Idon’t get star-struck easily. But I’ll admit that I was a little nervous when I got Rick Steves on the phone recently. Not only is the longtime PBS host and author America’s most beloved travel guide, he’s the avatar of a specific kind of travel—one that urges Americans to get off the beaten path, connect with the locals, and broaden their perspectives on their own culture by immersing themselves in another. Especially in a moment of rising nationalism and division and social media superficiality, this kind of travel can, indeed, be a “political act,” as he put it in one of his books.

Politics has been at the top of Steves’s mind lately. The longtime activist has been outspoken about Donald Trump ’s coordinated campaign to consolidate power and undermine democracy since his retur

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