Crossing Ideas

Author Mark W Sasse recalls a childhood trip to the world's first commercial oil well - Drake's Well - built in 1859. This remarkable achievement by Edwin Drake started an oil boom in Western Pennsylvania. This experience allows him to ruminate about the oil industry, the innovators of modern society, and whether the climate change pushers in this day and age should be trusted or not. The...

Author Mark W Sasse recalls getting caught up in the anti-Russian protests of March 2022 in Tbilisi Georgia, just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He talks about visiting Stalin's underground printing press in Tbilisi and theorizes how activism hasn't really changed much at all through the years. Learn more about Stalin and his roots in Georgia, and then see how that relates to the G...

Tbilisi, Georgia. I've visited there four times. There's something unique in the air. A place steeped in culture, the Georgian Orthodox Church, their claim to being the birthplace of wine, their precarious setting south of Russia, with the mighty Caucasus Mountains standing guard. In this episode, I delve into the wonderful sights and sounds of Tbilisi, and check out its heart and soul: it...

In the season 1 finale of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, author Mark W Sasse delves deeply into those characteristics of both Vietnam and American, which have permanently bored themselves into his mind. He realizes that no matter how long he has lived overseas - including long stints in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Saudi Arabia - he will never shed his love for America. Likewise, even twenty years after le...

In episode 11 of the Crossing Ideas Podcast from Author Mark W. Sasse, he relates what it was like for his kids to grow up in a rapidly changing Vietnam in the mid to late 1990s. He is able to see some parallels, as unlikely as that may seem, in how he grew up in Pennsylvania. He also recalls an incident when his child realized that she was different from the other kids around her, which elicits s...

Episode 10 of the Crossing Ideas Podcast with author Mark W Sasse. In this episode, Sasse recalls a trip into the remote, scenic valley of Mai Chau, and a stay at the Thai minority group village. He learns of the hopeless educational aspirations of one teen girl, caught in a system that cannot help. He then relates this to the modern education system, and offers a few ideas of how to improve thing...

In episode 9 of the Crossing Ideas Podcast with Author Mark W Sasse, the topic is cooking, and in turn, what do we really need to learn in school. Sasse recounts his arrival in Vietnam in 1994 as a frightening experience for his sensitive, bland American palate. He struggled to figure out how to buy food and then what to do with it, but as time progressed, he learned something about himself: he lo...

In the 8th episode of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, author and award-winning playwright Mark W Sasse recalls the hilarious story of trying to find a Christmas tree in Thai Nguyen, Vietnam in December of 1999. It was not an ordinary tree by any means, and it required climbing a tree to actually get it. This bizarre story allows Sasse to delve into the special moments of life which we all hold dear. H...

In the seventh episode of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, award-winning playwright and author Mark W Sasse compares the language experiences he had between learning French in the United States and learning Vietnamese in Vietnam. He recalls stories of his three different language teachers, who taught him how to respect language and use it to build bridges with people around you. This gets Sasse thinkin...

In the sixth episode of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, award-winning playwright and author Mark W Sasse recalls an unforgettable motorbike trip to the far reaches of northern Vietnam to visit the Ban Gioc Waterfall at the China border. The scenic vistas made the trip truly mesmerizing, but it was the interaction with border control guard which allowed Sasse to reassess his views of country borders an...

In the fifth episode of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, Author Mark W Sasse reflects on his friendship with Chi Lien, the foreign affairs official from Thai Nguyen University were he taught. He learned many lessons about patience and how to navigate Vietnamese culture successfully. Her untimely death also made him consider those things in life which are most important. This episode compares the way a...

In episode five of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, Author Mark W Sasse tells the tale of being watched carefully by the Vietnamese government during his time living in Thai Nguyen in 1999-2003. He also can't help but make parallels to our current world of non-stop surveillance, which we have unwittingly allowed to snatch our privacy rights right out from under us.

In this third episode of the Crossing Ideas Podcast, Author Mark W Sasse looks at the economic reforms in Vietnam of the 1990s which countered the misery of state run socialism a decade earlier.

Is President Harry Truman to blame for the Vietnam War?  Would things have been different if Franklin Roosevelt had lived another year? Why were Americans helping Ho Chi Minh in the summer of 1945? Author Mark W Sasse delves into these questions and more using his research and personal stories from his ten years living in Vietnam.   In the Crossing Ideas Podcast, Sasse intends to use his...