Colombia Calling Radio

Alternate Title: Expat Chronicles Radio … someday

I was recently interviewed by Richard McColl for his Colombia Calling Radio podcast. You can download each of his one-hour shows here: itunes.apple.com/cr/podcast/colombia-calling/id657800894 I enjoyed the interview because Richard is a sincere guy. He even donated to the Kickstarter campaign for This Mick’s Life. After the interview I’ve been listenting to all the other interviews on Colombia Calling. Here are my faves, from other expats in Colombia:

• Talking Colombia and Coffee with Carl Meek
• Election Results Special with Kevin Howlett and Mark Kennedy
• Chatting with the Gambling Man, Dan Kaiser
• Bogota Business English with Eric Tabone
• The Making of the American Kitchen with Matt Rines
• Colombia’s Presidential Elections with Kevin Howlett
• Adriaan Alsema of Colombia Reports

This is just what I’ve listened to in the last week. I haven’t gotten to them all, not even “Kidnapped in Colombia!”, which McColl recommended for me personally. The interview served another purpose in finally waking me up to the emergence of podcasting. I don’t know how many emails I’ve gotten from readers asking me to do a podcast. They don’t have time to read on the computer, or they don’t have time to read my long posts.

Last year I downloaded my unpublished e-book about my brief career in Colombia’s sex trade (currently only available via Kickstarter donation to This Mick’s Life) to the Kindle of one of my best friends in St. Louis. He called it “impenetrable.” Now of all the bad things you could say about that book, “impenetrable” is not one of them. This particular friend, however, does not read. Nothing. In the last five years, nay ten, zero books. However, he listens to audiobooks. The nature of his full-time job allows him to listen to an iPod. And as I can attest from jobs I worked which required driving all day, you can only listen to music for so long. You need informational content. An Ode to NPR: without NPR, I don’t think I could get by in the U.S. The conversational format of an interview also yields insights that wouldn’t come out in writing. If McColl interviewed Eric Tabone for a blog post as opposed to a podcast, I doubt they would’ve covered the same ground and, specifically, the gem about a Gustavo Petro aide being booted from a project for being late with German patrones (listen to the podcast for context). I don’t know when I’ll launch an Expat Chronicles radio show. But I am now formally announcing that it’s in the cards… Check out the bad-ass theme song from Colombia Calling: Toto La Momposina – El Pescador http://youtu.be/BAPh04Ay_0Q

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