2020 has been a challenging year by all accounts but it has been a breakthrough year for the Colombia Calling podcast. Now completing our seventh year on the airwaves, the Colombia Calling podcast truly came into its own and matured in 2020. I don't know to what we can attribute this, but the interviews were of a different level, the interviewees more involved and I think my style and form improved too. What do you think?

So, for this year ending 2020 episode, longtime listener and friend, Joey Czikk takes over to discuss some of the more memorable episodes from 2020 including the ones with Wade Davis, Toby Muse, MiKo, Diego Franco, Sergio Guzman, Elizabeth Dickinson and many more.

Thank you again for listening and we'll be back in early January.

Imagine a work of fiction set in Colombia where the line between real and unreal, fact and fiction no longer exists...this is what you get when you read author Lachlan Page's debut novel, Magical Disinformation. Think Waugh, think Greene and then a smattering of de Bernieres and you know what you're in for, a romp of a read which brings a smile to your lips as you enjoy this fast moving tragicomedy.

Oliver Jardine is a spy in Colombia, enamoured with local woman Veronica Velasco. As the Colombian government signs a peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas, Her Majesty’s government decides a transfer is in order to focus on more pertinent theatres of operation. In a desperate attempt to remain in Colombia, Jardine begins to fabricate his intelligence reports. But the consequences soon take on a life of their own.

In the era of ‘fake news’ in the land of magical realism, fiction can be just as dangerous as the truth.

Buy the book! www.lachlanpageauthor.com

It's a great pleasure to invite anthropologist and expert in gender studies, Nicol Lesmes on Ep354 of the Colombia Calling this week to discuss the state of play regarding the implementation of the peace accords in Colombia.

Lesmes works investigating how the peace accords and the key issues of the accords are being implemented across the country. This is a timely episode as the signing of the accords - to great international fanfare - occurred a little over four years ago.

We discuss the structural problems in Colombia which hinder the implementation of the accords in the regions, the issues of land reform, political participation and state presence in more isolated parts of Colombia.

Tune in to hear a first hand account of what is going on in rural Colombia and with reintegrated members of the FARC guerrillas.

If you want to know the real stories about what is happening on the frontlines of demonstrations in Colombia and Ecuador and on the border with Venezuela, you have to seek out the reporters on the ground, the freelancers that beg, borrow and cajole their way into certain danger to get the story. This is what US journalist Joshua Collins does. Why are the people protesting, why is there almost unversal unrest? Ask Collins.

Since Collins has been reporting for the mainstream media and publishing on his own website (https://www.murosinvisibles.com), those of us searching for boots-on-the-ground information don't have to look elsewhere as he's got it covered, from the violence on the Colombian border with Venezuela when the aid trucks were set alight after the "Branson Concert," when he reported from within the billowing clouds of tear gas in Quito, Ecuador and of course, during Colombia's N21 protests, now in their one year anniversary.

In this episode 353 of the Colombia Calling podcast, we hear about the challenges of being a freelancer, the journalist's desire to tell the stories and include the voices of those affected and the reasons behind their malaise.