Episodes
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80 - Season 6 - You Can Finally Learn That Next Language You’ve Been Thirsting to Speak
“The whole idea of language learning is saying things wrong until you begin to say them right.” That’s Steve Leveen, founder of America the Bilingual, diving deeper into three new perspectives he encourages adult language learners to adopt. He also shares details of the new Levenger Master Class...
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79 -Season 6- “What Language Barrier?” Meet the Indiana Jones of Language Learning
“I've never learned how to say no properly in my life, to prepare myself properly for things. I just figured if I kept saying yes to things, eventually something good would happen.” For Mark Ford, not saying no has allowed him to do some of the most important things in his life. Which is why it...
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78 - Season 6 - Meet Ilan Stavans, a Tocqueville for our century
Professor/publisher/author/OED consultant Ilan Stavans has written books about all three of the languages he speaks: his native Mexican Spanish, his heritage Yiddish, and his adopted English. In Episode 78, Ilan and Steve have a far-ranging conversation that touches on how American literature is...
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77- Season 6 - A trumpeter's tale
The multilingual Esteban Battalán, principal trumpet of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Brass, shares how his language odyssey has sounded important notes in his music odyssey. Hear his story on Episode 77 of the America the Bilingual podcast, “A Trumpeter’s Tale.” America the Bilingual is a…
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76 - Season 6 - Meet the maestro behind the new language gym
The conventional description of someone who speaks as many languages as Akshay Swaminathan does is “polyglot.” But as you’ll quickly hear when you listen to this episode, there’s nothing conventional about how this Knight-Hennessy scholarship recipient and PD Soros fellow approaches languages....
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75 - Season 6 - Recipe: Mix Jewish with Mexican, Add Maine
Meet Margaret Boyle, coauthor with Ilan Stavans of “Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook”. Margaret and Ilan have added their own ingredient to the cookbook: the history behind many of the recipes, some of them their families’, others the history of Jewish immigration to Mexico over the...
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74 - Season 6 - The unexpected truth about languages in America
The United States leads the world in bilingualism. No kidding. Because of this, no country understands the world as well as the United States. Seriously. Ah, you may be thinking, there must be a catch. No catch—just a different way to understand the uncontested data that’s been accumulating for...
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73 - Season 6 - Global English: Blessing or Curse?
While the whole world does not speak English, it’s nevertheless a ubiquitous language worldwide. Is that a good thing or bad? Or is it, perhaps, more complicated than that? Professor Rosemary Salomone, both linguist and lawyer, knows how to answer this question perhaps better than anyone. In this...
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72 - Season 6 - Kim Potowski’s master class in heritage languages
Hear why Kim Potowski, a professor of linguistics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has a passion for preserving heritage languages, and how she teaches speakers of these languages. De-stigmatizing the way that a Spanish bilingual speaks his or her home language, in Kim’s view, “is a...
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71 - Season 5 - The Surprise in That Subway® Sandwich: Languages
Want to know what really goes into that Subway® sandwich? Localization. Internationalization. And one more: transcreation. Hear how Subway’s Carrie Fischer is making languages part of Subway’s linguistic palate worldwide, in this new episode of the America the Bilingual podcast. This episode was...
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70 - Season 5 - A whisper to god
The American journalist, linguist, and author Michael Erard (Babel No More) has lived in South America, Asia, and now in Europe. He’s always had an ear to the native languages as much as for them. A deep researcher of language, he shares in this episode why he believes that “human beings are…
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69 - Season 5 - What is life when you leave the U.S. and become United Stateless?
The 20th-century novelist Thomas Wolfe famously pronounced that “you can’t go home again.” But what if you have little choice? This is what a number of Latino immigrants, who have long made their home in the US, face when immigration laws require that they return to their country of birth. In…
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68 - Season 5 - Amy Chua, the Original Tiger Mom, Has Bilingual Stripes
Join Steve for a lively, upbeat and often surprising conversation with first-generation Chinese American Amy Chua. A Yale law professor who gained fame as the Tiger Mom, she made sure that her children grew up as she did: bilingual. Listen as Amy describes three traits American immigrants share...
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67 - Season 5 - Meet a Spanish Teacher in Maine Named Mohamed
Call him señor Mo. That’s what Mohamed Kilani’s third-to-fifth grade students in Falmouth, Maine, call him. Mohamed is an Iraqi by birth, a Jordanian by virtue of war, and now an American by virtue of a selfless and brave mother. Listen to this Arab refugee’s odyssey of finding home and the many...
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66 - Season 5 - How Joe Keenan came to write a breakout book on learning Spanish
As a native English speaker who became smitten with Spanish, the American journalist Joe Keenan decided that nobody else had written how to break out of beginniner’s Spanish, so he would have to do it himself. That’s just how he titled his first book, back in 1995. It became a bestseller, one…
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ATB EP65v2
Why are Tacombi restaurants winning hearts across the US as America’s taco sensation? And just what is a Tacombi, anyway? Mexican American founder Dario Wolos shows how being not just bilingual but bicultural is turning Tacombi into a beloved brand that crosses borders. Hear his story, and the...
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64 - Season 5 - A global audio storyteller: the journey of Martina Castro
Martina Castro, the award-winning production impresario behind Duolingual’s popular multilingual podcasts and NPR’s Radio Ambulante, has become a major force in audio storytelling. Hear this Uruguayan American recount her own story of being bilingual in America, in Episode 64 of the America the...
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63 - Season 5 - Mexican American chef Pati Jinich takes time out from PBS for a podcast conversation
The award-winning star of the popular PBS cooking show, “Pati’s Mexican Table,” and of the PBS docu-series “La Frontera” (“The Border”) brings her love of her native Mexican culture and food to everything she does—including this conversation. Listen now to Episode 63 of the America the Bilingual...
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S6 -Episode 62- Writing in Two Worlds: How a Peruvian American Novelist Embraces Her Bilingualism
“I don’t know that I would have become a writer had I not grown up with this very deeply rooted fascination with language and the ways that for me it existed in these two worlds.” That’s the Peruvian American author Natalia Sylvester, whose newest book, “Breathe and Count Back from Ten,” was…
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61 - Season 5 - Where Children’s Books Become Bilingual
“If you limit yourself to writers from your own country, you’re missing out on the whole rest of the world.” That’s Arthur Levine, the founder of Levine Querido Publishing, which is making a name for itself—in many languages—in translated books for children. In Episode 61 of America the…
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60 - Season 5 - Crossing the Borderlands of America’s Immigration
“I do consider Puerto Rico a borderland of the United States,” says Brenda Piñero of her homeland, which is both a part of, and apart from, the U.S. In Episode 60 of the America the Bilingual podcast, Brenda shares what it’s like to work on the border in South Texas as an American immigration...
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From fast food worker to renowned Film Critic: Carlos Aguilar and why DACA is important
“My dad died in 2018 and I wasn’t able to go to his funeral. It was too much of a risk.” For the film critic Carlos Aguilar to have left his home in the US to attend his father’s funeral in Mexico would have put his re-entry into the United States in jeopardy. A native of Mexico City who has…
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58 - Season 5 - Reclaiming the Language That History Wanted Lost
In 1491, the Taíno people of the Caribbean and their language were thriving. After 1492, both had been extinguished. Or so many history books would have you believe. In Episode 58 of the America the Bilingual podcast, Priscilla Colón—whose DNA tested YES for Taíno—shares what it’s like to reclaim…
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57 - Season 5 - How the New York Mets Turned a Green Beret into a Polyglot
Long before his college graduation, Jack Clarke had his life mapped out: “I was going to be an Army officer and language capability would enhance my career.” Getting there was quite the adventure. His Spanish took him parachuting into countries on Special Forces mission. His German found him…
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56 - Season 5 - For a Star of Classical Piano, Languages Hold the Key
Concert pianist Andrew von Oeyen has been learning languages even longer than he’s been performing with the world’s top orchestras—and he made his professional debut at age 16. In Episode 56 of the America the Bilingual podcast, he explains how his fluency in three other languages infuses his…
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55 - Season 4 - Language learning: why tax your brain when there’s technology?
This is our second of two episodes on what technology can and can’t do for language learning…and perhaps more important, what technology should and shouldn’t do. Listen as Steve shares the week he spent in Silicon Valley attending the futuristic technology incubator called Singularity University....
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54 - Season 4 - To App or Not to App: That is the Language Learner’s Question
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on using technology for learning a language. That includes the many bilinguals Steve interviewed for Episode 54 of the America the Bilingual podcast. It’s a brief meditation on the merits—and demerits—of language technology. How much should we depend on language...
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53 - Season 4 - America is too big for bilingualism. Fact or fiction?
From sea to shining sea, English is spoken throughout all 3.8 million square miles of the US. Does it make sense to speak anything else? To answer this question, in Episode 53, Steve takes you on a tour that starts in Little Rock and ends in Montreal, by way of Casablanca and Mali. Enjoy this...
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52 - Season 4 - True or false? The best way to learn a language is total immersion
Want to learn Japanese? Go to Japan. Portuguese? Portugal or Brazil. Hindi? India. Immersion is absolutely the best way to learn another language…or is it? In Episode 52, Steve weighs in, and his answer might surprise you. Enjoy this sixth free audiobook chapter of America’s Bilingual Century by...
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51 - Season 4 - What they don’t teach you in Harvard’s Spanish classes
A middle-aged guy named Steve walks into an intermediate-Spanish class for Harvard undergrads, and does a quick assessment of their advantages versus his. Theirs: They’re smarter. They take tests really well. They’ve had more Spanish. They can hear perfectly fine. They’re highly motivated to get...
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50 - Season 4 - How to give your kids the gift of two languages
Are there certain best practices for starting your children on a lifelong path to bilingualism? Absolutely, and in Episode 50, Steve shares the three that are most essential. They can work even if parents are not (or not yet) bilingual. You’ll also meet two families who started their children off...
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49 - Season 4 - How Bilinguals Find Their ‘Where’
In Episode 49 of the America the Bilingual podcast, Steve introduces seven bilinguals whose new language came alive for them when they found where in their lives it should live. Lorna Auerbach is one of them. She had struggled as a young student trying to learn a second language. But later, as an...
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48 - Season 4 - How should you learn your new language?
If how you’re going to learn a new language is the first question you consider on your bilingual journey, Steve has a surprise for you. In Episode 48, he reveals an even more important question to ask yourself about that new language—before you decide how you’ll learn it. It’s one of the pivotal...
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47 - Season 4 - When Becoming Bilingual Becomes Irresistible
In Episode 47, Steve shares why he decided in midlife to leave behind a comfortable career as CEO of his own company and light out for the long road to bilingualism. Enjoy this first free audiobook chapter of America’s Bilingual Century, the new book by Steve Leveen. You’re listening to the…
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Summer light series: American outliers
To mark this Independence Day, we’re rebroadcasting our podcast on “American Outliers.” It tells a modern immigrant family’s tale and their success in coming to America, professionally but also linguistically. Both parents and both sons speak English plus four other languages. How did they…
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44 - Season 3 - Africa’s Relaxed Multilingualism: A Model for America?
In the west African country of Cameroon, it’s not unusual for youngsters playing a neighborhood game of soccer to encounter different languages among their friends. And throughout Africa, it’s not uncommon for people to speak three languages—even if they don’t write or read all three. How do they...
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43 - Season 3 - Buds of Bilingualism
None of us can master every language, but we can all learn phrases that extend a symbolic hand in greeting and say, “To show I respect you, and therefore your language, I’ll try to speak a few words of it.” No matter how poor the result linguistically, you’ve often made a friend. And thus, a bud…
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42 - Season 3 - North Carolina: A Dual-Language Success Story
In 2005, North Carolina had seven dual-language schools; in 2018, there were 140. A 2018 graduating class at one of the dual-language high schools had two valedictorians—one a native Spanish speaker and the other a native English speaker, both now fluent in the other’s native tongue. How did…
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41 - Season 3 - French Immersion at Université Sainte-Anne: A Bubble of Joy
This fifth episode in our series on some of the finest summer language immersion programs takes us to Université Sainte-Anne in the tiny village of Church Point, Nova Scotia. A French immersion summer program, it is Canada’s most popular and attracts many students from the United States as well.…
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ATB - EP40 - ASL2 - V2
What if young hearing children in America were never taught how to spell or properly pronounce words? That’s what’s happening to many of the children in America who cannot hear. They do not have the same access to the language of the deaf—American Sign Language, or ASL—that their hearing...
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39 - Season 3 - America the Bilingual goes to Morocco
What could be a better example of free speech in America than to be able to speak freely in public in another language? And when it comes to patriotism, what could be more patriotic than defending our country by actually being able to understand our allies, and our enemies, in their own…
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does America the Bilingual have?
America the Bilingual currently has 89 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is America the Bilingual about?
America the Bilingual is a podcast covering topics in society.
How often does America the Bilingual release new episodes?
America the Bilingual has 89 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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America the Bilingual is created and hosted by America the Bilingual.
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