Where I Live: The Listener Holiday Special

send in little audio postcards showing us where you live, what it's like there, what

“it sounds like, and what people might be getting wrong about the places that you call”

home. I thought of doing this episode because I live in Portland, Oregon, my beautiful hometown, and I got to thinking about how in the news this year Portland was supposed to be the scary scary city being taken over by non-binary anarchists, I guess, and

first of all I wish. And second of all, what that kept making me think about was how

Portland is to me a city where especially in the fall when a lot of people have more fruit than they can deal with. If you're out for a walk, and I would say most neighborhoods, there's boxes and bags of pairs and apples and whatever fruit people wanted, offer to their neighbors, that are just free for the taking, and that has a lot more to do with what anarchism is about than any kind of violence that we see

in our cities. And of course, the idea that Portland is a scary place is one that was used and weaponized this year as an excuse to send dangerous representatives of our federal government into it. So we wanted to make a little something to bring a little bit of balance to the way that we are seeing each other and to kind of let us feel part of a bigger community. And if there are places in the world or in the

United States where we're going to spend most of our time because that's where most

of our voice memos ended up being from. If their places where you've always wanted

to visit or wish that you knew somebody, after listening to this episode, you're going to know somebody there. We loved getting to listen to every single submission that people sent in. And we wanted to just share the joy that we felt both getting to hear your stories and about your homes and also just this feeling of being picked up and taken around the world and getting introduced to all these

lovely human beings. And hearing about the ways that you're finding to care for your communities, keep finding joy. If you're a Santa type of person, I certainly am,

we want this to feel free like a ride in Santa's sleigh. And if not, you can choose

whatever magical conveyance you prefer. The music you're going to hear in this episode is by Magpie Cinema Club and Magpie Cinema Club is our producer and

“Miranda Zickler and musician A.J. McKinley. Now let's climb on board, shall we?”

I'm from Denmark and I'm making this recording from my living room where I'm sitting in me and my partners old sofa, which we got from the Danish equivalent of eBay, I guess. And I'm here with my old cat who has just been sleeping most of the day away, which I totally get because it's the middle of the day and is still so dark outside that I have turned on some lights. I'm sitting in our

pretty old house, which we luckily are just renting. I mean, I don't think we would have the money for buying anything either way, but the house is from 1860. So it has all kinds of kinks and quirks. I'm sitting in our pretty messy living room. We just, the two of us, living together. So we have hobby things all over the place, yarn and sewing projects and miniature painting, figurines and, but it's just

the two of us, so it's okay. And then our cat. And we have a Christophe Gekko too. I think we have quite a lot of pets, even for Danish standards. And today I'm just enjoying staying inside because it's so cold outside. Hello, you're on about friends. I've been a fan of the show for quite a while now. One of the things I really love about it is how much joy that it finds in the mundane. And I feel

like that kind of, sort of like relates to the feelings that I have about the places where I call home. So I'm from Great Manchester in England. And that's

“how, that's what they always say when people ask me, I say I'm from Great”

Manchester. Even though that's not really a town. It's like the whole county, which is made up of like a collection of sort of small mining towns. But

in a different way. As for example, Lee is a place where all the rugby players

“were leopard print. And it's the place where I learnt how to use a bow and arrow,”

which is now a huge part of my life. Wigan is the place where everyone lives pies. And it's the place where everyone gets into fancy dress on boxing day. And I actually

got my first ever paid right in job going out into the street and interviewing people

about why they do this every year. Central Manchester is the sort of big central city and it's the place where I live now. It has these pictures of bees all over the place from sort of the city's role in the industrial revolution where a lot of the workers were called referred to as worker bees. And it's this weird combination

“of this really old working class industrial past with sort of these huge glass buildings”

now now that sort of the gentrification of it is started. But to me it's the place where I learnt to pour a pint and it's the place where I really found my voice and actually learned how to talk to other human beings and not be afraid of them. Bolton is where my

parents live. It's the place where my dogs run out to greet me and where my heart always

feels just kind of warm. And it's also the birthplace of filming the Coke which is pretty cool too. So that's great Manchester and each one of these places is home to me in a different way and it's not so much pleasure to live there.

“I am mothered so I live in a community of about 20 people and also on a trailer park in Germany”

we're very lucky to have a lot of space and also a lot of dogs so I try to encapsulate some sounds for you to for you to better imagine how it is and also to send some good

feelings and I don't know everything you need maybe it's strength maybe it's resilience

maybe it's something totally different. So yes when when it gets colder you hear wood shopping throughout the day. So next to our home there are train rails and once every other week or so and a very old train passes by and this time sadly I didn't get the true true but I did get the train pass. Also speaking of true true we have this wonderful habit of when someone has cooked for everyone

and that's someone sounds the trumpet and tonight it sounded like this so with this charming sound and also the fireworks that you might hear in the background yeah I wish you all a good time and again I send you all the good things yeah thank you for the podcast and I'm really excited to listen to all the other postcards yeah bye. Hi Sarah hi everyone and you're on the part community and I wanted to share with you what it's like standing on our balcony which is

in the city of Bonn that was the capital of West Germany until 1990 and we actually do have some ring-necked parakeets living here in Bonn and also in other seats along the river Rhine like Cologne in the 1960s I guess they just started spreading and I don't know if you know but usually in Germany we have the usual birds like pigeons or I don't know a crowd here in there but yeah parakeets that's that special and when we moved here into our new flat a year ago

I don't know it just made the whole thing more special and when I'm having a hard day which given the situation in in a lot of countries but also in Germany where everyone's moving to the far right it feels like I don't know when I'm having a hard day for this or that reason stepping onto the balcony and just watching them and be able to watch them and listen to these unusual habitants of the city I don't know just puts a smile on my face sometimes and I appreciate them

very much and I appreciate you for doing the podcast and everyone listening to it I hope you're all okay

happens just before the sun comes up

“because up Lanka isn't an noisy city so this is usually the only time”

I actually hear it as the rest of the day it's it's delivery motorcycles all day yeah you hear it from all directions and then we up high on the fifth floor

hi Sarah this is calf and I'm leaving you a message from South Africa

it is a warm overcast drizzly day in the eastern Cape in a tiny little town called Hamburg

“on the coast right down at the bottom of the African continent you can hear the birds”

you probably can't hear the rain because it's very light but it isn't absolutely beautiful day and I hope you can hear what everything sounds like contrary to what your president I beg your pardon not your president has been saying they're a suit and you know why do you want to sign going on out here I live in the farmlands and it's

“one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived in my life so sending you love and”

end of the year wishes from South Africa hello world I'm speaking to you from San Juan Puerto Rico my home it is almost 11 p.m. I'm still outside in my garden and I won't bore you with too many details but what's been said about Puerto Rico in the media recently tonight I just want to share with you some of the sounds from my garden oh, you enjoy these chirping sound you're hearing by the way

those are frogs that is Elgokim and is an academic frog species from Puerto Rico and when you grow up from Puerto Rico as I did this is your favorite sound in the entire world

I can never imagine that there will be someone who did not love this sound as much as we do

but kind of find out nice and people have been moving to Puerto Rico and a few past years but don't find this sound classy at all and they want to get rid of Elgokim but the Gokir is in Kornan where and near where you seasons greetings from my home in South Florida it is a beautiful afternoon along the ocean I'm here listening to the waves that appreciate the fact that there's a nice cool wind

the cold front that's coming through this evening Florida is walking along the beach and watching

my morning coffee as I walk my dog walk to the canal that lines my neighborhood and try to spot a

“shark for a ray for a crocodile Florida is the wonderful community of people that I have found”

Florida is a place that can be really hard to love Florida is a place that is constantly under threat and yet Florida is a place where there is so much abundance and joy so much celebration so much diversity it is a place that makes me feel safe these people inspired I really hope that everyone is able to find a place that feels like home in the way that this does for me

Hi Sarah and all of my other fellow listeners and travelers on this road of life

greetings from Noel in Louisiana I have lived all over the state throughout my 40 plus years my father was a Methodist minister when I was a child so we kind of went where the church sent him and that was as far north as the rolling red clay hills of Lassal parish lots of tall timber grown-up fair and harvested and processed to paper mills and as far south as these swampy swamps of well as swampy swamp is slide out or the North Shore get I guess but the place that I want to

tell you about the place I remember most it consider home the most are what's known as the

Cagian prairies and that is in the of well Saint Landry parish area of the state it is very

“agrarian and I think of the seasons as harvest seasons right now most of the fields are full”

of or about to be emptied of sugarcane and in November and December the roads are covered in little bits of sugarcane debris and no one wants to get behind a cane truck and the rice fields are actually crawfish fields now and you'll see big nets with birds sitting on top trying to steal a little crawfish or two and those will be enjoyed and the spring when the rice is planted again the uncles that live on the road by my mom and my grandmother grew corn and soybeans and wheat

and the soybeans were planted in the spring and harvested in the early summer and the corn was

“harvested in the late summer and the smell of fermented soybeans that remained and then the smell”

and the sight of the husks of the corn that flew up in the late summer when you hoped for rain to settle it and just cycles of life with crops and harvest and the gardens that my grandparents kept those are home to me and the food of course the food North Louisiana is not very well seasoned but oh man my grandmother could make some rice and gravy hello you're wrong about this is genitive hi you're wrong about my name is Grace and I want to tell you

about my favorite place on earth and I've been many many places so I feel qualified to say this I've lived here most of my life moved here when I was four so I really have very little memories of where I was before and that's Houston Texas and I live about an hour drive away from Houston Texas it's my hometown it's where I grew up and it's where I came back to as an adult because nowhere else has a soul like Houston does and I would say that this day for all its problems can be quite beautiful

Houston is one of the most diverse cities in the entire country all my life I've haven't been able to go very far without hearing Spanish or Chinese or Vietnamese it's huge and it's sprawling and it's chaotic and it's messy the buildings and the streets are built on top of each other and there are no zoning laws and we're way too invested in highways instead of public transit we're everything is crowded and the traffic is endless but it is also beautiful

and authentic and resilient the people the culture the food it's also bright so life given

evening walks because no matter where we go somebody is playing baseball or soccer people are having

picnics in the grass and playing fetch with their dogs couples are walking along the trails in the paths kids are learning how to ride bikes and it's just so human and it's so beautiful and in the spring the blue bonnets bloom for all of two weeks and everyone rushes to take pictures of them pictures of themselves pictures of their pets pictures of their children in every time that I have felt really ground down in the last year because of the state of things all it takes is one trip to a neighborhood

“park to remember that we're still here and they're still joy here and there's beauty here too”

I think people get the wrong idea of Texas because the only things they hear are the things that

the people empower here want them to know but the truth is for the last three decades a handful of

really wealthy people who want the state to look like their own personal Christian nationalist views have funded a very effective campaign to make sure the only people who win elections think like them so the people of Texas don't really have any representation at the top of our state and what you see is what those people want and not who we are I love Texas I love Houston and I always love this crazy place I think we're we're fighting for this is Cara from Nashville Tennessee

I actually have South of Nashville in a place called Lamson County which is the richest county

“in Tennessee and of course that means the most Republican the most madda”

but I persist nevertheless in one of the things I've been doing this year is I wear a lot of gay shit I have a lot of gay t-shirts I have rainbow sweaters I have rainbow sneakers I have tons of little rainbow bracelets and whenever I'm out and about here in Lymphs and County running errands or whatever I wear at least one gay I don't partially just because I'm very proud of the fact that I figured out that I'm bisexual or pansexual later in life and also because I'm of a certain age

and I really don't give a shit anymore so I really would love for that old man staring at me and like being really mad at me for wearing a t-shirt this is lesbian on it in Walmart I want him to make a fuss because I would love to talk back to him because I don't care anymore it's the blessing

“of not having any fuchs and I try my best to be allowed visibly queer person to give cover to those”

folks who are less comfortable being out and proud and are afraid right now because I know they have good reason to be afraid so I'm just as loud and obnoxious in this gay as I possibly can be and one of the best things is when I go out and about people all the time say I love your rainbow sweater I love that shirt that's such a great message because I really do believe there are more of us than there are of them and most people just want everybody to be able to pursue what they want and be left alone

and live their lives so I hold on to that and I hold on to the birds I come outside almost every morning and listen to the birds I have a bird feeder I have a bird tracker app so I guess I'm a bird or now and let's listen to this morning we have robins we have cardinals we have starlings and um sparrows so let's listen to these little birds just be happy I refilled the bird feeder My name is Hannah I'm currently in Oakland, California but I want to talk about my hometown of

Memphis, Tennessee there are so many things I love about Memphis getting chosen the AC and the summer and stepping outside feeling the weight of the humid air hearing cicadas drinking honey sickle nectar in the backyard of my sister and last winter going to stack recording studio with my dad and listening to Otis Redding saying about sitting by the dock of the bay I grew up in Memphis until college leaving is my relationship with home was becoming complicated I'm now a

nurse in the reflective health but when I was a teenager I'd only just started to notice the way adults treated my sexuality I need a bridge control yet also somehow not existing I couldn't articulate that tension then let alone my queerness as so many teenage girls are I was just angry

all the time I first got involved with abortion organizing on the state level but the defeats were

Atlanta for college which felt impossibly cosmopolitan for the first time my interests were welcomed

“and my anger may be determined I found queer family that made it harder to have his at home”

were my parents were navigating a painful divorce I looked to my graduation in 2020 with excitement for independence in Georgia and being more openly queer but it didn't happen that way I had to move back to Memphis the days notice my plans changed I break up a naming job graduation on Facebook live that grief I made the best of it by moving out of my dad's house into a studio in the Kuperyang neighborhood I went on long walks in a city that I hadn't known as an adult wondering if

I'd ever feel the sense of belonging at last as travel became possible again I visited a friend in San Francisco and went into a queer history museum in the Castro I cried reading about the local activism that had happened there not only because it had happened but the reverence with which it was being spoken about but down by resisting the conservative bent of my nursing program I could

“barely imagine something like this in Memphis I started working in birth in abortion came out”

moved back to Atlanta then to Oakland I returned to Memphis last summer and was driving past the science and history museum known locally as the pink palace and managed and surrendered to the city when the founder of pigly wiggly went bankrupt when I saw a sign for a Pride month exhibit I stepped into a museum I'd last been to a kid their recognized names and places for my childhood in a new light I saw photos of a lesbian bookstore that had been just blocks in my studio until

it closed in the 90s a building I'd walk past dozens of times to write conservatives Memphis is nothing more than a place to project a racist moral panics about crime on too to many coastal liberals like in California here it's backwards an unsafe space a place to pity but this is what I

want to hold as home in Memphis that we've always been inventing and reinventing new worlds for

“taking care of each other we just have to notice I live in the highly desirable rapidly gentrifying”

oasis of purple and a deeply red state Charleston South Carolina we are a destination for problematic plantation weddings and roving tropes of bachelor at parties everyone wants to move here and seemingly has since remote work became accessible post 2020 we have everything hurricanes flooding so much flooding traffic made worse by non-existent infrastructure racist senators and corrupt politicians amazing food beaches and Spanish moss covered live oak trees google strand feeding dolphins

Charleston is a drinking town with a historic problem mosquitoes were invented here I love it I moved to Charleston about 13 years ago from another series of southern towns so I knew what I was getting into for the most part uh but let's go back to the gentrification the thing that people love most about my fair town the charm the small retailers the local cuisine the locals are being pushed out by big bad developers and the con daynast adherence

Charleston is becoming less and less Charleston every day and it's not because of the new people coming in but because of the lack of incentives and programming in place to keep current businesses and residents to stay Jordan Amaker from low country local first says gentrification is a policy failure losing character is a failure of design losing demographics is a failure of policy community growth is a garden we must tend so come and visit us come move here with me and my john's island native

husband but uh shop local shop small and buy from local businesses not just this holiday but all year this is my audio post card from my backyard in Charleston South Carolina I grew up here in chis and a closet queer kid who felt so alone I sought refuge online on my one direction tumblr making friends only with my mucials I swore I was going to get out of this town as soon as

I could and never look back the appeal Charleston had to tourists and forever locals was confusing

to me when I was younger the beauty here is abundant in everywhere in the wetlands and in the people it all just felt obvious and surface level and I was completely bored by it I had a couple pretty traumatic events happened in my late teens in early 20s and I was extremely lost and I started acting out so I blamed the city I moved to New York City at 23 and was taught new ideals that the south shielded me from I came out and I realized I'm beautiful to you but I'm not

a Charleston tent in 2023 I had some mental health issues pop up and I knew I needed to be back in the low country when I moved back I made a big effort to be uncomfortable and search for connection with my newfound identity and from beliefs I feel I found community and friendship that

I never have before within the arts all my friends are so incredibly talented it made me feel

driven to create and be better I also reached out to my childhood best friend and rekindled our

about playing remains at folly beach or doing the puzzle I think about her and her sons and the lasting impacts they played on me the jaded view I used to have of the city and the landscape is all gone now because of the friends who reintroduced me to its beauty now when I look at the wetlands I don't look past them I look at them with all like how my friend Esther showed me to

“when I think of my best friend Aurora I think of shaking us on a Friday night at recovery room”

tavern with a PBR in hand peanut butter waffles and black coffee at waffles house and chains looking cigarettes while dolphin watching that sunrise park things I used to think we're pouring now are precious I overheard a conversation once about some people moving away and then coming home and when the girl said look around we all end up back in Charleston those words used to feel like a death sentence but now feel comforting if you ever move here or you live here now and are struggling

to make friends it's a magical place full of important history beautiful ecosystems in wildlife and in hidden pockets are some of the most kindhearted and genuine people you just have to be

“willing to search for them hi Sarah and you're wrong about listeners my name's Irina and I'm calling”

you from a beautiful Richmond Virginia I wanted to talk about the thing that has kept me going not just in the last year but for the last five plus years which is my local mutual aid network it's called Matter VA mutual aid distribution Richmond we in the first few weeks of the COVID pandemic got together a bunch of folks to distribute food to people who couldn't leave their homes

we crowdfunded we got amazing produce donations from home gardeners and from local farms we did

that through 2021 and then in 2023 we opened a free grocery store called the metalbridge community market in a neighborhood called north side which lives under food apartheid and since April of 2023 so

“going on almost three years we have been providing groceries and hygiene supplies and mental”

supplies and COVID tests and baby supplies to about 200 families every week and we are trying to buy the building that this store operates out of so we can permanently commit to this neighborhood this community and making sure that people have the food that they need giving food to people for free is a political act just because snap is back doesn't mean that there are not millions of families not getting in a food not getting good nutritious food not getting treats we also have

treats because everyone deserves that and we're going to keep doing this as far as long as we possibly

can we operate in an amazing network of other mutual aid orgs like our community fridges

silvia sisters that gives us mental products little hands like it's a baby products the Richmond reproductive freedom project which is an abortion fund and we all operate together to try to make Richmond a better more equitable place for everyone my name is Elizabeth that I live in Washington DC and this is not a postcard about the national guard or the number of active police forces in the city which is preposterous or the absolute scourge upon the earth

that are Republican lawmakers from other states that come to our city to just talk shit about us and try to overrule local government this is about club banner care one of the best things about living in DC banner is the public pool in my neighborhood and on the weekends in the summer the DJ who is really the head of lifeguard plays bump in music it's wall the wall people and it's

an incredible experience I love DC and I knew it was home about two weeks after I got off the

plane from the middle of the country and I hope that everyone finds a home the way that I did when I came here my name is Jillian and I currently live in Washington DC for me it's especially insane to have to continually remind myself that none of this is normal because for someone with my privileges the rate at which it became normal was a lot faster than I thought it would be so I love DC and I also just wanted to shout out two people that have made this place home there are a lot of fantastic

seen each other through that dates and tickets and of course the continued down fall of our democracy as we know it they made me pancakes on my first day of grad school and give me IB profile when I'm too lazy to buy my own and at a point in our lives where we're seeing a lot of emphasis put on starting a family and finding romantic love and all the other fun had our own normative stuff I'm really really proud of the platonic family and the home I've already built for myself with these two

incredible women and you know as I leave to start a new chapter of my life and I'm a little bit

worried about moving back to where I grew up I'm really comforted because I know that no matter where I am as long as they're in this city I'll find a part of home here. Hello I am sitting here on the first really sleedy rainy cold dark day of winter on my couch cutled up with world

“snuggliest French bulldog making lots of snow noises as I sip a really nice coffee but I think”

what's remarkable about where I am is that I'm in a place that is truly safe and beautiful but much like Portland it's a place that many people want you to think is ugly and dangerous

and that is Washington DC. Specifically I live on Capitol Hill with the aforementioned bulldog

and it's been a really difficult several months for our city we are having neighbors snatched by ice and secret police roaming our streets and national guardsmen on our streets and it's challenging to live with the duality of it but there are people living full lives with beautiful families and communities and neighborhoods that deserve the chance to have that without the federal intervention we've seen, without the cruelty we've seen, without the pain and hurt that we have seen

inflicted on our city but underneath it all I think it's the beauty that helps us thrive and survive and I certainly think that that's the case for me and for my bulldog as he begins to snore a little bit more so thank you for this chance to share my coffee with you this morning and to share our city with you which already belongs to all of you. I saw a TikTok yesterday where there was a man with city hall on the background and he said to the camera that I am from the city, state and

“country, a Philadelphia and I laughed because that's how it feels here there's not quite another”

place like this you can say go birds to be anything you want it depends on your inflection I guess you can say fuck around and find out because it's true, fuck around and find out is so important I think I think that we can all let things be because when you fuck around you're going to find out anyways I am a country trans plan I'm not actually from here I'm from the middle of nowhere

when I first came to Philly I felt a sense of that last puzzle piece clicking in I came over a

ridge on Route 3 coming towards Philadelphia early in the morning as the sun was rising going directly into my eyes and I saw the city skyline breaking up the rising sun and just something in me really realized that oh no this is where I'm supposed to be fast forward and we have a home we have some

“cats I have a husband that I met here I have a baby that I birthed here and I remember when I was pregnant”

being sad that my daughter wouldn't get the same upbringing as me but then I remember to myself as I thought about it for longer that I I liked it I didn't love it and maybe she'll feel the same way about living here maybe she'll want to go back to the country that I'm from the country side I should say that I'm from in central Pennsylvania but she might also love it she might not have to look for that missing puzzle piece like I did my name is Virginia and not sure if this counts but I wanted to

talk about a city that I don't currently live in but I'm in the process of moving to just toward another apartment today Philadelphia Pennsylvania City of Brotherly Love and Sebastian Stallone I just graduated from college this past May and during my senior year I just wanted to figure out where I wanted to land it's hard to define where you want to be until you're there and you just feel that connection a lot like falling in love in a lot of ways but I visited

fell in love with the people the history of the art and when I went to one of the coffee shops I just

“started a conversation with a stranger and she told me that she loves Philadelphia and she moved”

back here after living in Montreal and Boston because the people just have this attitude of if there's something that you see about the city that you don't like then you know come help that just for reminded me a lot about what you and Harmony Collangelo have discussed multiple times about you know loving a city despite its flaws and seeing what it could be and wanting to work towards that and I'm just really so excited for this next step it's really scary like incredibly

scary in a lot of ways but I'm just really excited to you know get my hands dirty and learn more

about the city and start contributing to it I am from tire swings in tool up trees and to fall in walnuts and play pretend pasta I am from Sandy Run Creek both deadly rushing water and expressway to the park I am from brick walkways leading to brick houses built in part by my own two hands and and whole by the two hands that built me I am from cousins as siblings siblings as role models in safety nets I am from honoring those who have passed from your grandmother would have loved you

and KC watch over your sisters from my mom's mom's recipes simplified and discounted and anglicized Italian slang from pink fluid and bond joe v w m m r into v m g k cranked loud enough to hear over the jeep's busted transmission and the turnpike wind rustling our

“hair I am from nothing secret nothing sacred from dog hair on the couch and cement in the dryer”

all else a guise of pristine there is no state in the united states that people get more wrong about the new jersey I should know because I from here live here on my life you can do an entire web series on just one region of new jersey and still have enough leftover for a side podcast

see the first mix conception is that new jersey is just one state when it is in fact three

there is north jersey heavily influenced by New York City that is full of both whole people and city people there is south jersey heavily influenced by Philadelphia which is full of pine barren people and beach people and then there are central jersey where I'm from that both people from north jersey and south jersey agree doesn't exist but we do in fact exist that's something that

“people in New Jersey get wrong about New Jersey all the time central jersey doesn't fact exist”

and there are many such arguments that go on within the borders of this state that make no sense to anyone else I don't blame people for leaving New Jersey New Jersey is taxing emotionally it's taxing physically and most importantly it's taxing financially it's really hard to live and exist here but if you do if you come from here there is nothing that can surprise you and there is nothing that can take you now and that's the one thing

everyone gets wrong about New Jersey underestimating us greetings from the sweet rural sprawl of jersey vania that's the intersection of western New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania a blend of worn in hundred counties New Jersey and we high north ampton and bucks counties Pennsylvania here's a place where you can have some of the weirdest streams in the country it's mighty haunted in these woods and the spirit folk just might cross

the astral thresholds into your subconscious to have a chat of course you can also enjoy yourself with the local teenagers drinking and smoking weed in the graveyard this is simultaneously one of the most boring places to grow up and rich with abandoned buildings places with much scope for the imagination and cryptids you need a card to get anywhere and that car will be filled with grungy self-described goat girls that just swam in the raretian or Delaware rivers housing is on

affordable good old boys drive trucks waving Confederate flags but the land is sacred and held dear by all the weird witchy queer punk kids and their cats who came here by accident of birth and ain't much but it's home

to you live from Rockefeller Center the weekend before Thanksgiving for quiet before the storm

“because the population of our city is about to double over the next six weeks between Thanksgiving”

and New Year's just looking to see if things are on track we have people ice skating check

the rackets are never further away from 90 minutes from performing the parade with soldiers

we got a giant tree going up in the middle of Rockefeller Center we've got the Christmas decorations going up over at sex with avenues so everything seems like it is on time and on schedule for Santa Claus is arrived down 6th Avenue here at a couple of days but through the magic of audio storytelling we're going to go up closer to where I actually live and they're the clothing or a place in just like that we are in central park

by the pond bordering the north woods and I'm heading deeper in to meet a friend who lives on

“the other side of the park for me and I think that is what the holidays are like”

or so many New Yorkers it is the glitz and the glam of New York Christmas

and just doing our best to kind of sneak away and be with the ones we care with find those private warm real intimate moments my name is Amy and I live in western Massachusetts I have four pair trees in my guard so when you talked about people in Portland giving away fruit from their trees it made me think of my pairs and how I share them with my family and my neighbors here in little western

Massachusetts I'm very involved in my library I'm very involved in my local church here and we

“spend a lot of time giving things away to our neighbors and for me that's what's helped me stay”

hopeful my children also live in my small house with me my son is just graduating from college and my daughter is seven and we are all saying to each other how can we help how can we make this little corner of the world that we live in a more peaceful place? Hi my name is Lucille I live in Johannes Massachusetts I'm Kipcott and this is a piece I wrote a little while ago everyone wants to visit in the summer it's all about the beaches in July the beach almost isn't even

necessary just walking around feels like swimming the water is 75% poison anyway in summer it's all a parking lot cars don't move and if they do they're cutting you off only to go five miles under the limit pavement it hot and squishy and the only smell in the air in fall the roads are smooth and cool and crunchy with leaves and what this is related to workers who have been repaving them for the last three years she goes out hand warmers that had been turned fuzzy with life in

our damp basement the air cools with dissipation of red sweaty bodies the ocean goes green and barren and the rocky beaches are bearable again it's not just that they're empty the sand is soft and damp and cool the lifeguard stands are abandoned stones clink against each other and dance in the tide fog settles in like the crush on the boys it's too just so worn algebra it wraps everyone in a comfortable pace of my along school pick up lines and great you

can almost see how it used to be a small fishing town before they all the chemically induced lawns and tourist traps on the highways there are these signs pointing to the bridge in peace of tsunami

and implies we'll have some sort of warning when it comes though I've never understood tsunamis

to call ahead of time to make a reservation my mother says that if there's ever tsunamis you would just let it suck her up just always too much brick traffic in the summer I tell her she should move I've heard it called the vortex as in you never get out maybe think you've gotten out you got past the bridge traffic anyway but you'll be back back to the beaches you never go to back to the highways in the pavement that's the poison water our own oncology department tourists tourists

tourists or us trapped in paradise the business workers out the buildings it's dusty

museum that I should start a blog about wailing that is going to sell the house and move south my mother tells me she'll move in with me someday that I should come home for the summer that's sure to help that she wonders if she will miss the beach I drive home from work past midnight stuck in traffic and traffic and traffic this is the light where everyone races you to get across the intersection first this is the road I would turn off when I finally learned how to drive so I could

throw away the lunch I never ate this is a long way home my dad would take if he needed to talk to me

about saying hello to his girlfriend with incorrect inflection or reading my book on the sofa a car drives by and records engine every hour on the hour marking the passage of morning afternoon night morning everyone from high school is here we pretend not to see each other I'm calling in from just outside of Halfax Nova Scotia and I hope you can hear the wind it's very gray it will be gray here until probably mid April gray skies

gray snow gray mud gray ice like a lot of things that exist in the gray area like me actually I'm trying to learn how to love it hi my name is Emily I'm writing in from Tecuronto also known as Toronto or Toronto if you're from here in Canada Tecuronto is the Mohawk word which means where there are trees in the

“water I bring that up because for me when I think about what makes Toronto Toronto it's the waters”

we are fed by three rivers that all join Lake Ontario at the south end of the city and I'm sitting by the shores of Lake Ontario right now at the ferry docks it's late November so it's cold it's about two degrees and it's snowing a bit today the water looks pretty I'm inviting unless you're a duck but being by this lake through all four seasons is one of things that I love the most about Toronto in the depths of winter the shallow parts of the lake

sometimes freeze over so much that people can actually skate on them over to the islands that are a couple of kilometers off the shore granted that's happening less and less now due to climate change but it's still pretty cool to see when it does happen I was whole area that I'm in the harbour

“front is quiet today but whenever I'm here I think about what it's like in the summer because”

there's an art center down here tons of ice cream stalls and of course the ferries that bring people back and forth between the mainland and the islands they're not very busy today but on summer Saturdays they're bringing hundreds of people over to the Toronto Islands Toronto is one of the most diverse cities on earth uh over half of us who live here we're born outside of Canada so

on the ferry you always hear families chatting away in English and French and Tagalog and

Arabic and I'm Haric and Cantonese, Portuguese, Hindi like all people with very different lives but all just sharing this experience so you know covering the kids in sunscreen pack in a picnic and heading out of the downtown for a day at the beach and it always moves me to be on that ferry because it really feels like it is for all of us and Toronto has always seemed to me like a place where most people really love and value our diversity and welcome newcomers but these days

“I think there's a lot of fear and pressure and people looking around and seeing that things seem”

to be getting worse not better and they want to know why and I'm scared that there are these narratives that originate here but also elsewhere which are slowly chipping away at that lovely consensus

that this place is for all of us so my hope for 2026 and beyond is simply that we never let them

Hi Sarah, like you I live in a maligned place in America I live in Springfield, Ohio which gained some notoriety during the last presidential election cycle when Donald Trump said that our Haitian immigrants are eating the dogs they're eating the cats that is not happening here by the way but Springfield is a town that suffered a lot in the recession but there is a lot of hope here I've volunteered with a non-profit that tutors people in reading and writing and basic

literacy skills from that angle I just get to see so many people who are doing so much good in the community and who want to help and I also wanted to share one of my favorite moments of

and I was at Meyer one day and a Haitian woman carrying a big squash saw me using the produce

“scales asked me how to do that and I showed her and she said thank you and I said”

five the quath which is your welcome and Creole and the way she lit up it just made my day and I just wish that we as a country could all do more to live for those moments because to me that is the heart of what this country really is I grew up in a town called Midland Michigan which is in its own way kind of a hallmark Christmas town and what I mean by that is every year there is a big Santa Parade where Santa comes down from the north pole across the Tridge which is a bridge downtown

that goes from nowhere to nowhere to nowhere and arrives at the courthouse where they light up the

baby Jesus in the manger on the courthouse lawn but really what's most fascinating about my home town is a point in I want to say they early 90s when I was maybe 11 they built a Santa house that has now become kind of world famous but more importantly the Santa house actually has a Santa school and people come from all over the world to go to the Santa school and so now as an adult you know they had little bits on the travel channel with my favorite librarian from childhood

“teaching storytelling to Santa's and that's I think really special it's weird and I didn't think”

it was weird growing up I thought it was just like everybody has a manger at the courthouse and everybody has a Santa come down across their weird little footbridge I think it was the really

magical time for me and now Christmas is always magical because of this lovely Santa house that I

grew up with and I actually had a Santa house ornament that still lives on my Christmas tree even though I've moved away to warmer climates and that's my story about my home thank you for listening hey Sarah I'm calling from Snowy Chicago and something I love about this place is that conformity isn't as much of a social value here as it has been other places I've lived

“I think it's because a lot of people moved here as adults and had to make all new friends”

and so had to be more open than they would have otherwise my fiance and I have become pretty close friends with a refugee family from South America and they needed to save an affordable police to live and they are kind of out of options so we decided to shop for houses that would be big enough for us to share we found one and something that was so cool is that we were open about why we wanted this house and all the people that were going to live here

and everyone in the process was enthusiastic to help us the seller was excited the real city agent the lender were calling me and talking to me about logistics seeing if they could do it in their own lives and my parents and neighbors helped and my co-workers check in every couple months and say again I send them some money how's their asylum case preceding so it's been really awesome to see how much warmth and respect there is and when he give

people opportunities to show up they do my name is Dina and I live in Chicago in the Edgewater neighborhood it's Thanksgiving in about an hour I'm gonna ride my bike from edgewater to my husband's brother's wife's brother's house in Humboldt Park these are both pretty immigrant neighborhoods and so both of these neighborhoods were hit really hard by the ice siege that has recently eased off but is not over and that has been really horrible but one

thing that has been great about it is seeing the community response that popped up to deal with this issue just about everyone I know is on some sort of signal thread about doing bike patrols in their neighborhood or helping out you know making sure kids get home safe from school and I might send you another voice memo from my rides so that you can get some of the like sound tear war I don't know what the right word for that is if you listen really closely right now you can

most Chicagoans do and the things about that city that make it into the popular consciousness are

“often you know really distorted for reasons that suck okay here is the sound of me riding down”

10th Avenue with a near full of local beer and my dear oldest constant grandpa's favorite holiday appetizer which is Fredo's an excellent it's 306 it's already getting dark and it's filling just a little bit hello my name is Bianca all the I am a journalist and content creator can make a lot of videos about Chicago where I live a city that's recently been under a lot of government scrutiny and I wanted to talk about the holiday train and bus which is one of the favorite things that

happens in Chicago this time of year and I want you to imagine that you're working in an office downtown and you've gotten a very exhausting commute home and you go into the the elevated train station

“and you're waiting for your train home and all of a sudden it pulls up covered in candy canes”

in Christmas lights there's an actual Santa sleigh between the train cars and then you get in and there's attendance dressed like elves who will hand you candy and Jose Feliciano's Felic Navidad is playing on the speaker system the train seats are upholstered in a snowman pattern and instead of the usual print advertisements on the walls of the train there's advertisements for fake businesses in the North Pole and everything is just like cheery and bright and ridiculous it is

so good they will paint the bus to look like Rudolph the red nose rain deer it's unhinged

I don't even like Christmas and I'm obsessed with it and I always tell people take the Santa

train or the holiday bus and it'll just completely turn your day around and make you feel like a kid again that's my testimony about what it's actually like to live in Chicago and how truly magical it can be to be here even in the darkest time of year hello you're on about makers and listeners I am calling from Duluth Minnesota which is in northern Minnesota it's right where Lake Superior meets the St. Louis River and I am calling to spread some love about the winter I have this theory that there's

“something about it being so cold here that enables care and connection and I think it has something”

to do with the facts that if it's really cold out and you like pass somebody who's car has given out you got to stop because if you don't that person could be toast in like 10 minutes I'd be curious to hear if people think that that's a Midwestern thing or a cold climate thing or a Minnesota thing but yeah that's Duluth it's a weird place and it's a complicated place but it's definitely beautiful and that beauty cannot be separated from from the winter hi my name is Jack I'm originally

from Omaha Nebraska and when I went to college when I moved out of Omaha I found it very strange

because I love Omaha and I've always been very proud of Omaha and it was a little shocking to me

when people when I would tell them from I'm from Omaha does not resonate the same with people who don't come from Omaha you know I would get responses oh it's a small little town in Nebraska I don't know where that is you know I've always been proud of Omaha and I don't think it gets the credit to deserves but when I was in college I for a random class I wrote this little poem and so I wanted to share that I know what something like this I'm from a place called Omaha

500,000 people small it's not well known but even so it will always be my home that's all

my name is Morgan I live in Lincoln Nebraska and I lived in Nebraska almost my entire life my parents are conventional farmers of corn and soybeans and I grew up thinking that Nebraska was a pretty boring place to be I thought that stories happen elsewhere I in college worked at an

and I ended up falling in love with Nebraska I ended up falling in love with studying a landscape

“and understanding how people's lives their lifestyles the way they look the way they dress the way they”

talk is changed by their landscape do they live where it's hilly do they ranch do they farm does it rain a lot does it snow a lot and Nebraska is a beautiful place to study that because we have you know average of like 10 inches of rainfall in the western part of the state and by the eastern part of the state it's upwards of 30 inches sometimes up to 40 so there's more difference in rainfall between western Nebraska to eastern Nebraska than there is all the way from Omaha to the coast

so Nebraska is a beautiful place to study how people fit into their landscapes and their landscapes shape them it's not flat here as people would maybe assume from driving on the interstate but Nebraska is home to the sand hills which is the largest stabilize sand dunes in the world

“possibly I think definitely the western hemisphere and we also have more river miles than any other”

state so I love to tell people that and there's a lot of people out here that are trying to make our city a wonderful place for everybody to live and I love living here I am Chelsea I'm in the suburbs of Colorado even though I'm in a pretty purple part of the country I feel safe and a mutual respect amongst myself and my neighbors which is a very nice place to be in I also just feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude hope and honestly just I can exhale every time I listen to this podcast

and just know that there's people across the country who think and feel the same way as me so this prompts brought me a lot of joy happy to share a little and a good of where I'm from and what it's like here and excited to hear about where others are from and what brings up joy hi you're around about I am calling in from Oakland California I'm an East Coast Transplant

Oakland's always been in the news always getting about reputation my husband and my dog and I have

lived here for five and a half years we moved in April 2020 from DC and we've just fallen in love but it's got a lot of really tough resilient brilliant beautiful people and I really love this neighborhood and in this town it's been a really really fun place to live but also in and thinking about what of my home that I wanted to share I think about my family and I think about that that's primarily my husband and my dog and I was just thinking about last night I couldn't sleep and I

went and got my dog out of her crate she's nine going on three still got that puppy soul and I was sandwiched between them and I had been feeling really anxious and just awake and frustrated and I asked my husband to spoon me and I spoon my dog and I was just in the middle between two great sizes of bread and I was listening to both of them breathe as I fall asleep and that was just a

“really special moment of feeling really good home and that's what has brought me the most comfort this year”

hi Sarah and you're wrong about listeners my name's Brianna Bowman and I am leaving this voice mail from my little cottage that I rent in Newport Oregon I've dreamed of living here since I was a kid I would visit here when I was young I visited here when Caco was at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and then I volunteered at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and lived with my grandparents who had lived in

depobay and I just returned here as a visitor over the years and always knew that this was somewhere

that I wanted to end up and last year I made the big decision to uproot my life in Alaska and make the very long drive from Anchorage to Newport and I still feel that this is exactly where I want to be it's where I need to be and for the first time since I left home when I was 18

I still want to see new places but this truly is home to me

“Hi Sarah Miranda my name is Afro I live in Vancouver Canada and I live on a busy street next to”

kind of a funky cafe and on the side of the cafe there's this little red door that is a shockingly short door that looks like it should like lead to some um I don't know underground

nightclub or magical weird place where elves live and before I lived here I always wondered like

what what is that door for what is behind it and now that I do live here I go through it every week to do my laundry in the seller of this cafe that smells like mouse poop and garbage and is really not a pleasant place to spend much time but every time I go down there I love seeing the wonder and people's faces that are on the street just like watching me disappear into this

“odd red door and I just like being a part of like the mystery of like my neighborhood you know”

I used to be one of those people wondering on the street and now I'm on the inside and it's not as

fun as it was before but I mean I'm happy to be on either side of the story I live in a smaller city just south of the Canadian border in Washington state and the summer our neighbor down the street started a standard her front yard where she's selling her homemade sourdough bread muffins and cookies beautiful loaves and everyone started kind of concentrating around her house she has a couple of young kids toddler age and all the kids are hanging

out there and we have a now ten-month-old puppy pit bull puppy and she's very social and so

“when I wasn't working or freaking out about the world I was walking my puppy and”

she knows all the kids in the neighborhood and all the houses where she can get pets meet new people and also you know just enjoying my neighbors lovely bread and the community that she's built by having the bread stay in there and it's been nice with the exception of what's happening everywhere else it's been a lovely summer and I'm sad that I won't get to see my neighbors as much now that it's like pitch black all the time and really cold out but looking forward to spring

and having that come back again. The sun has just broken through the clouds here in Alberta in the town where I was born and raised that I left for a time but I am still very proud to call home and I have this sound to add to the sounds of places for you. That was cheering of thousands of people who showed up to a rally in support of trans folks and the rights to access healthcare and have bodily autonomy. Alberta has a reputation across Canada

as being super conservative but it is also home to queer people like anywhere in the world and that cheering is heartening because that's the sound of community and love and defiance in the face of oppression so to anybody who believes that they might be the only one in their town wherever they are you're not the only one people love you people want you to live your best life and if you need that kind of reassurance I hope that you can hear that cheering and know that that is

thousands of people who love trans people and the trans community. Hi Sarah and crew, my name is Brandon I'm sitting on my porch with my favorite pucks or dog page and recording this in Svetka, Alaska. I don't think you really capture living in Svetka without capturing the rain. It's a place that I've called home for a lot of years originally brought up here through the Coast Guard. I was struck by how easy it is to get everywhere. It's a very walk-friendly town which

was great because I didn't have a license when I first deployed here in 1998 so I got a good raincoat

I am in love with this community this morning I'll be heading off to the local dance theater which is about a three-minute walk for me to help load out for the nutcracker which is put on every other year.

“It'll be I believe my fourth time on stage in a year as I've kind of kind of bug”

both through seeing some heroes of mine in the local community. Resight paragraphs to me

through a creepy Frankenstein play and by the children putting on a newsy's performance and finally

getting to see that play on stage. I really enjoy that the town really just rallies around the arts and the artists and that I've been able to find a little bit of that even though I'm surrounded by a wife and daughters that produce the most visually appealing art I can imagine. I'm more of a stick figure guy and so this has been great for me to be able to contribute to the folks around me and to make hopefully other people want to stay in this lovely town.

G'day Sarah, my name is Victor. I live in Australia in the state of Victoria in the city of Melbourne.

We've got a population of about five million and we're a textbook example of urban sprawl.

Pubbing the Magpies. Rippling out from our CBD we've got trendy in a suburbs, identifying middle suburbia and then sprawling out of suburbs. We have a lot of heritage buildings, one of the most iconic of which is Flindest Street Station. It's been operational since the 1850s but the current facade was built in 1909. It's a great big yellow building with great big green domes on top and a big wide archway at the entrance with clock faces. The clock faces are controlled

by computers now but they used to be adjusted with a very long poll. In the inner suburbs we've

got beautiful workers cottages which are quite divisive now. Then there are two story homes

that were built in the late 1800s, some in the 1900s, that are now primarily the state for the residential apartments we desperately need to keep up with our growing population. I like the middle to outer suburbs best because of the tall trees and vibrant bird life which I'll describe now. You'll often see rainbow laureates and collars in pairs because they make for life. The laureates have a blue head, yellow chest, green wings and a red beak.

Galars have a striking pink torso. Magpies which you heard at the beginning of this recording have a characteristic wobble and are pleasant to wake up to in the morning. My personal favorite is the Karawong song which I would describe as a two-tone twitter punctuated with high notes that rise in fall rapidly. The rest of Australia calls Melbourne coffee snobs and we deserve that. Still I take a lot of comfort in a smooth aromatic flat white.

The media is giving a lot of air to knife crime at the moment. It's a pity because they're obviously puffing it up and it encourages people to retreat from public spaces at a time when we need community. You can find community if you look for it. Just recently I attended a grassroots gender inclusive weightlifting competition called the trans takeover. This was

“its fourth annual event and I think it might be the only one of its kind in the world.”

On that happy note, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Sunny Australia to you Sarah and you're wrong about collective. My name is Amanda and I am just letting you know I'm in a Australia. We had a federal election this year and one of our local politicians was not looking like he was going to get his seat so he did like a PR thing and went and changed his name to Austin Trump and he was calling himself Aussie Trump and I assume that that was in an attempt to try

and get votes from people who might have supported views like Trump's policies in the US and I'm very happy to say that Aussie Trump did not get any or many votes whatsoever during our elections.

“So even though I think that Australia has a long way to go when it comes to racism and”

inclusivity of other minorities and in particular I think disabilities and we are an incredibly

in place to support people with disabilities in our communities and really very little to support

“minorities in general but I was very pleased to see that maybe one area where we're not”

completely terrible is that we didn't have a whole bunch of people voting for Aussie Trump. Hi Sarah. This is Bryn. I'm talking to you from Burrara in Australia and I know I don't

sound Australian and that's because originally I'm not. I moved here eight and a half years ago

from America with my Australian husband and our kids and I am talking to you from Burrara but it's also our green guy and dark people's nation our indigenous peoples and what you hear around me is our sound of Christmas which is the summer cicadas because of course here Christmas is happening in the summertime so you'll hear a lot of the clicking sounds of the cicadas a lot of the buzzing

“sounds because they're all around in our trees and a fun thing that you need to remember is don't”

walk under the trees in summer because the cicadas will be on you by from Burrara. I'm Heather. I'm at the United Market in Lower Hut, New Zealand where I'm being my partner. I usually go every weekend. There's about a half a dozen stalls here and live music which is

basically just a guy singing karaoke and I'm just gonna stroll through and see what kind of sounds

will be here. Hello, we're in the Faditiki. Where are the sounds? We're going to be back, make sure. Hey, cocks? So pretty. Yeah. How are you going? Yeah. Oh, I'm not a cat. That is pastures if my partner's got the cash. It's one now, maybe. Oh yeah, thanks. Hi. My name is Hannah. I usually live in Altaro, New Zealand at the moment, but I'm from Lutruita Tasmania and I've come home for my like yearly return. It's to help run a flight

punk festival for our night here. We're an entirely volunteer run festival and we just had it on the weekend. So my voice is struggling. But yeah, I've just been sitting at my friend's house on hip-hop or the cup of tea, just reflecting on the weekend and how proud I am of everyone who put in their time and effort and sometimes money to make community events happen and then the other people who show up

“for those events. It's just really special and I've got to keep doing it. It's community is the most important thing.”

I've now actually ever than what I'm used to but it feels good and light and yeah, I'm very happy here. Hi, Sarah. My name's Joe. I'm from Australia. I hope you can hear the sound of the wind and the birds and some kind of insect drilling over there. I'm sitting in my backyard, which is a little oasis I have behind a very busy street. I live on. I'm sitting here after a really long day

It's finally flowering.

It's time like a full night time. We'll take a cup of coffee and we'll see all our lives on.

“Almost heaven, west Virginia, the witch mountains, chandelier river. Life is over there, older than the trees.”

Younger than the mountain, going like a breeze, country roads, take me home to the place.

I belong west Virginia, mountain long, take me home, country road. Should all the

acquaintance see if we're all happy. Should all the acquaintance see if we're all happy.

“I am so happy to have gotten to make this episode with you.”

Once again, the music in this episode is by Magpie Cinema Club. Magpie Cinema Club is this show's

producer Miranda Zickler, a musician AJ McKinley. I want to thank every single person who sent in a voice memo who emailed us, who thought about it but then time got away, it all counts and we have been so incredibly lucky to share this year with you and to keep learning to reach out and find

“and build community and learn new ways to take care of each other. If you want to support the show,”

if you want to take part in more episodes like this, you can join our Patreon or subscribe at Apple Plus subscriptions and we have a good time over there. We also have an audiobook of a Christmas Carol that I did a couple years ago. Can hear that on Patreon or Apple Plus as well. We are going to take a little break at the start of next year. As some of you may know, and as you saw on our feet a little while ago, I did a CBC show about what else, the Satanic panic. It's called the W. You know,

it's out now. There's a lot of work we're having a little rest and we'll be back with new episodes of you're on about on January 27th and we can't wait to see you. Take a care of each other. Anyway, thanks a lot. Thanks for your podcast. Love it. Okay, thank you. Bye. Bye, Sarah. Thank you. That's me. Thank you. I hope you come and see you sometime. [BLANK_AUDIO]