Marianne & Melissa - chatting overseas

This week on Chatting Overseas, we're discussing red flags, questionable men, and why falling in love sometimes means temporarily losing access to your common sense.

Inspired by the spectacular dating disasters of Love Is Blind, we ask the important questions: Can you actually trust your gut? When does romance become love bombing? And why do some grown men still behave like unsupervised teenage boys?

Meanwhile, Marianne reunites with her high school girlfriends, brings back the dangerously nostalgic Galliano Hot Shot, and discovers that apparently nobody was as cool in high school as everyone else thought.

Melissa throws out her back, Mercury goes into retrograde, and somehow Norway's outdoor toilets become international news.

And of course, Nils delivers a Red Flag Radar playlist .

We're back! After weeks of illness, exhaustion and questionable immune systems, Marianne and Melissa reunite across the Atlantic.

This week: shingles (or Hellfire, as Norwegians call it), vaccines, Alzheimer's, the benefits of naps, and why Instagram thinks being tired means you're developing dementia.

Marianne discovers Love Is Blind: Boston and calls it cultural research. Melissa skips the romance and heads straight for the drama.

We also compare childbirth stories, from emergency C-sections to ridiculously easy deliveries, before asking Nils for songs to help us survive our fifties.

Two women. Two continents. And absolutely no intention of ageing gracefully.

This week, we are operating at about 65 percent.

Marianne is sick, traveling, possibly dealing with a UTI, and has an extremely unfortunate airport parking story involving absolutely no dignity whatsoever.

Melissa is also running low on energy, so naturally this becomes the perfect time to pitch a brand-new reality show: Welcome to Cringe Island.

We also finally tell the story of how Melissa discovered that her Norwegian ancestors apparently lost a medieval battle to Marianne’s friend Olaf’s family,.

And because the mood desperately needs rescuing, we finish with 90s rap, Salt-N-Pepa, Biggie, Montell Jordan — and a playlist designed to drag us back into life.

Low energy. High cringe. Questionable cranberry juice.

A perfectly normal week.

At some point, you realize you’re tired of spending energy on things that don’t deserve it.

So this week, we’re making a list.

FOMO. Calories. Looking stupid. Being liked by everyone. What strangers think about your relationship. Dressing “appropriately” for your age. High heels. LinkedIn. And apparently, deciding what to eat for dinner.

Marianne has reached the stage where she’ll post a nine-minute video even when Instagram tells her nobody will watch it. Melissa is done pretending LinkedIn is fun. And both of us are increasingly interested in one very specific life skill: caring less about the wrong things.

Along the way, there’s an exploding bottle of blueberry juice, an accidental encounter with a dead body, questionable Red Bull decisions, bad hair days, younger boyfriends, and yet another detour into The Americans.

Maybe turning 50 isn’t a crisis.

Maybe it’s just finally knowing what deserves your energy — and what absolutely does not.

We keep saying we’re not nostalgic.

And yet Marianne is binge-watching The Americans, developing a completely reasonable crush on Matthew Rhys, studying every blouse, hairstyle and watch on screen — and slowly realizing that half her wardrobe already looks like it escaped from 1987.

So this week, we go all in on the 80s.

Big hair. Shoulder pads. Swatches. Walkmans. Cassette tapes. The Goonies. The NeverEnding Story. Milli Vanilli. Questionable fashion choices. Much hotter spies. And the strange realization that life may actually have been easier when you had to physically turn the cassette over yourself.

We also discuss whether troll factories have HR departments, why being a spy in the 80s looked infinitely more glamorous than being one today, and why our children will never understand the emotional importance of a Sony Sports Walkman.

And of course, we finish with this week’s therapeutic nostalgia playlist: music to keep your confidence up, protect your good mood — and make absolutely sure you still know how to dance.

Featuring Queen, Whitney Houston, and enough 80s energy to survive even a terrible Tuesday.

What happens when you stop looking for love and then accidentally meet a man 16 years younger in a tiny bar after a stand-up show?

Marianne tells the full story of how she met Adrian, why she almost dismissed the relationship because of the age gap, and what made her realize that chemistry, emotional intelligence and connection mattered far more than the number on a birth certificate.

Melissa, meanwhile, has taken Marianne’s advice and lowered the age range on her dating apps. Obviously, we need to discuss this.

We get into younger men, dating after 40, cultural references you absolutely do not understand, the double standard around older women dating younger men and why finding something real may require being open to a person you never imagined choosing.

This is no ordinary life. If you listen - you will know.

Season 2 is here — and apparently, we have a lot to catch up on.

Melissa has done something she’s been thinking about for years: she got up on stage at an open mic in Cambridge and performed four minutes of stand-up.

But ticking off an old goal creates a new problem: what do you dream about next?

We talk about setting goals at 50, making time for yourself when you’re a parent, Marianne’s terrifying first encounter with a hip-thrust machine, an unfortunate skirt-and-backpack situation in Oslo — and why sometimes the only sensible response to life is to create your own event.

Welcome back to Chatting Overseas.

We’re back, baby.

For the season finale, Marianne checks in from Japan and Melissa from Massachusetts — which means this episode is officially happening across approximately eight seas, several time zones, and one deeply committed 7-Eleven birthday mission.

They talk World Cup tactics, Norwegian football emotions, why losing to Sweden would be a national trauma, and how Japan somehow makes trains, cakes, convenience stores, and tiny acts of kindness feel like a lifestyle upgrade.

Marianne shares the story of Karoline’s sweet sixteen in Japan, complete with a 3:30 a.m. 7-Eleven run, a mystery cake shop, and a birthday cake that somehow survived the language barrier better than most tourists.

Melissa brings safari misunderstandings, Apple Camp parenting hacks, Airbnb rating anxiety, and a season-two cliffhanger she refuses to explain properly. The episode ends with an overanalysis of A-ha’s “Take On Me” — because apparently Norway’s greatest export before Haaland was a man with impossible cheekbones, a dolphin-level vocal range, and a romantic emergency inside a comic book.

A season finale about travel, football, birthdays, ratings, nostalgia, and the strange fact that sometimes the sun really does always shine on TV.

In this episode of Chatting Overseas, Marianne calls in from Amami, Japan — in a bikini, far from Trondheim — while Melissa reports from Massachusetts, newly converted into a Norwegian football supporter after watching Norway play in a Boston bar surrounded by 300 Scottish fans in kilts (with no underwear).

Melissa dives into World Cup energy, Tartan Army chaos, Haaland fever, Madagascar vanilla ice cream, historical hat parades, and the physical collapse known as “mom flu.”

Marianne shares her 50th birthday celebration in Japan, a long family journey across time zones, turtles, Japanese menus translated by phone, birthday balloons, analog cameras, and the emotional purchase of a mysterious surfer T-shirt.

The episode then turns deeper, as Marianne talks about returning to Amami — the island where she wrote her book about her mother — and being invited by the mayor to speak about dementia, caregiving, family and what Norway and Japan can learn from each other.

There are formal bows, brown cheese gifts, Soroptimist women, local radio, students, translators, and a possible Alzheimer connection involving the island’s venomous Habu snake.

And finally, Niels overanalyzes The Proclaimers’ I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) — turning it into a Scottish love song, a cardiovascular event, and a deeply unhinged logistics proposal with no snacks, no waterproof clothing, and absolutely massive pub energy.

In this episode of Chatting Overseas, Marianne and Melissa begin with an important Norwegian language lesson: the dangerous difference between complimenting a cute little girl and accidentally complimenting something very different.

From there, Marianne reports from the sidelines of her daughter’s soccer match, where she is supposed to be a neutral “game host” in a yellow vest — a role wildly incompatible with her emotional football nervous system. 

The conversation moves into World Cup feelings, men finally being allowed to cry, hug strangers and emotionally collapse in public — and Marianne’s surprise success getting a football-themed column accepted after years of writing serious dementia pieces.

Melissa brings her own sports-parent energy, including plans for giant cat-head signs at her daughter’s games, before detouring into Meryl Streep comparisons, sexy Conan O’Brien Halloween trauma, and the brutal honesty of children commenting on their mother’s body.

Then Marianne tells the story of a deeply moving and wildly original “ovary festival” for a friend facing surgery: a celebration of women’s bodies, friendship, fear, relief, menopause, and male speakers bravely entering the world of women’s health.

Finally, Niels returns to overanalyze Europe’s The Final Countdown — turning it into the official soundtrack for Marianne’s last days in her 40s, the beginning of World Cup season, and possibly the strongest argument yet for buying a fog machine.