CASTRO SMITH is one of the best known intaglio engravers in the world. The Filipino-British carver of jewelry and art pieces is based in London, known for his intricate work on signet rings. The signet rings often sell out fast at Dover Street Market and other upscale merchant platforms. It’s also captured the attention of A-list celebrities such as Elton John, Jeremy Strong, the actor in HBO’s Succession, and Anya Taylor-Joy from Queen’s Gambit, who have gone straight to Smith to commission...

Extreme slow metal at its tastiest. Hailed as genre-defying and a tour-de-force, BASALT SHRINE's debut LP is burning up the Pinoy sludge swamp like someone freed a quartet of gleeful arsonists.  The Filipino doom/post-metal super group is composed of Bobby Legaspi (Surrogate Prey, Malicious Birth), Rallye Ibanez (Ex-Religious Nightmare, Surrogate Prey) and Ronaldo and Ronnel Vivo (Dagtum, The Insektlife Cycle, Abanglupa, Imperial Airwaves, Ex-Hateure).  On this interview we go through each...

Australian phenom Rhiannan Iffland is one of the most dominant female Olympic divers in the world and the undisputed Queen of Cliff-Diving.  A five-time consecutive Red Bull Cliff-Diving Series World Champion, she still credits one of her biggest wins to the time she came back from a devastating MCL injury in 2017, claiming the championship title despite a six-week rehab layoff. How did she bounce back so fast? Visualization and mental training were crucial to her recovery.  This is a field...

RONALDO VIVO Jr. may be a well known musician and visual artist in Filipino metal and extreme music, being in bands like sludge supergroup Basalt Shrine and Abanglupa, but he is also an indie publisher, director, and popular writer of transgressive crime literature. On this episode, we talked about his recent release that's since become a cult hit "Ang Bangin sa Ilalim ng Ating mga Paa" (The Abyss Beneath Our Feet) and his first book "Ang Kapangyarihan Higit sa Ating Lahat" (The Power Above...

MANIC MUNDANE is the musical moniker of solo artist Kath Dizon.  A young, bedroom producer based in Mindanao, she crafts a particularly robust strain of electronic music out of deceptively simple riffs, spiced up by sci-fi synths imbued with a triphop vibe, garnished with 80s post-punk.  “Narrative Three,” is Manic Mundane’s debut EP under the Cebu-based record label Melt Records. It’s Dizon’s big coming out as a solo artist as well as a return to her roots, literally being back in her...

MIKHAIL RED is a Filipino director best known for Birdshot and Dead Kids -- the first Netflix original film from the Philippines. As the eldest son of acclaimed director Raymond Red, Mikhail has been immersed in cinema from an early age, studying under Marilou Diaz-Abaya when he was 15, and then making independent films in 20s.  His career has since grown by leaps and bounds, and he's now managed by the influential talent management company Creative Artists Agency. While he is still...

JAY IGNACIO has worn many creative hats. He is the director of the 2012 FMA documentary "The Bladed Hand" as well as being a practitioner of kali. He is also a stand-up comedian and a guitarist for the novelty rock band Sa Pulis.  Recently, he added graphic novel author to his accomplishments when he released ALANDAL, a swashbuckling tale of conquistadors and pirates set in 1700s Sulu, illustrated by the iconic DC and Marvel artist Alex Niño.  On this episode of the Dead Drop, we talked...

THE Master, or Saya, WIN ZIN OO, is the founder and head coach of Thut Ti Lethwei Club in Yangon. "THUT TI" means "courage" in Burmese. The gym itself is home not only to pro and amateur fighters but also known as a fitness destination. While there's of course competition training for  lethwei fighters available, a wide range of people go there who don’t want to compete, but rather want to learn lethwei for fitness and wellness, for self-defense or to combat stress. LETHWEI is the 2,000...

BUDJETTE TAN is the writer and co-creator behind the award-winning comic books "Trese." Now a hit animated series, I talked to Budj back in 2019 in an interview that was material for a feature article in an international online magazine. On a call to Copenhagen, where Budj and his family are now based, note that throughout this episode you'll hear his son, then two-years-old, as Budj and I discuss his process of creativity, writing comics, the community of Pinoy folklore and mythology...

This is a brief excerpt from the forthcoming full Dead Drop episode with "Trese" comics writer and co-creator Budjette Tan. One that's coming very soon.  *** CONTAINS sound samples from "Cottonmouth" by Surrogate Prey. Used with permission. DDP is powered and distributed by Anchor.fm. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Guillermo "Gimo" Gomez is the rehabilitation program director giving alcohol and substance abusers a new chance at life through the innovative treatment at Bridges of Hope Rehab Center. BoH is the therapy center where GIMO works that offers wholistic therapy and counselling to get people off their addictions. He's also a certified instructor at Triad Jeet Kune Do, one of the local chapters of Bruce Lee's martial arts system. Before that though, Gimo was also an addict himself who had gone...

WARNING: Explicit words and content in this episode! Part 2 of 2 parts. IN FILIPINO arts and literature, LOURD DE VEYRA is a creative goliath. His latest book is "Marka Demonyo," a collection of poetry. With all his literary and media accolades though, he's mostly known for being the frontman of the jazz rock, spoken word band The Radioactive Sago Project, their monster hit "Gusto Ko ng Baboy" is now one of those staples on videoke playlists. HIS new band is KAPITAN KULAM, a mix of...

WARNING: Explicit words and content in this episode!  Part 1 of 2 parts.  IN FILIPINO arts and literature, LOURD DE VEYRA is a creative goliath. His latest book is "Marka Demonyo," a collection of poetry. With all his literary and media accolades though, he's mostly known for being the frontman of the jazz rock, spoken word band The Radioactive Sago Project, their monster hit "Gusto Ko ng Baboy" is now one of those staples on videoke playlists.  HIS new band is KAPITAN KULAM, a mix of...

On this episode, DUSTIN CELESTINO comes on the show to talk about GENERAL ADMISSION the newest movie he wrote.  Dustin is a multi-awarded fictionist and playwright. He also wrote and directed the black comedy crime thriller UTOPIA. In his work there's usually a running thread of satire that is meaningful and also intensely entertaining. *** Directed by Jeffrey Hidalgo, GENERAL ADMISSION stars Jasmine Curtis-Smith as Katja, a member of a sexy dance group who has a wardrobe malfunction on a...

THE POWER brokers of Hollywood never saw AMBRA BATTILANA GUTIERREZ coming. THE RISE of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement has been pretty well documented, the spotlight mostly on A-list celebrities like Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, and Angelina Jolie. Their experiences of sexual abuse in the movie industry have filled headlines worldwide. So it’s easy to overlook how, at the root of it all, it was the 22-year old Filipina-Italian Gutierrez (born 15 May 1992), a Victoria’s Secret model and...

MARIA Christina Sarte, known as DOCTOR KITTS, is a Cebuana who's worked with Doctors without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres) for 13 years Now. Her medical missions have taken her all over the world, to crises and conflict areas like Afghanistan and South Sudan. WHILE she graduated as a pediatrician from the Philippines, she now specializes in snakebites and just finished an MSF project in Ethiopia,where snakebites and diseases like kala azar, a chronic and potentially fatal parasitic...

TOM SYKES is the English author of  "The Realm of the Punisher | Travels In Duterte's Philippines" and the forthcoming "Imagining Manila | Literature, Empire and Orientalism." HE's a veteran writer, editor, and University of Portsmouth senior lecturer who's written satire to short fiction, reportage to travel narrative. But his essay travel writings about the Philippines, the Ivory Coast, and Malaysia, are the best ones among his works, conjuring up Paul Theroux, Philip Caputo, and Alex...

English director Bernard Rose has had an eclectic and diverse film resume. From 1992’s cult horror classic "Candyman," 1994’s historical drama "Immortal Beloved," 2010’s Welsh crime caper "Mr. Nice," to 2015’s gritty remake of "Frankenstein."  In 2019, Rose released "Samurai Marathon," a movie in the vein of the jidaigeki (period film) set during Japan’s Edo period of 1885 when the country was still closed to the world. Against this backdrop, the infamous "black ships” led by US Commodore...

Veronica Litton is better known in kayfabe as Veronica Shannon, one of the founders of Manila Wrestling Federation (MWF), and a pioneer of modern Pinoy pro-wrestling. On this episode she talked about the challenges of being a trans woman in local sports entertainment, the early days and struggles of the MWF, how the wrestling ring is a platform for progressive storytelling, and her Wattpad novel on Pinoy rock "Some Jingle Jangle Morning."    *** The Dead Drop Podcast is field recordings and...

Highlights of my interview that eventually became a longreads on CNN Philippines.  BAHAREH ZAREH BAHARI is an Iranian beauty queen, a women’s rights activist, and a refugee in the Philippines.  She was infamously in the headlines in October of 2019 when she fought against being deported back to Iran on mysterious charges. Because she resisted, Bahar was trapped at a Manila airport for 21 days awaiting extradition to Tehran, putting her under incredible mental and physical stress, with the...

A flashback interview from Historycon 2018! KATHERYN WINNICK plays the fighting Queen Lagertha on History Channel’s hit TV show VIKINGS. Recorded during 2018's HistoryCon Manila, this episode contains highlights of our interview during which she talked about her martial arts experience, using her black belt knowledge  to inform the role of the shield maiden, her thoughts on action movies, working with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and future seasons of Vikings.   Contains sound samples from...

Who was it that said “All my conversations with men seem to revolve around music”? ALDUS SANTOS is half of the neo-folk duo Pamphleteer. Along with vocalist Dee Cruz, PAMPHLETEER track a uniquely meditative, Pinoy strain of modern folk that’s captured in their new album “Collected Fiction.” In this episode we talked about how the Coivd19 lockdown has fundamentally changed the consumption and creation of all art, coming of age in the 1990s as grungy college kids with literary aspirations, the...

An interview with ALYX ARUMPAC on the making of the ASWANG Drug War Documentary. Recorded during the community quarantine lockdown in Luzon. Alyx is the director of ASWANG, the first Filipino-directed full-length documentary on the Philippine government's war against drugs. Shot from 2016 to 2018, it follows characters whose fates entwine with the growing violence during the years of killings the height of the anti-drugs campaign in Manila and the rest of the country. It draws parallels...