The Antidote to Despair

It's only been two months into 2026, but it already feels like we've lived 3,000 lives in this time.

Venezuela, Greenland, Minnesota, Gaza's so-called "Board of Peace," Cuba, Mexico, and now, Iran and the rest of that region...

“Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

For me, and many others around me, it has been hard to function 'business-as-usual.' Our lives can't continue operating in a bubble of normalcy when so much around us is not. Sooner or later, cognitive dissonance sets in.

This is one of the tenets of coverage inside Going Places: we speak clearly.

We acknowledge that the house is on fire, because pretending otherwise is doing more harm than good – to our nervous systems, our wellbeing, and our capacity to engage with the world.

At the same time, I – and many others around me – feel the urge to disconnect from the news. Those same nervous systems that want to stay engaged can't process the inordinate amount of information we all have access to. It's beyond human ability to take in and process it all.

And that's a good thing.

If the headlines have got you down, YK Hong just published an excellent piece called Antidotes For News Overwhelm.

In it, the tech justice and liberatory strategy activist suggests making a list of your core truths, checking your trusted sources, focusing on what matters, and determining your response (or lack of response) accordingly.

What does any of this have to do with travel, and, because you're subscribed to Going Places, our mission of global stories of hope through a decolonial lens?

In short: everything. And you can read my long answer below.

xx Yulia

Inside Going Places 🏠

Healing the world

There are only two weeks left until the next season of our podcast, in which you'll hear from a Condé Nast Traveler editor, a travel industry rebel female leader, an author of a groundbreaking book that reshapes what we thought we knew about Europe's Muslim history, and so many more.

I can't wait.

In the meantime, here's an interview that feels extra relevant today. It revolves around this question: how do we heal the world?

Hadar Cohen is an Arab Jewish scholar, mystic, and artist whose work focuses on multi-religious spirituality, politics, social issues, and community building.

She comes from a 10th-generation Jerusalem family with lineage roots in Syria, Kurdistan, Iraq, and Iran.

How do you practice love, compassion, humility, and courage in the face of so much that is wrong in the world?

These are the questions we explored in this episode.

Take a listen to our chat here.

Tikkun Olam and Healing the World

Traditions of the sacred with Arab Jewish mystic Hadar Cohen.

Going PlacesYulia Denisyuk

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In The World 🌍

Travel as a tool for planetary empathy and justice

The idea of travel as a way to serve the traveler has never sat well with me.

Blame it on my peripatetic, 'third-culture-kid' upbringing or on my tendency to be curious about other people, but I always believed that travel is about the connections we make with other places, cultures, worlds.

Last week, I wrote about travel's potential for collective transformation.

This week's news of the illegal (according to both the U.N. Charter and the U.S. Constitution) and deadly (over 100 schoolchildren killed in the town of Minab) strikes that the U.S. and Israel have launched on Iran has prompted me to think about the other side of the same coin: travel's ability to broaden our worldview and help us understand this fragile place better.

Travel to the Occupied West Bank allowed me to see the apartheid system and the military occupation with my own eyes, beyond any doubt.

Numerous trips to Jordan have helped me understand the region and improved my ability to spot Islamophobia and Orientalism in the U.S. media discourse.

A week in Okinawa highlighted the ongoing expansion of U.S. militarism doctrine on the island against its residents' wishes.

A work trip to Chile resulted in my connecting with Indigenous activists fighting against erasure (more on this coming up).

And on, and on, and on.

The more of these issues I see, the harder it has become for me to unsee them, to travel just to escape, to please my own needs.

Travel has grown my sense of planetary empathy and helped me see that many injustices around the world have the same roots – greed, unchecked power and wealth, capitalism, neo-colonialism, patriarchy, and racism.

While this all may sound utterly depressing, realizing this has actually had an opposite effect, and here's why:

Wherever I go, I meet those who want to build bridges, those who share my sense of planetary empathy, those who are already working on rebuilding, restoring, reviving, renewing our world.

Across the globe, I find lots more people like this than like the madmen at the helm.

I have these connections – to people in Iran, Jordan, Qatar, Mexico, Venezuela, and beyond – because of travel.

And that gives me hope.

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