Without Borders

Stories-Essays

How to Tell Stories for a Worldwide Audience

How do you tell stories for a worldwide audience? There's no one-size-fits-all solution in a modern, globalized world where storytelling is laden with intertextuality and memetic devices. You need to learn the universal themes and values while honing your craft by studying plot devices and how people speak. But who

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Stories-Essays

December 2022 Collection

Happy New Year! Here's the December PDF collection for all of you who don't want to strain your eyes. As paid members, you have access to PDFs you can print or read on your Kindle. Please let me know if you have any complaints about the font or anything like

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E12 - Misconceptions about French Socialism & Work Culture

Keaton Jackson shares his experience as a landscaper in Vancouver, Canada and Paris, France. He shares his insight on what it's like to be a union worker versus a private employee and the difference between working in Canada and France. Nolan and Keaton also discuss certain misconceptions some people have

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Language Learning

E11 - Empowering Women through Borderless with Tima Deryan

Nolan and Tima expand on last week's episode and dive into the different ways people can become part of the Borderless NGO. They discuss feminism, gender essentialism, and how Tima empowers Arabic women around the world. Tima Deryan became the 1st Lebanese woman and youngest Arab to summit Mount Everest

Stories-Essays

God's Paperwork

“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy." Kafka. Prologue March 2020 The soul-sucking virus, here known as a bureaucrat, ripped the paper and tore Ana's heart. "Nu pari un român cu adevărat," You don't sound like a proper Romanian, he said loudly enough for

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Language Learning

Episode 10 - Youngest Arab to Summit Mount Everest Joins Borderless

Tima Deryan became the 1st Lebanese woman and youngest Arab to summit Mount Everest, but you can learn about that on CNN, BBC, Aljazeera, and every major news channel. In today's episode, we focus on the Borderless NGO. Borderless is an independent Lebanese non-profit organization with a mission to create

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Language Learning

Episode 9 - Breaking American Stereotypes

"Opinions shouldn't define who you are; if they do, you'll never change them." Walden Hudson describes people's stereotypes about him as an American and how he works to break them. Nolan and Walden differ in their views about gun control but discover they have more in common than they think.

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Stories-Essays

November 2022 Collection

"I can't stand reading on a computer or phone all day," I say. That's a bit ironic coming from someone trying to create an online community with an independent subscription service. I've skipped out on countless articles because I was no longer in the mood to stare at my phone

Stories-Essays

Death & Culture

There's no way to pull me apart from the others. We're held together by what I can only describe as a magnetic force. It's as though our energy has been converted into a meaningless and inevitable task we have no control over. Even my sense of self is disintegrating into

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Language Learning

Episode 8 - A Tearing Decision During COVID - Transcript

Nolan Yuma and Walden Hudson expand on their previous conversation about work culture in the United States versus New Zealand. Waldon Hudson (IG @Walden.Hudson) opens up about his family and friends that passed away during the COVID Pandemic and one of the most heart-wrenching choices he ever had to

Stories-Essays

Can We Morally Accuse a Culture?

"It's our culture" is a common rebuttal when people criticize cultural practices such as eating shark soup, child beauty pageants, swimming with dolphins, bear baiting, eating Fois Gras, binge drinking, Zwarte Piet, bullfighting, child fellatio, female genital mutilation, ritual child sacrifice, attending a Nicki Manaj concert—this list could go

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Language Learning

Episode 7 - Bogans, Rednecks and Nudity in New York

You can access the Spotify episode here for free. Nolan Yuma and Walden Husdon relive their first encounter and reveal how Nolan ended up naked in Times Square and in Walden's manager's basement. Walden then tells the story of how he went from being a model and actor in New

Language Learning

Only a Fool Learns a Language

For those who don't want to laugh, you can scroll past the videos and right to juicy psych deets. To learn a language, you can't be afraid to make a fool out of yourself. Some of you might need to ease into embarrassment by messing up a few verb conjugations

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Language Learning

Episode 6 - Cultural differences Between Japan and North America - Transcript & Language Notes

Stories-Essays

Japanese Food for Thought

You don't need to be a cultural psychologist to know that culture influences how you raise a child, create business structures, physically distance yourself, and what you value. But did you know culture influences how you see horizons, your levels of trust, embarassbility, types of mental illnesses you're subject to,

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Language Learning

First 5 Episodes: Transcripts + Language Notes

I launched the first five episodes to give people a better idea about the podcast. Last week, I launched the trailer: Without Borders Trailer 0:00/1:331× And the first episode: An Easier Life in Sri Lanka than the UK Renuke Samarsignhe went from telling servants to pour him

Stories-Essays Featured

How to Understand Culture & Weird People

First off, what is culture? Food, traditions, language, and so on, right? Well yeah, but we need a better explanation than that at Without Borders. So, let's get a bit academic here and use Richerson & Boyd's definition. Culture is any information acquired from other members of one's species through social

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Language Learning

An Easier Life in Sri Lanka than the UK - Episode 1 - Transcript & Langauge Notes

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Stories-Essays

October Collection PDF

"I can't stand reading on a computer or phone all day," I say. That's a bit ironic coming from someone trying to create an online community with an independent subscription service. I've skipped out on countless articles because I was no longer in the mood to stare at my phone

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Screw Plan B, I'm going Balls Deep

Language Learning

Correct Transcriptions and Spoken English Quickly

Transcription + Grammarly = Improved English. Transcription + Grammarly = Quicker transcription editing. Alright. That was the extent of my math career. When I started my podcast and vlog Without Borders, I knew I wanted to help English learners with transcripts. I already knew that transcribing would be a pain in the ass, but

Stories-Essays

Social Media Alternatives

In my last post, "Yuval Noah Harari: Hero and Hypocrite," I ended it with a promise to look into ethical, social media alternatives or ways to change social media. I was immediately overwhelmed and had difficulty tracing back some claims to academic journals and legitimate research. Fortunately, my friend, Dexter

Stories-Essays

Yuval Noah Harari: Hero and Hypocrite

"…People who shone at school and don't understand why that hasn't made them happy have Harari." * Helen Lewis. That quote hit home. It has sat with me since August 15th, 2018. No, I don't remember the exact date because I had some life-changing revelation. I just looked it up when

Language Learning

Spanish Learning Podcasts

Cops and reckless drivers wouldn't be pleased with how I learn Spanish—at least when it comes to podcasts. If you see a gilipollas shredding down the bike paths, ignoring cross lights, and hopping onto sidewalks, it might be me. The way I bike is the way people in South

errores de un guiri

¿Qué es un Guiri?

Soy un guiri. ¿Qué es “guiri?” Un guiri es un extranjero que vive en España. Alguien que pone ketchup en la tortilla, mezcla los verbos estar y ser, deja propinas, busca restaurantes abiertos entre las 15:00 y 20:00, sale al club a las diez, llora en el ayuntamiento,