Dam Yankee

Comedian Nadine Froughi's viral hits blend Dutch directness with her "outsider" view

Nadine Froughi describes herself as "spiritually" Dutch, yet her comedy thrives on the friction between her adopted home and her complex, international roots. This week on Dam Yankee, the comedian sits down with host Zack Newmark to discuss her sudden ascent from the local Amsterdam scene to viral social media stardom.

For years, Froughi shared clips to a modest audience, but everything changed this past October when she tapped into a specific micro-annoyance of Dutch life. "I kept noticing when I was ordering in Dutch in cafés, people were speaking back to me in English," she sayws. "Dutch friends of mine would be irritated. 'I can't order a coffee in Dutch?' And I made like a little video about that," she explains.

"I just did an impersonation of a Dutch person realizing they have to order in English, and they're kind of annoyed about it," she continues. "And that really struck a nerve with people." The video grew her fanbase 30-fold, proving that her "outsider" observations resonate deeply with both locals and expats.

Born in England to an Iranian father and an American mother, Froughi moved to the Netherlands at age 16. She jumped right in to higher education, eventually earning a master’s degree at the University of Amsterdam. "It started to feel like home to me because I really made a choice," she says of her decision to stay and naturalize.

Now a fluent speaker, she occupies a rare space in comedy, noting: "I'm making fun of a culture and a society that I have made an effort to integrate into and be a part of."

Beyond her viral skits, Froughi is preparing to debut her new hour-long show, Daydreamer, next month, Froughi sat down with host Zack Newmark to discuss her sudden rise both online and in venues, her unique background, and her first comedy hour, premiering March 14 at Volta in Amsterdam-West. The show promises a "musical-comedy romp" exploring the no-man's land between real life and her daydreams.

Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms, or watch the full videos on YouTube.

Nadine Froughi frequently adds dates to her performance calendar, and can be found on Instagram and TikTok.

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Amsterdam, Den Haag, Utrecht, Nadine Froughi, Iran, United Kingdom, England, Scotland, comedy, sketch comedy, family, Stand-up Comedy, Zack Newmark, Dam Yankee, podcast, Podcast Interview, entertainment, social media, multicultural, ethnically diverse, diversity, naturalization, University of Amsterdam, Haagse Hogeschool, marketing, communications, Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland

A €1,900 scam inspired stand-up Sjoerd Scott's law thesis, and sparked his comedy career

In this episode of the Dam Yankee podcast, host Zack Newmark sits down with Sjoerd Scott, a Sint Maarten-born comedian whose path to the stage was paved with irony. While repeatedly failing his law thesis on financial crimes, Scott fell victim to a €1,900 telephone scam. A fraudster posing as a Dutch Supreme Court official convinced him to drain his account, leaving him with just two euros.

Instead of quitting, Scott pivoted. He wrote his final thesis about the scam itself, finally earning his degree. However, the humiliation provided a "career epiphany." Realizing he was better at telling stories than writing legal briefs, he traded courthouses for comedy clubs. Scott reflects on his early "disaster" of a debut at age 16, the struggle of adapting to the Netherlands after Hurricane Irma, and how his legal training now helps him structure his viral sets.

Beyond the irony of the scam, he eventually found that the same analytical skills he used to struggle through law school work. Adding structure and building an argument were the same ingredients needed to sharpen his comedic timing and viral social media skits.

From a "terrible student" to a rising star opening for icons like Hannibal Buress, Neema Naz, and Jimmy O. Yang, Scott explains how he learned to transform personal pain into "banger" stories. His €1,900 mistake has become the defining moment of a career that has become more successful each of the past five years.

It’s a hilarious and inspiring look at resilience, the absurdity of the Dutch legal system, and why your worst mistakes often make for the best material. Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms, or watch the full videos on YouTube.

Scott shares more information on his performances and schedule on his TikTok and Instagram accounts. He organizes an English-language comedy showcase every Friday at Clink in Amsterdam-Noord. New episodes of the podcast Sjoerd Scott co-hosts with Daniel Yazbek, In The Background, will also be released soon.

Strong family, love for admin work got Tennessee improv comic Laura Maynard to Amsterdam
It took a decade of grinding in Chicago’s comedy scene for Chattanooga native Laura Maynard to find her way to the canals of Amsterdam. Now a full-time ensemble member at Boom Chicago theater, Maynard sat down with host Zack Newmark on the latest episode of the Dam Yankee podcast to discuss the winding road that led her from the American South to the Dutch capital.

While Maynard makes her living making people laugh, her life philosophy is rooted in her grandfather’s serious lesson of "choosing to be kind" every single day.

"I loved how he was so generous and he was an effortlessly sweet man to the untrained eye," Maynard said. "And then when you got to know him, you saw this just everyday effort of just being really caring and thoughtful."

She explained that kindness isn't automatic, but a deliberate practice. "I think I learned so much from my grandfather about how every day you kind of renew that vow, you get to choose to be that person."

This discipline permeates her career. In the chaotic world of improv, Maynard finds stability in an unexpected place: administrative organization. Her unironic comfort in a well-organized to-do list and the "clickety-clack" of her keyboard aligns perfectly with the "everyday effort" she values.

Now settled in Amsterdam, Maynard is teaching and performing, bringing a mix of Southern charm and Chicago grit to the stage. Whether dealing with a snowstorm or a scene partner, she proves that few things are more important than arriving with patience and warmth.

Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms, or watch the full videos on YouTube. Maynard shares more information on her performances and schedule on her website and Instagram account.

Amsterdam performer Fer Rodil's darkly funny take on his harsh year facing cancer & loss
What happens when a professional storyteller is handed a narrative too painful to tell? That's the question Fernando Rodil, a screenwriter and director, was forced to confront over the last 12 months. After moving to Amsterdam from Buenos Aires to follow love, Rodil's life imploded when his close friend Marijn Maas, died from terminal cancer a few months before Rodil himself received a shocking cancer diagnosis. And then his five-year relationship came to an end.

Rodil speaks to the Dam Yankee podcast about how the sheer scale of the tragedy gave him an urgent, unexpected sense of purpose, driving him to create his new solo show, Fer Is On A Deadline, which will next be performed at the Storytelling Festival Nijmegen on Dec. 13. Expertly directed by Igor Alvarez Cugat, the show manages to be clever, introspective, thought provoking, and darkly funny.

For Rodil, a professional screenwriter accustomed to crafting scripts for HBO and Amazon Prime, the sudden confrontation with his own mortality forced a harsh pivot. Diagnosed with follicular lymphoma at age 35, he found comfort and resolve at the Amsterdam storytelling venue Mezrab, which he has called his "second home." He realized that structuring his trauma into a story would allow him to survive it.

He described the writing process as "exposure therapy," a way of "grabbing all these several sources of pain and turn them into something hopefully beautiful," he said. The diagnosis stripped away his previous identity, he told host Zack Newmark: "The most painful thing is the shift, the moment of transition in which you still want to understand yourself as your previous self as someone that is perfectly healthy... and realizing, 'No, you have to let that Fernando go. Now you are this Fernando the cancer patient.'"

This loss of self was compounded by the death of his close friend, Marijn Maas, at age 32. Rodil struggled to find logic in the tragedy. "There's nothing more meaningless, no clearer evidence of meaninglessness, than a cancer diagnosis when you're young," he said. Yet, Marijn’s approach to his final days became a guiding light for Rodil’s own journey. "The fact that I saw him walking us through the process of his dying throughout his last year and seeing him happy also, that was incredible," Rodil noted.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Fer Is On A Deadline is a comedy. Rodil recalled crucial feedback from Farnoosh Farnia at Mezrab's House of Creation that helped him shape the show past his raw grief: "She told me, 'Think of what you want the show to look like in two years.'"

This tip helped him edit out bitterness and anger. He concluded that his ultimate resolve is acceptance. "If I didn't go through all these things, I wouldn't have known that I could go through these things and still be happy," he said. "I think I still need to make plans because I'm not dead yet," he finished. "So, I want to achieve stuff, and achieving stuff requires some planning."

Listen to the full interview with Fernando Rodil on the Dam Yankee podcast on all major platforms, or watch the video on YouTube. For more information on Rodil's show and workshops, visit his Instagram account, and the websites for Mezrab and the House of Creation. Tickets for the Storytelling Festival Nijmegen cost 15 to 20 euros in advance, or 25 euros at the door on Dec. 13.

 

Amsterdam, Fernando Rodil, Amsterdam-Oost, Mezrab, comedy, Improv comedy, storytelling, theater, international theater, live theater, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mezrab's House of Creation, podcast, Dam Yankee, immigration, Podcast Interview, entertainment, Noord-Holland, Farnoosh Farnia, arts and culture

Firebombs, slim finances couldn't stop Mike Manicardi from growing Amsterdam's Badhuistheater
 

Ask long-time Amsterdam resident Mike Manicardi whether he is an actor, director, community leader, or entrepreneur, and he'll give you a complex answer making it clear why he worked 80 hours per week for most of his career. The founder of the Badhuistheater in the capital's Oost district, Manicardi says it is his family's survivor mentality and his refusal to quit that allowed him to defy the odds and grow the theater over 40 years into a vital cultural hub for Amsterdam's Dutch and international community. Manicardi told the Dam Yankee podcast it was never easy turning the venue into one of the city's most diverse small theaters, noting that the building's assignment by City Hall to international audiences prompted violence from extreme nationalists and youth gangs in the then working-class neighborhood.

The early years of the Badhuistheater were marked by open hostility and literal threats to its existence. Compounding the danger was the immense physical labor required just to open the doors each night. Manicardi recalled transforming the derelict structure: "We had to rebuild it... we had to pull half of the building apart and create a kind of circus tent of beams to create the amphitheater that you have now." In that part of Amsterdam-Oost, which he described as an "impoverished ghetto," he faced "a kind of a criminality" and "fascist parties" who "tried to burn us out. But it didn't matter. It didn't work." Manicardi's tenacity in the face of firebombs and gang crime cemented the theater’s foundation on a principle of absolute refusal to fail.

Manicardi credits his English, Irish, and Italian heritage for his immense fortitude, tracing his "survivor mentality" through his parents’ dramatic experiences. His mother was quite literally born in a forest in Myanmar, when it was still known as Burma, a "complete miracle that they all didn't die of disease." Meanwhile, his Italian father was rounded up as a teen during World War II and held in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. Manicardi speculated his father carried the shame of that experience "all his life," noting that in the camp "they didn't mind if a couple of them died because then there was less people to feed." This intergenerational history instilled in Mike the unwavering resolve needed to save his theater.

After over five decades in theater, Manicardi, now in his 70s, admits that the fight for survival never went away; it just changed. The early physical threats have been replaced by the persistent, draining struggle against slim finances and institutional neglect. "In my 70s, I’m still working 60 hours a week," he noted, explaining that he must constantly be two people: the artistic director and the entrepreneur who keeps the lights on. The battle has intensified with politicians who "sometimes disregard the need for culture," leading Manicardi to work constantly to protect the diverse, vital role the Badhuistheater plays in the community.

Despite the battles, Manicardi remains intensely optimistic about the future of his city and his country. He expressed hope for the political landscape: "I'm very positive. Amsterdam is going to be the wonderful magic city which it still is," adding, "I'm a complete fan. And I think, 'Thank God, we live in the Netherlands.' I'm very proud to live in the Netherlands." Today, the Badhuistheater stands as a unique monument to independence and resilience, hosting live theater, improv comedy, and productions from Dutch, English, Czech, French, Italian and Polish companies—a testament to one man’s decades-long commitment to culture.

Listen to this entire episode of Dam Yankee on all major podcast platforms, or watch the full videos on YouTube. For more information and tickets, visit the Badhuistheater website and their Instagram pages.

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