Radio Chatter is a talkshow filmed in a Cessna airplane and this week’s guest is celebrated British-Columbia photographer Taylor Burk flying over Mount Waddington.

Radio Chatter is taking the talkshow genre to new heights. Created by Victoria, British Columbia native Mathew Mosveen, the project films guests in a Cessna 172 aircraft talking about everything from what it’s like being in one of Canada’s most recognized bands to the nuances of photographing the country’s most remote landscapes.

Founded in 2018, Radio Chatter is shot while pilot Mosveen navigates the plane with his guest in the passenger seat and episodes so far have been filmed in Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto. Guests have ranged from musicians and actors to athletes, entrepreneurs and artists and according to Mosveen, the aim of the show is to entertain and inspire while demystifying the magic of flight and showcasing the beauty of our natural environment. In the most recent episode he flies to the summit of Mount Waddington and documents BC-based photographer Taylor Burk in action shooting the province’s tallest and most remote mountain. We caught up with Mosveen to ask him a few questions about how the project got started and what some of his favourite guests have been so far.

Hey Mat, congrats on the show. It’s a cool idea. What was the impetus for it?

I’ve been head-over-heels passionate about aviation since I was two years old. In fact, I have plenty of early memories being around airplanes and many of my childhood photos are around planes ’cause I loved them so much even though there was never a flying background in my family. I got my license at age 16 and remember taking my friends flying throughout high school and college and for them it was as magical as the first time I got to fly. So by taking others flying I get to constantly experience my passion through the lens of somebody who hasn’t done it thousands of times before. It keeps it all interesting for me because I’m terrified of it ever becoming boring or routine. I figured I could share that passion with the world with a show in which guests are always like, “Wait you want to take me in a plane? Over a mountain? Ahhh… sure!” It’s way more fun than interviewing them over a cup of coffee.

What have been some of your favourite episodes so far?

Gosh it’s hard to pick. The lazy answer is the most recent one with Taylor. He has been to almost any mountain you can think of so this was about the only one that would have been a first for both him and I. It was a bucket list item for every single person on the adventure. Besides that, this episode was also special because of the amount of work it took to make it happen. We tried three times over eight months and had to cancel on the day of, or day before, because of weather. There are very few useable weather days in that remote part of the province plus reporting is hard to come by: there’s one weather camera up there that takes a single picture every 24 hours so you have to interpolate the reports from places like Powell River which are far away. We even Googled local places to ask them, “Hey how’s it looking up there today?” The guys at White Saddle Air really helped us out that way. Plus we had to have tons of backup plans for any scenario like search and rescue, survival gear, that kind of thing because it’s a wilderness that has to be treated with the utmost respect. We actually did have challenges on the day of shooting too: an aircraft experienced a brake failure early in the day, which was caught during the pre-flight checks,  so we had to delay the shoot and get another plane while that one went to maintenance. It all worked out though because the two-hour delay put us at golden hour which made for insanely good lighting. We flew home at sunset!

I also like this episode because the production quality shows just how far the show has developed. It was the first time we did air-to-air shooting where we had another aircraft in a safe distance away with photographers and zoom lenses photographing us. It was also pretty funny since Taylor himself is a creator so some of his own shots that we were captured during the interview ended up in the show.

How did you and Taylor connect?

He was the first guest who ever found his own way to the show. Up until now I’ve spent lots of time approaching potential guests and pitching the show. Taylor, on the other hand, actually saw the episode with Yukon Blonde’s Jeff Innes and reached out to via the Radio Chatter instagram account. He didn’t ask to go on the show, all he said was “Love the concept for these interviews, super unique! Also Jeff is hilarious. Nice work!” But it felt crazy that somebody so notable would reach out to me. So I asked him to come on and he immediately said he’d be honoured.

For more about the Radio Chatter talkshow, visit the YouTube channel.