As the PEN World Voices Festival gets underway, Andrew Solomon, president of PEN, professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University, and National Book Award-winning author of Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change (Scribner, 2016), looks back at his own encounters with other places and peoples to explore how travel changes both visited and visitor.

Among Andrew Solomon discussed the moral imperative of seeing the world, the difference between tourism and travel, and explained how he gets to know a strange place quickly–throwing a party.

→ Hear more: Andrew Solomon will be speaking at the PEN World Voices Festival tonight at 7pm. Tickets and information can be found here.