This week represents a special show and a change for the Colombia Calling podcast where the interviewer Richard McColl - host of the podcast - is put to task and interviewed by Emma Louise Jay of Conquered by Colombia (https://www.conqueredbycolombia.com). We'll discuss Mompos, Bogotá, life in Colombia and indeed writing. 

So, in the week that was absolutely terrible for Colombia, terrible news reports about our country in the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP and a german newspaper, we take a breather, and discuss something a little lighter!

You asked, we listened and delivered! Ep274 of the Colombia Calling podcast deals with cycling in Bogotá with none other than one of the original city cyclists, El Mono Nuñez. So, in an enjoyable and flowing conversation, we sit down with el Mono and discuss his book, ‘Mi cicla y yo’, and reflect with a certain nostalgia, a time past in Bogotá. 

The images in El Mono's book hark back to a time past in Colombia, a time of more innocence and space, when Bogotanos felt a sense of belonging in their city and when it may well have been, "The Athens of South America."

So, tune in to hear about cycling in Bogotá through the eyes of a keep cyclist and Bogotano, a man who hitchiked in the 1980's from the capital to Cartagena, who worked as a cycle courier in London and now plies his trade as a voice over artist.

Oliver Kaplan is an Assistant Professor at the Josef Korbel School of
International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of the book, “Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves” (Cambridge University Press), which examines how civilian communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence. He was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and was previously a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School and at Stanford University. As part of his research Kaplan has conducted
fieldwork in Colombia and the Philippines.

So, it is with great pleasure that we invite this expert Colombianist onto Colombia Calling to share much of his research and findings about the peace communities in this country, the conflict and more ahead of the Spanish edition of his book being released in August 2019.

Mark Litwicki has lived a colourful and varied life and has been a journalist, an academic, an actor and indeed, an author. One constant in his life appears to be his love for Colombia. So, it is a great pleasure to have this Chicago-native on the Colombia Calling podcast this week. 

Litwicki tells us about his arrival in Bogotá all those years ago and how he fell into an old school reporting job for the Colombian Post newspaper. The book, Bogotano Por Accidente, is a loose autobiography of his time in Bogotá during this period, the scrapes, misadventures and of course, cultural observations. 

Interestingly, Litwicki felt that his book would not work in his native English language and opted to write it in Spanish. Get the book at all good stores in Bogotá and of course, tune in to this podcast.