A friend suggested I call my next thing “Rough Transition” and I laughed and tried to forget about it and couldn’t.

How perfect, I thought. For six years, I hosted an NPR podcast called Rough Translation, which brought listeners personal stories from all over the globe. The show was cut, along with other seasonal podcasts, as part of the network’s re-organization. Now that show - and I - are in transition, figuring out our next home. Rough Transition.

But also, transition can be a teacher. Periods of big change in the world and in our lives force us to look in the mirror and ask who we are and what we care about.

In my time as an audio journalist around the world, I’ve covered wars and war crimes, sweeping legislative changes and government overthrows. I won a Peabody. I once dragged my accordion across Afghanistan on the trail of the “Afghan Elvis.” But the surprising thing I’ve learned covering crisis and change around the world, is that the doubts and questions people face in these moments are often not so foreign. Am I being a good parent? Am I making the right choices? How can I find some joy or relief in my day-to-day life? 

So what is Rough Transition? 

Rough Transition is an email newsletter where you will get stories of lives and places in transition - with the goal to gain new tools to see and understand ourselves.  “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change” may or may not have been said by Stephen Hawking, but one way to practice that sort of intelligence is by diving into stories of a changing world. How do others handle transition moments in their countries and lives? How do we learn to see ourselves and our world from different angles? There will be book reviews, there will be interviews, there will be audio. There will be travel tips from global nomads, not just how to pack a travel bag, but also how to make loneliness your friend and how to strike up useful conversations with strangers. I promise delight, wonder, and at least some stories that you won’t hear anywhere else on the planet.