The View From A Broad

Send us Fan Mail What if the thing you call “helping” is actually you grabbing the reins? A lot of control starts as love.  My guest, award winning film maker and founder of To Be Or Not To Act, Jo Kelly, chose a newspaper column I wrote about 30 years ago about a humbling lesson I learned about offering unsolicited advice when it came to my son's school project and how to apply face paint fo...

Send us Fan Mail Telling people anecdotal stories about what's happened to us was, at one point in time, the only way we existed beyond the span of a lifetime. In a world where individual experiences often feel lost in the noise, storytelling allows us to celebrate both the good fortune and the challenges we face and these narratives not only help us process our lives but also foster a deeper...

Send us Fan Mail The Golden Rule, Silver Rule, Bronze Rule, Iron Rule. Do unto others... don't do unto others... do unto them before they undo you!  Who knew there were so many to choose from?   My guest, Emmy award winning journalist and documentary producer, Ann Medina, was working on her doctorate in philosophy when she made the leap into journalism becoming a producer for NBC, a correspon...

Send us Fan Mail Revisiting a 1999 column I wrote about the “real men” of the 1960's, I embark on a discussion of masculinity, banter, consent, and the cultural roots of the manosphere, with chef, writer, and yogi Tom Norrington Davies,   We discuss whether masculinity has been “pathologized” in some modern discourse, and why boys need space grow into men without being told there is something...

Send us Fan Mail What a hilarious romp this episode is through the division of "labor" -  from the rampage of pregnancy hormone sweeps to the actual labor in the delivery room of a hospital (one in Hong Kong in 1987 and the other in Myanmar in 2021) along with 24-hour new parent exhaustion, cracked nipples and some tips for new fathers on what NOT to ask a nursing mother. Join me and my...

Send us Fan Mail We begin with a column I wrote in 1994 after I'd seen Robert De Niro in the movie "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein".  We are frightened and fascinated with ugly. My guest on the podcast, Eliana Bogdanova, explores with me what, if anything, has changed in the way we look at unattractive people, whether there's a downside to being "too beautiful", and...

Send us Fan Mail NOTE: In this episode we discuss mental health, depression and suicide, so please take a moment to consider whether or not this is safe subject matter for you. "A Speccy Man Has a Breakdown" is the name of the book that my guest, John-Paul Flintoff has recently published - it captures, through illustrations his experience as a patient in a psychiatric hospital, having ch...

Send us Fan Mail Has balancing work and family gotten tougher from one generation to the next?  My parents had clearly defined roles: Dad earned the money, Mom managed the home and kids, my brother and I were responsible for schoolwork: he was better at that than I was.   To a great extent, that same division of labor was mirrored in my marriage.   My husband worked and travelled , I worked and (w...

Send us Fan Mail Teresa is joined by Professional Bodybuilder, World Champion Powerlifter, former international rugby player, and entrepreneur who stars as Voltage in  Amazon Prime’s American Gladiators , Daniella Means. Dani is the perfect person to help unpack Teresa's 1990's newspaper column that sends up  20-minute infomercial for an exercise machine, presented by a hard selling, pen...

Send us Fan Mail Do men and women still dance with each other? I don't mean on celebrity dance-offs or bouncing up and down as a group at a concert.  I mean in each other's arms, cheek to cheek... or at the very least facing one another. In the 1990's I wrote a column bemoaning the fact that my then-husband had dismissed the idea of joining me to learn to tango, samba, waltz and cha...

Send us Fan Mail Did you have a summer job when you were a teenager? In 1974 Teresa worked as the hostess/receptionist guiding diners to their table at a restaurant that specialized in pies and... was dealing with an infestation! Her guest, Dean Winter has worked in leadership roles at world famous hotels including Hong Kong's iconic Mandarin Oriental Hotel where he and Teresa met, and more r...

Send us Fan Mail Can a working mother "have it all"?  Is mothering just an endless cycle of trade-offs? My guest is bestselling author Filipa Fonseca Silva, who, as a mother of two, opted to put her children first and that commitment has published 7 novels, 2 non-fiction books, 1 children's book, and countless chronicles, short stories, and essays, placing herself as one of the most...

Send us Fan Mail Don't judge a place by its reputation.  Hong Kong, India, Dubai, Portugal... Teresa and her guest Sulakshana Chemudupati, dispel some myths and share how  interpersonal connections have impacted their experiences living in some of the most exciting and misunderstood locations on the planet. Sulakshana who, after more than a decade in Dubai took a leap of faith to live a hybri...

Send us Fan Mail Have fad diets become a thing of the past? How do you get cast as "Mr. Pussy" in the hit 1990's television series "Sex and the City"? Are there things you found funny 3 decades ago that make you cringe today? 30 years ago Teresa and her then-husband tried a fad diet that promised 10lb weight loss in just days and ended up falling off a wagon piled with tin...

Send us Fan Mail In this 1st Anniversary Special Teresa's very first guest on The View From A Broad is back to unpack a column about her longing for romantic life to imitate art in the form of the musicals she listened to has a kid. They cover everything from a romantic regret to flash mobs, a touching story of a musical farewell and highlights of John's three-year photographic journey a...

Send us Fan Mail Join this trip with Teresa and psychotherapist and legal psilocybin facilitator Michele Koh, as they discuss the complexities of self-image and societal expectations, eyebrow piercings and convent school uniform quick changes, what constitutes "slutishness" and the primal instinct that drives attraction and what causes resistance to accepting a compliment.  Michele share...

Send us Fan Mail Teresa talks to London-based, award winning Irish actress Justine Mitchell, who enjoys a successful career on stage and screen.  She shares about growing up, being shy and also being a bit wild. Confidence, identity, and personal growth are explored as Justine reflects on her teen years in Hong Kong as an outgoing young drama student, discovering as an adult that she is basically...

Send us Fan Mail This episode begins with a mega sale of appliances at a factory in Hong Kong where Teresa found herself communing with fellow bargain hunters who were waiting in a VERY long line... about 30 years ago. What unfolds is a conversation with her guest, Belina Raffy, about a time when smart phones didn't distract strangers from making conversation, how living abroad encourages ada...

Send us Fan Mail This episode kicks off with a newspaper column, written in December of 1994, that had Teresa Norton facing the realities of making a new home far from family and friends. There's the fascination and fun of immersing oneself in a completely different culture and the feeling of helplessness when something scary happens to someone you love on the other side of the planet in what...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode host Teresa Norton (a confessed Barbie fan who still has her first and only Barbie doll ) is joined by her guest Melissa Chan as they dive into a nostalgic, affectionate and critical examination of the iconic doll.  Teresa's take in her 1990's newspaper column was that Barbie wasn't built to be a role model... she was a fashion model. Designed to get...

Send us Fan Mail A look back at a San Francisco Bay Area junior highschool music room circa 1968 and the imposing, mind expanding presence of one Carolyn Schwartz, glee club teacher and expedition guide to the sounds of the 60's. While Teresa was having her mind blown by the sounds of the Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix along with fellow 7th graders in Mrs. Schwartz's classroom, this...

Send us Fan Mail Separating facts from fantasy, Teresa as a young mother in the early 90's recounts having "the facts of life" talk with her young son. Film maker, broadcaster and University of Hong Kong lecturer Crystal Kwok joins in to unpack her "favorite subject" sex! On both Cable TV and Hong Kong's RTHK radio, Crystal spoke frankly about human sexuality in a way...

Send us Fan Mail Teresa talks with theater director, visual artist and Founder of Hong Kong Youth Arts Foundation, Lindsey McAllister, about a column written 30 years ago when Teresa and her girlfriend were picking out the replacement wives for their husbands, not in the event they divorced their spouses, but if they widowed them. The conversation covers a everything from euthanasia to a cocktail...

Send us Fan Mail In 1999 Typhoon York tore through Hong Kong and the resulting devastation inspired Teresa's newspaper column about the force of Mother Nature and the nature of forced displacement.   The conversation with guest Victoria Wisniewski Otero, Founder and CEO of RESOLVE Foundation, takes a similar journey, opening with an imagined conversation between the birds outside Teresa'...

Send us Fan Mail A sentimental journey for Teresa and her guest and former FM Select radio co-host, Harry Wong, as they unpack a newspaper column of her's that looks back 3 decades to a magical experience she had at a little movie theater in Hong Kong's Wanchai district. Popular children's entertainer, magician, puppeteer and television personality, known to generations of Hong Kong...