Ho! Ho! Ho! And Happy New Year! Having just passed the 1 YEAR ANNIVERSAY of my podcast, I am announcing GOOD NEWS — the release of “e-travels with e. trules” on SPOTIFY! To celebrate, I’m releasing the 4th and final BONUS EPISODE – between Season 1 and Season 2. It’s my interview from this past Fall with Joshua Rivers, also known as “The Podcast Guy”, and host of “Podcasting Experiments from the Creative Studio”.
http://erictrules.com/episode23
It's the 1 Year Anniversary of the Podcast, so today to celebrate and to tickle your travel podcast fancy, I'm releasing a BONUS episode, my guest interview with Jeremy Collins, host of "Podcasts We Listen To".
Jeremy contacted me from Capser, Wyoming, where is a UPS driver, as well as the creator of "Podcasts We Listen To", a popular podcast and the largest podcast-based group on social media, with over 16,000 members on Facebook.
It's one of the great hings I love about podcasting: everybody has a place at the table. It doesn't matter where you live or what you do. All you need is a microphone and a passion to have your voice heard.
In between Seasons 1 & 2, the podcast offers a BONUS EPISODE of Trules' guest interview on the "Travel Stories Podcast", with host, Hayden Lee.
Here it is... one of kind.... a travel story not about... me! Along with excerpts from Season 1, and final travelogue.
"Tear" is about a 15 year old Chicano boy named Alejandro Chavez, my "mentee", and the bus trip he took across the US-Tijuana border in 1995.
Alex, as he like to be called, told me this story, and I've tried to capture it here. I think it's a love story about the distance between cultures and countries, in our modern age of... President Trump and all the challeges of immigration. I also think it's a bitter-sweet and appropriate ending to the End of Season 1 on the "e-travels with e. trules" podcast.
These words from my guest in this Episode, Debra Ehrhardt, solo performer and native of Jamaica:
"Your saying 'no' to me is just a way of my saying, ok, how can I get 'yes'?"
"In America, there is no class system; they see you as you are."
"When a man is involved in a child's life, it makes such a difference."
"People who travel are so much more interesting than those who stay in their tiny little city."
This episode finds Trules chugging up the Mighty Mekong River, on a flat-top, tin-roof, diesel-puffing dinosaur, from northern Thailand to southern Laos, metaphorically and musically searching for mad Mr. Kurtz, from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and of course, more recently adapted by Francis Ford Coppola into his film, "Apocalypse Now", where Kurtz is notoriously played by mad Marlon Brando.
Trules speaks with one of Los Angeles' true musical and theatrical treasures, Morlan Higgins. Be serenaded with Morlan's mandolin, learn about his acting with Pulitzer-Pfrize winning playwright, Athol Fugard, and hear about "the river of life"
Amsterdam, Christmas 2013
As ex-heavyweight champ, Sonny Liston, always said,
"Life... a funny thang".
It comes and goes -- in cycles. When we're in an "up" cycle... feeling good about ourselves and our lives, it seems nothing can go wrong. We're invincible. When we're in a "down" cycle... of loss, transition, fear, it seems that nothing can go right. We're unworthy.
Me? I'm more like Chicken Little, always expecting the sky to fall... than like Mary Poppins, always ready to fly away into her next optimistic adventure.
But on this trip, I talk about "perfect moments"... you know those evasive, ephemeral life experiences that you so seldom capture. Those things that my solo performance predecessor, Spalding Gray, always yearned for, but never found.
Anyway.... this episode is about Amsterdam and perfect moments.
Or... "perfect enough"...... if you are in the right place at the right time... with the right attitude.
Please listen to Episode 15, "Amsterdam, the 'Perfect City':
http://erictrules.com/episode15
In this lively episode, Trules talks with Liz Femi, a fellow solo performer and storyteller, who was born in the United Kingdom and grew up in Nigeria, a country not many tourists - or travelers - know much about. Liz is a small, smart, beautiful, and feisty young woman who her Mom describes as: "a really bendy, bouncy branch... connected to a strong Nigerian oak tree".
Echo Park, the one time immigrant-socialist-artist neighborhood of Los Angeles, has undergone the sad and inevitable process of "gentrification". Trules, a long-time Echo park resident, goes to the annual Cubano musical festival and is confronted head on with "unneighborhly" gentrification. Complete with original Cuban music composed by Amanda Yamate and an original score with roosters, fireworks, & gunshots by Alysha Bermudez.
Trules speaks with long-time friend and Israeli diplomat, Raphael Morav, who he has visited in Rome, Jerusalem, Helsinki, and Paris. Hear them chat about politics, Israel, diplomacy, kibuttzes, travel, SERVAS, the United Nations, and more.
In December, 2001, just months after 9/11, Trules arrives in Kota Kinabalu on the island of Borneo in East Malaysia. Teaching at an all-Islamic university on a Fulbright grant, he is confronted with images of Osama Bin Laden - on the screensavers of his university colleagues - and on t-shirts in every shopping mall. Talk about culture shock, he learns that Bin Laden is the most admired man in Malaysia for being the only man to stand up to George W. Bush and Goliath America. Still, Trules tries to make peace with the natives.
Trules talks with long-time travel blogger and podcaster, Chris Christensen, "The Amateur Traveler"... whose cool rules of the road include: 1- "Never lose your sense of wonder and adventure when you're traveling." 2- "Never complain that you don't do things that way at home; that's part of the point of traveling." 3- "Never whne, because in the grand scheme of things, if you can afford to travel, what do you have to complain about?"
Enjoy the banter between Trules, who travels, and Christensen, who interviews about travel.
Trules arrives at the international airport in Denpasar on the magical island of Bali - to meet his Indonesian wife - but she is not there. She is, instead, in the local Kasi Ibue hospital with... dengue fever... one of the most feared, mosquito-born illnesses in the world. After waiting a week with Surya on intravenous drip, they go to the "Good Karma" bungalows on the still-pristine East Coast of the island, where Trules promptly has a head-on motorbike collision by driving on the wrong side of the road. A comic misadventure with original gamelon music composed by Amanda Yamate, the Trules survive, managing to lose 2 of their collective 18 cat lives amidst the Balisnese magic and the good karma.
http://erictrules.com/episode9
My guest this week is Jonathan Munoz-Proulx, otherwise know as “JMP”, my former student and now independent theater artist, who first gave me the idea of doing a travel podcast. After seeing me do many readings and performance of my stories on stage, and then reading them on my travel blog, he said:
“Your stories are SO MUCH BETTER when we hear your voice! You should do a podcast.”
And the rest…. is history.
Full show notes: http://erictrules.com/episode8
Beijing, China, 2007 It's a year before the Beijing Olympics and there are crowds and pollution everywhere. I've been invited to teach the LDTX Bejing Modern Dance Company, the Joffrey Ballet of China. I'm 60 years old and I haven't danced in over 30 years. What am I going to do? "Figure it out," says that jackal trickster, Travel. "Improvise! Isn't that your specialty?" "Thanks, a lot, Travel. I will"! And so I do... as along the way, I ask myself... and my listeners, "Why travel?" Why leave the comfort and familiarity of home? For a change of scenery and pace? For rest and relaxation? To stretch your boundaries? For some new food? Or for something else?
Full show notes: http://erictrules.com/episode7
My guest this episode is Hayden Lee, the self-professed son of a hippie and a biker, and the host of the popular, Travel Stories Podcast. Born in rural Shropshire, England, Hayden is a musician and an intrepid world traveler who can't help but navigate every conversation into a story. In fact, Hayden, like me, believes that memorable stories are what travel, life, and podcasts... are all about.
The Travel Stories Podcast is a weekly show that brings you original stories of freedom and adventure from seasoned travelers. And whether you are one or not, a seasoned traveler, you probably already know that certain road stories capture not only a moment in time, but also all the emotion, serendipity, and wonder that come with travel. It was a little surprising... how many times Hayden said to me in our interview, "I think we might be the same person... only separated by a few years and geographical time zones."
Hayden interviews fellow travelers, podcasters, digital nomads, and other guests about their lifestyle, their entrepreneurship, and about their amazing stories from the road... all with original music.... by Cody Crabb. On his next solo travel adventure, he will be heading out to ride a motorcycle through every country in mainland Europe.
Full show notes: http://erictrules/episode6
Alausi, Ecuador. 2003. I married for the first time at age 55. Also in 2003. I married an Indonesian girl from Sumatra who I met in Bali, who was 31 years younger than I was and who spoke almost no English. Go figure, huh? But in the summer of 2003, a few months after we tied the knot in LA, we took our first extended trip together, to Machu Picchu in Peru, and up the Avenidas de los Volcanos, along the mountainous spine of Peru and Ecuador. For 2 months, we traveled by all-night buses with "los indiginos", the local natives, dressed in colorful sarapes and gray bowler hats. I loved it. My wife hated it. And this trip was... as much about our new marriage as it was about South American culture and adventure. Enjoy and Happy Trails...
Full show notes: http://erictrules.com/episode5
My guests this time are my 2 trusty and talented production colleagues, Alysha Bermudez, our imaginative and immersive sound designer, and Amanda Yamate, our composer who creates music tapestries from all over the world. Both are college students well on their way to professional careers. Alysha is in the Sound Design program at USC and Amanda is in the Film Scoring Program at Cal State Northridge.
We work in the studio of USC's Sound Design Program on Jefferson and McClintock in South Central LA, usually early on Saturday mornings, and although we work quite hard and meticulously, we also usually also, have a lot of fun. Hear about the technique of scoring a podcast, who and what inspires them, how they "hear" the world. And listen to another "Trules Travel Quiz". Enjoy and Happy Trails...
Full show notes: http://erictrules.com/episode4
June, 2006. Trules has arrived in Mumbai on the day that 5 bombs have exploded in 5 different train stations in the financial hub, but still beggared, megalopolis of the sub-continent. He heads southeast, up into the mountainous tea plantations of Munnar, high in the Western Ghats of the province of green, green Kerala. There he takes a terrifying bus ride down a serendipitous mountainside where his whole life flashes before his eyes.
Full show notes: http://erictrules.com/episode3