Behind the scenes of Trash Taste: how the hit podcast is made
Dexerto: Andrew AmosTrash Taste has grown from a tiny Tokyo studio to become one of the biggest entertainment podcasts in the world. Dexerto got the chance to shadow the three stars as they recorded live on set to show how the hit podcast is made.
It’s 90 minutes before a double-barrel recording of Trash Taste when the podcast’s three stars — Joey ‘The Anime Man’ Bizinger, Connor ‘CDawg’ Colquhoun, and Garnt ‘Gigguk’ Maneetapho — start trickling into the studio.
The space is lively but cramped. Upstairs is where the business happens. Whiteboards full of content ideas are spread across the floor. Streaming setups are there in case one of the boys wants to broadcast at their home away from home. Garnt’s Asuka-themed case stands out from the rest as he uses his computer to map out a future segment.
Coffees are passed around as Connor rocks up. A second round is due before the recordings begin. Lunches too get consumed as discussions ramp up. It’s the usual business talk: sponsorships, upcoming events, content plans. Ideas get put up and shot down within seconds. It’s a very jovial mood with banter woven in.
After everyone pitches in, the focus swaps to that day’s recordings. Topics for discussion? Conspiracy theories and a Food 3×3; the grid-style of the latter has proven to be a popular format for Trash Taste. Joey and I banter about Aussie foods, specifically a classic Bunnings snag. Kangaroo sausages are what he eventually settles on.
The boys plus the team behind them have put in some research into the topics, but even as the recording starts downstairs, they are iterating. Joey is about to throw to one potential theory, but Connor speaks up to scrap it. With some editing magic, the viewer is none the wiser.
There’s only a handful of Trash Taste fans who have seen the energy of the trio live: either on the US and European tours, or at their first live recording at DreamHack Australia in 2023.
That energy resounds even more in the confined studio — Garnt’s voice reverberates off the walls as he passionately argues about the physics of light amid the Moon Landing controversy discussion.
Behind the camera, producers hold back laughter as ludicrous and hilarious statements are raised. Occasionally they jump in with a quip, which sometimes gets a reaction from the hosts and leads them into a tangent. The episode starts relatively structured, but by the end, it is a chaotic mess of laughter.
The experience of seeing how a Trash Taste episode came together gives you a greater appreciation for the hard work and love its three members — and their bevy of backroom helpers — put in. It goes to show how this one show, which exploded off a stroke of luck, means for everyone involved.
Dexerto: Andrew AmosTrash Taste in name, but not by nature
In between recordings, over another coffee, the boys reminisce on those early days of Trash Taste and their expectations.
“Definitely not this long,” Joey laughed when asked about how long they expected Trash Taste to last. “Originally it wasn’t even meant to be a main thing we did. It was always going to be a side project.
Garnt continued: “We wanted to be financially viable after one year, that was the goal. The goal was to be self-sustaining and it went way further than that.”
Nearly 200 episodes on though, Trash Taste has become a big part of these three creator’s lives. They are all individually successful in their own rights: in many respects, Joey and Garnt were the two bastions of anime YouTube in the early days. Connor was one of the most respected voice actors of that time too, rising up through the fan dubbing circuit to make a name for himself in VA work as well as streaming.
Trash Taste took their careers to the next level though. Since the podcast started in 2020, they’ve had dozens of amazing guests. Felix ‘Pewdiepie’ Kjellberg, MoistCr1TiKaL, Sean ‘jacksepticeye’ McLoughlin, Michael Reeves, and Mori Calliope are just some of the names they’ve invited on.
Across these four years, they have barely missed a week of uploads. It has exploded into a mammoth project with an equally huge following. They have 1.6 million followers on YouTube. It’s one of the top 10 Leisure podcasts on Spotify in the English-speaking world (ranking as high as third in Joey’s home country of Australia) with thousands of listeners every week.
Dexerto: Andrew AmosTrash Taste was an experiment of sorts for the three of them, testing the waters on broadening their content horizons. It was a blank canvas for their creativity stifled by being shoehorned into one corner of the internet, and they turned it into a masterpiece.
“Normally if you have some weird ideas, if they don’t perform well you start panicking and you don’t get as much creative freedom,” Garnt explained. “Because we have the safety net of Trash Taste, it gives us that freedom to explore new ideas and other channels and just not have to worry about the channel dying.”
Trash Taste may be marketed as an “anime podcast” — a long running joke in the community given how little anime they discuss. However, the appeal lies in giving anime fans content made by people who know the culture, but who also happen to have other similar interests. It keeps every episode fresh and interesting.
“It’s not screaming ‘hey we’re super into anime, it’s all we’re going to talk about,’ it’s more like ‘we’re normal people who just happened to also be pretty knowledgeable about anime and the anime community,’” Connor explained.
“It’s giving them more of a conversational podcast that’s geared towards their kind of humor and their likes and interests which helps a lot.”
It also so happened the podcast came at a perfect time. When recordings were moving online, Trash Taste was able to keep things in-person, in a studio, which let them stand out. That, coupled with “the general interest for foreigners who want to travel to Japan increasing” as Joey put it, gave them the recipe for success.
They took the cards they were dealt and turned them into gold. They’ve had plenty of great experiences, with the Drifting Special and the two tours they’ve done so far named as the big standouts.
The latter was a particularly monumental moment. They had never done anything in front of an in-person audience before 2022.
“I think we wanted to challenge ourselves to see if we could even do it and put on a good show,” Joey explained. “The one trait we all share is we love trying new sh*t out, and for all three of us, touring was obviously a very new thing we’ve never done before. We’ve never done a stage show or anything like that. So we were like ‘let’s see if we can even do this, let’s try and challenge ourselves to see if we can learn this entirely different skill set to just talking in front of a camera.’
“Getting more stage experience makes you a better entertainer in general too,” Connor continued. “So I wanted to get more stage experience and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to try it.”
It went swimmingly. The first couple of shows on the road in the US were “rocky” in Joey’s words, but the chemistry between the three of them meant the rest were silky smooth.
“The three of us knew exactly what was happening and it’s always hype seeing a live audience opposed to a live chat or a comment section,” Joey said. “It’s a different vibe.”
All of these wins have given them the confidence to try anything. There’s no one dream episode per se — unless Joey gets to bring on Barack Obama — but rather a sentiment that they can tackle anything they put their minds to.
“We’ve gotten to the point where, aside from some mega superstar guest coming onto the podcast, if we have a cool idea we want to pursue, we just put it in motion to do it,” Garnt said.
“That’s a lot of what we’re doing in 2024. I think it’s cool we’ve reached a point where we can pursue some of the more ambitious ideas.”
Standing out solo while learning from each other
Trash Taste wasn’t just a chance for them to do something together and grow it standalone. The learnings from Trash Taste were something they could adapt for themselves too.
It has given them a renewed look on content creation, where they realized they were only limited by self-enforced boundaries.
“Trash Taste was definitely the catalyst to make me change my mentality of YouTube being a job versus YouTube being a career,” Garnt said.
“Seeing the fact that Trash Taste grew beyond something beyond all three of our expectations and people were liking the fact they were getting to know us on a personal level and not something that was inherently connected to the content, that gave me the idea like ‘I don’t have to do something people know me for in order to make something cool.’”
Connor looked at it through a different lens: “I always try things out and see how they feel. It wasn’t necessarily a second wind or anything, it was more like ‘okay this is a new thing I’m going to try.’
“It didn’t feel like a big pivot and more like a natural progression of the stuff that I’m doing and the guys that I hang out with.”
Joey’s transition is probably the most obvious. The Anime Man himself kind of laughs at the branding now, given he’s all but retired from anime content. But now he’s pursuing his other passions like music through content, and showing more sides of himself.
“After Trash Taste I realized that people liked me for me, not for the content I make,” he explained. “It actually gave me a confidence boost to try stuff that wasn’t necessarily something that for the longest time I felt like I was pigeon holed into.
“I have anime in my f**king name. It’s a bit harder for me to do stuff that’s not anime related when it’s in my name. So I f**ked myself up on that but even then I was able to escape out of that vision a little bit. And I think that’s all because of Trash Taste.”
Dexerto: Andrew AmosDespite the expansion, it’s not like everyone took the same path. Connor is the biggest streamer of the bunch. Joey has his side hustles in business. Garnt still does his anime related videos but also shares his life in gacha hell from time to time.
“I like how we all went in separate directions,” Joey continued, “because it makes people and ourselves realize ‘yes, we are a collective unit creatively, but we’re also our own individual creators and artists separately,’ and that’s always nice.”
However they still have learned plenty from each other, both on a professional and personal level.
“When you see your friends working hard on stuff, you’re naturally like I want to work hard too,” Connor said. “We just want to keep doing stuff, making cool things.”
Putting the friendship first
Trash Taste is, and will forever be, a ‘side project’. Joey, Garnt and Connor are all individual creators first and foremost.
“It’s just something I have to dedicate time to, like any other project,” Connor stated. “We’re all doing content outside of it.
“Like it gets one or two days a week and if you think about your time existing in a week, you’re like ‘okay I have two days of the week to this thing’ and then you have to decide how you allocate the rest. Calling it a main thing is tough because we all do a lot of stuff individually as well. But it’s certainly a project that requires us to plan and be consistent with it.”
However even in their world of other projects, Trash Taste holds a special place for them. They are accountable to each other in this one. And instead of the personal relationships being a potential barrier, their clearly defined boundaries and aligned goals push them forward.
“With our other projects, the only person that’s relying on that is yourself,” Garnt continues. “We always want to make time for Trash Taste because we don’t want to let the other boys down and the staff members down. That’s a very big motivation.
“I know of so many YouTube groups that have fallen apart because they’re so focused on one thing and their interests don’t align or the passion doesn’t last and things fall apart.
“But with us dedicating a certain portion of time to Trash Taste, a certain portion to other projects we might want to do individually, it just gives us that balance and separation from not just projects but each other as well.”
Dexerto: Andrew AmosFriendship is ultimately at the core of Trash Taste. The three of them will never do something that jeopardizes that. And if the tension gets too much, the importance of their friendship will come first.
“All three of us agreed when we started Trash Taste that if one of us leaves, then that’s the end,” Garnt said. “I’m sure it will happen one day, this is not going to be forever. But whenever that does happen, so be it. All good things must come to an end.
Joey continued: “If Trash Taste ends one day, whatever manner that be, I don’t think we will stop being friends. Trash Taste was built around our friendship and if our life situation changes, Trash Taste may end but our friendship will continue.”
With all that in mind, Trash Taste are going to continue embarking on their ambitious adventures and long rambles about everything from conspiracy theories to anime to their childhoods. And when the end is nigh, they’ll go out as loudly as they burst out onto the scene.
“All I hope is Trash Taste ends with a bang, not with a whimper,” Joey said. “If we’re going to end it, make it memorable in a good way. Don’t just fizzle out. That’s the only thing I’d want really.”
