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Zero To Travel Podcast

Zero To Travel Podcast

By: Jason Moore
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✈️ The Zero To Travel Podcast has been downloaded 12+ million times and named a "Best Travel Podcast" by The Washington Post, Travel + Leisure, The Telegraph, and Forbes. Packed with life-changing perspectives, inspiration, and practical advice for everyone from travel newbies to nomads, this podcast will give you everything you need to travel the world on your terms, regardless of your situation or experience. Welcome to our amazing global listening community! Since 2013, "Travel Ambassador" Jason Moore from zerototravel.com has been picking the brains of adventurous people living an unconventional life on the road so you can discover new ways to travel endlessly. Along the way, you'll get actionable advice and key resources that will improve your life AND help you travel more as we get down and dirty on topics like; starting and running an online business from anywhere, the best off-the-beaten-path destinations to visit, travel and work opportunities, gutsy budget travel strategies, surprising ways to earn free travel, the digital nomad life, unconventional travel based lifestyles, fun travel jobs, how to plan epic adventures, backpacking, remote work, how to take a gap year or a career break, 4-hour work week inspired topics, ex-pat life, slow travel, travel hacking, sustainable travel, human-powered adventures, trips worth planning, and everything in between. Host Bio: Jason wandered the planet as a nomad for over a decade and spent 15+ years on the road as a tour manager in events/music, a seasonal adventure travel tour guide, and a digital nomad. Originally from the USA, he is now a dual citizen (Norway/USA) based in Oslo. He is obsessed with helping YOU explore our planet on your terms. Follow the show (it's FREE!) and welcome to the global community. 🙏 PS - To sign up for our free newsletter to get travel tips, tricks, destination advice, and more visit zerototravel.com/newsletter.Copyright 2013-2026 Zero To Travel International AS Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Social Sciences Travel Writing & Commentary
Episodes
  • Adventure Filmmaking for YouTube, the Art of Storytelling, and Life on the Road with Molly McDonald

    Adventure Filmmaking for YouTube, the Art of Storytelling, and Life on the Road with Molly McDonald
    Jun 30 2026
    Molly McDonald is a London-based YouTube producer and founder of Blue Door Productions, a YouTube-first content agency that brings broadcast-level production to digital storytelling. She studied journalism at Boston University and later earned a master's in Irish studies from NYU before building her career in television production in New York City. Her client list includes Red Bull, BBC, and National Geographic, and her films have accumulated over 200 million views on YouTube. This episode covers Molly's journey from Irish-American New Yorker to YouTube travel documentary producer, including her work on some of the most extreme human endurance expeditions ever filmed and what she learned along the way. Travel has a funny way of dismantling the stories we tell ourselves about the world, and Molly McDonald has lived that firsthand, from the pubs her family built in Manhattan to the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. She grew up straddling two cultures, and that dual identity turns out to be the exact foundation for the kind of storytelling she now does for a living: finding the human truth inside extreme, unpredictable adventures. There's a real conversation in here about what it means to travel to places that scare you, why the media often gets destinations wrong, and how following a story you can't fully control is actually what makes it worth watching. What place have you avoided visiting because of how it's been portrayed in the media, and has anything ever changed your mind? I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you'll share by sending me an audio message. Tune In To Learn: Why growing up Irish-American in New York shaped Molly's approach to storytelling and travel How Blue Door Productions brings TV-level production quality to the "wild west" of YouTube What it was actually like to cross into Iraq during a live expedition, and what happened to all the fear Why Kurdistan challenged everything Molly thought she knew about the region How to capture authentic moments on camera when you can't predict what's coming next Advice for aspiring YouTubers on what to cut, what to keep, and why most people share too much Why the title and thumbnail of a YouTube video matter more than people realize How to think about storytelling structure even when the story is still unfolding in front of you What the concept of "soul places" reveals about how travel changes you over time Why starting from zero on YouTube is actually an advantage, and what consistency really means And so much more Resources: Sign up for our FREE newsletter Learn more about Molly's work at Blue Door Productions Follow Molly on Instagram at @mollybmcd Watch Mitch Hutchcraft's expedition on YouTube Want More? 100 Documentaries Project: Traveling the Globe to Find Extraordinary Humans + Changing the World One Story at a Time with Robin Danehav Transition to Travel: West Africa + Canoeing the River Gambia with Will Hunt Independent Travel as a Female in Afghanistan, Hitchhiking Iraq, and Ex-Pat Life in Sudan with Jacquelyn Kunz Thanks To Our Sponsors Become a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/zerototravel Check out Morning Brew Daily for business news that's actually fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 12 mins
  • Y We Travel Podcast: To Meet The Neighbours (Bonus Episode!)

    Y We Travel Podcast: To Meet The Neighbours (Bonus Episode!)
    Jun 25 2026
    This week, I'm sharing a bonus episode from a brand new podcast called Y We Travel, co-hosted by my friend Eric Weiner, who has joined me on the show a few times over the years. Eric is a New York Times bestselling author and former foreign correspondent, and his co-host Erica Vella is an award-winning podcaster and former broadcast journalist. There's no shortage of travel advice out there — who can save us a buck, what to do, when's the best time to go, where to go. But one fundamental question often gets left behind: why? Born from an award-winning magazine series of the same name, Y We Travel explores the deeper motivations behind our journeys. The show unpacks the emotions, discoveries, and purpose that give travel its meaning. In this episode, Eric and Erica discuss the origins of the series and their own motivations for travelling. Eric interviews author and Y We Travel essayist Pico Iyer, trading travel anecdotes from Japan to California to North Korea and discussing themes from Pico's piece in The Walrus magazine, which argued that we should travel to meet our neighbours. Erica continues the conversation with a selection of Toronto Pearson passengers, asking: "Why are you travelling today?" Resources: Sign up for the Zero to Travel FREE newsletter Listen to Y We Travel on Apple, Spotify Read the companion essays at ywetravelmag.ca Contact Y We Travel: hello@ywetravelmag.ca Learn more about Pico Iyer Want More?: The Geography of Bliss With Eric Weiner How To Live a Long and Useful Life (The Wisdom of Ben Franklin) With Eric Weiner Rick Steves On the Hippie Trail (The Making of a Travel Writer) with Special Guest Host Eric Weiner Thanks To Our Sponsors: Become a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/zerototravel Check out Morning Brew Daily for business news that's actually fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    41 mins
  • 7 Travel Tech Trends Worth Knowing in 2026 + 3 Emerging Hot Spots to Spend Quality Time with Matt Gray

    7 Travel Tech Trends Worth Knowing in 2026 + 3 Emerging Hot Spots to Spend Quality Time with Matt Gray
    Jun 23 2026
    Matt Gray is the founder and CEO of Pangea, a free social travel app built to help people coordinate travel plans, share recommendations, and connect with their network around the world. After a decade in product development and corporate M&A at a global fintech company, he left the corporate world in 2023 to become a full-time digital nomad and build Pangea full-time. He is on a personal mission to visit every country in the world. In this episode, we get into seven travel tech trends shaping how people plan, book, and experience travel, including why most travel apps fail, the rise of social travel, and what AI can and can't do for travelers right now. We also dig into destination recommendations, advice for running a remote business on the road, and what it means to bridge the nomad bubble. These are genuinely fascinating times to be a traveler and a builder in the travel space, and Matt sits at the center of both worlds. He's thinking seriously about why travel tech has such a high failure rate, and what it would actually take to crack the code, and he brings a perspective that is grounded in years of on-the-ground experience across dozens of countries and travel styles. There is a real conversation here about the gap between wanting to travel and actually doing it, and I think it will stick with you. The travel tech trends for digital nomads piece is insightful, but the human thread running through it all is what makes this one worth your time. Have you ever had a piece of technology genuinely change how you travel or connect with people on the road? I'd love to hear your thoughts, and I hope you'll share by sending me an audio message. Tune In To Learn: Why so many travel apps are built to solve a single problem, and why that almost always leads to failure How being a "multifaceted traveler" is reshaping what a useful travel platform actually needs to do Why AI wrappers on ChatGPT are not the same as AI-powered travel tools, and how to tell the difference How social travel is changing the reason people book trips in the first place Why off-the-beaten-path destinations benefit most from the rise of connected travel communities How to break out of the nomad bubble and go deeper in the places you visit Why the people you travel with may matter more than the places you go Destination recommendations for regions quietly gaining traction in the nomad world Advice for running a remote team while living a location-independent life What it looks like to bring urgency to travel, not just talk about it And so much more Resources: Sign up for our FREE newsletter Download the Pangea app Pangea on Instagram Couchsurfing Workaway Want More? From Expat to Digital Nomad: Finding Your Travel Rhythm, Balancing Burnout, and the Digital Nomad Lifestyle with Kristin Wilson The World's Most Traveled Person on the Ethics of Gamifying Travel, Best Regions in the World, and Why To Keep Traveling With Harry Mitsidis of NomadMania Top 5 Reasons For "Slomading" + The Benefits Of Boredom With Tim Marting From Citizen Remote Thanks To Our Sponsors Become a Fora Advisor today at foratravel.com/zerototravel Check out Morning Brew Daily for business news that's actually fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 19 mins
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