Two Tea Podcasters Walk Into a Bar...

Earlier this year, TJ Williamson of the World Tea Podcast invited us to join him in leading a session on industry-specific podcasting at Podcamp Toronto. And when the nice folks at Podcamp also gave us the opportunity to record a Talking Tea episode in front of a live audience at Toronto's Imperial Pub,  TJ graciously agreed to join us as a guest on Talking Tea, to chat about the backgrounds of our two podcasts, why we do what we do, and about TJ's work in tea outside of his show. TJ tells us a bit about his own tea journey and some of his experiences working at a Japanese tea farm, and then we respond to one of the questions we received several times after our panel talk: why neither of us include a focus on herbal infusions in our podcasts. TJ's views on herbals are somewhat different from our own, and we chat about our differences as well as our two approaches to tea and tea podcasting. Of course, since we were recording this show in a bar, we had to talk about TJ's line of alcohol-aged teas (shown above), as well as the tea tasting logbook TJ produces.  And that brings us back to the focus we share: exploring tea's amazing spectrum of flavors and aromas, and delving into the science, artistry and craft that goes into producing them. World Tea Podcast is at worldteapodcast.com, and you can also follow TJ on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. If you're interested in hearing what we had to say in our seminar on industry-specific podcasting, check out a recording of our session on TJ's site here.   For more information on Talking Tea and updates on new episodes, visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/talkingtea. To inquire about being a guest or having your organization featured, please email us at [email protected]. Have something in mind you'd like to hear discussed on Talking Tea? Leave us a comment on Facebook or on our Libsyn episode page, or email us. Talking Tea is produced and hosted by Ken Cohen. You can follow Ken on Twitter @Kensvoiceken.    The views and opinions expressed by guests on Talking Tea are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of Talking Tea or its staff.   This podcast features music from "Japanese Flowers" (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii/japanese-flowers) by mpgiiiBEATS (https://soundcloud.com/mpgiii) available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Adapted from original.   Photo courtesy of TJ Williamson.