Investigative author and professional ghostwriter Cillian Dunne unpacks the reporting journey behind his book The Right Hand Man. After a call in October 2023, Cillian traveled in and out of Panama to interview Carlos Whitgreen, Manuel Noriega’s right-hand man, while tracking down long-hidden documents tied to the regime. They break down what it takes to earn trust with a source who can read people, how you write an “unreliable narrator” without losing the audience, and why stakes and pacing matter as much as facts. Cillian shares how the project changed the way he sees power and foreign policy, and closes with what’s next for the book: a Spanish version, an audiobook, and a push toward film adaptation.

Cillian Dunne

The Right Hand Man

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Host: Jack Moran

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Jack sits down in Panama City with four educators, Rick Hengelbrok, Ben Thorwaldson, Stephanie Hengelbrok, and Haley Herold Espino, to explore how the education system is evolving beyond the traditional classroom. Together, they unpack the widening gap between curriculum and reality, and why mentorship, emotional development, and real-world readiness are becoming non-negotiable. The conversation dives into system-level pressures, shifting student needs, and how teachers today operate more like entrepreneurs, building culture, adapting on the fly, and designing experiences that actually serve the next generation. Zooming out, they connect these insights to larger questions around leadership, purpose, and the future of learning in a world driven by rapid change. At its core, the episode reframes teaching as a craft rooted in influence, adaptability, and helping young people grow into thinkers, not just test-takers.

https://briggseducation.com/

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Host: Jack Moran

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Jack sits down in Panama City with Juan Kong, the co-founder and CEO of Marian Exchange, an investment app built to help Latinos generate long-term wealth by tokenizing real assets and connecting local banking rails with crypto infrastructure. He traces how organizing one of Panama’s first crypto conferences and seeing how many people remain unbanked, pushed him to design tools that make investing accessible. The conversation dives into his personal story of growing up Chinese in Panama and the U.S., never fully fitting in, battling depression, and realizing his superpower was connecting people across cultures. The two unpack, leaving a comfortable corporate job, launching a failed ticketing startup, and ultimately finding a better fit at the edge of Web3, where constant change matches his curiosity. They close on the inner game of entrepreneurship, habits, boundaries, imposter syndrome, meditation, even ayahuasca, and the core message that aligning your work with your true purpose and following your gut matters more than any external playbook.

https://www.mariex.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juankong/

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Jack sits down in Panama City with Emilio Chi, the co-founder of Consultores IND, an engineering firm specializing in non-destructive testing and structural diagnostics. They break down how critical maintenance is in a market that loves to build fast but rarely budgets for long-term health. The conversation expands into Panama’s unique advantages, from logistics and finance to a skyline boom that keeps technical inspection in constant demand. They explore cultural realities, the entrepreneurial mindset gap, and the shift from small hustles to scalable, system-driven businesses. At its core, the episode is about identifying risk early, using geography as a lever, and acting on ideas before the market passes you by.

https://www.instagram.com/consultoresind/

https://www.instagram.com/emiliochi/?hl=en

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emiliochi/

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Dan Burdman, co-founder of Hauzd, breaks down how interactive 3D and live inventory shorten the path from curiosity to commitment in new-build real estate. He shares franchising wins and scars the importance of documenting everything, aligning incentives, and how those lessons translate to everyday. The conversation shifts toward leadership over control: listen first, set the context, and teach people how to think so they can work independently without needing constant supervision. Through it all, the theme is disciplined persistence—stay cash-flow responsible, iterate with customers, and optimize for time freedom as a measure of success.

LinkedIn

Hauzd

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Jack sits down in Panama City with Johan Castellanos founder of Verifik, to unpack the hard lessons of building, pivoting, and staying honest with the numbers. They explore the realities of operating in LATAM—Panama’s tax advantages, payment-rail gaps, hiring where talent density lives—and why raising capital locally demands extra grit. The through-line is discipline over ego: treat entrepreneurship like a vocation, listen harder than you speak, and let the market set the brief. They dig into attention as the scarcest resource and how to design simpler, faster experiences that respect it. Trust tech and rigorous verification show up not as buzzwords, but as principles for reducing risk and earning compounding confidence from customers.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johancastellanos/?originalSubdomain=pa

https://verifik.co/en/

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Jack sits down with Grecia Medina of Bloom Innova in Panama City to unpack how companies can bake measurable environmental and social impact into the core business without sacrificing profitability. She lays out a practical roadmap, strategy, partnerships, and concrete activities that help founders unlock grants, risk capital, and impact investment, with real SME wins and a KPI mindset that tracks both revenue and impact. Zooming out to Panama’s SME-driven economy, they connect climate and biodiversity pressures and national priorities to why private-sector execution, aligned with clear goals, can move faster than public programs, and how to build around the problems that frustrate you most.

Grecia Medina LinkedIn

Bloom Innova 

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Jack sits down with the co-founder and CTO of Darien Technologies, Norman Coburn, in Panama City to unpack 11 years of building a “software factory” across banking, fintech, and startups. They contrast capital-rich comfort in the U.S. with the scrappy, bootstrapped edge of LATAM, then dig into how AI shifts the craft from deterministic builds to generative experiments, plus when to use each. Beyond code, they cover senior product coaching, ruthless scoping, and early user feedback loops that turn specs into MVPs people actually adopt. The team’s operating principles come through: transparent proposals, radical candor with partners, annual reinvention to stay relevant, and addressing misalignment or underperformance early. 

Norman Coburn

Darien Technology

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Jack sits down in Panama City with Andrés Iglesias, founder of Convierte Panamá, a zero-landfill recycling company focused on transforming both waste systems and mindsets. He traces the spark back to traveling the country, witnessing pollution, and deciding to build a service that keeps material out of landfills while educating people to change behavior. The conversation delves into partner selection, alignment, loyalty, and emotional maturity, as well as the importance of prioritizing peace over hype or quick profit, and why protecting your peace matters more than rebuilding a broken business. Beyond the company, Andrés leads one of Panama’s biggest run clubs and also runs and performs with Brunchcast Music as a DJ, channeling community and culture into his work. He reframes fear as a growth signal and explains how sales is purposeful storytelling, clarifying the problem, who it’s for, and the why. 

Andrés LinkedIn

Andrés Instagram

Convierte Panama

Brunch Cast Music

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Jack Moran sits down with Panamanian entrepreneur and financial educator Juan Hun, co-founder of Fyros and founder of JHG Media, to unpack how he built a thriving business around simplifying money management. Juan shares how he transformed a pandemic-era YouTube hobby into a multi-stream brand, leveraging TikTok consistency, content repurposing, and financial education for Latin America. The conversation explores building a team, designing monetization funnels, and striking a balance between authenticity and smart selling. He explains why index investing beats complexity, why quantity often precedes quality, and how straightforward strategies often prevail. Listeners walk away understanding that patience, systems, and purpose, not overnight virality, create long-term freedom.

Instagram

Juan Hun LinkedIn

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