We finish our Me Or We series by exploring how individualism or collectivism show up for individual people as and how South Asia and Western societies differ on these dimensions. We also chat about the longstanding South Asian tradition of morning showers and the role that rebellion plays to shape our cultural and family traditions.

We continue our Me or We series this week and explore the topic of family vs. friends. We chat about a number of themes including  the challenges of navigating emotional space with parents, the generational differences in how we think about spending  time with family vs. friends, and the benefit of building guilt-free relationships.

We continue our Me or We series exploring how individualism and collectivism show up in South Asian and Western countries. On this episode, we dive into the idea of private space and how to navigate privacy between generations, especially between parents and children. While privacy is relevant in physical spaces, it's also relevant in digital spaces. Is it okay for parents to follow their children on social media? Listen on for our answer to this question and many others.

We kick off a new series called Me or We: examining individualism vs. collectivism in the South Asian community. The research and our experience shows that South Asian countries tend to be more collectivist while America and other Western countries focus more on the individual. How does this show up in our lives and influence who we are? We share some fun and hopefully relatable stories about growing up in these two different environments in part one of the conversation.

We're 25 episodes in and take a look back at how the podcast has grown and changed in that time. What did we set out to do initially, how have done against those goals, and what's next? We also chat about what we've learned about ourselves, how we work together, and share something funny that we've learned about the other person along the way!

Traveling to a new country opens our hearts and minds to new ways of thinking and being in the world. While Shankar travels to a new country, we exchange stories and ideas about yoga, meditation, and spirituality as tools that help us "level up" as people as we grow up. 

Immigration marks the start of a personal journey for each person as they learn to relate to both their home culture and their host culture. On this episode, we chat about what it looks like to integrate between two cultures as an immigrant, the cultural elements that really endure over multiple generations, and the differences between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation. We also reflect on our biggest takeaways from this three-part series on immigration.

Immigration affects both those immigrating and their children, who make up a second generation that may find themselves caught in-between two different worlds or cultures. In the second part of our immigration series, we focus more on the second generation experience, including how these immigrants learn to make sense of their identity from guilt to growth, what first generation parents dream of for their children, and how we can all learn to appreciate immigrant stories of all flavors without getting caught up in comparative suffering.

Immigration is an incredibly important force in the lives of South Asians as well as others who have moved away from their home countries. What is immigration? Why does Shankar consider himself a reluctant immigrant? How do we honor the stories of immigrants even after we have immigrated ourselves? We explore these questions and more in the first part of our immigration series.

With Father's Day coming to a close,  we've got another special father-child conversation this week between Shankar and his daughter Shivani. The roles are reversed as Shivani interviews Shankar on a range of topics including Shankar's experience as a single father, his advice to new dads, and some funny and memorable stories from Shivani's childhood.

You can also listen to Shankar on the latest episode of The Northgate Cafe podcast this week. He joins host David Tracy in an insightful conversation about identity, culture, and coaching. You won't want to miss this one! Check out the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3vbjzF0fzPetVb5UYBJfdG?si=apTixyjXQHmKKuHzjq-HuQ.