Funboat Diplomacy

Yasin Abdel Hamid is from Germany and grew up in Egypt. He is a filmmaker and actor in Berlin. We discuss culture in Berlin, the selective bias of global media, being targeted and arrested during the Egyptian Revolution, and the state of the Middle East today.

Jorge Alcantara is from Spain. He is a solutions engineer for a startup based in Barcelona. We talk about being a magician in a bar in Madrid, space exploration, and Spanish politics.

Jhoon Saravia is from Peru. He is a software engineer and is in San Francisco to attend the Google I/O conference. We discuss the cutting-edge technologies emerging from Silicon Valley, workflow and work habits, and the and the history of computers.

Thomas Rouaud is from Switzerland. He visited the Bay Area to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in Oakland with his idea for a sustainable school in Kenya after his experience volunteering there. We discuss his own project as well as the kinds of projects other attendants were proposing to change the world, the virtues of altruism and cooperation in a globalized world, and Switzerland’s position in the European economic condition.

Jamie Mandella is from Boston, Massachusetts. He currently works in the restaurant industry in the Bay Area. We discuss Vipassna meditation, ayhuasca, and our curiosity regarding the nature of the Landmark Forum and its relationship to Panda Express.

Naima Zakaria is from Bangladesh and lives in Norway. She is visiting eco-villages on her trip around the world. We begin the podcast with a calming and grounding guided meditation led by Naima and then discuss the mind's projection of time and reality, the cultural and technological bubble of China, and environmental sustainability.

Follow her projects at http://naima.strikingly.com

Periscope and Twitter: @naimanow

Patarida (Lynn) Kiatsamuttara is from Thailand. She began traveling after taking a hiatus from working in the oil and gas industry. We discuss the history and politics of Thailand, living in Xinjiang Province in western China, and traveling in mainland China.

Niko Delaeter and Joke Durnez are from Belgium and currently live in San Francisco. We discuss the big companies in Silicon Valley, the 2016 Presidential Election, the Belgian mentality, the terrorist attacks in Brussels, and the refugee crisis in Europe.

Motoko Kuromasa and Yuya Ume are from Japan. Both are university students in Tokyo who recently completed their internship program at the Nomad-A-What Co-Working Space in San Francisco. We discuss historical memory in Japan, impressions of America, Asian identity in American, learning English from Spongebob Squarepants, and marijuana.

Jamie Mandella is from Boston, Massachusetts. He currently works in the restaurant industry in the Bay Area and served in the United States Marine Corps in the mid-90s. We discuss his career in the service, his mission in Somalia following the events depicted in Black Hawk Down, and his first-hand observations regarding geo-political leveraging of American foreign policy.