The podcast where a British man and an American woman figure out why they can’t agree on anything — including what day it is.
There is a moment that every British person living in America experiences. It happens quietly, without warning, usually in a supermarket or on a phone call or while filling in a completely routine form. It is the moment they realise they have absolutely no idea what day it is.
Not because they’ve lost track of time. Not because they’ve been busy. But because someone has written the date as 6/7 and they are standing there, in the cereal aisle, genuinely unable to determine whether it is the sixth of July or the seventh of June, and both options have completely different implications for whether the milk they are holding is still safe to drink.
This is the world Jay lives in now.
So What Is This Podcast?
We are Chris (Grits) and Jay (A Brit). She is American. He is British. They are married. They live in America. And approximately four times a week (sometimes five), something happens that makes one of them stop and say wait, that’s not how that works where I’m from.
The podcast started because Jay couldn’t stop talking about certain things. The dates. The temperatures. The tipping. The portion sizes. The fact that a biscuit is a completely different thing depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re standing on. The fact that he showed up to a dentist appointment a full month early because of a calendar invite written in MM/DD format. The fact that he now — and this one genuinely keeps him up at night — thinks in Fahrenheit.
Chris’ sister heard them arguing over their culture differences and told them to start a podcast. Chris thought it was a good idea, Jay thought he needed a cup of tea. Then Chris started recording the podcasts. Then she put them out into the world because it turned out a lot of people — expats, immigrants, international couples, anyone who has ever stood in a foreign country feeling slightly bewildered — felt exactly the same way.
The podcast has been going for 19 episodes now. Jay is still processing.
What Do We Actually Talk About?
Everything. Specifically, everything that is different between British and American culture, filtered through the experience of two people who love each other very much and cannot agree on what to call the thing you walk on beside the road.
(It’s a pavement. It has always been a pavement. Chris is wrong about this and she knows it.)
Episodes have covered the complete collapse of communication caused by the date format, the deeply personal betrayal of discovering that there are no chicken flavour crisps in the USA, the specific grief of a man who cannot find salad cream anywhere in a country that has forty seven types of ranch dressing, and the slow horrifying process by which Jay has become, against his will and better judgement, a little bit American.
He has a Keurig now. Twenty three pod flavours. His favourite is Donut Shop blend. He described it as having “a very smooth finish” and didn’t even flinch.
He is, as Chris would say, one of us now.
He strongly disputes this.
The Episodes People Keep Coming Back To
The Date Format One — Jay makes the case that MM/DD/YYYY is not an order, it is chaos with a slash in it. Chris makes the case that it goes from biggest concept to smallest. Jay points out that she skipped the year. Nobody wins. Everyone learns that a NASA spacecraft crashed into Mars in 1999 because one team used metric and one used imperial, and that America looked at this information and continued using imperial anyway.
The Tipping Episode — Jay’s complete moral and mathematical breakdown at the American tipping system. The iPad spun around at the coffee shop. The self checkout machine asking for a gratuity. The moment he tipped a percentage on top of a bill that already included a service charge and didn’t notice until he got home. The twenty two minutes of silence that followed.
The Fahrenheit Confession — The episode where Jay admitted, in real time, on air, that he no longer knows what temperature things are in Celsius. He described a comfortable day as “about seventy two” without converting. Chris pointed this out. There was a very long pause. Jay described it as being “contaminated.” This is now several peoples favourite episode of the podcast. Jay is not sure how he feels about this.
Moving Abroad For Love — The emotional one. The story of how Jay left London, left his pub quiz team, Les Quizerables, seven time winners, pipped to the post on the final night by Agatha Quiztie and he thinks about it often. They dissolved under controversial circumstances when one member — who shall remain nameless but whose initials are D.R. and who should know better — identified a song that was clearly and obviously Don’t Stop Believin by Journey as, and Jay is quoting directly here, “one of the Rocky ones.” It is not one of the Rocky ones. It has never been one of the Rocky ones. They lost the music round entirely. They lost the overall quiz by three points. D.R. blamed the sound quality. The sound quality was fine…. Anyway, Jay left his quiz team, Greggs, left everything familiar, and moved three thousand miles because he wanted to have dinner with Chris at the same time as her.
Why Does Any Of This Matter?
Here is the thing about culture clash comedy. On the surface it is about dates and temperatures and whether a biscuit is a cookie. But underneath it is about something more interesting than that.
It is about the invisible assumptions we all carry around with us. The things we think are simply how things are that turn out to be how things are where we grew up. The moment you meet someone who does it differently and you both realise, for the first time, that your normal was never universal.
Jay grew up assuming everyone queued properly. Chris grew up assuming the customer is always right. Jay assumed healthcare was free. Chris assumed you tipped twenty percent. Jay assumed the date went day then month. Chris assumed the opposite. Neither of them was wrong. Both of them were more sheltered than they realised until they had to explain themselves to someone who genuinely couldn’t understand why they did things that way.
That is where the funny lives. Not in one culture being better than the other. But in both of them standing there, looking at each other, saying wait, you don’t think that’s strange?
A Note From Jay
I want to be clear about something. I came to this country with an open mind, a suitcase, and a healthy respect for the metric system. Three years later I have a truck, a ride-on lawnmower with a cup holder, and I now do a Sunday morning drive. No destination. Just the truck and the roads and whatever comes on the radio. Chris thinks I go to get coffee. I do get coffee. But mostly I just drive. Through the kind of landscape that still occasionally makes me pull over and look at it because nobody prepared me for how much of America is just quietly extraordinary when you’re not rushing through it.
I have one more thing to add and I am adding it myself before Chris adds it for me.
The Thunder Rolls by Garth Brooks is a masterpiece.
I know how that sounds. I know exactly how that sounds. A man from London. Oasis. Madness. Rain. Proper chips. All of that. And now this.
Here is what happened. It was storming. A proper American storm — not a British drizzle, not a grey Tuesday afternoon apology for weather, but an actual storm with thunder that means it and lightning that lights up the whole sky at once. I was in the truck. I probably should not have been in the truck. And that song came on and I want you to understand that The Thunder Rolls coming on during an actual thunderstorm in America in a truck on a dark road is not a normal listening experience. That is not a song at that point. That is a weather event with a soundtrack.
I didn’t move for the full four minutes and thirty one seconds.
I just sat there in the storm in the truck in America listening to Garth Brooks and somewhere very far away a version of me that still lived in London was watching this happen with his mouth open.
It’s a masterpiece. The production. The story. The thunder sound effect that should be ridiculous and somehow absolutely is not ridiculous. The way it builds. The ending. All of it.
I’m fine. Everything is fine.
The Thunder Rolls is a masterpiece.
— Jay
A Note From Chris
He was parked outside our house during the storm.
The whole time.
Ten feet from the front door.
I watched from the window.
I didn’t knock on the glass.
Sometimes you need to let a person have their moment.
— Chris
Where To Find Us
New episodes drop every second Tuesday. We are on every platform that exists and some that probably shouldn’t. Search for the podcast name, hit subscribe, and join the people who apparently find it very funny that a grown man doesn’t know how tall he is in metres anymore.
If you’re an expat, an immigrant, an international couple, or just someone who has ever stood in a foreign country feeling slightly bewildered by something that everyone around you treats as completely normal — this podcast is for you.
New episodes every second Tuesday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
©Grits and a Brit. All rights reserved. Except the metric system. That belongs to everyone. Even America, whether they like it or not. And except The Thunder Rolls. Jay is still parked outside.