About this episode
The episode reflects on the impact of immigration and globalization during the host's time at Microsoft in the 90s, inspired by the Olympics.
Hello Interactors, Watching all the transnational love at the Olympics has been inspiring. We’re all forced to think about nationalities, borders, ethnicities, and all the flavors of behavioral geography it entails. After all, these athletes are all there representing their so-called “homeland.” And in the case of Alysa Liu, her father’s escape from his. Between the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the fall of the Berlin wall, “homeland” took on new meaning for many immigrants. This all took me back to that time and the start of my own journey at Microsoft at the dawn of a new global reality. HOMELAND HATCHED HERE With all the focus on Olympics and immigration recently, I’ve found myself reflecting on my days at Microsoft in the 90s. As the company was growing (really fast), teams were filling up with people recruited from around the world. There were new accents in meetings, new holidays to celebrate, and yummy new foods and funny new words being introduced. This thickening of transnational ties made Redmond feel as connected the rest of the world as the globalized software we were building. By 2000 users around the world could switch between over 60 languages in Windows and…
People in this episode
Host: Brad Weed
Topics covered
- immigration
- globalization
- behavioral geography
- Olympics
- transnational ties
- technology
Keywords
- Microsoft
- immigration
- Olympics
- behavioral geography
- transnational ties
- globalization
- Alysa Liu
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Microsoft
More episodes of Interplace
- The Transit of Two Titans · June 1, 2026 · 24 min
- Becoming Not Beginning · May 11, 2026 · 18 min
- What the World Points To · April 27, 2026 · 27 min
- The Map that Murders and the Mind that Masks · March 14, 2026 · 24 min
- Street Snatches, Stolen Soil, and the Power of Care · January 31, 2026 · 22 min
- The Mind Can't Act Alone and AI Can't Either · January 16, 2026 · 23 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Interplace podcast page.