In Between Expats: Recent Episodes
Rodrigo Bravo
Are you an expat, or have you ever wondered what it’s like to live in a foreign country? Or how people managed to start a family, a business, or become an artist abroad? In that case, my guests will give you some answers.
In this podcast my goal is to talk to people from all walks of life who ventured to a foreign country because of love, work, or simply adventure and discuss how their lives have changed as a result of that decision.
What will you get out of this show? Definitely you’ll hear unique stories and perspectives. You may find inspiration to, post-covid of course, finally quit that boring job in your hometown and go out and see the world. Or you may simply want to know what it’s like to live on the other side of the planet while you exercise or walk the dog. It’s up to you.
I started this podcast because I’m an expat myself for many years, I’m based in Prague - Czech Republic and I suppose I became an expat or immigrant at the age of five when I moved with my family from Los Angeles to Ecuador, and five years later, we would return to Southern California. So far, I’ve lived in 4 countries, and have no current plans to return to the U.S.
So join me and I look forward to your comments. If you have an interesting story about being an expat, email me at inbetweenexpats@gmail.com, maybe you’d like to be on the show at some point. I’m also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just type @inbetweenexpats. And if you speak Spanish, you can listen to: https://feeds.captivate.fm/entreexpatriados/ It’s the same show, but in a different language.
The multi-talented French artist Klez Brandar (photographer, actor, poet, and musician) hails from Nantes and at the young age of 21, he decided to leave his country and see the world. He started out in Buenos Aires, Argentina and eventually found his way to places like Brazil. New Zealand, Italy and Spain before settling in Prague.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Klez Brandar - Youtube channel
Klez Brandar - Instagram
Klez Brandar -article in English
Timothy Snyder, "On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The 20th Century"
Kaboul Disco
Nantes
Buenos Aires
Kerouac is Dead - video
Lusk Dizehan, audio book (in English)
Lusk Dizehan - sample photos & campaign
Triste Mesure, video with a reading of some poems (in French)
Triste Mesure, release party video, 2019
Survival Through Design - Richard Neutra
Totems
The story of film director Payam Razi who left his native Iran at the age of 21 to live in India. Eventually, he landed in Prague as he was accepted in the prestigious film school known as FAMU. Payam talks about his work at Radio Free Europe, his movies, life in Prague, and the opening of his arthouse in late 2019.
Payam wanted to show a variety of films from different countries, have two bars, and even a dance floor -all in one place. So, Screenshot (Screenshot Prague) opened its doors but the pandemic forced Payam to shut them for the third time as of November 2021.
This episode is in part about resilience, how an expat entrepreneur won’t give up, but needs help to keep his business running. If you wish to donate money to Screenshot, please contact Payam at payam.razi@gmail.com
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Keep Screenshot Alive (video)
Screenshot Prague
Chapter Five - short film
Payam Razi - Facebook
Tehran
Miloš Forman
Milan Kundera
Goa
Holešovice
Cafe Liberal - Praha 7
Radio Free Europe
Radio Farda
Serotonin
Leviathan (2014)
The Hunt (2012)
A (very) short commentary on being an expat in addition to the 32nd anniversary of the Velvet Revolution.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4KbZIRgSkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qG5fxLmfAk&t=18s
Following her departure from her native Quito, Ecuador at the age of 12, Grace Gomez never thought she would one day become a bilingual journalist for NBC and Telemundo for the New England area. She’s based out of Boston, MA. Grace talks about the initial difficulties of being a young foreigner, but thanks to her family’s support and Grace’s resilience this four-time Emmy winner found success and her American dream.
If you happen to be in the New England area, please tune in the news to watch Grace at work.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Grace Gomez - Youtube
Grace Gomez - LinkedIn
Grace Gomez - Instagram
Ecuador
Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra
NBC Boston
Boston
Isla San Cristóbal, Galápagos - Ecuador
Hoboken, New Jersey
The View - Youtube
Barbara Walters
Popko's Provincetown Lobster Pot Tree
A light and entertaining conversation with Tracey Blash, a native of New Orleans who talks about Louisiana cuisine, Mardi Gras, life in South Korea and Prague, as well as literature (mostly pertaining to New Orleans).
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Louisiana
New Orleans
Hurricane Ida
Mardi Gras
Po’ Boy
Short Stop restaurant
Debris Roast Beef
Fried Alligator - youtube
Gumbo
Dooky Chase’s restaurant
Shrimp Creole
Louisiana Hospitality Foundation
Depeche Mode
Violator - complete album - youtube
Jon Batiste - "Freedom" - youtube
South Korea
Reading list:
The Gumbo Tales
1 Dead in Attic - Chris Rose
Good Omens
The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Pablo was born in Quito, Ecuador the son of an Ecuadorian mother and Spanish father. Pablo moved to the south of Spain as a child and he talks about what it was like to be part of two cultures, but not entirely. Pablo tells us a bit about his life as a student in France as well as his current life in Prague - Czech Republic. Given that this budding entrepreneur started out as a political scientist, I asked Pablo to give us a run down of the current political atmosphere in some parts of the world.
Carlos Botero is a native of Venezuela, an IT engineer, and an expat living in Prague who became a single dad right before the pandemic last year. Carlos gives fellow expats sound advice who may be in a similar predicament. Carlos discusses the political situation in his country with the hopes that one day Venezuela will be once again a democracy.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Carlos Botero
Venezuela
IT engineers are high-level IT personnel who design, install, and maintain a company's computer systems. They are responsible for testing, configuring, and troubleshooting hardware, software, and networking systems to meet the needs of the employer. IT engineers may also be required to train staff and manage projects.
AIESEC
AIESEC Malaysia
Malaysia tourism
AIESEC Estonia
Estonia
Erasmus
Brno
Skype
Mindvalley
A product manager is the person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfill, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality.
Arepas
Tequeños
Google Classroom is a free web service developed by Google for schools that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The primary purpose of Google Classroom is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students.
Arepas de Lyna
Napster is a set of three music-focused online services. It was founded in 1999 as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet software that emphasized sharing digital audio files, typically audio songs, encoded in MP3 format.
iTunes
Spotify
Blockchain
Geforce Now
Lilian Tintori
Tamara Sujú
El Comandante
T. Harv Eker
Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki
The Secret of the Millionaire's Mind - T. Harv Eker
React Native
If you're an expat in Prague or anywhere, do you know how to navigate the waters of investment and retirement? What do you do if you move back home or to another country -do you close retirement funds? What about cryptocurrencies? Damien Kohut has the answers to all these questions. He speaks a bit about his life as an expat, but moreover, the financial health of fellow expats and Frenchmen.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Damien Kohut - LinkedIn
Czech Rep: +420 773 476 240
France: +33 6 42 96 76 09
St-Lys
La Rochelle
Molson Coors
Prague College
Cryptocurrency
Dubai
Reading List:
Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill
Outwitting the Devil - Napoleon Hill
Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki
The Secret of the Millionaire's Mind - T. Harv Eker
The Sheikh CEO Lessons in Leadership - Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum -
What is it like to be part of the Peace Corps abroad? And what is it like to transition from a volunteer job in one country to a corporate job back home? What about reverse culture shock? Hailing from Dallas, TX, Keith Lannen answers those questions and explains how working in Slovakia in the Peace Corps was one of the most rewarding experiences of his life. Moreover, he agrees with many of his ex-colleagues that the Peace Corps is better than Tinder!
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Peace Corps
People to People
Slovakia
Panelaky
Stará Turá
Banská Bystrica
Halušky
Žilina
Ostrava
Mushroom hunting
San Francisco, CA
Phoenix, AZ
Grand Canyon National Park
Horseshoe Bend, AZ
Ever wonder what it’s like to embark on peacekeeping missions in places you only hear about in the news? Would you go to those places? That’s exactly what Portuguese Duarte Branco did many years ago with the United Nations and did so, with a positive and laid back attitude along with ‘rugby grit’. Find out how he built rapport with locals during contested elections, and how one Christmas came with a bang.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Duarte Branco - LinkedIn
United Nations
Portugal
Rugby
Timor Leste
Afghanistan
Kosovo
Malawi
Angola
Iran - tourism
Farsi language
Duarte recommends: Very Thai - book
If you’re a female expat and/or an entrepreneur I think you’ll find this particular episode useful. Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia Jennifer Fry is a community manager for Girl Gone International, a platform that helps women who live abroad. At the same time, Jennifer is looking for a co-founder for her new venture that will also help expats, you can see her contact information in the show notes. She tells us how during her university studies she had to make a choice between pursuing neuroscience or seeing the world. She chose the latter and she explains how that choice has led her to live in many countries as well as many US cities, and marrying a Portuguese man.. Listening to Jennifer’s life story I began to think if it’s possible to go home again, meaning if we can pick up in our home city where we left off. The answer is not that clear, but Jennifer’s story is certainly interesting.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
How to contact Jennifer:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jfrypm/
https://twitter.com/siciliana
https://www.instagram.com/jenfyre/
https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.fry/
Jennifer’s current reading list:
Designing your life
The Infinite Game
Lessons for the 21st century
Stillness is the key
Humankind
Girl Gone International
Farmup
Classical voice types
Neuroscience
George Mason University Neuroscience laboratory
Serotonin pathways in sea slugs
Ashoka
Microloans
Social entrepreneurship is an approach by individuals, groups, start-up companies or entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. This concept may be applied to a wide range of organizations, which vary in size, aims, and beliefs.
TEFL Worldwide Prague
Opera Classics - Youtube
Maria Callas
Internations
Mexico City
La Condesa - Mexico City
Mexico City elevation: 2,240 m (7,350 ft)
Playa del Carmen
Airbnb
Brian Chesky
Portland, Oregon
Miami, Florida
Austin, Texas
Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal
Alfama, Lisbon
Lagos, Portugal
Algarve, Portugal
How does a native of Bordeaux, France build a successful corporate career in Prague? It helps to have two Master's degrees but the path to becoming a VP at SAP took a few prior turns. Nevertheless, he describes how all his work experiences along with rugby and half marathon running have allowed him to become a better leader.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Bruno Labedan - LinkedIn
Bordeaux
Catalonia
Barcelona
Girona
Rugby
Half Marathon
Running in Sydney
Running in Stockholm
Running in Amsterdam
Institut Francais de Prague
HHH - Laurent Binet
Crucial Conversations Note: the title was incorrectly stated during the interview.
Dr Babu Chalam, an urgent and acute care doctor in the State of Washington. Babu hails from South East Georgia and given the times, the episode can be divided in two parts: his experience as a physician during the pandemic, as well having been fully inoculated against the Covid-19 virus. The second part is his experience as an expat, ranging from early travels to Tamil-speaking India to Heidelberg, Germany to Ostrava and Prague - Czech Republic.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
State of Georgia
State of Washington
Chennai
Mumbai
Tamil language
Covid-19
Pfizer vaccine
Naproxen
Acetaminophen
Heidelberg
University of Georgia
AIESEC
Prague
Ostrava
Dresden
Trier
Stuttgart
Zugspitze
"The Alchemist"
"How doctors think"
Buchenwald
Entre Expatriados - My podcast in Spanish
Děkuji moc = ‘Thanks a lot’ in Czech
Tschüss = ‘Bye’ in German
KROQ in the 80s
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Fernando Davila, the Peruvian entrepreneur and surfer who became an expat at the young age of 15. He never returned to live in his home country, but has had an interesting life in the U.S. and Czech Republic. He opens up about the cultural differences expats face with local spouses, as well as his companyEvoCreative .
Peru
Lima
Dominican Republic
Omaha
Warren Buffett
Miami
Prague
Plant Power
Jumu'ah (Friday prayers)
Immigrant Song -Led Zeppelin
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
Always on the run - Lenny Kravitz
Wakeboarding
Half-Pipe
Peruvian Ceviche
španělský ptáček (spanish bird) aka Rouladen
Portugal
Barcelona
Málaga
Cádiz
Fawlty Towers
Emil Jimenez, the New Yorker who lives in Prague and whose daughter inspired him to want to live forever through his latest entrepreneurial adventure.
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Emil Jimenez - LinkedIn
Passion Communications
Mind Bank AI
New York City
Dominican Republic
Miami
Florida International University
Miami Ad School
Budapest
Leo Burnett
Rich Dad Poor Dad book
Staroprammen beer
Chief Marketing Officer
Lycee Francais de Prague
Natural History Museum - London
Daily Bread - Coral Gables
Everglades
Las Terrenas - Dominican Rep.
Punta Cana - Dominican Rep
Shanghai
Beijing
Maldives
Plose - Italy
Black Mirror
Martine Rothblatt
Neuralink
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
Douglas Wong is a serial entrepreneur from Long Beach, CA who ended up in the then Czechoslovakia in 1990, after backpacking through Europe. Like many he liked Prague, started out teaching English, got a corporate job, started a family, and eventually founded different companies. Now, he advises many young entrepreneurs and startups who want to leave their mark in the world. Certainly, Douglas describes his road to success as a rollercoaster ride which he kindly discusses in this episode. I look forward to reading his upcoming memoir, and this is one of the two initial episodes of this podcast, and I hope you enjoy it.
Douglas Wong - LinkedIn
Blackfire
Magic The Gathering
President George H. W. Bush in Wenceslas Square, 1990
Gene Deitch video
"For the Love of Prague" - Gene Deitch
The 17 Goals - Sustainable Development Goals
Seedstars
Long Beach, CA
Items, places, and people discussed during the interview. Please click on the links for clarification and context.
The very charismatic American artist, April Popko, has lived and worked from her Prague art studio since 2003. She discusses how after having spent time in Australia and the Netherlands, she was done with expat life. That’s until she met her Czech husband. April left her native Provincetown, MA to live in Prague and through a series of circumstances, she became well known in the Czech art scene. She discusses how her life as an expat and family have influenced her paintings, and how even in difficult situations -such as the ongoing pandemic, her art work attempts to offer positivity to those experiencing it. This is one of the two initial episodes of this podcast, and I hope you enjoy it.
http://www.popkoproductions.com
https://www.facebook.com/APRILPOPKOART
http://instagram.com/aprilpopko
Massachusetts
Cape Cod
Provincetown
Prague
Getty Center Los Angeles
Sunrise (Marine) - Claude Monet
Abstract Art
Žofín Palace
Czech Easter
Norman Mailer
Jonathan Blum
In-n-Out Burger
Polish Pierogi
Becherovka
Slivovice
Take a look at the web sites of the terms and places discussed in this initial episode.
Expat
Los Angeles
Ecuador
Huntington Beach
Prague
Madrid