Robby Ramos’ play “The Walls Have Ears” is about three Cuban siblings who’ve taken diverging paths in the early years of the Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution, only to find themselves confronting those differences in an unexpected encounter at Presidio Modelo, a notorious prison on Cuba’s Isla de Pinos. In writing the script, Robby drew not only from the life of his own grandfather (who had himself been a political prisoner in Cuba), but also from the stories he’d been told by others in his family who lived through those early days of what would become the most most brutal, influential and durable dictatorship in the western hemisphere.

While the subject matter makes “The Walls” an inescapably political work, Robby didn’t go about the project with an activist motive. Instead, he was looking to tell a compelling story about a family and a people torn apart — from a perspective that is too often handicapped by too much emphasis on the politics and too seldom explored outside of Cuban and Cuban exile circles.

In this conversation, Robby Ramos talks with Nick Jiménez about his play, how growing up in his Miami Cuban family informed his politics and his views on liberty and why moving to New York to pursue theater opened his eyes to the need for work like “The Walls Have Ears.”

The two also talk about Robby’s broader acting career, including his work in theater and TV — especially his role on the cast of Heels — and the business side of “The Walls,” which was as much an entrepreneurial venture as it was a artistic passion project.

Finally, Robby and Nick talk about the strikes by the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA (which, at the time of this recording, were in their last days).

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Alberto De La Cruz is the managing editor at Babalú Blog, which for years has been among the more recognizable independent sources of news and commentary on Cuban-American life, Cuban exile politics, and human rights activism in Cuba. The site tends to feature conservative political views, but has also been a platform for everything from cultural content to recipes (especially from past Pan Con Podcast guest Marta Darby). These days, the content comes primarily from Alberto and Carlos Eire, a Yale professor and winner of a National Book Award for his memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana.

TLP host Nick Jiménez was a contributor and editor at Babalú in the aughts.

In this conversation, Alberto and Nick talk about the early days of blogging, dealing with the Cuban government’s Internet trolls, and the political divides that exist among Cuban Americans who approach opposition to the Cuban dictatorship from opposite ends the debate on U.S. policy on trade and travel.

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Michael Beltran is the chef-owner of Ariete Hospitality Group and the host of Pan Con Podcast. On this episode of The Liberated Podcast, he joins Nick Jiménez to talk about the boundaries he draws for himself and his chefs to balance freedom and creativity with business goals and personal development. Also, Nick does impressions of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Depp.

Visit Ariete Hospitality Group here.

Listen to Pan Con Podcast here.

Follow Michael Beltrán on Instagram here.

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Immigration is a perennial hot-button topic in American politics and the broader American culture. In recent years, the debate over whether and how to allow migrants into the United States has taken on new wrinkles. The Trump presidency, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are just some of the latest forces to push this controversy into the hottest spots of our national discourse.

Ali Noorani is the CEO of the National Immigration Forum. The first time I met and spoke with Ali, he had just published his first book, “There Goes The Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration.” We did an interview for The DADE Podcast, which is no longer around, but which we’ll re-publish in The Liberated Podcast’s feed for anyone who wants to hear that as background.

At the time of this recording, Ali had just published a new book, “Crossing Borders: The Reconciliation of a Nation of Immigrants.”

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Tim Buchanan is a history professor and host of the podcast In The Corner Back By The Woodpile, where he has conversations with a wide variety of guests on a range of topics, including music, politics, history and human rights.

In this episode of The Liberated Podcast, Nick Jiménez and Tim (whose podcast listeners know him as "Spun Counterguy," a name Tim explains in this interview) talk about how Tim's experiences living in China, teaching history, and interviewing thinkers and activists on his podcast has helped shape his views on freedom as a theme in history and in his work.

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Martha Bueno is a candidate for a seat on the Miami-Dade County Commission. In this first interview on The Liberated Podcast, Martha and Nick Jiménez talk about what she hopes to achieve if she wins, her experiences with Libertarian Party Politics (she's running as an NPA candidate, but has been an LP member and led Hispanic outreach for Jo Jorgensen's LP presidential campaign), and her efforts to get humanitarian aid to Cubans in the wake of protests that began in the summer of 2021.

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In this first, very short episode of The Liberated Podcast, I’m just taking a minute to introduce myself and the podcast.

I’m Nick Jiménez, and this is where I’ll have conversations with people about how we understand, secure and exercise our freedoms.

This first installment is a short one. Just a few minutes for introduction so that, if you’re new, you have some idea of what this thing is … and what it is not.

First, a bit about what it is. On this podcast, as with other DADEmag.com podcasts like Pan Con Podcast and Step Into The Sandbox, we’ll be doing primarily long form interviews on the subject of freedom. While that has the benefit of lightening the editing load a bit, that’s mainly because I want these podcasts to be a way to dive a little deeper than we could in other formats.

For purposes of what this podcast is about, when I say words like “freedom” and “liberty,” I’m defining them very broadly. The first episode, for instance, gets into some pretty explicitly political themes with a former member of the Libertarian Party who — at the time we recorded that and now as I record this — was running for office. But I expect to bring in guests who have things to say about other kinds of freedom. Maybe religious freedom. Artistic freedom. Freedom from addiction. What freedom looks like in the home or in relationships. Who knows? It’ll be a lot of things.

That said, I do come to a lot of these discussions from a particular perspective, and I’ll generally make that known. I’m a lot of things — a lowercase libertarian, an uppercase Libertarian, a Cuban, an American, a journalist, a Catholic, a home cook, a dog owner … All that (not necessarily in that order) and more will inform what I do with this podcast and I won’t pretend otherwise.

Now a bit about what this podcast is not.

This podcast is not my personal soap box. I’m bringing my perspective to it as I explore ideas with my guests and with you, but the idea is not to make this the corner of the Internet where I pontificate about liberty stuff.

This podcast is not an echo chamber. Yes, I’ll bring in people who agree with me. But I’ll also bring in people who don’t. That’s part of the thing. Besides, I don’t think there are any two people anywhere who agree on everything.

Finally, as with other DADEmag.com podcasts, this thing is not just for Miami. It’s from Miami. And it might in some ways, at some times, be very Miami. But the goal is always to make something that’s from here that’s for people everywhere.

That’s it. The rest can come together as we go.

Feedback’s always welcome.

liberated@dademag.com

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