What City Comes Next? I Genuinely Don't Know.

People ask me what city is next more than they ask me anything else about the show.

I don't have an answer. And I've been sitting with that long enough now that I think the not-knowing is worth writing about.

Here's the constraint I've set for myself that makes this hard: the show works best when I have real material. Not just research, not just a Wikipedia deep-dive and a playlist. A personal experience in the place. Conversations with people who actually live there… not expats passing through, but people who were shaped by that city the way Tokyo shaped me. The visitor perspective and the local perspective in genuine tension with each other.

That rules out some cities I'm genuinely curious about. I've never been to Accra. Never been to India. And yet, both feel necessary. ECW has covered North America, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia. Africa is a conspicuous absence. So is South Asia. A show about what cities do to people that never goes to those places is making a statement whether it means to or not.

So the list I keep returning to has two categories:

Places I know well enough to do the work now: London. Singapore. San Francisco. Berlin. Barcelona. Bangkok. Los Angeles. Vancouver maybe.

Places I want to go specifically to make the episode: Accra. Mumbai or Delhi.

The first category is safer. The second is more important.

There's also a third option I keep circling back to: revisiting a Season 1 city. Tokyo has more stories than one episode could hold. So does New York. Returning to a city you've already covered—but as a different person, with different questions—that's actually a fascinating premise. The city didn't change. You did. What does it whisper now?

There's a marketing argument I keep having with myself that makes this harder.

I know the "riches in niches" principle well. By that logic, the smart move is to go deep on one city. Become the Tokyo podcast. Own that territory, build that audience, dominate that search result. It's not wrong advice.

But I'm not sure it's the right advice for this show specifically. Because ECW's niche might not be a city. It might be the comparison itself. The insight that Tokyo's relationship with identity looks completely different from Berlin's, which looks completely different from Lagos's… and that the gap between them is where the real lesson lives. You need range to make that argument. You need the whole world to make the point.

So maybe "niche" for ECW isn't a place. It's a lens. The lens being: every city tests you differently, and understanding that makes you harder to rattle wherever you land.

If that's the niche, then going global isn't a lack of focus. It's the whole point.

I'm about 80% convinced by my own argument. Ask me again after the next episode.

What I've landed on (for now) is this: the next city will be one where I can get below the surface. Where I know someone who will tell me the truth about the place rather than the version they'd tell a tourist. Where the gap between what the city advertises and what it actually installs in you is wide enough to be interesting.

By that criteria, several cities on the list qualify. Which one goes first is still an open question.

If you have a strong opinion, I genuinely want to hear it. That's what the Share Your Story page is for. Tell me what your city whispers. Maybe that decides it.

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