

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>0:28</time>
      <p>
          And I finished the book and I looked up and everybody who was there was in tears.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>0:34</time>
      <p>
          It brought the house down.
      </p>

        <cite>unknown</cite>
      <time>0:36</time>
      <p>
          Wow.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_05</cite>
      <time>0:38</time>
      <p>
          The California minute. It takes a little while. You could try and just forget it. Or you could stretch a full mile.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>0:49</time>
      <p>
          Welcome to the Geopats Podcast, where we talk to people that have different cultures in them, around them, and running through their hearts, souls, and minds. In different episodes, we talk to people about books, coffee, podcasting, language, and so much more. In this particular episode, we are talking to Melissa and Dave from a strong sense of place podcast. So I interviewed Melissa and Dave for the Global Podcasting show on the Geopaths Podcast. And of course, because their podcast is about books, we went off the path a little bit and started talking about books. But off the path for the podcasting show is, you guessed it, a mini episode for the book episode. So there&#39;s two main parts to this one. There&#39;s the information about their favorite book places in Prague, and then there is intensely cute bookish romantic stories at the end. I really hope you enjoy this mini episode, and I hope you come back next month when Melissa and Dave will have their longer episode about the ins and outs of how they organize the intensely researched podcast that is a strong favorite of mine, a strong sense of place. That was an accidental joke. Oh man, I&#39;m so full of them. Okay, so here we go. Here&#39;s Melissa and Dave. Thank you so much, Melissa and Dave, for coming on the Geopats podcast. Thank you for having us.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>2:08</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, it&#39;s great to be here. Thanks.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>2:10</time>
      <p>
          And can you tell everybody where you are currently located?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>2:13</time>
      <p>
          We are currently in Prague in the Czech Republic.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>2:17</time>
      <p>
          Which makes this very easy to schedule. So hurrah to that.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_06</cite>
      <time>2:20</time>
      <p>
          Yes.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>2:21</time>
      <p>
          Now we could pretend that we&#39;re actually doing this on the train traveling from Berlin to Prague.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>2:27</time>
      <p>
          We should have done that. That would be very cool. Can you tell the listeners just a brief little snippet of your podcast and what it&#39;s about?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>2:35</time>
      <p>
          So our podcast is new. We just launched in January. It&#39;s called Strong Sense of Place. And we also have a companion website, and both are dedicated to literary travel and books with very vivid settings. Our goal is to help armchair travelers and actual travelers learn a bit about the world, feel empathetic towards characters, and get excited about traveling, whether they&#39;re physically leaving their house or snuggling up with a good book. The initial idea was to have a website that covered the entire world. Like this is my dream that I came up with, I don&#39;t know, three or four years ago, because we love to travel and I like to read specifically novels before I travel to a new place. So I realized that doing that research on my own, that there aren&#39;t a lot of people recommending books set in different places. There are lots and lots of huge lists generated by algorithms, but there weren&#39;t people really with that specific point of view making recommendations. And I thought we could do that. So my my initial idea was to have this huge website with the entire world represented. And then when we started actually digging into the work, we realized to produce that website in its entirety would take way more time than we could really invest at this point. And we&#39;d always thought we would do a podcast kind of as a marketing tool later. And then one morning we were talking about it like halfway still in our pajamas where you have your really intense discussions and all the good ideas come from. And we decided to flip those things because we realized if we did the podcast and visited all of these destinations through the podcast, then we could be building the website as we did that and we could connect with people sooner.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>4:22</time>
      <p>
          In Prague, do you have a favorite bookstore or library?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>4:26</time>
      <p>
          I do have a favorite bookstore in Prague. There on Wencesla Square, which is the very large main square in Newtown. There is a bookstore called Neoluxor. Palatskani, which means Palace of Books. It is a four-story bookstore. And in the basement, they have an enormous English language section. Everything. Beautiful editions of classics. A lot I think most of the books probably are from UK, so they have things that we don&#39;t have in the United States yet, and they have different covers on the things that we do have. It&#39;s very well curated, really excellent English language books there. And the first time Dave and I went there, I think we spent three hours looking at everything, even though the vast majority of the books are in Czech. It&#39;s just a really nice bookstore. They have a little cafe. It&#39;s great. There&#39;s also a good used bookstore called Shakespeare and Sons, which is in the Molestrana neighborhood, which is just below the castle. And that place is just really funky and cool. You know, it&#39;s always hit or miss when you&#39;re looking at used books because maybe it&#39;s just a crappy book that someone discarded. But it&#39;s a really cool place. And if you visit there, be sure to go down into the basement because there&#39;s a window that looks out onto the canal, and it&#39;s really cool. There&#39;s this crappy couch and a window, and the canal is right there. So it&#39;s a really fun, kind of hidden spot in the basement.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>5:54</time>
      <p>
          Probably be remiss not to mention the Globe, which is sort of the big English language bookstore here. The store itself is is kind of tiny, but it has a really nice cafe uh attached to it, and you can get English magazines and newspapers there. So sometimes it&#39;s fun to go over and get a newspaper and sit down and have a cup of coffee and just kind of catch up what&#39;s going on in the English world.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>6:15</time>
      <p>
          And that bookstore is also very carefully curated. They tend more toward literature than toward I don&#39;t know how you describe the books we talk about on our podcast usually. Let&#39;s call them pop fiction.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_06</cite>
      <time>6:30</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, general interest.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>6:31</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, general interest fiction. They they tend more towards the literary heroes and have a lot of Czech books in translation, which is great.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_05</cite>
      <time>6:45</time>
      <p>
          It takes a little while.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>6:48</time>
      <p>
          Hey there, this is Steph popping in between the informational and the romantic. You&#39;ll see what I mean in a second. I want to give a quick shout out and an offer to anybody that has a bookish-related podcast and take that for the big umbrella that it is. If you would like to put a promo spot for your podcast right here in the middle of any of the book show episodes, contact me. We&#39;ll sort out the details. It&#39;s super simple and it&#39;s free. I do not charge for this. I like to spread the word about books if you haven&#39;t noticed. Alright, thank you very much. Let&#39;s get to the romantic part of this episode. This is such a cute story. So you both had a strong library connection in your bios on the website. It made me think there might be a book story behind you two meeting. Is is that too personal of a question to ask?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>7:47</time>
      <p>
          Well, we were both writers.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>7:49</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, we were both writers, but I do have a book story. Do you remember? Which one? Oh, I hope you remember. Yeah, I&#39;m sure you remember. So before David and I started dating, we we worked at the same place. We were friends, we were work friends. And I don&#39;t remember what was going on with me on a particular day, but I was in kind of a bad mood. And we went for a walk. Our office was in Sausalito, California, which is just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. So it&#39;s this beautiful little town on the bay. And we would go for walks along the bay when we were taking breaks from work. It was really magical place.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>8:25</time>
      <p>
          And that&#39;s an interesting dichotomy because the work was horrible. Yeah. And then you&#39;d walk outside and the like fog would be drifting over the mountain and the seagulls would be s flying around, and you&#39;re like, okay, it&#39;s not that bad. And then you&#39;d stay out for lunch for two hours.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>8:40</time>
      <p>
          It&#39;s true. So I was in a bad mood, and he just like shoved this wrapped package in my hands, and it was this really nice hardcover copy of the picture of Dorian Gray, which was my favorite book at the time. So yeah, there&#39;s a book there.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>8:59</time>
      <p>
          Oh, that&#39;s so good. There was a book when I got married.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>9:04</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. When we got married, my reading, which was part of the ceremony, was this book called I Like You. It is the sweetest children&#39;s book, and it&#39;s about every kind of love. It&#39;s about family love and romantic love and friendship love. And it&#39;s got these really sweet black and white illustrations and tells this wonderful story about why the narrator likes the other person. And it&#39;s very, very sweet. And it&#39;s things like, I like you because when I get mad, you get mad too, because nobody wants to be mad by themselves and stuff like that. So that was my reading during our wedding. And there&#39;s this one part where it says I don&#39;t remember what it was like before I met you. It must have been lonely then. And every time when we were practicing and I got to that part, I would start crying when we were doing our rehearsal. So in the actual ceremony, we got to that part, and I got so choked up, I could not continue reading the book. And Dave had to take it from my hands and finish reading the story.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>10:09</time>
      <p>
          So I walked over and I was like, Do you want me to finish that? And she said, Yeah, and she kind of tearily handed me the book. And I was like, I also kind of was like, Okay, that&#39;s a lot emotionally at this moment, but okay, let&#39;s do it. And I finished the book and I looked up, and everybody who was there was in tears.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>10:26</time>
      <p>
          Like it brought the house down.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>10:28</time>
      <p>
          Wow. Okay.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>10:29</time>
      <p>
          Everybody was snotty and passing around tissues. Oh it was great.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>10:35</time>
      <p>
          I have to go find this book. I have to go find this.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_07</cite>
      <time>10:37</time>
      <p>
          It is the sweetest book. It is a sweet book. And it&#39;s a it&#39;s appropriate for every relationship, every kind of relationship.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>10:43</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, that&#39;s beautiful. And my husband, the he&#39;s a book person too, and he is the most impossible person to buy anything for for birthdays or anniversaries, which are the only real things we we celebrate. We&#39;re not Christmas people or anything like that. And I just I love finding those things that are like specifically him, and that kind of book sounds like something that would yeah, it would be a good thing. That would be sweet. That would be sweet. Okay, fun fact. I don&#39;t know if this is fun or not, but I make him do lists. I&#39;m like, five reasons you love me, three reasons you want to do this, five four reasons you want to live in this place. I&#39;m a list person. He that&#39;s awesome. But he&#39;s put up with this for over a decade, and he&#39;ll say, no, no, no, and then he&#39;ll go and do it. And I&#39;m just like like super happy for like an hour over a list. What is wrong with me? So it sounds like it might fit into my this is why I ask you these things, like justification for all those years of torture. So thank you for that. So remind our listeners where they can find you online.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_04</cite>
      <time>11:44</time>
      <p>
          We are at strongsenseofplace.com. On Instagram is strong sense of and Twitter, strong sense of, and Facebook has strong sense of place.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_01</cite>
      <time>11:55</time>
      <p>
          I see a pattern here. Strong strong sense of pattern. No, that&#39;s a bad joke. Yeah, that&#39;s it. It is okay.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_06</cite>
      <time>12:08</time>
      <p>
          Oh yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_05</cite>
      <time>12:13</time>
      <p>
          Oh yeah. Invisible people keep the dream alive. They&#39;re driving to work to keep the cars they drive. They&#39;re driven to win and live the will to power. Whatever we hear and every day and every hour. But the time It takes a little while. You can try and just forget it. You can try and fall a bad dog. But ever go back to all. In the California spring to water to help us fight the fire. And it never gets old. Just wait. It&#39;s gonna be a bit just I just forget. You can change it for a map. But if you need that you can live in Oh yeah. In the California winet. Oh yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>15:38</time>
      <p>
          Membership peace apply after free trial. Cancel any time.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_02</cite>
      <time>15:41</time>
      <p>
          You know what&#39;s wrong with health and fitness? You weaponize it against yourself. Why didn&#39;t you go to the gym today? You&#39;re so lazy. Ah, why did you eat that? You have no self-control. Stop it. At Beachbody, we think training and caring for your body in a way that works best for you should be about loving yourself. Let us help you without all the judgment. Here&#39;s how. Go to Beachbody.com to claim your free membership and start feeling great.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>16:08</time>
      <p>
          Drivers who switch and save with progressive save over $700 on average, and those savings add up. Imagine what you could buy in the future.
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_03</cite>
      <time>16:16</time>
      <p>
          So I use the savings from switching to progressive 30 years ago to buy tickets to the championship game. You know, between those two teams that didn&#39;t exist 30 years ago? Yeah, I&#39;m a big Alaska Palm Trees fan. Which is the team now? In the future?
      </p>

        <cite>SPEAKER_00</cite>
      <time>16:28</time>
      <p>
          So switch to progressive and save big because those savings can add up in the future. Potential savings will vary.
      </p>