I was coming to Toronto not for itself, but for the other worlds it opened up. And I also think that's true of traveling in general, at least for myself. Going to a specific city, but also to discover what it can show me otherwise.
SPEAKER_12Welcome to the Bookish Expats Podcast, where we discuss books that help us understand the host country cultures we have or are currently living in. Your host is usually Stephanie, a first-generation Italian American that first got her head stuck in a book about the same time that she got her first passport at the age of four and a half years old and has not stopped reading since.
SPEAKER_02We are Bettina and Enora. We're best friends and co-hosts of NRI Woman Podcast. We started podcasting because we believe in connecting women through stories. Our podcast episodes cover real and down-to-earth conversations with women of Indian origin who live across the globe. That's what NRI stands for: non-resident Indian. We are bound by our unique culture, and we hope that you will be inspired by some of the stories we bring you. We'll be back with season 4 and the fall, but you can listen to our previous episodes on NRIWoman.com. We're hijacking this intro so that we can tell you something about the book that Summer and Stephanie will be chatting about in this episode. The Global Soul by Pico Ayer.
SPEAKER_12The Global Soul is a book by travel writer and resident geopath Word Inspiration, Pico Ayer, who calls his comfort place nowhere. He has spent most of his writing efforts detailing his fly-on-the-wall perspective of various cultures in his numerous books, like Lady and the Monk, The Art of Stillness, and Video Nights in Kathmandu. The Global Toll was first published in 2000, when more and more of us geopaths started to make very conscious choices about living outside our home countries. In this book, Iko touches on many aspects of culture in many different places such as Canada, Japan, and Hong Kong. But it is the sense of place and the inner turmoil that stirs within his own placelessness. That is the connecting thread in all of these stories written in all of these places. In essence, the Global Soul is a study on the intensity and depth of grief of not having a place and of having too many places all at once.
SPEAKER_02This dichotomy, or more so the mere invitation to ponder place and our role in it, is what initially drew stuff to this book. She has recommended this book over and over since she first read it in 2001. The book and Beaker's other Geopath ideas have also made their way into her expat-based podcast over the past two years as well. So it seemed fitting to sit down with a new co-host of the Creatively Complicated Podcast Summer to dissect what makes this book a seminal book for Geopaths. Oh yes, Geopaths is a name created on the Virtual Expats Podcast to replace the term expat. But that's another conversation entirely. So let's focus on this book for now.
SPEAKER_12Warning. We do not recommend that you wait until you read the Global Soul before listening to this podcast episode. Unlike most book-based podcasts, you might want to hold off on reading the book until you hear why it was such a challenge for someone and Steph to get through. We dare not spoil why, but we promise that if you listen to this episode, all will be revealed. If you have any comments or questions about this episode, please feel free to connect with Steph on any social media platform. Steph Fuccio. Spelt S T E P H F U C C I O.
SPEAKER_02And on this parting note, as we say our warm goodbye, we would love it if you could please nominate us in the 14th Annual People's Choice Awards at www.podcastawards.com. That's www.podcastawards.com. Nominations start July 1st. Just look for NRI Women Podcast. And as always, keep learning, keep inspiring, and be kind.
SPEAKER_08Thank you so much, Summer, for joining us on Bookish Expats. Thanks for having me. For those of you who listen to more than one of my podcasts, you may recognize Summer's voice from the virtual expats episode as well as our co-project, our co-podcast, Creatively Complicated. Yay, our cop. Our co-pod, exactly. See, we like creating blend word blends. We definitely like creating word blends. To a fault, perhaps, but it's fun. I don't think there's ever a fault in creating more words that more people have to keep up with.
SPEAKER_09So what are we doing today, Summer? We are talking about a book that I learned about from you called Global Soul by Pico Eyer. It is.
SPEAKER_08And I recommended this book to people for years before rereading it. And part of today is me and me apologizing or doing that to people. But that's okay because uh Pico also apologizes for the book. So we're in good company, or I'm in good company. That says a lot when the author apologizes. The relief of hearing him say that was beautiful. But I'm getting ahead of myself. How would we describe the book? Should I read the back cover? I think you should. That's a good start. All right, yeah, let's see. From the acclaimed author of Video Night and Catman Doo comes this intriguing new book that decipheres the dreamlike, the personal impact of globalization, the rising tide of worldwide displacement. A resident, nowharian himself, born in England to Indian parents, raised in America, and currently living in Japan, Pico IR takes us on a tour of the transnational village that our world has become. Actually, there's another paragraph, but I think we're good on that one because the next paragraph goes into all of the places and we're gonna do that ourselves. So that is the book. So somewhere, if you were to give this a rating of zero to ten, zero being total shit that you'll never recommended, and ten being the most amazing thing ever.
SPEAKER_09Okay. Well, I did actually just write this book on Goodreads, and they have a one to five stars, and I gave it a three. So if we translate that to zero to ten scale, I'm gonna say probably I don't know, a six, a six. Wow.
SPEAKER_08Is that low? No, I think that's high. I think that's really high. And I'm glad it wasn't lower because my my uh book guilt would have been much higher had you gone lower than six. I think the first time I read it in 2002, I would have rated it probably a 10 plus. And this time I couldn't even get through most of the chapters. So I think for idea, I'm gonna go to a four or five.
SPEAKER_09Okay. So why did it have such an impact on you before that it didn't have now?
SPEAKER_08I had just started like backpacking and going overseas as as an adult. And I had I had totally lived a misfit life in the US to immigrant parents my entire life, and I'd never heard anybody really talk about being an immigrant's kids, being displaced, being like these, these group populations that he talks about and and their live and them living in all these different countries and all these different people. It was just it was mind-blowing to me because I'd never actually read anybody talk about these people, even though I met them and was somewhat surrounded by them. So, in that regard, that exposure was pretty mind-blowing. That makes sense. Yeah, but the attention to detail before I really, really got online, I was thinking about it, like this was before the internet really, really took off. So I had the patience to sit with the book and go through the meticulous detail that Pico goes into and be fine because there were no other options. Whereas in 2019, ooh, there's a lot of other options. A lot, a lot of other options. Yeah. Although I know I know we we were talking a little bit about some of the phrases that he hones in on every now and then, like hits you over the head. Right. Did you have any favorites of those?
SPEAKER_09Oh, there were a few throughout the book. Like I said to you when we were talking about it the other day, as I'm reading it, it's so ongoing and difficult. And you you just kind of tune out a little bit because he's he's just getting so descriptive about a scenario that you couldn't possibly appreciate without the context of of being there yourself. But then all of a sudden, he'll just drop in this sentence or a a short paragraph of something, and you and you just are like, Wow, this is this is why I'm reading this book. So but yeah, he he is talking of for people who haven't read this book, he is talking about what it means to be a global soul, someone who doesn't necessarily identify closely with one particular country. They feel at home either nowhere or everywhere, and they're comfortable roaming through the world. Would you agree with that synopsis? I do and I don't. Okay.
SPEAKER_08I I want that to be what the book is about, but I think part of why it was difficult this time is I I heard more of his sadness of being displaced, not not him being displaced, but of these populations of people that didn't have one particular home. I was hearing more of his sadness for them of not having a place. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, which I did not at all pick up on the first time. I was just like, freedom, and here's my population, here's my people. I there are so many projects I wanted to name Global Soul as soon as I read this book. But I didn't I didn't want to steal his his phrase, although he may have gotten it from somebody else. I don't know actually. But yeah, I don't know. There was there was a deeper, darker side to it this time than the first time.
SPEAKER_09Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I even picked up enough to decide whether it was good or bad in terms of feeling like sad or happy or something. I just I don't know, it just kind of was. And like I said, there were some great parts and there were some really dry parts that I just uh it was, yeah. I I did a lot of skimming as I was reading through.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I I'm trying to find a specific page because I did write down some numbers and there was something on page 85. I love quotes and I love phrases and things. Okay, on page 92, he does talk about a sense of half-belonging everywhere. I'm trying to figure out where I got this negative sense. Like even at one point I wrote that the first time I read it, and I know it's it's almost impossible for me not to do a then and now kind of thing with this book because it was such a a huge influence on my early geopath life. Um, but but but yeah, even saying half belonging everywhere, why not just feel comfortable everywhere? Like, why is this what is this half shit?
SPEAKER_09Well, uh that you can also interpret as good. It's kind of a glass half-full scenario. You either do feel comfortable somewhere or you don't, I suppose. And so if you half belong somewhere, then that equally means that you do and you don't. So I don't necessarily see that as sad. Yeah, I don't know. And oh, I wrote down that he was a cultural fly on the wall.
SPEAKER_08Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Because he just he is aware of a lot of things when he's in these places, but he isn't necessarily actually most of the time he's consciously not participating in a lot of them.
SPEAKER_09So you think he observes to a fault, maybe?
SPEAKER_08Yeah, and I also put at the end of that note like I do because I tend to want it when I'm in a new cultural situation. I'll like pull back for a long time. And I used to just watch, and sometimes I used I would take notes, and now I kind of take kind of hidden pictures trying not to draw attention, but just sort of like, I want to remember this moment, I want to capture this feeling or these people or this situation. Right. But yeah, I I felt like he he was so on the outside of all cultures that he was able to kind of look down, not down condescendingly, but look into the cultures without being a part of them and then describe what he was seeing. Well, should we talk about the different places?
SPEAKER_09Because it feels like I'm still trying to figure out these places, yeah. Yeah, I think we should because Mike's favorite part actually was at the end where he was talking about being in Japan. That I think the best.
SPEAKER_08If that is true, then you might actually like Lady and the Monk. Okay. Yeah, but it it it's still not the smoothest read ever. He is a very detailed reader. And uh I watched uh a lecture that he did at UC Santa Barbara uh not recently, it was probably a long time ago, but I watched it on YouTube last night. And he's such a more succinct, kind of smooth, big picture speaker than he is writer. It feels like when he writes, he gets deep down in the details almost, like you said, almost to the point where you it makes you tune out. Yep. But anyway, okay, so places, places, places. So he the chapter one's California, chapter two is still in California, but he it's specifically Los Angeles airport. Chapter three is Hong Kong, chapter four is Toronto, chapter five is Atlanta, chapter six, I think is the UK. Oh yeah, the Empire would be the UK, yeah. And chapter seven was the Japan one. And I definitely agree with you that chapter seven was the clearest and least bogged down. Oh, I guess that makes sense because that's the place that he feels the most like spiritually connected to. So I guess it would be the less cerebral. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_09That makes sense. So what what grabbed you in chapter seven? Okay, there's one quote that in my version of the book is on page 285. It says the homes we choose, in short, deserve a tolerance we might not extend to the homes we inherit. And in a world where we have to work hard to gain a sense of home, we have to exert ourselves just as much to sustain a sense of other. And I thought that was interesting first because we do tend to be more tolerant of the places that we choose to go. And then working hard to sustain a sense of other, um he does seem to be very comfortable in his otherness in Japan because that is some somewhere that I guess just by physical appearance alone, he will never be mistaken as you know, a a a local, so to speak. Yeah. So exert though.
SPEAKER_08See, that's got a negative connotation to it.
SPEAKER_09It does. Yeah, it does. That implies there's a lot of effort required. So, but then if you want to be an other and you are exerting the effort to do so, why do you want to be that other? Why would you not want to fit into the culture of this place that you've supposedly chosen for yourself? Yeah. Yeah, right. I mean, do people choose to be others? I mean, I guess in a stand out from the crowd situation, the whole I'm not like everyone else, sure, we all want to be unique and we all want to have our own things that make us special, but from a cultural standpoint, I think usually the the goal is to integrate. You know, this is why we learn languages, this is why we, you know, want to have homes in places rather than just staying in hotels. We we want to integrate ourselves into the culture and society. So I don't know exactly what he was getting at with that wanting to be other to the point where it required exertion.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, the exertion is throwing me. Because the rest of it sounds pretty serene. Pico, what do you do to us? Ah, I found the quote I was looking for. It's under the alien home. Yeah, that's also the same chapter. Yep. The it's at like the first paragraph. At the end of the first paragraph, the only home that any soul can find these days, it seems, is in the mist of the alien and the indecipherable. Ooh. So he's kind of regulating everybody to the nowhere state at that point. Oh no, no, no, no, sorry. The only home that any global soul can find. Okay, so that's the answer to what what home a global soul can find. I think I would agree with that. Yes. Seems the mist of the alien and the indecipherable in the mist. I can see the visual. Can you see it? Yes, I can. It's lovely. And indecipherable. It's funny. I used to have a when I was trying to write, I used to have a byline that was like, I prefer to be drowning in the oh, what was it? I prefer to be drowning. Oh, it's most comfortable drowning in cultures I don't understand.
SPEAKER_11Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_08Mm-hmm. That was uh Yeah. Well, yeah. Nobody thought so but me. But um, but thank you.
SPEAKER_09How long ago was that though? I feel like we're in a more global connected world now. Early aughts. So like 2003, 2004. Okay, well then I guess that wasn't so long ago.
SPEAKER_08No, no, but it feels like it. Because it was just at the beginning of the internet, but it was still a different place. It's amazing how quickly things have changed. Yeah, it really is. But I think it's funny because I didn't know the term third culture kid when uh back in the back in the day when I first read this. And it took me until chapter four, I think, this time to realize that he was the third culture kid when he was growing up. And I'm like, oh, that makes so much more sense on his perspective on life. Like he fits a lot of the characteristics of third culture kids. But I don't think they were it was talked about quite as much back in well, if he if it was published in 2000, he probably was writing it in the late 90s, right? Right. So I don't know. Why do you why do you think he wrote this book?
SPEAKER_09That's a great question. I I guess maybe because at the time there wasn't as much discussion of the expat immigrant global soul experience. You know, now you can find lots of writing about that, a lot of think pieces, books, expat memoirs, um, podcasts, of course, about it. So if you want that kind of connection, if you want that outlet, you can find it. But perhaps, you know, in the late 90s, early 2000s, there wasn't as much of that, and he needed to express this feeling of what it means to be a global soul.
SPEAKER_08He does address this at the end of that same chapter, that the Japan chapter, chapter seven. He says, uh, and this is similar to what I heard in the video in the interview last night. Uh, in short, the very notion of what is here and there, what is familiar, what is strange has to be reconfigured in the modern world. And he actually said in the interview that I was watching that he was like the anomaly as a kid, like him being from Indian parents and living in the UK, then living in the US, and like all of his his othernesses. He said he was the weird one, and he had to like every time he had to answer the question, where are you from? People would start rolling their eyes because it took so long. And he's like, But now he goes to the cities that he had in this book, and he's like, And these kids are way more complex culturally than he was. Sure. So he was saying that it's it's shifted, but I guess this was part of the beginning of the shift.
SPEAKER_09I think so. Yeah, I think he was right on the cusp of maybe no one talking about it, at least not as openly, and then everybody talking about it. So he was kind of in a transitional phase with it almost.
SPEAKER_08I guess part of me is thinking, why the hell does it matter? And it's funny that I say that because I this is like a huge part of why I podcast isn't vocalizing this life. So why does it matter that people know about people that don't stay in one place?
SPEAKER_09Or aren't from one place? I don't know if the message is necessarily supposed to get out to the people who aren't us, but maybe to connect with the people who are and who can relate.
SPEAKER_08Oh check, he did it. Well, at least he reached one person, yeah. That's a good point.
SPEAKER_09So he wrote it for people so they wouldn't feel so alone. Yeah, I think so. It's it's interesting to connect with other people who do like to wander because they can relate to the feelings and experiences that you've had, and they probably want to talk about those things too. So it's not something you can necessarily get into a conversation with just anyone.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I okay, I have a a very tiny part of a quote, and then I have a thought that's probably going to escape me when I do this. But also in the same chapter, literally the other side of the book, a sense of home or neighborhood can only emerge from within. Okay. I have I have strong issues with that statement.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I do too, because that implies that it doesn't matter where you are. Yeah, and it implies that you want what is it called? Uh a sense of home. Right. Yes, exactly. It aligns a little too closely with that saying of wherever you go, there you are. And you know, a sense of place is just too important to to me and to you and to people who like to explore and be out in the world. I don't think it's okay to say that home and neighborhood and all that only comes from within.
SPEAKER_08See, and that's part that's part of my struggle with. Some of some of the stories in the book now is that I now that I've actually lived more of an overseas life since I started this lifestyle, I I feel more of his pull towards home. I feel more of his like geopath angst, and I I feel more of the negative side of it when I read it. And I just I I feel like maybe it's to himself, maybe to make himself feel better about his now-ness.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that yeah, and to play devil's advocate, you could also interpret that saying as that's an advantage, you know, that you don't need to have a geographic home because you have home within yourself. So you know, if you look at it in the right way, yeah, sure, it's nice, it's warm, it's fuzzy. But, you know, at the same time, I think place just has such an impact on who you are and how you're inspired to get through life. And it it's just yeah, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08I don't know. It's it's very confusing to me because like part of what he said about Japan was that he liked that he was always the outsider, and more confusingly, he liked the traditional side of it. Right. And I'm like, well, huh? How can you be so cutting edge? Don't need a home, don't need boundaries, can be anywhere, but liking the traditions and the sorry to say it, but the rigidity of that culture.
SPEAKER_09I think it's probably a fascination with what is not yours. As I also don't really have a I mean, yes, I'm from the US and my parents are from the US, so I'm not a third culture kid by any means, but I didn't grow up with a strong sense of tradition and family and generations of of whatever. So I don't really feel like I have anything to, you know, carry with me, no matter what, you know, culturally, I don't really have an identity, I would say. So I am though fascinated by other cultures. Oh so you know, for in our conversations before, you know that I'm very interested in China, but a lot of Chinese culture does not align whatsoever with myself and my preferences. Yet so many things about that country as a whole just absolutely fascinate me to no end, and I would like to go there and immerse myself in them for a while. Does that mean that I would want to adopt that culture to the point where it was my own? No, I don't even think it would be possible.
SPEAKER_08And that's the point of being a global soul is that you don't have to completely embrace any one culture.
SPEAKER_09Exactly. And that's what I love about this whole global soul idea and this this concept of being a you know, a geopath, to use your term, because I think it's so fitting. Thank you. Because I can kind of step into and out of multiple cultures without necessarily feeling bogged down by my own. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08And that, you know, okay, now that you've said bogged down, I feel the bogged downness of his words in this book. Yes. But I don't buy the concepts in it. When I hear him talk about it, and when I hear when I look at just the the some of the phrases that I took out, they're very freeing. But when I read the chapters themselves, they're so dense with detail.
SPEAKER_09They are so bogged down. I would like to know what his writing process was for this book because he goes into so much detail. It's almost like he walks around with a voice recorder in his pocket and then transcribes everything for later. Because how could you recall these conversations?
SPEAKER_08Right. And moments in such detail. Yeah. I was telling my husband last night, I was like, I can't, I can't finish it. I was gonna push through a few more chapters, you know, to be uber prepared for this. And I'm like, I can't do it. It's like the opposite of what Stephen King says. He's like, take half your adjectives out, take most of them out, take those adverbs out. He's like, stop it, you're overcomplicating things. And Pico went the other direction and just added so much more. And yes, and it's when it I don't know, I I thought I was a much more restless person, much more impatient person back in the early aughts. So I don't know how I absorbed all of this. I honestly don't.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I don't either. And with how passionately you recommended this book, and I've heard you reference it on other episodes with other people.
SPEAKER_11Ridiculous amount of time, yeah.
SPEAKER_09I thought for sure that this book was just going to, you know, blow my mind and be, you know, something I didn't want to end. And there's absolutely great takeaways from it. And of course, I mean it's obviously compelling enough that we're having a whole conversation about it.
SPEAKER_08Okay, let me do this formally now to everyone I have ever recommended this book to. I'm so sorry. I don't think you should apologize though, because I I do, I do, I do, because I do the disclaimer now for um Big Magic. I do the the chapter five, life-changing. Let's just let's just go there. Okay, everything else around it is nice, but if you're a creative person for any length of time, you probably have already thought about most of that. But chapter five is is beautiful to me. And I will forever recommend, I think I will forever recommend that. Although now that this has happened, I might actually start to review stuff before I vocally recommend a lot more. But this one, yeah, I think it was the ideas at the time, and and there weren't a lot of there wasn't a lot of people doing this, talking about this. Um quantifying this. Hey, it's Steph. Uh, we need to break for a confession. Um, my confession. Uh there are two things that forever altered my podcasting experience. One is International Podcast Day on September 30th. There's another one coming up this year. And this was last year. And the second thing is the Sunshine Summit that Heather from Sunshine and Power Cuts did last, oh gosh, no, that was earlier this year in March of this year. And Heather, I actually met in number one in the International Podcast Day festivities online. It is a completely online conference. These two events absolutely positively changed my life. And why am I telling you this? Because from now until when uh when Heather has her next Sunshine Summit in August, you're going to be hearing promotions for both her podcast and the summit itself. Because I think that these kinds of conversations that she has, that she has with content creators, is not just for podcasters. I think it's really interesting to get the faces, the voices, and the backstories of the people that create the things that make our lives more enjoyable. Heather is an amazing person. Her podcast, Sunshine and Power Cuts, is amazing, and her Sunshine Summit is amazing. And that is why I wanted her to tell you about the summit in her own words. So here she is.
SPEAKER_01Hello, it's Heather from the Sunshine and Power Cuts Podcast. In association with Geeks Rising from the 10th to the 16th of August, or 11th to the 17th, if you're here in New Zealand, we are hosting the second 2019 Sunshine Summit. It's a week of live streams with amazing content creators and their communities with the theme of celebrating connections. All of the details for the upcoming summit, as well as replays from our previous events and where the live streams will be happening, can be found at Sunshinesummit. A huge thank you to the patrons of Sunshine and Power Cuts for making it possible. So check it out. And if you know our guests, we'd love for you to come and celebrate with us. And if they're new to you, come along and learn more about them. And we look forward to celebrating connections with you.
SPEAKER_08Okay, and with a lot of the podcasts that I have on here, I just need to remind you all that this is not a paid advertisement. These are projects that I think you will enjoy and that connect to the general idea of what we're talking about in Bookish Expatcast. Now, there are a few episodes that I would like to recommend of Sunshine and Power Cuts, Heather's podcast. Episode 29, our most recent episode, Ebb and Flow, is an absolute beauty. It has been heard that some people have stopped listening to the Headspace app and now listen to Heather's podcast, Sunshine and Power Cuts. And Ebb and Flow, episode 29, is one of those episodes. I literally cried after it. It was so peaceful and so grounding. And then her power episode number one, a brief intro into our off-grid system. Heather lives off the grid in rural New Zealand, and this is her description of her setup. And you do not have to be a very technical person to appreciate and to understand what she's talking about. And it is quite a different setup than most of us are used to in our homes, and I think a really good basis for understanding why she does what she does. Spoiler, she is not doing it just for environmental reasons. She uh there is, I don't want to spoil it too much, but it is a very different mindset than what I'm used to when I hear people talk about off the grid living. That is one of the things that makes Heather's podcast so interesting to listen to. And if I may be selfish, an interview that I did with Heather after the March Sunshine Summit this year, uh where I interviewed her about the the behind the scenes of the summit, when she started it, how she plans it and uh and all that kind of good stuff, is um it's one of the sunshine episodes and it's called Connections, Sunshine Power Cuts Summits. So those are the three episodes that I recommend you start with. But by all means, listen to all of them if you get a chance at some point in your life because she exudes sunshine to be cheesy, but to be accurate. She is a wonderful human being. Okay, let's get back to another wonderful human being. Well, three of us, actually. Some are myself and author Pico Iyer and his book, Global Soul. I have to admit, this came out of a romantic relationship. Okay. Mm-hmm. So it was kind of like a you're too restless for us to be together gift. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. I it didn't, it's funny because once he gave me the book, I was like, okay, see you bye. And I went and read in a corner because I'm like, I'm not gonna cry over this. But it was funny because it was like I didn't I didn't understand at the time that that's what I think that's what he was saying, was uh, because he was starting a career in Toronto, no less. Oh he was starting a career there, had just moved there, settled down, got his like long-term visa, and I was like in a hostel, working in a hostel in San Francisco, went out to visit for uh for just for fun and to see if it could work. And he's it just looked at me and was like, You need to go overseas again. You need to go away, basically. And he was right, and he was definitely right, but it did, funny enough, come out of a romantic relationship. That's funny, but it sounds accurate, so yeah, and one of the out of one of the cities that is mentioned in the book, no less. And I didn't realize all of this until I was making my notes and I went, Oh, oh, look at that. Toronto's in here.
SPEAKER_09There's actually a a quote that I happen to have up from the the Toronto chapter, which is called The Multiculture. And he says that the hope of a global soul always is that he can make the collection of his selves something greater than the whole. The diversity can leave him not a dissonance but a higher symphony. And I think that's really nice. Oh, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_08So kind of erasing a lot of the us and and thems.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah, exactly. And collecting a little bit of everywhere that you go and making that make you better, I guess.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. And I think he even quoted back in my I'm gonna like over-disclaim everything from now on. Um, but in my twenties, I loved Houston Smith, uh, what is he called? Religiousologist. That is such a butchering of his greatness. Um but I think he even has a quote during the from Houston Smith at the beginning of one of his chapters here. But he I remember watching a series. Uh, okay, what was he called? A leading scholar of religious studies is a much better thing to say than religiousologist. Yes. So I remember watching the world religions, like PB, was it PBS? It was some sort of TV series. And I remember watching it and remember him going through different world religions and him kind of piecemealingly taking out the parts that made him grounded and keeping those in his life. And I thought that that's what I want from life on every level, not just religion, but especially not on religion, but just every level. I want to be able to choose what parts of culture, what parts of food, what parts of people, not what parts of people, but what people. And I want to have that kind of discriminating choice all the time. Yes, same. And that I think that's similar to what the quote that you just read is saying too.
SPEAKER_09I think so. Yeah, absolutely. He says also in the actually at the beginning of this Toronto chapter that um I was coming to Toronto not for itself, but for the other worlds it opened up. And I also think that's that's true of traveling in general, at least for myself. Yes, I'm going to a specific city, but also to discover what it can show me otherwise. Can you say that again? That was beautiful. I don't know what I just said. As soon as I finished saying it, I thought, wow, that sounded really choppy and awkward. But yeah, I go, I go to cities not just for the city itself, but also for other things that it can open up to me. Yes. Which is probably why we can't go back to places, right? I think so. Yeah. I I think so. There's just the more that you're out there, the more you realize how much even more there is. Yeah. And then it becomes just unfathomable to think about, you know, in our case, moving back to the United States and just sitting there in one place and being content.
SPEAKER_08Content was never in my card. So I don't I don't have the problem of wanting that, but I definitely have the problem of wanting to see everything.
SPEAKER_09Me too.
SPEAKER_08Um although that is going slightly away, I thought Spain was going to be my place until I went there. And uh I haven't really replaced it ever since we went there, and I realized it's not.
SPEAKER_09Right. Yeah. Well, that's why you have to go to places. We I think maybe people who enjoy traveling, they might have a country or two that they have on a bit of a pedestal until they go there. And then their lust for the place is either confirmed or completely refuted, and then what's next? What replaces it on that pedestal? That's very true.
SPEAKER_08I guess I don't know. I feel like I kind of put the pedestal away, to be honest with you. That's probably good, honestly. It probably is, because I think I was looking for a foreign home. And I think I was getting frustrated not finding one that fit most, not all. I wasn't completely unrealistic, just mostly. But I was definitely looking for a place that I could spend long stretch in. Yeah, and I definitely kind of put that down. It's a beautiful place.
unknownSure.
SPEAKER_08Spain's lovely. It's just not any place I want to live in, which I did not see coming.
SPEAKER_09So do you you must not feel that way about Shanghai though? No. It's a place you can live.
SPEAKER_08It's a place I can live now. It's it's a place that I accept for environmental aspects. Uh it's a place that I adore now. There's a lot of um it's not just now. Shanghai has a um because of it, it's a port, because it's on the edge of the country, it's not, you know, in the middle of it. It's got an international flavor. Even when things close down, it still had pockets of foreignness to it. And there's uh because of all the trade and other aspects, it's oh it's oh always been uh mixed, especially for a Northeast Asian country. It's always been a city that's been very, very, very international. And that's that's still here, although it's it's wavering, uh, like a lot of countries are right now. Sure. Um but yeah, but it's it's got in a very, very cool international mix. And so a lot of the stuff that I'm involved in here has a lot of people from different countries and a lot of locals that want to talk to people from different countries. So it's got a really, really cool mix of people doing a lot of things.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I mean, it's hard to imagine it not being just because it's such an explosive big city. But yeah, I guess we don't know. But right now, though, it is this multicultural global city where you can find a little bit of, I would say, just about any kind of culture that you you want to dip your toe into. So if you left Shanghai, do you think you would be equally happy in another global city? I mean, perhaps Hong Kong is not far enough away to be a fair counterpoint, but I don't know. What about going back to the book Toronto? Too North American. Right.
SPEAKER_08I do, I do really love Toronto. I was I really, really, really I mean, to get dumped while you're still visiting someone and still like the city that that happened in kind of says something about a place. So I was like, yeah, like the city, don't like what you just did, but um so yeah, but no, I I really like Toronto, but it is a little too close to quote unquote home. It's a little too close to the little too familiar. I do like it's funny because I the same thing about languages kind of came up twice what today, once in this in this book and once in uh the Bangkok podcast episode that came out today. And I can't not reference podcasts, it's how I think right now. But in the book, he talks about basically not knowing what's going on around you. And oh, here we go, here we go. Okay, so it's again in that in that last chapter that we keep talking about and not knowing much of the local tongue frees me from gossip and chatter and eavesdropping, leaving me in a more exacting silence. Yes, I that resonated with me as well. And uh and Ed from the Bangkok podcast in this episode was talking about because he just went home to North to the US for I think it was a wedding. And he was he mentioned one of the things is it the language is so loud to him when he goes there. You know, when you go back to a place where English is the language that most people are speaking, and it's just it's so loud.
SPEAKER_09It is, yeah. And and when you have full comprehension of a language, it's very difficult to tune out. I mean, I experienced the same thing here in Germany. You know, if I go to a cafe and I want to read and sit there, I'm I can tune out the German. It's it's fine, I can tune it out. But if there's a table of English speakers next to me, uh the peace is gone, you know. I can't I can't help but eavesdrop.
SPEAKER_08And part of it for me, even if I can understand a few words in Chinese of people that are sitting around me, even if they get like animated and I kind of have a gist of what they're talking about, it's much more exotic of a conversation in my head than they're actually talking about. Whereas if I'm on a bus in San Francisco and people are speaking in English, I know exactly how mundane the things they're talking about are.
SPEAKER_09Right.
SPEAKER_08Not that everybody's only talking about mundane or silly things, but I it but when you can hear every word and understand things without even trying, it uh it yeah. That what did he say? Silence. Oh, here it is. The exacting, a more exacting silence. I'm like, yeah, I love that it blocks out most of the stuff that's happening around you.
SPEAKER_09Yes, it's great. It it allows you, I think, to be more present in the moment. And to be yourself. I think we've he's he might have touched on this in the book too, but you can be more of yourself when you're in a culture that you don't completely fit into. Yeah, why is that? Expectations, I think, are different. Uh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_08Cause yeah, because you're you're not expected to act like the well, depending on where you are. In most places, you're not expected to act like the locals.
SPEAKER_09No, and just the expectations in your head, too. I mean, self being self-conscious about things. You know, we don't want to embarrass ourselves, you know, in a place where we're surrounded by people who are, you know, quote unquote like us, but it's different when it's truly a stranger, you know? So what we're saying is we don't want to be around people.
SPEAKER_08We don't want to hear what they're saying. We don't want we don't want their traditions unless we can read about them in a book, but we don't want the pressure of traditions.
SPEAKER_09I'm teasing, I'm totally teasing. It's a complicated thing. This is why I like these kind of conversations, though, that come up from content like this book, because there are a lot of nuances to the life of someone who travels and immigrates and is an expat, and whatever term you want to use. I it's interesting. There are so many things that come up when we step out of our passport country that we would just we would have no way of knowing unless we did that.
SPEAKER_08Hey, this is Steph. I wanted to take a second to break away from our discussion on the global soul to talk about two wonderful souls, Shankar and Vishnu of the Writer and Geek podcast. I'll let them describe. The podcast to you in all of their funniness, and then I'm gonna come back and give you some recommendations on specific episodes that I think you should start with. And just a reminder: these are not paid advertisements, these are these are invited voices, invited projects into the podcast because I think they complement the things that we're talking about in the podcast, and I think you will like them. So here we go.
SPEAKER_03Did you know in the 20th century people used to think that smoking is good for health?
SPEAKER_04Did you know that coffee culture started in the Middle East as opposed to the West?
SPEAKER_03The per capita consumption of ice cream in the US is 23 liters a week.
SPEAKER_04And it's possible to 3D print a pizza as demonstrated by NASA in 2013. You could easily Google these, but you wouldn't because you're lazy. Welcome to Writer and Geek Show, and we are your hosts Vishnu and Shankar. Every week we bring you the most interesting yet Googleable facts to empower you by making you knowledgeable about things you would never research on.
SPEAKER_03You can listen to us on your favorite podcasting app, or you can go to our website, writerenge.com.
SPEAKER_08So I promised you that I would give you three episodes to start with, and I'm going to do this out of order because that's how my brain works. Episode 51 is ice cream, episode 41 is coffee, and I realize as I'm reading this out that apparently I'm a little hungry right now. And I don't always listen to the episode zero where podcasters talk about the beginning of their projects, but I definitely did for them. And for them, that's episode 000. Welcome to the show. And I think it's a really good origin story. I think it's really good, really interesting, really heartwarming, and of course very funny. Shankar and Vishnu have an amazing connection to each other and to their content. And like Summer and I do in our creatively complicated podcast, they have a connection to curiosity. That is one of the reasons that I wanted them to be in your ears during this podcast episode. All right, let's get back to the other person in this podcast, Pico Iyer and his book Global Soul. I said that in jest, but I actually kind of mean some of that. Yeah, absolutely. And not in an awful way. It's just, oh, it's so distracting. It's like, okay, before social media, you did if like when I was in my home country and I could hear, I could understand most of what was going on around me, even in major cities with multiple languages, there's still enough English around me where I could hear everything. Yep. And that's very distracting. It is, absolutely. And maybe that's why I was, yeah, I don't know. Because I always like as soon as I stepped on a plane and went to a new place and I didn't understand what was going on around me, that's when like my ideas started to come out.
SPEAKER_11Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah, that's I know it's it's crazy. Okay, is it as a a used to be want to be again language learner who's on a ridiculously long hiatus, does this mean that part of my own language block is that if I get fluent, I lose that piece?
SPEAKER_09Oh, that's hard to say. I I would tend to think that that's a deep, deep, deep subconscious thing if that does play a role in it, because language is pretty tough to learn. Uh that's true. Especially as adults uh who grew up in the US where language was not really a priority. You know, it's it's tough, I think. And I know that language learning comes naturally to some people, and that's fine. I think you and I have discussed this enough where we agree that we are not those people. No, no uh nope.
SPEAKER_08If you were that person, you would have laughed me when I started that statement. Understandably so. But yeah, no, we're not. So what okay, so do you get distracted by German at all? Because you you've you're at a certain fluency level where you can understand stuff, right?
SPEAKER_09Right. Yeah. I I I'm not completely fluent, so it is possible for me to tune it out. But yes, I can get distracted depending, you know, if I pick up snippets of what they're talking about, and then maybe I will choose to tune in, and usually I will choose to tune in because I am trying to improve the language. So I'm not gonna go talk to them, but I will try to pick up the conversational things that they are going on about because it does help to be surrounded by that. So yes, I can I can be distracted by it. Oh, see, so that is a thing. It is a thing. But I couldn't it's I mean, I that's I would certainly never say that I don't want to learn the language because of that. I'm teasing that.
SPEAKER_08It I don't think that's my biggest block. I think there's a lot more.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, there's a lot of things.
SPEAKER_08I don't know, but I feel like we should leave Japan and go to one of the other places. I think so. Okay, the first time and this time I found the easiest chapter was the the easiest, but not necessarily my favorite, was the airport chapter. What'd you think of that one?
SPEAKER_09Uh I kept wondering when it was going to end. Honestly. I mean, on the surface, it was fine. It was a fine chapter. I love airports personally. I love the atmosphere there, I love the energy of an airport. I am perfectly happy to show up early and hang out. I'm perfectly happy with a long layover because it means time in the airport. So I appreciated it from that standpoint. And there is so much observation that can take place in an airport. It is the best place for people watching and for daydreaming. And I absolutely love airports.
SPEAKER_08See, okay, and I'm on your page. I I on some level I tune out and just go through the motions, and on another level, I feel kind of free and like there's no cultural pressure. Yes. But then, but then here comes Pico, page 52. Here's part of the negativity that I picked up on this time. And I wrote, This is so dark. And here's what he wrote. Everyone, in fact, is on alert to some extent when he goes to the airport, and it is that sense of free-floating apprehension that all of the life insurance companies and their spiritual equivalents hope to turn to profit. People are scared here. A security guard told me as we inspected the x-ray machine he was supervising, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. People are scared here.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I I noticed that as well. Uh, this free-floating apprehension idea and people being scared. I think that's unfortunate for sure. But if we consider the publication time frame on this, 2000, that was right after 9-11. But but it was published in 2000, which means he wrote it before then. Probably. I guess in fairness, we don't know exactly what his writing time was and his publication contract, but um yeah, that's true. So yeah, I don't know. But yeah, to feed off of that, I mean, I don't ever feel nervous in airports, honestly. If anything, I feel more free and exhilarated by them. Me too.
SPEAKER_08But they're like, I hate flying, and I I'm I'm not nervous to the point of needing any sort of medication or anything like that, but I do dislike the act of flying for long stretches of time. But airports do not have that this effect on me. Yeah, I really wonder. I hadn't thought about 9-11, which is strange, but I wonder Is there anything in there that tells us that gives us a clue of the time frame that he wrote that chapter?
SPEAKER_09I don't think he mentions dates very often.
SPEAKER_08No, he doesn't, which is probably a good thing. But in this case, I feel like I want him to. Yes. Yeah. So we might have to throw out that chapter. Because that would, if that was true, then that completely and utterly explains the fear. But then he should have mentioned that, I think.
SPEAKER_09That's true. So he probably did write it before all of that happened. But I guess I don't know. I mean, there's always been airport security to some point, even when you could still walk to the gate with a passenger, there's always been security. So and and then just flying in general, I think, makes people anxious because it is a large metal tube flying through the sky, and it seems like it could fall down at any second. So and sometimes it does do that, which is sometimes it does. Yeah. So I guess I can understand why people would be nervous at an airport, and I guess I can understand certain people wanting to capitalize on that, but yeah, I guess.
SPEAKER_08I just never thought of it like that. Between that and what was that Tom Hanks movie where he was accidentally living in an airport for a while because he was countryless? The terminal, yeah. That I never really thought of extended times in airports except for these two instances. Like, why would you spend more time? Just go and travel.
SPEAKER_09I think you have to be young at the airport to spend a lot of time there. So but yeah, I don't know. I I thought it was an interesting chapter. Uh maybe that wouldn't be the particular airport that would be my choice to hang out in, but you know, he lived he did live in California. So which one would you pick then? Well, I'm very partial to Hong Kong, so maybe there, but just for sheer volume of flights and the diversity of people that are gonna be there, I think the Atlanta airport uh has a lot to offer.
SPEAKER_08I don't think I've ever flown through there. That sounds very okay, very interesting. Yeah. I know the the newer it's not new now, I think it's a decade old, but the newer one in Bangkok would be yeah, that might be skewed towards sex pets, though. I'm not sure I mean that anymore. Never mind. I was gonna say I've never been to Bangkok yet, so oh okay. It's it's much better than that population of tourists would led to, I think, believe. But um but it is a huge airport and a lot of people because Bangkok's Bangkok is one of the what five or six hubs in the world. That's like the biggest. And so I think funny fact, Greece is like Athens is another one, and I never think of that as being a massive hub.
SPEAKER_09No, I don't either. I flew into Athens once and I remember it as a very small airport, but maybe that was just the terminal I was in. I don't know, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08I just remember reading the hubs here, wait, let's see. Air hubs, because the internet needs to be used all the time. Um, I remember reading the five or six, and the Greece was the one or Athens was the one that I was really, really shocked by because the other ones seemed were big, had a lot of flights go through it, like London was not a shocker, Bangkok was not a shocker, but the but that one definitely, yeah, I can't find it quickly. I'm not gonna yeah, it's not that important. Yeah, I don't know. Let's see, what are some of the other places?
SPEAKER_09What about the chapter where he talks about the Olympics? Speaking of Atlanta. Oh yeah, I have to admit that my warts bias kicked in. Yeah, it wasn't the most interesting for me either. I made a note of something and I'm trying to Ah, yeah, okay, here it is. He says on page 176, the Olympics pose a curious kind of conundrum for people such as me, of course, if only because they affirm affiliation to nation states in an age that has largely left them behind, mass-producing images of nationalism and universalism without much troubling to distinguish between them. They ask us to applaud the patriotism of others while transcending the patriotism in ourselves, and they draw our attention to the very boundaries that are increasingly beside the point. I literally had the beginning of that quote circled. Did you? How did you do that? It's so spot on. It's so spot on.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. I okay, I need to do an aside to the listeners. Listeners, if you are a savage and you pick up this book, I swear to God, I think you can read the topic sentence. And for those of you that did not take my academic English class, that is the first sentence of a paragraph. So if you can read the topic sentence of every paragraph, I think you would get a sense of the book, a strong, strong sense of the book. Okay, agreed. Yeah, but yeah, the affirm the I had the they affirm affiliation, which is a weird alliteration thing, to nationalism. Yeah, and then I wrote in big, big letters nationalism and universalism. So yeah, so who do you okay, when okay, when's when's the next World Cup? What year does that happen? Are you a World Cup person? Yeah, I like the World Cup. That I see, I'm not I've never been an Olympics person, but I like the cultural aspect of the World Cup. And so I I kind of I had to in my head to get through what I did of that chapter, I had to do a uh comparison in my head. I just said head a lot of times there. That's all right. We're talking about soccer, soccer, football, soccer, football. So when is the next World Cup? So you've been in in Germany for three and a half years, right? You probably haven't hit a World Cup then, have you? 2022 is the next one.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I have. Um, we even went over to Paris actually to watch Sweden play. Um no, wait, that might have been the European Championship Championships. Yeah, it has. But yeah, the point is I don't really start out with loyalty to any one particular team. I see how things go and then I choose a favorite from there. So for instance, I will probably cheer for Sweden over Germany. My husband is Swedish listeners, if you don't so um I and they're more of an underdog team. I mean, Germany is so good at soccer that it's not really, you know, it's not really surprising or great, you know, if they do well because they're expected to do well. But an underdog team I'm much more inclined to cheer for. That makes sense than it's like I I don't care where the what the country is, I just I choose favorites and they they evolve as the competition rises. That's so global solo view.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_08Whereas me, I just completely detach and look at the rival rivalries, which I can't say. Um I look at the cultural differences, and when there's like cultures that are very different from each other, like when Japan plays Russia, I'm like, oh, and I think of all the cultural differences, and I try to find them as I'm watching the game. And even though they're playing like soccer or football, they're you know, they're playing a sport. I'm looking for cultural things that they're doing that are are different. I don't know, it's very strange. Like in my head, it's almost like, will they culture clash? Where in reality it's it's it's a sport, they're supposed to clash, it is supposed to be a competition, yeah. But I I like the stereotypes going at each other in this really fun way with the energy behind it and all of that.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, I I I love that culture. I that's I've never been really a soccer person before, but over here it's such it's such a pervasive thing that everyone enjoys, and it's really hard not to get swept up in that energy. So I I I do enjoy following it. Um for sure, for sure. Even when the Olympics come on, I've never been, you know, like a diehard Olympics person, but I like having them on and I will watch certain sports to kind of pass the time, and it's it is interesting, but yeah, the the country alliances. I mean, I I don't cheer for the US just because I'm from the US. I know.
SPEAKER_08I I watched, gosh, I don't remember what year it was, but I walk I was in San Francisco one year when the World Cup was going on and the US and Italy had a match, and I was like, I have to go to a bar where nobody knows me because the questions of who are you voting for are annoying. Because truthfully, neither. I'm just I just want to watch the game. Right, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah. In most cases, I don't really care which country wins, it's just interesting to watch sometimes. So yeah, I th I thought he just nailed it completely with that that statement about the Olympics and the conundrum that they pose.
SPEAKER_08So the universalism, I'm guessing, is the the global soul side of it, is that right?
SPEAKER_09I think so. Yeah, nationalism and universalism, yeah. So yeah, so yeah, everyone is loyal to their country, but then we also embrace all the other countries. So I mean it's cool in terms that the Olympics do bring the world together for however long they run, a couple of weeks. But then yeah, it it enforces this patriotism that I don't think is is necessary.
SPEAKER_08Okay, when I live outside my home country, I expect to be culturally disoriented. Technically, I was when I lived within, but it wasn't as obvious, and I definitely didn't talk about it as much because it's inconvenient. The marketing of idealism that he talks about with the Olympics. Do you not get to participate in that fluffy view of a certain culture if you're not fully part of that culture? Right. Yeah, that's almost like yeah, it means that global souls would naturally be excluded from the joy.
SPEAKER_09Right, yeah, like you can't celebrate France because you're not French. But yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know if that's discouraged or not. I think it's I don't know. I'm so used to rooting for countries that aren't where I'm from and aren't where I live that I I don't even give it a second thought. But I guess yeah, some people say, you know, oh, why are you rooting for Germany? You're from the US, you know?
SPEAKER_08So yeah, I I don't know. I've been to so many more places where they're just excited that you're excited that they don't care that you're not from there. So yeah, I'm not sure if this exists. I've never been an Olympics person. Honestly, I I hit up the the movies when the Olympics come on, and I'm just like, I'm not just not gonna even turn the TV on. Well, I don't even watch TV anymore, but I was like, I'm not even gonna turn the TV on because it just overtakes everything. Yeah, it does.
SPEAKER_09It does. Certain sports are fun, but I I don't follow the whole thing closely.
SPEAKER_08So yeah, I don't know. So that but there definitely feels like a different feel to the World Cup than to the Olympics.
SPEAKER_09Agreed. Yeah, absolutely. It's more focused, I think, the World Cup. You have these soccer or football, as most of the rest of the world calls it, fans, and they're coming together over one particular sport and they're rooting for their team and they're so excited. And then in the Olympics, it's kind of this every nation is coming together to do every sport, and then people start arguing about whether something is really a sport or not, and it just kind of devolves, I think.
SPEAKER_08I don't know, yeah. So okay, so the Olympics would be the judgy older sister, and the World Cup would be because I need to do weird analogies every day.
SPEAKER_09The cool cousin, yeah, like the cool down-to-earth cousin, maybe a little bit hipster, but in a good way. Yeah. That works. I don't know if this is the conversation that Pika was hoping to inspire when he wrote this chapter. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_08I feel like he was uh I think it might be because he was kind of mocking the idealism and um pointing out how segmented and exclusive it was for each. So I think he actually led us to the Judgy Older Sister moment.
SPEAKER_09That's true.
SPEAKER_08Pico, if you ever listen to this, I'm sorry for the analogy. But um yeah, because we're on a first name basis. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, so oh man. What okay, wait. I I need to go back. I because I wrote I specifically wrote down the cities, but now I'm realizing it's more of the structure too. We start with a burning house, we go to a big airport, then we're in a mall and a hotel room, yeah. And then we're in an entire city, and then the Olympic Games, then an entire empire, and then outside of a culture.
SPEAKER_09He's actually expanding out as he goes through the chapters. Yeah, he is. That's really interesting, and I did not pick up on that until now.
SPEAKER_08I neither did I, but I'm sitting here going, wait, wait, wait. Where yeah, he's freaking A. Okay. I think that feels intentional.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that I think is definitely intentional. Wow. Interesting. So is that part of the universalism? I don't know. Him becoming more universal, perhaps. Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, like the moving out, moving away from just being from one culture. Sure. Do you know what blows me away? Okay, three and a half years in Germany, and this is your first time living outside of the US, right? Yes. A lot of the shit you've said so far in various conversations, recorded and not, are things it took me a decade to realize.
SPEAKER_09I was meant to not be at home.
SPEAKER_08Clearly. But I'm just like, there's times when you say stuff and I'm like, okay, she's clearly way way quicker at this than I was.
SPEAKER_09Maybe. But I've also you also moved away though before the internet was really a big thing, right? Ha, unpack that. Why does that affect anything? We're more connected. We have more context to things. If you're interested in something, you can have um a whole day's worth of reading about it within seconds.
SPEAKER_08Oh, maybe, but it was just at the beginning. I mean, 2000 2002. So it's sort of like my my uh geopad existence grew up, or my geopad self grew up with the internet or with the public side of the internet.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that makes sense actually. 2002 was also when I moved from Oregon to South Carolina, so I also made a big shift at that time. And what month did you move? Uh this was in was it June? Oh. Or oh crap, I don't even know now.
SPEAKER_08I think mine was February, March, or April. It was something in early or late. It's hard to tell in San Francisco. It's just rainy, so it could have been any. Time before June. I have a feeling it was March or April though.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I don't even remember. June seems like a really bad time of year to go to South Carolina, but I don't remember.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, yeah. Well, then the rest of the year seems lovely if you're gonna do a that kind of summer first. So yeah, so he goes out and out and out and out and out into the to his global self. Crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. So you're gonna have to you're gonna have to fill me out on the Empire chapter, because I it's literally been since 2002 since I touched on that one.
SPEAKER_09I think that was also one that I skimmed through because I don't seem to have any notes of anything I took down reading for them. So actually, yeah, I have nothing to nothing to say about this. I'm sorry, Pico, if you're listening. Which I'm sure he is.
SPEAKER_08Um if not now at some point in the future. Our future selves apologize, but the Empire chapter. What was it about? I'm curious. We both kind of went, eh, yeah, I don't I don't even I don't even know.
SPEAKER_09Topic sentences here, maybe I don't. There you go.
SPEAKER_08See what a good teacher I am.
SPEAKER_09I think maybe about a bit of a nationalism thing here, too. I think talking about what it means to be British, possibly. It seems to be ringing some kind of bell. But yeah, I really did not read this closely enough to speak coherently on it.
SPEAKER_08Because he flew, if I remember correctly, he flew from England to Santa Barbara. And yes, I'm doing country/slash city comparisons, but he flew from somewhere in England to Santa Barbara, like on a regular basis when he was a child. Mm-hmm. I think so. Which is pretty intense for a young one. Yeah, see, that's the thing. I'm not as drawn to his British self as I am to his dis No offense, Pico, but yeah, I did I don't know, I don't remember this one at all. Like when I started to read the Burning House chapter, I remembered it. I remembered the the the mall one, I remembered the airport one. I definitely remember the Japan one. But I do not remember this one at all.
SPEAKER_09Oh, actually, there was something I wrote down out of this. This was on page 258. There is kind of the last paragraph at the bottom, he's talking about how uh the difference between me and those of my parents' generations I felt was that I'd never had a strong sense of departures or arrivals. I'd grown up without a sense of place to come to or from which to leave. And I thought that was interesting. And that makes sense as well if he was shuttling back and forth between the UK and California.
SPEAKER_11Yeah.
SPEAKER_09You know, yeah, you probably at some point do stop thinking of it as leaving one place and going to the other. You just simply are in one of those places. I don't know.
SPEAKER_08I just I can't even fathom. I've every time I hear how much he traveled as a child, I just can't even fathom doing that. Like I travel I went overseas once when I was four and once when I was twelve. And we literally went to one place in Italy and stayed there for a month and came back. Like he it sounds like he did so much more so often that I just Yeah, he did.
SPEAKER_09I'm I'm envious of that. I did travel around the States quite a bit as a kid, but I didn't actually leave the US until I was I had just turned 27 or 28. 28, I think, actually. So um, you know, I got a real late start, so I've I've been doing some heavy catching up for sure.
SPEAKER_08Oh, here's a here's a um, despite the fact that I find it hard to read Global Soul, is the sequel should be These Places Revisited as his childhood self. I don't know if I would read that. Okay, then just the airport one. I would like just the airport one from his childhood perspective. Because I can only imagine what he felt like, saw, noticed, all those kinds of things as a kid as he was going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. Because even just as a kid in Italy, I felt like the differences hit me over the head. And uh and he did it often. So he'd have enough comfort level with the commute itself. And it's right, it's crazy to think of an airplane as a commute, but it sounds like it was that he could get comfortable enough with the commute where he could start to notice the things around him a lot, and that would be kind of cool.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that would be interesting.
SPEAKER_08Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. It might not be, depending on how articulate he was as a child.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that would be a challenge to write because I I think I was a pretty articulate kid, but I don't believe I could describe in detail a whole lot that happened back then. So I mean perhaps he could. He certainly seems to recall a lot of detail just flipping through global sources.
SPEAKER_08Oh my god. Do you think do you think he went back to the places for all these places? Do you think he was there when he wrote this stuff?
SPEAKER_09I'm sure he took notes at least, thorough notes on things. I don't know if he I don't know. Maybe this book was years in the making, actually. Maybe he was collecting notes and thoughts as time went on so that he could eventually one day turn it into a book. That's a possibility. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08I wonder if it was different publication, different like he did write travel articles for magazines for a long time. I think he still does occasionally. So maybe this was a collection of them that his editor thought they should should be put together and then with more detail.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, or or yeah, use those as a jumping off point to write something else surrounding those. I don't know. But one thing about this book though, it does and his level of detail, though it is exhausting and impenetrable in some some ways, it does make me want to do a better job at taking notes when I travel. I always aim to take these detailed, meticulous travel journals, and I really don't. Or I will for the first day or two, and then it just drops off. And I wish that I kept better records for myself. So he's inspiring in that regard.
SPEAKER_08Yes, yeah. I suppose I feel like we should give them a sample of of something that's difficult.
SPEAKER_09What which one should we pull? Oh, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08I mean, it's so detailed. Where haven't we been yet? Oh, we haven't been to the burning house yet. The opening. Maybe we should that I don't know that that one has because the whole sorry, we're doing this so in reverse. But um, but since you know the world is uh a mishmash of global souls, then it just makes sense that we're doing it out of order. But uh the whole reason why he starts the book, no, the whole reason he starts the book is that his house burns down and he in Santa Barbara and and he has to reconfigure his life. Am I remembering that right? Yes. Yeah, so he walks us through that. I feel like that's not as overly detailed as some of the other ones. Oh, the global marketplace is gonna have details. Oh, okay, okay, okay, here we go. Page 98. The latest artifact of Hong Kong, the super fashionable new movie Chung King Express, came at one much as the city did in Mandarin and Cantonese and Urdu and Japanese and English all at once, giving one the jostling, indecipherable sensation of being on any of its mingling streets and serenading one with the synthetic blast of Masala music, Canto Pop, and California Dreaming, named for one of the city's most infamous hotels for transients. It played out its quick change scenes in all of the classic Hong Kong locations, the convenience store, the fast food stall, the check-in area, cities click on blah blah blah blah blah blah. You get the idea. It's like every single idea has so like a list of things that he puts with it, right?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, it's it it's exhaustive. I love Hong Kong, so I am usually consuming as much as a little about it. And I just yeah, yeah. It's it's a lot. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_08I agree, it is a lot, and it's a little like we were talking about it yesterday, and I was thinking, oh my gosh, what if that's part of his strategy?
SPEAKER_09I mean, maybe. What if he wants us to tune out? But then it seems like most people would just close the book and walk away from it.
SPEAKER_08Right.
SPEAKER_09Except it was 2000.
SPEAKER_08What else were they gonna do other than read? This is true. No, I don't know. I'm grasping at straws at this point. Uh, I don't know. To be fair, and I know we're being slightly harsh on this book. In the interview that I watched, one of the first things Pico said to the audience was that he apologizes for this uh impenetrable book that he's now about to read from during the event. That's great. He also said that he likes to start with a funny moment when he does book readings and events and stuff. And he he was like, I literally could not find one funny moment in the entire book.
SPEAKER_09Oh yeah, that's true, actually. I was just looking through my notes to see if I came across something I'd noted down that was either funny or about creative inspiration or something, and there just there isn't. I really read it for the snippets about what it means to be a global soul, I think.
SPEAKER_08Absolutely. I have one phrase that I took out of context from page 291 where he talked about fluent pigeon. Oh. And that's the only funny thing I found. Because I thought it was, you know, funny to talk about fluent pigeon. And is that a thing? I don't know. If it is, then I think I've got that in a few languages. Because I always just say that I can like do like restaurant, whatever. I can do restaurant Vietnamese or I could do like gas station uh Chinese when I lived in Taiwan and that kind of thing. Oh my god, it's another long one. We can communicate only in a kind of fluent pigeon with English words thrown into Japanese constructions. Yes, it's not as funny in the whole thing, but just the phrase fluent pigeon, I think is kind of funny.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, that's nice. And I also think that that says a lot. They they can't communicate fully in one language, which is you know, that's kind of cool, kind of romantic. Right?
SPEAKER_08I think I think I think I think he's the person that I got the phrase foreign eyes from when I'm referring to like authors that are the displaced ones that are writing about the place they moved to. And I've so wanted to steal that foreign eyes thing. Yeah. Cause it's like I think the first person I heard him say that about, I think was the gentleman I cannot pronounce his name of, who wrote the English patient and Michael such and such. I yeah, I can't even try. And he he talked about him and a lot of the other writers that were in Toronto at the time, and how they, you know, they moved there and they took, you know, their the culture that they came from and they were viewing stuff through that, and how different their stories were. And those are the kind of stories that I've been drawn to for years, because I like seeing different views of things.
SPEAKER_09Yes.
SPEAKER_08But I don't think most people do. But I don't know.
SPEAKER_09So would you ever recommend this to anyone? I don't know. I mean, if somebody mentions it, I don't think I would deter them from reading it, but I don't think I'm going to carry around a copy on the street and ask someone randomly if they have a moment to talk about Global Soul.
SPEAKER_08So what okay, what could he have done differently to keep like the I the core idea that we're liking, what could have been different to make it more palatable?
SPEAKER_09Uh I don't I don't even know. I mean, I would say less kind of droning on about these very specific experiences that there's no chance his reader can fully appreciate and relate to because they weren't there. But at the same time, this is his experience and it is his book, and we choose to consume it or not. I don't know, make it a little bit more lighthearted, but then that would detract from the you know the core message, I guess. I I don't know. I I still am grappling with whether he is pleased to be a global soul or if there's a certain sadness in that for him. One of my theories was just blown.
SPEAKER_08This was his sixth book. Sixth. Really? Yeah. Cause I was thinking maybe it was just his first because there were articles first, and this is his first book, so he felt the need to over detail it out, but that's blown away. This is his sixth book.
SPEAKER_09Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_08Well, there goes that there goes that theory. I must admit I read I read a fair bit of his stuff, especially the fictional stuff, afterwards, and I do think he does details in general, that's part of his thing, but I feel like this is much heavier on that than the other ones. Right. But then it's hard to get this kind of narrative flow when you're hopping through seven very different places.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, this is true. This is true. It's not going to read like a novel, no matter what he does to it, I think. So I think it's just one of those books that you have to take for what it is. And you read it, and there you go.
SPEAKER_08This is interesting. Here's a New York Times article from 2000, March 2000. Okay.
SPEAKER_09Okay.
SPEAKER_08Oh, oh, this is pretty harsh. Okay, so I is a good writer with a sharp eye, a well a well-furnished mind. Wow. Oh. And I know, right? A well-furnished mind. That's anyone. And a key moral sense. It is probable, uh-oh. It is probable that he intended the global soul to be as dizzying as its subject. The book is, however, too dizzying by half. One problem is that the individual chapters give every appearance of having begun life as magazine assignments and then of having been pulled like Taffy to enlarge their significance. Oh my god. Like lines. There it is. They're marked marked with magazine journalism's impatience, its need for quick cut, montage, sound bites, color and parade, blah blah blah blah blah. Huh. That's interesting. It is interesting. And yet, we have two different covers, which means there's obviously different editions, and lots of important people wrote reviews about it. So why was it so widely talked about if it was so widely dissed?
SPEAKER_09I guess maybe there wasn't anything else like it. Maybe there still isn't. I don't know.
SPEAKER_08Very bizarre.
SPEAKER_09I don't know. I mean, just to read the back of the book or to read the description of it on a website, it sounds very interesting. I guess I would to go back to the question of whether I would recommend it. Uh, you know, sure. Yeah. If you want to challenge yourself, if you want to try and expand your mind a little bit in in in terms of what a global soul can be, then I would say, yeah, you might enjoy this book.
SPEAKER_08I don't think so.
SPEAKER_09I mean, maybe not enjoy it, but in all fairness, too, I didn't read this book uninterrupted. You know, I've been kind of wading through it for a few months now. I've read several other books in the meantime, while I've been, you know, taking this, you know, little page by page. So it has never quite had my full attention.
SPEAKER_08And I think that's probably better. Because to get absorbed in something so deeply detailed and from my perspective, negative. I think that would be self-defeating and kind of tragic. Mm-hmm. To read it all at once. Yeah. I think that would be a recipe for serious depression. I think I have a quote to maybe wrap this up. Maybe. Uh we're still back in the Japanese chapter, which appears to be the chapter to read if you are going to go this route, listener, which yeah. Speaking of foreign language, one has scarcely learned is easier, perhaps, than trying to negotiate a tongue in which all the letters are the same, but ineffably scrambled, so that home, H O M E, appears as O me, O H M E, and life, L-I-F-E, comes out as file, F-I-L-E.
SPEAKER_11Hmm.
SPEAKER_08So not only are the chapters and the details all scrambled, but he just wants to mess with us at the end of the book and be like, hey, nothing's not as it seems.
SPEAKER_09That's true. Yeah, I mean, it's true. There's always another layer to the onion, Drew. There is.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so I don't know. This is a big lesson in thinking about recommendations for me.
SPEAKER_09Yeah, yeah, it is. It's it's um a tricky one, but you know, I'm I'm glad that we we had this experience and read this book, and I'm going to I'm gonna put it on the shelf, and honestly, I will probably not take it back down until I move. Will you take it with you when you move? Yeah, definitely. I'm only moving two blocks away. Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_08If you would move to a different city, would you take it with you?
SPEAKER_09Yeah, I think so. I'm not really a book get rid-over so much. Really?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_09Okay. They look nice on the shelves. Actually, when we first moved into this apartment, my husband was encouraging me to get more books so that we could fill up the shelves because he likes the look of it, and I like to have books to read and look at. So we both won there. So yeah, I mean, it it'll stay on the shelf, but it's probably not going to be a book that I reread. Yeah. I highly recommend that you don't reread.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. To be fair, okay, I have to I have to have to say, every time I've heard him talk about the book, it has not come across as this impenetrable thing. I do still think the ideas in it are still relevant, if not more so.
SPEAKER_09I think so too. I I think there are things to be pulled from this book for sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Do you know what I just realized? Oh my goodness. Speaking of our other project, creatively complicated, plug, plug, plug. Remember how we were talking about sometimes you have to go through something to get to the point of it, and then all of the process is not important, but the point that you get to is important. Yes. I don't know if these were magazine clippings or newspapers or articles or what have you, but maybe he needed to write or reorganize or do whatever with these bits that made this book in order to get to the collective global soul idea.
SPEAKER_09I think that is a great hypothesis. That absolutely makes sense. I mean, if the listeners could hear our WhatsApp voice messages sometimes when one of us has left the other, you know, a string of 11 or 12 messages and most of them are not even necessary to listen to. Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense that he would kind of write his way through this, like his form of thinking out loud, so to speak.
SPEAKER_08And he's not the only author to ever do this. There's plenty of authors where the actual work itself is excruciating, but the idea that comes out of it that is perpetuated in culture keeps going because it's so relevant and important and yep and sharp. Absolutely. It's just, yeah, I don't read them every day. No, no, no, no. Well, there is that. So I I thank him for talking about this in the early off. Yes. Thank you, Pico.
SPEAKER_11We have uh thank you, Pico.
SPEAKER_09We've been a little harsh, but we appreciate your work. Absolutely, absolutely.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_09Final thoughts? Hmm. Well, I'm glad that that this is over.
SPEAKER_08Will you ever listen to me when I recommend a book again?
SPEAKER_09I will, yes. I will. You haven't steered me wrong yet. So no, I mean, for as much as we are harping on how hard this book was to read, it obviously stirred something in us that made us want to talk about it and record, you know, what is surely coming up on an hour and a half worth of conversation about it. So there's value there for sure. I I am glad that I read it.
SPEAKER_08Yeah. Absolutely. I'm glad I read it once. I couldn't get through it a second time, but I think that's because I already got to the end before, now that I think about it. Summer, thank you so much for for getting through the book and for talking about it with us on Bookish Expats.
SPEAKER_09Well, thank you for foisting it upon me and then talking to me about it.
SPEAKER_08And um, this is an extra episode in season three before we switch over to the new format, which will include Tatiana, who is also a recent guest on Bookish Expats. And uh yeah, she'll be joining us in July, which actually at the time of this is probably next week. Yeah, it's coming right up. Yeah, so we'll be officially switched over as of July 2019 to Bookish Expats, which will be a co-hosting experience. We will be focusing only on fiction, and it will be readers only, no writers, who are living or have lived in a country and a book that taught them something about that culture or country, or probably both. Summer, thank you so much for all of this.
SPEAKER_09Thank you very much, Steph. It's been a delight, as always.
SPEAKER_08And uh for less excruciating content, come on over to Creatively Complicated. It is Summer and my new podcast about our messy creative project.
SPEAKER_09Yes, please join us.
SPEAKER_08Hey, it's Steph. I wanted to say some final words before we wrap this up and listen to some music. I want to thank you first and foremost for listening to this season three finale episode of the Bookish Expats podcast. Word of mouth is the best way to spread the word about this project. So please help us do just that on and offline. Season four will drop Friday, July 26th, with a focus on expat readers and the fiction books that they read about the host countries that they're currently living in or lived in before. We're pleased to start the season off with guest expat reader Nicole Palazzo, who, fun fact, is also a librarian in Germany. She also makes a podcast called The Expat Cast. We highly, highly recommend it. Tajana, my new co-host and I, will be talking to her about the book Shot and Forta, which I'm sure I mispronounced. Shot and Forta, a love story by Rebecca Schumann. Spoiler, we all highly recommend this book, so please do feel free to read it before listening to the episode. A special thanks is also in order to the other voices in the episode that you just listened to. David Castillo is gracious enough to let us use the background music for this podcast. The song we use in this episode is called I Will Remain, and it's from his Mess of Me album. There'll be links in the podcast show notes, so feel free to dig in there. If you are a lucky soul and live in coastal California in the US, you can actually see him and his band perform all summer. I'm looking at the tour dates now, and there's stuff. Actually, there's even stuff tonight. There's uh a concert tonight at Tooth and Nail Winery in Pasarobles. That is July 5th. And there's also concerts on August 2nd, August 31st, and September 7th. I'm sure they'll be adding on more dates as time goes on. So do check out daemoncastillo.com for more show dates, information, music, merch, and all that good stuff. Also, I really want to thank the other voices in this podcast that gave us more creative edutainment projects to follow. And that includes Bettina and Nenora from Nroi Women Podcast. A very, very inspiring storytelling podcast that is guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings and inspire you to do fill in the blank with whatever it is you want. So definitely check out their podcast. Also, Writer in Geek Podcast Brothers, Shankar and Vishnu, thank you. And someone you'll be hearing a lot of in all of my podcasts until her Sunshine Summit in August 2019, Heather Welch. Thank you to all of you for making such thoughtful content and for joining the voices here on Bookish Expats Podcast. For more Bookish Expats Podcast episodes, go to Bookish Expats, don't forget the S.podbean.com. Or search for Bookish Expats in your podcast app. We should be everywhere. And if you're using a podcast app that doesn't have us, do let me know and I'll get us listed there. Feel free to contact me if you are an expat reader and you have a book that really helped you adjust to your host country. Do let us know. We'd love to talk to you about it. My handle literally everywhere is Stefuccio S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. And that is also my Gmail address. I really, really look forward to any feedback or questions that you have. Thank you so much for getting to this far down the road in the Booker Text Pats podcast season three finale. As promised, here is the full song behind the instrumental music that we have been listening to in this episode. It's I Will Remain by Damon Castillo. You are going to love this. His voice and the music that accompanies it. It's like butter. Here you go.
SPEAKER_06Exactly when we met. I wanna write a history. I wanna take it step by step. If I remember every moment past I can solve this mystery, I can make it last. I will remain, I will remain. Loving you is the reason why I came. I will remain, I will remain The world will change, but I will always take the stake Every moment a choreography each and every passing day As if I rise no last The sweetest music, the greenest window green, all the symphony of heart It is a work of art I will remain I will remain The thing is the reason why I came I will remain I will remain The world will change I will always stay the same Building so tall Yeah will crumble and fall Forever is not nearly long enough for me to love you I will remain I will remain I will remain loving you is the reason why I came I will be I will be loving you is the reason why I came up with the black thing is change when I will always stay the same Progressive presents married to your home I'm disgusting Oh house don't say that you could live someplace so much better than me that's not true Oh yeah look at these uneven stairs gross house you know I don't care and the squeaky door hinge I think it's cute no matter how much you already love your house you'll love it more knowing you could save big bundling your home and auto with progressive coverage from Progressive Casualty Insurance Company if he has a third party insurers but at least now not available in all states or situations membership fees apply after free trial cancel any time you know what's wrong with health and fitness you weaponize it against yourself.
SPEAKER_00Why didn't you go to the gym today? You're so lazy. Ah, why did you eat that? You have no self control. Stop it. At Beach Body, 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's how. Go to Beachbody.com to claim your free membership and start feeling great.