http://erictrules.com/episode43
Today’s Bonus interview on “Podcast Junkies” is called: “Rebelling Against Conformity and Finding Freedom Through the Arts”, and in it, Harry Duran and I cover my journey from pre-med college student to professional clown and recent podcaster. Along the way, Harry calls my work the “predecessor of flash mobs”. I’m not exactly sure that’s true, but it sounds good and it is Harry’s show. http://erictrules.com/episode42
My guest, Linda Ballou, is an accomplished travel and adventure writer - about whom world-wide explorer, Jim Dorsey, says: "Ballou takes the reader out of their armchair into the vast world as few travel writers can. Her eye for detail, combined with intimate knowledge of her surroundings, sets Ms. Ballou heads above most of the travel writing pack. In this age when everyone with a back pack proclaims him or herself a travel writer, it takes books like Linda's- to re-define the genre. This is just plain, great, travel writing.” Listen and enjoy. https://erictrules.com/episode41
Today we’ll be time traveling again - a long ways back… to 1988, when I ventured to Edinburgh, Scotland to perform for the first time in the Edinburgh Fringe, the largest arts festival, if not on the planet, then at least in the Western world. I was 41 years old, living in Santa Monica, and I was invited to perform my one man show as part of a theater troupe called “New Voices from America” that was created solely for the 1988 Edinburgh Fringe by KPFK radio theater critic Stefan Tater. I was the lucky invitee because I had been wishing and dreaming of going to the Edinburgh Festival for almost 2 decades. It had magic and wonder and international artspainted all over its Scottish kilts. https://erictrules.com/episode40
Ladan Jiracek, host of the Travel Wisdom Podcast, is my Behind the Scenes guest today because… I just love the question that his podcast poses: “Can travel be more than just a fun thing to do? Can it also provide a learning experiences for later in life?” Ladan believes it can be, and that’s why he’s traveled to over 100 countries... hoping to plant the seeds of wisdom from faraway lands in the hearts and minds of his listeners. http://erictrules.com/episode39
New York City — 1977 — “back in the day” — when Studio 54 was all the rage and the new TKTS half-price tickets booth on 47th Street and Broadway was still bright-eyed and bushy tailed. When myrent at the infamous and sometimes dangerous, Hotel Woodward was $55 a week, and I had to figure out a way to pay it. As you’ll hear, I was ingenious, and perhaps a little criminal, in the way I did so, but that’s what’s interesting about time travel, it allows you to look back on your life with perspective… letting you see the innocence and error of youth…. hopefully with a sense of humor. https://erictrules.com/episode38
Jen Ruiz is the author of “The Affordable Flight Guide”, has been featured in the Washington Post and on ABC news, and she documents her travel-hacking adventures on her website,jenonajetplane.com. She believes that too many people put off seeing the world until they retire, save up a small fortune, or find the perfect travel partner. She thinks that’s a mistake because those circumstances might never happen, and meanwhile, the world is out there waiting. So if you want to travel for less, and experience more, then speak to Jen. Or start – by listening to today’s episode. https://erictrules.com/episode37
Today I find myself at a cremation ceremony in Ubud, Indonesia, the cultural capital of the magical island of Bali. Thousands of locals and tourists are watching a Hindu-Bali ceremony… where the bones of Balinese men, women, and children, who have never received a proper burial, have been dug up, placed in giant coffin-boxes topped with carved wooden bulls, run through the streets, surprisingly like the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and then set afire in a giant Hindu-Bali ceremony of flames and celebration. Amidst the humbling crowd are Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, and… me. https://erictrules.com/episode36
Roger Steffens is a reggae expert and collector extraordinaire. Also a poet, photographer, raconteur, and personal friend of Bob Marley. Which means… Roger’s been to Jamaica many times, mon. If you know anything about reggae, you probably know that Roger co-hosted “The Reggae Beat” on KCRW radio beginning in 1979, the first and only reggae show in Los Angeles at the time. And I consider myself extremely fortunate to be presenting some previously-unreleased Bob Marley music from the singer’s personal “Bedroom Tapes” that Roger has graciously allowed me to mix into our interview, “on loan” from “The Archives”….along with several original “dub tracks by The Wailers themselves. Enjpy…. https://erictrules.com/episode35
If you remember, I last left you at the end of Part 1 getting off a hot, crowded bus which took me from Tetouen, Morocco to… Chechaouen, Morocco. It turns out that not all “ouens” are the same. I’m getting off the bus when I see a seated Islamic man dressed in all white, staring intently at me. He has a computer in his lap, and it’s not too long after 9/11. He points at me and I’m…. terrified… expecting the explosive worst…. only to find out that he’s pointing at my blue plastic CD player which I’ve left in my seat. “Shokrun”, I say, “thank you”, the only word I know in Arabic, as I get off the bus, the victim of my own racial profiling. http://erictrules.com/episode34