Adventure Travel with Dimitry Elias Léger - Author of Death of the Soccer God & God Loves Haiti

Guest Bio

Dimitry Elias Léger is an award-nominated novelist whose work blends global storytelling with deeply human themes of identity, resilience, and belonging. A finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, his writing has appeared in leading publications including The New York Times, Time, Fortune, Granta, The Miami Herald, Literary Hub, and The Millions.

Before focusing on fiction, Léger built a career in international affairs, studying geopolitics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and spending a decade advising the United Nations. His work took him across regions facing political instability, humanitarian crises, and cultural transformation—experiences that now inform the emotional depth and global perspective of his novels.

Drawing inspiration from his Haitian roots and a life lived across continents, Léger splits his time between Brooklyn, Geneva, and Martinique. His books, including God Loves Haiti and Death of the Soccer God, explore the intersection of personal stories and historical forces, often set against vivid international backdrops.

Show Summary

In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, host Jason Elkins speaks with Dimitry about his journey from global humanitarian work to becoming an internationally recognized novelist. Dimitry shares how his early experiences—growing up between cultures and later working with the United Nations—shaped his worldview and ultimately influenced the stories he felt compelled to tell.

The conversation dives into the origins of his first novel, inspired by his time in Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Rather than focusing solely on tragedy, Dimitry chose to explore the unexpected presence of love, humor, and human connection in the aftermath of disaster. That same lens carries into his latest work, Death of the Soccer God, a story rooted in migration, identity, and the global journey of a Haitian athlete navigating life between countries and cultures.

Along the way, Dimitry reflects on the creative process, the realities of life as a writer, and the personal sacrifices that often come with pursuing meaningful work. The episode also explores how travel, displacement, and distance from home can sharpen one’s sense of identity—and why some of the most powerful stories emerge when we are far outside our comfort zones.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Big World Made Small Podcast for the Adventure Traveler. So happy to have each and every one of you back here today, and we're doing something a little different today. We've got a wonderful guest for you. We've got Dimitri Elias Leger. He's the author of Death of the Soccer God. Dimitri, welcome to the show. Happy to have you here. Hi Jason, great to be here. Hey, it's just this is exciting. I mentioned that it's something a little different today because you're an author. You've written some great books. We're going to definitely discuss that. You're not the typical guest that we have on the show in the sense that you're a tour operator or necessarily a travel writer or anything like that. But when we first spoke, I dug into a little bit to your of your background and I thought, well, hey, that's just that's fascinating. So we're going to definitely discuss the book, and we're going to discuss kind of how you got from where you are to where you are now. You've got a very interesting past, and I think that a lot of our listeners will really enjoy hearing that. And before we do that, let's touch on tell me about your book, Death of the Soccer God. Give us a little bit of idea what that's all about. And then we're going to go back into your past and work our way back up and probably wrap up discussing the book again.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Well, thanks, Jason. My first book, my first book is called God Loves Haiti. It was inspired by a trip I did to Haiti after the big earthquake in 2010. And I worked there as a humanitarian for a year. And the stories I heard and collected while working stayed with me. So I did, I wrote a novel about family, or a couple that survived the earthquake trying to figure out what to do next with their lives. It was about PTSD and it's about love and it's about faith. It's about do you stay or do you leave when your country's in trouble? While I was in Haiti working, I read an article about a little-known story of a Haitian immigrant who was studying at Columbia University and playing soccer for fun at Sheep's Meadow, the big park within Central Park, with a bunch of immigrants, and got recruited to play for the U.S. soccer team in the World Cup of 1950, which took place in Brazil. I'm like, wait, I love Brazil. I love football. And I've been an immigrant who's gone from New York, Haiti to New York as a teenager to follow my studies, and now I was back in Haiti working for the UN. So it's like, what was it like to go from Haiti to New York and then become a soccer player for the Americans and then go play in Brazil? So it sounds to me, and then by great coincidence, in 2014, Brazil hosted the World Cup of soccer. And then I was like, wait, sounds like I gotta go to Brazil to research this novel. Yeah. The novel took place in 1950 in Brazil, but 2014, 1950 is still vibes. What are the vibes of a World Cup in Brazil life? What were the team, what was my hero doing in between matches? What were the teammates doing? What happens when you got a bunch of 22-year-old soccer players let them loose in Brazil and better horizontal Brazil? What could they possibly do? What trouble could I get into? So I went down to Brazil for three weeks during the 2014 World Cup and I and I and I record and I explored and took a lot of pictures, and then I came home and I wrote a novel. So you already called Death of the Sucker God, and just like my first book, it's inspired by a trip I did to Brazil, among other things.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

And you had already decided when did you make the decision to write the book? Because I don't know how the thought process works for authors. Is it you kind of just do you have a bunch of ideas in your head and you kind of explore all of them and then one just pops out? Or is it you make a firm decision, okay, this is the person I want to write about. So now I need to go to Brazil to research, I need to do all this stuff for you. Like, was it a kind of a foregone conclusion that you're gonna write this book early in the process, or did it just come about later?

SPEAKER_03 3:50

I found my voice as a novelist in April 2010. Basically this week in April in 2010. I'd always wanted to write international adventure novels. I'd always wanted to write not necessarily James Bond, but Hemingway style novels about a foreigner in a foreign land. I'm looking for dignity, looking for love, looking for valor. Those questions always mattered to me. I love Hemingway. I love Graham Green novels as well. And he they wrote novels about journalists or diplomats traveling the world and trying to do some right things and sleeping off the wrong woman and then somehow trying to make the right things right. Even there's a revolution around them, there's a civil war around them. There was World War II. I mean, Hemingway's novel, Farewell to Arms, my favorite novel of all time, is about a guy fighting for the Allies in World War II in northern Italy who falls in love with his nurse after getting wounded and convinced the nurse to um leave the war. Mm-hmm. Desertion. Desertion for love. It doesn't end well. Right. And um, so those novels really moved me. So I was going to write these kind of novels. Um, and I've been struggling to find my voice as a novelist. April 2010, I read an essay in the New York Times about about what it was like for me to be in Haiti as a Haitian expat 24 years after I left. 800 breezy words about danger, romance, hope. It was bittersweet, and but the bittersweetness of it was like, oh, this is the voice I could use for a novel. Two months later, I read an article in Spotify's trade about this Haitian soccer player who plays for the Americans, scores the game-winning goal for US against England, in Brazil, shocks the world, becomes super famous, meets Harry Truman, the president of the United States, goes to play professional ball in Paris, comes back to Haiti, a conquering hero, gets disappeared by a dictator.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Oh wow. But when when I read he got disappeared, he got picked up on the street one day and taken to a gulag, never to be seen again, dead or alive. But since nobody ever saw his dead body, I told myself, maybe he didn't die. Maybe he escaped, like escape from Alcatraz style. Maybe he escaped and agreed to lay low, and he's running a bar in Paris or driving a cab in Miami. And that got my imagination spitting. And I was like, okay, this is a novel I was born to write. Immigrant success story, coming back and dealing with the politics, and somehow finding a happy ending. That's very, very cool. I love it. So it chills up my sign. That's cool. So when I got home, and it's like I just checked before we spoke that my novel is still among the top ten novels about the Caribbean ever. It's like a must-read before traveling to the Caribbean. There's a must-read novel for basically every region in the world. There's 10 for South America, 10 for Africa, 10 for Asia, 10 for Latin America, and there's 10 for the Caribbean, and my novel. That novel is still among the top 10. The novel I wrote was called God Loves Haiti, my earthquake novel. But the Sakura novel was in my back burner. So after the mission, after Haiti, after I got home and recovered from my humanitarian mission, got reacquainted with my wife and kids, got some sleep for two months. I woke up and said, no, I should write the earthquake novel first. So I wrote the earthquake novel in 2011, published it in 2015, it did well. But before when I sold it in 2013, 2014 was the, it takes 18 months to publish a novel. So when they buy it, before it gets to the stores, 18 months. And just like it's just like with movies, by the time a movie makes it to theaters, it was finished a year and a half ago. The ramp up takes a year. The ramp up for a novel takes 18 months. So during that 18 months window before publishing the Earthquake novel, I said, what do I do now? Well, I have a little piece of change from the book deal. Let's get back to the soccer novel. And oh wait, Haiti's hosting the World Cup. Let's go to Haiti to Brazil. Let's go, no, Brazil's hosting the World Cup. Let's go to Brazil for three weeks to check out the vibes. My wife blessed her heart, let me go. And I spent three weeks in Brazil researching the book. Came back, wrote 40 pages, and the plot is really a man on that row. A man on death row in the gulag in Haiti after having offended the dictator of Haiti in the 1950s, wondering, wait, how did I go from privileged, rich kid, Colombia student, soccer star in Brazil, to a gulag in Haiti. And then he tells his story. I wrote the first 20 pages about a guy on death row going, what the hell happened to me? And then I had to go on tour to promote the first book. Okay. And to promote the first book, that tour started in January 2015. The book was so successful, it took me 10 years. It took me a world tour. I toured the world many times promoting that book. It took 10 years before that died down. And then around 2022, 2023, I said, look, let's go back to the soccer novel. I need to fuck I need to finish writing the soccer novel and I need to publish it before the next World Cup. So I wrote I locked myself in an Airbnb in Martinique, the Caribbean island, in the end of 2022. And I spent two years just locked in a room or on the beach writing this book. And I finished it in early 2024, put it to publisher at the end of 2024, and that was coming out before the World Cup of 2026.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

You mentioned already April. Yeah, and and the book's going to be released, you said May 12th. May 12th. Okay. In exactly five weeks. All right. And the World Cup starts in middle of June, June 13th. Yeah, I can see why the timing would be would be important. You said you said so many things in there that just like I've never heard, I'm not aware of, as far as the turnaround time to from once you finish a book until it actually gets released. You were talking about touring around, promoting the book for years, it sounds like. I get that. I guess I want to hear a little bit more about the earthquake book as well. Hello, hello. I Yep. I I'd like to hear a little bit more about the earthquake book, if you don't mind. What was kind of the plot of the characters adult?

SPEAKER_03 10:20

Yeah. That book is dear to my heart. And it's probably gonna be the book I'm most remembered for. If I probably published 10 other books. Because it was the book that I was in Haiti after the earthquake. I've been trying to write about Haiti for a long time. Even though I was born in Haiti, but I grew up in New York City and I lived in Switzerland for 20 years. So while in Switzerland, I had a two-year-old son. Once my son was born, I was like, okay, I gotta write a book. So he knows his dad had more than fun travels for his life. Caring about some things. And had a vision of the world that I wanted to share. But it gave him a sense of humor. It's one of those weirdest things. It's lots of dark comedies, obviously, because the country has been terribly poor and unstable for since its founding. And by since before its founding, but since its founding has been terribly poor and unstable, yet very proud and very resilient. Now the resilience can be explored in many different ways. Some of my favorite writers explore resilience in war times with great trauma and with great sadness. I decided my way would be through romance. I experienced what makes us what keeps us out of bed. What gets us out of bed? I decided I'd focus on romance as one of the drivers that keeps us out of bed, even when we're broke, even when we're scared, even when we're traumatized. And when I was in Haiti after the earthquake in 2010, after being away for 24 years, I saw signs of romance after a couple of months. I saw couples holding hands. I saw a wedding in a refugee camp. Three million people, the city was destroyed, three million people lived in refugee camps in the middle of the city, 200,000 people died, and I helped bury all 200,000 people. But in the middle of that burial, in the middle of all that grief, I saw people fall in love. And I thought, oh, this is a novel. My novel would be about how humor and romance exists in spaces that are tragic.

SPEAKER_00 12:29

We don't even like I can't speak for everybody, but I don't even think about that when I think about the Haiti earthquake or other large traumatic events that have happened in the world. You think of, you know, things that happened during World War II, or there's there's so many things, things that are happening in parts of Africa right now. Yeah, it doesn't even occur to me to think about the romance. You just you just look at it's just pure survival. Nothing else is happening there. They're just trying to survive. Um, that's an interesting angle.

SPEAKER_03 13:01

And it's worth exploring because fortunately, great writers and great artists have been writing about war and death since literature was invented. The first ever lone poem, but the first ever novel is the Odyssey.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

About a man leaving Ithaca, his island in Greece, to go fight a war. Odysseus leaves his wife and kid, Penelope and his son, to go w fight a war across the Mediterranean for Greece, and stays fighting for 10 years and then comes back home and discovers that his wife had changed, his family had changed, has to pick up the pieces. That's like the first novel ever. Right. Homer is the Iliad and the Odyssey. And the Odyssey is such a um canonical and foundational story that is it's gonna be a movie this summer by Christopher Nolan. Okay, same director who did um Oppenheimer. So looking at how people handle family and war has been going around since Homer and the Odyssey and Shakespeare picked up on it. All Shakespeare's novels are basically about kings trying to get laid. Through war and through peace and through and um and fast forward to a 21st century. Some of the greatest books ever and movies were made about World War II. And one of the greatest, The English Patient, written by a novel. It's a novel, you know, it's based on a novel by a writer named Michael Dajek, who's Sri Lankan but lives in Canada and was a poet by training. But he read this amazing novel about adultery during World War II in the Sahara. Okay. And Graham Green wrote amazing novels about adultery in Haiti, in Panama, in Vietnam. For some reason, they're cheating bastards wherever you go. Yep. And by coincidence, a lot of these writers were Catholic, and a lot of Catholic literature from Dante's Divine Comedy, all the way through Graham Green and all the way through my books and other books by Haitian writers, at the core, Catholic tests, Catholic writers exploring the Catholic issues, which is family betrayal, redemption. Right. So there's a long tradition of this, and I just joined that tradition. So God loves Haiti is about a woman torn between her husband, who happens to be the president of Haiti, and her lover, who happens to be a young, ambitious guy her age. But after the earthquake, the president, the husband who she didn't respect much, grows some balls. And the young guy that she loved, she can't find him. She doesn't know if he survived or not. So she's wracked with guilt. So she travels for a prince in the wreckage of Poor Prince, trying to find the guy she, the guy she loved, and in the process finds herself. But does she want to live Haiti? Does she want to leave in Haiti? Does she want to does she want to leave Haiti? Um, does she want to get back to her Catholic roots or does she want to be an adulterous wife? Does she want to love her husband or leave her husband? Suppose this guy is alive. Does she really dealing with those questions of whether to stay or to leave? And what is the honorable thing to do after surviving a tragedy? That's what Calab's Haiti is about. But it's a comedy because it is about an adulterous woman trying to find Anita in a haystack, the guy that she thinks she killed, whose heart she broke. And the novel goes between different chapters, one by her, one by her husband, one about one from the perspective of her husband, who doesn't know she's been cheating on him, but slowly figures it out. And one chapter about her lover, who thinks she's dead and who's depressed, because he's hurt from the earthquake, physically hurt, and he's like, Why do I have to live? He went from being a stud before the earthquake to being a depressed, wounded guy after the earthquake. So that's the novel's about three people who survived this thing, whose morale is in different places after the thing, and where are they gonna end up? Are they gonna end up with each other or separately? Or not. So that looking for how love can operate in a war setting, in a natural disaster setting, which is why I do in that novel, has been done before. Has been done by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the great Colombian writer, who has lived in Mexico City when he wrote his great novel, including A Hundred Years of Solitude.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

He lived in Mexico City at that time? Yes, most of his life he lived in Mexico City. I didn't even know that. I mean, uh I've spent a lot of time in Colombia. I've read in Spanish some of his works that it's not easy. I've been told it's not the easiest books to read if you're practicing span practicing Spanish, but I did not know that. Okay, all right, that that's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

I know when he became huge, he was too big for Colombia. So, like many writers, he he his refuge was another country. So he lived in Mexico City. That's interesting. And many people do that. Hemingway never lived in New York. He lived in Spain, he's been in France, and he lived in Cuba.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Let's discuss that. That's an interesting concept I hadn't thought about, but I heard you say that you were in Martinique for two years.

SPEAKER_03 18:10

Yes, I left myself in the Airbnb in Martinique to write the soccer novel because the Haiti novel came out in 2015. It was popular. I I made the rounds and I published very late. I published in about 45. So I'm a very late bloomer. So I'm thinking I'm a one-hit wonder. I'm just gonna ride this out. As long as somebody asked me to do press, I'm doing press. I just was gonna milk it until people stop inviting me. Alright. I was a one-hit wonder, and plus I got a new appreciation of life from doing humanitarian work and seeing the death and suffering in countries like Haiti after the earthquake. Because since then I worked in Africa quite extensibly in the Middle East. Right. I've seen a lot of things, and I wanted to share the message that, you know, Cope DM.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Before we're gonna go into a lot of the stuff you just touched on, but if you don't mind, I would like to stick on the part of you know, why Marquez would be in Mexico City, or why you were why you were in Martinique or why Hemingway was in Cuba. Is there something about changing your environment, living closer to your subject? Why did why do so many writers go somewhere completely culturally different to immerse themselves while they write a book? And is it norm typically yeah, I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Tell me it's a great question. It's a great question. Looking back at um the history of literature, and again about my experiences, it's traditional. Dante wrote the divine comedy. Um, while in exile in northern Italy, Dante is famously from Florence, and the Middle Ages, he was Florence lost the war with another with Rome or something. So him and his political party were exiled to Milan. While in Milan, he was pining for Florence. So he wrote a long poem about how other people who kicked him out of Florence should be in hell or purgatory. And heaven is reuniting with the love of his life who's from Florence, Beatrice. Um he created, he wrote the first book that described what heaven and purgatory could be like, and what hell could be like. And his images, his depiction of hell, the greedy, you know, and the and his depiction of hell and purgatory became lasted for centuries. Pictures and movies that show hell and heaven, he invented this. And he wrote that in like 1077, and he wrote it in exile. So homesickness may be one of those things that's at the root of many great works. I write about Haiti. I lived in Haiti for about five years from the ages 60, from the ages eight to 14. But I'm only writing about Haitians because I find I find uh their existence fascinating because they live 100 miles from America, poorest country in the world, next to the richest country in the world. We have intimate relationships between America and the US. Nothing happens in Haiti that Washington does not decide, not for hundreds of years. And yet we've grown richer, Haiti's grown poorer. And how do you handle that? And I find that fascinating, even though I wrote the first book in Switzerland. And then the second book, I got the inspiration, I had the free time, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna finally gonna get it done. I got my I was in Martinique for a book festival for the first book, and the welcome in Martinique was so nice. The people loved the first book so much. I'm like, you know what? You guys deserve a second book. I'm gonna write a second book just for you guys, because you love the first book so much. I'm gonna get over my writer's block. I'm gonna stop being a one-hit wonder, I'm gonna get this Airbnb and stay and write a new book. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

Know if we want to I don't know how far you want to go into your personal life, but I don't know. Earlier I heard you say you went to Brazil for a few weeks, and you specifically mentioned my wife said I could go or let me go or something like that. It's one thing to take off for three weeks and go to Brazil to research a book. What a how how you know you know where I'm going with this.

SPEAKER_03 22:20

Yes. Needless to say, the first book was not really helpful to my marriage. Um those three weeks in Brazil, she let me go, and when I came back, she was like, You suck. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

You left me alone with the two kids.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

This is a warning to all just people. It goes both ways. But yeah, when your partner says, Yeah, sure, baby, go for three weeks. Yes, yes, have fun. That it doesn't always mean that's what they're thinking, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:51

No, no, no. And plus, there's gonna be buyer's remorse or philanthropist remorse or lover's remorse. She let me go to Haiti for three months after the earthquake. Within two weeks, she was like, dude, the kids are killing me here. I'm like, I'm burying 200,000 people here. And I live in a town. Yeah, but you're in the Caribbean, I'm stuck here with the two. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that became a recurring theme. So I'm gonna do it. And of course, then you do this, and then you can recurring things. You publish a book, and it's really about you. Books are not collaborative like movies are and music is, um, like many of the other arts are. The performing arts, there's a practice session. People, your partner, your lovers can see you practice. Yeah, they could come to the set of your movie and share an opinion. They could come to your atelier and see your painting and be like, oh, you're using a light of red this time around. Yeah. They feel like they're they're part of the process. A novel, not so much. A novel is much more like alienating.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Yeah, it it I don't know, but it feels like, okay, leave me alone. I'm writing, I'm working on my novel, and you're in a room somewhere or a different country or an Airbnb.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

You're in the basement. You're in the basement, everyone goes to sleep. I wrote that first book between 11 p.m. and six in the morning when the wife and kids went to sleep on Friday nights and Saturday nights, 11 p.m., 6 a.m. At 6 a.m. Um Saturday mornings, my son gets up to go pee. He was about six or eight at the time. I'm like, oh, that's my time to go to bed. Okay, I go to bed. The wife would wake up, I take them skiing all day Saturday. I sleep all day, revise, they come home from skiing, we have dinner, uh, we watch a movie, they go to bed, 11 p.m. Saturday night, I go back to work. Oh, you don't have to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Sound like a fun like a fun husband during that stage.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

I'm not I'm not knocking. Actually, many husbands have hobbies. Yeah. You know, they're in the garage, tinkering on a, you know, mailing, making an almoir. People have hobbies. Yeah, yeah. And at the time, I had a regular day job. I was at the UN. So that's Dimitri spending all night working on his novel. That's so cute. That's a midlife crisis happening. Uh-huh. But lo and behold, it was good. Lo and behold, they found a great publisher. And lo and behold, audiences liked it. Yeah. And that was a game changer. Sunny, the little hobby became this other thing. And suddenly it's like, I didn't sign up for this.

unknown 25:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

And I'm sitting there, like, this is my dream come true. I'll hit the lottery.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Mm-hmm. And she wasn't.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

It turns out she wasn't coming.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah. Is that a common thing with writers to have relationship issues? Because everything you just described, I'm like, oh. Yeah, I can I can see some possible issues.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

There isn't. Hemiway had four wives.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:41

Guess, yeah. Grand Green had a thousand mistresses. Fitzgerald had one wife who hated him, his fame, which drove him to drink and suicide. Well, drink by suicide. Suicide by drinking. It's not a collaborative art. It's not even that remunerative, but it's quite rewarding. Because you telling jokes to yourself for hours on end. And I'm a fast writer. Like I wrote the first book in about a year. Like 10 months. I had a wife and two kids. I couldn't be dicking around for years. The second one, I dicked around for 10 years. Because I was in no hurry, I already did my Magnum opus. But then when it's time to brass tag to write it, I got that Airbnb. I was freshly divorced. Mm-hmm. And I wrote a little bit on a beach, and within a year it was done.

unknown 26:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

And do you within a year it was done. So let's what I heard you earlier say was a lot of writers will write in either exile or somewhere. You mentioned the term homesickness. And and when you said that, so I've been traveling full-time for four and a half years. Um doing this digital nomad thing. And one that probably my biggest problem to solve at this point in my life is a potential isolation. It's part of why I do the podcast, so I can connect with people, have conversations. Ooh, that's interesting, actually. I'm I'm going through this stuff in my head. But the but the point is there's that isolation, that loneliness, that discomfort of being in a place that maybe is fascinating and people think, oh, you're so lucky to be there, but there's always that discomfort. And I'm I'm sensing that maybe it's that discomfort, that isolation, that loneliness that kind of maybe torments the brain a little bit. I don't know if torments the right word. And I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.

SPEAKER_03 27:35

Yeah. What I would say is when you're out of your element, when you're in a foreign country, especially, or out of your hometown, you find it's very common to find your purpose. Like, why am I here? The question became more acute to me when I lived in Switzerland. I lived in the heart of Switzerland, the heart of Europe, running as a European family, with this very international community. But what's the point? Yeah. What's the point? What's the point of me? And that question is less acute in your hometown. Because in your hometown, your family or old friends always remind you, or always reminding you who you are. Who they think. You went to this high school. Yeah, yeah. You went to this high school. You're the son of, you're the daughter of. Your cousins are definitely reminding you, your siblings are always reminding you, too, you're my kid brother. No more, no less.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

And your family does that. They do this check in, they check you in that regard. Um, but when you're out of your element, there's no check. You get to reinvent yourself. But it just so happens along the way, you also look at what's good about where you came from. What's worth keeping? Yeah. What's from your hometown? What are the things from your family, from your dad and your granddad and your ancestors, and their journey? And especially if we're American, most Americans can trace their roots to some other country. So, what did it your ancestors bring to you that used to carrying with you? And when you're out and about, what about those things are you carrying with you? Like it turns out I had a concierge show me this, a Haitian guy um in a building I lived in in Miami at one point, and we used to chat in French. And he's like, at the time, he's like, Your French sucks. I'm like, why? Because you sound like a New Yorker. So it turns out, whatever language I speak, I speak like a New Yorker.

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:23

Yeah. I cut off the end of my words. I curse. And you can't stop being a New Yorker. So over the years, you travel around, I pick up all these other languages, I pick up new accents, I get better with my accents. But everywhere you go, everybody knows you're a New Yorker on some level. You walk into a room, you look people in the eye, oh shit, you must be a New Yorker. Yeah. And you become more of a New Yorker the further you you you live away from New York. I found. I became more Haitian the further I lived away from America and the Caribbean. I was like, oh man, you know what? My country is not so bad. Haiti is 10 million people, Switzerland has 10 million people, Sweden has 10 million people. They're proud. We have reasons to be proud. Everybody in Europe would be like, well, America is so racist, but no, no, no. Obama's president. Calm down. Where's your Obama?

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Where's your Obama? You don't have an Obama. And you've been around longer than the US. Oh, yeah, but now it's like Trump. Obama still happened.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Mary King still happened. Where's your Mary King? Where's your Obama? Where's your Bob Marty? Yep. I mean, Jamaicans could always hang their hat on that. And nobody unifies the world born in Bob Marty's music. And he lived a very brief life. So you I start to appreciate a lot of things about the Caribbean, about America, that boldness, the adventurousness, the polyglotness, the multiculturalism, um, the constant struggle. You know, now the Nazis are in charge, but before that, you know, Luke Skywalker was in charge. It'll flip-flop again. But we do these things. I became appreciative of America and the Caribbean the longer I lived in Switzerland.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

It's very it's a very interesting thing that these are kind of thoughts that have been rolling around in my head, but I haven't been able to formulate them. So it's such a pleasure to chat with you that you've got this way with words and and describing. Do you have kids? I do. Yeah. I've got a uh a 19-year-old son and a 29-year-old daughter.

SPEAKER_03 31:29

I have a 20-year-old daughter and a 24-year-old son. Yeah. Another thing, too, my son was born in 2002. I had just about turn 30. And I was like, is my legacy gonna be Dimitri had a cool resume and a lot of passport stamps? Or is my legacy gonna be a body of work that tells him, This is what I love?

SPEAKER_01 31:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:50

This is who I am. You get to decide who you are. I wrote God loves Haiti. It's an absurd title, it's a head structure title, but I did that. You're gonna hear about Haiti from the headlines, from your colleagues, from your friends, and you're really gonna hear anything good about Haiti. Well, you know what? Turns out there are good things about Haiti. Turns out I had a good time there. Turns out my parents met and had me there. And that must have been a love story. That must have been a nice love story. Turns out the population of Haiti went from six million when I was a kid to ten million in 2020. People were having sex, people having babies, and grown families. So the longer I lived abroad, the more I'm raising kids like in Switzerland who are not Swiss. None of us were Swiss. But I'm raising kids far away from their roots, far away from my roots. I felt like I had to give them a sense of my roots that they could take with them. They could read and explore where I'm alive and when I'm get it.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

I I love that you asked if I had kids, and and then you were sharing that and I was reflecting on it's it might sound cheesy to people. Like I've got people in my family that you mentioned your ex-wife was kind of like, oh, he's doing his novel thing. Sometimes in my mind, my friends and family think Jason is doing his podcast thing, you know, and they don't understand maybe why I'm doing it. Sometimes I don't even understand why I'm doing it. But when I reflect on my kids, like I love the idea that my son would sit there and listen to these episodes. I don't think he does. He's 19. He's got a lot of things on his mind. Girls, work, whatever. But I've always appreciated the fact that at some point I'm gonna have this long series of conversations with people that I respect, I admire, I feel like got connection with, and the idea of my kids going back and listening to these episodes and seeing dad was like talking to cool people. Dad was talking to interesting people, having interesting conversations. He helped people bring out their stories. And then the guest scared, he was curious, yeah, you know, and yeah, he gave people their voices, yeah, helped others. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, I do some website design that stuff that I enjoy. But you know what? I I could build a beautiful website and and then if you know, in a couple years somebody else gets hired to replace an update and it's gone. But these these conversations will be there forever. And I'm gonna, you know, I could do everything I can to make sure they're there forever. Yeah. So I I get that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:30

That's the media by the media.

SPEAKER_00 34:31

Yeah.

unknown 34:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:32

I was a journalist. And um, I was a journalist, I was a major and undergrad at St. John's University here in Queens. And then I became a journalist very early on, publishing in national magazines, writing about music, and then eventually writing about the tech world. And I remember when I went to grad school to get to international relations and to get into humanitarianism, I was being recruited by um by the government quite a bit. Because I went to a school of government for masters in public administration. The government agencies were like, okay, we want you to come work in our communications department, work in our media communic uh department, help us work in our intelligence department, help us, you know, get information and help advance the country's and country's goals. And I was like, I already have a wife and kid. I did grad school very late. So I'm like, I'm used to doing a public-facing career as a journalist. I publish regularly, and my kids can read it, and my friends know what I do for a living. If I'm in the government doing intelligence work, nobody knows what I'm doing. And you're not really supposed to tell anyone what you're doing. I'm lying left and right. Uh, it's too late. If I'm 22, the idea of that kind of obscurity works. At 32, no, I want to share my ideas with the world. Yeah. And with my kids and my family to be proud of what I do. Yeah.

unknown 35:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

And so going to so there's something about being in the media and producing public-facing work. Um, that's rewarding and that's gonna last and that's enduring. When from journalists to novelists, I found to be great fun because a journalist, you're not supposed to be funny. Right. But a novelist, you can make fun about adultery. You can make fun about death. You could make fun about how people grieve. You can make fun about how people have sex, you can make fun of how people fall in love. How people fall out of love. You could actually make fun of stuff that is that's painful, but that people could recognize themselves in.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah. I get that. Hey, I have a personality question. You've probably thought about it more than I have, or maybe not, maybe it's not even relevant. When I think of journalists, people that go into journalism school, and I I don't I don't know, I might be wrong. Because you mentioned put front facing, public facing, and I'm thinking those are people that kind of like to be, I don't know, maybe like to be in the spotlight. Yeah, extrovert. That's exactly where I was going with that. But then I think of novelists, like just before I had this conversation with you, I think of a novelist, I think of an extreme introvert. Yes. How does that work?

SPEAKER_03 37:03

Tell me more. I don't know. I'm winging it. Yeah um my people who were close to me could better answer that. My wife and girlfriends could better answer that.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

They're gonna be on the next episode. I don't know if we told you that. We're doing a surprise episode, Dimitri's.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

Going from extreme social, because people are keep going from extreme social to extreme hermit. Um, it's kind of a bit of a whip whiplash. Um, it's whiplash. And you have to have both sides of personality. I've been uh it's been Lent. It's Catholic season, it's Lent, it's Holy Week, Easter is Sunday. Doing holy week, doing Lent, 40 days, just like it's just like um Ramadan. 40 days of no partying, no booze, no sex, no well. Well, 40 days of reflection and no partying. And holy week, no sex. I have a friend in Martini who told me his wife was like, dude, not this week. And now again, like wow. That's what you said last week. Exactly. But I find blend to be a great period to lock into my work. Yeah. Lock into your work and having a partner with who could understand is tricky, man. It's tricky. And you write, and I'm writing about people who were in my past. People I miss, ideas of adventures that I never had, but they are reflection on adventures that I've wondered about through time. Um, I'm never writing about where I am and the people I'm with. And they all want that. They want that. They want you to write about them. They want that. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

A woman will see what you and hopes that you end up in your novel. Okay. I shouldn't say this, but I think I just came up with a new hobby. All right.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Writing novels, that is. There's nothing fun about writing novels. There's nothing fun about the industry of making a living off novels, but there is fun about having a novel in a bookstore.

SPEAKER_00 39:07

Yeah. I couldn't because I heard someone say there's the difference between a writer and an author has something, and I don't know, I might have got this this quote wrong, but an author has something in a bookstore type of thing. Is that that common thought? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Yeah, yeah. I mean, more books have been published and written in the last 10 years since the internet than the history of man. But the percentage that ends up in bookstores is like 1%. Okay. That's the percent. And the book industry is a very large industry. It's like $130 billion, projected to grow to $180 billion in the next 10 years. People read books. Bookstores are thriving. But the percentage of what's written and what ends up in bookstores is like minuscule. Okay. It's like with music. People are recording music left and right now on their laptops. But the percentage that ends up in Spotify, minuscule.

SPEAKER_00 40:03

Help what you said about the book industry growing, bookstores doing well, it feels a little counterintuitive to me. You're much closer to it. I suspect it sounds counterintuitive to a lot of people listening because we know what happened in newspapers and magazines. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 40:22

But they provided a temporary jolt of culture, while books provide an enduring form of culture. So one thing that's grown the last 20 years as the internet has devoured most media, museum attendance has grown. Really? The Louvre, the Met. Well, okay. Roma. Thriving. Thriving. The Louvre is so popular, they open a Louvre Abu Dhabi. They open like a Guggenheim in Spain. Like museums are thriving.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

Is that because of is that because people post social media photos of themselves standing in the courtyard at the Louvre?

SPEAKER_03 40:59

I think while people have been moving a lot of their lives online, the people offline have been extremely offline. The museums have become more popular. I mean, Taylor Swift and Beyonce made billion dollars on their last tours. Like no one did that before. Why are people going to concerts? Why are you going to concerts when concert tickets cost two grand, three grand now to go see Taylor Swift?

SPEAKER_02 41:29

People go. The NFL, British football, hundred thousand people stadiums.

SPEAKER_03 41:35

Why? When you could do everything in your comfort of your living life. Oh, there's a nice yin and yin going on between the online life and offline life. So bookstores are thriving. There are great photo apps. They're a great way to spend the evening. They're a great place for moms, stay-at-home moms to bring their kids to hang out. And one thing authors can give you that AI can't give you is the backstory. An AI novel does not have a backstory. A self-published novel does not have the same self-published writers don't end up in bookstores. There's enough published writers for bookstores to have a different book signing every night. So you won't meet them in person. Okay, I got it. While somebody who's never been to Haiti, um, who's not even Catholic, they read my book, they were moved by it. I'm sp I'm signing books in their town, they want to come and be like, dude, really? Why you write so well about women and adultery? How did that I mean, did that how did your wife react to that? Well, not well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

You mean by ex-wife? She finally found out what I was doing for at 11 o'clock at night every Friday night, writing about adultery. So a computer won't have a backstory to their novel. Okay. Alright. That's interesting. And and as you describe that, I'm like, yeah, I've always thought bookstores were a cool place to just go hang out. I've probably spent more time than I feel good about sitting in bookstores and reading books and not always buying them.

SPEAKER_03 43:05

Speak at schools. I've been speaking at schools around the world since for more than 10 years now. Whenever I go speak to a class, and at many grades too, ninth grade to 12th grade university, teachers always prep the class by having them read a chapter of my book. Inevitably I show up, and this has been in like the ghetto, this has been in the Sahara. When I show up and posh private schools, of the 30 kids in the class, five will have read the entire book. Not just a chat. Yeah, that's good. I think that sounds great, right? And whenever I see these five kids, I'm like, oh, I was you when I was 14. I would have been one of those five kids. So in any group of 30 kids, there's five who love print, who love to read, who could actually put away their phone and read a book from beginning to end and feel good about it. And those five. Kids out of 30 have existed since the dawn of time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

The people who are capable of lock in and read an entire book, or lock in and go to a museum and actually paint. And people who appreciate painting. Mm-hmm. Because writers are are are just reflection of readers. And there's a million there's like a billion readers out there. Those five kids out of thirty grow up to be adults who become five out of thirty who do book clubs.

SPEAKER_00 44:25

And you know, I I don't know what it's like. It's been a while since I've been in New York City, but I've spent a lot of time in some other cities and uh other parts of the world. And you can see those those five out of thirty when you get on the metro. There's that person. There's everybody else is on their phone, and there's that one person standing up with a backpack on, a bag of groceries wrapped over their arm, and there's reading a book. And it's like, oh, that person's a little different, and not in a bad way. Like in a really good way. I grew up with my my dad's a reader, I'm a reader, and my dad was a big reader too. Yeah, I shouldn't say this, but but he used to drive down the freeway. Like back in the day when we were young. You know, my brother and I were probably, I don't know, 11, 12, 10 years old, whatever. In the back of the pickup truck. This was just midway across the country. We just traveled, we traveled across the states. He was a balloon pilot. We would go from town to town for balloon festivals on the weekends. But he would be driving down that freeway, reading, you know, with my brother and I in the probably in the back of the truck. Of course, not strapped like in the back of the pickup truck. You know, 75 miles an hour down the interstate through Kansas. And he'd be sitting there with a book, reading a book as he was driving. And it was, I just that's a memory.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Yeah. I'll read a couple of chapters.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

I know, and and now we're like, I mean, I get it, but like if I like if my son sees me glance at my phone, if he's in the car with me and I glance at my phone by looking at the map, you know, they're like, quit looking at your phone, quit looking at your phone. Mine too. And mine too. No idea what it was like when I was growing up with my, you know, he might have even had a drink between his legs sometimes.

SPEAKER_02 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 46:20

You know, it's avid readers exist. Last night I went to the Pan America Um Literary Awards, like the Oscars for books. Uh-huh. And it was packed. Everybody was well dressed and beautiful, and the winners all were people who wrote books um or translated books in countries, about countries that they're not even from. Oh, really? And like one guy who won a translator award for a novel set in Argentina, and he's clearly from Iowa. You saw that a lot. It's in the culture of people who who are curious, who travel to want to connect with the people locally and either get their stories out by translation or write their stories.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

And that's been going on for a long time. When you say get their stories out, you're talking a little bit about translation. And it's not my haven't really considered.

SPEAKER_03 47:14

Translation, I mean, you could even take it a step further. My next novel is gonna be set in Zurich. It's gonna be about a Swiss banker. A private banker who's not Swiss but who's running a Swiss bank. Because the idea of somebody who's not Swiss running a Swiss bank lends itself to so much comedy. And that kind of disconnect exists in all art and across the world. Okay. Whenever I'm trying to get a job, I do corporate comms on the side. It's like I'm always a fish out of water. And because I'm permanently a fish out of water, I'm permanently seeing stories about being a fish out of water.

SPEAKER_00 47:46

Yeah, okay. And I celebrate that. And you said you said something like people getting their stories out through translation. I think I don't know if I got the exact wording.

SPEAKER_03 47:56

For example, for example, you read Spanish. Yeah. Well, it's totally making Spanish, and you could write it in English. You could read a book in Spanish that's never been translated and pitch it to a publisher and translate it into English.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

If if I read a book in Spanish, that's I I think I here's where I'm going with this is and it happens in just like when I have conversations with people. Because I understand probably at regular speed, I understand about 50% of what they're saying. So the story in my head is almost always completely different than the story they were telling me. Right? So if I read a book, I could probably go write a whole completely brand new new novel based on my understanding of what I just read, and nobody else would look at the two and say, oh, and that would be an original work.

SPEAKER_02 48:49

That would be an original work.

SPEAKER_00 48:51

Because half of it would be completely made up in my head based on what I thought I was reading that wasn't really what I was reading. That's an interesting concept.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Now, Marquez lived in Mexico City most of his life, but he wrote these beautiful novels about sex and family drama in Colombia. Yeah, yeah. While living in Mexico. Like, you could write a Mexican novel. There isn't a limit. So people write about because one thing, best advice I got when I was going to write novels. So I had an agent. My first agent, he liked a piece I worked in the New York Times about going to Haiti three months after the earthquake. What Haiti was like three months after the earthquake, after being away for 24 years. So I wrote an 800-word piece about visiting my old house, being in the hospital where I was born, visiting the house, my dad's house, the house where I grew up in, and seeing it fractured but still standing, reuniting with old friends, and noticing that the cracks in the walls of the house meant it could come down on my head any minute now. Right. So while we're hugging, hey Demetri, good to see you. It's been so long. I'm like, dude, we need to go outside, or else we're gonna die. Right. So I wrote that piece, my agent read it. He's like, dude, you should write a book about this. About what it's like to go back to Haiti after being away for 24 years as a humanitarian. And I'm like, dude, I'm on mission now, it sucks. I'm dealing with a lot of depth. I'm translating opposites in three languages, trying to raise money to help Haiti and also let the public know that we're doing good work to help the people. It's it's a contradiction, it's not it's not it's counterintuitive. We're doing a good job, but please give us money. Yeah, we need more, right? Yeah, that would be tough. So you checked in with me every month, and when I get back to home to Geneva, this is like in he checks in again in November. Dude, what are you thinking about book wise? I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna do a novel. I just came back and we went, we visited a friend of ours, an old friend of ours, who just her marriage just exploded because she got caught cheated. So I'm thinking about a novel about adulteress in Haiti after the earthquake. And um, he's like, a novel? I wanted you to write a nonfiction book. I'm like, yeah, but you know, that's what I'm feeling. I don't want to write about myself, but I'm gonna write about other people. That's why I see the funny. And he goes, Alright, well, my piece of advice to you, and this is great advice, shout out to Robert, is a novel is all about your voice. If your voice is agreeable, pleasant, good company, you could tell a reader any story, and the either will the reader will file you file you for 300 pages. You have to be pleasant, you have to be good company. And that that was the magical advice. That's all I needed to hear. Because it makes sense. People write about science fiction, people write about aliens, people about Star Trek, people write about you know magicians, people write about anything if it's agreeable on the page. If it makes you want to find out what's next, you just keep turning pages, keep turning pages, keep turning pages. That's interesting that freedom blew my mind.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

So after hearing that advice and you look back at some of your favorite authors, did you immediately kind of see it and agree? Like, like Yeah. Um was Hemingway agreeable? Like I when I should Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 52:21

I've read his books, but I've never short sentences, direct, and percussive. So you keep on going. The writers I love the most, Jose Saramago, Portuguese, winner the Nobel Prize in 1983, he'll write a sentence that's five pages long. Oh wow, okay, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then wow, and then while his boss came in the room, and then okay, then you started thinking about his wife, then you start thinking about shit, he's talking about the boss's wife, and then and then he could do that for 10 pages, and it works. And I read that and I thought, oh, I could do that. That was more my style. I started opting I could do Hemingway, then I started doing these novels where I could do a sentence that asks us five pages. Then that's my style. It's called maximalist. Hemingway is the classic minimalist, it's the most attractive. Both styles are agreeable.

SPEAKER_00 53:14

But both styles are agreeable and that makes sense because when I'm reading I like to read a lot, and yeah, if I feel like the person telling the story is pleasant, I just assume that it just feels pleasant to me because I like I feel like I like the author. Like you mentioned the bookstore thing. Like if I read a book from front to end, probably the person that wrote the book is somebody that I'd want to meet in person. Yeah, you you it's a really good point because if I pick up a book and I read 15 pages in and I'm like, I don't like this. And then someone said, Oh, this famous author is gonna be at the bookstore. I'm like, Yeah, I I picked up his book. I didn't read the book. I'm just not gonna feel connection. So that makes sense. It makes complete sense. I also remember someone saying to me, or I read somewhere, it's probably a famous quote that you know, or maybe don't I don't know if it's a famous quote. I just remember reading somewhere that, or someone said that we read to discover we're not alone in the world. I don't know if that sounds familiar. I just remember that it was that when I read, it does. I just feel like, oh, I feel seen, I feel heard. Even it's not a book about me, but it just makes me feel like, oh, this other character has similar thoughts and problems and struggles and he nailed it.

SPEAKER_03 54:30

He nailed it. And that's what that's what writers do, and that's what writers that's why writing, lonely as it seems, hermit-like as it seems, it's like throwing a party. But I write about people who suffer and find found fun in their pain somehow. And when I'm seeing this to do it, I'm I'm creating a world of people, a hero and her boyfriend and her cousin, and how they're doing. I mean, their parents and how she's trying to be like her mom, different from her dad, but turns out she's more like her mom, and she turns out she hates her mom, but she's like her mom. I'm writing a I'm creating a world of people who are like me and like you, and forgot throw enough out there in their drama and in their bad jokes and in their embarrassing situations that you can relate to.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

Do you does your story I don't know the process, but do you oftentimes feel kind of surprised by your own story? You're writing the story, and then it's like a character takes a right turn and you're like, ooh, I didn't see that coming.

SPEAKER_03 55:35

You never see it coming. Like Saga God ostensibly, it's about a guy who comes to America, becomes a big star in Brazil, goes back to Haiti, gets in trouble with the dictator. That's the headline. The reality is it's about a kid who's a twin and who grew up who's very competitive and who was vain and he was very talented. It's about being a genius, being gifted, and not knowing when to say no. Not knowing when, you know, enough's enough. Maybe you don't sleep with your brother's girlfriend. Maybe if you leave, maybe you come back. Maybe you don't stay away, you don't stay out in the party over and over again. If you promise you the love of your life that you come back, come back. Um, what are the limits to genius? If you're gifted, gifted people and writers for a lot and for along those lines, and musicians and artists for along those lines, gifted people feel entitled to it. Hey, my gift has to be expressed. And that's what I'm expressing. You know, I kind of doing God's bidding, I'm doing what God gave me the ability to do, which is unique. Fair, but where are the limits?

unknown 56:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:44

Where the cap. How do you do it and and keep a family together? How do you do it and keep your spouse happy? How do you do it and become part of a community and stay part of a community, not bigger than the community? Those challenges, that's what my first that's what Devil the Soccer Guide is about. Yeah. It's about um it's about a gifted soccer player who has a godlike ego and dies.

SPEAKER_00 57:08

Well, yeah, because that's I'm thinking like that's the karma thing, right? Is why he disappeared, which is a whole other topic that I think is super interesting. But yeah, so it's kind of uh things will come back around to put you in your place or yes.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Karma comes back around, consciousness comes back around, and love may come back around.

SPEAKER_03 57:32

It's like, can you be so vain? Anyway, the Ten Commandments, the number one is being too vain. And as an American, I clearly identify with that one because we are too vain. We think we live on an island. We think we have 250 million people who live on an island and could do whatever we want elsewhere, but here we're untouchable. And to whom much is given, much is expected. So instead of thinking like we're in an island, we should be more generous, more kind, more giving. And sometimes we have a president who makes us more kind and giving to the rest of the world. Sometimes we don't. But this paradox of wealth, the honor system that comes with wealth and privilege, is fascinating to me. And Devin Sacred is really about that. Wow. The twists and turns that he takes, like he goes to Brazil. In theory, 22 football players get to Brazil, but they're gonna sleep with everybody in Brazil, or will some guys fall in love and want to adopt a new family? Will some guy go and have sex with four women? Will some guys just stay back in the hotel stories of guys who are out there doing stuff? Right. Those diverse personalities. So when you're when you're writing a novel, you're not alone, because you're putting everybody you know, and I even name characters after my friends just as a shout out, because I'm grateful for everybody gonna have lunch with you when you're a stay-at-home novelist. Everybody could have lunch with you and hang out with you once in a while. You're so grateful. So they all end up in my book somewhere. Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 58:59

I don't you know, one thing that popped into my head as during this conversation, and I'm not really familiar with this. I think they just call them role-play games, and I'm not trying to minimize or diminish or or I'm just curious though. But yeah, I've I feel like people create these stories in their head, and with their friends, they make characters, and sometimes they do it as a group, but I don't know if you can do it by yourself, but it seems like maybe the same type of person that enjoys that might later later on turn into a writer. What do you think? I don't know. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_03 59:36

Shakespeare had money problems is all correct. 99% of writers have money problems. Or family problems. And yet the greatest literature and the greatest plays, the greatest movies have been about kings and presidents. No king has ever written a play or a novel. But that's the quote, that's the quote for this conversation. I love that. Yes, okay. There are great novels about kings. There are great novels about the chiefs, about the prime ministers. They're not writing books. Never written by a royal. Hamlet was a prince of Denmark. Written a novel, a play written by a broke writer in the deep backwards of England. Um there's something about the imagination. If the writer does a good job, and if you make it convincing or charming enough, the reader believes it. But my first novel is about a president of Haiti, a 60-year-old president of Haiti. I was 40. When people get me all the time like, wait, you know, adultery, and I'm like, wait, I'm not a 22-year-old woman, which is the hero of the book. I'm not a 60-year-old man, I'm not president of Haiti. So there's nothing about my life in here. Except I know that people can be strong, people can be weak, and when they're strong, when they're weak, is kind of unpredictable. And how people try to bring everything full circle is kind of funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

I'm strong, I'm weak, but I'm not that weak. I'm still kind of strong. I mean, we have that push-pull of our kids all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

I have that push pull.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:18

I'm a good dad, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:19

Well, sometimes that I have that push-pull constantly, every day in my life, you know, going back and forth, and people are people, whether they're kings or 20-some-year-old women, right? We all have, yeah. Yeah. So yes.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:36

Uh, every king wants to be a good man, every emperor wants to be seen as a good man. Everybody wants virtue. Can you be good, but can you be good in a sustained way? That's the challenge.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

It's gotta be a tremendous amount of pressure for any any, you know. I mean, you mentioned it, every king wants to be s a good man or wants to be seen as a good man, and what a tremendous amount of pressure. Because with all the eyes looking at you, and yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:03

You know, I mean, and the same thing with all of us. Like, I do this by myself, but I wanna, I have a family, I want them to be proud. Yeah, I have a community, I have friends, I have um a girlfriend, and I want everybody to feel part of it. Even though it's just me by myself making shit up. Um, it's not about them, but I want you to feel part of my life. I want you to show up for me, I show up for you, but I have more free time for than you, so I show up a lot. But what I'm doing is important and it still counts, but it's a balancing act. Yeah, you can't please everybody. So you have to find some middle line of like I'm creating these things, but I'm also part of the community. And walking that tightrope, I'm isolated. Um the bylines are just me. But I'm part of a community. I show up for everyone I can, and I hope we get paid for it. I hope people show up at the book events. Uh-huh. When somebody says you did like the book, you're like, Shaq, you actually read it? Um, you're always gonna be shocked. And I've talked to the most famous guys, and they're like, Yeah, every reader is like a miracle.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:12

It's I get that on a smaller donor. It just anytime, you know, any anytime I talk to somebody about the podcast and they're like, and they mention they've heard it, or they said, Oh, I listened to episode so-and-so with so-and-so, and I don't know why I'm always like I mean, I'll be vulnerable right now. I always feel excited and surprised, even though I know I mean I can look at the back end, I can see people are listening, you know. I but that's just a a chart or a graph or whatever. And what and when someone says, Oh, I really enjoyed this episode, I really love the way you got this out of that person, and I'm like, Oh, you were listening? Oh, like it feels like, oh my god. There's um that uh I can't remember his uh guy that does a very large podcast and he um talks about something like, Well, I I I hope nobody's listening or whatever, but if you are, I don't Stephen, something I don't I don't even go off on a tangent, but um it's to me too, fascinating conversation. I feel like we could come back and discuss so many things. I I haven't had a lot of authors on the show. Um the the ones that I have had have been um what you're doing is obviously very internationally relevant and be super these are you know interesting stories for I think my typical listener. But where I want to go with this is I really love your ability to communicate. It's just such a fun conversation to have with you, and you're you're very thoughtful and your responses are clear and it's uh you've left me with so many fascinating little thoughts and and new messages that I hadn't heard before. So thank you so much for doing that. And I'm curious, before we wrap up though, I told you early on I'd say we'd have a chance. I want to make sure we didn't leave anything on the table. So I wanted to ask, what did I forget to ask you? What do you wish that I'd asked you, or what else do you want to make sure our listeners know before we wrap up?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:05

Well, one thing we um I want to add as one thing that we talked about in our pre pre-recording um conversation, which is that there's a potential here for there's it's an opportunity for all the tour organizers, other travel agents, other people who are your typical audience, typical listeners, or typical interviewers, and the people running business, people of the travel industry. Books and movies about the countries, about their countries, about the country they're traveling in, to do philanthropy and to just visit are very, very important. And that should be part of their offering as travel agents. There isn't a country that doesn't have you know the famous great American novel? Um, every country has a great dot dot novel. More countries more countries read novels more than they watch TV. Electricity being what it is. And so forth. So that that every country has that. And I think the tour operators and the hotels should make these works available to their customers and their clients and to their partners. Because these things are what the tangible assets. One thing about digital assets. Digital assets are amazing. Digital media is great. But there is something about life offline. So every country has museums. Every city has a museum of natural history, of modern art. Those things should be part of the people's itineraries when they're going to any country. And particularly the literature. You could read that after or before you go on a trip. And that's part of that country that's with you forever.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:56

I love that. And yeah, I remember discussing that. I'm so happy you brought that back up because that was that was something I really wanted to get into, and I kind of glossed over and forgot. So thanks for bringing that up again. Because I know for me, in my experiences, if I'm going someplace new and I'm excited about it, but I'm not there yet. But I'm uh kind of emotionally, I want to be there. I want to get there. And there's so for example, if you're going to Kenya or whatever, and you might and you're so excited to go to Kenya, you might want to get out of Africa and read it. Or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:29

Nigeria. You read Chimamanda Adichi Ningose's novel called Americana. So she's Nigerian who studied at Princeton, but writes out of Nigeria, but wrote a great novel called Americana about being an African woman, trying to find a hairdresser and trying to get a footing in America. And she goes into all the minutiae about adapting to America that is so familiar but seen from a new end lens special. Like in the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:04

So it's called Americana, but it's written by Nigeria.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:07

Yeah, it's it's it's very cool. It's and it's just a way to kind of because I like to think that any travelers that are listening to this program are really want to create a connection. It's not they're not just people seeking Instagram opportunities or they want to there's so many ways to connect with a culture, so I don't want to say anything that does connect with culture.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:28

There's a lot of ways. But my music, films, yeah, yeah, museums.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:32

But books offer a cheap way and uh internally rewarding way of connecting with a culture you're visiting. Did you say it's or you might visit? Did you say the word cheap way?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:44

Yeah, because the books cost 20 bucks. Okay, so there's there's the cheap way, but there's also it's kind of a cheat. I because I heard the word cheat. A cheat way is like to start that process with of connecting before you get there. Because some people will watch YouTube videos and they'll watch, you know, street food videos in Vietnam, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:02

So they and But if you read Taylor, if you read the Taylor of Panama before going to Panama, you get to read about sex and politics in Panama. Yeah. So and you can you can't get that in a YouTube video about Panama City. No, you can get it in the Tale of Panama the novel.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:17

Because the YouTube video about Panama City, most likely, and I'm not knocking any of my other content creator friends out there, but many times I've watched these videos, uh, for example, Medellin, Colombia, and I will see top ten things to do or top three mistakes to avoid, or da da da, and then the person can't even pronounce the name of the city right. You know, and you're like, and if I didn't know, I wouldn't know, but I know, you know, and it's like, oh, okay, yeah, this is you know, they threw it together in the course of three days as opposed to locked in an Airbnb somewhere in Martinique. Yes. Banging it out and creating current.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

Right. Yeah. Yeah, we want to find a bookstore in that city.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:02

Yep, yep. Find bookstores air. There are some. I don't, yeah, I don't know if people are aware of this. You are, obviously. Um, I'm at least aware of the fact there are some bookstores are really cool when you're out about traveling.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:16

Yeah, the best photo app. There's a bookstore in Porto, Portugal that's so beautiful, you have to pay 10 euros to get in. And there's a line outside. And they probably only started to do that to try some.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:32

Yeah. You know, so and it's like when Instagram exploded, people discovered this book this bookstore that's been around for a hundred years. There's a line outside.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:42

And people paid money to go inside a bookstore.

unknown 1:10:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:45

That's like unheard of, but that exists.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:48

And many countries around the world have gorgeous bookstores. Yeah. And they're not all Barnes and Noble. And I'm not knocking Barnes and Noble. The important player.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:56

But they're modern pop bookstores that happen to have funky architecture. And you walk in there, you smell hundreds of you should be read a history of a country.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:04

Funky architecture, funky just cultural stuff, just the way people work in spaces.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:12

And you ask them about you asked the bookkeeper about the most popular books from that city, from that country. Well, this author is from here. He he wrote this novel about um about a king and his um and his gay lover, and he became abused bestseller in in 1845. And people suspect that he was gay, but he was in the closet. So he wrote a novel about a gay uh closet cake. And that's the lore. So whenever you see a novel, that's the popular novel of a local community, there'll be a backstory to it. Yeah. And the bookseller can tell you that, and suddenly you know something about that community that you won't find on YouTube.

unknown 1:11:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:53

Then you go back to your friend and be like, hey, man, if you go to Kuana and Pur, there's a bookstore there. Boy, they got stories.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:01

Yeah, yeah, that's very cool. I remember walking, I didn't actually intend to walk into the bookstore. I was, it was actually in a mall right after I got to Colombia several years ago, my first visit there, and just walking through the mall, and there was a line outside this bookstore. And I was, and the woman I was with, my friend, she she was very excited. She's like, Oh my gosh, that's Dulio. That's Dulio. He's a he's a cook, so it's a cookbook that he had had written. But he was in there doing a book signing, and it was so exciting. And I was like, I had no idea who he was, so I had to go buy one of his cookbooks because I like to cook. Yeah. And there was it wasn't just a cookbook, he he wrote stories about these different things and why these things are important in the culture, and uh da da da da. And it was just it was just a cool experience for me to to have that and a memory. So yeah, bookstores are a really good choice.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:49

They're really good choice. So that should be on any travel itinerary. Basically, a lot of stuff that's not on YouTube should be people should have almost an offline version of the tour in their offering for clients. You've seen the online stuff, but my agency offers you the offline stuff. Well, I'm gonna be museums, which will be bookstores, which particularly for high-end clientele. Because people actually read.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:12

Well, those are the destinations, but I think also something where I believe that maybe some tour operators missed the boat is in the pre-planning, you know, in the pre-trip stuff, is why not have a link in there to a few books? Why not have recommended readings? Yep. And not just recommended, but just like here's a link to where you can buy it from whichever bookseller you feel most aligned with. But here's the book we recommend. You know, if you like to prepare and read about and understand the culture before you get there, this would be a great choice and make it easy for them to go get it. Yeah, that's yeah, I because I do that. I mean, I do that myself quite often before I go someplace. I'll go find what it what is the book that I need, you know, like you said, the great American novel, the great Kenyan novel, the great Vietnamese novel, that type of thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:57

Zimbabwean novel, the great Portuguese novel, the great Norwegian. Like there's a lot, and people have, and even countries that you don't associate with literature will have literature.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

Yep. I like I just recently read The Alchemist in Spanish. I read it, I'd read it in English quite a few times. I I really connect to that book, and it's a pretty quick read in English, it's a little slower, slower in Spanish, and we were touching earlier on the translation thing, and I was like, I recognize that I'd read it quite a few times in English, and when I read it in Spanish, it was a different story. Go figure way different story, way different story. You know, that could be the translator's version or just my interpretation of the Spanish version. But the re the reason I bring that up is you know, I've been wanting to go to Morocco for a while and and Spain. I haven't really been to that that you know, Northern Africa, the the part of Spain, you know, the southern Spain influenced with a lot of North African stuff. Yeah, yeah, it's a different world. And that book's not necessarily all, it's not a travel guide. It's not gonna help you prepare for your trip, but it's just maybe a good, quick, easy read example of something you've got. I got a recommendation for you. Yeah, please do. The Moors Lament. The Moors Lament?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:11

Yes, that's a novel about um Spain and the Moors, uh, which are the people from Morocco and Algeria who ran Spain for 600 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:23

Um, it's a great window into that work.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:26

Yeah, very, very cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

To the history of that world and high and and the beauty about that history is is very present when you go to that world.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:34

You know, when you when you go to that world, it's still present, like wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:37

Architecture and all that. There's so many cool places. Here's the thing there's too many cool places to go see and to fully absorb and connect with, but we can we can take a shot at connecting with a lot more of them by reading. I will say that. Yes, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:15:56

There are many ways to connect to society. You know, you date locally, you you you cook and you shop locally, but you read, you get to the soul of a country.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:05

Well, I'm and I'm saying, I'm saying not everybody has the ability, uh, physical, financial, whatever, ability to go hang out in Morocco, to go to the markets and try the spices and do all this stuff. But most people have the ability to either pick up a book and read or listen to it if they can't read, they can't see it, they can listen to it. And you could you could sit in your apartment in Brooklyn and or wherever in the world and really learn a lot about culture and f and and different societies and without ever leaving.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:41

Just the humor, there and also it cuts across literature, cuts across generations. You know, those five people, you know, in the class of 30, in most families, it's like five people. There's like a grandmother who read obsessively. Yeah. So when you when you read, when you like my dad read obsessively. So I read obsessively. So when I'm talking to my cousins and and relatives, like, oh yeah, your dad, man, he's he reps so much. And then and I got stories about the family, because my dad knew the stories, told me the stories, and I got stories about our family. My family's like, damn, we didn't know that.

unknown 1:17:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:16

That's why you have that's why you have writers in the family. That's why you have readers in the family that actually read and remember stuff. Which leads me to one thing, Jay. Yeah. Before we go, um sounds to me like you got a book to write.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:29

I I'm thinking the same thing. I'm actually this conversation has been really, really interesting. And I have found myself over the last few years spending so much time, you know, analyzing like why have I made the choices I've made and what is my purpose and and um what was behind this and behind that. And frankly, a lot of it's because I've been, I'm gonna say I've been locked in an Airbnb for four and a half years. Not always by myself. I want to put that out there.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:55

But it's um, but yeah, yeah, it's that's one reason I'm happy being back in my hometown is I left probably I met my wife in prison. So basically for 25 years, I've been I was married to a European, so for 25 years I've lived outside of the US. Yeah. Because even even when you we were in the US, we have a house that's like half Haitian, half and so we always had like we were always traveling, I was always on the run. So when I came back here in September, I was like, oh, I'm I'm not on the run anymore. I'm here. So when I want dating, it's like no, no, I'm here. I'm not passing through. And suddenly I'm like, oh my god, I was so unreliable before because I was so passing through. I could talk all the talk, but I was just passing through. I'm in an Airbnb, I'm not gonna be in your country that long. Yeah. But you're amazing. Let's hang out, but I'm not gonna be here that long. But now I'm gonna be here. So now I'm like truer and more sincere and more myself because of that.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

Here's I don't know if this resonates with you, but my process was when I decided, okay, I'm gonna go travel, I got rid of everything. I went the minimalist thing, everything I own is in one suitcase, and then I've got a little backpack I carry my computer around in. I'm there. And so it's like, okay, so I got rid of all this stuff, and you were talking earlier about the things you leave behind, the things you let go of. And so it both it's literally, metaphorically, physically, whatever, I left a lot of stuff behind. I didn't leave my family behind in the sense my relationship with my son's amazing. I do, I talk to him about every day on a video call. I talk to my mom once a week on a video call. So I didn't leave the relationships behind, but I left a lot of stuff behind. So then you go travel for a while and you figure out, okay, what's important? Like when I don't buy anything, and this is not about spending money. This is I don't buy anything unless I value it enough to carry it. Yes. You know, and so there's that's the literal thing. If it fits in my suitcase, I maybe I have to get rid of something else to make it fit. But the same thing happens with relationships, habits, thought processes. It's constant evaluation. Okay, what can I, what should I continue to carry with me or what should I let go? And then someday when I end up back in the States or I end up staying somewhere, then I can realize, okay, now I kind of know what's important, what I really need, what I, you know, what I want to have in my life, and and then add and maybe add some things back in because I don't have to physically carry them anymore. But just with a different perspective on kind of what's important. Did you is that does that resonate?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:32

It may totally make sense. It totally makes sense. I've lived out of backpack quite a bit, um, but it's the last six years. My kids got old enough. I'm like, okay, bet, you know, and me and my ex-wife were very cool. She's she's a she's a great woman. Um I'm happy being in my continent, and I'm happy being able to, but I'm happy also because half my life is my kids. Yeah. So half my life is in Europe. So I'm here, but another half of me is in Europe. Uh my daughter has a job interview tomorrow morning. I'm waking up at 3 in the morning to wake her up. It just means at 4 in the morning, which is 10 o'clock Paris time. But I'm waiting I just to be safe, I'm like, hey, you're awake. We're always parents. We're always parents, aren't we? We're always parents, and that keeps me grounded, and that keeps me connected wherever I am. But living out of a backpack, I've done that for a long time, and I'm growing into setting down, growing into my roots now, and now I'm discovering this is who I've become. I think your travels, because you carried around the same backpack, the same suitcase, the same X amount of things, and the same hobbies to make yourself feel at home in a foreign place, those hobbies become you. So my routines in foreign countries was the Catholic Church on Sundays, bookstores, museums. You know what? My routines, wherever I am now, there's a Calgary Church naming, there's a bookstore I pop in, just to pop in, this is for the air, and this is New York City, there's one every five two blocks. Um and then the body of water I like to go walk by. You know, I mean, usually it's on the Wall Street, like a seaport. I just want to say seaport. Those routines happen everywhere you go, but they have been hardened and become part of my DNA over the course of me using them in my travels to give me a sense of Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:28

Yeah. And it's it's fascinating. I suspect that what if I get it, I say when I get to the point of not traveling and living out of a backpack. I suspect that my life before traveling, I had traveled quite a bit, but for work trips and stuff. But I had an apartment back in Phoenix, and I can picture exactly what it was like, and I suspect that when I sign a lease on someplace or buy a place at some point in the future, it's gonna look very different. Just my life is to be very different. So, like for example, I never used to go eat a croissant and drink a coffee in the morning when I lived in Phoenix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I've done it an awful lot in the last several years, and wherever I live, there's gonna have to be a little panaderia or a pastry shop or batisserie or whatever, where I can go sit down with a coffee and eat a ham and cheese croissant in the morning. Like it's just gonna be part of my life forever now. And that was not.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:20

And you would never be as materialistic as you were before you started traveling.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

Oh, yeah, because it's it's gonna turn objects are just objects. Yeah, and stuff doesn't mean anything, really. I mean, it has to bring me a tremendous amount of joy for me to carry around. And very few physical things give me that much joy. Like, I would yeah, I would just much rather cars, furniture. No, but like you mentioned, you know, passing through and and being, you know, relations sometimes you you meet people and you know, like I'm a single guy and I meet women, and like where do you live? Well, that's really complicated. How long will you be here? How long will you, you know, do you have a car? Do you uh do you have family here with you? Why are you here by yourself? There's those questions can be kind of those those those questions become recurring, and you're like, Well they think you're great.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:08

I stand for these things. I have these hobbies, I have these passions. Do you share them? Let's enjoy that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:14

Yeah, I I asked someone recently uh I'm just gonna say online, virtually, I asked this person a question, and I said, if you could go anywhere in the world, if you could go anywhere in the world for one month, where would you go? And you know her response, and I respect her response. Her response was it's impossible. I have to work. And I'm like, okay, I like I get the response in a sense, but I said, if you could go anywhere, I wasn't inviting her. I wasn't, I didn't, I had no, like I had this was like our very first like back and forth, but it was if you could go anywhere, and she wasn't even creative enough to say, if I could go anywhere, it would be Switzerland, or if I could go anywhere, it would be Nigeria. You don't have those things in common, it's tough. Yeah, and like like if she had said, I would love to go to wherever, unfortunately, right now I've got to figure out something with my works, my situation, because I don't have a lot of time off. But if I could go, I would go. Then I'd be like, okay, well, maybe we could have a conversation. But if if your first response is, yeah, that's impossible. It's just like if anybody starts the conversation with it's impossible. Yeah, I'm like not much room to grow from there. You're probably gonna get really frustrated with me. Yes. I get it, I get it the same way.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:27

I get the same way. If you don't like books, you don't like book events, what are you doing with yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:31

If if you ask what's your favorite book and you're and they and she's like, Well, I'm too busy to read, I don't really read, then yeah, okay. Well, I'm gonna bore the shit out of you, and you're gonna bore the shit out of me. So let's uh let's save each other some time and energy.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So but that's but that's the thing. We just we define who we are the more we roll, and we have to be true to those values. Yeah, that's what I've learned to do is to be sincere about them. Yeah, and it's hard because not to waste anybody's time.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:58

Yeah, it it that can be hard because sometimes you question yourself. If if 90% of the people I interact with, I tell them this is this is my life, and and they respond with, Oh, it sounds like you're homeless. Are you homeless? Like, well, I get that. Then you have kind of. Oh, I'll share this quick story, just real quick. I was back visiting my son and my mom in Arizona, and he was probably I don't know, 16 or something like that. And there was like a parent-teacher like visit like before school, like orientation day, and they invite the kids to come in with their families, meet the teachers. And so I my myself and his mom, my ex-wife, um, accompanied him to this school event, and one of the teachers um said, Oh, and what you know, she knew we were divorced, or that came up somehow. And then she looked at me and says, Oh, so where do you live? And I said, Oh, I'm homeless. My poor son went into immediate. He looked at me immediately, said, Dad, you have to explain, explain it, explain. Because that is funny. And I'm like, Oh, I mean, I'm a I'm a digital nomad. And and Jackson's like, Oh, dad, why did you tell her you're homeless? Oh my gosh, he was so embarrassed. And not that it's a bad thing necessarily, but anyway, I can appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:13

This is funny because you're you're you're in full nomad mode, and I'm reventing in being an American living in America for the first time in 25 years, I'm like, oh, this is nice. Yeah, I I people ask me a way from, I'm like, you know what?

SPEAKER_02 1:27:26

My high school's down the street.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:28

Yeah, isn't that that's and so I'm experiencing the reverse of that, but I totally get it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:33

Well, right now, unfortunately, when I am back in the States, if I run into somebody interesting, or if somebody says, Where do you live or where are you from or whatever, and it it kind of comes back around to, well, I'm staying at my mom's house right now. Which is probably worse than being in Columbia and saying you're a nomad and living in an Airbnb if you're in the States and you say I'm a nomad staying at my mom's house, they're like, Yeah, you've got no points. Nothing going for you when you say that. Dimitri, this has been funny. This has been so much fun. You better stay in touch, but I actually, yeah, I think uh we're doing New York City, let me know. Bagels. Do you like bagels? You gotta like bagels. You're in New York. I like bagels. Yeah, yeah. I love my girlfriend makes amazing bagels. Okay, so I'm gonna come to New York. We're gonna do bagels with uh locks and all that good stuff and a coffee. So I look forward to it. Yes, Dimitri, thank you so much. I appreciate you. This was a lot of fun. Can't wait, can't wait to read your book. That's gonna be super that's gonna be super cool. I think she sent me a link, and um, I didn't want to kind of ruin it by learning too much about you ahead of time because if you can't tell, I'm kind of a spontaneous guy. I like surprises.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:42

So but it's uh but now it's I think you like Soccer God because it is about um moving around the planet and uh making new friends.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:50

You know, and that you called it disappeared by the corrupt government. Yeah, that's a big thing in Latin America that I don't know if I mean probably not just in Latin America, but it's not something really on our radio.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:02

Or ISIS disappearing people in America.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:04

Dictators do that.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:06

Yeah, they they do.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:07

Dictators disappear people. Yeah, and it's something I didn't think about a lot before I really started traveling. But you know, Mexico City, in anywhere in Mexico, Colombia, most of these places I've been, see they there's a park I remember in Buenos Aires back before I was traveling full time. I went there and they've got, you know, these these women that hang out in the park and they've got pictures of their family members that disappeared a long time ago, some of them and some of them more recently. And it's a big thing. And I bet there's a lot of story opportunities there, which is kind of what you've done with Death of a Soccer God is you know, yeah, what what happened to these people and getting voice to the voiceless, giving voice to the uh disappeared. I I I think it's uh pretty cool. So all right. I'll I'll let you get back to what you're doing. Dimitri, thank you so much. Uh let's do it again real soon. Same here. All right, thanks. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_03 1:29:55

Cheers.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:55

Bye bye.