Expatriate Act Podcast

Your host (and his erstwhile nonexistent roommate Chad) sit down with entrepreneur and wandering investor Maurice to talk about his travels, his financial advice for expats, and his recent jaunt to San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua to avoid quarantine. Your host gets a little overzealous with the website promotion. That domain name, by the way (should you manage to forget it before the end of the show) is www.thewanderinginvestor.com.

In which your host extends an open invitation for you to join or to willfully ignore The Trout Society: a deliberately ill-defined band of brooders, thinkers, and blatherers united in their opposition to the breed of nihilism espoused and embodied by Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States. All requisite information is included in this mini-podcast, and all requisite links are provided on the show page.

Rev. Jerry Stiles makes his record-setting third appearance on the show in this wide-ranging interview that covers everything from the pronunciation of the word "Nebraska" ("like a fart on a plastic chair") to Daoism to the coronavirus to 1980s baseball and everything in between. One might think of Jerry as an involuntary expat: months ago, he, his wife, and his son went to visit Jerry's Chinese in-laws and, a week later, were placed on lockdown in Shanghai. Now Mr. Stiles has a job, a visa, and no intention of leaving the People's Republic anytime soon.

In which your host interviews Nathan Pauls, his second contestant in the show's accidental Nicest Guy from New Jersey Competition. Highlights include Nathan's account of his first and only winter in Mongolia's coldest province, zen and the art of woodchopping, the Naadam festival of "three manly sports," and his short-lived Mongolian wrestling career. Nathan and his girlfriend are currently enjoying some quality quarantine time in Santiago, Chile.

Proud New Jerseyite Ethan White has been quarantined in his apartment in Valencia, Spain for the past three weeks. In this episode, a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan agree to a truce upon discovering their shared love for The Wire.

In which your host sits down with his long-estranged half sister for a conversation that has absolutely nothing to do with travel, but quite a lot to do with the art of burlesque, child furries, assless chaps, prosthetic arms ejaculating high fructose corn syrup, and post-marital dog theft. This podcast was recorded over a month ago, at a time when the Mookie Betts trade mattered more than COVID-19.

A few days ago, Jeanine Fitzgerald narrowly escaped quarantine in Cairo and multiple Egyptian plagues, only to return to her native Washington and proud Western epicenter of COVID-19. In this episode, she and your host discuss Cairo's ongoing great flood, the ensuing eruption of raw sewage, killer hailstorms, a locust infestation, and a power outage imposed by the Egyptian government in order to prevent mass electrocutions. Other matters of note include: giant minesweeping African rats, The Mummy (starring Brendan Fraser), the horrifying Step Pyramid of Djoser, helpful tips re: bribing one's airline stewards and stewardesses in exchange for infinite vodka, and an orange tabby cat named Jimmy who ran away with an entire croissant. Jeanine is working on founding a nonprofit tentatively titled "The Forgotten Cats of Egypt." And this covers about 13% of the conversation.

In which your self-quarantined host relates his improbable three-year path to continued survival, bitches about the duplicity of the word "biweekly," and gushes shamelessly about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

In which your host, who has been self-quarantining and social distancing for years, predicts the sweatpants-and-small-talk revolution, fails to invent a new sport, and describes (briefly) a peculiar layer of Hell that not even COVIDiots deserve to visit.

In which your host riffs on a very stupid anecdote to a ladyfriend to remain nameless.

In which your host, unsure of whether he is the type of dude who goes voluntarily tumbling down rabbit holes, proceeds to go tumbling down a rabbit hole on his own volition and (for the moment) suspects that he knows darn well what he has encountered down there (though, as you will see in Vols. 3 and 4, plenty of entirely possible (if not more probable) explanations yet remain, many of them still more puzzling than those presented in this edition).

In which your host attempts to comprehend the universe and ultimately falls on his face.

Almost certainly the funniest interview your host has ever had the privilege of hosting.

In which your elderly and considerably more chilled host parts ways with (some of) the institutional angst that he felt during his two years of service in the People's Republic of China.

Emphasis on the word “deduce.” We know nothing of yet, and perhaps never will.

In which your host totally breaks his own heart via the tale of his guest, who lost both of her sisters (one to suicide; one to a car wreck) before she was even born. A few drops of CBD were necessary for this'un.

In which your profoundly sober host engages with his former boss in an effort to arrive at the truth.

In which your sleep-deprived host and his profoundly wise guest talk life, love, Ukraine, and Peace Corps.

You’d think we’ve have learned our lesson by now. Our differences, our in-fighting, our refusal to vote because we didn’t get to pick our dream candidate — these are the mistakes we made in 2016, and we are repeating them blunder by blunder in 2020. And things will intensify. They will get uglier. Four more years of Trump seems like an inevitability at this point. What, if anything, can we do to keep the fascists from getting exactly what they want out of is? Also, your host (as the butt of the inside joke that has become his life) has been peer pressured into asking AOC out for a cup of coffee. We’ll see how that goes. Early precinct results from the State of Iowa (six days late) suggest a likelihood of 99% ignore, ..3% of total (and justifiable) ignore, and .1% of actual acceptance of the offer: in which case your host’s life ceases to make sense, as though it ever did in the first place.

In which your host and return guest Kelly Branyik take altogether too long to establish the day of the fucking week, then move onto broader topics: The Chonx (the largest city on earth), the potential extermination of humanity by the Chinese coronavirus (endemic to Kelly's Xi'an), and the extermination of Peace Corps China by forces external to the Peace Corps itself -- whatever the Wall Street Journal or NPR or Axios or Marco Rubio (@rubella)would have you believe. The convo ends on a heartwarming note, and Ms. Branyik invites y'all RPCV China volunteers to contribute your video snippets to her ongoing multimedia project to celebrate this bad-ass thing we were all in some semi-coherent way a part of.

After 26 years, Peace Corps China (under pressure from the United States government) is ceasing its operations this June. Your host posits a perplexing game show question: who, d'ye reckon, is bullshitting you, here? Is it The Peace Corps, or is it Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL)? The first listener to answer the question correctly will receive a 2016 FOX News Republican Primary Debate "Little Marco" commemorative pog. Full Statement by Currently Serving Peace Corps China Volunteers, in Response to Senator Rubio’s Remarks: As volunteers in Peace Corps China, we are shocked and disappointed about the administration’s decision to discontinue the China program. This decision was made without consulting staff or volunteers in China, and appears to be a budgetary, politically motivated action that does not reflect the Peace Corps mission, nor the quality of work volunteers carry out in China. For twenty six years, as an apolitical volunteer organization, Peace Corps China has created invaluable person to person connections between our two countries. Those relationships are more important than ever in light of the current US-China relationship. This abrupt decision comes at a time when US diplomatic capacity and resources have been systematically hollowed out. We fear this is a continuation of that trend and are heartbroken by the news.

In which your host treats what remains of his audience to a multimedia extravaganza — a year in review in the form of a mashed-up montage of the best bits from 2019’s most memorable interviews — celebrates the lives of those lost in 2019, and explains his prolonged absence, his near brush with death, and his eternal struggle with alcohol, alcoholism, and alcohol withdrawal.

In which your host reflects upon his hellish couple-three days of acute alcohol withdrawal, and the fascist face put forth by physicians and police alike in the United States with all matters addiction-related.

In which your host and the delightful Julie O'Yang (author of The Little Yellow Book) kick it old school and attempt to explain the current state of modern China by examining its not-so-distant past.

In which your host and his long-term travel droog discuss American politics: what it's like to be a flaming liberal in a red state, whether America is sinking into permanent decline and eternal division, and what (if anything) can be done to stitch together the ripped-apart nation in which the two of us reside for the moment.

Your host sits down with Oleg and his delightful accent to talk about Ukraine, its recent past, its history of corrupt leadership, its relations with Russia over the years, and the circumstances that led to its current clusterfuck involving The Orange Blob and His Friends. Even as a Ukrainian-American Lieutenant Colonel undermines the schemes perpetrated by aforementioned Orange Blob, Oleg offers some levelheaded analysis of his own country, its complexities, and why its allegiance with the West is so damned important -- to Ukraine and America alike.

In which your host embarks upon an interplanetary journey for the sake of exposing what he perceives to be wishy-washy arguments in defense of authoritarianism.

In which your host engages with his guest, Haval, a current resident of Iraqi Kurdistan, for his ground-level perspective on the situation in northeast Syria, the current state of the Kurdish people, and what relations (should we be fortunate enough to maintain them) between the United States and the Kurds will look like in the future.

In which your host addresses the passing of one of his fellow — and most beloved — Peace Corps volunteers. Like the rest of my cohorts, I am at a loss for words, so I shall let The Pogues tell it. So long, Pete. We will make this world a better place in your absence. Promise.

In which your host narrates, as best he can, the genuine absurdity of being threatened at gunpoint for attempting to attend a Bob Dylan show in Lincoln, Nebraska.

In which your host, after stuttering and spontaneously coining the term “abroadcast,” assesses what he suspects are the real reasons lurking behind the NBA’s sudden reticence to talk human rights when it comes to Hong Kong. On a BCAA/creatine-fueled rant that takes him from Francis Fukuyama and the collapse of the Soviet Union to Space Jam 2 and the roles corporations play (or perhaps ought not to play) in advocating for social causes, your host finds himself in an ever more curmudgeonly mood when it comes to geopolitics, and perhaps on the verge of transmogrifying into Andy Rooney incarnate.

In which your host and newly minted Special Foreign Correspondent Julie O’Yang discuss the nuclear-tipped dong competition that was the Chinese Communist Party’s 70th birthday celebration, Xi Jinping’s quite deliberate emulation of Chairman Mao throughout the festivities, what this display of bravado signifies for the fates of Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the means by which young Chinese citizens make their ascent in the Party. Also detailed: Julie’s own trajectory as an author and a Chinese dissident, now happily situated in Europe. This will be a recurring segment, as China is a vast, fascinating, and (above all else) strange place full of mystery and contradiction. Your questions will be warmly received at keithpetit@gmail.com, and they shall be answered posthastily.

In which your host lambastes the human lamprey his countrymen and -women call their president and that human lamprey’s most recent (and most grievous) decision: to subject the Kurds to genocide at the hands of Erdoğan’s pro-Russia, pro-Assad Islamist paradise. Other matters addressed: how to discuss politics with one’s parents (don’t), and some hype for our looming interview with Chinese dissident Julia O’Yang tomorrow morning at 8 AM sharp. Fuck authoritarianism in all its forms. Long live Hong Kong, long live Taiwan, and long live liberal America.

In which your host, for want of better options, delivers a totally unconvincing State of the Podcast Address, ruminates upon his recent streak of podcasting misfortune, the demise of the four seasons (the human-fueled deviation in our annual weather patterns, not Frankie Valli and company), the modern working world and how it ties into the broader fragmentation of our society, and how your host intends to maximize his week of socioeconomic worthlessness for the benefit of his audience.

In which your host attempts to explain the chaos behind and betwixt the David Liebe Hart interview and his own rant re: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mother China, et al. He also, in the wake of the second anniversary of the show, serenades his audience with a tasteful Taiwanese selection, sung in proper East Asian karaoke room fashion, complete with excessive reverb and an unrealistically high score from the feel-good machine displaying stock footage on a constant loop.

I have nothing to say or to contribute to this two-year anniversary special. You should probably just listen to it. Nothing went as planned. A song was recorded about 9/11.

In this mega-mini podcast, your host draws from his three-ish years teaching and living in the Han Chinese world (in both Sichuan Province and Taiwan) in order to explain why the looming Golden Age of China isn't such a great thing for the world, and why America (in its current incarnation) will do precisely nothing to help their long-time allies in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or elsewhere — both because their leadership is beholden to the very same corrupt, authoritarian, semi-superpowers of the world doing the dirt, and because America (to some extent) has become just such a place itself. Admittedly, this is very much an opinion piece — objectivity bedamned — and your host happens to possess an especially defined opinion on the matter. Fuck authoritarianism in all its forms, and 香港加油!

In which your host settles a festering nine-year-old bet with fellow RPCV and arch nemesis Andrew Moose by ingesting one hundred hua jiao (Sichuanese numbing peppers) to the tune of Sunn O))). While nothing so degrading can exactly be termed a success, your host is pleasantly surprised by all of the ways in which the experiment was not an unmitigated disaster and a permanent stain on his reputation. Your move, Moose.

In which your host airs at least some of his remorse regarding The Great Interview That Wasn’t: his brilliant hour-long chat with Dr. Don Kulick, anthropologist extraordinaire, that (courtesy of Amolto Call Recorder) went unrecorded and will never be heard by anyone — not your host, not his guest, not the CIA: nobody. In a feeble attempt to compensate for this ill-timed technological catastrophe, your host offers a review of Dr. Kulick’s most recent book — A Death in the Rainforest — and his full-throated endorsement thereof. Detours include the Steely Dan recording “The Second Arrangement,” which does not exist, and previews of upcoming interviews with fine folks from Uzbekistan and Iraqi Kurdistan, conversations which certainly do exist, so long as your host’s laptop continues operating.

In which your host celebrates two full months (and one half-finished day) of joyful/mundane sobriety, previews his gaggle of upcoming guests (Uzbekistan! Afghanistan! A Uighur! A Kurd!), and preserves for posterity the occasion that he very nearly bankrupted Econo Lodge® — that most economical of lodges — by losing six plastic keycards during the course of a single one-night stay. (One imagines that this is some sort of world record, but not the sort of record that one stakes any claim to whatsoever.) This mini-episode is presented to you in NTSQA (Not-Totally-Shit-Quality Audio), facilitated by a magical Spandex pop filter that it took your host two years, 74 interviews, and eighteen dollars to purchase.

When your host first decided to go Stanhopping a few weeks ago, he didn’t exactly pencil Turkmenistan into his schedule. A year before, he went searching for a Real Live Turkmenistani Citizen, but there were no takers: those who were Turkmenistani figured your host for a member of the secret police, and those who had been to Turkmenistan — well, nobody had actually been to Turkmenistan. Enter Craig: a pseudonymous Turkmenistani citizen living in exile. He left the country when he was seventeen to pursue psychology in Europe. He intends to become a talk therapist. He does not intend to return to his native Turkmenistan. As a homosexual, it is doubtful that it would be safe for him to do so. With impeccable English and a keen eye for political nuance, Craig tells the story of his upbringing, his departure, and his year of homelessness in a foreign country. Straining his memory to recall things he’d probably rather forget, he then details the dictatorial bric-a-brac that makes Turkmenistan one of the strangest — and one of the cruelest — countries on Earth.

There are many stans, but only Tajikistan is Tajikistan. Our host sits across the world from the pseudonymous Benjamin, an American scholar of Persian language and literature and a walking Wikipedia of Central Asian fun facts. Tajikistan was Ben's first real trip abroad, and he liked the place so much that he married it. (Real Live Tajik in-laws can be heard clunking around in the background.) On this episode, Ben floats a theory that Persian and Tajik are, in fact, the exact same language – a suggestion that is sure to piss off Iranian and Tajikistani listeners alike. Ben offers his take on the brutal Tajikistani Civil War and its origins, relates his personal experience of the 2015 government crackdown on free speech, explains why the hell he decided to master Esperanto during his free time, and (urged on by his host) explores the wide world of traditional Tajikistani sport. Horses and goats are involved, simultaneously.

In which your host and the dauntingly articulate Ardit Kola spend about ten minutes parsing modern Albanian politics before shooting down a series of progressively irrelevant conversational wormholes, among them: Incels, boulder warfare, bringing a buckshot pistol to a European summit, Hellbanianz, dogs with smartphones, and The Universal Shittiness of Call Center Labor (which might just be spawning the next generation of empaths). Also covered in the course of this roundabout discussion are the recent Albanian mayoral elections, the bizarre disappearance of the entire Albanian Democratic Party in protest of … something or other, and the state of LGBTQ rights in Albania (not as dire as you might think). During the interview, your Albanian guest drops the neologism “You do you, girl” on two separate occasions, a fact of which your host (for no reason known even to himself) is unspeakably proud.

In which your caffed-out host talks Central Asian democracy with Kazakhstani-Brooklynite activist Laura Winterfell. She recounts how a potato-shaped man with all the charisma of a doorknob quietly reigned over one of the largest countries on Earth for thirty nightmarish years, and then retired (without actually retiring) but not before renaming the capital of Kazakhstan after … himself. Laura discusses the various anti-authoritarian projects that consume what free time she has: from marches and protests in Times Square to crowdfunding the reimbursement of the ludicrous fines and legal fees slapped on native Kazakhstanis for exercising their constitutional right to peacefully protest the abuses and excesses of an almost comically corrupt regime. Detours include fascistic felines, the art of appearing as an extra in a rap video, Borat, and Thom Yorke’s new solo album — Anima — a multi-medium masterwork that your host hasn’t even had the time to watch or listen to yet. This episode, like all others before it, is dedicated to the legacy of Nursultan Nazarbayev. Enjoy your retirement, bud. Grab a vodka tonic and hit the links. Go ahead and shoot nine while you’re at it. You’ve earned it, big guy.

In which your host sits down over a soothing Gatorade® bottle of Fijian kava and enjoys a maximally chill convo with his now-official Albanian Beard Bro, the mononymous Niku. With saintlike patience, Niku fleshes out the nuances of Albanian politics to his troglodytic host, describes the glories of Albanian cuisine (think: Italian, Greek, and Turkish food slamming together in the most delicious car wreck of all time), and highlights the many scenic spots that Albania has to offer, most of which have yet to be infiltrated by the man-bunned backpackers of the Western world. Bonus features of the podcast: the blood feuds and sworn (female) virgins of northern Albania. Niku also narrates his first impression of the State of Texas — where he may, American dictatorship permitting, relocate to live with his Albanian wife and her thoroughly Texan relations. This is, perhaps, one of the most pleasant interviews I have ever had the privilege of taking part in — and I have interviewed some pleasant motherfuckers in my day.

In which your host ruminates on past misbehavior abroad -- including a tense standoff in which (in an alternate universe) he was bludgeoned to death with an eight-foot wand and left for dead in a wine vat -- and previews his upcoming guests: if Albania, Papua New Guinea, anthropology, or linguistics happen to be your jam, ExpatPod's got you, fam.

In this Father’s Day edition of Expatriate Act, your host sits down with his pops to discuss the old man’s prepubescent escape from the seminary, his enlistment in the Air Force, his narrow evasion of the Vietnam War, his reassignment to Greenland (where he encountered many a musk ox, including an especially noteworthy one named Willie), his reassignment to Greece, the successful courtship of the love of his life, their reassignment to North Dakota, his work with Minuteman III missiles at the peak of the Cold War, his reassignment to Nebraska, his adjustment to civilian life, a local scandal called Donglegate, an even greater scandal involving Nixon-level phone tapping on the part of the Bellevue, Nebraska Chief of Police, his forced retirement, and his successful career (starting at age 67) as a best-selling Western novelist.

This leaked exclusive SPECIAL EDITION Expatriate Act podcast is available for only £15,000, and for a limited time only. DM us for details. Hurry before Season 3 descends upon us with its forebodings of time travel, flashbacks, flash-forwards, and raffles. Yours, --Skeezy Russian Hackers

In which your host likens himself both to a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) and to a worn-out baseball.

In which your host and his dearly beloved travel companion reconvene to discuss almost nothing involving travel. Instead, Andrei Tarkovsky crops up a lot, along with the perils of introducing Western hip culture to East Asian college students. The play Oedipus Rex, when taken literally, doesn’t seem to resonate well with Korean undergrads. Neither do The Beatles. The Irishman is mentioned only once or twice in passing (and is not dissected for twenty minutes at a time as in most episodes), which surprises both host and guest. Your burnt-out host (having interviewed three dudes in 16 hours) offers an apologia for a brilliant interview with a distinctive man that may never be heard — by host or audience alike. Not his fault, though. Blame Windows and the rotating purple ouroborous of information loss and death.

In which your host and some dude from Fiji named Meli discuss the chain of islands that constitute Fiji. The horrors of British colonialism are briefly addressed, along with the fringe perks that have turned Fiji into a rugby sevens powerhouse. Sipping on Vanuatuan kava all the while, your host includes, as his intro music, a song he wrote about Fiji, so as to escalate the meta-level of this episode to unprecedented heights. The condition "cauliflower ear" is explained and fully fleshed out.