PODCAST

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing!

Dean Foster, Tom Peterson, and Torin Peterson

society & culture places & travel

All Episodes

36:02

Mardi Gras Preview! Special Reissue

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2026/01/22

With Mardi Gras 2026 right around the corner, sink your teeth into a special slice – erm, reissue – of our Mardi Gras-themed episode, “Culture’s Consequences: King Cake At Mardi Gras”, from February 2024. Enjoy this purple, green, and gold delight!Introducing…Dean’s new “Culture’s Consequences” Substack column, in which he reveals the hidden cultural reasons behind the daily headlines! In this episode, Dean and Tom bite into Dean’s February 2024 “Culture’s

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61: Havana New Year’s Eve: Rum, Rhumba, And Remembrance

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/12/30

Happy (almost) new year! In this episode, Dean remembers his experience of ‘rum, rhumba, and remembrance’ in Havana Cuba on a past New Year’s Eve. Tom and Torin join him on this (literally) timeless journey, rum in hand, dancing shoes on, and all clearly being out-rhumba-ed by six-year-olds. Join us on this blur and whirl of an episode, because, as always, we are the walrus: coo coo ca choo![As this episode was recorded remotely, please forgive any technical hiccups and/or audio

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61: Havana New Year’s Eve: Rum, Rhumba, And Remembrance

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/12/29

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Not Being The Ugly (Fill In The Country Of Choice)...

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/12/25

Please enjoy this holiday-themed episode reissue from Boxing Day 2024, “How Not To Be The Ugly (Fill In The Country Of Choice) Tourist”, and have a happy end of 2025 & start of 2026! It’s a holiday-filled time of year and a heavy travel time across cultures, dear listeners; as such, we’ve been receiving your questions about how not to be the “ugly American (or fill in your country of choice) tourist” while traveling abroad. On this Boxing Day, Dean and Tom pause their gifting to

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39:06

Serving “Holidays Of Gratitude”! Special Reissue

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/11/27

Thanksgiving is back in the US, and so are we with a special reissue of our November 2022 episode, "Holidays of gratitude"! (And don't forget: Dean’s newest book, "Business Beyond Borders: Stories, Tales, and Lessons Learned from Working in 100 Cultures Around the World”, IS OUT NOW. Order your copy today!)Happy Thanksgiving to our US American listeners! In this episode, Dean dishes to Tom about both experiencing US American holidays like Thanksgiving while in different countries, as well as

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35:23

Idiots Still Talking Idioms! Special Reissue

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/10/23

After recently exploring what certain words and phrases say about culture, we thought it time to re-explore what other certain phrases - idioms - say about - yes - culture! With that, enjoy this special reissue of our 47th episode, "Idiots Talking Idioms", from March 2024. (And don't forget: Dean’s newest book, "Business Beyond Borders: Stories, Tales, and Lessons Learned from Working in 100 Cultures Around the World”, will be released Nov. 4th in hardcover and Nov. 6th in Kindle and audiobook

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35:40

60: Dean Wrote A Book! & “Moore” Culture Lit (Part 2...

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/09/25

We’re back for Part 2 and for our 60TH EPISODE! In this even more culture-lit-laden episode, Dean, Tom, and Torin resume poring over Christopher Moore’s book “The Untranslatables”, about terms representing universal concepts that don’t have a direct translation in U.S. English, like the French term “esprit de l’escalier”, the Mandarin word “guanxi”, and the Bantu word “ubuntu”. Dean’s stories, tales, and lessons learned abound (and astound) as the bibliophilic blokes explore why the terms’ original

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39:34

59: Dean Wrote A Book! & “Moore” Culture Lit (Part 1...

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/08/28

Dear listeners: As you’ve enjoyed nearly sixty episodes of Dean’s stories, tales, and lessons learned from working in a hundred cultures around the world (and if not, why are you here? this is what we do!), we know you’re absolutely going to love Dean’s newest book, "Business Beyond Borders: Stories, Tales, and Lessons Learned from Working in 100 Cultures Around the World”. It’ll be released Nov. 4th in hardcover and Nov. 6th in Kindle and audiobook - pre-order it today!In this culture-lit-laden

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58: Gossip Gets Things Done?

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/07/24

Listen to this juicy rumor: In this episode, would you believe that Dean and Tom ‘spill the tea’ on the value and function of gossip and secrecy across cultures? From investigating the use of tsismis in Manila, to eyeing gossip’s impact on decision-making in sub-Saharan Africa - plus secrecy’s impact on drapery in Brussels - they manage to make a splash at proverbial water coolers in both the Global North and Global South in just thirty minutes…all while serving up some fresh scuttlebutt of their

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41:02

Deepest Apologies! Special Reissue

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/06/26

While we're sorry to possibly offend, we're not at all sorry about reissuing our apologies-across-cultures episode, "Sorry?", from June 2019. We hope that you enjoy it, and if you don't, what else can we say but...sorry?We’re very (not) sorry to say that Dean and Tom are talking apologies across cultures, particularly in the U.K. and East Asia, in this episode. Also, Producer Torin brings in a recent New York Times article about apologetic tweets from British railway companies (sorry if you missed

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48:47

Back To Japan! Special Reissue

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/05/22

Last month, Dean entered a ryokan in Japan, so this month he - and we - are re-entering the Japanese bathroom in the FIRST-EVER episode of the "Oops, Your Culture's Showing!" podcast. Enjoy this special reissue of our March 23rd 2018 premiere episode, titled "Shaving & Japanese Toilets"!World cultures expert Dean Foster and longtime friend Tom Peterson dive into bathroom habits around the world in this episode, with the act of shaving and, yes, using the toilet. Join them as they dissect the

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29:00

57: Cherry Blossoms And Ikigai In Japan

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/04/24

Happy spring! With cherry blossoms blooming all around, Dean and Tom float into an exploration of ikigai, a concept for finding happiness and purpose in everyday life, in Japanese culture. Along the road of their discussion, they also stay at a ryokan and relish wabi-sabi - all while occasionally being interrupted by the Licensing department. Whether you’re subtly finding beauty in the imperfection of this episode (there’s plenty here!), or you’re taking the “full-blown, get-in-the-van” approach to

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39:23

56: A Toast To Speaking Across Cultures

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/03/27

Clink clink! Dean and Tom would just like to take a moment (actually, several moments across this episode) to toast toasting and public speaking across cultures. After toasting all night long with a tamada in Georgia, they toast Dean’s May 2024 article for Toastmasters - Speaking Across Cultures: Top 10 rules for communicating around the world - and Tom tries to guess some of the top 10 rules before Dean reveals them. If you can guess them correctly, dear listener, we’ll happily toast you all night

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55: Canada Is Not The 51st State

Oops, Your Culture"s Showing! ·

2025/02/27

O Canada! With all the recent talk of Canada being the 51st U.S. state - it’s not, and won’t be! - Dean and Tom venture into the vast expanse of cultural differences between Canadians and U.S. Americans in this episode. Meanwhile, Dean encounters polar bears on the Canadian Shield, Tom’s Canadian relatives enter the melting pot, and Torin searches underground for Montreal’s Nuit Blanche (White Night). To learn if they all survive their respective Canadian adventures, pull up next to a crackling fire

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