April 2023

65. How Dario Wolos Turned a Taco into Tacombi The secret sauce: a love of language, culture, and family

2023-04-26T16:11:34-04:00By |Episodes|

65. How Dario Wolos Turned a Taco into Tacombi. (The secret sauce: a love of language, culture, and family) When you wrap your appetite around a Tacombi taco, here’s what you’ll taste: Tradition Culture Family Authenticity And possibly the best taco you’ve ever had. In this episode, Tacombi founder Dario Wolos shares his journey as an entrepreneur who is building a brand that honors the food, culture, and family values of the Mexico that have been part of his life from childhood. Language as lodestar As a youngster, Dario was shaped [...]

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March 2023

64. A Global Audio Storyteller: The Journey of Martina Castro

2023-03-29T07:52:32-04:00By |Episodes|

64.  A Global Audio Storyteller: The Journey of Martina Castro Maybe it was because her father was always listening to NPR. Perhaps it came from wanting to study a language she never heard in her bilingual home. Or possibly it was her lifelong love affair with opera and singing arias, “a very big part of my life,” she says. AN EAR FOR WHAT WASN’T BEING SPOKEN Whatever the reason, the Uruguayan American Martina Castro, the powerhouse behind Duolingo’s multilingual podcasts, had heard a need for something that was long missing in [...]

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63. Chef Pati Jinich’s Recipe for Reaching Across Cultures

2023-03-15T10:10:58-04:00By |Episodes|

EPISODE 63. Chef Pati Jinich’s Recipe for Reaching Across Cultures Photo by Pati Jinich “Here's the thing that we all need to know. And it's life lessons. It's just like making pancakes or rice or so many things in life. “You’re not going to get it the first time around. “You’re going to have the tools, you're going to have the correct ingredients, I'm giving you the right instructions with so many tips. But regardless of all that, you need to repeat and to try it many times, and [...]

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62. Writing in Two Worlds: How a Peruvian American Novelist Embraces Her Bilingualism

2023-03-01T09:06:06-05:00By |Episodes|

EPISODE 62. Writing in Two Worlds: How a Peruvian American Novelist Embraces Her Bilingualism Natalia Sylvester’s newest novel for teens, Breathe and Count Back from Ten, was a 2022 Today Show Pick, and just recently won two awards from the American Library Association. Her newest novel for adults, Everyone Knows You Go Home, won an International Latino Book Award. The audio version of Breathe…, narrated by Frankie Corzo, won an award from AudioFile magazine. “I just love her work,” Natalia says of Frankie. “It’s such an incredible process when I listen to [...]

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February 2023

61. Where Children’s Books Become Bilingual

2023-02-15T07:21:36-05:00By |Episodes|

EPISODE 61. Where Children’s Books Become Bilingual Arthur Levine (L) and Antonio Gonzalez Cerna of Levine Querido Publishing recorded our conversation in Guadalajara, Mexico, when they were in town for the Guadalajara Book Fair. When Arthur Levine, a longtime American book publisher, bought the rights to publish, as he called it, a “very British” new children’s book on this side of the pond, it was not because he thought it would become as popular as, say, Harry Potter. It was because “if you limit yourself to writers from your own [...]

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60. Crossing the Borderlands

2023-02-01T14:04:08-05:00By |Episodes|

Episode 60. Crossing the Borderlands of America's Immigration Brenda Piñero “I do consider Puerto Rico a borderland of the United States,” says Brenda Piñero of her homeland. Brenda left the island—an American territory rather than a state—after getting her law degree at the University of Puerto Rico. But she could not stay away from borderlands. She’s now an attorney who is part of a pro bono asylum representation project based in Harlingen, Texas. The border with Mexico is a scant 28 miles away. Brenda works [...]

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March 2022

Six More Spanish Words English Should Adopt

2023-03-10T10:35:43-05:00By |Articles|

English is already well seasoned with Spanish. Not just place names like Colorado and Florida, and not just food words like tacos and enchiladas, but also nouns so firmly established in English that we need no synonyms—nouns like canyon, silo, plaza and rodeo. Yet we could use some more—specifically, six more Spanish words that may serve to strengthen family ties, and for which no English equivalents exist. There’s a name for us I encountered the first of these family-member words from author Joseph Keenan in his book, Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, which I recently discovered. [...]

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January 2018

21. Preview of Season Two (A Minisode)

2018-01-03T14:22:23-05:00By |Episodes|

Preview of Season Two (A Minisode) As we close Season One of America the Bilingual, we are filled with gratitude for the hundreds of interviewees—teachers, scholars, and bilinguals of all types. Thank you for answering our incessant questions and adding your voices to our first 20 episodes. We will resume our schedule with Season Two on March 28th, 2018. In the meantime, we’re in production on a dozen new episodes, including: How Monolingual English-speaking Parents Can Raise Bilingual Children Says Allison Altmann, the mother of 14-month old Charlotte, “I’d love Charlotte to be able to speak [...]

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December 2017

Podcast Index for Teachers, Parents and School Superintendents

2019-12-17T13:55:05-05:00By |Articles|

Here's an index of podcasts by subject matter for teachers, parents and school administrators. Dual Immersion—for those interested in the benefits of teaching languages in the elementary schools Episode 24         Dual-Language Education, Report #1: The Revolution Begins Episode 25         Dual-Language Education, Report #2: Winds of Change Go-To for Teachers—encouragement and ideas Episode 12          Eastern Star: The Nick Staffa story Episode 17          When a gap year becomes a bridge year Episode 18          Bill Weir Loves Language Teachers— Wishes He Had Listened to His Validators for Language Students—for students wondering if language learning is worth it Episode [...]

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