Name and Occupation

Diving into everything European via the music, the food and in-depth interviews.

Discover European Cultures

Navigating Europe: A Fascinating Map Exploration | NAO IN-DEPTH
https://youtu.be/Gh3yDTqOx9k

Name and Occupation In-Depth: France Edition
https://youtu.be/sB3qr3LbBwY

NAO IN-DEPTH Paris: From Eiffel Tower to Louvre (France)
https://youtu.be/tbpNTnazv8o

Bear research: NAO IN-DEPTH Interview with Olivia Baudet of France
https://youtu.be/-fo1xPSlRkk

Vacances en Luberon (France) NAO IN-DEPTH interview with Rixt Ferkranus in Reillanne
https://youtu.be/xvn-jd7BuIw

Name and Occupation In-Depth Italy Edition
https://youtu.be/oE5LzaHubUk

NAO IN-DEPTH Terracina music, food & culture (ITALY)
https://youtu.be/I1gucxowAtQ

NAO IN-DEPTH Malaga (SPAIN) Algeria De La Vida Bed & Breakfast
https://youtu.be/FPgOVmYACi0

Pamplona BULL RUN | NAO IN-DEPTH SPAIN with Paul Bower
https://youtu.be/fJLXr9zZOMM

Dutch Work-Life Balance #8 Name and Occupation
https://youtu.be/LP5k8ms4pGI

The Famous Dutch Tulip Fields
https://youtu.be/CvCZfeMp72E

Full Story here

The Berlin Arts Factory – #4 Name and Occupation
https://youtu.be/CEQ4p-4qkJc

https://blackvinylpublishing.gumroad.com/

Discover Asian Cultures

Diving into everything Asian with the music, the food and in-depth interviews.

Name and Occupation In-Depth Japan
https://youtu.be/nqJ6rFmTumQ

In-Depth The Japanese Sushi
https://youtu.be/OoDTs12nJ6A

Name and Occupation In-Depth Thailand
https://youtu.be/aU5V9XhfZIU

In-Depth Interview with Kwan Prasarnpan
https://youtu.be/nai8877pyBc

In-Depth: Chicken & Shrimp Pad Thai
https://youtu.be/ZVo2v407aVk

Name and Occupation In-Depth Vietnam
https://youtu.be/jChrfmLRU7U

In-Depth Interview with Myrthe Duursma about Vietnam
https://youtu.be/rUOQuJde-VM

In-Depth Cooking: Vietnamese Spring-rolls
https://youtu.be/3WZ4jfOT5Gk

In-Depth Clips: Cobra Medicine Wine
https://youtu.be/zeFyC9nMCpo

Name and Occupation In-Depth China
https://youtu.be/QT0YctLL6Fw

In-Depth Cooking: Chinese Chicken Fried Rice
https://youtu.be/hrl3y4687uk

Name and Occupation In-Depth Afghanistan
https://youtu.be/W1YgkYj7NOU

https://blackvinylpublishing.gumroad.com/

A podcast for lovers of music, food and culture. We bring you positive content from around the globe. Episodes Include: interviews, backstories, recipes, music videos, and a after show. It’s done live, interactive, unfiltered almost every week.

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Members get to watch our full 1hr Shows on demand + bonus footage + access to the unfiltered livestream.

NAO In-depth Merchandise

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People, Arts, Music, Nature and Wildlife

In a world where memories fade and cultures evolve, the Name and Occupation (NAO) Time Capsule emerges as a digital sanctuary for the extraordinary ordinary. This project transforms raw travel vLogs into an enduring archive, capturing the essence of people, arts, music, nature, and wildlife. 

Time Capsule—branded as “NAO travel”—offers viewers a portal to global wonders. From bustling street art scenes in Europe to serene wildlife encounters, these vLogs preserve fleeting moments for future generations. Whether you’re into cultural deep dives or natural beauty, this capsule bridges past and future with authenticity and heart. Join the journey—your next inspiration awaits.

All Images by André Quesnel Producer, Cameraman and Editor

Stock footage is available for commercial use.

Watch it on YouTube (NAO travel)

https://youtube.com/@NAOtimeCapsule

Henri Groenewold
Ik Denk Niet Meer Aan Jou
Album : De Pijn Van De Liefde

Zang: Henri Groenewold
Gitaar, bas, toetsen: Henri Groenewold
Drum: Titus van der Woude
Mixing and Mastering: Ido Kuperus

Music Video
Directed by
Andre Quesnel

Ik Denk Niet Meer Aan Jou | Henri Groenewold | MusicVideo | 2022
https://youtu.be/d9ihu2Wp1Iw

http://www.henrigroenewold.nl

In-Depth Interview with Henri Groenewold
https://youtu.be/N0_giXUNQSQ

In-Depth Music Break | In het bloed | Henri Groenewold
https://youtu.be/ul8KmhBhUCE

“My works present an independent reality, a world that is dependent on our real world yet is separate from it.“

Anonymous Reality with Erik Nieminen

Featuring: Martti Nieminen and Matthew Israel

Amsterdam Premiere

November 9th, 2020

Documentary YouTube Link

33 minute Documentary-Short

Film by André Quesnel

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14432562/

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Name and Occupation is financially supported by the viewers that contribute to the tip jar, paid content subscribers and with producers.

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The Netherlands has one of the most distinctive work cultures in Europe. The country averages 32 hours of paid work per week—the lowest in the developed world. The four-day work week emerged in the 1990s as a cost-saving measure during a recession. It worked. Productivity held. Burnout dropped. The model spread across sectors from technology to education.

What began as economic necessity became cultural standard. By the time other countries started debating the four-day week as radical policy, the Dutch had been living it for thirty years.

Dutch law guarantees every employee a minimum of four weeks of annual holiday. The concept of niksen—the Dutch practice of doing nothing deliberately, without guilt—runs through the social fabric. Not laziness. Dutch culture treats rest as something you schedule alongside work, not something you earn after it.

Employers who contact staff after hours face social disapproval. In some sectors, legal consequences. The Dutch defend the boundary between professional and personal time.

The numbers support the model. The Netherlands tops global rankings for work-life balance, happiness, and child welfare. UNICEF named it the best place in the world to be a child. Dutch workers report the lowest levels of workplace stress in Europe.

The country’s part-time culture functions as a structural feature of the labour market, not a career disadvantage. Women work part-time at higher rates here than anywhere else in the developed world. The system accommodates this rather than penalizing it.

The economy behind this culture moves fast. The Port of Rotterdam handles over 400 million tonnes of cargo annually—the largest port in Europe. Dutch agritech makes the Netherlands the second-largest food exporter in the world by value, behind only the United States. From a country smaller than West Virginia.

Sustainable energy, financial services, and digital infrastructure drive consistent growth. A rested workforce produces better results over time than one running on overtime.

The Dutch model draws criticism. Housing costs in Amsterdam and Utrecht have risen sharply. Income inequality, while lower than most European neighbours, continues to grow.

But the core architecture remains intact. Short hours. Long holidays. Protected personal time. A culture that doesn’t equate overwork with ambition. One of the more coherent attempts any country has made at building an economy around people rather than the other way around.

All images by André Quesnel. Watch the feature story below.

Dutch work 32hrs a week · The Netherlands — best place to be a child (UNICEF) · Best Work-Life Balance · World Happiness Report · Harvard Business Review — 4 Day Week · Niksen

Tulip Fields · Vlieland Island · Happy Stones · Paint and Beer Amsterdam · Street Art Amsterdam · Utrecht Graffiti · Groningen · Demolition Street Art Project

Complete Netherlands Travel Guide

The post Dutch Work Life appeared first on Name and Occupation.

Costa Rica abolished its military in 1948. That decision changed everything.

The money meant for defense went into education. Healthcare. Infrastructure. Green energy. The result: a Central American country running almost entirely on renewable energy, ranking among the happiest populations on Earth, with a national philosophy—pura vida—that actually means something.

We drove from the Central Valley to the Pacific coast. Cloud forests to volcanic regions. Eco-lodges in Monteverde to coastal sanctuaries in Guanacaste. The roads were well-maintained. The people relaxed. The landscape protected as national priority, not political talking point.

Pura vida isn’t marketing. It’s the actual greeting. The national mindset. Pure life. Simple life. Good life. The phrase shows up everywhere because the culture actually supports it.

Free education. Universal healthcare. No military spending bleeding the budget. A social safety net that functions. Costa Ricans focus on community and nature because the government built infrastructure that allows them to.

Costa Rica leads the world in sustainability. Not aspirationally. Functionally. The country runs on renewable energy—hydro, wind, geothermal. The commitment to environmental stewardship isn’t ideological. It’s economic. Protecting biodiversity attracts eco-tourism. Eco-tourism funds conservation. Conservation protects biodiversity. The cycle works.

The locals we met spoke about their land with pride. Not performative pride—actual ownership of the idea that protecting the environment matters. They see it as civic responsibility, not burden.

A society that feels cohesive. Forward-thinking without Silicon Valley smugness. Entrepreneurial without American hustle culture. Laid-back without laziness.

No military conflict. No extreme social disparity. A population that focuses on what matters: community, nature, well-being. Not perfect—nowhere is—but functional in ways most countries claim to want but never achieve.

The physical beauty helps. Cloud forests. Volcanoes. Pacific coastline. Spider monkeys. Waterfalls. Sunrises in Montezuma. But the beauty works because the system supporting it works.

Costa Rica chose happiness as measurable national priority. Then built policy around that choice. Seventy-five years later, the data supports the experiment.

Produced by Name and Occupation
All images by André Quesnel

World Economic Forum — Why Costa Rica is one of the world’s happiest countries

Wikipedia — Costa Rica facts

Santa Rosa National Park · Rincón de la Vieja · Volcano · Río Colorado · Waterfalls · Puerto Soley · Playa Rajada · Punta Manzanillo · La Cruz Lookout · Spider Monkeys · Salinas Bay

Beach Town · Sunrise · Jungle Alarm

Cloud Forest Birds · Hummingbirds

World Economic Forum — Why Costa Rica is one of the world’s happiest countries

Wikipedia — Costa Rica Facts

The post Costa Rican Road Trip appeared first on Name and Occupation.

New York City is where modern street art began. In the early 1970s, unsigned tags started appearing on subway cars across the five boroughs. Specifically, TAKI 183 — a teenager from Washington Heights — became the first writer to gain citywide recognition, after the New York Times profiled him in 1971. He had tagged every subway line in the system. Others followed immediately. Within two years, the New York subway had become the most concentrated display of unsanctioned public writing in the world. The writers were mostly teenagers from the Bronx, Harlem, and Brooklyn — neighbourhoods that the city had largely stopped investing in. The tags were not decoration. They were proof of existence.

The city treated it as a crime. The Metropolitan Transit Authority spent over 300 million dollars between 1984 and 1989 trying to eliminate graffiti from its trains. Consequently, the writers moved to walls. The South Bronx, Harlem, and Brooklyn became the new canvas. The style evolved rapidly — from simple tags to elaborate wildstyle lettering to full multi-story murals. What started as a signature became a visual language with its own rules, hierarchy, and history. Writers earned reputation through quality, consistency, and reach. Getting up on the most dangerous or most visible spots carried the highest status.

Keith Haring began drawing in the New York subway in 1980 — chalk figures on the black paper used to cover expired advertising panels. His work was illegal and deliberately temporary. Furthermore, Jean-Michel Basquiat started as SAMO© — tagging cryptic phrases across Lower Manhattan before galleries noticed and pulled him inside. Both moved from the street to the international art market within a decade. Their trajectories established the model that defined the next forty years of street art — work that begins outside and ends on a gallery wall, with the street credibility intact and the price tag attached.

The Banksy Effect accelerated this shift in the 2000s. The anonymous British artist turned the urban wall into a platform for political commentary — and made the anonymity itself part of the brand. Banksy’s work proved that street art could generate serious auction prices without the artist ever entering a gallery or revealing their identity. A piece shredded itself at Sotheby’s in 2018 mid-auction and sold for 18.6 million dollars four years later. The market had fully arrived. What the MTA spent three hundred million dollars trying to erase in the 1980s was now selling for eight figures in London auction rooms.

The Bushwick Collective in Brooklyn is the clearest example of what sanctioned street art looks like at scale. Specifically, it covers over 50 city blocks with murals commissioned from artists across the world. What was a deteriorating industrial neighbourhood in the 1990s is now one of the most visited open-air galleries in the United States. The transformation took less than fifteen years. City governments, real estate developers, and tourism boards have all taken note — and replicated the model in cities from Amsterdam to Berlin.

The economics follow the murals. Property values rise in neighbourhoods where large-scale street art projects take hold. Moreover, the artists who once worked illegally overnight now negotiate contracts, retain intellectual property rights, and collaborate with brands. Modern writers command fees that would have been unimaginable to TAKI 183 in 1971. The street artist as entrepreneur is now a recognised career path in New York City and beyond.

The tension from the original movement has not disappeared. In short, the same walls that once got writers arrested now get them commissioned — and the question of who controls public space, and for whose benefit, remains as contested as it was when the first tag appeared on a Bronx subway car over fifty years ago.

Watch the feature story below.

Produced by Name and Occupation. Images by André Quesnel. Music: The Juggler by David Cutter — davidcuttermusic.com

The post New York City Street Art appeared first on Name and Occupation.