Juan Pablo Villarino: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you have thoughts on that possible contradiction? I think that the problem is that we perceive countries just because of what we heard on the news. Most people would only know about Iraq or Sudan — they say “Sudan” and they will only know it suffered a blockade and sanctions from the US in the late ’90s. Then people would know about the Taliban in Afghanistan, about the war in Iraq, but we never get to know about the real people living there under those facts. That’s what I’m trying to compensate with my travel literature. You can say it’s a contradiction, but I would say it’s the way that information is treated. The stereotypes and the kind of news that the media like to show is always about the wars or the things going on between leaders, but the normal people — they just never make it to the headlines. There are some published estimates you’ve offered — how long it takes to get a ride in different places. If I may just quote: the quickest is listed as Iraq, 7 minutes on average. Next quickest is Jordan, 9 minutes on average. Then Ecuador, 10 minutes; Romania, 12 minutes. The slowest of them all seems to be Tibet, where your estimate is 3 hours 16 minutes. Now, why is Tibet an outlier on the other side of that equation?…

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