Salon featured a nice interview this week with Monty Python vet Michael Palin, who recently completed a new travel documentary about the Sahara. At a time when so little human-interest news is coming out of the Middle East, it was encouraging to hear Palin’s take on his personal interactions within the Muslim world. “When I travel it really comforts me how little actually divides us,” he says. “Of course there is a huge gulf in our material welfare, religious upbringing, and things like that. But things like your family, your house, your children’s education, your hope for the future, are things that throughout the Muslim world they would share very easily with their counterparts in America.”

Elsewhere in the interview, it was nice to hear Palin give his endorsement to the current travel (and travel literature) environment: “It pleases me when I see a few more shelves at the bookstore devoted to travel. It used to be down on the bottom with gardening and erotica. And I think some of the best modern writing comes now from travelers. This is a golden age of travel again. So many more places are available to us now, especially after the collapse of communism.”