Travis lived in Germany and the Czech Republic for 20 years and podcasts about history on podcastnik.com. After talking about alchemy and witches as a ghost-tour guide in Prague, he teamed up with Pete Collman to figure out podcasting as a medium to tell stories from history. Travis has a long and complicatedly long adoration with coffee that started in his childhood upbringing in Germany. Now, he now lives in Oregon, where he partakes in specialty and 7-11 coffee.

Bianca is an expat based in Shanghai, China (but currently seeking refuge from corona in Australia). She is a qualified high school ESL/English and Italian teacher currently working in Language Assessment in China but dreaming of a full time career in Nutrition, her real passion. She is a Carnivore, biohacker and Nutritional therapist with a love of travel, cats, working out and playing sports, cooking at home, drinking coffee, spending time with her niece and nephews and discussing health and well being with anyone and everyone who is willing and able.

Marielle is a Data Scientist in Berlin. She is also a long-distance coffee farmer because her family started a coffee farm in our ancestral home in the Philippines (in Mankayan, Benguet). They practice organic and sustainable Agroforestry and they hope to one day export their coffee through a transparent supply chain.

​Italy, ITALY, Italia has a way of bringing out the coffee lover in many of us and Hector was a victim to this caffeinated crime. Hector spent the first 30 years of his life in Mexico and then relocated to the United States. But it wasn’t until he went to Italy this year that the coffee spirit moved him. In this episode we talk about coffee and coffee culture in Italy; Austin, Texas; Mexico and our brains via a spontaneous ADHD realization. 

Ana Blackstad has experienced coffee culture in so many different places that I ran out of ink during our chat yesterday. Okay, I might be exaggerating a bit but seriously, Ana moved to Prague, Czech Republic only 3 years ago but she has made the caffeinated most out of her time there by exploring both local Prague cafes (many of which are listed down below) and those in neighboring countries like Italy, Greece, the UK, Norway, Finland and Turkey. Her love of this beany goodness comes through loud and clear. Ohhhhh, just wait until you reach the part where she describes the best latte she ever had. She speaks of “peak coffee experiences” and  the “theatricality” of cafes so eloquently that I think we should all adopt this vocabulary to share the coffee goodness going forward. Who’s with me on this idea? 

​Shankar is a Writer, Podcaster and he claims to be a newbie to coffee. However, after having this conversation with him and hearing his coffee experiences in his home country of India, I beg to differ. I think he is a bonafide coffee fanatic and a discriminating one at that. We chat about his first coffee experience, coffee culture in Northern versus Southern India and why he intentionally does not use a coffee grinder at home. In between the laughter, Shankar teaches us about the growing coffee culture in India, especially in his current city of Bangalore, the I.T. capital of the country AND where his brother (hi Vishnu!) and he spend a lot of time in coffee shops researching their Writer & Geek Podcast.