Medellin and Colombia are hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, due to sexual exploitation of children by foreign visitors. In April, a US citizen was caught bringing two girls, ages 12 and 13, into the Hotel Gotham, in the exclusive sector of El Poblado in Medellin. There was all sorts of paraphernalia in this individual's room, to suggest his guilt but since he wasn't "caught in the act," he was held by the police for 12 hours and later fled the country. The Hotel Gotham...

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we sit down and chat with Gary Murray, a former hotelier in Colombia and compare notes on the business. Murray's experiences, on the whole, have been incredibly negative, mine on the other hand have been positive and so we look at some of the socio cultural nuances to running a business in Colombia, hear some outrageous and horrendous stories which occurred in Murray's hotel in an exclusive part of Bogota and reflect on what may have been. We...

"Get the most from your time in Colombia by adjusting your expectations with regard to what you probably take for granted: Punctuality [never], Predictability [rarely], Promiscuity [frequently], and Passion [always]." And so it goes as we explore Colombia by way of Barry Max Wills' writing in his debut novel, a memoir entitled: "Better than Cocaine: Learning to Grow Coffee, and Live, in Colombia," published by Fuller Vigil. Enjoy a far-reaching conversation with a master story-teller. ...

Journalist Emily Hart sat with Frank Wynne, tracing his incredible career from the start of his linguistic journey (a breakup and a bookshop in Paris) to his award-winning translation of writers across Latin America and the francophone world – particularly his work on cult Colombian author and ‘Enemy Number 1 of Macondo’ - Andrés Caicedo and his novel “Liveforever!”. Tune in for a literary episode exploring one of Colombia's least known and cult authors recounted in such an erudite...

Imagine starting your first business venture from a huge wooden treehouse, nestled on a wild island off the coast of the Colombian Pacific. Linsey Rankin left Australia to travel, arrived in Colombia in 2013. After working in tourism, education, and health, she set about creating a business model that would allow her to be creatively independent, establish a tribe and give back positively…Prana Pacifico was born. In April 2017 Prana Pacifico offered its first yoga retreat, and since...

This week, Emily Hart is setting out into the Wild West of cryptocurrencies here in Colombia and beyond. Is cryptocurrency the future of finance in Latin America? Is it safe? Is it just another way for rich people to hide their wealth from the tax man? Or for criminals to launder income? Or could it be a way for people to take banking into their own hands, a way for all of us to take control from a global system of banking we have so little say in? To explain all of that, we have on the...

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast we speak to Sara Tufano, the author of "Colombia: unaherida que no cierra," (Planeta, 2023) and a former member of the Clandestine Colombian Communist Party. After surviving some periods in conflict in Colombia as a member of the FARC guerrillas, she now dedicates her life to academia. Sara Tufano is a sociologist specializing in the Colombian conflict and the history of peace processes. She holds a B.A. in Human and Social Sciences from the...

This week, Emily Hart speaks to Andrea González Duarte about Mi Barrio, Mi Sueño - the women’s empowerment project she founded in La Honda, a neighbourhood in the hills of Medellín. Andrea was born here in Colombia, then was adopted and grew up in the Netherlands, moving back here with a degree in social work many years later. The project began with barrio boxing – boxing classes for girls and women in the neighbourhood. With a background in sports education, Andrea knows well how sports -...

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast, Ohio native and now resident of Medellin, Zach Meese, joins us to discuss Nearshoring in his adopted homeland. Now, I am pretty unfamiliar with Nearshoring, so Meese walks me through it and why the city of Medellin, Colombia is the ideal place for a business of this type. Nearshoring is defined as a close relocation and refers to the practice of relocating business operations to a nearby country. And so, we ask why this happens and is it...

Adventurer Daniel Eggington is back! After completing the crossing of the Darien jungle along the Pacific side from Colombia to Panama in 2022, Eggington has decided to return to Colombia to embark on a three-month expedition along the Rio Negro all the way to Manaus in Brazil. The Rio Negro is over 1400 miles long with its widest point in Brazil at around 18 miles wide that is based around the Anavilhanas National Park. Eggington will face dangers from gold miners, illegal logging groups...

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast we hear about British photographer Natasha Johl's work in photographing the Arahuacas in Colombia's Sierra Nevada. Descendents of the Tairona, an ancient South American civilization, indigenous group, the Arhuacos, reside in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Arhuaco have developed an understanding of the earth which gives equal measure to the human mind and spirit and the forces of nature. The Sierra Nevada is a microcosm of earth: A seamless...

Paula Delgado-Kling takes us to her homeland, Colombia, where she finds answers to the country’s drug wars by examining the life of Leonor, a former child soldier in the FARC, a rural guerrilla group. But, this story doesn't begin with Leonor, it commences during Delgado-Kling's childhood, when Colombia’s violence also touched her family and her brother was kidnapped and held in captivity for six months. It becomes intensely personal. Our conversation spans decades of the author's life...

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we discuss Colombian food and observe it through the philosophically tilted lens of expert Juliana Duque. Halfway between the abstract and the tangible, Colombian cuisine is the taste and the colour of abundance. The fertile soils of the American continent shaped pre-Colombian food cultures. Changes over the centuries have shown the influence of the Andes, running the length of South America, the Pacific coast extending for thousands of...

This week, we are exploring the underground and invisible networks of Colombia – along with some of its strangest and least-understood creatures: fungi. We’ll be talking about zombie fungi, shamanic fungi and magic mushrooms, the Wood Wide Web, sunscreen spores, makeup fungi, and eco-warrior fungi – plus why this fascinating mega-science has been so neglected, and why it’s more urgent than ever that mycology gets the awareness, resources, and respect that it deserves. Emily Hart...

This week, Emily Hart speaks to Cristina Fuentes La Roche, International Director of the Hay Festival, about arts curation and festival-making in the era of Artificial Intelligence and social media - and bringing one of the world's most successful literary festivals to Colombia for the last two decades. The Hay Festival is known as 'the Woodstock of the Mind': Nobel Prizewinners and novelists, scientists and politicians, historians, environmentalists and musicians take part in the...

It's Episode 500 of the Colombia Calling podcast! Celebrate with us as we chat to Colombia's most famous dancer, Fernando Montaño. Fernando Montaño was born in Buenaventura on the Pacific coast of Colombia and at the age of 14 won a scholarship to the National Ballet School of Cuba where he won several prizes at the International Ballet Contest in Havana, Cuba, and then joined the Cuban National Ballet. He also trained at La Scala and Teatro Nuovo di Torino, Italy where he was spotted...

On the final episode of 2023, the Colombia Calling podcast welcomes back Colombia Risk Analysis' director Sergio Guzmán and Daniel Poveda to discuss their latest report: "Understanding China's Tech Footprint in Colombia - Challenges and Opportunities," and also discuss 2023 in terms of Colombia's politics. Hear Guzmán and Poveda discussing the strategic - or lack thereof - plans created by the Colombian government led by President Gustavo Petro, to court China but at the same time, not...

Kidnapped by the FARC guerrillas whilst birding, Diego Calderon may just be Colombia's most famous birder. This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, Calderon sits down with myself and journalist Natalia Malaver, to discuss how birding in Colombia can be a tool for reconciliation, his experience of being kidnapped, what the peace accord with the FARC means and all sorts of information about birdwatching in Colombia. Tune in for this and the Colombia News brief reported by journalist...

This week, Emily Hart takes you on a sonic tour of Colombia, with the Humboldt Institute’s Natural Sound Collection: not only are we going to be hearing about this amazing project, we are going to be listening to some of the more unusual and noteworthy sounds from the collection itself and exploring what they tell us about Colombia’s natural environments and those who inhabit them. We’ll hear a giant otter’s bark, the snore of a fish, a frog cocktail party, and mosquito love songs, plus...

 In this week's episode, I reflect on four recent visits to the town of Capurgana on the Caribbean coast of the department of Choco. Capurgana is one of the jump-off points for migrants to begin the infamous and dangerous trek through the Darien jungle to Panama en route to their final destination of the United States. In this episode, I relate my attempt to gain access to the migrant camp in Capurgana, my brief meeting with some members of the Clan del Golfo crime syndicate, finding two...

This week, Emily Hart gets the inside story on the #NarcoFiles - a new investigation into The Global Criminal Order, the largest investigative project of its kind to originate in Latin America. She speaks to OCCRP’s Latin America Editor Nathan Jaccard, who has led and coordinated this project - right from its earliest seeds in the 2022 hack to the incredible flourishing of reporting we’ve seen this week, and which continues to emerge. Last year, a group of 'hacktivists' known as Guacamaya...

Emily Hart takes us (way) back in time this week, to a very different Colombia - one well before the arrival of human beings… but in the process of looking back, we’ll also be looking forwards - to what the future on this planet might look like. We have with us some of the team behind "Hace Tiempo" - an incredible book on Colombia’s paleontological past: Colombia’s leading palaeontologist, Carlos Jaramillo, Paleo-botanist at EAFIT University, Camila Martínez, and science communications...

On this episode of the Colombia Calling podcast, we get to talk to writer Paula Delgado Kling - after a long absence - about her book, which is now a reality and will be launched on 28 January 2024 (Tune in for further details). "Leonor, the Story of a Lost Childhood," is a heart wrenching tale of a young girl who entered the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, becoming the "first girl" of the commander in her region of Putumayo. Author Delgado Kling has had unrivalled access to Leonor over...

Colombia's leading astronomer, Dr Paola Pinilla, joins us to talk about planet formation, space technology, and diversity in the field of astronomy. We’ll be chatting about the knowledge and inspiration which arrives from outer space, how Paola's childhood in Bogotá led her across the world and into the depths of the universe, and the incredible elements we are all made of – Space Dust. Paola's work focuses on how planets are born – the first steps of planet formation, growing from dust to...