We caught up with Tania & Adam from the Jits Into The Sunset podcast to discuss how the show came about and the trials and tribulations of living full time on the road. Check out our interview for the Pod Bible Podcast above and read their answers to our Have You Heard? questions below!

Who are you and what’s your podcast about?
We are Tania & Adam, travel filmmakers (and now podcasters) living full-time in our 24-year-old rusty campervan, Jits for the last 3.5 years. Our podcast is all about travel, adventure, and road trips. We share our own stories from the road but we mainly use our podcast as a platform to chat with people with interesting & inspiring travel stories; from backpacking to van life, boat life, and everything in between! The one thing that they all have in common is that before taking the leap, they were just like you and me… normal people with a big dream to pursue a life different from the conventional 9-5. In our podcast, we learn about their personal stories, mindset & mantras through the lens of travel & adventure.

What was the first podcast you ever listened to?
It’s a hard one to pinpoint point but perhaps it was ‘S-Town’. We both love this journalistic approach to podcasting that hooks you into the story straight from the get-go.

Why did you decide to start podcasting in the first place?
As huge podcast binge-listeners ourselves, we toyed with the idea of starting our own podcast for over two years before we finally took the plunge. Admittedly, it was the fear of failure and ‘imposter syndrome’ that initially held us back. Then one day, when we were feeling brave, we decided to just go for it! We ripped off the bandaid and released our first episode (that we had recorded 18 months prior). Luckily for us, our community was so incredibly supportive that that first episode shot up to the top 5 UK podcast charts, under the ‘Travel & Culture’ category. We were gobsmacked! Our main motivation for starting the podcast has been to share and inspire others to pursue their aspirations of travel & leading an alternative lifestyle, no matter what age or stage in life they are at.

Which podcasts do you take inspiration from?
We both love to listen to Steven Bartlett’s ‘Diary of a CEO’ as we both appreciate Steven’s interview style. He always seems to get to the heart of what makes the guests who they are.

Who’s your dream guest for the podcast?
We would absolutely love to get Ben Fogle and Mike Horn but there are so many incredible people out there that we stubble upon all the time, that we know would make amazing guests!

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as a podcaster?
We’ve quickly learned that podcasting is probably one of the purest forms of ‘social media’. In a world where short-form content is king and click-bait YouTube thumbnails and titles make or break the success of a film, podcasting goes against the grain and holds its own. Podcasting is intimate and it taps into something far more meaningful than what can be conveyed in 6 seconds or less, and that is connection & context. It’s the intonations and pauses in people’s voices re-telling their stories in an open and vulnerable way. It’s being welcomed into a conversation with a new friend. By far, some of the most meaningful and heartfelt messages that we receive from our community are from those that listen to our podcast, week after week. As they say, “radio is like TV but with better pictures”.

Which episode would you say is the perfect introduction to your podcast?
To get to know us better and our back story, we recommend starting from the beginning with episode 1. But if you’re looking to get a taster of our interview style and the type of guest we love to welcome, then we highly recommend listening to episode 21 titled ‘From Adversity Comes Opportunity – Retirement Rebel, Siobhan Daniels (60+ Solo Female Van Life)’.

Where can the Pod Bible readers find out more about you?
We we love for you to head over to our website www.jitsintothesunset.com where we have our Podcast, YouTube & Instagram + other socials linked.

The post Recording on the road with Jits Into The Sunset appeared first on POD BIBLE.

Chris Broad created his multi-award winning YouTube channel Abroad In Japan after moving to Japan to work as an English teacher in 2012. In the 8 years since its inception, Abroad In Japan has amassed over 2 million subscribers. Pete Donaldson, a co-owner of podcast production company Stakhanov, met Chris when he interviewed him for his radio show. Already a fan of the channel, Pete joined forces with Chris and the podcast was born in 2018. Since then, the podcast has pulled in over 11.5 million listens. Abroad In Japan is currently the only Stakhanov show that does not record on-premise, offering a unique set of production challenges – from the logistical to the very technical. As broadcasters have been forced to adapt to lockdown restrictions, remote recording has become an art of its own – one that Chris and Pete have long had to master.

What is your remote recording set-up?

C: Once Pete convinced me we should do the podcast, I snapped up a Rode NT1A condenser mic and that’s been my set up for 3 years now! We started out having a Skype call and recording our audio locally then mixing it together, and these days we use a service called Zencastr which does it for us. While most of the episodes are recorded from my apartment, the beauty of doing our podcast remotely is I can stick the microphone in my backpack and record from wherever I am. For example, last week I was in Tokyo for a meeting and I was able to record from my hotel room!

How have you had to adapt the show in the face of the pandemic?

C: Given both Pete and I are sitting in rooms 8,000km away, we’ve actually not had to change anything since the pandemic started. On the contrary, our setup has helped us weather the storm better than other podcasts, I think, which have had to quickly adapt and abandon the comfort of their recording studios. We could never have envisaged our setup would prepare us for a situation of this scale.

P: Yeah, to be honest, I’ve mainly been rolling with Chris’s schedule. Being in Japan, he’s had a lot more capacity to get out and about. While London’s been in lockdown, Chris has been all over the place – I’m well jealous!

C: For the three years we’ve been recording, Pete has recorded in London and I’ve recorded in Japan. Typically we record on Tuesday at around 6 pm Japan time and 10 am for Pete back in the UK, with both of us hunched over a cup of coffee! Still, my favourite episodes are the ones where Pete visits Japan and we get to record face to face. Hopefully, we can make it happen again in 2021!

What are some of the challenges of recording remotely?

C: Although I have the benefit of being able to host the podcast on the go, the downside is that it can take extra hard work to make sure Pete and I sound natural despite the distance. In the early days when using Skype, there could be a delay of a second or so which could lead to awkward pauses, most of which we removed in post-production.

P: I’m with Chris! Whereas most people featured in these pages will be painfully aware of the limitations and challenges when it comes to recording shows in homemade insulated tents made of duvets and blankets, we’ve been wrestling with the best way to record remotely since the beginning. Our biggest adversary is latency. We’ve had to find our rhythm over the last three years as London to Sendai is quite the distance for VOIP!

C: Yeah – it’s incredible to think we’ve recorded over 150 episodes in this exact format for the past 3 years. But it’s worked surprisingly well and many of our listeners early on mistakenly thought we were in the same room recording together.

Listen to Abroad in Japan wherever you listen to your podcasts. Follow Abroad in Japan on Twitter and Instagram.

—

Stakhanov produces podcasts that entertain and inform, including some of the UK’s biggest and most popular shows – boasting a combined 4 million monthly listens and over 45 years of podcasting experience. Whether recording remotely or in our broadcast-grade London studio, we specialise in every stage of the podcasting process. To find out more or get in touch, visit our website at stakhanov.studio!

The post Abroad in Japan talk recording remotely, 5000 miles apart! appeared first on POD BIBLE.