The Bridge

Super-producer Cimcie is back on The Bridge, and with just a couple of days before Thanksgiving, the conversation goes back and forth about the way that American's will have to celebrate this annual holiday. John points out that perhaps it's not a bad thing that we cannot all get together as in the past, outside of the obvious guest everyone wants to avoid-Cyrus The Virus. 

It's the universal language, and while neither John nor Heyang can carry a tune, they are great fans of all genres of music. Heyang shares a story about how Terry Lin, one of the most popular artists in China, showed up at a school to help them sing one of his songs, to her fan fav-the late great Michael Jackson, and John rolls back the years to the first concert he ever attended in 1973, with Bachman-Turner Overdrive, and the show concludes with "In A Faraway Land" written by Luo Bin Wang, is sung by John Denver, in 1994 at a concert in Australia, and the arrangement is by Richard Kaufman, who has been a guest on The Bridge.

After kick-starting the show with cookies and donuts, John & BeiBei are off on a tangent that includes John's ten years of sitting in saunas and the great benefits of sweating it out, BeiBei suggests that John get a pig-snout mask and use it to promote The Bridge and finally John gives BeiBei a crash course in fitness, leaning on his experience as a personal trainer, and then the conversation turns to walking as a pilgrimage and a sacred site in Trinidad.

It's another outing that spans the conversation spectrum, starting out with BeiBei's plans to bring Dunkin' Donuts to Beijing, her fascination with skin care products, her obsession with food and how much she enjoys shopping, and everything in-between.

He's run for governor in Arizona and has spent the past 30 years bringing facts and figures around climate change to the forefront. So how did a psychologist and founder of the OCD Recovery Center get involved with environmental science? Dr. Komor shares his journey with John & Heyang and the discussion turns to the many ways that humans might be affected by global warming in the future, and what if, anything can be done on a personal level.

It's another spontaneous conversation that starts out with the number one fear that most people have-public speaking-and soon John and Heyang are off to fixing the problems of the world, from taking a long look at the bias and prejudices that keep people apart, to the value of the ongoing conversations between them, that while nearly 7,000 miles apart, has in fact made that distance much smaller.

It's been five years since the Chinese Government lifted the "One Child Policy" restriction, that was originally part of a birth planning program, designed to control the size of the rapidly growing population of the People's Republic of China. It was introduced in 1979 (after a decade-long two-child policy), modified beginning in the mid 1980s to allow rural parents a second child if the first was a daughter, and then lasted three more decades before the government announced in late 2015 a reversion to a two-child limit. Heyang and John discuss the many aspects of the policy and how after five years, the lifted ban isn't exactly going as experts predicted.

It's Tuesday, and that's when super-producer Cimcie joins John & Heyang on The Bridge. In this episode, she and Heyang reflect on how important self-care is during stressful times, and the different ways both of them handle stress. The ladies also cover the difficulty of dating and relationships during the pandemic.

In 1980, Mark Ruffin got his first on-air opportunity through the Jazz Institute of Chicago and has never looked back-until now. Mark's new book "Bebop Fairy Tales: An Historical Fiction Trilogy on Jazz, Intolerance and Baseball" is an incredible blend of historical fiction with jazz and... baseball.  John and Mark were on the original team that launched Oprah Radio in 2006 and share some of their memories from that time and Heyang admits that she's not too sure about jazz, but the two time- Emmy winner Ruffin, explains the magic of the music. Since 2007, Mark has been the program director and host of Real Jazz on SiriusXM channel 67.

BeiBei's husband surprised her with a getaway to Water Town, which is one of the most unique destinations in all of China. John gets a virtual ride-a-long to some incredible places, spaces and of course food, on this "all over the map" episode of The Bridge.