Foolish Careers
13 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 2 years ago -Have you ever been told: “You should get a more sensible career"? On this show, we speak with the people who ignored that advice to become the trailblazers, leading lights, and entrepreneurs of Asia's creative industries. From Singapore to Seoul, Taipei to Tokyo, Mumbai to Manila, these creators and artists tell us how they paved their own path and dealt with the unexpected challenges and unmitigated failures along the way, as they built a unique and singular foolish career.
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Episodes
On getting lucky and earning it retroactively with writer Chris Jones
February 19, 2022 04:28 - 46 minutes - 42.8 MBOn this podcast, we've always interviewed creators in Asia. I made an exception for this episode because I wanted to speak to Chris Jones. Chris is a journalist and screenwriter who is best known for his work at Esquire Magazine, where two of his stories won the National Magazine Award, the highest accolade for magazine writing in the US. I'm a long-time reader of Chris's work and also enjoy his hilarious Twitter feed @enswelljones. So when his book publicist reached out -- out of the blu...
Switching careers midlife and his new book The Eye Test with writer Chris Jones
February 19, 2022 04:28 - 46 minutes - 42.8 MBOn this podcast, we've always interviewed creators in Asia. I made an exception for this episode because I wanted to speak to Chris Jones. Chris is a journalist and screenwriter who is best known for his work at Esquire Magazine, where two of his stories won the National Magazine Award, the highest accolade for magazine writing in the US. I'm a long-time reader of Chris's work and also enjoy his hilarious Twitter feed @enswelljones. So when his book publicist reached out -- out of the blu...
How losing at the Webbys turned into winning creative careers with Andas Productions' Roshan Singh and Isabel Perucho
November 27, 2021 23:00 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBTemujin is a limited-series audio drama about the life of Genghis Khan. It has a fan base in the audio drama world and was a finalist at this year's Webby Awards in the Podcasts - Scripted Fiction category, where it competed against The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and entries from HBO, the BBC, and Wondery. Spoiler alert: Temujin lost to Trevor Noah. But it was comfortably in second place with 34% of the 2 million votes cast. (The Daily Show with Trevor Noah got 40% of the votes. Third plac...
The patient ways of chocolate with Kad Kokoa founders Nuttaya and Paniti Junhasavasdikul
October 22, 2021 15:15 - 33 minutes - 30.4 MBPaniti and Nuttaya Junhasavasdikul had stars in their eyes. They had just spent two weeks in Hawaii with Nat Bletter, a pioneer in the bean-to-bar chocolate movement, and at the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute in San Francisco with chocolate scholar Dr Carla Martin. From Dr Bletter they learned how to produce and package bean-to-bar chocolate, and from Dr Martin how to grade cacao, the better to evaluate the beans they were buying directly from farmers. Their idea of having one’s own br...
When to scale and when to stay small with Anonymous Creative Director Felix Ng
October 17, 2021 05:00 - 55 minutes - 50.8 MBAs fledgling graphic designers, Felix and his co-founder Germaine were held at arm's length by clients. While developing a brand identity for a restaurant, they never had a chance to taste the food. Another client claimed to do guerilla marketing but actually did above-the-line advertising, and when Felix pointed this out, he was told to stick to designing the logo. “I felt like we were just designing the candy wrapper for this thing. I didn't really know what we were selling, whether it wa...
Why a technologist developed soft skills with innovation consultant Keith Timimi
March 24, 2021 23:00 - 36 minutes - 33.2 MBThrough self-inquiry, Keith has embraced vulnerability and emotional honesty for a more meaningful career and life. “I'm 50 years old, I should know better, but I don't think the learning journey ever ends.” He incorporates these ideas into the robust innovation workshops he designs for clients seeking to imagine meaningful customer experiences in a world of accelerating change. While the work requires academic rigor and practical experience working with organizations and ecosystems, Keith...
Launching your debut novel about protest amidst a mass protest with Sunisa Manning and Jason Erik Lundberg
March 09, 2021 23:00 - 38 minutes - 35.4 MBSunisa Manning was born and raised in Bangkok to a Thai mom and American dad. She studied journalism at Brown University then came back home to work in the non-profit sector, which led to working in rural Thailand with farmers, school teachers, and descendants of royalty alike. The experience opened her eyes to the wealth disparity in the kingdom and was part of Sunisa’s political awakening. (“I was one of those people who probably couldn't have told you it was rice growing in the field fo...
Learning to be a sommelier using Wine For Dummies with Gerald Lu
March 02, 2021 23:00 - 25 minutes - 23.1 MBHow does a kid just out of National Service learn about wine when there are no teachers in Singapore? Wine for Dummies, of course. Gerald Lu, one of Singapore’s leading sommeliers and current chair of the Sommelier Association of Singapore, had no choice. “The industry wasn't very helpful then. There wasn't a sommelier association. All the best wine guys are at The Raffles Hotel or maybe Les Amis, and these guys are very busy so you email them and nobody replies.” Choosing to become a som...
Why every creator needs a scene with filmmaker Suridh Hassan
February 18, 2021 23:00 - 29 minutes - 26.8 MBBy age 30, Shaz Hassan had several significant projects under his belt. His London-based production firm Studio Rarekind, cofounded with Ryo Sanada, had produced and sold three independent films, “Scratching The Surface” about Japanese hip hop culture, "Rackgaki" about Japanese graffiti art, and “Soka Afrika” documenting human trafficking in football. They had authored two books on graffiti art in Asia which led to a new project, Stickerbomb, a series of sticker books curating street art fr...
Building the first buffalo dairy farm in Laos with chef Rachel Elman O'Shea
February 11, 2021 09:00 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBWhat if you had to explain the concept of a gallery, then build one, before you could present your art? What if a creator had to build YouTube or TikTok before they could produce their first video? 99.999999% of us would never get started. And what if you craved cheese while living in the poorest country in Southeast Asia, where milk isn’t part of the diet and farmers didn’t know they could milk their buffalo? If you’re the founders of Laos Buffalo Dairy, you do it all from scratch: buil...
Swapping rock-and-roll journalism for volunteer work with editor Kristine Fonacier
February 03, 2021 07:15 - 31 minutes - 29 MBJournalist and editor Kristine Fonacier launched her writing career in the golden age of magazines, and her freelance work as a music journalist quickly took off. Ten years in, she found herself questioning its relevance. “I was doing rock-and-roll journalism. After your hundredth party, you begin to wonder if you’re really contributing anything to society.” This triggered a career recalibration that included 18 months of volunteer work in Guyana, an experience that informed her editorial...
Creating a Netflix-worthy comic book with Trese author Budjette Tan
January 29, 2021 02:00 - 34 minutes - 31.1 MBLike many authors, Budjette Tan had a dream. He wanted to get his comic book published in America so it could gain a wider readership. While working long hours as a creative director at an ad agency in Manila, Budjette and his co-creator, artist Kajo Baldisimo, started writing the graphic novel Trese, featuring heroine Alexandra Trese, a detective who walks among Filipino mythical creatures and helps the cops solve supernatural crimes. From its first print run of 30 copies, Trese gained ...
Teaser: Making a comic book in 30 days
December 14, 2020 23:00 - 1 minute - 1.41 MBOne creative project, one hour a day, for one month. If you want to get a creative project going and it’s unrealistic to block out big chunks of time, find shorter, more manageable blocks. Budjette’s collaborator, Kajo Baldisimo, figured he could draw one page in one hour, so he blocked out his lunch breaks for a month. That’s 20 days to draw the story plus 10 days to add the word bubbles. The first Trese story was in the world a month later. What one thing can you work on for one hour a ...