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Chris Arnade Absorbs Australia In Full & Offers His Worldview

Chris Arnade on Curious Worldview - Spotify

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Subscribe to Chris Arnade's Substack - https://walkingtheworld.substack.com/

Who is Chris Arnade!

He started as a physicist, earning a PHD from Johns Hopkins and then took to Wall St spending two decades on an elite trading desk at CitiGroup before disillusioning his well dressed allies to engage in the photography, walking and writing of the great and forgotten cities of this world. 

He is a best selling author, but as well… a best subscribed substacker!

'Chris Arnade Walks The World' is the publications name…

And in it, Chris lives up to the title. 

Japan, Europe, China, Australia, The Faroe Islands, Canada, the expansive US of A, Turkey, Korea, Indonesia even Uzbekistan (which gets a special mention in this podcast). Cities within all of these great nations and many more, Chris has trod and documented. 

His format is slow and empathetic. Chris will embark on several 20-30km journeys at his location, take photos and then report on his walk. 

I can’t remember how long I’ve been subscribed, although it feels like years, but the other day I woke up to an email which detailed Chris’s initial impressions of Sydney! I replied to the email right away, and just a few hours later was guiding him along the Malabar to Bondi trail. Steve and I - guiding Chris from the area I grew up to the most iconic beach in Australia. 

That was a special serendipity which came out of no-where and furthermore, led to this podcast today...

• 00:00 Introduction to Chris Arnade — physicist, Wall Street trader, turned global walker/writer.

• 02:00 First impressions of Sydney — “child of LA and London,” with beaches, pubs, suburbs, and good living.

Sydney Observations

• 03:40 Sydney’s trains: efficient, sprawling, but designed to avoid beaches.

• 06:00 Sydney friendliness vs. UK cynicism — “Australians are like puppy dogs, eager to please.”

• 09:30 Suburbs as “democratized manors,” good life for the average person, housing affordability issues.

• 13:00 Housing supply constraints, coastline beauty, and why Sydney isn’t as bad as people think.

Walking & Method

• 16:30 From physics & Wall Street to walking: walks as stress relief, learning, meditation.

• 20:30 Spreadsheet brain → toy models → refining worldview through walking.

• 22:30 Cities that defied expectations: Tashkent & Jakarta.

Global Perspectives

• 25:30 Africa’s challenges: Nigeria & Dakar as examples of dysfunction despite resources.

• 29:00 Australia’s weak ties with Indonesia, lack of Indonesians in Sydney, food culture, overlapping economic models.

• 33:30 Chinese-Indonesian business dominance — parallels to Jews, Lebanese, minorities elsewhere.

• 36:00 High-trust vs. low-trust societies: Japan as the archetype.

Culture & Writing

• 41:30 Why he avoids fame, prefers anonymity, but respects subscribers deeply.

• 44:00 Pressure to deliver as a Substack writer — treating it like a job.

• 47:00 Writing inspiration, uninspired cities (Bangkok), and the challenges of always producing.

• 53:00 Strong opinions drive traffic

Dignity & Underclass

• 55:00 “Dignity” project in the US — underclass and addiction.

Personal Life

• 56:20 Family and frugality

• 58:50 Why he doesn’t read other travel writers

Philosophy & Serendipity

• 01:04:50 Serendipity? “I don’t believe in coincidence.” 

• 01:07:00  Country he’s most bullish on

• 01:09:00 Next destinations

Consider sharing this interview with a mate, colleague, brother, sister, whoever you think might be interested in this as well.

Here is a transcript of the opening exchange from the conversation…

Ryan
The best place to start would be your impressions of Sydney.

Chris
It's a wonderful city. call it, I think the thing I said was it's like a child of LA and London that's inherited the best qualities of each. From LA it's got this beautiful setting which I can see now up here on your roof and wonderful trees, beautiful beaches, great coastline, great climate and from and space and from London has gotten pretty much everything else. Kind of an English pub culture, a culture of going to sports and kind of what I would call good living in the English manner. But it's also a city of suburbs. What's kind of striking is when you walk around here, you really feel like in many ways that you're kind of in a in a clean, safe version of the US suburbs because everybody has a small home with a yard that's immaculately kept and with garden and maybe a small boat parked out front of the house that they use on the weekends. It's kind of a, I think what people would call normies have a pretty good life here.

Ryan
It's funny you were just saying earlier or rather I think it's funny that you've probably seen intimately quite a lot more of Sydney than most people might who grew up and live here. For instance you were just saying how you got on the train north, got on the train west, got on the train south and we just got off at a random point and walked between 20, 15, 20 kilometers a day.

Chris
Correct. When the weather would allow me. It's been rainy the last much of my time here. But yeah, I I just kind of take the subway generally. The subway is here. The metros, the trains, whatever you want to call them. They don't go to the coast, which is notable. I think that's intentional. They want to keep people away from the beaches for some reason, but they go out west. Yeah, I think it's by design. It doesn't surprise me that the you're gonna buy design the only line going and going going out toward the beach is stops about a mile short of Bondi Beach. Yeah. So yeah, so they kind of sprawl out the line sprawl out and they're good. They're really fast. They're clean. They come regularly. But and they go fast. So you can you can be you can live you know 30 kilometers 40 kilometers outside the city and be in be be downtown and 30 minutes. So it's all very, and you know those places are, huge. The neighborhoods out there are just massive. They're not high density, not like you see in kind of other Asian cities. They don't have a lot of office towers. They don't have a lot of apartment buildings. It's just a lot of small ranch style homes on like a quarter acre of land.

Ryan
How much of the culture do you you can infer from just walking around various parts of it over a number of days?

Chris
I think quite a bit, you know, it helps it, obviously. I speak the language, although I will tell you there are times I just don't understand what people say here. I absolutely do not understand, especially in the more working class neighborhoods. there are people who will say things and I, I just don't know what they're saying. Um, but you know, I mean, hopefully I've gotten pretty good at just observing by just walking and just sitting in, you know, cafes and talking or just watching people. Um, and you know, I spent a fair amount of time in my life and, and, and, and, UK, both living there and then walking around it. And there are times here, or especially early on, where when I was kind of delusional from jet lag, where I really felt like I was in London, you know, and then I just look up and then I'll see, well, there's a harbor, you know, London doesn't have a harbor. You know, you see that especially on the high streets, you know, you've inherited the kind of English idea of you have suburban you have houses and then you have one high street in each neighborhood where you put all the chemists and the pharmacy and the restaurants and the cafes and so that feels very much the case. You still have that here.

Ryan
Are you a chatty fella? When you're going around, you find yourself...

Chris
Yeah, in general. mean, in general, mean, when my mood is, my mood is usually good. The weather, will say again, the weather has kind of got me down at times. It was, it's been, yeah, you know, for your listeners who are not in Sydney, it's probably been some of the 10 wettest days in the recent past of Sydney, I've been told. But yeah, you know, I tend to just talk to people. You know, I...

I just kind of go up and just ask them questions. And in general, everybody's been friendly here. People in Australia are remarkably friendly. That's the biggest difference between here and UK. That's nice. It's almost like, I think, I'm going to guess the English would.

make fun of you and say you're almost like puppy dogs. It's just like the yippy puppy dog who just wants to keep on getting pet. is a sense of like immense... people want to be agreeable in a way that's, find, refreshing, but I can imagine would grow old after a while if you're kind of a cynical person. There are times I tend to it. I try not to be. I think...

Ryan
Do you think you're a cynical person?

Chris
is something you always, as any, if you're an intellectual, you have to fight cynicism pretty hard to not descend into it.

Ryan
not just be overcome by all the problems that you can't help but know.

Chris
Exactly. And there are times when you travel, there are moments when you feel completely isolated, and so that can become almost a defensive cynicism.

Ryan
Take the other day for instance when you posted something and then within a few hours you had a couple of people from that city writing to you saying, hey, I'm in town, I wanna meet you, let's go for a walk. Is that something you enjoy or is that also very mood dependent?

Chris
I enjoyed that. It happens in general in big cities like Sydney. It happens far less in places like places I go more often are like Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. don't get people saying they want to walk with me. So yeah, I appreciate it. It's a nice change of pace.

I am by myself so often and I do like to be by myself. It's not a complaint. I feel like I can think better that way. But yeah, it's nice to have people to walk with.

……. continue the conversation with the podcast here.