Sunday Times Travel Podcast | Time Travel - Who's dumb enough to make a travel podcast on cassette tape?

Sunday Times Travel editor Paul Ash has always travelled with a tape recorder. Long after cleverer people dumped clunky tapes for the brittle efficiency of solid-state flash-memory recorders, pundits have been shouting "Tape is dead!" from the rooftops.

Yet, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of tape's death have been greatly exaggerated. The National Audio Company of Springfield, Missouri, USA, makes about 10 million cassette tapes a year for tapeheads and artists as different as Pearl Jam and Arianna Grande.

Those musicians have helped ensure that there's life the old dog yet.

In this episode, veteran tapehead Ash speaks to Sunday Times colleagues about the considerable punishments and slow-burning joys of cassettes and making mix tapes for the objects of your heart's desire.

The interviews were recorded on a Marantz PMD-420 two-head cassette deck, using a Rode M3 "direct fire" condenser microphone. Field audio was recorded on a Sony WM-D6C Professional Walkman and an Akai micro-cassette dictataphone. National Audio Company · Sunday Times Travel