Language podcaster Craig is from the UK but has been podcasting in Spain for many years. Alternatively business podcaster Pilar has the opposite geographical podcasting experience being from Spain and podcasting from the UK for a long time. And yet they found each other and created a podcast about the scene in Spain some years ago. In this conversa…

Making our morning cup is not only a ritual and often an energy requirement but it's a sound experience. That's why I'm so glad that Audio Engineer Jason Sheesley agreed to join us for this playful coffee chat. We explore U.S. and Europe coffee and coffee culture, his peak coffee experience, and take a look at his kitchen coffee setup. And more! Ja…

Questions about family can be triggering if the experience was not ideal. This is one of the reasons that Steph's talked about her family in tiny drips here and there but not in depth. But it felt disingenuous to ask other expats to open up about their early family life growing up with immigrant parents without diving into these experiences herself…

Have your immigrant parents ever visited you in any of your expat places? Georges' parents have and it shifted how he understood their struggles moving from Greece to Canada. We cover a lot more ground on his parents' immigrant story and how it has both positively and negatively influenced his own expat experience. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earl…

Have you ever wondered why your immigrant parent(s) didn't prepare you for being a global citizen? Chelsea thought this when she was struggling in her first expat place. Over time she began to understand the distinct difference between her mother's immigrant experience and her expat one. In this conversation, we unpack the lasting impression that C…

How much do our immigrant parents impact our adult expat experiences? This is what we're exploring in this conversation with return guest Alison. Alison and I dig into growing up with two unequal cultures in one household, the racial struggles she's seen in many countries during her years living outside of her passport country of the U.S. and her c…

This episode is about half of a conversation that Matthew Boyle of Legendary Language Learner YouTube channel and I had about language teaching, content creation and the intersection between the two. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame Audio (more recent eps) :https://keyframeaudio.com/ Top 3…

Yuki and I sat down to have this conversation far too long ago. Life has been crazy and, to be honest, I even stopped drinking coffee for awhile. So it felt weird publishing this episode during that time. But things feel a little more frothy these days, so here it is! And here SHE is:) Yuki has sought out, enjoyed and brewed coffee in many location…

In December 2019 my dear friend Shannon Martin and I sat down and recorded an episode about The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. We were so intrigued with the book that we wanted to repeat the process with the more autobiographical version of the book, A Moveable Feast. And then we both left China and you know what happened. We did record this f…

Can social media ground us and make us feel more at peace in this crazy world? This conversation with Tania from Swahili Secrets will present an answer to this question that is not common but very refreshing. Tania was born in Kenya and moved around a lot. Her geographical footprint includes 4 other African countries, Thailand, Austria and Germany.…

Can learning a new language unlock part of your personality? This is something I've wondered my entire language play experience. And I've been asking guests flavors of this question more and more lately. How Kyle and Diane answer this question is really going to tickle your funny bone and get you thinking about this too. They are two Americans who …

Language can be a lens into culture, a way to share our experiences and a tool to help others. These are some of the aspects of language that we discuss with guest Elizabeth Gowing. She worked in primary education in inner London before moving to the Balkans in 2006. From then until very recently she split her time between Kosovo, Albania and the U…

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live and do linguistic research in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode is for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives on their podcast (the https://bigwhitepodcast.lib…

If you've ever wondered what it's like to live, work, and podcast in Kathmandu, Nepal, this episode are for you! Big & White, their podcasting nicknames, are two American Linguists who, until very recently were living in Nepal and creating a rather hilarious audio account of their daily lives. Their episodes covered much of what expat podcasts cove…

This episode is really special for me. Last month for NaPodPoMo I had the extreme pleasure of chatting with Damon Castillo for this episode. Yes, THE Damon Castillo of the Mess of Me album that we've been using for the past 2 years in all of the Geopats Podcast Network shows. We talk about the longevity of the Damon Castillo Band, his geopatness, m…

Our first guest on Geopats Online (then called Virtual Expats) in September 2018 was Joanna Czutkowna, Founder of Life in Breaths & I went shopping today. When we first met back then she was very passionate about sustainability within the fashion industry and also about redefining how we view age, beauty and the ability in how we design. Even thoug…

On September 30, 2020 I was thrilled to lead a language learning Podcasters panel for International Podcast Day. You can watch the video of this panel on YouTube, https://youtu.be/hR8fr0Hapo0, OR you can listen to this on this episode. Thank you to Dave and Steve, the geniuses behind IPD, for holding yet another amazing year's sessions of Podcaster…

In this episode we are talking to Ken Hirano, who was born in Japan but his family moved to the U.S. before he started school. He has returned to Japan to live a few times in his life, and now is one of them. He moved back to Tokyo about a year ago and recently https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kenhirano_china-culture-asianamericans-activity-670716254…

One year ago today Nicole from the Expat Cast, former guest and guest Host Tatjana and I discussed the book Schadenfreude, a Love Story: Me, the Germans and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words for in an episode. After I moved to Berlin, Germany I posted a photo o…

Erin and I met in Vietnam many years ago, the place where both of our coffee obsession hit a peak, so it only made sense to have her on the podcast. In this episode we dive into her coffee explorations in Australia, many countries in Asia, Italy and Canada. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame…

​Has music ever soothed your soul and made you feel connected again? Yes, me too. And it sounds like the same happened to James when he was an expat for well over a decade. He is back in his home country now so his perspective on his time in the Czech Republic and China are especially poignant. As is the origin story for his intensely researched an…

In this episode, Steph Cook of Transcontinental Overload is kind enough to ponder 3 aspects of German that strike me (Geopats Steph) as strange. Her insights and humo(u)r about these differences is a sheer delight. You will never hear the German language in the same way again. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastill…

Travis lived in Germany and the Czech Republic for 20 years and podcasts about history on podcastnik.com. After talking about alchemy and witches as a ghost-tour guide in Prague, he teamed up with Pete Collman to figure out podcasting as a medium to tell stories from history. Travis has a long and complicatedly long adoration with coffee that start…

Welcome to the bookish world of Japan. Guest Host Tatjana from Craving Expat Life chats with Yuki fromBook Nerd Tokyo about Japanese books, specifically Banana Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen” in this conversation. They explore Yuki’s life between Japan and the USA as well as Tatjana’s discovery of Japanese literature, translations, and stereotypes. 🤸🏽Music f…

How much overlap is there between music and language? Sinologist, Linguist, Jazz Pianist & returning Geopat Podcast Guest, David Moser, joins us again for a dive into this question. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame Audio (more recent eps) :https://keyframeaudio.com/ Top 3 services that hav…

David Humphreys and Melissa Joulwan are the hosts of Strong Sense of Place, a podcast and web site dedicated to literary travel and books with vivid settings. In each episode of their show, they explore one destination and talk about what makes that place different from everywhere else on earth. Then they recommend books set in that destination and…

Marielle is a Data Scientist in Berlin. She is also a long-distance coffee farmer because her family started a coffee farm in our ancestral home in the Philippines (in Mankayan, Benguet). They practice organic and sustainable Agroforestry and they hope to one day export their coffee through a transparent supply chain. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (e…

Do you read about a place before traveling there? Yup, so do we. By we I mean Mel and Dave, two American expats living in Prague, Czech Republic and Creators of the Sense of Place Podcast. Oh, and myself. In a few podcast episodes Mel and Dave have already perfected the art of diving deep into a place via books and the people who love them. 🤸🏽Music…

This week due to an evil head cold I have something different for you. This mini language episode includes:-a personal German language update (get ready to cringe)and-an unpublished language snippet from a previous interview with Yunus from September 2019 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame A…

How sound sensitive are you? Our guest today, Phoebe, grew up with Mandarin Chinese but has learned a myriad of languages including English, Finnish, German & more. But her sound talent goes far beyond languages into sound and voice research in her current PhD life in Ireland. She is currently researching the connection between recorded voices and …

​Years ago an expat friend of mine made a comparison with the Lost Generation in Paris in the 1920’s and Western expats in Asia in the early 2000’s and I have never forgotten it. Shannon Martin returns to the Geopats Podcast for a dive into Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” book about his slice of the Lost Generation so that we can dig into t…

Can the making of a language be a riveting story? Yes, yes, and according to Sinologist, Linguist, Jazz Pianist & returning David Moser has thoughts on this idea. 🤸🏽Music from Damon Castillo (earlier episodes): https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame Audio (more recent eps) :https://keyframeaudio.com/ Top 3 services that have help me while liv…

Have you ever had to create your own path to succeed at something? That is exactly what Venture Capitalist https://twitter.com/Rshuken (Ryan Shuken) did to become fluent in Mandarin Chinese. In fact, he was so successful at it that he ended up being the Lead Interpreter for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 in China. This is a 2 part interview about his…

Ana Blackstad has experienced coffee culture in so many different places that I ran out of ink during our chat yesterday. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit but seriously, Ana moved to Prague, Czech Republic only 3 years ago but she has made the caffeinated most out of her time there by exploring both local Prague cafes (many of which are listed d…

“Language is the center of everything I do.” -https://120226949-447684682532113263.preview.editmysite.com/geopats/episode/update/id/%20https:/twitter.com/david__moser (David Moser). David’s Twitter bio says that he is a Sinologist, Linguist, Jazz Pianist and Author of "A Billion Voices: China's Search for a Common Language" but what it does not say…

“...they say that it gives them a perspective of Germany from outsiders eyes. That was a surprise for me.” Shaun, Host of Expat Life Germany The Germany Experience (formerly Expat Life Germany) is one of those podcasts that you listen to as you are doing something else (for me I was cleaning the apartment) and then find yourself stopping, grabbing …

"I actually believe that China is about 15 times more advanced in the usefulness (with social media) than the United States." Keturah Kendrick. Keturah’s online activities changes a lot when she moved to China, but not in ways that you think. Keturah is an intelligent, articulate and delightful person to talk to. I met her at a Podcast Creators mee…

What do you do as an expat when your life goal is to collect and share experiences and information? You start a podcast! And that is exactly what American expat in Germany Nicole Palazzo did just after her first year in Freiburg, Germany. We recorded this mini episode on the new Podbean Live app, which was in Beta version. There were some technical…

In this episode I am pleased to welcome Yunus Emre Karasakal, a Turkish expat in Shanghai, China. Yunus is a Brazilian JiuJitsu (BJJ) Instructor here in Shanghai as well as an Abu Dhabi World Pro Masters Champion (Brown Belt) and an IBJJF Asian Open Champion (Brown and Black Belt). Yes, for the language geeks, he gives BJJ instruction in English an…

In this podcast episode, I am honored to talk with Tina Kanagaratnam about the book The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. Tina is a Bookish Expat with both strong literary and historical knowledge of China. I have been to a number of bookish events in Shanghai where Tina has joined in to provide some historic context to the texts that we were discussing…

In this podcast episode, I chat with Ting, a Third Culture Adult who is currently interviewing fellow TCKs and TCAs about their experiences. I first heard about her project when I went to a TCK event in Shanghai earlier this year. During this event Ting shared her experiences living in China, Singapore, the U.S. and Hong Kong- all before she gradua…

In this podcast episode, Steph talks with Thom Clairmont, Thomreads on Instagram, a French university student who is studying Sinology in graduate school. Sinology is the study of Chinese language, history, customs and politics. He has studied French, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Russian but it is Chinese that he is the most fasc…

What do you get when you have two American Expats and one German Expat talk about a book by a former American Expat living in 1990’s Former East Germany? This culturally windy episode dripping with heaps of blasted stereotypes, linguistic gems and lots of laughter. We are delighted to have Nicole Palazzo, Host of the Expat Cast Podcast on the show …

The Global Soul by Pico Iyer is a seminal geopat book. Stephanie and Summer (Steph’s Co-Host on the new podcast Creatively Complicated) dig into this book in a very big way. This is not a regular episode because Steph is not interviewing Summer about her reading story but instead they are discussing both of their reactions to this book. Summer read…

Antonella Moretti is the Author of Parsley and Coriander, a fictional book about an Italian expat community in Suzhou, China. Antonella has lived in Suzhou for many years herself and draws upon her personal expat experience for this narrative. In this episode we asked Antonella about her two bookish hats: expat reader AND expat Writer. We discuss h…

In this podcast episode we chat with Brendan Davis, an American expat who has lived in China for many years. Brendan is a Film and TV Writer, Producer, Director and fellow Podcaster. His podcasts are: If I Knew You Better, Big Fish in the Middle Kingdom and How China Works. Brendan somehow has kept grounded as has been involved with some pretty spe…

In this episode, we chat with Angela, a Canadian who went to China for the first time in 2006, which is where she met her husband. She left China and returned, as so many expats do. Lucky for me, she came back to China in 2010 and worked at the same school teaching Academic English to students who were about to study abroad. Angela’s relationship t…

In this episode we chat with Summer Rylander, an American expat who has been living in Nuremberg, Germany since 2015. Summer is a freelance food and travel writer with a fondness for cooking, reading, daydreaming, procrastinating, and taking long walks with podcasts. Her latest droolworthy publication in Culture Magazine is about Swedish cheese (ye…

In the podcast episode we chat with Tatjana, in her words “a German married to an Indian-Chinese - or Chinese-Indian depending on the mood of the day”. Tatjana grew up wanting to live in different countries, so she went into Hospitality in order to do so. Of course, at the same time she read voraciously. In fact, while living in Dubai, one of the s…

Nine Years Ago Joshua Ogden-Davis left graduate school in Texas, moved to China and taught himself Chinese. He is now a Mandarin Chinese Translator, does audio and video production in multiple languages, and is a Puppeteer. In this Changing Scripts podcast episode we dig into Josh’s fuller language story, including this switch from English to Manda…