The Steven Sirski Podcast

William Griffith, the mind behind renowned music website here in China, Live China Music, joins me today to talk about his efforts over the years to build up a website that people can go to find out about indie music here in China. Starting with his initial video recordings of live shows in Beijing, he began editing videos for local bands and posting them on YouTube. After accumulating a vast sele...

He's back! Again! Episode 44 sees the return of none other than Denny Goin, world traveller, political opinionator, educator and adventurer! After YEARS of travelling the world, Denny has (re)landed back in Tblisi, Georgia and shares his pandemic and post-pandemic travel insights, both on the ground and in the media. Still looking to move to South America to escape the impending doom of the wo...

Recorded on Sunday November 26, 2023. On this episode, I have fellow expat Alyssa Brown joining me to talk about her life here in China and some of the things that she's learned over the past few years, particularly as she is about to celebrate her fifth anniversary in the country.  Alyssa is an English teacher and a small business owner here in Beijing. She is the owner of Brownie Bites, a bu...

Recorded on Wednesday, September 27, 2023 in Beijing, China. Brad Seippel aka thruoutin, an American-born electronic producer and multi-instrumentalist, joins the podcast today. He’s been in China for over fifteen years and now runs his own studio here in Beijing. But when he’s not helping other people record their own music, he is recording and producing his own work that he has toured the world...

Recorded Thursday, August 23, 2023. He returns! From Ethiopia, fitness coach Curt Hamilton joins me once again nine months after his departure from Beijing. This time, however, he has lots to say about his life in Addis Ababa. Some of the topics we cover include: Eight months, how has the adjustment been and what has Curt learned so far? Still working with the same company? Learned the local langu...

Recorded Friday August 18, 2023 This Episode features award-winning, Kazakhstan-based Director of Photography, Aigul Nurbulatova. Recorded between filmmaking stints, Aigul was back in Kazakhstan preparing for her next feature film to be shot in Turkey as her most recent feature, In Flames , directed by Zarrar Khan, is making its way through. The film has already had its European premiere at the Ca...

Joel JP Passante joins me on this episode to talk about an eclectic bunch of retro knowledge he has gained over the years. A former actor and producer, Joel is now a video game streamer on Twitch and a soon to be podcaster. We’ve known each other for quite a few years, stretching back to the early 2000s, and have been involved in a few productions before.  Today we talk about the movies and produc...

Joining me today is Song, a Beijing-based producer who is in charge of hiring all that talent you see in those commercials you try to skip! It's not an industry that receives the same glitz and glam as the big movies, but she is busy, profitable, and looking for talent. In this episode we talk about how Song got her start in the industry, some of the missteps she's had, and what she sees b...

Recorded Monday January 23, 2023. Latin as a Second Language? How so? Calling in from around the USA, this episode features a trio who are sparking life in what many would consider to be a dead language. Andrew Morehouse, Ilse van Rooyan, and Claire Mieher make up part of the team that run Latinitas Animi Causa, a website and social media channel that uses spoken Latin for everyday things. They te...

A soon-to-be-Beijing ex-expat joins me today to talk about his time in China and what the country has been like both to work in and live over the last few years. Curt Hamilton is a sports performance coach who works with athletes and teams around the world and has been based in Beijing, China for the last two years or so. Curt has worked with Olympians and sports professionals in developing their...

Recorded Tuesday November 22, 2022. Another episode and another expat! Hailing from Illinois, USA but now situated in Beijing, China (with an epidemic thrown in to keep things structured), Tatiana joins me on the podcast today to talk about life in the 'Jing, podcasting and blogging, several social issues she's involved with and what's in store for the future. This episode we dive into quite a bit...

Recorded on Saturday October 1, 2022 My guest today is compadre now former colleague here in Beijing Octavio Araujo as he gets set to return to the USA after years of being in China. Concluding a 27-year interest in the country and the Chinese culture, Octavio is going back to the States to follow yet another career path, one that takes him out of the classroom and possibly into the courtroom. In...

Recorded Friday September 2, 2022 Returning guest David Horton is back for another yikyak as it’s been over a year since he’s been on and a lot has happened… though much has stayed the same. In this episode we talk about the arts scene in Beijing and how David weathered this year’s lockdown of his compound and surrounding areas. Even more excitingly, we also discuss David’s biggest accomplishment...

Recorded Thursday, September 1, 2022 This episode I talk to another expat but someone who, like many others these days, is departing China. Omar Badr hails from Egypt and has been in China for the last three years living and working but sadly not travelling as much as he wanted to. We sit down to talk quite a bit about his home country and some of the ways that China has developed in a different f...

Recorded Thursday July 21, 2022 This episode another fellow expat, but this one is a known a bit around the foreigner circles that remain. One half of the Date Night China podcast team, Rachel Weiss, joins me to =day to talk about life here in China, what brought her here in the first place so many years ago, and how the idea for a “Date night” podcast came about. Her podcast has struck a chord wi...

Ever thought you could be a voice over artist in a foreign country? Kei Gambit didn’t either. But that’s what he does now in Beijing. This episode is one of the funniest as I have musician, comedian and voice over artist Kei Gambit with me today. Like most expats we talk about what brought him to China in the first place and what has kept him here for nine years so far. How is his Chinese? Non exi...

Interpreter, translator and teacher Qian Wang joins me today to talk about her work with languages. Having grown up going through the Chinese education system, Qian was exposed to English at a very early age and has gone onto become an interpreter between her native Mandarin Chinese and English. She has also had the chance to study overseas (in Sweden) but has opted to learn another language inste...

Comedy lives in Beijing! This Episode, recorded on Wednesday, February 9, 2022, sees me sit down with writer and comedian Donnie Fan. A self-described “mixed blood of Chinese descent” hailing from New York, Donnie has found a new home here in Beijing China. Fresh off of the production of his first tragedy, Medea , based on the play by Euripides, Donnie is now focusing his efforts of developing his...

Recorded on Saturday, September 25, 2021 This episode has another band joining me, The New Age of Decay. The band / project is made up of Michael Burton, aka NotAnotherPoet, and Dann Gaymer, aka The Slow Blade. They join me online as Michael has recently returned to the UK while Dann and I are still in Beijing. The band is a collaboration between the two who met through literary circles here in Be...

If you’re on Facebook and part of the Ukrainian diaspora, you’ve no doubt come across a page called Forgotten Galicia. That account, and its primary website , ForgottenGalicia.com , is run by Areta Kovalska, my guest on today’s episode. A US expat living in Lviv, Ukraine, Areta had arrived roughly around the same time I was in the country but ended up staying much longer. As war-torn as Ukraine is...

A returning guest! He’s alive! He’s not in America! He’s in… WHERE?! Without fail this is a good conversation but, as it had to happen, not without some political discussion. I encourage you to give it a listen as the political yik yak is interweaved with the real gold nuggest throughout the conversation. Denny is no longer in the US, but I’ll let you listen to find out where he is right now (and...

This week I have another guest from my hometown of Winnipeg, Father Jay Korban. Newly ordained and now overseeing a dozen parishes in the rural areas of Manitoba, Father Korban and I talk about his journey into the priesthood and how it’s been a life calling. We talk a lot about growing up and experiencing different parts of Canada, particularly Winnipeg and Ottawa (we even come up with an idea fo...

This week I bring on another fellow expat here in Beijing and we talk a lot about what life is like in China both now and when he first came over over a decade ago. Hailing from Detroit, Michigan, David is a writer and editor now based in Beijing, China and is an active participant in the arts community. In this episode David shares stories of living and travelling throughout the USA and China and...

Recorded on Saturday, April 3, 2021. This week I have David Zellis on my show, a guy I’ve known for quite some time. He used to work for the Winnipeg Film Group and that’s where our paths initially crossed. Since then he’s taken on other assignments as a filmmaker and film producer and now makes up one half of Zellco Entertainment, a movie production company that he runs with fellow filmmaker, Cra...

Recorded on Saturday February 20, 2021. I’ve known John for over a decade now since we met in South Korea when we both first started teaching. We were part of the same intake of ESL teachers into the South Korean government’s EPIK program that brought teachers from around the world into the country and were both sent to Busan to teach. Aside from teaching, we were both a part of the music scene in...