How Fitness Saved My Life: How Alexa Towersey and Jenna Louise worked out podcasting
Earlier this week, LiSTNR announced its new podcast titled How Fitness Saved My Life. The pod features Alexa Towersey and Jenna Louise who will attempt to expand listeners understanding of what the human body is capable of – mentally, physically, and emotionally.
In each episode, the pair talk to a guest about their story of surviving life-threatening situations and recovering from terrible accidents, using trauma to drive their success, and how they’ve rebuilt their minds and bodies.
Podcast Week‘s Trent Thomas caught up with the pair to talk about what listeners can expect from their new show.
Louise said that she had wanted to produce a podcast for several years but wasn’t sure about what it should be about, but that she did know who she wanted to host it with.
JL: “The only person I could really think about doing it with was Alexa. We have known each other for a good five or so years now. And we just always have really great banter and we have really good energy when we talk. And collectively we have a great network.”
AT: “It’s hard to find people who you have that dynamic with. Being in the fitness industry, you meet people all the time, and everybody has a story but not everybody can tell their story and use their story to help others. We both had the idea that when we were going through some really shit times that it would have been really cool to have some advice from really awesome role models.”
When asked what producing the podcast was like the pair admitted that it was a bit harder than they had thought, but they had received a lot of help and support from LiSTNR.
AT: “When we had our first ever chat, and it was really informal and we were sitting around a table, and we were joking around, and we’re arm wrestling and Jenna was trying to make me drink water upside down. I was like, yeah, I could totally do this. You don’t realise what a production this is.”
JL: “It was something I sort of knew the level of work and commitment that it was going to take to produce something like this. But when we did start working with LiSTNR and our producer and the rest of the team it just elevated so much more than what I expected.”
Towersey and Louise will talk to guests such as Alyssa Azar, who survived an avalanche to become the youngest Australian to reach the summit of Mt Everest, champion BMX and mountain biker Caroline Buchanan who overcame a near-fatal accident, boxer Luke ‘Action’ Jackson who fought his way off the streets and away from alcohol, drugs and crime into a professional boxing career, and Em Carey who has transformed her life after becoming a paraplegic in a skydiving accident.
AT: “I am the queen of getting into people’s DM’s – I don’t know why I’m still single, but this is what I do. Clearly, it doesn’t work for me and I should learn from this experience!”
JL: “Tina our producer has been fantastic at reaching out to the management of guests as well. But there’s been a lot of people that we’ve known through our networks. We have had some incredible guests. And some we’ve known really well, some we have heard of them through the grapevine. I think collectively, between all of us we were able to pretty much get the guests that we wanted, which has been great.”
[Listen to How Fitness Saved My Life here]
From LiSTNR to Hit Network: Abbie Chatfield giving SCA their monies worth
The Hit Network has announced that the host of LiSTNR’s It’s A Lot podcast, reality TV personality and “the ever unapologetic” Abbie Chatfield, will host her own show, Hot Nights with Abbie Chatfield, across 50 Hit stations.
The new show will air nationally from 7-9pm weeknights and will premiere Monday, January 17.
This follows Chatfield’s high profile poaching from Nova in October last year. Her latest season of It’s a Lot has now begun streaming on LiSTNR with the most recent episode discussing RAT’s and the omicron variant of Covid.
Speaking to Mediaweek last year, Chatfield said that the longer the podcast has gone on, the easier it’s been for her to let go.
“Making the podcast now is a much easier and natural process. When I first started making it I wanted to be perfect – I still obviously want it to be incredible, but I had a lot of pressure on myself to make every single aspect really perfect when the whole point of it was to be conversational. It’s a very important part of my life now, and it’s so much part of my routine. I love it so much for getting my thoughts and ideas out there, I’m very grateful for it.”
Now with this latest gig, her future may also equally lay in radio.
Podcast Ranker results for 2021 show Aussies love a laugh
Australians downloaded more than half a billion podcasts in 2021, 28% more than the year before, with comedy again the most popular category, followed by news; society & culture and true crime, according to annual insights from the Australian Podcast Ranker, released by Commercial Radio Australia and Triton Digital.
Comedy, which includes radio show podcasts, accounted for 118.61 million or 22% of the 543 million podcasts downloaded during the year, but the fastest growing categories were business (up 57% to 22.21 million downloads) and health & fitness (up 54% to 22.16 million downloads).
Casefile True Crime was the ranker’s top podcast of the year based on 22.3 million downloads, followed by Stuff You Should Know (18.5 million) and Hamish & Andy (18.4 million), with The Kyle & Jackie O Show coming in at number four with 16.7 million downloads and Life Uncut with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne rounding out the top five (11.6 million, and up from 12 th place last year).
The best performing debut podcast of the year was The Sure Thing, a six-episode program about Australia’s biggest insider trading case, by Nine Publishing, which achieved 426,000 downloads when it launched in March.
Joe Rogan in hot water again over misinformation
The Joe Rogan Experience podcast has once again come under fire for misinformation as hundreds of scientists, professors and public health professionals have penned an open letter to Spotify urging the streaming platform to crack down on misinformation.
This follows an episode of the podcast that allegedly promoted “baseless conspiracy theories” about the COVID-19 pandemic.
The letter took aim at the show’s exclusive distributor Spotify, urging them to “immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform”.
The letter specifically highlighted the episode that featured scientist and vaccine sceptic, Dr Robert Malone, who was banned on Twitter for violating the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy a day before he went on the show.
Inspired Unemployed are punter favourites
Podcasters Jack Steele and Matt Ford who are also known as The Inspired Unemployed have been well supported by betters a unique combination of markets: The Bachelor Australia 2022 and the 2021 GABS Hottest 100 Craft Beers.
The pairs’ Better Beer Lager, launched in the second half of 2021, has been the most supported beer to win the 2021 GABS Hottest 100. The Beer is now the $4.00 second-favourite behind last year’s winner Bentspoke Crankshaft at $1.80.
The Inspired Unemployed also find themselves both at $10 to be The Bachelors Australia in 2022. The two have confirmed on radio that they have been approached by producers. Tony Armstrong remains the $2.75 favourite ahead of Dr Chris Brown ($4.00) and two former contestants in Todd King ($5) and Adam Todd ($8.50).
[Listen to the Inspired Unemployed here]
