Many many thanks to Jani Ryhänen for joining us this evening, and special thanks to everyone who participated in the live show! We discussed lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Finland and related topics. Finland is one of the leading countries in this regard but there’s still much room for improvement.

And here’s the podcast…

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (19.3 MB - 41:28)
Download the show in AAC+ format at 24kbps (7.4 MB - 41:28)

Join us tomorrow night at 21.00 (GMT +2) on Radio Free Finland for the live interview with Jani Ryhänen, President of the Social Democratic Pink Rose organization, a political LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans gender) organization in Finland. We’ll be discussing LGBT issues in Finland. Some info about Jani…

Studying Bachelor’s Degree in Hospitality Management at the Laurea University of Applied Sciences. Organization and Training Officer of the Social Democratic Youth in Finland. The president of the first political LGBT organization in Finland, Social Democratic Pink Rose. Active in the politics - member of the Finnish Social Democratic party and several NGO’s. Appreciates friends, good restaurants, art and running. Easy going guy.

Tune-in Monday night for the live interview, all you need is Skype to listen-in and a micrphone if you wish to participate. If you don’t want to ask your questions live, you can e-mail us (info >>AT>> radiofreefinland dot net) before the show or send a text chat to us during the show, and we’ll read your comments live on the air.

Click below to read more about the Pink Rose organization… (more…)

Everything you wanted to know about Finland, and more!! What to do, where to go, what to see, how to make love like a Finnish man - it’s all here.

Big thanks to Markku for spending some time with us! And special thanks to everyone who listened and participated in the live show. Big apologies though to caller Paul, for some reason my recording software to pick up his audio (two weeks ago it cut off prematurely, last week we had audio quality issues, and now this..).

For your listenening pleasure…

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (14.8 MB - 31:37)
Download the show in AAC+ format at 24kbps (5.5 MB - 31:37)

Join us this Monday evening at 21.00 (EEST) on Radio Free Finland for the live interview with Markku from Finland. We’ll be discussing Finland, Finnish culture, life in Finland, the Finnish language, Finnish women, Finnish love, Finnish love-making, Tarja Halonen, Kimi Raikkonen, Eurovision, Lordi…and whole lot more! For anyone who’s interested in Finland and wants to learn more, it’ll be the ideal way to learn everything there is to know about Finland, coming from Finland’s new official spokesman, Markku.

My hobbies are: karaoke, sudoku and stickwalking (sauvakävely).
I want to welcome everyone to the country of thousands of lakes
Famous Finnish firms: Aarikka, Marimekko, Nokia, jne..
Famous Finnish people: Tommi Evilä, french politican Ari Vatanen, Karita Mattila, Renny Harlin, JJ Lehto, Leningrad Cowboys, Miisa (almost did it), Leijonat (Lions, Ice-Hockey World Masters!)
Welcome! Let’s meet at the market! (Torilla tavataan!)

Tune-in Monday night for the live interview, all you need is Skype to listen-in and a micrphone if you wish to participate. If you don’t want to ask your questions live, you can e-mail us (info >>AT>> radiofreefinland dot net) before the show or send a text chat to us during the show, and we’ll read your comments live on the air.

Many thanks to Martin-Éric Racine for spending some time with us on Radio Free Finland and thanks to everyone who tuned in to the live show. Topics for the evening included immigration policy, fertility treatment for singles and lesbian couples, Martti Ahtisaari and the Nobel Peace Prize, YLE’s possible legal actions to YouTUBE, learning the Finnish language, and Linutop.

And here’s the podcast…

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (37 MB - 80:09)
Download the show in AAC+ format at 24kbps (16 MB - 80:09)

Tomorrow night at 21.00 (EEST) on Radio Free Finland will be the first of hopefully many round-table discussions where myself, a guest(s), and an active live audience will discuss a wide-range of hot issues and other Finland-related topics.

We’ll be joined by Finnish immigration specialist Martin-Éric Racine, topics for the evening include immigration policy, fertility treatment for singles and lesbian couples, Martti Ahtisaari and the Nobel Peace Prize, YLE’s possible legal actions to YouTUBE, learning the Finnish language, and Linutop…and anything else you want to discuss…

Martin-Éric Racine is a former Bass Player with appearences on two Gold records.

Living in Finland since 1998 as a Free Software specialist, he witnessed the glory days of the Finnish ICT industry while working at Sonera and Tieturi and at Mato Valtonen’s notorious mobile startup, Wapit.

He became a specialist of EU and Finnish Immigration policy through the school of hard knocks.

Nowadays sharing his time between Free Software, two Finnish political parties and several business ideas, he regularly contributes articles to various online publications.

Tune-in tomorrow night for the live interview, all you need is Skype to listen-in and a micrphone if you wish to participate. If you don’t want to ask your questions live, you can e-mail us (info >>AT>> radiofreefinland dot net) before the show or send a text chat to us during the show, and we’ll read your comments live on the air.

Big big thanks to Kenneth Sikorski for spending some time with us this evening. We had a nice open discussiong about Islamist extremism in Scandinavia. The Skypecast went better than expected, we had some great questions and comments from listeners.

Everything went better than expected until the very end when I noticed that Pamela (a Skype add-on) had only recorded 29 minutes of our hour long conversation. Someone has screwed with my computer and I’ve narrowed it down to either Islamic extremists, SUPO, Tarja Halonen, or Billy Graham. Actually I discovered that I was using a BETA version of the software and other people have reported this problem on their forums (GRR!!!)

So my sincere apologies for only providing half a podcast. But big thanks to Kenneth and to all who participating in being the guinea pigs for this new technology. I promise I’ll have all the kinks worked out for next week’s show.

Here’s the [half] podcast…

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (13 MB - 29:48)
Download the show in AAC+ format at 24kbps (5 MB - 29:48)

Be sure to tune in to Radio Free Finland in this Monday night at 21.00 (GMT +3) for the live interview with Kenneth Sikorski of the Tundra Tabloids, we’ll be discussing Islamist extremism in Scandinavia…

Kenneth Sikorski is an ex-pat American who’s lived in Finland for 19 yrs. He runs the Tundra Tabloids blogspot that focuses on Islamist extremism in Scandinavia, Islamist hegemony in general, as well as providing commentary on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the War on Islamist Extremism.

Next week should begin the new season of Radio Free Finland and I’m making a few changes, here goes…

- Radio Free Finland will be every Monday night at 21.00 (9pm) instead of Sunday nights at 22.00. I’m doing this for two reasons, I hope to get more live participants and I don’t want to spend lazy Sundays worrying about that night’s show.

- The show will not have a absolute time limit of one hour, some shows will be less, some may be more.

- We’ll probably only have just one guest per episode, last season we occasionally had two. (Finding guests has proved to be a very difficult task)

- The show will remain live and interactive, but we’ll broadcast it via Skype using “Skypecasting” and after the live show it will then be available for download in mp3 format as normal.

For those who don’t know about Skypecasting, it’s a way for lots of Skype users (100 max) to all chat in one room in a controlled environment. The host and the guest will talk while the others listen - if you want to ask a question or make a comment, you can push a button to “request the mic” and have your say. Skype users can also write in questions to be asked “on the air”. Listeners can still e-mail their questions in before the show, but during the show I won’t check e-mail, just Skype. I doubt we’ll keep that land-line phone number, it costs like 40e/year I believe and was rarely used.

From the recent poll results, it looks like most of you have Skype or can easily download it. For those who don’t have it, you should get it, it’s simple to setup and completely free and IMO, the best chat software out there. Last season I was paying $20 (US) a month to broadcast the show live via Windows Media, and the service wasn’t reliable - Skypecasting is totally free. Plus, only about 1-2% of you actually listen to the show live - one show last year I had 3,000 downloads during the days after the show and only 74 people listened to it live. Another show I had about 1,000 downloads and the number of live listeners were in the single digits.

…okay, that’s about it. I hope the new changes will encourage more people to participate in the live weekly broadcast. Looking forward to another fun season of Radio Free Finland, hope you are too!!