Tonight at 21.00 (GMT +2) I’ll be joined by David Cord, Managing Director of the Investment Services division of Fundior AB, and author of the blog, ScandinavianFinance.com. He’ll be on to discuss Scandinavian finance, the Finnish economy, and a whole lot more. Be sure to tune-in tonight for the live interview!

David J. Cord worked for over eight years as a financial advisor in one of the largest asset managers in America. In America his clientele consisted of high net worth and mass affluent individuals and families. In 2005 he married a Finn and moved to Helsinki, Finland. He is now the Managing Director of the Investment Services division of Fundior AB (publ). Fundior is a financial and insurance services group based in Sweden with a presence throughout the European Economic Area. In his spare time David enjoys being with his wife Niina and dog Orion. He is a huge history buff and has long studied various aspects of the Roman Empire and ancient Scandinavia.

UPDATE: Fantastic show! We discussed the Finnish economy, taxation, retirement, saving strategies, housing costs, U.S. economic trends, and much more. Here’s the podcast…

Download the show in MP3 format at 64kbps (20.5 MB - 43:05)

This week we’re doing Radio Free Finland live on a special Sunday night at 21:00 Finnish Time (2pm EST). We’ll be joined by Justin Petrone, author of the “Itching for Eestimaa” blog. He’ll be on to discuss Estonia, Estonians, Estonian politics, Estonia and Finland, Estonia and the states, and a whole lot more.

I first came to Estonia in 2002 via Finland. I was one of two Americans selected to participate in Finland’s Foreign Correspondents’ Programme that year, but unfortunately (for them) I met an Estonian woman and defected to the other side of the gulf when the program was over.

I lived in Estonia in 2003 and 2004 and worked mostly as a freelance journalist writing stories for The Baltic Times. In more recent years I have also published articles in Postimees - one of Estonia’s largest dailies, and Eesti Elu and Vaba Eest Sõna, which are published in Canada and the US, respectively.

Since 2004 we have lived in New York, and I currently work for a biotech trade news company. I started my blog Itching for Eestimaa in May 2005, mainly to counter Russia’s state-owned newswires which I thought were
spreading inaccurate and disingenuous information, but it has developed into a general Estonia-centered blog.

Tune-in Sunday night for the live interview, all you need is Skype to listen-in and a microphone 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.

Last season on Radio Free Finland we were joined by Steven Stewart, songwriter of Finland’s Eurovision 2005 entry. This Monday we’ll be joined by Steven Stewart, Mormon. Steven learned Finnish while in the states, came to Finland as a missionary, and never left. He’ll be on to discuss his missionary work in Finland, Mormonism in Finland, and the Mormon church in general. And we’ll have a film crew from YLE (my favorite television station in the world) there to interview me and film the podcast for an upcoming programme on citizen journalism!

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.

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…)

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.

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.

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!!

If you look below the Radio Free Finland logo on Finland for Thought, it says, “To be announced after summer” - and since it was 20 degrees this weekend, I remain true to my word. But summer is just about done so it’s time to begin the next season of Radio Free Finland…and I need your help!!

Last season we had some fantastic guests: Tarja Kantola from Tarja Halonen’s re-election team discusses the campaign, Singer/songwriter and Finland’s 2005 Eurovision song contest winner Steven Stewart, Teemu Lahtinen of Suomen Sisu, Terrorism expert Toby Archer from the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and a whole lot more. We’ve discussed all sorts of interesting topics like marijuana legalization, gay and lesbian rights, music piracy, conscription, anti-Americanism, immigration, liberals, the Mohammed cartoons…

If you enjoy this blog and the Radio Free Finland podcast, you can help out by suggesting some guests via comment/e-mail. I’m looking for individuals or organizations who do something Finland-related and may not make the traditional news outlets like Hesari and YLE. And don’t be shy, suggest yourself as a guest if you have something interesting to talk about!! Seriously, the most difficult thing about doing the podcast is booking the guests, so if you could help out with it, that would be fantastic!

There’ll be some small changes to the show, I’ll write about them in a future post. Hopefully we’ll do the first show next week or the following. Stay tuned!

Be sure to tune-in this Sunday night at 22.00 (3pm EST) when I’ll interview Teemu Lahtinen of Suomen Sisu live on Radio Free Finland. Send questions for Teemu to info@radiofreefinland.net - Or ask your questions live on the air by dialing +358 (0)9 2316-3876 or by connecting via Skype to the username: radiofreefinland

Teemu Lahtinen, 29, was one of the founders of Suomen Sisu at age of 21. While completing double degree this IT professional advocates healthy national and cultural self-esteem and every nations rights to exist and to govern themselves. Being head of Suomen Sisu now for 2 years, he was one of three publishers of Mohammad-cartoons on Sisu’s site on February and now under threat of criminal prosecution.