The End of Bangkok Podcast?

Tony and Thai language Jedi Rikker discussing how not to pronounce Thai.

At the beginning, we thought that the majority of the shows would be just me and him talking about life in Thailand, but as we grew, we were pleasantly surprised to find that there were a large number of people willing to come on for an interview. We ended up getting some pretty kick-ass guests, all told. Journalists, celebrities, monks, business owners, ambassadors, educators, politicians, linguists, authors, bloggers and more all helped us put together some pretty interesting content. A huge thanks goes out to everyone who came on the show – I genuinely enjoyed talking to every one of them.

Chillin’ with Canadian ambassador Ron Hoffmann, a most excellent hoser.

But as we wrap things up, I’ve gotten a good number of questions – some of them with a hint of condescension – along the lines of “Can’t you find a new host?” or “Why, don’t you like doing it anymore?” Oh, if only it were that simple. The truth of the matter is that putting the podcast together was an assload of work, and I’m not sure people realize how much.

We recorded every Sunday – without fail – which means that for the past year Tony and I basically only had one day off per week, when you factor in our jobs. There was a lot of preparation for each show – finding a guest, arranging a recording time for when all three of us would be free, doing a bit of research on said guest, booking the studio, coming up with an intro topic, arranging an interview for the next show so we could say “Join us next week when…”, and going through the emails from BK Magazine & picking out a few events to mention during the intro. Most of this was done late at night throughout the week over email, phone, SMS, and a shared Google Calendar.

Friends and fans heading out for a BP bike ride!

When it came to recording a show, it wasn’t as simple as sitting down and pressing record. Oftentime we’d never met our guest before, so there was always a bit of pre-show banter, setting up and testing the equipment, and then recording. After the guest left, we’d usually record the intro/extro for that show, and the intro/extro for any upcoming shows, depending on our schedule. All told, it took about 2 hours to record each episode, not counting travel time.

Now, I know our sound quality was never top-notch, but we managed to get the most out of our meager equipment. After editing the show, the timeline often looked like a stretch of Bangkok sidewalk, with pits and gaps all over the damn place. I had to break apart our stereo recording into two separate mono tracks, apply noise filters, volume limiters, EQ adjustments, and compressor effects, as well as add in the music bumpers and an intro/extro that may have been recorded that afternoon, or the previous month. Then I had to listen to the whole show in real time, cutting out as many pops, pauses, do-overs and dead spaces as I could. Once that was done, I generated an .aif file (for a safety backup), which takes 10 minutes, an MP3 (for upload) which took about 30 minutes, and then upload the file to our host (about 30 minutes). So on average, each episode took between 3 to 4 hours to edit (more when my unpredictable computer would crash).

Phew.

Not seen: me cursing at the computer and begging it to stop crashing.

At any rate, the other most common question is why I don’t just find another co-host. Well, it could be done. Even if I couldn’t find someone who could do it every week, I’m sure I could find 5 or 6 people who could rotate. But the podcast is at least a two-man show; with Tony gone, someone would have to do all the things I don’t know how to do or don’t have time to do: dealing with the host provider, linking all the episodes to iTunes, managing subscriptions, updating the website, negotiating affiliate deals, answering emails, updating Facebook and Twitter, adjusting SEO, and more. Yes, I could probably find an intern to handle most of them, but they’d be working for free, as Tony and I haven’t made a dime from the show.

But most importantly, with a full-time job, taking time to enjoy life, and a wedding to plan – free time is just one thing I don’t have right now.

But in the end, we met a ton of great people, have something cool to put on our resume, and learned about a whole new area we’d never experienced, and that ain’t never a bad thing. As for the future, who knows? Neither of us wants to say it’s done for good – there may be a few special shows down the road, but we’ll have to see what happens. Thanks for listening, and see you on the flip side.