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For this Collective episode, I\u2019m talking to writer Evan Rail. Evan is based in Prague, and has become more active with Good Beer Hunting as we increasingly look beyond the U.S. beer market and bring you stories from around the world.

Evan has a unique perspective, having grown up in Fresno, California, and later relocated to the Czech Republic. For us he\u2019s an essential voice: both because he has an endless curiosity about European beer history, but also because his work ethic motivates him beyond the obvious headline\u2014and pushes him to look for the thing that\u2019s just out of sight, around the corner, or behind the next door. His interview technique pulls out remarkable stories from people you\u2019d otherwise rarely hear from.

And in the end, he understand a story\u2019s place in a publication like Good Beer Hunting, which is still, and probably always will be, a U.S.-minded publication to one degree or another. Not many writers can do all that. And that\u2019s how we ended up talking today\u2014because all those factors came together in a recent piece about the long, weird, and newly complicated story of the Budweiser trademark. It involves a tiny town in the Czech Republic, and the world\u2019s largest-ever brewing conglomerate, AB InBev. We discuss the process of writing that piece, Evan\u2019s approach to interviewing, and mention a couple other things coming up with Evan that you\u2019ll want to look out for.

This is Evan Rail, GBH contributor and beer writer based in Prague. Listen in.