This is You. (So I think...?)
You, In Three Visualizations
Hello, I’m Gregory, creator of NPR’s Rough Translation podcast. If you haven’t subscribed yet to my newsletter, consider hitting this button to never miss a post.
Two mind readers bump into each other on the street. The first one says:
“You’re fine. How am I?”
🙋😍👾🌷🐝👻🍡💙🏃🌇🌀😜
In this post I’m going to assume the role of mind reader. I’m going to tell you about you. At the end you can tell me what I got wrong. Because, I have been blown away by all the new subscriptions to this Substack, and naturally I’m wondering, who? Who is this group of lovely individuals that have taken the time to join me here? What commonalities do we share? Many of you are here because you’ve enjoyed my podcast, Rough Translation, but what else is like-minded about this community? Does part of you cringe at the word “like-minded?” Is that a shared trait? Understanding who you are will help me understand what this is. This newsletter. This community. And what we are doing together in the great unknown that is this Fall, after I depart NPR.
Now, onto the mind-reading.
#1: You are global.
Not mind-reading but map-reading: You are joining us from 48 states and 68 countries. When I looked last week, it was 48 states and 64 countries, so welcome to the 4 new pins. 🇧🇷🇨🇳🇹🇿🇦🇺. (This map is only visible to page admins, but Substack programmers if you’re reading this, it would be great to be able to put a public-facing map that new subscribers can see and slap a flag on the place they’re joining from?)
But maps only tell part of the story. Join a chat and tell us where you joined and one place you’re curious about. And if you can, help us color in the map. Do you know someone in a different country (or in North or South Dakota) who might like to know about this newsletter? Could we - here’s an ambitious thought - build this Substack into as global a community as the Rough Translation podcast? (That’s why you’re here, right? Right? That’s my question of course.)
#2. You Roam. Or Dream of Roaming, Sometimes.
In a poll I posted last month, I asked who you might want me to interview in a future version of Rough Translation. Authors? Academics? Entrepreneurs? Celebrities? As I was posting the poll I included an additional category (one that I’d never actually seen as a category): Global Nomads.
Wanna take a guess at your top choice?
Which of course got me thinking about us. What does it say about us that 3 out of 4 responders want to hear about the lives of people with no fixed address? Is it travel tips you desire? Vicarious adventure? Schadenfreude? Freudenfreude? Are you a digital nomad or are you considering becoming one? Or are you someone who looks at the nomads flooding your town and think oh god there go the rents?
#3. You Feel Like An Outsider, Even In Your In-Group.
I’m taking a leap here. But on Wednesday I asked you if you ever found yourself thinking like an anthropologist in social situations, observing your friends’ habits and social signals like a young Zora Neale Hurston or Margaret Mead.
84% of you said yes. That says something. After all, people who feel entirely at home in their social group don’t also find themselves often or sometimes standing at a distance from that group, observing them. A bit of alienation can help us see. “Fish discover water last,” goes the Ethiopian proverb.
But lately, I’ve started to wonder if feeling like a bit of an outsider, even in your in-group, is also a sort of membership card. I think about the overwhelming response from listeners to Rough Translation, when we asked you: “Do people ever speak to you like you're a part of a group that you feel you don't belong to? Do you check off one set of boxes in the United States, but identify as something different overseas, or even in your own community?” We ended up doing a two-parter from all those responses, “Our Boxes, Ourselves” and then, “Boxing Back.”
The theme of those episodes was about the painful feelings of not-belonging. The idea of this Substack, though, is to imagine a place where not-belonging is a superpower. In a world of increasing polarization and us-and-them thinking, we need those powers of observing ourselves and our social groups. So in the coming months, I will talk to people who excel at these observational skills. As I wrote in a post on Wednesday: “How do we listen to awkward silences, discover the invisible, and hear what people are not saying?”
How Did I Do?
How much does my version of “you” resonate with you? Let me know in the comments.
Just want to say the nomad option in your poll didn't ring my bell as much as wanting to hear voices of people "living abroad." I moved overseas from the US after spending a few years without a fixed address, and the difference between these two ways of being is large. The "nomad lifestyle" isn't something I would enjoy hearing about unless it was highly critical of the way it's hyped in certain circles. Hearing insights from people who have established residency in another land and adapted to a different culture (or not adapted!) get much deeper at questions about belonging, social ties, communication, and stepping out of fixed beliefs. This is what always resonated for me most with the podcast.
I was disappointed to see global nomads come in first bc I’m not so interested in stories of travel, but maybe I’m missing something or many of us interpreted global nomad differently. If you mean something like the family that moved to Japan and talked about the experience of their son in public school there then I’m all for it.