Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews

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The only show that finds the most dedicated language learners out there, and tries to learn from their craft! Meet and learn from language tutors and creators from all around the world in Tandem Language Exchange’s new official podcast, hosted by Michele and Michelle.

  1. 1d ago

    EP. 34 - FrenchSchoolTV: From Zero to Millions of Followers, and Why He Gives It All Away

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Vincent wasn't supposed to be a French teacher. He was a construction engineer who hated French at school, until years of traveling revealed he had a talent for teaching the language like an equation to be solved. In this episode of Connected By Language, the founder of French School TV explains how he quit his job at the French Institute in December 2019, three months before Covid put the whole world on their phones, and turned that gamble into a language school with 3+ million followers across social media. He shares the philosophy that shaped it all: giving away complete courses for free because the more you give, the more you receive, building a team of teachers who are encouraged to propose anything, and running every decision through one simple filter, doing the opposite of what the worst manager he ever had would have done. A conversation for anyone dreaming of turning language teaching into something bigger than themselves. About the guest: https://frenchschooltv.com/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 intro 7:59 How a Career Change Became a Calling 14:45 Building a Team Around a Language 24:28 The Philosophy Behind Giving It All Away 30:34 What Language Teaching Looks Like at Scale   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

  2. Aug 4

    EP. 33 - Xena: Exploring Asia Through Food, Language, Dance, and Random Experiences

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Xena is an Italian content creator who grew up bilingual between Italian and French, with Senegalese roots and the sound of Wolof in her childhood home. In this episode of Connected By Language, she shares how a multicultural upbringing shaped her relationship with languages, why she once pushed away the language of her heritage to fit in, and how she now finds connection in places where words fail entirely, from dance trainings in China to dinner tables in South Korea. The conversation follows her journeys across Asia, including the mistake so many Europeans make of assuming English will carry them everywhere, and the small cultural moments that no textbook can teach. Xena explains what she's really searching for in her random food adventures and unplanned encounters, why a stranger asking to take her photo turned into a lasting friendship, and why she believes anyone still figuring out where they belong is luckier than they think. About the guest: https://www.instagram.com/xiexiexena?igsh=b2Y2ZDM4YnhzOXFz  What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 Intro 0:23  Italy, Senegal, and the Languages in Between 19:06 Falling in Love With Asia One Random Experience at a Time 26:59 When Two Cultures Meet and Neither Has the Words for It 44:53 What All These Worlds Gave Her That One World Never Could   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

  3. Jul 21

    Ep. 32 - Guillaume: How Speaking Different Languages Can Make You a Better Activist

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Guillaume grew up near Brussels as a monolingual French speaker who failed to pick up Dutch at school and thought languages simply weren't for him. In this episode of Connected By Language, he explains how discovering his own learning methods changed everything, eventually building up to seven languages at B2 level or above, plus a collection of others including Norwegian, Catalan, and Mandarin. The conversation centers on how he combines this skill with animal rights activism. During an international outreach event in Amsterdam, Guillaume held 500 street conversations in a single month, half of them in languages none of the other activists could speak. He breaks down why addressing someone in their native language connects to their values in a way English never can, how the Socratic method opens minds that direct arguments shut down, and what humans and animals share in the language of communication itself. About the guest: https://www.activism.wtf/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 intro 10:17 What Polyglots Get for Free 14:34 Seven Languages in the Streets of Amsterdam 37:32 How to Have a Conversation That Actually Changes Something 52:53 The Language We Share With Animals

  4. Jul 7

    EP. 31 - From Language Fear to Language Coaching: a Conversation With tschechisch.online

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Katerina is a Czech language coach who moved from the Czech Republic to Germany at nineteen and built her career explaining Czech to German native speakers, a niche she carved out for herself. In this episode of Connected By Language, she talks about the fear and structure that shaped her own German learning journey, why she barely speaks her native language anymore despite growing up with it, and how one supportive teacher taught her the difference between knowing a language in theory and actually living in it. The conversation moves into how Katerina built an online language business from scratch, starting with a simple system of learning one new word a day and turning it into pre-recorded courses, coaching, and in-person retreats in Prague. She shares her philosophy on staying human on camera, why she never tries to convince hesitant students, and what she believes anyone starting a language business needs to understand about finding their own reason before chasing scale. About the guest: https://www.tschechisch.online/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 Intro 0:22 From Forced to Fluent 17:22 Why Most People Fail at Languages and What Actually Works  44:22 What It Actually Takes to Turn a Language Into a Living 1:05:22 What She Would Tell Someone Starting From Zero   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

  5. Jun 23

    Ep. 30 - Natascha Moser: How a Scar Became Her Entire Language Teaching Method

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH What happens when the people who are supposed to teach you tell you you'll never make it? For Natascha Moser (@german.language.coach), influencer with 400,000+ followers, and incoming managing director of Expo Lingua, that question shaped everything. In this episode, Natascha shares how years of being told she had no talent in her own mother tongue became the foundation of a coaching philosophy built on identity, belief, and starting before you're ready. We talk about her move to San Diego with a failing English grade, her semester in Buenos Aires where she studied human resources in Spanish (yes, really), and what it actually takes to thrive in a language beyond just moving to the country. About the guest: https://www.instagram.com/german.language.coach/?hl=en More about Expolingua 2026: https://www.expolingua.com/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00  Intro 0:19  The Things They Said 29:38 Proving It In the Real World 48:19  Building a Philosophy From a Scar 1:03:08 What Language Still Owes Her   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Language Exchange Podcast.

  6. Jun 9

    EP. 29 - Petr: How Language Exchanges Led to Helping Ukrainian Refugees

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Petr is a Czech linguist and freelancer who spent years treating English as just another school subject, until an early internet language exchange site opened up the world to him. From there he taught himself Russian in his thirties, not because he had to, but because he was drawn to the post-Soviet world and the vast geography a single language could unlock. He passed a B2 exam, traveled to Georgia to put his skills to the test, and built quiet long-lasting friendships along the way. Then February 2022 arrived. When Ukrainian refugees began flooding into his city, Petr showed up to volunteer at the reception center, speaking a language he had learned entirely for personal curiosity, now suddenly needed in the most human way possible. In this episode we get into what that experience felt like, what a crisis teaches you about language that no classroom or app ever could, and how a hobby you build slowly over years can matter enormously in a single unexpected moment. About the guest: https://freelancing.eu/petrloucka/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 Intro  4:36 From Classroom Boredom to Real Motivation  11:34 Building Russian From the Ground Up  38:33 The Moment It All Meant Something  54:43 The Dream That Started It and the Reality It Became   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Podcast.

  7. May 26

    EP. 28 - Rafael: Teaching Korean, Learning Spanish, and Starting Over for Love

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Rafael is a Korean native speaker who started teaching Korean online after noticing how many people in Prague were desperate to learn the language during the height of the K-pop and Squid Game wave. What began as a casual side project turned into a full career… Until he followed his Spanish partner back to Europe, landed in Barcelona without knowing a word of Catalan, moved to Madrid, and suddenly found himself on the other side of the classroom for the first time in his life. In this episode we get into what makes Korean both more logical and more nuanced than most learners expect, why so many Koreans can read and write English perfectly but freeze the moment they have to speak it, and what teaching a language for years teaches you about it that simply speaking it never could. We also get into Rafael's current approach to Spanish: the classic textbook, the public language school, the Spanish partner, and a playlist of classic Spanish hits that he sings along to alone at home… which he insists is working! About the guest: https://ochikortutor.com/koreanclass What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 Intro  8:31 Growing Up Inside the Korean Education Machine  19:29 Teaching Korean to the World  39:51 The Spanish Adventure  51:07 What the Classroom Looks Like From the Other Chair   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem - Language Exchange Podcast.

  8. May 12

    EP. 27 - One doctor, Seven Languages, and a Polyglot Community Built From Scratch in Stockholm

    🌍 JOIN TANDEM TODAY: https://tandem.go.link/lcLQH Jonatan grew up in northern Sweden with Eritrean parents, speaking both Swedish and Tigrinya at home, and was promptly labeled the math kid while his more extroverted sister got the language person title. That label stuck until a passionate Spanish teacher named Lars changed everything, and what started as a school subject eventually took Jonatan through Spain, six years of medical school in Hungary, fluency in Hungarian, Russian, and several other languages, and back to Sweden with a completely different understanding of what languages are actually for. In this episode we explore what it really means when a doctor speaks a patient's native language, why the difference between a direct conversation and an interpreter goes far beyond words, and how Jonatan turned a quiet longing for his polyglot community into Stockholm Polyglots, a growing nonprofit that brings language lovers together every two weeks across ten languages at a time. We also get into the Hungarian saying he opens every event with, and why he believes every language you speak makes you a more complete human being. About the guest: https://polyglots.se/ What is Tandem - Language exchange? Tandem is a global language exchange app on a mission to connect the world through languages. Members build confidence and improve their language skills through real life conversations with native speakers in 1:1 chats or live audio rooms.  🔗 Connect With Us: https://linktr.ee/Tandem_App 0:00 Intro  4:14 The Language Person He Was Not Supposed to Be  13:31 Language in the Hospital Room  35:11 Building the Community Sweden Forgot to Build  43:32 What Seven Languages Taught Him   🌟 What topics/language should we explore on the next episode of the new tandem podcast? Let us know in the comments!  Thanks for watching Connected By Language: Polyglot Interviews, the new Tandem Podcast.

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The only show that finds the most dedicated language learners out there, and tries to learn from their craft! Meet and learn from language tutors and creators from all around the world in Tandem Language Exchange’s new official podcast, hosted by Michele and Michelle.

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