your free episodes can be podcasts

the short version

your five free episodes can now be podcasts. answer underway's questions with your voice only and the episode comes back as audio, with the questions kept in, the same way it does on a paid plan. until today a free account could record by voice, but the audio file itself was held back until you picked a plan. that was the wrong way round, so it has gone.

• on the setup screen, pick audio and keep questions as the kind, and the interview runs on the mic alone
• underway asks each question out loud, you answer, and the finished episode is two voices: the question and your answer
• the audio episode is made for every free episode, and for any video episode you want as sound too
• the podcast feed, the address apple podcasts and spotify pull from, is still part of series
• everything else about the free episodes is unchanged: five of them, no card, and your intro episode does not count

why it changed

the page most people reach from our ads is the one about days you don't want to be on camera. it says: don't skip it, make it a podcast. it was true for anyone on a plan and not quite true for someone trying underway for free, which is exactly who reads that page. a free trial that leaves out the thing the ad promised is not a trial of the product.

there is a better reason too. the voice-only episode is the one that saves a streak. it is the episode you can record from a car, on a walk, or on a day when the face is not up to it. if the first week is where the habit is decided, the free episodes are where that fallback matters most. holding it back until you paid was holding back the one thing most likely to get you to episode five.

what a podcast episode is in underway

it is the same interview, heard rather than watched. underway asks you questions out loud about what you are working on, one at a time, and follows what you say. your answers are cleaned up, the pauses and the ums come out, and the questions stay in, so it sounds like an interview rather than a voice note. it is numbered like any other episode, so episode four can be a video and episode five a podcast and the series carries on either way.

nothing is reordered and nothing is added. the words are yours, in the order you said them, the same rule as every episode.

what still comes with a plan

the podcast feed. a feed is the address a podcast app subscribes to, so every episode you publish lands on apple podcasts, spotify and the rest without you uploading anything. that stays on series, along with posting to every network in one tap. on a free account you can listen to your audio episodes in underway, download them, and put them on your public page when you choose.

how to record one

• open today and start the next episode
• on the setup screen, choose audio
• keep questions as the kind, choose how long, and press the button
• answer out loud; the question is on screen too, for anyone who missed it
• when it finishes, the episode page has the audio player at the top

it works the same on the web and on the phone. no camera, no lighting, no framing, and nobody hears it until you share it.

faqs

your first five episodes are free, no card. start free.