Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Christina Hoag | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #56 |

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Christina Hoag | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #56 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

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  It's another episode of the Christian we've podcast, but
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  before we get into it, are you subscribed?
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  If not please make sure to subscribe.
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  Like and share the video and spread the word because the
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  Christian read podcast is here to stay.
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  I love doing this and I love all of you that support me.
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  So thank you. And yeah, let's get into this
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  podcast, shall we? Boom.
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  Hello. And welcome to another episode
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  of the Christian Reef podcast. Today's East has an unbelievable
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  resume. So I'm just going to list just a
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  few of the things that this lady does.
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  So she is a professional writer and editor a traveler.
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  A public speaker, foreign correspondent, and many, many
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  many, many other titles, which goes by the name.
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  Christina Hogue. Welcome to the show.
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  How you doing? Hi Christian.
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  Thanks for having me on today, so that's silly pleasure to
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  have. You look like I said, I was just
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  kind of bewildered by looks so many different.
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  Loose and viewers won't know this, but I actually ask
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  Christina before we did the podcast.
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  If I could have more time with her, because honestly, there's
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  so much to ask you and so many different areas to kind of dive
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  in as far as that your professional career and your
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  personal life and everything. And it's a really fascinating
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  story and some of this stuff I identify with like, you know,
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  living abroad and stuff like that.
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  And yeah, that seems like an appropriate place to jump in
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  actually. So as far as like traveling and
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  living in different countries, He's is concerned.
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  You have visited 72 different countries around the world, talk
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  to us a little bit about the places you've been and the
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  greatest experiences that you've had while traveling.
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  Well, I should preface their that I was sort of born
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  traveling and my parents met in Northern Rhodesia.
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  What was then Northern Rhodesia is now Zambia in Africa, on my
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  mother's from England and my father from New Zealand and they
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  were in a copper mining town in Europe.
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  Order of Congo. So when I was seven, when my
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  mother was seven months pregnant with me my father whisked her
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  off to New Zealand. And then I was born and three
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  weeks later, we were traveling off to a gold mine in Fiji, my
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  father was a mining engineer. So, again, I've been trying
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  since even before I was born, you know, in utero.
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  So it's just been, you know, I've lived in many places.
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  I grew up moving from country to Country and then as an adult, I
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  lived in three other other countries, Spain, Guatemalan, Le
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  and that was probably not the greatest experiences.
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  I had. It was, I worked as a foreign
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  correspondent was a journalist. And, you know, I just have these
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  Great Adventures sort of around traveling to do stories and you
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  know, sometimes the adventure was the story sometimes even she
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  wasn't quite the story. It was you know, getting getting
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  to the story and what have you so I'd say that was they really
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  the most adventurous was traveling around, Latin America,
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  South America, and some pretty pretty rough spots sometimes In
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  terms of the countries that you've lived in, how did this
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  affect, because obviously, you mentioned, yeah, you were
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  growing up and obviously that's a lot for a child to take on,
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  you know, moving from place to place.
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  Obviously, if that is what you understand to be sort of life or
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  normality, then there is that as well.
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  But it can, it cannot be easy. And one of the things I wondered
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  is how did this affect your life growing up and then how does it
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  compare with, you know, being an adult expert?
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  Because obviously there is differences Between both like,
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  how would they compare in your experiences?
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  Yeah. Well you know it wasn't until a
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  few years ago that I found I have I have a name, have a third
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  culture kid, that's what they call children.
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  Who grow up sort of his death as expats.
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  You know traveling as their parents move around and could be
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  with the military diplomats or as monkeys, a business legal
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  business, Pratt business things or sometimes missionaries also
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  the Fallen too though, right? Yeah that's right.
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  So I'm a you know and it was sort of like this great thing to
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  find like I had a tribe, I had a community because my whole life
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  when you grow up, you know, moving from country to Country,
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  don't really feel like you're from anywhere so that, you know,
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  very simple, easy question. Where are you from?
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  Really is like a huge dilemma for me whenever it's asked, and
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  I go through this whole mental exercise, like, should I go
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  through the whole story or should I just tell, like, oh,
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  I'm Just from, you know, New Jersey, which is where we landed
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  sort of. In, when I was in high school,
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  just make it that the easiest thing.
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  So it's always the question of identity and home and belonging
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  becomes very complex because you don't really belong anywhere.
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  And you know, it's someone said to me, you have a lot of
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  allegiances Christine and I said yeah, you know I mean things
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  like the Olympic Games and you know, I have different On.
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  So it just creates a much more. Yeah.
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  Complicated growing up, you know, and as a parent compared
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  to what if you're an adult and you start traveling?
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  Like my parents, for example, you're already from somewhere,
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  you know, you have a HomeTown, you your, you have a family
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  rooted in one area. So life is just, you know, that
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  bit much simpler. And it's something that I always
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  envied, you know, you know, as I got into my 20s, I call, I
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  really wanted to be from one place, you know, to grow up in
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  one place. And have one school where I knew
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  all the kids, you know, from kindergarten to to through high
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  school. And, you know, it just seems so
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  idyllic to me and of course, other people looking at me,
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  think I had this really glamorous sort of upbringing
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  traveling around the world and whatnot.
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  So it's you know so there's pros and cons to both they say
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  interesting. You say does well?
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  Yeah because I'd met a few kids growing up who were in a similar
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  situation, maybe not so so awesome.
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  As getting to that travel to many Different country been
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  there. For instance, there was a girl.
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  I grew up with who I believe her family was from America or
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  something like that. So she would sometimes spend
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  three or four months over there and come back and you could tell
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  when she had because her accent was suddenly much for American.
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  And she'd be like, oh yeah, I was, I was Stateside for a bit
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  but no. But you touched on the great
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  point there. I mean, this whole identity
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  thing. I mean, it's interesting because
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  I remember when I was growing up, but I used The kind of
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  ignorant me kind of think like, wow, you know, if you're born in
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  a place, that's where you're from, but I mean, there's so
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  many instances of people where they're born in a place, but
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  then maybe they spent like five minutes there and then they go
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  somewhere else. And it's like, can you really
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  say you're from that place? If you weren't there, you know,
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  and I think, yeah, it really comes down to where you grow up.
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  I think that's more accurate representation of where you're
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  from. And yes, I'm going to be
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  annoying but I'm kind of intrigued now since You know,
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  you've spent a lot of years in various different places and
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  you're in a different place. Now, where would you actually
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  consider yourself being from all?
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  Maybe a better question would be, what do you which country do
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  you most closely identify with? I suppose it has to be United
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  States. I mean I came here as a teenager
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  went to high school here and then worked went to University
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  here and worked for a while and then I went travelling for 10
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  years and I came back. So this is probably the, you
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  know, the closest I'm from. But even here I've lived in New
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  Jersey, Boston, Miami, and now I live in Los Angeles.
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  So it's not even, you know, from and I don't, you know, I don't
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  feel particularly You know, sometimes I just don't feel
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  particularly American per se or patriotic about it, but, you
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  know, I'm here and but it's interesting you say that
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  because, you know, I was born in New Zealand.
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  So if I meet, you know, kiwis and I say, oh yeah, I was born
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  in New Zealand say oh, where I say, oh, maroon South Island.
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  Oh yeah. And then they'll say, oh, I'm
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  from such and such a place, and, you know, and of course, I don't
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  know it. You know, I don't know New
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  Zealand that well and I we did live there.
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  When I was a small child for about four years where I started
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  Will there but still, I don't know, you know, not intimately
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  acquainted with with New Zealand.
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  And I've had to sort of brush up sort of bone up on a New
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  Zealand. So I can kind of like, you know,
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  feel more a bit, more of a kiwi but still it remains.
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  Yeah. You know, it's funny and then
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  people like, oh yeah, do you know sometimes that is this and
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  that? And I'm like, no, not really.
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  It's not really from there either even though I was born
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  there. Yeah, no, I get what you mean,
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  like Even me like the most time I've ever spent another, the
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  country was more recently when I lived in Estonia for three years
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  and I must say as I was growing up, I did feel sort of British.
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  But then I kind of had this like period of, like, disillusionment
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  in my early twenties where I was like, I started to like, present
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  where I was maybe I just presented London.
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  I'm not a big fan of where I'm from from London.
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  I don't live in London anymore. I haven't for many, many years,
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  but sorry. Everyone who listened to us from
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  London. But, you know, you know, you
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  don't need me to repeat all the reasons why I don't like it.
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  But anyway, I obviously, you know, went to University went
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  abroad, came back and I because one of the reasons that I came
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  back was that I really had homesickness and I've never felt
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  that way about England before and now that I've come back, I'm
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  very happy to be back here. But I do kind of have that
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  second home thing where I miss Estonia and I very much identify
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  with Estonia is As well. And I've always had that feeling
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  of more closely identifying with Europe because you know, while
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  there might be things that you identify with and that you feel
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  a part of your personality things you remember from growing
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  up and so on and so forth, right?
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  There's always stuff that you don't necessarily identify with
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  and for me that was a lot of different things and I suppose
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  after spending so much time away and then coming back, I kind of
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  feel like okay well maybe you don't have to you know, Beast
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  Doctor one place you can just kind of pick and choose just
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  like, you do with everything else, you know, like some people
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  choose to stick with one religion.
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  Some people choose to have many different things, that that's me
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  as well. Yeah.
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  I like to pick and choose and whatever makes sense for me.
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  And, you know, I think that's a very interesting thing.
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  You know, when you have people that are Patriots versus when
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  you have people that are experts, like it is a, it's a
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  different way of life. Which I think you can only truly
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  appreciate when you start traveling yourself.
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  Yeah. Absolutely.
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  You know, it's funny because you when you travel around you pick
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  up things from each place and it's like when I came back to
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  America from living in Venezuela for seven years, I couldn't
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  drink American style coffee, it just seemed like water and I was
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  just like, oh God, this is a not coffee.
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  And also speaking, you're speaking as a huge, I mean, it's
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  the best coffee. I mean, you want, you have a
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  little cup of coffee in a bar and, you know, you just sort of
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  down it at the bar and then using them.
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  So Kathy, It kind of just bounced out all out onto the,
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  you know, Street, you know, so caffeinated.
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  So I just, I can't drink that coffee.
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  Any American coffee anymore. I have to have an espresso
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  machine and I make my Express specialist mods.
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  What, when I met my ex-girlfriend, like she
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  essentially introduced me to good coffee and before that.
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  Yeah, I remember showing her like I went and bought coffee
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  and like I was used to getting like this.
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  I don't even know what it is now.
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  It's like kenko. Powdered coffee something,
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  horrible like that. And that's what I grew up on.
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  That's what we had, right? And I think I tried like
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  espresso coffee like once, but it tasted like disgusting and it
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  was too strong Marla. But basically, I just hadn't had
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  good coffee and there was other things that I hadn't had that
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  were good. Like I'd ever had good, vodka,
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  for example in England, I mean, in a standard store, you just
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  can't find good. Vodka and it's not unlike a big
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  alcoholic or something. It's just that is interesting to
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  me. The when I did come back and as
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  you say a similar situation, you try to find things that are,
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  well, I had this abroad and it was amazing.
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  I want to try and find it in my home country and it's like, you
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  either have to really go out of your way to find like a
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  specialist store or something. Or it may be important or you
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  just can't find it. Like, when it comes to coffee
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  for me, a lot of time I ever have to go for like, the most
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  expensive coffee, I can find. That's just like, okay.
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  Like normal or Or I have to compromise for something that's
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  like possible, but what I wouldn't deem to be like normal.
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  Do you know? It's like well this will do
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  because it keeps me awake but it's not, it's not coffee, it's
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  really coming from on that. Yeah, I mean it's like, you know
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  in Australia I lived in I grew up most of my childhood in
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  Australia, so you know, they're you eat meat pies and also in
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  New Zealand and, you know, coming to the United States.
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  They don't have any pies here, you know, it's him.
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  Burgers and so it's like you know when you see a meat pie
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  place, there's a couple Aussie places here in l.a., ah, there's
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  a big Aussie population actually for the film industry.
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  I looked a lot of them come over for the for acting and what have
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  you, you know? So there is a couple like me
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  Pipeline on my oh my god of meat pie, sausage rolls, you know,
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  you know, you can get it and it becomes like a big thing to seek
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  out. These little tiny things you
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  take for granted and new in the other country, you know?
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  And they're just Just like, you know, silly things or do you
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  have? Like, because I'm intrigued.
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  Do you have like British shops or like English?
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  Yeah. Like it's like you could go in
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  there and maybe get some, like Tesco stuff or something like
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  I'm coming. Oh, absolutely.
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  And that's another thing. You know, my mother was English
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  from Plymouth and so we grew up on you know, cottage pie
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  Shepherd's. Hi.
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  Yeah. We always had mom might not
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  Vegemite and things like that. This is so now I buy that you
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  can buy them off a On and get my might sent from England and and
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  Breeze, drinking chocolate. And then there are British
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  shops, is one actually here, in Santa Monica, where I live.
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  There's there are quite a few bricks around.
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  I think they seem to go to the warm weather spots.
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  Either Florida or California. Is rather be British expats.
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  Uh, so yeah, so I go in there and find things.
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  I mean, get all, you know, custard powder.
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  That was the other day. I made a trifle the other day
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  and that was like a big treatment.
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  Richard the birds custard, things like that.
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  So it's it is this weird so it's you know, my life is sort of
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  this weird amalgam of different, you know, influences How is
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  living in other countries and traveling like someone has such
• 15:02
  a frequent basis like shaped your perspective on life?
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  Yeah, I think it's just me, you begin.
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  You see the world is like a bigger Global Perspective rather
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  than just a narrow perspective, you know, having lived in Latin
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  America, for example, and very unstable countries where the
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  economy and the politics of both pretty unstable.
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  And you come back to the To America where it's just so
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  stable except for lately which now you know in the last month
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  or two it's been like Bolivia I'm like what we're saying is
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  this like Bolivia but you know it's so you but you learn to
• 15:43
  sort of see Sierra, you know, own play own country or, you
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  know, different places at it with a different eye.
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  And like you said, you were sort of down on things in the UK.
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  And when you go abroad, say, you know, you kind of, you know,
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  appreciate things like, you know, having a protest against
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  the government and standing in the street, you know.
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  So, you know, things like that, just just different laws and
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  things. So you end up with a bigger
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  perspective, on how things also impact people's lives, such as
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  you know crime. I mean Latin America is a huge
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  crime problem, the police had just ineffective, I mean it's
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  just, you know, just ineffectual, there's no real
• 16:23
  strong policing system. So you've learned to appreciate
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  having rule of law and you know, having police who actually sold
• 16:30
  crimes, you know, so it becomes a much more, you know, you just
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  gained much more perspective, I think on things when it comes to
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  policing over there, like, do you Okay, on this dish, I'm
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  going to phrase the question. So in the UK we have a very
• 16:47
  responsive Police Service in the sense that like even if there's
• 16:51
  like a small disturbance, they will respond.
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  They will be there. They might take their time but
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  they'll be there, right? When it comes to to these Latin
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  American countries, you've lived in, is it the sort of situation
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  where they look at like the quite like the level of the
• 17:08
  crime and then base the decision on whether or not they're going
• 17:11
  to come on that. A tour or like what exactly is
• 17:14
  the system there as far as that's concerned?
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  Yeah, it's right. To say, you don't see a lot of
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  police, like, patrolling around or walking around.
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  It's almost like an invisible sort of thing.
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  They're very undermanned. Oh, okay.
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  The kind of, there's just not a lot.
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  They don't, they're very poorly paid.
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  So which is, you know, they're also very corrupt, you know.
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  So the same would be in Caracas. For example, at night, if you
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  were driving at night, you wouldn't stop at a red light
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  because if you stopped at a red light, you would get assaulted
• 17:45
  by a band of, you know, it was an excuse for fan of thought.
• 17:49
  And police would be, you know, where around.
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  So you sort of slow down, see if anybody's going then just whip
• 17:54
  across the intersection. And police just weren't really
• 17:59
  around and I think one of the things that they responded it
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  was just, it would be the level of the crime and who's involved,
• 18:05
  you know? If it was a wealthier person,
• 18:07
  they had, you know, had better show up but someone in the
• 18:09
  Barrio it's just another dead person before person or what
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  have you. So it's you know and then very
• 18:17
  low. Rate of solving crimes.
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  How did you, you know, protect yourself when you were that II
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  assume that a lot of the time you were traveling.
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  Sort of the loan for work. Is that right?
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  Okay, so yeah. What what measures did you take
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  or what did you do to kind of protect yourself as best you
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  could? I didn't do anything too much.
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  I mean I was a sort of a you know, being a woman you're not
• 18:42
  that much of a threat. I mean, so that can work for you
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  in that way. You can also make more
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  vulnerable, right? But I would also I would do
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  things like not go out at night. It really unless I was, you
• 18:52
  know, with someone I wouldn't walk the streets at night.
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  I never wore jewelry and I still don't know.
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  I trusted earrings. You know, even a watch one time.
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  I got assaulted and Lima Peru. I just had a cheap watch with a
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  plastic band on it and had a buckle and I'm just walking.
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  It was a Sunday morning. I'm just walking on the street
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  and some comes Ron. Just grabs my hand and tries to
• 19:16
  take the watch song in this like push and pull you thing.
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  And finally he gave Gave up and then he just walked off.
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  I think he was high on something, but he couldn't get
• 19:25
  it off because it was a buckle. So, I thought so after that, I
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  always just put my watch inside my shirt, around my bra strap, I
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  would like, you know, so nothing that would in, you know, show
• 19:38
  any thing that you that people would want.
• 19:42
  I would wear my backpack on my front, don't my back things like
• 19:47
  that, just common sense things. I wouldn't drink, you know, in
• 19:49
  bars or anything. That especially alone.
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  Just stay at home and resale a hotel and read or something.
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  But yeah. So you had to take take care and
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  then, when I was going into dangerous areas, a lot of slums.
• 20:03
  For example, I would go in with with an escort, you know,
• 20:06
  somebody from that area. Oh that they, you know, that was
• 20:10
  sort of known or what have you. So I had an escort into too
• 20:13
  dangerous sort of places. Wow, just just this, this is one
• 20:19
  of the reasons why I really They wanted to interview Christina
• 20:22
  because there's just so many stories, like, even we've when I
• 20:25
  was just reading your website. I remember, just looking at the
• 20:27
  blurb and just going, this, this is one cool person.
• 20:30
  This is, this is like you can make a movie about this sort of
• 20:32
  stuff there. But what you were saying, just
• 20:35
  go back to the, the measures you took?
• 20:37
  I remember doing something similar even when I was on
• 20:39
  holiday in America. I remember hearing bad stories
• 20:42
  about or what can happen. And I recommend that anyone
• 20:45
  traveling, obviously after covid, try this.
• 20:48
  So what I did is I loaded up a I don't know what it's called.
• 20:52
  It's like a traveler's card. You can get in the UK, you can
• 20:54
  get it at the post office and I put some money on that.
• 20:58
  I think I put like half of the money I had on that.
• 21:01
  So loaded up on the card and then the rest I had in cash and
• 21:05
  what I did then is I split the cash across various different
• 21:08
  things to some in my luggage. I'm on me some in other places
• 21:12
  and then the card, I would put, I'd always keep my stuff in like
• 21:16
  my shoes, which sounds mental, but trust me.
• 21:21
  If you do get robbed, no, what no one's going to be like
• 21:23
  rubbing your socks, or it was very unlikely, they're going to
• 21:26
  be doing that. You know, the most I'll do is be
• 21:28
  like give me money and like they'll take it from your pocket
• 21:31
  or held you at gunpoint or something, but that way, you're
• 21:35
  not completely screwed. Because if you do get robbed,
• 21:38
  it's like, okay, well, I'm short of that $20 now.
• 21:41
  But, you know, I've still got this money in my pocket, I'm
• 21:43
  sorry in my shoes and, you know, I'm okay, kind of thing.
• 21:47
  I think it's always worth kind of thinking about, especially if
• 21:49
  you go to Far less stable countries, where you're actively
• 21:53
  told like, Hey listen, it's like this.
• 21:56
  Like you said, you don't wear jewelry in public.
• 21:58
  You don't wear this, you don't way that.
• 21:59
  And a lot of the time I tend to track even in England.
• 22:02
  Like if I don't, if it's not absolutely necessary.
• 22:06
  I don't carry around money with me.
• 22:08
  I just kind of keep it simple, you know.
• 22:10
  So if people do try and Rob you there's nothing to rub.
• 22:13
  You know, another thing I had was a small change purse so I
• 22:19
  just keep small my notes. And change.
• 22:21
  So, if I bought something in a shop, they bought, you know, all
• 22:24
  the people would see was this small thing.
• 22:26
  And then, you know, I would have either the bigger notes tucked
• 22:30
  further into the backpack or sometimes.
• 22:32
  I'd leave them locked into in my duffle bag of suitcase in the
• 22:35
  hotel room, which you know, could have been again.
• 22:38
  I always locked suitcases in hotel rooms.
• 22:41
  Also, and that's another thing is, wow, you gotta be careful of
• 22:45
  his people Raiden you, your suitcases, in your hotels or
• 22:48
  that happens. I think you got to be very like
• 22:50
  Good luck, where you hide this stuff.
• 22:52
  So, like, for example, if you have a suitcase and you've got
• 22:55
  like an inside, you know, sometimes you can zip the inside
• 22:59
  of. Yeah.
• 22:59
  And hide it like in a very unusual place then it works
• 23:02
  because they will search everywhere and it's just it I
• 23:07
  hate it. I hate it to be that kind of
• 23:09
  like cynic, but it does happen and to be fair, it happened, it
• 23:11
  wasn't in the world. Yeah, it's not anywhere
• 23:14
  specific, but there are countries where it's it had its
• 23:18
  more common place and I guess Yes.
• 23:21
  Another thing as well as like, if you're on holiday in some of
• 23:24
  the suppose that poor countries, then you immediately draw a tap
• 23:29
  attention to yourself just by being there.
• 23:31
  Like, you being that exactly, it's almost like an
• 23:33
  advertisement for like, hey, I have money.
• 23:36
  It's like, you know, you stand out, you know, you would still
• 23:40
  stand out, you know, just the way I look.
• 23:42
  So, people would notice me and, you know, they don't know.
• 23:45
  You have money, probably and what have you?
• 23:48
  So I had a, as I said, a few scary thing.
• 23:50
  But nothing's ever really happened to me.
• 23:53
  That's what. Yeah, I would sit money into
• 23:55
  like a zipped compartment in my cosmetic bag or something.
• 23:58
  You know something son. It's a good idea actually.
• 24:00
  Yeah I did at the bottom right. Yeah.
• 24:05
  No One's Gonna Be A robin lipstick.
• 24:06
  So yeah as we draw it to a close for the traveling section of the
• 24:12
  interview, interview sometime official, what are the key
• 24:16
  benefits and drawbacks of this lifestyle?
• 24:20
  No, I mean the drawbacks are you feel a bit Like a Rolling Stone?
• 24:25
  You don't put down Roots anywhere and it so you can feel
• 24:28
  a bit rootless and friendships because of come and go.
• 24:34
  You know, you make friends in a particular place then you move
• 24:37
  on. So it's hard to keep in contact
• 24:41
  with the people you left, you know, because they can't really
• 24:44
  relate to where, you know, your the place where you are then you
• 24:48
  although you can relate to them. Them and the place you left.
• 24:51
  It's not really relevant anymore because you're finding your way
• 24:54
  in a new place. So that's one of the major
• 24:58
  drawbacks is just I'd say just Human Relationships, you know?
• 25:02
  And and say you do you know, meet another expat that you
• 25:05
  really get along with and they'll be moving on, you know,
• 25:07
  they're moving on to some new place.
• 25:09
  So it's a very transient community in lifestyle but on
• 25:14
  the other hand you just you know, the pros, are you just
• 25:17
  learned an incredible amount every day.
• 25:20
  Was sort of an adventure, you would learn something and just
• 25:23
  to just to see different things and experience different things
• 25:29
  and learn about. So I think you have to have an
• 25:31
  innate sense of curiosity. Just you know really curious
• 25:34
  about it and willing to be adventurous and sometimes take
• 25:37
  for us to, you know for that. But to me it's just such a sort
• 25:41
  of a high you know, traveling to different places like that and
• 25:44
  seeing the more different to me the better.
• 25:46
  I don't, you know, some people's idea of travels going on a Cruz,
• 25:50
  you know, and that, you know, that's fine, it's not my idea of
• 25:53
  travel but yeah, you know, it's to me, it's just fascinating
• 26:00
  just humanity and the things that we all share.
• 26:02
  That's one thing I've learned through travel is, we're all
• 26:05
  more alike than different. You know, if you go to all
• 26:08
  different cultures, people want the same thing.
• 26:11
  They want to be able to live in peace.
• 26:12
  They wanted to, you know, raise their kids have good
• 26:15
  opportunities with. That's really what people want
• 26:17
  everywhere at the The core of it and then let me know then
• 26:22
  there's all this culture religion but not sort of over
• 26:25
  that undone when you get beyond that.
• 26:27
  It's we're all much more the same than different.
• 26:30
  I couldn't agree more. Yeah, it's definitely my
• 26:32
  experience and many of the countries I've been into and
• 26:35
  lived in. And I think another point that
• 26:38
  you touched on, which is yeah, it is very interesting, is how
• 26:43
  and I will never understand this for the life of me.
• 26:45
  I know so many people who have grown up with people.
• 26:48
  I know in in, you know, just met over the years who've just never
• 26:52
  been anywhere like, and everyone's everyone has their
• 26:56
  idea of happiness and stuff like that.
• 26:57
  And I understand that. But, you know, it's like you
• 27:00
  said, some people's idea of holidays, is Yet two weeks on
• 27:03
  the beach, which, to me, that's you.
• 27:05
  Don't you need to see culture, you need to see something
• 27:07
  different. Yeah, I remember going on
• 27:08
  holiday years ago and I'm going to name names but they know who
• 27:12
  they are. So if they are listening sorry
• 27:14
  but hey, this was seven years ago, I was holidaying in
• 27:18
  Bulgaria and it was like a sort of Couple almost like a couple
• 27:21
  still. I was dating this girl and she
• 27:23
  had a couple of friends who wanted to come as well and we
• 27:25
  did this whole thing and it was it was cool.
• 27:27
  You know initially and with the thing is we it was a beach
• 27:30
  holiday which I wasn't really into at all.
• 27:35
  I'd never done it before. So in that sense I was kind of
• 27:37
  up for it but ya I just you don't mean like two weeks on the
• 27:41
  beach like we going to do. I've called are exactly the main
• 27:46
  reason I wanted to go is because hey oh my God!
• 27:48
  It's Bulgaria to do. Current country.
• 27:50
  I've never been here before. Oh my God.
• 27:52
  And it was exactly how I thought it would be like the first day
• 27:55
  or two was nice. You know, like we had a one of
• 27:59
  those deals where it's like, you know, like all expenses paid or
• 28:04
  something like so you go crazy at the bar and yeah, but yeah,
• 28:09
  that got very old very quickly. And then I was like, what?
• 28:12
  Now like we can't just do this everyday.
• 28:14
  Like we need to explore and like the strip that they had was
• 28:18
  obviously built specifically for Party tourists and and and you
• 28:22
  know, it's all just clubs places to get drunk and that's it.
• 28:26
  And obviously, loads of loads of places to eat and I was like,
• 28:31
  there must be something I come on.
• 28:32
  I need and my ex as well, was like me.
• 28:35
  She was like, where do we go? Where do we do?
• 28:36
  Like, we got to do something. Luckily, on the third, or fourth
• 28:40
  day, we found that there was like an island, you could go to
• 28:44
  on a boat, that was maybe 25 minute sale.
• 28:49
  Oh, is that what you say? I don't know.
• 28:50
  Ride Away by boat, so great. We get to go on a boat.
• 28:54
  So sunny day and we've got to go to this remote island and that's
• 28:58
  when we saw the culture like really old ruins, little
• 29:02
  itsy-bitsy shops with weird memorabilia from like World War
• 29:05
  and all that. And I was like, yes, this is
• 29:07
  what I wanted and that one day or two days.
• 29:11
  We were there as far as I'm concerned was the best time out
• 29:14
  of the whole two weeks because the rest of the holiday was just
• 29:18
  the beach stuff but I was just That I'd done that and that this
• 29:22
  Italy and from that moment onwards, I realized that, you
• 29:25
  know all my holidays Explorations in any country.
• 29:29
  I need to do that culture stuff, and bring it back to my point.
• 29:33
  I will never understand people that only want to stay in their
• 29:37
  own country or their own place. It's because I think that it's
• 29:40
  very worth, exploring the country you live in that's very
• 29:45
  important. That's something that I'm trying
• 29:46
  to do like one of the reasons I came back was because I really
• 29:49
  want to get to To know more of my own country and, you know,
• 29:52
  the nation itself because there's a lot that your own
• 29:55
  nation has to offer. And every place is different.
• 29:58
  Like, in the state's, every state is different.
• 30:01
  Same in the UK, we've got different countries within this
• 30:03
  nation, but that's the thing. Like they are going to be
• 30:08
  similar in some extent. Whereas if you go.
• 30:11
  Yeah, like somewhere, like, Bolivia Peru or France, Germany,
• 30:14
  whatever. Like that's going to be totally
• 30:15
  different and I feel that it's worth it for so many different
• 30:19
  reasons. Like, it just gives you.
• 30:22
  Yeah, different sense of perspective.
• 30:24
  It gives you different experiences.
• 30:26
  You meet different people. You see how other people live,
• 30:29
  and you learn? And you become, I think you
• 30:31
  become more interesting as a person.
• 30:33
  You get more stories, you know, they mean like I thought I
• 30:36
  missed. Yes.
• 30:37
  Only so much you can talk about in the little town that you live
• 30:40
  in like generally, if I just stayed in my hometown.
• 30:43
  I mean, you know, I like going up there but I couldn't imagine
• 30:46
  living there my whole life never goes.
• 30:49
  That is lose my mind. Yeah, it's sort of dumbfounded
• 30:53
  in travel. I think you also learn about
• 30:55
  yourself and you become more resourceful and more confident,
• 31:00
  you have to conquer fear, you know, I'd be I go on these trips
• 31:03
  by myself and it's a plane would sort of Descend into where, that
• 31:09
  and I'd be gripped by, like, what am I doing this?
• 31:11
  You know, I can't wait. You know, I'm going to be
• 31:12
  Bailon, I'm doing this in and then, I mean, I had no choice at
• 31:15
  that point. I'm there, you know, Sally
• 31:18
  Forth? I'm good.
• 31:19
  You know, we have a good time, but, you know, you've learned to
• 31:21
  conquer that sort of fear of doing things, doing things
• 31:24
  different, that you don't know and the fear of the unknown and
• 31:29
  being resourceful, you know, going to figure out a bus
• 31:32
  timetable, or whatever it is, or the chill and the money and, you
• 31:36
  know, all these things. So I think you Really grow as a
• 31:39
  person. You know just personal growth
• 31:41
  and really it's really good for that.
• 31:43
  Excellent. Well thank you so much for
• 31:45
  sharing with us. I'm sure our listeners will love
• 31:48
  listening to that and yeah for me it's I totally get exactly
• 31:52
  where you're coming from on all this feel exactly the same way.
• 31:55
  Let's talk about your works as a writer, you're an award-winning
• 31:59
  author. And you've written a series of
• 32:01
  Works including novellas such as Angels, lost a series of
• 32:05
  anthologies and crime. Psychological horror our many
• 32:08
  other genres to give all of your more recent work, skin of
• 32:13
  tattoos, a crime Noir. Thriller talk to us about your
• 32:17
  process of writing these books and how you draw inspiration
• 32:21
  from your real life experiences in order to craft these stories.
• 32:26
  Yeah, some of them, it's difficult where you say,
• 32:29
  inspiration comes from, you know, as a journalist I came
• 32:31
  across many different things. So, scared of tattoos actually
• 32:34
  came out of something that I interviewed gang members and El
• 32:37
  Salvador about. And I had this idea for a sort
• 32:42
  of a bigger story about it. They were actually Deport.
• 32:45
  They were gang members in Los Angeles and they have been
• 32:48
  deported because of the crimes they've committed and back to El
• 32:53
  Salvador. The problem was they, they had
• 32:55
  been In El Salvador but they didn't know.
• 32:57
  They've never grown up there. Some of them barely spoke
• 33:00
  Spanish. So they were sort of fish out of
• 33:02
  water in these places where they lived with maybe extended
• 33:05
  family, Aunts Uncles, grandma is that they really didn't know.
• 33:09
  And they didn't know the country at all.
• 33:10
  They were, you know, they were American and so it just struck
• 33:14
  me. So that's actually what that is.
• 33:17
  A funny sort of paradox of immigration, you know?
• 33:21
  And so I ended up writing that novel.
• 33:24
  It's a new or novel about a gang member.
• 33:25
  Trying to go straight and how difficult it is.
• 33:29
  And after I came to LA and I did Cover a lot of gang issues here
• 33:33
  for the Associated Press. I started writing that so that's
• 33:37
  where that came out of directly. Sort of out of that journalistic
• 33:41
  was a magazine story. I did my other novel girl on the
• 33:45
  brink came out of a personal experience which is an abusive
• 33:48
  relationship. And I wanted to write something
• 33:51
  that for younger girls teenage girl.
• 33:55
  As they start their dating lives because nobody teaches you this
• 33:58
  stuff. There are definite red flags of
• 34:01
  abusers and you can mistake them very easily.
• 34:04
  For example, someone who you know, calls you incessantly or
• 34:07
  text you you know, you can all. I just want to hear your voice.
• 34:11
  Oh, I just, you know, I can't bear another 10 minutes without,
• 34:13
  you know. And so this can seem very
• 34:16
  flattering at first but really, what they're doing is
• 34:18
  controlling their checking up on you.
• 34:20
  They're not giving you time to live your wife or what have you.
• 34:23
  So that's what I wrote a A book about that, it's a young adult
• 34:28
  novel on the brink. So that came in my personal
• 34:31
  experience right now, I'm working on a mystery that came
• 34:35
  out of a location that from high school in New Jersey, where I
• 34:39
  went, which was a rock and up in the mountains of the lake and a
• 34:44
  big rock and kids would go up there to party and smoke pot and
• 34:48
  drink beer and whatnot. So, I have a mystery centered
• 34:51
  around this again. It just always stuck to me.
• 34:54
  This Drew. This could be a very Sinister
• 34:57
  setting and something. So yeah, it's just it's a
• 35:00
  different amalgam of different things that you come across and
• 35:04
  I have a book and I write down different ideas that I have
• 35:09
  different thoughts, sometimes names, like place names or names
• 35:13
  that I think would be good for character.
• 35:15
  And I just write them all down and when I need something, I go
• 35:18
  to that, my notebook, I've often heard certain writers in various
• 35:24
  different fields, say that, you know.
• 35:25
  No, the best stories come from real life, from things you've
• 35:30
  experienced or or just you know maybe like things that you take
• 35:34
  inspiration from and then you. Yeah.
• 35:35
  You craft that into the the novel like I for instance, I
• 35:39
  know the comedian Ricky Gervais site, whenever he does a TV
• 35:43
  show. He always does it around
• 35:45
  something that you know, he's a personal experience.
• 35:48
  Obviously many people known for the office and you know with
• 35:51
  that that was literally boss or someone he'd worked with that.
• 35:54
  He based his main All right. They're all in the setting of
• 35:57
  working in that office and everything.
• 35:59
  And yeah I think as far as like the relatability aspect of it,
• 36:03
  you know, that that's what makes these sort of stories much
• 36:06
  better and much more engaging because it's stuff that people
• 36:10
  can relate to and you can kind of tell and feel that it comes
• 36:14
  from a maybe sort of a real place because you're learning
• 36:19
  because like if it's too much of a something abstract story or
• 36:23
  something, it's like maybe It's more difficult to lose yourself
• 36:27
  in it. And whereas, if it's more real
• 36:29
  or doesn't have to necessarily be real.
• 36:31
  But like, if it has a concrete point, then it's like, you know,
• 36:35
  something people can really engage with, no, it has to be
• 36:39
  relatable in some way. And usually, I mean, even
• 36:41
  fantasy or science fiction, or whatever you have characters,
• 36:45
  and you have to be able to empathize with the characters
• 36:47
  and what they're going through, even though it may be a, you
• 36:50
  know, fantasy setting or what have you were with werewolves
• 36:54
  and partners with God. It means or what have you but
• 36:57
  you can relate to the the actions and the mentality of the
• 37:00
  character emotions of the characters.
• 37:03
  When you were talking about girl on the brink, you mentioned,
• 37:06
  obviously that you the reasons for doing this is to inspire
• 37:10
  young women and to give them confidence and so teach them and
• 37:12
  stuff. And one of the things that I
• 37:14
  notice, which we covered in in the Preamble, is that your
• 37:18
  public speaker? And I wanted to know, what sort
• 37:21
  of things that you you speak about when you're doing your
• 37:24
  public speaking. Like I Can kind of sort of
• 37:26
  reason, the sort of things that you tend to speak about based on
• 37:29
  logic and what we've spoken about.
• 37:30
  But I just like to know, like, what kind of things you speak
• 37:34
  about like I presume that you obviously do public speaking
• 37:37
  with, with younger women and to educate and that sort of medium.
• 37:42
  But is there any others particular topics that you
• 37:45
  discuss with the I do? Well, I speak a lot about
• 37:48
  writing and books, book clubs writing groups that sort of
• 37:52
  thing libraries, so that's 11. Topic.
• 37:56
  And, you know, various all kinds of different aspects of that and
• 38:01
  then I do speak about dating relationships.
• 38:05
  Dating abuse, I suppose domestic violence.
• 38:08
  That's another topic and then I have spoken about my
• 38:12
  journalistic career and you know the adventures I've been on and
• 38:18
  travel that sort of thing and how I grew up and travel.
• 38:21
  So do sort of those are the three main things I think What
• 38:26
  do you think it takes to become, you know, a really good public
• 38:31
  speaker. What are the main qualities?
• 38:33
  Do you think you need You know, I was painfully shy as a kid I
• 38:38
  really was and I think that, you know, genetic I suppose but also
• 38:44
  because I moved around. So what I was always the new kid
• 38:47
  on the Block. Yeah, I was just shy but you
• 38:49
  know, just watch what people were doing so I could fit in,
• 38:53
  you know, but fitting in was the main thing when you're a kid you
• 38:56
  want to fit in and belong somewhere?
• 38:58
  So, and as a journalist, I had to push through that because you
• 39:03
  have to you know, ask go up to Strangers and ask questions and
• 39:06
  things like that. So, you know, if I can do it,
• 39:09
  anybody can I think and you just have to push yourself and I
• 39:16
  practice, I think is a good way, you know, in front of a mirror
• 39:19
  or just speaking to small groups before going to larger groups.
• 39:23
  I think that really helped me as well and also having an outline
• 39:27
  of what to say. And again, I like to sing it.
• 39:30
  So people, you know, sort of speak extemporaneously, I found
• 39:33
  that that didn't work for me because I would forget something
• 39:36
  and then have to go back and then it would just look, you
• 39:38
  know, you look sort of disorganized.
• 39:40
  So I think having an at least either an outline and things and
• 39:43
  speaking and then trying to inject some humor, you know,
• 39:47
  audiences love humor. And so that, if you can make
• 39:50
  things funny people actually they want to laugh.
• 39:54
  And, you know, they do laugh at my jokes, if I, you know,
• 39:57
  nothing on a comedian or anything.
• 39:59
  But, you know, if you can inject, that little bit of
• 40:02
  humor, even in a dry, If it's a corporate talk or something,
• 40:07
  more serious, like, you know, you know, dating abuse or
• 40:12
  whatever. That's that really goes over.
• 40:14
  Well really knows it well, but I think also, you just have to be
• 40:17
  yourself. And that's what audiences want
• 40:19
  to see that. You kind of have to relax, which
• 40:22
  can be difficult. You know, you're up there with
• 40:24
  all these eyes staring at you, but the more you can relax and
• 40:28
  be yourself and let your personality show through.
• 40:31
  I think that people respond to that.
• 40:34
  Thank you for sharing. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 40:37
  I'll add on top of that. I think it does take a great
• 40:40
  deal of practice that these things don't kind of just come
• 40:43
  overnight. Like I am a bit of a Omniverse,
• 40:47
  Tim, Germany, how I describe myself.
• 40:49
  So you know I find it pretty easy to like do that in those
• 40:55
  social situations. But I almost always have to
• 40:59
  force myself to do it because most of the time I just I'm very
• 41:01
  kind of content with just being real.
• 41:03
  Going around the room observing drinking, you know, that's,
• 41:06
  that's I like that. And obviously you don't achieve
• 41:09
  anything really but I mean it's nice to enjoy, you know?
• 41:12
  But you don't really achieve anything.
• 41:13
  If you're a networking event, you need to talk to people.
• 41:16
  So it's yeah. It's I suppose it's important to
• 41:20
  sort of push through that boundary barrier, boundary or
• 41:23
  whatever and put yourself out there and yeah, I think it gets
• 41:27
  easier over time, doesn't it? The more you practice it, the
• 41:30
  more you do it. You know, as I said you're
• 41:32
  starting with Like little writing groups that, you know,
• 41:37
  that was a really good thing that built my confidence, you
• 41:40
  know? And I thought, well, I can do
• 41:42
  this, you know? And, you know, I make people
• 41:46
  laugh for people like me and you know, they came bought my book
• 41:49
  and I was like, okay, I can do this, you know.
• 41:51
  And I just, you know, again, I have to push myself too, because
• 41:54
  I'm exactly the same way. I'm like a cocktail party, you
• 41:58
  know. But you know, some people comes
• 42:02
  more naturally than others. But But yeah, do you I mean I'm
• 42:06
  intrigued because obviously as you said, you've taught yourself
• 42:10
  to to not be shy and to ever comments that but I imagine it's
• 42:13
  something that doesn't ever quite go away.
• 42:15
  And like, for me, I've always been great at talking to people.
• 42:19
  I've never really been shy about that, but as I've gotten older,
• 42:23
  I have become much, much more introverted, which is why I say
• 42:26
  I'm an omnivore and what I mean by that is and I've said this to
• 42:31
  people and it always sounds a bit crazy but every A
• 42:33
  circumstance is different for me, so like sometimes I walk in
• 42:37
  a room and here's a really good example.
• 42:40
  So I volunteer at this place here in Manchester and we had
• 42:44
  like a supposed like a Christmas do it.
• 42:48
  He was like socially distance and stuff, but whatever.
• 42:51
  Cool about it was that I was was basically the structure of this
• 42:54
  place is that you enter the building from the downstairs?
• 42:57
  You walk up the stairs and there's a main area right now,
• 43:00
  normally, that's just a couple of tables, whatever and it's
• 43:03
  Empty, right? But I walk in and there's like
• 43:07
  40 people, 50 people spaced out but like around this room and
• 43:11
  I'm like, huh, and I sort of as I looked behind trying to like,
• 43:16
  you know, not because it always happens.
• 43:18
  You enter a room, everyone stares at you, and there's
• 43:21
  nothing to think about because, no one cares, everyone does the
• 43:23
  same thing I can guarantee. When you sit down, you'll be the
• 43:26
  person staring at people again. So, say, you gotta, like, remove
• 43:30
  the, the, oh my God. They're staring at me thing
• 43:32
  because no one cares. But yeah, for that minute you
• 43:35
  everyone has their eyes on you and I remember walking to the
• 43:39
  side of the room and just whispering to someone like
• 43:42
  there's a lot of people here. Here.
• 43:44
  And the my point is that most of the time I don't mind but
• 43:49
  sometimes you get those instances where yes, suddenly
• 43:52
  you feel really shy and I just wonder like did you have like
• 43:57
  instances of that way? Like one situation you're just
• 44:00
  confident and and he's and another time it's suddenly like
• 44:04
  almost like you're paralyzed with fear.
• 44:06
  Like dude you experienced that in?
• 44:08
  Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if it's just a mood
• 44:11
  or some, you know, or you just it's some sort.
• 44:14
  Out of vibe, you pick up on and something that sometimes I feel
• 44:18
  more forward and sometimes I just don't feel for and I just
• 44:22
  feel like, oh, just sit here, you know, to take the easy way
• 44:25
  out with or sometimes I'm like, you know, the life of the party
• 44:27
  going around and more animated, I will say, you know, one time I
• 44:32
  showed up for it was a writing group thing and it was in Orange
• 44:36
  County which is south of LA. And you know, LA traffic is
• 44:40
  just, you know, horrendous. And so it took me.
• 44:43
  I mean, I'm ride Just on time after bashing through this
• 44:47
  freeway traffic and I was just like frazzled and exhausted and
• 44:50
  worried that I was going to be late and, you know, so I rushed
• 44:53
  in setup and just went into my thing and I was very flat, you
• 44:56
  know, I really was and I could see everybody was just sort of
• 44:59
  like, you know, looking at me and I just, you know, I guess I
• 45:02
  just didn't have it together and so I mean went okay, you know,
• 45:06
  but you know, then nobody nobody bought my book, you know, and I
• 45:10
  know but I was just like, you know, I learned a lesson here.
• 45:14
  I have to allow time to even if I get somewhere in our earlier,
• 45:19
  two hours early just to get there and relax, you know, and
• 45:24
  not be so like, because I was so frazzled after the traffic and
• 45:27
  whatnot. So, I mean, you know, things
• 45:29
  like that can influence you to your mood if you really like out
• 45:34
  of it and stressed out to get to the event, even if it's a party
• 45:38
  or something, it takes a while for me, too, one down, things
• 45:44
  like that. So yeah, you learn me.
• 45:46
  But yeah, I absolutely yeah, there were days when I feel
• 45:49
  like, you know, I'm the leader. I'm, you know, everybody's going
• 45:52
  to follow me and other days. I feel like I'm just yeah.
• 45:56
  Severe. It really is like that, isn't
• 45:59
  it? I'm moving things forward, like
• 46:02
  talk to us a little bit about your work as an editor.
• 46:04
  Like I noticed that you've done a lot of news editing and I
• 46:08
  think our listeners would probably like to know a little
• 46:10
  bit more about that and what that involves and just yeah the
• 46:13
  job in general. Yeah, bikini, you know, I was a
• 46:17
  journalist and newspaper. And then I became a copy editor,
• 46:28
  and what they call you, sort of a sign reporters to go out and
• 46:32
  report but it's not as fun as when you're out there in the
• 46:42
  field and because you're sitting at a desk like, literally, you
• 46:45
  know, eight hours of just staring at a computer screen.
• 46:49
  So, I went back eventually to writing and recording but my
• 46:52
  writing was a lot better after having been an editor.
• 46:55
  And then I saw, you know edit you know because you you sort of
• 46:59
  write it a vacuum, you think everybody works and writes like
• 47:01
  you and then you see all these different styles and things that
• 47:04
  mistakes people make and what not as an editor.
• 47:06
  So I think it actually improved my writing quite a bit and now I
• 47:11
  do a lot of editing. I work as a freelance editor and
• 47:15
  writer I probably do more writing than editing.
• 47:18
  Well I don't know 50/50 perhaps but again I you know II had of
• 47:24
  self public you know people sell Yeah, whooshing novels or what
• 47:27
  have you? So I edit their manuscripts or I
• 47:29
  had a lot of reports soon or we write different corporate things
• 47:35
  so again it's it's it's fun but it's actually it's pretty taxing
• 47:40
  work to when you sit down and edit because it's about
• 47:43
  structure and organizing words and sentences so end of an
• 47:47
  editor I'm actually put a more tired if I was doing right you
• 47:51
  know it's just writing so it is but you know, you develop Again
• 47:56
  you know the more you do it, you develop an eye for looking for
• 47:59
  details. I couldn't agree more of you.
• 48:02
  Yeah, I'm afraid Lance writer as well in predominantly in the
• 48:06
  field of marketing and I yeah, I must say proofing in editing is
• 48:11
  so much more taxing and tiring than just writing an article and
• 48:15
  I'm writing an article for the most part is easy because as you
• 48:18
  say you have your own style and as long as the client gives you
• 48:22
  kind of something to work with like okay in marketing.
• 48:25
  It's you know, No. Here's the topic is the keywords
• 48:28
  go and I can normally just turn that into something quite
• 48:31
  easily. But yeah when they either don't
• 48:33
  give you a lot to work on or you know yeah it like I've had
• 48:38
  situations where I was literally doing.
• 48:41
  I remember this one client? I was sort of editing improving
• 48:44
  their website and oh my God. Was that boring?
• 48:49
  I mean, it's got to be done and it's you know, you got to take
• 48:52
  pride in everything you do and always give it your utmost, you
• 48:55
  know, Sin. But it yeah it's very tiring.
• 48:58
  And I think the main thing that makes it tiring is that your
• 49:01
  mind has to be like really fixated on the words and really
• 49:06
  focus. That's the thing, like our
• 49:07
  brains do this thing where we skip over words.
• 49:13
  So like sometimes I even have proof read my own work and
• 49:17
  they'll be mistakes till afterwards and it's very
• 49:20
  frustrating because I'm like, God damn it.
• 49:22
  Like, I'm so careful with this but like there's still Nothing
• 49:25
  that any normally, it's something very minor like it
• 49:28
  maybe you missed a connecting word or you know, something very
• 49:31
  minor but still like you. When you pride yourself on your
• 49:34
  work and particularly if you're freelancing you're trying to
• 49:36
  build a brand or you're trying to say, hey take my services,
• 49:39
  like I'm the best, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 49:42
  Like you've got to prove that and it's like a little minor
• 49:45
  things like that. They're kind of destroy a
• 49:49
  reputation, a little bit like, you know, maybe that's a bit of
• 49:51
  a crazy way of putting it but, you know, I think it is
• 49:53
  important. Oh, yeah.
• 49:56
  Absolutely. I mean, I miss that.
• 49:57
  Miss words all the time and I went like the or an or these
• 50:00
  leaves are, you know, and I can read it like three times and I
• 50:04
  miss it every time I bring it just skips over and then
• 50:09
  somebody else are reading. Catch it right?
• 50:11
  When I heard that, you know, like five times.
• 50:13
  I never caught the missing the, you know, it's weird.
• 50:18
  But yeah, so she smashes what? Because you say you see a know
• 50:21
  I've seen it all sorts of Publications like not just
• 50:24
  articles. I've seen it.
• 50:25
  It on like official, you know, documents from major companies.
• 50:30
  I've seen it in books like proper books, you know, but my
• 50:33
  very famous, authors as well. Like this happens all the time,
• 50:37
  and I think it's a combination of two things.
• 50:39
  It's a combination of, yeah, what?
• 50:40
  We just laid out and also the reader doing the same thing.
• 50:43
  I think it's, you don't often pick up on the words unless
• 50:47
  you're kind of sort of in autopilot.
• 50:50
  And you're kind of like relaxed. And or if you are looking for
• 50:52
  those mistakes, obviously, then you might find That place is
• 50:57
  crazy out of mind work. Sometimes, I don't know.
• 51:01
  It just is. And again, it's also how focused
• 51:03
  you have to be when you're editing a thing that's sort of
• 51:06
  where you just have to really be.
• 51:07
  So on every detail, every word, every ' you know, it has
• 51:13
  happened. That's how taxing it does get.
• 51:17
  What are your means of goals and aspirations for writing is, are
• 51:21
  like, I don't know. Maybe some particular Awards,
• 51:23
  you'd be interested in winning or I don't know, is it is there
• 51:26
  like a Target as far as like sales or maybe it's more
• 51:29
  creative? Do you have like a goal where?
• 51:31
  It's like, I want to write this kind of book or this kind of
• 51:34
  thing or like what is your what's the, what would be that
• 51:38
  the Pinnacle of your life, sort of writing career?
• 51:40
  So to speak, would be great to be able to live off my income,
• 51:45
  off my books and so I didn't wouldn't have to do proofing and
• 51:48
  editing everything that is quite a tall order.
• 51:53
  Many, you know, there are few novelists that Live off their,
• 51:57
  just their novels, you know, most have to do other things,
• 52:00
  you know, either teach, or I feel and what have you, but,
• 52:03
  yeah, I'd love to be a best seller or, you know, win some
• 52:06
  prize that would, you know, unknown prize that we've sort of
• 52:10
  put me on the literary map, that type of thing.
• 52:13
  So, it's, yeah, you know, you just have to keep slogging at it
• 52:18
  and, you know, basically, you have to do it as a labor of love
• 52:21
  because you just don't make that much money out of her anything
• 52:23
  and they're huge projects to, right?
• 52:25
  The book, it just takes a lot of you know it you really don't get
• 52:29
  the recompense for it. So you have to do it because
• 52:32
  you're driven to do it. Sometimes I think I'm a
• 52:34
  masochist but you know I just love to do it.
• 52:38
  So that's really what I want to keep doing.
• 52:41
  I'm exactly in the same boat as you in a different way but
• 52:45
  obviously I'm trying to make my podcast and YouTube my living
• 52:50
  and as many content creators, listening will know and
• 52:53
  podcasters as well. Like it's Is that sort of thing?
• 52:56
  Where you know, it doesn't happen overnight.
• 52:58
  And many people start it and then give up, you know, very
• 53:03
  early on maybe, maybe even like six months into it and you got
• 53:06
  to do this stuff for years. You've got to build this for
• 53:08
  many years and I often think about that because obviously my
• 53:12
  freelance work is essentially what keeps me going.
• 53:15
  And you know I like writing but when what you're writing and
• 53:20
  what you're writing for is everything like I would much
• 53:22
  rather be writing articles. On but probably more creative
• 53:28
  writing because that's something I've not really done.
• 53:30
  I've done, I do poetry but creative writing something
• 53:34
  that's like kind of eluded me as far as you know writing is
• 53:38
  concerned but I'm much more interested in, you know creating
• 53:42
  video content podcast in like these kind of mediums.
• 53:45
  Like just talking I really enjoy that and it's difficult to build
• 53:50
  that over time. And as you say, you need these
• 53:52
  little kind of things to help you do your Thing.
• 53:55
  But like you said like it's very know, it's essential that you
• 54:01
  love what you do and I think that it serves as the means or
• 54:05
  it will serve as the Catalyst to make it happen for you as well.
• 54:08
  Like I kind of believe in myself.
• 54:11
  I can do this and you know I think like with yourself like as
• 54:15
  you continue over the years like you're inevitably it will
• 54:18
  happened, you know? I mean I think it's like like I
• 54:20
  said like when I when I came across your your website like I
• 54:24
  was fascinated by this. Story and I think we as humans
• 54:28
  are just fascinated by stories. You know, it's probably not the
• 54:32
  most entertaining thing, one of the most entertaining things in
• 54:34
  life, you know, it's not so much.
• 54:36
  Like, people can talk all day about, like, oh, and this much,
• 54:40
  and I did this thing, and it's like, but stories are
• 54:43
  everything, and not just what the story is, but the way you
• 54:46
  tell it as, well, that's something that I've had to learn
• 54:49
  over the years. Like, it's, it's very easy to
• 54:52
  just be like, yeah, this happened and this happened.
• 54:54
  But like, as you say, so, sometimes it can it can fall
• 54:56
  flat if you're not prepared and you don't have like your own way
• 55:00
  of kind of Telling the story being a Storyteller.
• 55:05
  Yeah, absolutely. I think you know, people are
• 55:08
  fascinated by people and that's why, you know, the gossip, you
• 55:12
  know, industry is so is huge because people want to read
• 55:15
  about people you know what they're doing, you know?
• 55:18
  I mean, I mean, really, who cares?
• 55:19
  What? You know Prince Prince Harry and
• 55:23
  Meagan are doing but you know big headlines.
• 55:26
  See that's one thing I'll never understand though.
• 55:28
  Like I okay I would be Interested in learning about
• 55:33
  Sir, okay? Like, for instance, one of my
• 55:35
  favorite people is Patrick Stewart.
• 55:37
  I think he's an excellent actor. I would love to learn more about
• 55:39
  him as a person, right. But I don't want to know about,
• 55:43
  you know oh him and his wife are having issues and but like why
• 55:47
  do I go who cares? Like why is that?
• 55:50
  It doesn't matter. Damn, I can't iron magazines.
• 55:56
  We got so many of them in the UK.
• 55:58
  And I just I've never read them because But like, sometimes I
• 56:02
  look at them and I'm like, the sell very well, like, there's a
• 56:08
  bucket for this. Why is there a market?
• 56:12
  I don't know. Yeah, absolutely.
• 56:13
  I just think people are fascinated by people and
• 56:16
  people's stories and I think everybody has a story to tell
• 56:20
  some people are more interesting than others, but I think
• 56:23
  everybody in when it comes down to, it has some as a story.
• 56:27
  And, you know, that was one thing.
• 56:28
  I loved as a journalist was And interview people and finding out
• 56:33
  their stories. And as a journalist, you can ask
• 56:35
  people sort of personal questions, you know, about their
• 56:38
  how old they are and you know what influence did your father
• 56:42
  have on you or your moment you can actually sort of personal
• 56:44
  questions and and people loved it, you know?
• 56:47
  And again people's favorite subject is themselves.
• 56:50
  Ultimately say is I'm talking about myself but it is.
• 56:56
  Yeah. So it's I think stories is such
• 56:59
  a huge thing. I'm going back to, you know,
• 57:03
  caveman days, you know? Let me sit around the fire
• 57:05
  telling stories telling stories with the paintings on the rock
• 57:09
  wall. One thing that's interesting me
• 57:10
  over the years is how? Because sometimes a lot of time
• 57:13
  people just interested in listening to me talk and I'll be
• 57:16
  honest, I prefer listening to talk in.
• 57:19
  If anything I kind of live by that saying of, you know, like
• 57:23
  you don't you don't learn anything by talking so just shut
• 57:25
  up and listen, you know, but you know, inevitably you do have to
• 57:30
  talk and have to tell stories. He's and that's kind of more
• 57:32
  what I use YouTube for. So in real life, I'm just
• 57:34
  listening. All right, that's what I'm
• 57:36
  doing. But on this.
• 57:37
  Yeah, it's all cool one, right? It makes sense to do it that
• 57:40
  way. But like I look at like the way
• 57:45
  that people sort of interact with each other and I wonder
• 57:49
  like, why people sometimes say to me, you know, oh you love
• 57:54
  talking about yourself, don't you?
• 57:56
  And I think, to be honest with you, we all use ourselves.
• 58:01
  Not just to talk about it. But as a reference point gin and
• 58:05
  I mean, like if you're trying to relate to someone 9 times out of
• 58:08
  10, you're going to say, well, when I was in similar situation
• 58:11
  or if, when I was in this instance, you know, like you
• 58:14
  like I don't for example, people have mocked me for talking about
• 58:18
  living in Estonia, right? And for me that's something
• 58:22
  recent that happened in my life. It's a big part of my life.
• 58:24
  Obviously, I'm very proud of that and everything but a lot of
• 58:27
  the time I don't actually bring it up on purpose.
• 58:30
  It's more of a case of Like if someone says something about the
• 58:33
  say we're talking about Europe, I don't know, politics, I'll
• 58:36
  say, oh yeah, you know, when I was in Estonia, it was x, y, and
• 58:39
  Zed, so it's more kind of like relatability rather than me
• 58:43
  going. Oh, Hey, listen to me.
• 58:44
  Talk about x y and Zed for half an hour.
• 58:46
  Like I am not like that, but it's interesting to me that
• 58:49
  people have that attitude, and I think it comes down to a
• 58:53
  combination of maybe jealousy, but also kind of people failing,
• 58:56
  to understand, like human interaction, like you have to
• 59:00
  have that Baseline. Of relatability and often that
• 59:03
  will be coming from your own experiences.
• 59:06
  You know? I mean, like it's unless I guess
• 59:08
  you're talking about someone, you know, closely and sort of
• 59:11
  talking about their experiences. But you know, I mean like makes
• 59:14
  more sense to talk about your own experiences because you can
• 59:16
  also talk about how you felt in those instances as well which is
• 59:20
  something also that people want to know.
• 59:21
  It's people always say like well you know yeah you did this thing
• 59:25
  but how did it feel being in that instance and what was that
• 59:28
  like and you know, Interesting. Yeah, it can be difficult.
• 59:32
  You know, this is one thing I've never told talked about my
• 59:35
  background even how I grew up or traveling or what have you a lot
• 59:38
  because people come, you know, it can come across as boasting a
• 59:44
  get accused of being a snob to because you know I say some word
• 59:48
  differently you know my own Americans it was it sounds you
• 59:52
  know British tea or something and it just says because I say
• 59:54
  Bean instead of been you know whatever you know.
• 59:57
  So people pick up on these little things.
• 59:59
  Things and it makes me feel like, maybe I shouldn't say
• 1:00:02
  that, you know, maybe I shouldn't even talk at all, you
• 1:00:04
  know? And, and it does, you know, it
• 1:00:06
  is a bit inhibiting. So, you know, going on to a
• 1:00:09
  podcast, I can actually, you know, talk all I want about all
• 1:00:12
  these things. But yeah, it is.
• 1:00:14
  And it is a combination, I think of envy, and people just can't
• 1:00:17
  relate to it. You know, they don't it always
• 1:00:20
  amazes me because people don't want to find out how it was to
• 1:00:24
  live in Venezuela or Guatemala or something or Estonia and, you
• 1:00:29
  know, They just kind of look and and to turn and change the
• 1:00:33
  subject to something if he get his subjects.
• 1:00:37
  But yeah. So there is that aspect all
• 1:00:41
  that. But I do think in general, we
• 1:00:43
  live in an age with a social media and everything, we're
• 1:00:46
  self-promotion as much more permissible than it, used to be
• 1:00:49
  sure. You know, it used to be, you
• 1:00:51
  would never, you know, say too much about yourself and put
• 1:00:54
  yourself forward, you know, it was just seen as unseemly.
• 1:00:58
  But now you're, you know, No. And that was something I had to
• 1:01:01
  come get over to like you posting that myself on Facebook
• 1:01:05
  or what have you. It's, we do live in a bit more
• 1:01:08
  of a narcissistic age where it's okay to say about this prize,
• 1:01:14
  are I'm doing this and they see that that's the thing.
• 1:01:17
  I think it's silly that there is that you because what we're
• 1:01:21
  doing, like for instance, both of us.
• 1:01:23
  What we're doing is marketing, its branding.
• 1:01:26
  That's what it is and marketing and branding has been around for
• 1:01:29
  Words of years, you know, maybe even longer than that.
• 1:01:32
  And it's that's how you get things across if you're selling
• 1:01:35
  products services. So it's no different.
• 1:01:38
  Like you only thing is in order to get people interested in and
• 1:01:41
  you know, for instance, if I want people to subscribe to my
• 1:01:44
  Channel or check out this podcast, I have to make the
• 1:01:47
  content entertaining. But I also have to think about,
• 1:01:50
  you know, how, yeah. How I promote that and saying
• 1:01:52
  like hey would you be interested in this?
• 1:01:54
  Make sure you check this out because this happened, you know,
• 1:01:56
  like I don't see that as boasting and stuff, I think, I
• 1:02:00
  think I see it as like, it makes sense to do that.
• 1:02:03
  It's essential to do that. I think in everyday life,
• 1:02:06
  obviously there is a way to approach these things.
• 1:02:10
  So you know I mean if I often wait for people to ask me, I
• 1:02:16
  don't bring it up the things that I do, unless I see a fair
• 1:02:23
  opportunity to do so and it feels like sort of normal to do.
• 1:02:27
  So I cannot to imposing or yeah if they ask me and often you
• 1:02:32
  know, As the cases when people ask you and probe, you then they
• 1:02:34
  want to know more and more and more.
• 1:02:36
  So it surprises me for instance, that you say, like, you've had
• 1:02:38
  these instances where you like, yeah, I lived in Venezuela and
• 1:02:40
  people don't want to know more like that is confusing to me
• 1:02:43
  because humans are naturally inquisitive.
• 1:02:46
  So you think you'd want to Does, you know, there is that as
• 1:03:04
  well so it's you know, it can be a mixed bag.
• 1:03:07
  But yeah, as you say if when people would, you can sort of
• 1:03:10
  detect to when people are interested, when you know,
• 1:03:12
  people have traveled a lot more have a border mind and they're
• 1:03:16
  more open to that, you know sometimes when people you know
• 1:03:19
  have lived in a one-town, their whole life they not you know
• 1:03:24
  probably going to really appreciate someone's other.
• 1:03:27
  You know, overseas experiences is much, I think the key comes
• 1:03:31
  down to 20 Open mindedness really?
• 1:03:33
  Because you don't have to travel the world to have an open mind,
• 1:03:36
  but it helps, you know, because they say I travel broadens the
• 1:03:40
  mind, but I've met many people that haven't traveled a lot, but
• 1:03:43
  still have the most open minds of all time.
• 1:03:46
  And I think it's yeah, that's certainly how I live my life is
• 1:03:50
  sort of the Quest for knowledge. The quest to learn more like I
• 1:03:53
  would never understand people that don't want to learn, don't
• 1:03:56
  want to understand, but hey, we, you know, whatever.
• 1:03:59
  Like it's long as you're happy. Okay, moving it forward.
• 1:04:04
  And one thing I want to do before I kind of just go in on
• 1:04:08
  this asking you about your phone, correspondence, stuff,
• 1:04:11
  because there's so much to delve into their.
• 1:04:14
  I want to Circle back to talking about the work that you've done
• 1:04:19
  motivating the teenage girls because I want to know, like, is
• 1:04:24
  there any kind of like success stories you've had of, as a
• 1:04:27
  result of that where maybe people have reached out back to
• 1:04:29
  you maybe through emails or maybe when you were doing the
• 1:04:32
  talks to people wherever kind of confide in you and you were able
• 1:04:37
  to kind of move them forward with their life and yeah whether
• 1:04:41
  any success stories in that area.
• 1:04:43
  Well you know every time I talk about this book to a group and
• 1:04:48
  mention it was my own based on my own experience and you know,
• 1:04:51
  very it wasn't Spired more than peace.
• 1:04:53
  But anyway, and he's my mate. I mentioned there's afterward.
• 1:04:56
  I always get someone, usually a woman or more than one coming up
• 1:05:00
  to me and saying, you know, that happened to me too.
• 1:05:03
  I was in years of marriage, for 14 years.
• 1:05:05
  It took me 20 years to get out. And, you know, I've had women
• 1:05:09
  come up to me crying and Tears in their eyes, and just seeing,
• 1:05:13
  you know, I'm so glad you're doing this and, you know, I, you
• 1:05:16
  know, this was my experience and it had never fails in every
• 1:05:22
  every May I speak about it, so I hope it's moved the needle
• 1:05:26
  forward and I do get actually a lot of women or older woman,
• 1:05:29
  even buying it for granddaughters daughters nieces,
• 1:05:32
  you know, for teenagers in their lives to read it.
• 1:05:37
  So hopefully it's done some good at some, you know, some level, I
• 1:05:42
  know it does resonate with with readers, you know, and you know
• 1:05:45
  that I hope it's certainly quick that more on the map, you know?
• 1:05:52
  No. And especially and it could also
• 1:05:54
  happen to boys but it does happen more two girls, you know
• 1:05:59
  the warning signs of an F an abuser because they can be very
• 1:06:02
  misleading. Especially you know, you don't
• 1:06:04
  nobody teaches you this stuff. He's kind of just land in it and
• 1:06:08
  often too late. I think it's excellent the work
• 1:06:12
  that you're doing and it's really, it's crazy.
• 1:06:15
  It's really good to hear that very reassuring to hear that
• 1:06:18
  like there have been people that have resonated within been able
• 1:06:21
  to find some sort of positivity in that because it's not
• 1:06:24
  something easy to get through and it does take a long time
• 1:06:30
  and, you know, branding and promoting.
• 1:06:32
  Yeah. Go for it please.
• 1:06:33
  Yes. And in fact it's a friend of
• 1:06:36
  mine actually just translated into Spanish.
• 1:06:40
  Made of of Peru. So we're working on that and
• 1:06:43
  that's going to be released in Spanish shortly.
• 1:06:46
  So that's going to be another adventure, how to Market Wilkin
• 1:06:48
  Spanish, have not done that before.
• 1:06:50
  But anyway, so there's girl on the brink so make sure you go
• 1:06:53
  out and purchase that book we're working.
• 1:06:56
  They get that book. So obviously on your website.
• 1:06:59
  But where else can I find on my website?
• 1:07:02
  I've got a bunch of copies. I had a whole bunch of book
• 1:07:05
  events scheduled for last year and that all went with the
• 1:07:10
  thanks to the coronavirus. So yeah.
• 1:07:13
  So you can buy a signed copy, just send me an email on the on
• 1:07:17
  my website. It's on Amazon.
• 1:07:19
  Excellent. It's yeah.
• 1:07:21
  And it's on Amazon UK and Australia, you know, the Amazon
• 1:07:25
  puts it on all that. Oh, all the Amazons worldwide.
• 1:07:29
  Fantastic fantastic. Okay, thank you.
• 1:07:32
  Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, make sure you go and
• 1:07:34
  purchase that book and all the other books that she go because
• 1:07:37
  Christine has done a lot of books.
• 1:07:39
  There's a lot of stuff on there. And all different different
• 1:07:42
  genres. Like a covered earlier.
• 1:07:43
  So lots to take away their and to delve into.
• 1:07:48
  Now let's move it forward. You have interviewed gang
• 1:07:52
  members, Bank thieves, thugs billionaires even presidents.
• 1:07:58
  What are some of the interviews that stick out most for you?
• 1:08:01
  And why? You know, some of the more
• 1:08:07
  interesting things are the people who are sort of on the
• 1:08:10
  margins of society, like, you know, like the gang members in
• 1:08:16
  El Salvador, it was just sort of interesting.
• 1:08:19
  I was out on, you know, sort of in the shanty town on the
• 1:08:23
  outskirts of San Salvador. And I was interviewing sort of a
• 1:08:28
  really cool shot caller which is a leader of a little and little
• 1:08:31
  crew, you know, Young. Jurors.
• 1:08:33
  So there was a dirt road, leading into the shanty town,
• 1:08:36
  and they had strung up a chain across the road.
• 1:08:39
  So, anytime anybody was coming in, they had to stop at the
• 1:08:43
  chain across the road, and the kids would come down and demand
• 1:08:46
  attacks, you know, or a toll. Basically, it was like a toll
• 1:08:49
  they had to pay and they would lift up the chain and the car
• 1:08:52
  would go through. And this was how they made their
• 1:08:55
  money. You know, it was just this out,
• 1:08:57
  right sort of extortion, type of thing.
• 1:09:00
  So I was interviewing the guy on the, on the sidelines.
• 1:09:03
  Ordering these kids around and he sort of he leans into me so I
• 1:09:06
  send you and I you know, get me a job.
• 1:09:09
  You know I have a girlfriend and I have a baby six months.
• 1:09:12
  I just really need a job and I thought to myself.
• 1:09:15
  So here's this gang member and it was just struck me again.
• 1:09:18
  How similar everybody is? He really just wanted a job, you
• 1:09:22
  know and of course but not a lot of employment in El Salvador.
• 1:09:25
  But that's what he wanted. Was just a job for supporters
• 1:09:29
  was a kid in his girlfriend. And there he was Reduce.
• 1:09:33
  Do you know this haphazard thing of putting a chain across a road
• 1:09:37
  and you know, totally charging this illegal sort of thing.
• 1:09:41
  So that was pretty, you know, it was pretty crazy and it just
• 1:09:46
  lets see. I haven't not have either wild
• 1:09:50
  experiences. I went into a jail in Caracas.
• 1:09:53
  One time I was doing a story on Prison conditions, for human
• 1:09:57
  rights Magazine and there was this one jail that was, you
• 1:10:00
  know, the worst of the worst and I applied for Permission to go
• 1:10:04
  in and see what and the prison officials said.
• 1:10:07
  No, we could not guarantee your safety.
• 1:10:09
  So of course I was like, hmm. Now I really want to go in and
• 1:10:13
  see what's going on on their. So, a reporter friend of mine,
• 1:10:16
  you a nun who went in on a regular basis to minister to the
• 1:10:22
  inmates and what have you? And she was actually from the
• 1:10:24
  Philippines. So I called her up and she said,
• 1:10:26
  yeah, I can take you in and I said, well, Do I have to dress
• 1:10:30
  in a habit? You know, she's like, oh no.
• 1:10:32
  I just read t-shirt and jeans. I'm like, oh, okay.
• 1:10:35
  So we would go and, you know, on a Saturday morning lineup and
• 1:10:40
  huge line and you know with all the women were separated from
• 1:10:44
  the men and she's like well I know there's something I need to
• 1:10:47
  know and I said what she's like well there's a vaginal search
• 1:10:51
  for all the women going in and like say what shit and I was
• 1:10:57
  like well you know I wanted to get in There.
• 1:10:59
  And I thought, well if this none could do that was gonna do it.
• 1:11:02
  So, we get there, we line up in the women's line and it was full
• 1:11:07
  of like prostitutes, everything, cuz he's promised you for go
• 1:11:10
  into the jail. Okay.
• 1:11:11
  And there's a little hot up there a little Shack.
• 1:11:15
  And so the lime goes forward, the none goes first and then, so
• 1:11:18
  I go in and there's this, you know, prison guard.
• 1:11:20
  And she's got a gloved hand, she's told me to lie down on the
• 1:11:24
  table so I do initiative or just unzip your jeans unbutton and
• 1:11:28
  unzip. Jean.
• 1:11:29
  So I just do that and I'm thinking and then she just Pat
• 1:11:33
  it inside on my abdomen, so that's it.
• 1:11:35
  And I said, okay, I said no, you know, other searches you said
• 1:11:40
  no, we just got rid of that last week, we got a lot of complaints
• 1:11:43
  about it was like, oh my God, like I really lucked out.
• 1:11:50
  I didn't know what I was gonna do, but know it's funny because
• 1:11:53
  I didn't know that going in. I was fully prepared for this
• 1:11:56
  completely and masive, you know. No search.
• 1:12:00
  But apparently women visitors had really complained about
• 1:12:03
  Italy. Did you actually find out why?
• 1:12:06
  Because I would presume that, that rule is in place, was in
• 1:12:09
  place. In order to, you know, maybe
• 1:12:11
  women trying to smuggle things in that way.
• 1:12:29
  Like most sewage stench was just awful and, you know, they the
• 1:12:33
  prisoners were in there, just dressed in sort of shorts and
• 1:12:36
  sometimes not even sure. It's just a boxer shorts and
• 1:12:39
  flip-flops. And I mean it's just awful.
• 1:12:42
  And, you know, I had to say I was a nun and then two of them
• 1:12:48
  wanted me to go down, seats. You know, we've something to
• 1:12:51
  show you down here and I said, okay, so I go down with them to
• 1:12:54
  this basement and there was a broken water pipe and all this
• 1:12:57
  black water was Wastewater was just flowing out, you know?
• 1:13:02
  Freely, you know, wasn't being repaired and I was like, wow,
• 1:13:05
  that is bad. They wanted to show me that.
• 1:13:07
  Then all of a sudden I see one of them had this long, metal
• 1:13:11
  piece of metal metal stick, you know, down the back of his jeans
• 1:13:14
  and I said, oh what's that? Brings it out and he's like oh
• 1:13:17
  this was a bad leg but you know, a sharpened and it had been
• 1:13:20
  sharpened to a point. This is my weapon and I'm like
• 1:13:23
  oh and then all of a sudden it hit me unlike down in this
• 1:13:26
  basement where no I was alone with these two guys and I'm like
• 1:13:30
  what am I doing? You know, get out of there.
• 1:13:32
  So just like, well I think we should go back upstairs and
• 1:13:35
  join, you know, sister. So and so so we went upstairs.
• 1:13:38
  But I was just like, oh, sometimes I've been like to
• 1:13:41
  Fearless, I think. Yeah.
• 1:13:42
  Yeah, nothing happened. But I was kind of something
• 1:13:47
  happened. Nobody would have heard me, and
• 1:13:48
  I didn't even if it had nobody would have come, you know, what
• 1:13:53
  did you learn from that specific experience because obviously,
• 1:13:56
  you said, you went in there for obviously, for a purpose, so
• 1:13:59
  like other than what, you've just sort of laid out was there.
• 1:14:03
  And it maybe like some interviews that you conducted
• 1:14:05
  there, or like, was there anything you were able to sort
• 1:14:09
  of gather there for a story or something like that?
• 1:14:12
  Yeah, that's what that story basically was just on the really
• 1:14:15
  inhumane conditions, right? And so it was in the cells, so
• 1:14:35
  we go into the cells and that's where all the family members
• 1:14:38
  were running in and out and buckets of water.
• 1:14:41
  There was no, like, running water.
• 1:14:42
  So the inmates would fill up these buckets of water.
• 1:14:44
  It was just, you know, again, pretty primitive.
• 1:14:47
  And I'm asking a lot of questions about the Border
• 1:14:49
  situation and this eye looks at means like you wouldn't be a
• 1:14:54
  journalist. Would you you're asking a lot of
• 1:14:56
  questions? Shit?
• 1:14:58
  I said, no, no, I'm just, you know, a nun.
• 1:15:01
  I just wanted to send Resting conditions here.
• 1:15:03
  So I can take this back to you know tell everybody's sisters
• 1:15:07
  Sisterhood. Safety, the guards actually sat
• 1:15:34
  sort of, on the perimeter of the prison in a little office, they
• 1:15:38
  weren't inside the jail at all. So what are they are?
• 1:15:41
  Would the prisoners freely walking around walking around
• 1:15:45
  everywhere? You know, it was controlled by
• 1:15:46
  me, you know? And then they had these prison
• 1:15:48
  gangs and warfare and drugs and whatever they did in there,
• 1:15:53
  instead of that you control the prison basically.
• 1:15:56
  So, they did not want this revealed, I guess, you know.
• 1:16:00
  But anyway, so that was probably the most harrowing Reporting.
• 1:16:04
  I did of ever done. Do you think that the gods
• 1:16:07
  feasibly with them were afraid of the prisoners then?
• 1:16:11
  So that's all situation. Okay?
• 1:16:14
  It just who cares? When I'm not going to risk my
• 1:16:17
  life to go in there and they just had didn't have control of
• 1:16:20
  the place. Wow, inmates running the Asylum
• 1:16:24
  scray Z. Yeah.
• 1:16:26
  What, what other random thing I just want to ask on on that
• 1:16:29
  particular story. Did you see like the food A were
• 1:16:33
  eating or anything like that. Like, those sorts of, but we
• 1:16:36
  went into the cafeteria and I saw the kitchen and it was
• 1:16:40
  filthy, it just had this layer of black grease and it was also
• 1:16:45
  cement. So that was sort of like cement
• 1:16:47
  tables and benches, you know, fixed in the place.
• 1:16:51
  It was just like this layer like, you know, good quarter of
• 1:16:54
  an inch least thick of Greece. I mean, it's just disgusting.
• 1:16:58
  It was just really, really discussed.
• 1:17:00
  So when you broke this story like what was the The aftermath
• 1:17:03
  to did it lead to any changes perhaps or you know, I don't
• 1:17:07
  know. I mean I know that that
• 1:17:10
  particular jail was demolished. Maybe six months later, the
• 1:17:14
  government decided they move the prisoners out to other prisons
• 1:17:17
  and something the conditions were just right.
• 1:17:28
  And yeah, obviously, I asked, you know, that you you'd
• 1:17:31
  interviewed lots of different types of people and tell us some
• 1:17:34
  stories about some of the billionaires and presidents.
• 1:17:37
  You've interview like a, did you learn anything?
• 1:17:40
  Maybe you shouldn't have, or was there any weird interactions as
• 1:17:44
  far as that was concerned? That well, what did you learn
• 1:17:46
  from those experiences? Why interviewed president Hugo
• 1:17:49
  Chavez in Venezuela and ended up interviewing him twice for Time
• 1:17:53
  Magazine and what was a parent was he He just talks non-stop so
• 1:17:59
  it's free and you ask him a question and he was just go all
• 1:18:03
  out, you know. Expounds and he was a very
• 1:18:05
  educated Man actually, but he does love to talk but what was
• 1:18:09
  sort of interesting. He's had like a great personal
• 1:18:12
  Charisma and you could see how he got so many people to follow
• 1:18:16
  him and he'd actually led a failed coup, 10 years in 1992
• 1:18:21
  and you can just see how people would have followed him.
• 1:18:24
  I mean he was just so you felt like just drawn into him and
• 1:18:29
  like, yeah, you know, go here you go.
• 1:18:33
  It was just a really incredibly different type of Personality
• 1:18:37
  just as his personal Charisma, and he could really control like
• 1:18:41
  a room or, you know, just, you just felt like he was drawing
• 1:18:46
  you in. It was just a sort of an agree
• 1:18:49
  Ali. Interesting experience.
• 1:18:50
  I've never met anyone like that, then billionaires.
• 1:18:53
  I've interviewed starve. I've been his way to Venezuela.
• 1:18:57
  There's establish these mirrors and Marines Mendoza and both of
• 1:19:02
  them are highly controlled. They were, you know, they had
• 1:19:05
  their PR person, you know, had to check me out, have to check
• 1:19:10
  out the publication, what? This was for, what that, you
• 1:19:13
  know, we're going to talk about this.
• 1:19:14
  It was all very, you know, control they submit your
• 1:19:18
  questions that you were only allowed to aren't ask certain
• 1:19:21
  questions, you know, you weren't asked to that, you know, they
• 1:19:25
  wouldn't go too far into like You know, political talk or
• 1:19:29
  anything. It was very controlled.
• 1:19:31
  So it was just sort of. Yeah, this totally different
• 1:19:33
  type of interview. But again, those those people
• 1:19:36
  kind of tend to protect their reputations, you know, quite a
• 1:19:39
  bit. So and one thing I want to say
• 1:19:45
  on that topic actually about the Charis Charis Charisma.
• 1:19:49
  So this me is that something I've noticed about Donald Trump
• 1:19:53
  at least initially, excuse me, and how he was able.
• 1:19:57
  Too kind of goddess such a major following because a lot of
• 1:20:01
  people like, why does he have such committed followers?
• 1:20:03
  And I think a lot of it comes down to the like, he like, yeah,
• 1:20:06
  people call him stupid. He's not stupid, he's a good
• 1:20:08
  manipulator. He knows how to get to his
• 1:20:11
  voters and it's something we've seen throughout history.
• 1:20:16
  You could say probably say the same about Adolf Hitler, you
• 1:20:18
  know, but like the pattern is always the same that you look at
• 1:20:23
  the problems Society is dealing with and you were dressed him
• 1:20:27
  and then you about how you're going to change them.
• 1:20:28
  So obviously Hitler promised a lot of change in various ways
• 1:20:32
  and to be fair in the Years preceding, the war.
• 1:20:35
  There was actually a lot of change, like he delivered on
• 1:20:37
  those promises. So that's how he was able to get
• 1:20:39
  such a big following because he was doing what he was saying.
• 1:20:41
  Like imagine that a politician doing when they say, all right,
• 1:20:44
  but we've Donald Trump. I feel that it was a very
• 1:20:48
  similar thing, but obviously, his Charisma and his ability to
• 1:20:52
  do that, as kind of come over the years through his business
• 1:20:55
  exploits, and More recently for his reality TV stuff.
• 1:21:00
  So it's interesting to see that and obviously to see the
• 1:21:04
  aftermath of what that's that's turned into.
• 1:21:06
  Actually, I do want to ask real quick, like what has been sort
• 1:21:09
  of your experience or kind of perspective on that?
• 1:21:12
  Obviously, you're in the states right now sort of living it to a
• 1:21:16
  deep to a degree, you know? Just when you can't think that
• 1:21:20
  Donald Trump, you know, you've sort of, you know, you can't
• 1:21:23
  think anything else can happen, something else happened, you
• 1:21:26
  know, you just don't know what to do.
• 1:21:28
  He just does these completely unpredictable erratic things and
• 1:21:31
  now we had this, you know, odd, very odd, weird Insurrection,
• 1:21:36
  people stormed the capital building.
• 1:21:39
  There was a security police there.
• 1:21:41
  They just kind of, again, gave up and, you know, people were
• 1:21:44
  wandering around. They were sitting in the house
• 1:21:47
  speaker's desk and stealing the lectern, the podium, and I mean,
• 1:21:52
  it was just crazy and it's just a sense that you know, how could
• 1:21:56
  have this happened. And and just the things he did
• 1:22:01
  to try and he lost the election. It was by all accounts of fair
• 1:22:05
  and square election that he just tried like hell to whip up this
• 1:22:10
  frenzy that it was the election was stolen from him.
• 1:22:13
  He just couldn't get over that it was he didn't win and it was
• 1:22:16
  just you know down to outright you know phone call to the
• 1:22:20
  Georgia elections. Yeah asking, can you find me
• 1:22:25
  11,000 more votes? Aye.
• 1:22:27
  I just need 11,000 over just you know but he has no shame.
• 1:22:31
  That's the other thing. You just never, he just doesn't
• 1:22:34
  get that all. This comes out and it just
• 1:22:36
  doesn't matter. It just it just keeps going on
• 1:22:39
  and rolling and rolling but he knows exactly what to say to his
• 1:22:43
  base and his base is surprisingly big. 74 million
• 1:22:47
  people didn't vote for him. So you know, it's you know,
• 1:22:53
  who's knows what's going to happen after Joe Biden takes
• 1:22:56
  office, if Trump is going to be there as a sort of perennial
• 1:23:00
  thorn in the side or he'll fade off or who knows start a new
• 1:23:04
  political party or movement. You know, it's we just don't
• 1:23:09
  know that it's it's just been a really a crazy time.
• 1:23:13
  When the one thing that amazes me above all else?
• 1:23:15
  Is this tactic that he uses? Which I'm sure you've probably
• 1:23:19
  noticed in many other people. You've interviewed over the
• 1:23:22
  years where he kind of does this thing where he, but what he
• 1:23:27
  said, Eli's, right? And and says, like girl you know
• 1:23:31
  we did this to his best deal ever and we did this and it was
• 1:23:34
  tremendous and you know, all this and he's basically just
• 1:23:37
  saying about how everything that he's done is amazing and it's
• 1:23:40
  the best ever, right? But he gets caught out because
• 1:23:44
  everything right now in society, there's video evidence for
• 1:23:48
  there's, you know, we have every we can get access to everything
• 1:23:52
  we can disprove everything and we can say, dude, you're a liar,
• 1:23:56
  you're lying. He just continues and continue
• 1:24:00
  and not that blows my mind more than anything else.
• 1:24:03
  Is that kind of almost disillusionment like, I wonder
• 1:24:07
  does he consciously think I'll just keep lying about this?
• 1:24:10
  And, you know, this section of society will believe me, and
• 1:24:15
  that's fine because I just need them to vote or is he actually
• 1:24:19
  truly delusional and believes those things and he's just kind
• 1:24:24
  of saying it to you know, because he genuinely believes
• 1:24:27
  Because some people are like that in life, some people
• 1:24:29
  genuinely create like, sometimes sometimes people lie so much in
• 1:24:33
  life that they gets night. They kind of blur the lines
• 1:24:37
  between fact and fiction, and then they kind of believe their
• 1:24:40
  own lies. It's a really weird.
• 1:24:42
  Yeah, I think that's the case with him.
• 1:24:44
  I again, it's mind-boggling that he can have the truth.
• 1:24:49
  He can lie, just outright old wise about something and he'll
• 1:24:54
  be confronted with the truth. And he'll say, well, Not true.
• 1:24:58
  You know, you know, you did a very good impression of him, by
• 1:25:01
  the way, the fake news, you know, he's just a fake news,
• 1:25:05
  that's not the whole story, or you know, who come up with some
• 1:25:08
  vague, you know, dismissal and I think he really does believe his
• 1:25:13
  lies. I mean, I just think he lose his
• 1:25:15
  something mentally wrong with him.
• 1:25:17
  And he's delusional, I think that, I mean, I think that's the
• 1:25:19
  only rational explanation. I just don't see him.
• 1:25:24
  Yes, just, it's just mine. Violent the continual facade,
• 1:25:29
  that he has his pumped and just constantly and there are people
• 1:25:34
  who go along with it. These bizarre conspiracy
• 1:25:38
  theorist, this queuing on thing. I mean, it's just truly bizarre,
• 1:25:42
  how it's taken root and again, what this bodes for the future,
• 1:25:46
  I don't know his it. Here's the thing that you
• 1:25:49
  mentioned, the I really want to ask you about because, you know,
• 1:25:52
  obviously our work as a journalist and then a News
• 1:25:54
  writer and such. What is your thoughts on this?
• 1:25:57
  Fake news thing that he's created because I must say that
• 1:26:01
  at first, when it first happened, it was a mean, we all
• 1:26:04
  laughed about it, blah blah blah, right.
• 1:26:05
  But the dangerous thing that he sought created as an offshoot of
• 1:26:09
  that is there is actually legitimately fake news out
• 1:26:11
  there. You find loads of Articles
• 1:26:15
  posted online that are just nonsense.
• 1:26:18
  They're just in not factual and luckily, we do have some
• 1:26:22
  websites that are like, fact Checkers.
• 1:26:24
  And, you know, things for example, if a photo is
• 1:26:27
  Photoshopped it will it will be listed.
• 1:26:29
  I can remember the exact website, but there's particular,
• 1:26:31
  what person that does this where it will say like, oh this photo
• 1:26:35
  that said, this is not factual blah, blah, blah.
• 1:26:38
  Disproven right. But yeah, as a journalist like,
• 1:26:42
  what do you actually think of this fake news thing and, and
• 1:26:46
  how about how bad is it really? Is, it, is it something we
• 1:26:48
  should be concerned about? Or is it just kind of like a all
• 1:26:52
  come and go kind of thing? Just a fast that Donald Trump
• 1:26:55
  created. Yeah, I mean, first was nothing
• 1:26:58
  new. I mean, dating back to the Roman
• 1:26:59
  times Kill the Messenger, you know, you write a news thing.
• 1:27:03
  But I think it's incredibly dangerous and to democracy, you
• 1:27:07
  know, a democracy has to have a free and independent press and
• 1:27:13
  when people don't have trust in the media, it just doesn't bode
• 1:27:17
  well because then either Camp you know some political nut can
• 1:27:22
  just use that and that's what he's done and he's made it very
• 1:27:26
  very Very divisive and people not trusting the media.
• 1:27:30
  And again, now there's there's no such thing as sort of a
• 1:27:33
  neutral media. You could say the New York Times
• 1:27:36
  is ostensibly the American newspaper of record but now it's
• 1:27:41
  been labeled fake use by Donald Trump.
• 1:27:44
  So anything that you say, well, it was in the New York Times
• 1:27:47
  fake news, fake news. Yeah.
• 1:27:49
  Where you use from? Well, there's this website on,
• 1:27:53
  you know, and I saw it on Facebook or, you know, Anna some
• 1:27:56
  Tsar, random, you know, again, q and on conspiracy website, and
• 1:28:00
  people really think that's the news and they, that's what they
• 1:28:03
  trust. And, and again, incredibly
• 1:28:06
  dangerous to, for going forward, if you do not have a, you know,
• 1:28:12
  a public Watch, Dog, because that is one of the essential
• 1:28:15
  roles of a, the media. And the Press is to be a public
• 1:28:18
  Watch, Dog. So if you're not trusting that
• 1:28:20
  public wash Watchdog, it just doesn't bode well for it leads
• 1:28:25
  to a lot of manipulation. Should know of of the public and
• 1:28:30
  votes, you know, again we have a free press in the UK and it's
• 1:28:36
  been a sort of a point of controversy for many years.
• 1:28:39
  Because, you know, of this very, you know, fact that, you know,
• 1:28:43
  people are able to pretty much post whatever they want.
• 1:28:46
  And what the media does here in the UK, it's mainly the tabloids
• 1:28:51
  that do this, you don't find broadsheets doing this but you
• 1:28:53
  know, paper's like the sun, the mail excetera, They'll post
• 1:28:57
  anything and they don't care if it's liable because they'll get
• 1:29:03
  sued and the money that they make on the papers and online
• 1:29:08
  and everything far like, vastly outweighs how much do ever get
• 1:29:11
  sued. So, and they do this on purpose,
• 1:29:13
  they do this all the time and that's because of the way.
• 1:29:16
  The system is set up and the sort of I suppose the point of
• 1:29:22
  discussion always is, well, you know, should we have free?
• 1:29:25
  Press you? Because it enables people to do
• 1:29:29
  that to post in factual news and then people have in factual
• 1:29:34
  information, right? But at the same time and this
• 1:29:36
  this is the thing. I'm more on the side of having a
• 1:29:39
  free press that while, I don't like the idea of papers like the
• 1:29:42
  Daily Mail and the Daily Star and such, I do want people to
• 1:29:47
  have a choice because at the end of the day, you can just choose
• 1:29:50
  not to read them. Choose not to buy them, right?
• 1:29:52
  And that's the best way to fight it.
• 1:29:54
  I would always say and I know Ian Hislop in the UK, always
• 1:29:57
  says the same thing about that. He's the editor of private eye
• 1:30:00
  for those who don't know. And that's where I sort of lean
• 1:30:04
  on that kind of argument because I think that like, when you
• 1:30:07
  start sort of telling people what they can and can't do
• 1:30:11
  whether it's online in newspapers.
• 1:30:13
  I that's a dangerous road because where do you draw the
• 1:30:15
  line on that? Like what?
• 1:30:18
  It's a very slippery slope. Yeah I agree.
• 1:30:21
  I mean that's the the negative side of having a free pass
• 1:30:24
  presses that it can you know, view the other But you need a
• 1:30:28
  press that can credit be critical of the government.
• 1:30:31
  You know, that's really what the it's meant to be about that.
• 1:30:34
  The that the government, any government does not have control
• 1:30:37
  and can silence the Press but of course people can, you know
• 1:30:40
  again take advantage of that to do these gossip Rags but you
• 1:30:44
  know the thing is with newspapers like the sun and the
• 1:30:46
  Daily Mail people know what they are.
• 1:30:49
  You know what I mean? They know that that you know you
• 1:30:51
  read something in that it's going to be maybe half and half
• 1:30:54
  true. A little fact Cyril
• 1:30:57
  misappropriation or what have you so you kind of expect it
• 1:31:00
  from that. You made me read it for that,
• 1:31:02
  you know, but then you're going to read the Sunday Times for
• 1:31:06
  sort of the you know down the road.
• 1:31:11
  You know, the real news type of thing in the garden so you know,
• 1:31:15
  but it does that is the the, the negative side of that.
• 1:31:19
  I mean, one time, I did know, a guy friend of mine who worked
• 1:31:22
  for the New York Times. He was at the Brazil
• 1:31:23
  correspondent some years ago, when president, the president
• 1:31:27
  was Lula da Silva. Well, Lula da.
• 1:31:29
  Silva was a well known alcoholic, he drank.
• 1:31:32
  So the Brazilian press never printed.
• 1:31:34
  This Larry name is Larry Bird, wrote a story and included this
• 1:31:39
  in. Well, the next thing he knew He
• 1:31:40
  was getting the boot out of Brazil because the government
• 1:31:43
  didn't want his punishment for inviting about Lula, da, Silva
• 1:31:47
  was drinking. So, I mean, that's the kind of
• 1:31:50
  thing you don't want. I mean, you know, I think the
• 1:31:52
  people, you know, deserve to know if their president drinks a
• 1:31:55
  lot or whatever. You know, that may affect his
• 1:31:57
  judgment on things. But so the, you know, those are
• 1:32:00
  the kind of things that you, you know, you can have a government
• 1:32:04
  cracking down on reporters for speaking, this telling the
• 1:32:07
  truth, but on the other hand, you know?
• 1:32:10
  Yeah. They can go completely nuts and
• 1:32:13
  the other side. This is the thing as well.
• 1:32:15
  I can in the UK, we've got a lot of organizations that quite
• 1:32:19
  obviously affiliated with certain political parties.
• 1:32:23
  So I mean, the BBC for example, British Broadcasting Corporation
• 1:32:28
  is normally just affiliated with whichever party is in power.
• 1:32:32
  That's always been what quite well-known.
• 1:32:34
  And to be fair, a lot of the papers either outwards thus in
• 1:32:39
  support of No, a particular party or it's kind of inferred
• 1:32:43
  in in, in the the way that the stories are written, you can
• 1:32:47
  kind of guess for the most part and I like that system.
• 1:32:50
  I think it's good because it enables people to kind of pick
• 1:32:53
  and choose like, wow. You know, I don't want to
• 1:32:54
  support this because it's against my political ideals and
• 1:32:57
  stuff and it's good to have like all these different pet.
• 1:33:00
  Like there are some papers that are purely just facts.
• 1:33:03
  Like I think, from what I understand the standard the
• 1:33:06
  times the guardian tend to be more kind of down the road.
• 1:33:10
  Which is what I look for, you know, because the thing is, you
• 1:33:13
  can read papers that have political leanings and gain
• 1:33:16
  information from it. But the problem is, you get too
• 1:33:19
  much of a slant and there's too many words used in there that
• 1:33:22
  kind of derogatory towards one party or whatever.
• 1:33:28
  And I suppose you can just like skim through that and see it
• 1:33:31
  rise above it. But like, it can for people that
• 1:33:35
  are not as maybe strong will strong minded.
• 1:33:37
  Yeah, it can easily affect them and And yeah, that's why, for
• 1:33:41
  instance, in the UK we have so many Daily Mail, readers Sun
• 1:33:44
  readers, and there's jokes written about it.
• 1:33:46
  And it's, it's worrying because in those papers obviously they
• 1:33:50
  do just write a lot of nonsense and lies about people parties,
• 1:33:53
  whatever, and It's tricky sometimes.
• 1:33:56
  But yeah, I think that's, it's better to have that than it is
• 1:33:59
  to not have a free press at all. And have as you say,
• 1:34:02
  government-owned media, I mean that just sounds like the worst
• 1:34:04
  thing ever. Anyway, moving it on, talk us
• 1:34:12
  through your experience of having your laptop searched by
• 1:34:16
  Colombian guerrillas. I couldn't believe when I read
• 1:34:18
  this, but yeah, please. Well there was a, the Colombian
• 1:34:23
  government gave that one point, early 2000s, I guess it was
• 1:34:27
  games that gorillas a huge chunk of territory and this was much
• 1:34:32
  criticised in later with rollback by later government.
• 1:34:35
  But anyway, they gave them the huge chunk of land territory in
• 1:34:39
  southern Colombia. And basically, that was the
• 1:34:42
  gorilla. I mean, it was basically like
• 1:34:43
  forming a nation within the nation of Colombia that the
• 1:34:46
  gorillas controlled and so they were having peace talks and
• 1:34:51
  whatnot. So of, for Time Magazine, I went
• 1:34:54
  to cover them. So I had to fly.
• 1:34:57
  I flew into a local town of Florencia and me and the thing
• 1:35:01
  was the guy from, I think it was a financial times.
• 1:35:04
  And Dallas Morning News, we shared a taxi down to The
• 1:35:08
  southern Territory called San Vicente Del Quran.
• 1:35:13
  And, you know, we got to the sort of the border of this, you
• 1:35:16
  know, area and we all had to get out and be searched by the
• 1:35:19
  gorillas. And I mean, again, it was like
• 1:35:21
  going into another country and they had a table set up and we
• 1:35:25
  all had to hand over all our belongings and laptops will have
• 1:35:29
  laptops. And, you know, they had to
• 1:35:31
  search the laptop and go through.
• 1:35:33
  And, you know, do the whole thing, if Gordon explosives and
• 1:35:37
  check out press. Passes if we were legitimate
• 1:35:40
  press and L that's thing. And the thing is, you know, it
• 1:35:44
  was fine, we all went you know, we got back in the texting
• 1:35:47
  proceeded on, but I mean, you never know what's going to
• 1:35:50
  happen in those because again the person doing the searching
• 1:35:53
  has power at that particular moment.
• 1:35:55
  So it's always like, you know, how is this going to end up and
• 1:35:59
  whether they going to make up something and just you know
• 1:36:01
  threw you out. I had another on experiencing
• 1:36:05
  Guyana, I went to Guyana to report on the Will industry,
• 1:36:08
  they are. And when I was leaving the
• 1:36:10
  country, I had sort of a duffle bag thing and handed my passport
• 1:36:16
  to the, to the immigration official.
• 1:36:19
  And she got very suspicious because I had actually had a
• 1:36:22
  huge passport. I actually had to add more pages
• 1:36:25
  sewn in because I traveled so much.
• 1:36:28
  I'd all these different visas and I was going in and out of
• 1:36:30
  Venezuela all the time. So she thought this was
• 1:36:32
  extremely suspect and very suspicious and I was going in
• 1:36:36
  and out of Venezuela because it was Drug trafficking and
• 1:36:38
  whatnot. So she sort of hailed somebody
• 1:36:41
  down to pull off my to get my bag that I'd already checked
• 1:36:45
  through to search. I'm like, great, you know, now
• 1:36:48
  what's going to happen? So I saw them actually pull my
• 1:36:51
  bag off the off the plane and already been loaded, you know,
• 1:36:54
  trundled across and luckily she said you stand here and I got to
• 1:37:00
  watch her as she searched it, but it had sort of a hard bottom
• 1:37:05
  to it. There was a little piece of
• 1:37:07
  cardboard. Yeah, something it was a head.
• 1:37:10
  I'm like a service. She was convinced.
• 1:37:12
  This was a double bottom boat thing, you know that it had a
• 1:37:15
  false bottom in it. So she just threw everything out
• 1:37:18
  and she was going over that bottom of the suit that the
• 1:37:21
  duffel bag you know really looking at the seams and how it
• 1:37:25
  was. Sewn it and looking for any kind
• 1:37:27
  of opening and you know I'm just standing there thinking.
• 1:37:30
  Well at least I'm watching this because you know again and he's
• 1:37:34
  on little countries who knows what they do.
• 1:37:37
  So again it was a little Nerve-racking and I'm thinking
• 1:37:39
  to myself, well, I did interview, the energy Minister,
• 1:37:41
  I could call it. Yeah, thinking going through my
• 1:37:43
  mind who I can phone if I, you know, I get thrown into jail but
• 1:37:47
  finally she gave up and she said, you know, go outside to
• 1:37:51
  repack everything. And you know, um, word I went,
• 1:37:53
  but I was like that. But it was a bit, you know,
• 1:37:57
  again little harrowing because people lose in that moment, you
• 1:38:01
  know, your fate lies in this person's hands and you just
• 1:38:04
  don't know in some of these places.
• 1:38:05
  So it was the same Who say like I'm kind of I do admire that
• 1:38:11
  person's like commitment to that because sometimes when I walk
• 1:38:14
  through like Heathrow or Gatwick or whatever and Ice, I just see
• 1:38:19
  the like, nothing to declare area.
• 1:38:21
  Like, I shit you not. Sometimes they're just, they're
• 1:38:23
  not even paying attention. I mean, obviously, there's
• 1:38:26
  cameras everywhere and I know but it's like Like I mean, I
• 1:38:32
  remember one time this is a true story.
• 1:38:34
  I was coming back from Albania in 2007 and basically was like a
• 1:38:40
  family holiday type deal and I must have been for 1314 time
• 1:38:49
  something like that. I was young and it was me and my
• 1:38:52
  mom and my stepdad and my suitcase.
• 1:38:57
  Had a series of like, like decorative like swords.
• 1:39:01
  They were legit, like Albanian sort.
• 1:39:03
  Like, you could kill someone with it.
• 1:39:06
  But they were kind of mostly blunt though, like you'd have to
• 1:39:08
  sharpen them, but some of them were a bit sharper, whatever.
• 1:39:11
  But they were swords, right? Can't have that.
• 1:39:13
  And there was a mostly that was compromising, but I had like
• 1:39:18
  three or four of them in my suitcase.
• 1:39:20
  I don't know why looking back. I thought that was a good idea,
• 1:39:23
  but then again, we wanted to bring it back and I remember
• 1:39:28
  there was the, you know, nothing to declare and something to
• 1:39:31
  declare gay. And I said to my mom, like,
• 1:39:33
  because we were walking towards the nothing to the clown.
• 1:39:35
  I was like, Mom, why, why are we going to the nothing to declare?
• 1:39:38
  We've got something to declare and she's like, shocked shocked,
• 1:39:42
  so we go through that gate. And yeah, we managed to
• 1:39:45
  essentially smuggle swords into the UK from Albania.
• 1:39:51
  But yeah, I do remember that they weren't really looking and
• 1:39:54
  I suppose it does come down to like, you know, look, Being
• 1:39:57
  suspicious, but I mean, anyone can look suspicious pecially.
• 1:40:01
  Right? Now, I understand back in the
• 1:40:02
  day after 9/11 and 7/7 in London, that, you know,
• 1:40:08
  tensions, were high and suspicions were higher and that
• 1:40:11
  has changed travel forever. But by the same token, I do feel
• 1:40:15
  like, sometimes it's very lacks in certain places and it's not
• 1:40:19
  that like, security teams aren't on a lower.
• 1:40:21
  But I do Wonder, like, how they go about this, like what they
• 1:40:26
  base, their Asian Zone, huge search.
• 1:40:29
  Who not to search like it's now they have profiles.
• 1:40:33
  I mean, I think they just have very specific profiles and they
• 1:40:35
  go, you know, they don't, there are dogs.
• 1:40:37
  I've seen, you know, the drug sniffing dogs are often employed
• 1:40:41
  and and they're looking for anyone who's looking nervous.
• 1:40:44
  You know, they do really if you're sweating, you know,
• 1:40:48
  wiping away, bees it feel perspiration and how you answer
• 1:40:51
  and stuff like that. But, yeah, she was convinced
• 1:40:54
  this guy and he's officials convinced.
• 1:40:56
  I was very Be suspicious, I had to be drug trafficking.
• 1:41:01
  But again, they have less, you know, people.
• 1:41:03
  I mean it, you know, he threw, of course, you know, massive
• 1:41:06
  amounts of people going in and out.
• 1:41:08
  So they've got a, you know, narrow it down.
• 1:41:10
  I guess just certain certain profiles, you once had your
• 1:41:15
  phone tapped in Venezuela, so how did this happen?
• 1:41:20
  How did you find out and what was the aftermath of this?
• 1:41:26
  Well, this was in Caracas and I was covering this was when you
• 1:41:31
  were Travis was there. And what not?
• 1:41:33
  And anyway, I was just, you know, making phone calls as I
• 1:41:36
  gazed into phone different sources or own stories and
• 1:41:40
  whatnot and one day I phoned one of the public as a Time magazine
• 1:41:47
  that I found in Mexico City and I was on the phone to the guy,
• 1:41:51
  you know, talking about whatever and there was a clunk and it was
• 1:41:54
  like this You know, every every like few I don't know 30 seconds
• 1:42:00
  or something and he studies like, you hear that and I said,
• 1:42:04
  yeah, he's like your phone's being tapped and I said, you
• 1:42:06
  know, it's like yeah, that's you.
• 1:42:08
  That, that set. That's the clunk.
• 1:42:10
  And I said, wow, so I put the phone down, you know, and
• 1:42:15
  whatever. And I just thought, well, it
• 1:42:17
  could be, you know, and then I and then I it lasted for about a
• 1:42:21
  week and I can detect the clunk. And I mean, I was speaking in
• 1:42:24
  English, I don't know if they must have had him.
• 1:42:26
  Was speakers listening in or what have you?
• 1:42:30
  You know, they just wanted to check up on what I was doing.
• 1:42:32
  I suppose what I was reporting and who I was and but again I
• 1:42:37
  wasn't planning a coup or he's smuggling in weapons or
• 1:42:42
  anything. So there was nothing I could
• 1:42:43
  really do but it was really funny.
• 1:42:46
  And then I say I mentioned it to another guy, I knew what the
• 1:42:49
  Miami Herald. I said Tim, you know that?
• 1:42:51
  Somebody said there's things like, yeah, that is that's the,
• 1:42:54
  that's the noise, you know, he's like I've had that too, you
• 1:42:57
  know, that was just an odd thing and then Then it just faded off
• 1:43:00
  nothing ever happened with it. I mean, it was again there
• 1:43:03
  wasn't I wasn't really doing anything other than just calling
• 1:43:07
  on stories. And she didn't have to, like,
• 1:43:09
  get rid of that phone off the woods, or something, or because
• 1:43:12
  what actually once it's been tough, it was a okay, okay?
• 1:43:18
  It was probably much easier to tap, you know, then I don't know
• 1:43:22
  how they just physically intercept signals on cell
• 1:43:25
  phones, but yeah, it was a land with terrestrial I so it was
• 1:43:29
  easy. Enough to get.
• 1:43:31
  But yeah, I know I mentioned it to other reporters if they, you
• 1:43:35
  know, in the foreign foreign press and if they had, you know,
• 1:43:38
  had that and nobody seemed to have noticed.
• 1:43:40
  So it was just me, or they didn't like something that I
• 1:43:44
  wrote when, you know, I'm sure that was it, that something that
• 1:43:47
  I've written the government didn't like.
• 1:43:49
  So they decided to follow up on me.
• 1:43:52
  See what happened? But nothing ever happened.
• 1:43:54
  I never heard anything more about it.
• 1:43:56
  But, you know, luckily, but again, you know, when you're in
• 1:43:59
  these countries, Trees that monitor the Press again, it
• 1:44:02
  speaks to the whole Free Press issue.
• 1:44:04
  You know, that's happened and exactly how to phrase this.
• 1:44:08
  But like how does it work for like foreign correspondents in
• 1:44:13
  those countries? Because I mean, obviously,
• 1:44:15
  you're coming from a country where you have a free press, you
• 1:44:18
  are a nod to report but then yeah, you'll as you say, you've
• 1:44:20
  been heavily kind of How to put it like surveilled, you know,
• 1:44:28
  what kind of like do they pose restrictions on you?
• 1:44:31
  Or like what exactly how do they deal with you?
• 1:44:34
  Exactly they sometimes have I never had any kind of
• 1:44:39
  restrictions or anything, they will have like a press secretary
• 1:44:42
  in the government and Deals, just with the Foreign Press and
• 1:44:45
  they know who you are and all that sort of thing.
• 1:44:48
  And you go, if you want to, you know, interview the president or
• 1:44:50
  what have you. We also had a Erin, press
• 1:44:53
  Association. So all the correspondence, you
• 1:44:56
  know, we would get together for different events or they might
• 1:44:59
  have some official Minister who would speak just to us and
• 1:45:04
  things like that. But I never, again, I never
• 1:45:06
  witnessed any any kind of personal retaliation, or
• 1:45:10
  anything. As I said, I did hear about a
• 1:45:13
  friend of mine, in Brazil, that kind of thing.
• 1:45:15
  I did have my phone tapped, but I never got intimidated or
• 1:45:20
  anything, was pretty. It was pretty free.
• 1:45:21
  I have to say, I do don't know, I don't think it's like that
• 1:45:24
  now, I'm not really sure. Venezuela has really changed for
• 1:45:27
  the worst, but yeah, I mean, it depends on which country and
• 1:45:31
  which governments in. Hmm.
• 1:45:34
  You can come believe it you once hid under a car to evade
• 1:45:40
  Guatemalan soldiers I mean toolkits for like how this
• 1:45:47
  happened and yeah, please just tell us about this like this,
• 1:45:51
  just play something else. Spy film, what am I City?
• 1:45:55
  And my roommate was an American photographer and she actually
• 1:45:59
  worked for local Guatemala, City daily paper and there's a couple
• 1:46:06
  different stories with her but anyway, she was doing this on
• 1:46:09
  the side a a sort of photo essay project thing.
• 1:46:12
  Hang on transvestites or transgender transgender people
• 1:46:17
  in Venezuela and Guatemala. Who were kind of Pop persecuted.
• 1:46:21
  They weren't well, sort of received, and many of them
• 1:46:25
  worked as prostitutes in the middle of the night in downtown
• 1:46:28
  Zone, 1 of Guatemala City, which is right, downtown in the Heart
• 1:46:32
  of the City, not the greatest area.
• 1:46:35
  So one night, she wanted me to go with her just to keep her
• 1:46:38
  company, you know, for safety, I suppose because she was going to
• 1:46:40
  take some photos of these women Street.
• 1:46:44
  So we were so I went you know, it was like 3:00 in the morning
• 1:46:47
  was really cold. I'm really tired, I'm thinking
• 1:46:49
  all right you know it wouldn't actually go and she's busy, you
• 1:46:53
  know, taking pictures and whatnot and all of a sudden we
• 1:46:56
  hear like a rumble, what's that? And then they're like, oh, it's
• 1:47:00
  that it's the Army's, they coming in the little tanks and
• 1:47:02
  they had these, it was either my Venezuela like small tanks, not
• 1:47:06
  the big, you know, pens at World War Two tanks.
• 1:47:09
  These little tanks tank at those.
• 1:47:10
  I called them, they like, oh, that's the army.
• 1:47:12
  Becoming, you know, quick we have to hide and like, why do we
• 1:47:15
  hide? And she's like, you know, they
• 1:47:16
  come and harass us and sometimes be just up on the street.
• 1:47:19
  And they at that time the crime that the Army was patrolling the
• 1:47:24
  streets because of the crime situation.
• 1:47:27
  So they employed the Army to go around and it's little tank
• 1:47:30
  things and it's just like quick quick.
• 1:47:34
  We, you know, they sort of pull this down, so we had to like,
• 1:47:37
  you know, their cars, parked along them along the street.
• 1:47:40
  And so we just got under the things that they just got under.
• 1:47:42
  Cars, you know. So that's what we had to do was
• 1:47:44
  just get under the car, wait till the tank rolled by that I
• 1:47:48
  because we did not. Again, it's problem.
• 1:47:51
  You know, they would have stopped maybe and they would
• 1:47:53
  have hassled us. I don't know whether they would
• 1:47:55
  have done anything, but it was just, you know, what are you
• 1:47:58
  doing out here? Why are you doing this, you
• 1:48:00
  know, taking pictures, you're not allowed to do that or, you
• 1:48:02
  know, it's just something you don't want to run into.
• 1:48:05
  So Sherry and I just, you know, Dove under the cars and waited
• 1:48:09
  till they, they went by along. With a along with the women.
• 1:48:14
  You know we were all hiding under the and because did you
• 1:48:18
  see anything with this? Anything hear anything as they
• 1:48:21
  were going past or when they did they stop and do anything
• 1:48:24
  anywhere or luckily they went right on by just rumbled on by,
• 1:48:28
  but it was just, you know, you could hear the sort of this
• 1:48:31
  Rumble, the army's coming in under the cars, get out.
• 1:48:38
  Oh yeah. Yeah.
• 1:48:44
  What would you what kind of advice?
• 1:48:46
  Would you give to people that want to become either a chorus,
• 1:48:50
  foreign correspondent or journalists in general will?
• 1:48:54
  What will you would be your sort of tips?
• 1:48:59
  These days you have to be sort of a very versatile multimedia
• 1:49:04
  reporter you know now with a thing everything's online
• 1:49:07
  printer sort of dying a slow, maybe not even so slow death.
• 1:49:13
  So you have to be so versatile and shoot video and you know be
• 1:49:16
  able to do video stories be able to do audio stories shoot your
• 1:49:21
  own photos and right. You have to do all of these
• 1:49:25
  things kind of thing which is a lot.
• 1:49:28
  It's a tall order actually to do all that stuff.
• 1:49:31
  And when you go on a story, each one of those components requires
• 1:49:35
  a, just a little bit of a different angle, you know, even
• 1:49:37
  taking photos, you need different requirements than if
• 1:49:40
  to be right in the thick of it. Whereas a for just reporting on
• 1:49:43
  a know, you know, writing notes are not stand back or something,
• 1:49:47
  you know, I mean there's these different things so but that
• 1:49:49
  really I think media Outlets really look for that.
• 1:49:52
  Now as being is video capability audio you know, again being You
• 1:49:58
  order your stories and visual and print, and if you want to be
• 1:50:03
  a foreign correspondent again, you know, because of the, the
• 1:50:06
  internet, the, you know, a lot of the media Outlets have just,
• 1:50:09
  that was the first thing to go was farm bureau's and foreign,
• 1:50:13
  you know, they just sort of slashed and require require rely
• 1:50:16
  more on the wires warranted, AP Bloomberg.
• 1:50:21
  You know, some of the big why are things.
• 1:50:24
  So, if you want to make that happen just go Like I did you
• 1:50:29
  know you just have to pick a region that you're interested in
• 1:50:31
  if it's Africa, go to Nairobi. That's where a lot of the
• 1:50:34
  African presses sort of based and start freelancing, you know,
• 1:50:40
  just making contacts and maybe work for linking local paper.
• 1:50:46
  You know, if there's an english-language paper or
• 1:50:47
  foreign something that cages to the farm community building
• 1:50:50
  contacts, and start pitching stories to editors and that kind
• 1:50:54
  of thing. So you kind of fully moved out.
• 1:50:58
  Industry now or do you sort of dabble a little bit?
• 1:51:00
  Like obviously, I know that you're writing a professional
• 1:51:03
  basis, but is that within the world of Journalism or is that
• 1:51:06
  just completely unrelated now? Yeah, it's completely unrelated
• 1:51:10
  at this point. It's basically corporate sort of
• 1:51:11
  things, speeches, press releases talking points.
• 1:51:16
  You know, the occasional sort of article for a corporate blog or
• 1:51:22
  NGO blog or something like that but yeah, straight journalism.
• 1:51:28
  Why did you choose to move out of it?
• 1:51:32
  That's a whole other story. I actually ended up tearing the
• 1:51:35
  tendons in my forearms or and yeah.
• 1:51:40
  From typing, you know, I mean fair enough but I did after
• 1:51:48
  many, many years of typing on Deadline, you know, I had
• 1:51:51
  incredible pain in my arms and I had to go to a couple doctors.
• 1:51:54
  And finally one said, you know, you can't do this anymore, go
• 1:51:57
  ahead and did my journalism career basically.
• 1:52:02
  So like how have you kind of overcome that obviously cuz
• 1:52:07
  you're still writing you just not writing as frequently as you
• 1:52:10
  as you were like, how did you overcome that and that injury?
• 1:52:14
  Yeah, I finally found a what they called, PRP Therapy
• 1:52:17
  platelet-rich, plasma therapy and they take some blood out of
• 1:52:21
  the injured area and put in a centrifuge and it spins out the
• 1:52:25
  platelets and they put back the platelets into it.
• 1:52:28
  And she like the super dose of the your own regenerative
• 1:52:32
  platelets and that actually worked really alleviated, the
• 1:52:37
  pain, and what not? And a lot of athletes do it, you
• 1:52:40
  know, from the injuries and that sort of thing.
• 1:52:42
  And then I I've just had to manage.
• 1:52:44
  I use these sort of braces on my yeah.
• 1:52:48
  Yeah, yeah. And I also type with styluses
• 1:52:51
  like this, so I look rather odd it when I'm typing and, you
• 1:52:54
  know, public people always like looking at actually works.
• 1:52:58
  And I just have to kind of limit myself through about 14 hours a
• 1:53:02
  day, is my Max or just really kind of Make sure I rest my
• 1:53:07
  arms. Excellent eye exam as we draw
• 1:53:11
  things to a close today. Do you have any kind of final
• 1:53:14
  thoughts or upcoming projects that you'd like to share with
• 1:53:17
  us? Well I'm as I said, I'm
• 1:53:21
  releasing this book and girl in the brink in Spanish and this
• 1:53:24
  going to have a new cover and everything that have hopefully
• 1:53:26
  be April as well as a new edition of the English and a new
• 1:53:30
  edition of the skin of its kind of tattoos book with a new
• 1:53:36
  publisher and I'm working on a mystery novel.
• 1:53:39
  So my goal is to finish that this year and try and get a
• 1:53:44
  publisher for that agent publisher and then.
• 1:53:47
  So that's really Ali, Michael immediate goals and yeah I'm
• 1:53:52
  words of advice, you know, follow your folder your heart
• 1:53:55
  you know you have to follow your passion.
• 1:53:57
  I mean if that's really what I've done my whole life and it's
• 1:54:00
  worked out. It really has worked out.
• 1:54:02
  You know, I've made you have to try and find ways to do what you
• 1:54:08
  want to do, what you love to do. And sometimes it isn't the
• 1:54:11
  traditional where you have to take a detour.
• 1:54:13
  Sometimes you have to put up with doing, you know, crack work
• 1:54:16
  for a while and saving up. In your bank account and then
• 1:54:19
  you can do it or you know but I think you have to think sort of
• 1:54:25
  a long-term what you really want to do and do it, you know?
• 1:54:29
  And if you're not sure you want to know what you want to do, try
• 1:54:31
  different things, you know, don't be afraid.
• 1:54:33
  I think my key thing, I think most people are held back by
• 1:54:37
  fear and fear is what really they just scared to quit their
• 1:54:42
  job and do something and you know don't be foolhardy about it
• 1:54:47
  but you know No, be practical and just try and push through
• 1:54:52
  the fear and you get to the other side.
• 1:54:55
  Thank you so much for sharing. And yeah, I just want to say
• 1:54:58
  this has been fantastic. So real big thank you for
• 1:55:03
  agreeing to be on this podcast and sharing all these different
• 1:55:06
  stories and just yeah, sharing your life in general.
• 1:55:10
  I'm sure our listeners will be over the moon set to listen to
• 1:55:13
  this, to watch this as well, know if it knows honestly, like
• 1:55:17
  you have a very fast In story and in various different ways
• 1:55:20
  and it's a real pleasure to listen to and I wish you the
• 1:55:25
  absolute best with your writing career and everything.
• 1:55:28
  And in the future likewise with your podcasting career, I'll be
• 1:55:33
  following along subscribing. Thank you very much and yet, no,
• 1:55:41
  space been an absolute pleasure to have you.
• 1:55:43
  Thank you, thank you, thank you for being on the show and to all
• 1:55:46
  my listeners if you're enjoying Doing the podcast and you're
• 1:55:49
  listening on Spotify, Apple podcast Google podcast or
• 1:55:53
  whichever audio platform that you listen to the podcast.
• 1:55:56
  Make sure you are following, make sure you're sharing this
• 1:56:00
  interacting with it rating. You know, the podcast because
• 1:56:04
  all of those efforts are going to help me with my goal of
• 1:56:07
  getting a sponsor. This is my immediate goal for
• 1:56:09
  this podcast is to get a sponsor.
• 1:56:10
  We can do this but only with your support and equally if you
• 1:56:15
  would like to See a certain guest on this show in the
• 1:56:20
  future. Here are specific Topic in the
• 1:56:22
  future, let me know. I'm always active on social
• 1:56:26
  media, you know, Twitter Instagram, YouTube, you name it.
• 1:56:29
  So, reach out to me, let me know your thoughts, good or bad.
• 1:56:33
  I want to hear everything and obviously for YouTube, make sure
• 1:56:37
  to like, share and subscribe. And yeah, that's my done with
• 1:56:41
  the plug-in. Thank you, very much for
• 1:56:43
  listening to the Christian we've podcast and until next time,
• 1:56:47
  peace out will laugh. See you in the next one.