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Life doesn't have a script. At least, it doesn't have to. Hosts Katy Sewall and Tiffany Parks explore the challenges and joys of moving abroad and moving home. Whether you’re living overseas, or not — or not yet — join us weekly for unadulterated conversation. Get to know Rome. Laugh at our embarrassments and insights. Most of all, imagine the possibilities for your own life (and meet some famous authors along the way).
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What happens when an expat "goes native"? How long does it take, and is it inevitable? Is it a conscious choice or does it just happen? Today we chat about this idea, and Tiffany lays out the ways she has gone native—eschewing American culture and habits entirely in favor of Italian ones—as well as the aspects of Italian life that she staunchly res…
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Episode 527: Moving to Rome—Sight Unseen (with Brie Ripley)
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Would you move across the world to a country without ever having been there? That's what this week's guest did. We sit down with Brie Ripley to talk about her decision to take a 4-year contract with the World Food Program, which meant a relocation to Rome—a city she had never even visited. She talks about the challenges of adjusting to life abroad …
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Episode 526: An Unbelievable Discovery in Rome!
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An exciting discovery out of Rome has recently rocked the archeological community! We have the details on this week's episode. ------------------------------------- ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started. BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The B…
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Last week we talked—among other things—about what it would be like if the year started in March, as it used to do in ancient Rome. This got us thinking about seasons and how they effect our lives. On this week's episode we talk about what we love about certain seasons, how where you live can vastly affect how you experience the seasons (and therefo…
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Episode 524: What if New Year's Were in March?
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Is early January—the deepest, bleakest, darkest moment of winter—really the best time to make New Year's Resolutions? Isn't early spring a more fortuitous time for new beginnings? (And did you know that March used to be the first month of the year?) We mull this and other season-related questions on this episode (including a check-in to see how Tif…
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Episode 523: Legacy and Loss (with Kaila Merrill)
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Today we explore a story of one woman whose family legacy—in particular her close relationship with her mother whom she lost suddenly to cancer—brought about a life pivot that she was never expecting. Kaila Merrill joins us today to tell her moving story, from growing up in tiny island town in northern Vermont to a carefree life on the beaches of A…
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Episode 522: The Case Against Travel, Part 2
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What if travel doesn't actually change you? A few weeks ago, we discussed this controversial idea, a conversation inspired by an essay in The New Yorker. (Make sure you listen to that episode first, because we had a lot to say on the topic!) It turns out, our listeners did too, as we got a lot of feedback on the subject. Today, we share some of it …
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Episode 521: Road Trips (with John Roderick)
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What makes a song a good road trip song? This is something Katy has been musing over for several years now. What better person to ask than a musician who has crossed the country on tour numerous times? This week, Katy sits down with musician and podcaster John Roderick to talk about the allure of the American road trip, as well as what you should l…
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Tell me about that trip that changed your life... and I'll tell you how you're lying to yourself. So claims a recent essay in The New Yorker titled The Case Against Travel. In it, author Agnes Callard makes some pretty bold and sweeping assertions, including that travel "turns us into the worst version of ourselves while convincing us that we’re at…
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What makes a life meaningful? Can a meaningful death transform an otherwise meaningless life into a meaningful one? These are just a few of the many ideas touched on in this week's episode, an interview with poet and author Kaveh Akbar. He joins us this week to discuss his new book, Martyr!, released in January 2024 and already a New York Times bes…
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A line from a new book by poet Kaveh Akbar sparks the idea for this episode: in a nutshell, does language have the capacity to truly express what we are trying to convey, or is there always something that can't be put into mere words? Is it true, as Akbar claims, that a photograph can describe what it was, but words can only describe what it was li…
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Episode 517: Could You Miss Discovering Your Passion?
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How do we discover our passions? Is it a given that we will discover them at all? And where do they come from? Are they something we are born with and just need to be discovered within ourselves? Or are they triggered by something we are exposed to externally? Or is it a bit of both? Are there people with incredible innate talent for music or paint…
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Is it Covid or are we just getting older? This week we discuss how the social world seems to have changed drastically in recent years—but is it due to this post-Covid era we're living in, or is it simply because we're getting older? We wonder: Is it acceptable now to simply not respond (indefinitely) to text messages? Even if they are from a close …
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Episode 515: The Story Behind the Crow Gifts Photo
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A little girl feeds crows and gets gifts in return. It’s a wonderful true story that’s gone viral again and again. But where did it come from? As it happens, it comes from this very podcast, when Katy discovered the "Nature Girl" and friend-of-crows herself, Gabi Mann. Katy snapped a photo of her collection of crow gifts—a photo that has now been s…
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Episode 514: Did We Keep our New Year's Resolutions?
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It's our annual New Year's Resoultion Recap! Did we do what we promised to do last year? This is always a cringe-worthy moment for us both as we go back and listen to our own hopeful voices promising what we will do... and often they are resolutions we don't even remember making—much less keeping! Listen in as we report how we did, and of course (b…
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Happy New Year from your friends at the Bittersweet Life podcast! We wish you and your loved ones a 2024 full of adventure, personal growth, and excitment! As a final gift from us, we are extending our $500 discount for our October 2024 Rome listener trip to Epiphany (6 January 2024). So if you're considering joining us on an unforgettable week in …
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Episode 512: Operator (A Radio play by Matthew P. Woerner)
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As a special holiday treat, today we are airing a new original radio play by friend of the show, Matthew P. Woerner. In the tradition of the golden age of radio, Operator is inspired by H. G. Well's historic War of the Worlds, from the point of view of a newly minted telephone operator as she fields calls from panicked citizens, calling in for info…
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Episode 511: Is the Place You Love as Good as You Think?
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We've all had it happen: you gushingly recommend your favorite cafe or restaurant or bar to a friend, only to have them go and report back something tepid like, "It was ok." How is it possible that my friend thinks my all-time favorite place is... just ok?? Which caused us to wonder: are our favorite places really that great in and of themselves, o…
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Have you ever wondered who you would be if you had made different life choices? Even making just one big decision differently, say, not moving abroad instead of moving abroad. Or not leaving that stable job. Where would you be in the world? What would you be doing? And most intriguingly, how would your personality and character be different? Tiffan…
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Episode 509: Expats in Switzerland (with Lindy & Vince)
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On our amazing listener trip to Rome this past October, we interviewed two of our guests, expats Vince and Lindy. These two native midwesterners talk about their backgrounds—traveling or not traveling as a child (depending on which member of the couple is talking), and how that has contributed to their life choices—and the challenges of being a twi…
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Episode 508: Discovering Rome's Secrets with our Listeners
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On this episode, we bring you along with us on the final tour of our amazing Rome Adventure last month! During breaks between the sites of this super-secret Rome walk, Katy pulls out her microphone and interviews a few of our guests. She asks them about their impressions of Rome, the city's soundscape, the art that inspires them, the subjects that …
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Episode 507: Seeing (and not Seeing) Rome for the First Time
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On the final morning of our amazing first-ever Bittersweet Life listener trip to Rome, we took a bit of time to tape an episode to capture what we were feeling and how the trip was going. What's it like to see Rome for the first time? And as a tour guide in Rome who has seen the sites hundreds if not thousands of times, is it possible to remember w…
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Episode 506: [Live Show in Rome]: Discovery (with our listeners!)
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Join us for a live episode with our listeners, the participants of the first-ever Bittersweet Life Roman Adventure! On Day Three of this amazing and magical trip, we stopped for an aperitivo in a sunny garden to tape this special show. Our topic: discovery. What are some of the greatest discoveries you've ever made, big or small? And what have you …
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In October we hosted the very first ever Bittersweet Life Rome Adventure with ten of our listeners! It was a blast, and we can't wait to share more about it over the coming episodes. But first! We taped this episode the evening before the trip kicked off, just a few hours before we met our guests on the rooftop terrace of Hotel Donna Camilla Savell…
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The opening lines of David M. Eagleman's Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives inspires this week's episode, just in time for Halloween. Eagleman's premise is that you aren't fully dead until your name is spoken for the last time. And although the thought of your name never being spoken again, never again being remembered by the living, is horrific,…
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