AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Well, after a 32-year run, United Airlines is printing the last physical copy of its inflight magazine, Hemispheres. This comes after several other airlines, including Delta, American and Southwest, have stopped printing their magazines. Ellen Carpenter was the editor in chief of Hemispheres for the last seven years and joins us now. Welcome.
ELLEN CARPENTER: Hi. Thank you for having me.
CHANG: Airplanes were, like, the last refuge where you could get away from the internet for hours at a time. At least for a while, it was like that, and having a hard copy magazine like Hemispheres in front of you was just part of that analog experience, right?
CARPENTER: Exactly.
CHANG: What do you think people will miss most about not seeing Hemispheres in that seat pocket?
CARPENTER: It all comes down to travel inspiration. So people got this really curated level of content that you don't get when you're on the internet because you're - I think, at least - surfing endlessly, trying to find one thing or...
CHANG: Yeah.
CARPENTER: To have it all there in one place and one magazine for you to read all that, see all these beautiful photos, the beautiful illustrations, and take that all in - I think people are going to miss that for sure.
CHANG: I know. It is kind of quaint now, this idea of a confined universe of information that you can flip through.
CARPENTER: Yeah. Yeah.
CHANG: Any examples of favorite stories you worked on that jump to mind?
CARPENTER: One that springs to mind was Michael Crowley. He wrote about going to golf at Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. He and his brother had been avid golfers, and his brother passed away from cancer.
CHANG: Oh.
CARPENTER: And that was the course he had most wanted to play. And so he went up to play the course by himself and to honor his brother and to kind of remember all the beautiful times they had together but also to kind of still experience the love he had for golf, you know, in this gorgeous place in Canada.
CHANG: Yeah.
CARPENTER: That was a great story. We did a lot of literary pilgrimage stories. I did one myself with my mom. I took her to the Eastern Townships of Quebec. We did tracing Louise Penny's "Three Pines" novels. We wanted to kind of go find Three Pines, which is a fictional location in the stories, but it's based off all these little towns up there. And it was really a magical experience and something that people who love her books or who just love reading can't help but enjoy, you know, and be moved by.
CHANG: Yeah. That's so cool. What kind of relationship did you have with some of your readers? Did you get a lot of feedback?
CARPENTER: Yeah, definitely got a lot of feedback, got a lot of emails. My favorite were when people would email and say, like, oh, I didn't get to fly this month, so I don't have a copy of Hemispheres. I've been collecting them for years. Do you mind mailing me one?
And we used to, in the magazine pre-COVID - had a page where we had a hashtag, #Hemigram, and people would take photos of themselves with the magazine all over the world. There'd be someone jumping from a plane, skydiving, holding a copy of Hemispheres or someone at the top of Mount Everest or someone underwater, swimming with sharks, holding one in a plastic bag so it doesn't get wet. And I just loved seeing that, where people took the magazine. Or someone would be holding...
CHANG: Yeah.
CARPENTER: ...A copy from, like, five years before, and they're finally in that destination. Like, they're finally in Paris.
CHANG: Right.
CARPENTER: And they're holding that copy of the magazine.
CHANG: Oh, my God. It's like the magazine version of "Flat Stanley."
CARPENTER: (Laughter) Yeah, definitely.
CHANG: (Laughter) Well, what did being part of Hemispheres mean to you personally?
CARPENTER: I think the privilege of getting to inspire people to travel was wonderful. I mean, travel is transformative, and people - when they take trips, they're learning more about other cultures. They're learning more about themselves and their own background.
CHANG: Absolutely, yes.
CARPENTER: And so getting people out there and seeing the world - that was the best thing possible. And I know we're not, you know, solving world problems here with a travel magazine, but I really do feel like when people travel, they grow, and they bring back what they learned to share with their friends and their family and expand their horizons, and that's really powerful. I think especially seeing other cultures and understanding other people better - that's something you really only get by traveling to other destinations.
CHANG: I love that. I couldn't agree with you more. Ellen Carpenter was the editor-in-chief of United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine from 2017 to 2024. Thank you very much, Ellen, and best of luck to you as you start the next chapter of your professional life.
CARPENTER: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
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