The Bittersweet Life

For much of the pandemic, Italy has been keeping their numbers (relatively) under control, and the United States, on the other hand, has seen their numbers climb and climb without an end in sight.

Bu…

Tiffany looks back on the week that it all changed in Italy—one year ago right now. Did any of us think, a year later, that restrictions, yellow, orange, and red zones, masks and all the rest of it, …

Walking through the halls of a museum like the Uffizi Gallery in Florence—when we're not in the middle of a pandemic, that is—is generally about as artistic an experience as rush hour at Grand Centra…

Katy gets into the nitty-gritty of feedback from her own point of view, digging into her own past as a senior radio producer. Today's mini-episode features part of the conversation that was cut from …

How can effective feedback change your life? Today, we sit down with Dr. Theresa Huston, author of the new book Let’s Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower, a "game-changing model for giving …

Oscar Wilde called it the "holiest place in Rome" and Percy Shelley said it would make someone apt to fall in love with death to think of being buried in so sweet a place...and not soon later he was …

Reading books can inspire you to travel, and travel can inspire you to read books. It's what we call a delicious cycle.

Today we talk about the books (and other types of art) that have inspired not o…

On our "super secret" Truth or Dare episode from a few years ago (available only to our Patreon patrons and long-time donors), Katy did something incredibly scary, heart-poundingly so: she called som…

Some psychologists say that anticipation of a desired event can often bring more happiness than experiencing the event itself. And if that's the case, can we conclude that planning a trip is even mor…

Every two weeks, an endangered language disappears from the planet, when the last person who speaks it dies. And one third of the world's languages are endangered.

On this mini-episode, we talk about…

One of the greatest rewards of being an expat is mastering a foreign language. But what happens when you live in a foreign language so long, so cut off from your own culture, that you start to lose y…

Today we continue our virtual walk through Rome, were we just happen to run into a few more world-famous authors. What are the odds? Katy's brilliant sound-mixing skills, Tiffany's knowledge of the E…

Katy and Tiffany take to the streets of Rome once again, and this time, they encounter a slew of fascinating and important people, all former guests of the show!

Through the magic of radio—a cache of…

TripAdvisor might be some people's go-to app for planning their vacations, but Tiffany prefers to steer clear of the anonymous travel review site if possible.

We mentioned this on a previous episode,…

Is there a specific thing you like to buy when you travel to a new place, like a magnet or a snow globe? Or do you seek out unique and locally made art and objects? Perhaps you prefer the type of sou…

There's a new man in the White House this morning—and a new woman too!

Just like we did four years ago during Donald Trump's inauguration, we recorded our live reactions to Joe Biden's inauguration v…

A missing person, a grieving family, a curious clue: a half-finished manuscript set in Paris... these are just three of the intriguing ingredients of Liam Callanan's new novel, Paris by the Book. The…

Was Pope Francis really arrested by the FBI last weekend? Did all the lights in the Vatican go out to hide this event from the world? And most importantly, did Pope Francis really change all the vote…

Do Italian parents really take their toddlers out to restaurants at 10pm? Do they really go home for lunch during the work day and take a nap?

Thanks to an idea sent in by a listener, today we dig in…

Whether a funky mug from Prague, a hand-painted ceramic bowl from Mexico, or a random dish picked up off the street in Japan, there's got to be one special souvenir that has a place in your heart and…