Colombia Calling - The English Voice in Colombia

Remember the story that made the headlines for several weeks about the four Huitoto children, lost for forty days in the Colombian Amazon after the aircraft they were travelling in crashed? Well, our friend Mat Youkee has written the definitive book on this event, a triumph of the human spirit and survival, but he also delves into the history of the Amazon, the exploitation and mythicism therein....

Former DEA agent Chris Feistl and literary collaborator Jessica Balboni discuss the new book: "After Escobar: Taking Down the Notorious Cali Godfathers and the Biggest Drug Cartel in History," on the Colombia Calling podcast with Richard McColl and Emily Hart. Arriving in Colombia in 1994, a year after Pablo Escobar had been killed, Chris Feistl was charged with the task of dismantling the all-pow...

La Escombrera, a vast rubble pile overlooking Medellín, is considered to be Colombia's largest urban mass grave. Its excavation this year has unearthed the remains of people whose families have been searching for them for decades.   Earlier this month, it was announced that the excavation there is being expanded. Some hope that what is found in that rubble will answer deeper questions - about how...

Heather Luna, a native of Michigan with strong ties to Colombia, spent a significant time in the UK before moving to Tabio. Since then, she has been working remotely offering consultations, consulting and workshops and showing people the value of collaboration and solidarity.   Her work has embraced questions of identity - including her own -, environmental causes and human rights causes and now s...

It's an absolute honour to welcome author Jennie Erin Smith on the Colombia Calling podcast this week to discuss her latest book in which she investigates and chronicles her six-year investigation into the phenomenon of early onset Alzheimer's in rural Colombia. Jennie speaks to Emily Hart and Richard McColl. In the 1980s, a Colombian neurologist named Francisco Lopera traveled on horseback into t...

What explains selective violence against social and community leaders in the aftermath of war? Why does the killing of community and social leaders continue unabated in Colombia?  This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we look at a new academic article entitled: "Delegative peacebuilding: Explaining post-conflict selective violence," written by Dr Sally Sharif and Dr Francy Carranza-Franco whi...

Victoria was never meant to come to Colombia, in fact, had things gone according to plan she would be in China right now. But, fate had a different path in mind for this native of a small town near to the city of Perm in Siberia, Russia. And so, on this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we hear from a Tatar far from her birthplace near to the Ural Mountains and find out how she ended up in the town...

There's so much to say about the Latin American Boom in literature, but how can we possibly discuss it at this point in time without mentioning Mario Vargas Llosa and his recent passing. And so, as a Colombia-focused podcast, we take a look at this era and these personalities in the literary world, such as Colombia's inimitable Gabriel Garcia Marquez but through the prism of Mario Vargas Llosa. Wi...

This week we speak to Camila Gonzalez Rosas, Director and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Los Andes University in Bogotá and Researcher at the the Centre for Investigations into Microbiology and tropical parasitology and we discuss tropical diseases in Colombia. Nothing is off the table from chagas, malaria, dengue, leishmaniasis, zika, chikungunya and Covid-19....we cover it all. Wh...

Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol has polluted hundreds of sites with oil, including water sources and biodiverse wetlands, the BBC World Service has found. However, as detailed in a new documentary produced and directed by Owen Pinnell of the BBC: "Exposing the toxic record of Colombia's oil giant | BBC World Service Documentaries,:" there are far more issues involving Colombia's Ecopetrol beyond...

In today's episode, Emily Hart speaks to archaeologist Daniella Betancourt: the woman decoding the enigma of Colombia's mummies. Mummification is a practice which has been carried out all over the world, from Chile to China – from the ancient Egyptian pharaohs to Vladimir Lenin and Evita Perón, and - though chronically understudied - right here in Colombia too. These preserved remains are, Daniell...

Barry Max Wills, author of: "Better than Cocaine: Learning to Grow Coffee, and Live in Colombia," and Richard McColl of: "The Mompos Project: A Tale of Love, Hotels and Madness in Colombia," join editor Dan Cross on this week's Colombia Calling podcast. In a conversation that takes in the topics of culture and identity, immigrants to Colombia, writing about their adopted homeland, their books and...

On this week's Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to James Bargent, an investigative journalist for Insight Crime about his work putting together the new podcast: "the Shadow of El Dorado." Along with his colleague Mat Charles, the resulting podcast is a multi-year project which takes the listener into the world of organized crime and how the Gaitanista (Clan del Golfo or AGC) criminal organisatio...

Today, we go back many millennia in order to protect ourselves for the coming centuries: Emily Hart speaks to two Colombian scientists, Carlos Jaramillo and Camila Martínez, time-travellers of the smallest imaginable time machines: fossilised pollen and tree cells.    Climate change has been a constant feature of Planet Earth: at points in history, the planet has been both much cooler and much war...

President Petro's Disastrous Televised Cabinet Meeting or The Petro Presidency Meltdown. Pause for breath if you can, but we've been experiencing a barrage of negative headlines surrounding Colombia's President Petro. This began with, at first, the online fracas with President Trump over the treatment of Colombian illegal migrants being returned to their homeland to, most recently, a total car cra...

This week on the Colombia Calling podcast, we speak to Lorena Estupiñán-Pedraza, a professor of international relations and political science from Boyaca, but resident in the southern city of Cali. In a far-ranging conversation, we discuss Lorena's PhD studies public policy implementation in Boyaca, local problems with global impacts and all about what it means to be from Boyaca and to understand...

A new documentary, in the making, seeks to document the sacred nature of an ancient medicine. We're all familiar with vivid tales of projectile vomiting and the complete loss of bodily functions during an ayuahuasca ceremony but who, amongst us, has really explored the benefits of a ritual? This documentary seeks to educate us, through a carefully curated journey from the lands of the Taitas (sham...

Jonathan Swift, "Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it." … never truer than in 2025 This week on the Colombia Calling podcast Emily Hart and Richard McColl tackle the issue of disinformation and fact-checking in Colombia and fortunately, we don't have to take on this task alone but are joined by two experts in the field. Laura Sarabia Rangel is the Editor of El Detector de Mentiras at...

Sometimes, it's just fun to have an agreeable conversation, and this is why I enjoyed chatting to Vivek Jayaraman. Vivek was born in Tamil, India and in the way life takes its unusual routes has ended up living in northern Bogota and with a love of mountains - he's from the plains - and a firm desire to know and understand the regions of Cundinamarca and Boyacá, Colombia. In his words: "Thus was b...

In order to understand the issue of the cocaine trade in Colombia, we need to look at three factors: 1. Drugs Policy as a Geopolitical tool. 2. Markets: A Political Economic issue. 3. Narratives: the Myth of the Narco. On the Colombia Calling podcast this week we speak to Estefanía Ciro Rodríguez, expert on drug politics, the cocaine economy and the Colombian armed conflict. We discuss la Escombre...

Brendan Corrigan has had multiple jobs in his time in Colombia (dating back to 2011), and his most constant has been that of a contributing writer of acerbic observations for the El Tiempo national newspaper, with an office job in marketing thrown in for good measure and some forays into the acting world by way of a telenovela (soap opera) appearance here and there. However, there's been an ever p...

As there are now a growing number of people considering moving to Colombia, and where better than the country's enticing Coffee Region, we decided to focus on this topic for this week. Known for its natural beauty and landscapes, lush countryside, friendly and hard-working people...it's an easy sell. But what happens when you are ready to take the next step beyond internet research and start the a...

Have you heard of "destination duping," "rosy retrospection," "JOMO," or "trailblazer hotels?" Well, with Colombia of course in mind given that this is the Colombia Calling podcast, we leap into 2025 with an upbeat episode discussing travel trends for this year. We mull over each of the aforementioned phrases with Bruce Mclean, travel expert and owner of BNBColombia Tours. Hear us talk about how C...

Well, where to start with this interview?! It's that time of year when we endeavour to discuss more hopeful and positive episodes and then an email hit my inbox from Rick DellaRatta and Jazz for Peace.  And thus the episode came into being. Rick DellaRatta is a multi instrumentalist, pianist, composer and founder of Jazz for Peace and we discuss what can be done to try and use music as a common gr...

We've never done this before, but heck, why not?! So, here is the first ever Colombia Calling Christmas Appeal in our 11 plus years of being on the air. Cartagena Paws and their supported Foundation of Tu Fiel Amigo in Cartagena have been on our radar for some time and a certainly deserving of some welcome help. We speak to Maureen Cattieu about the work of Cartagena Paws and Tu Fiel Amigo. ​ Cart...