie: Block Party Edition!' is made for those who yearn for the mines, so get ready to (re)enter the Overworld this weekend! Tickets are on sale now in select theaters for 'A Minecraft Movie: Block Party Edition!'—check local listings. About 'A Minecraft Movie' From Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures and starring Jason Momoa and Jack Black, 'A Minecraft Movie,' directed by Jared Hess, is the first-ever big screen, live-action adaptation of Minecraft, the best-selling video game of all time. The film also stars Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen, with Jennifer Coolidge. Welcome to the world of Minecraft, where creativity doesn't just help you craft, it's essential to one's survival! Four misfits—Garrett 'The Garbage Man' Garrison (Momoa), Henry (Hansen), Natalie (Myers) and Dawn (Brooks)—find themselves struggling with ordinary problems when they are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into the Overworld: a cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home, they'll have to master this world (and protect it from evil things like Piglins and Zombies, too) while embarking on a magical quest with an unexpected, expert crafter, Steve (Black). Together, their adventure will challenge all five to be bold and to reconnect with the qualities that make each of them uniquely creative…the very skills they need to thrive back in the real world. Hess directed from a screenplay by Chris Bowman & Hubbel Palmer and Neil Widener & Gavin James and Chris Galletta, story by Allison Schroeder and Chris Bowman & Hubbel Palmer, based on the Minecraft video game. Roy Lee, Jon Berg, Mary Parent, Cale Boyter, Jason Momoa, Jill Messick, Torfi Frans Ólafsson and Vu Bui produced, and Todd Hallowell, Jay Ashenfelter, Kayleen Walters, Brian Mendoza and Jon Spaihts executive produced. The director's creative team behind the camera includes director of photography Enrique Chediak, production designer Grant Major, editor James Thomas, VFX supervisor Dan Lemmon and costume designer Amanda Neale. The music supervisors are Gabe Hilfer and Karyn Rachtman, and the music is by Mark Mothersbaugh. Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures Present A Vertigo Entertainment/On The Roam/Mojang Studios Production, A Jared Hess Film, 'A Minecraft Movie.' The film is be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures worldwide and by Legendary East in China.
Forbes
04-04-2025
- Forbes
Travel Expert Rick Steves' Coming-Of-Age Memoir: 'On The Hippie Trail'
Rick Steves in Nepal, 1978. Rick Steves—best-selling author, renowned guidebook guru, popular public television host and radio personality who founded and heads the impressively successful group-tour company Rick Steves' Europe, which leads more than 30,000 vacationers annually abroad—astounds once again with his latest book, On the Hippie Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer (Avalon Travel, Hachette Book Group). . The origin of this singular, coming-of-age memoir springs from a remarkable hard-cover journal that Steves, during the summer of 1978, toted along a 3,000-mile stretch of horizon-unfolding experiences in Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal (see route map below) on what was then called the Hippie Trail—an overland trek from Europe and West Asia through South Asia. Notable for its cheap-budget lifestyle and an alternative hippie subculture that interacted more readily with locals than traditional tourists did, the trail held legendary allure, spotlit by the Beatles' 1968 trip to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Rishikesh, India. Ripe for meaningful exploration through mysterious lands, 23-year-old Steves was a recent college graduate and piano teacher from Washington State. En route, he daily penned 1,000 words, chronicling a vast expanse of observations and interactions. Returning home, his well-worn pages brimmed with 60,000 words. Soon after, the travelogue was tucked into storage and forgotten. Forty-two years later, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Steves stumbled upon his diary, rereading passages about his formative trip. A personal anthropological dig. His hand-written script was transcribed into type and lightly edited. The resulting 2025 published narrative stays true to Steves' early emerging voice and enthusiastic purview: candid, curious, earnest, empathetic and hopeful. It exudes the transformative power of travel. An unvarnished, very readable revelry. Photographs—from an era when each camera snapshot was carefully considered because film rolls were limited and costly to develop—enrich his in-the-moment, on-the-spot reportage. Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw traveled overland from Istanbul to Kathmandu during the summer of 1978. Steves was accompanied by his friend Gene Openshaw, an ideal travel companion. Cellphones, GPS, apps, personal computers, social media, online recommendations and digital reservations did not yet exist. In their rucksacks, the duo packed a foldout paper map of the itinerary, few clothes and ample medicine (antibiotics, malaria pills, iodine drops for the water). Openshaw and Steves on the Pakistan-Indian border. This fresh-faced leap into the unknown catapulted Steves and Openshaw toward wisdoms beyond their years. They were free, determining their own paths, facing their own consequences. Unable to stay in touch with loved ones in the United States, they relied on themselves. There were no guidebooks about this region, nor an ability to make advance bookings—so they slept among a patchwork of accommodations, often searching and scrambling for overnight cover. Their Western values encountered distinctly different cultures and characters, the collision of which fortuitously instilled wonder and humility. Steves and Openshaw in Kashmir, the northernmost geographical region of the Indian subcontinent. The monsoon season soaked them in Delhi. They fought off leeches and biting winged insects. Bumped and bustled on scruffy buses, crowded trains and narrow rickshaws. Dodged mischievous monkeys. Witnessed chaos and repression. Faced myriad complexities. Peered at ramshackle neighborhoods and broken roads. The poverty was jolting, heart-breaking. Visiting a village outside Delhi, Steves relieves a local woman of her load. They also rejoiced at the sublime beauty of picturesque landscapes. Cherished unexpected embraces, uplifting connections and formidable kindnesses. Made friends in Tehran. Got high for the first time in Afghanistan, which they departed via the mountainous Khyber Pass, navigating through Waziristan, an ungovernable region where Pashtun tribes set their own rules and strong-armed their own defenses. Rode elephants and ponies. Boated the milky Ganges River. Were awed by the strikingly white marble Taj Mahal, a monument to romance. Hiked the Himalayas. Floated on a dreamy Kashmir Lake houseboat. In Kathmandu, they exchanged namaste greetings with villagers in a lengthy, slender settlement and up a ridge overlooking a pastoral valley. Sweeping his vision across the panorama, Steves told Overshaw that he couldn't remember ever being more contented, happy and at peace. In Kashmir. "I've never met a family so disconnected from the rest of the world or so warm and welcoming," says Steves. At journey's end, when Steves flew home and 'dove into adulthood,' he explains: 'In the wake of this adventure—having stoked my travel spirit—I made a decision that changed the trajectory of my life: I let my piano students go, turned my recital hall into a lecture hall and began a small travel business.' His pivotal seed was planted, aligning a passion that has brought an array of travel pleasures to millions of people. Rick Steves today. Steves and Openshaw were unaware at the integral crossroad of their lives that 1978 would be the last Hippie Trail summer. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution arose in Iran. Easy, friendly and safe passage through both countries slammed shut. The world has changed a great deal since then, yet Steves continues to rally travel's impact to influence peace and partnership. Here, from the book's postscript, his thoughtful highlights about spreading your wings. • 'Those same 23-year-olds are still out there. I frequently hear from young globetrotters who have ventured beyond 'tourism' to become friends with the world, and I'm inspired by their stories.' • 'I miss the days of 'bon voyage.' There's so much fear these days. But the flip side of fear is understanding, and we gain understanding through travel. Travelers learn that fear is for people who don't get out much; that culture shock is the growing pains of that broadening perspective.' • 'I've shared the lessons I learned on the Hippie Trail for over 40 years. And I'm an evangelist for the notion that good travel is more than bucket lists and selfies.' • 'I believe that if more people could have such a transformative experience—especially in their youth—our world would be a more just and stable place.' • 'Travelers understand that the big challenges of the future will be blind to borders, and we'll need to tackle them together—as global citizens and as a family of nations. And most fundamentally, travelers know that the world is a welcoming place filled with joy, love and good people.' • 'Young or old, rich or poor, backpack or rolling suitcase, the best way to understand this is to experience it firsthand. To get out there to know our neighbors. To build not walls, but bridges.' Steves bicycles in Afghanistan, where trucks were brightly painted. To read a digital scan of Steves' original hand-written journal, go here.
Vox
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Vox
A hippie memoir that will send you on a trek through Kathmandu
Next Page is a newsletter written by senior correspondent and book critic Constance Grady. She covers books, publishing, gender, celebrity analysis, and theater. To get new editions in your inbox, subscribe here . Any time I travel to a new place for which there is no Rick Steves guidebook, I feel a little cheated. Steves, with his impeccable recommendations, sensible budgeting options, and gently corny prose style, has served as the benevolent fairy godfather on more than one trip for me. So it's a treat to read his new memoir, On the Hippie Trail , and meet a Steves who is much younger and much more unsure — perhaps in need of a fairy godparent of his own. In 1978, Steves was a 23-year-old piano teacher who already had the travel bug. Together with a school friend, he was determined to make his way across the so-called Hippie Trail: from Istanbul to Kathmandu, an overland trek by bus and train through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal. He kept a detailed journal of his experiences, and it's that which forms the basis of the new memoir — a young man's story, with minimal intrusions from the old one. Along the Hippie Trail, Steves got high for the first time. (In Afghanistan in 1978, he reasoned, it was 'as innocent as wine with dinner is in America.' Today, he's an advocate for legalized cannabis.) He rode an elephant in Jaipur and bathed under a waterfall in Nepal. The dreamy travel descriptions are fun, but what's loveliest in this book is to watch Steves slowly open his mind to a world that was bigger and more complicated than he ever expected. 'What did the people think as we waltzed in and out of their lives?' he wonders. Travel is one of the great opportunities to open your mind to the world, but one of the others is reading, which allows you to brush up against the consciousness of another person, touching your mind to theirs. Here are some books to help you do just that. Here are some of the characteristics of the books of Ali Smith, who's been called Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting: sneaky serialization. (Her acclaimed seasonal quartet was linked by a tricky, easy-to-miss series of daisy chain connections.) Linguistic play. (She likes a prose poem integrated into the text and, if she can swing it, a long discussion of etymology.) A set of anti-fascist politics that is not optimistic so much as it is committed to resistance and to the resilient capabilities of art and beauty. (The seasonal quartet contained some of the earliest serious post-Brexit and post-Covid novels.) Smith's new novel, Gliff , contains all of the above, and yet it still feels new and surprising. It's simply not quite what you would expect Gliff takes place in a near-future dystopia, and it tracks two siblings with the fairy-tale names of Rose and Briar. Their bohemian parents have sheltered them from the worst of their authoritarian state, but the state takes its strange and absurd revenge. Sometime in the night, we learn through Briar's child eyes, someone comes to their house and paints a red line all around it, an opaque threat that nonetheless forces them to flee their home. Then the line comes for their camper van. It comes relentlessly, unstoppably, forcing Briar and Rose away from their parents, off the grid, into hiding, and even, eventually, away from each other. Gliff 's title comes from an old Scottish word with many meanings: It can be a short moment, a violent blow, a sudden escape, or a nonsense sound. Its companion novel is due to come out next year and is being advertised as 'a story hidden in the first novel.' It will be titled Glyph . What a treat, what an absolute delight this warm, funny novel is — which is a particular triumph because it is, in some ways, a Me Too novel. A little bit Slings & Arrows , a little bit Dorothy Parker, Mona Acts Out deals with the fraught relationship between esteemed Shakespearian actor Mona Zahid and her old mentor Milton Katz, who has been forced out of the theatrical company he founded after accusations of sexual harassment. Mona, who as she approaches middle age laments that she will soon have to stop playing Ophelia and start playing Gertrude, credits Milton with 'making' her. Yet she's never felt completely comfortable with the way Milton wielded his absolute power at their theater company, a dynamic tracked here with the nuance befitting a book that takes Shakespeare as its subject. Over the course of one disastrous Thanksgiving, Mona gets very high indeed and, little dog in tow, walks out on hosting her in-laws to ramble across Manhattan, trying to get Milton out of her head and also work out the mystery of why her hair currently looks so good. As Mona walks, she occasionally frets over the role she's currently playing: Maria in Twelfth Night , one of Shakesepeare's most sparkling comedies. Mona's playing it dark and cruel, and no one quite understands why: Isn't it supposed to be funny? With Mona Acts Out , Berlinski has pulled off the opposite feat. She's written a sharp analysis of something dark, and she's made it a pure pleasure to read. What a strange phenomenon the Disney Channel of the 2000s was: all those squeaky clean sitcoms about sweet kids with big dreams; all that ever-lurking paranoia that one of the sweet kids would pull a Britney any minute now. If you're a millennial, odds are that you spent some time with Disney Channel as your babysitter. It fed mainstream pop culture one giant pop star after another — and then, somehow, it seemed to fade away, consigned to irrelevance as abruptly and inexplicably as it became, somehow, central in its heyday. Or maybe not so inexplicably. Ashley Spencer's Disney High is a smart, rigorously reported piece of both cultural and corporate history on how a combination of luck and prescience shot the Disney Channel into the zeitgeist over the course of the 2000s, and how corporate inertia let it fall again. Few would call the work Disney built over that decade great art, but it was a hugely formative influence on the childhood and adolescence of a generation. In Disney High , Spencer shows us how it got there. Have you been following all this uproar over book blurbs? I wrote about it here. Happy Valentine's Day! LitHub has some advice from novelists on the art of the sex scene. At Harper's, climate journalist Justin Nobel tells the story of pulling his book from Simon & Schuster after the publisher was bought by a private equity firm with investments in oil and gas. Novelist Lincoln Michel makes the case that books will outlast AI. At the Paris Review, Jamieson Webster celebrates the word-drunk language play of Good Night Moon writer Margaret Wise Brown. See More:
