The Bittersweet Life

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Episode 637: A Musical Immigration Story (with Felipe Salles)

July 13, 2026

As hard as it is to succeed and thrive as a professional jazz musician, how much more challenging is it when the journey leads you to a new country—with new laws, new social customs, and a system that creates roadblocks nearly every step of the way? Today we sit down with jazz saxophonist and music professor Felipe Salles to talk about his journey from an international student at a major conservatory in Boston "fresh off the boat" (as he puts it) from Brazil, to a working musician living in N...

The Bittersweet Past: The Friend, the Bread, and the Knife

July 10, 2026

When you're a longtime expat, do your friends back home move on? We discuss on this episode from our archives. Expats often make friends with other expats in their adopted country. That can be great, but it also means that it's very likely that your new friends will, sooner or later, move away and you'll be back to square one. It's typical, therefore, for expats to consider their friends back home as their "real friends." But do those same friends feel the same way about them? While an expat ...

Episode 636: How to Live Abroad Part-time (with Laurel Attanasio)

July 06, 2026

What happens when you dream of living by the sea in Italy but you are deeply connected to your home town and community? If you are like this week's guest, Laurel Attanasio, you compromise: buy your dream house on the Calabrian coast and live there for just part of the year. Best of both worlds, eh? But there's a catch: living in Italy even part-time brings endless bureaucratical issues (perhaps even more than living there full-time). Case in point: you can't buy a car without car insurance, b...