The Immigrant Perspective

The Immigrant Perspective
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"Where are you really from?" It's a simple question with a complicated answer. The Immigrant Perspective is a podcast dedicated to the voices of those who live between two worlds - exploring the nostalgia, the culture shock, and the triumphs of the migration journey. We move past the small talk and dive into the rich, messy tapestry of what it means to find home in a new land.

  1. 9 sep

    From Mexico City to Nashville: On Belonging, Medicine, and Seeing People Whole

    Adriana Bialostozky's immigration story started a generation earlier, when her grandparents left Russia and Poland and landed in Mexico instead of the United States, because the doors here were closed. That layered history is the backdrop for a conversation about what it means to carry multiple homes inside you, and what gets lost (and found) when you rebuild a professional identity in a new country. Adriana trained as a physician in Mexico City, came to the US on an H1 visa, and made her way through New York, Miami, and Ann Arbor before putting down roots in Nashville nearly twenty years ago. Along the way she married a fellow immigrant physician, raised two sons in a household where Spanish, late dinners, and a strong sense of community were non-negotiable, and built a practice focused on the families most physicians aren't trained to see clearly. In this episode, we talk about the sexist residency interview that sent her packing for the US, the study library in New York where immigrants from every country sat side by side chasing the same dream, and the moment she cried after her first clinic in Miami because she couldn't decode the abbreviations on the chart. We also get into her cultural competency work with medical residents, and why it's not about memorizing cultures, but about learning to ask better questions. Adriana explains what she means when she says she doesn't belong in Mexico anymore, and she doesn't fully belong here either, and she has made her peace with that.

  2. 2 sep

    Chasing an Artist Visa to Hug His Mother Again

    Freangel Pacheco left Venezuela in 2015 after being threatened for protesting the government, and he hasn't seen his mother since. Eleven years later, his political asylum case is still pending. Freangel, a musician, personal trainer, and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, talks with Mary Lou about the limbo of waiting on asylum with no passport and no embassy to turn to, the years he spent depressed before finding his way back to music, and the six-song, six-film, six-painting project he's releasing this year in hopes it builds a strong enough case for an artist visa, which is the path that will allow him to see his mother again. His first single from the project, “Dejando el Ayer” (“Leaving Yesterday Behind”), is the opening chapter of his debut album Incondicional Vol. 1, released under his music project Lastdaysofjude, and it just hit #1 on Venezuela's Record Report Pop Ballad chart. It's a conversation about displacement, depression, art as survival, and what “home” means when you can't go back to the one you had.

    Chasing an Artist Visa to Hug His Mother Again

  3. 28 ago

    Home Is a People, Not a Place

    Perry Constantine has three immigrant stories layered into one: his Greek grandfather fled political violence in Istanbul to bring the family back to Chicago; his British father emigrated through Canada; and Perry himself left Chicago for Japan in 2008 through the JET Program, expecting to stay a year. Almost twenty years later, he's teaching at a university in Kagoshima, married to a Japanese woman, and raising two bilingual kids. In this conversation, Perry and Mary Lou talk about arriving in a town with no English-language information available online, the reverse culture shock of moving back to the US, and what it actually means to feel at home in a place that isn't where you're from.

  4. 19 ago

    The Accent Switch

    Cathy met my wife Lois twenty-five years ago at a summer resort in Lois's Michigan hometown. They remained in touch and stayed close enough that Cathy flew back to the U.S. for our wedding, then eventually settled in the US herself with her husband Mark, who's also from England. In this episode, Cathy and Mark talk about meeting, marrying for a green card (mostly joking), and building a life across two apartments, one house, and 48 states. One of the parts of their story is especially fascinating to me: their two kids speak with British accents at home and American accents with friends, and they switch mid-sentence depending on who's in the room. We dig into what that's like to witness as a parent, whether the kids even think of themselves as American, and what Cathy and Mark themselves still call "home" after eleven years - a question that gets two different, equally honest answers.

  5. 12 ago

    The Tap Water Was Better

    At thirteen years old, Nigel de Leon left Cebu City, Philippines with his mom and a one-way trip to Alberta, Canada. In this episode, Nigel talks about the small, unexpected things that stuck with him most: the taste of the tap water, the radio station playing the night he landed, and his grandmother crying at the airport as he left. Now settled in Edmonton, Nigel is a Toastmasters member and host of his own podcast, The Meetup Spot, using it to build his path toward a career in media and radio. We talk about culture shock, chasing opportunity, and what it means to call two places home.

  6. 5 ago

    Max Jess: American by Birth, Irish by Luck, Gaditano by Choice

    Max grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado. Thanks to his Irish-born mother, he has an Irish passport and a restlessness he couldn't quite explain. He left college, spent a semester in Costa Rica with essentially no Spanish, and somewhere between a host mother who spoke no English and a breakfast table breakthrough, something shifted. In Sept 2026, he moved to Cádiz, Spain, on the southwest coast near Gibraltar, and he has no intention of leaving. In this episode, Mary Lou talks with her nephew about the winding road that led him to Cádiz, the culture shock of Costa Rica, and what daily life actually looks like in a small Spanish city where the locals talk "violently but always with love." They dig into the loaded difference between the words immigrant and expat - who uses them, why it matters, and how gentrification plays into all of it. Max also shares his take on identity (firmly American, luckily Irish-passported, increasingly gaditano), what it's like to be asked about US politics everywhere he goes, and why he thinks everyone in the US should be learning Spanish. And at the end - where is home? His answer is immediate.

  7. 24 jun

    Negin Farsad: Anchor Baby, American Patriot

    Negin Farsad is a comedian, filmmaker, author, and podcaster based in New York City. She's a regular panelist on NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, the creator and star of The Muslims Are Coming!, and the author of How to Make White People Laugh. She also hosts the political comedy podcast Fake the Nation. In this conversation, Negin shares the story of how her father, a surgeon detained by the Shah's secret police over a Soviet anatomy book, eventually made his way to New Haven as part of Iran's brain drain. She talks about growing up in Roanoke, Virginia and Palm Springs, California, longing to be Mexican, speaking Farsi to her daughter, and the heartbreak of not being able to return to Iran for over 20 years. She also makes a pretty compelling case that immigration is great for the economy, even if you don't like empanadas. (You do like empanadas, right?) This episode was recorded in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the week of Negin's show The Muslims Are Coming! with Equally Threatening Friends.

  8. 3 jun

    Home Depends on Who I'm Talking To

    Frank is the only American-born member of our family, and the one who had to figure out how to become an immigrant in reverse. A conversation about names, leaving, and what home really means.

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"Where are you really from?" It's a simple question with a complicated answer. The Immigrant Perspective is a podcast dedicated to the voices of those who live between two worlds - exploring the nostalgia, the culture shock, and the triumphs of the migration journey. We move past the small talk and dive into the rich, messy tapestry of what it means to find home in a new land.

Información

  • Creador
    The Immigrant Perspective
  • Años de actividad
    2026
  • Episodios
    17
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © @2026 The Immigrant Perspective
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    The Immigrant Perspective

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