The real role of the interviewer — and how I got it all wrong
Interviewing isn’t what you think. It’s leadership.
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Hi storytellers –
Lately, I’ve been plagued by a recurring memory of an interview I did several years ago.
I was working for Colorado Public Radio on the station’s daily public affairs show. The opportunity arose to talk with a renowned medical ethicist, a practicing physician who was also, I would come to learn, a former Shakespearean actor.
The University of Colorado had wooed Matt Wynia away from his longtime post as the American Medical Association’s lead ethicist to run what I thought was a mystifying, and fascinating, organization: the university’s Center for Bioethics and Humanities.
There, Matt would lead studies of our most pressing ethical, life-and-death dilemmas. He’d also be in charge of faculty for whom the humanity of medicine is as important, if not more so, than the roles of biology, technology, and chemistry. The center is a place where people’s stories matter more than their blood tests.
I’d never heard of an organization like this before.
I asked Matt question after question. I chased ideas down one rabbit hole after another. The interview felt electric. I’m sure the idea of winning an award crossed my mind.
After I ushered Matt out of the studio, I walked by my producer’s desk, exhilarated.
“That was great, wasn’t it?” I asked.
He looked at me with an odd expression. Hesitant. Maybe…disdainful? Arched one blonde eyebrow. Cracked no smile. Finally, he mumbled something several rungs down on the enthusiasm scale.
He was far less impressed with me than I’d been with myself.
“What?!” I said, backing away from his desk.
“It was all over the place,” he said, showing my ego no mercy.
In my curiosity to learn everything, I’d created an interview about nothing.
I felt a hot flush of shame rise from my chest into my cheeks. All that pride I’d been feeling?
In Nate’s eyes — and now, in mine — I didn’t deserve it.
Now, not only did I feel like my skills didn’t match my ambition, I was worried about how Matt would react when it aired. He’d spent time and energy to be there; it mattered to him. I didn’t want him to think of me as an amateur.
Ouch.
. . .
I’m sharing this story with you now for a couple of reasons. The first is that it helps answer the question with which I started Sound Judgment almost two years ago: “What does it take to become a beloved host?” (I’ve since expanded this question from “host” to “audio storyteller,” but let’s go back to the origins.)
If you’ve ever wondered why your interviews aren’t as gripping as Audie Cornish’s or as fun as Trevor Noah’s, consider this apocryphal wisdom:
“Listeners come for the topic but stay for the host.”
I said that to a coaching client recently. He already has tens of thousands of listeners, but he was looking to up his interviewing game.
He looked at me blankly.
A modest guy, he’d been standing back, asking questions, and “allowing his guests to shine.” That’s a popular stance. Most of us fear overshadowing our guests. But more than that, we labor under the false assumption that the only value we bring in an interview IS the guest; we’re simply providing the platform and hopefully asking questions that evoke scintillating answers, without offering any of ourselves in return.
It’s a leftover, out-of-date convention.
It leads to problems like mine. In my blush-inducing interview with Matt Wynia, I had no central question with which to focus our conversation, no direction and destination for the interview, no point of view. I’d committed the public radio equivalent of the world’s worst podcast question: “Tell me about yourself.” This interview, and the millions like it that air every day, are unsatisfying to everyone: listeners, guests, and ourselves.
So what do we do?
Luckily, I’ve learned a few things in the last decade.
In the last issue of this newsletter, I wrote, “To moderate is to lead with a firm but gentle hand.” I was referring to moderating panels, but the principle applies to interviews. A good host acts as an informed guide for the listener. We direct them gently (or provocatively) toward a destination in service of the listener.
Guests can’t lead an interview and don’t want to. When we fail to lead, we create a vacuum in which everyone flounders. How many times have you heard an interview that was, like mine, about everything — and therefore about nothing? (Maybe not many, because once you grasped that a conversation would lead nowhere interesting, you abandoned it.)
This understanding about leadership came home to me from an unlikely source: author Priya Parker’s book, The Art of Gathering. Recently, I called this book the best book I’ve read about podcasting. But it’s not about podcasting at all, but about making any kind of gathering, from weddings to business meetings, meaningful and memorable.
She starts with purpose, as do I. You have to know why you’re gathering in order to know why you’re interviewing your guest and how that interview will take shape as a result.
“The purpose of your gathering,” Parker writes, “is more than an inspiring concept. It is a tool, a filter that helps you determine all the details, grand and trivial… Virtually every choice will be easier to make when you know why you’re gathering, and especially when that why is particular, interesting, and even provocative.”
Translate Parker’s language of “gathering” into an “interview” served to an audience (a taped or live audio interview or one held on a stage) and “purpose” becomes a promise we’re making to the listener. Listeners want to know why we have gathered or tempted them there and whether we’re promising them something worthy of their scarce time.
Claiming the leadership mantle
A good example of a host who claims her role as leader is Kelly Corrigan, host of the podcast Kelly Corrigan Wonders and the PBS show Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan. In the recent episode “Going Deep on Spirituality and Well Being with Alexis Abernathy, W. Kamau Bell and Dr. BJ Miller,” Corrigan leads off with what I call a “driving” question: “I’m wondering how spirituality factors into well-being. Do people who have an active faith or a faith community experience better well-being over the course of their lifetimes?”
That inquiry governs the entire episode — from her choice of guests to the line of questioning she pursues. It’s a lively, thought-provoking, and fun conversation. Her simple question slices like an arrow, carving two big, unwieldy topics, spirituality and wellbeing, into something we can get our arms around: Do people of faith experience better wellbeing?
Not only is that driving question (or the episode’s purpose, in Parker’s words) interesting and fresh, but it also acts as a filter. Undoubtedly, it screens out some questions Corrigan may have wanted to ask her highly accomplished guests, but realized they’d lead her off course. We need filters.
Guests or thought partners?
If you listen to this episode, you’ll notice another useful strategy: Corrigan calls her guests “thought partners.” I’m liking this label more and more, because having a partner puts us, as hosts, in a different stance: Now we’re equal with our guests, rather than taking a back seat as the reticent interviewer. Conceive of yourself as a “thought partner” and you’re likely to participate more fully in the conversation.
What happens then? Listeners come to feel like they know us. They start to like and trust us. Now they’re not just coming for the topic, they’re “staying for the host.”
Our role as a host is like that of the nonfiction narrator in a good book: “The central pleasure of nonfiction doesn’t reside in the events recounted but the narrator’s ability to reflect on them, to pluck meaning from the rush of experiences,” writes Steve Almond in his remarkable book on the creative process, Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: a DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories.
But wait!
All this talk about leading might be making you a little worried about a few things, though. Let me put your mind at ease.
1. Does this mean I have to know everything there is to know about my subject? I might as well quit now.
Not at all. In fact, we don’t want you to, because no one likes a know-it-all. We want you to know enough about your topic and your audience that you can be a stand-in for listeners by asking questions they would ask in your shoes. We want you to know what’s important and what’s not. We want you to be confident that listeners share your particular curiosities, the ones drawn not just from your mind but from your heart. We want you to know enough to skip questions that Google can answer.
We want you to be as fun, as self-deprecating, or as snarky or quirky as you truly are. We’ll be there for it.
The closer you get to serving up the “real,” unprocessed you, the more we, the listeners, love you.
2. Are you saying the whole conversation needs to be scripted? That sounds awful.
I’m not. I’m saying you need to get clear on your specific purpose; create a sequence of key questions, and then conduct the facilitator’s dance. That is, make sure to ask your most important questions (not necessarily in your outline order), while also following the conversation and your curiosity in the moment. In my process, I’m analytical while researching and preparing. Once the interview begins, I slip into the intuitive side of my brain and tune everything else out. I’m fully present and as connected as possible with my guests thought partners.
. . .
At the beginning of this essay, I said I shared my flubbed interview story with you for a couple of reasons, the first being as a lesson in how to do a more purposeful job than I did. Here’s the second reason.
This business we’re in of informing, engaging, moving, or entertaining audiences is a roller-coaster ride. Some days, we feel mastery. We choose the right angle, land the elusive guest, write a glittering sentence. On other days, we feel more fragile. Our egos get in the way. We worry, as I did, what our listeners and our impressive guests will think of us.
No matter what, we can’t get away from the fact that we are performers. Even for the most humble among us, we are at the heart of this work, as a visual artist is at the heart of theirs.
We can’t do this kind of storytelling without putting our souls on the line.
If we care about our work, about our audiences, about our guests, that can be scary. And that’s OK. Fear can be fuel. Show up scared. We all are, sometimes.
What are your interview stories — good and not-so-good? What questions can I answer for you about how to shape compelling conversations? Share them in the comments.
Try this in your studio
Here’s an exercise to take the abstract and make it more concrete.
Look back at a piece of creative work. It can be a podcast episode, an article or blog post, even a speech. Read the introduction or the lede out loud. Do you jump in with a fresh driving question? Does it make a clear promise to your listeners? Does it make you curious?
If not, rewrite it. Make it sharper. Focus on the content that interests you the most: your opinion counts. Now read it out loud again. (There’s nothing like reading out loud to show us the truth.)
If I could go back to that interview, now long gone from the Internet, I’d choose to ask why Colorado’s flagship university needs a whole institute on ethics and humanities in medicine. I’d ask, “Can focusing on ethics and humanities transform something fundamental about the way health care providers treat humans — not as body parts (patients) or factory workers (doctors and nurses) but as whole people?”
Now that would kick off an interesting conversation.
In every issue, we give Sound Judgment Kudos to audio folks we feel are making sound judgments choices that improve our craft or serve others.
Our first Sound Judgment kudo goes to freelance writer Kaitlyn Arford for this article in the newsletter Freelance Opportunities, which links to several freelance pay rates databases (including invaluable rate guides from AIR, the Association of Independents in Radio.)
Our second Sound Judgment kudo goes to Mia Lobel for proposing an idea I endorse: reconceiving the podcast feed as being more like a radio station, on which I as a listener can reliably find new and existing work I will probably like. It would solve both a discovery problem (are you overwhelmed by choice? I am) and potentially be a more sustainable economic model for audio storytellers. Read this article, share it, and discuss it with friends and colleagues. We need innovation.
Our third Sound Judgment kudo goes to longtime podcaster Evo Terra, for his work creating The End, a listener-focused database of what he calls “completed” audio fiction. You’ll find all kinds of audio fiction here, including radio plays, podcast series, and audiobooks. I just learned about this free database (big thanks, Evo!) and I feel like he handed me the proverbial keys to a candy store. And what better time than summer to listen to fiction!
🏆 Learn from the best
Read: I’m always excited to read a new creative process or craft book, especially one recommended by a friend who never steers you wrong. Essayist and The Moth Storyteller Andrea King Collier put Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow: a DIY Manual for the Construction of Stories on her reading list. I picked it up instantly. Now I wish I had nothing else to do so I could read it all today. It’s written for writers, not audio storytellers, but author Steve Almond’s wisdom will hit your heart and mind no matter your platform.
Attend: On July 31, The Institute for Independent Journalists (IIJ) is holding a full-day workshop on the business of freelancing for Chicago freelancers and folks attending the National Association of Black Journalists (NAB24) convention. It’s affordable, although the early-bird rate of $49 just ended. You’ll meet assigning editors from the New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Health and more.
Study: How can I not direct you to a class on Sound Design by Jad Abumrad of Radiolab fame? You can still sign up for his workshop, “How Sound Makes Story,” which takes place this Saturday, June 8, online. It’s $89 for his seminar, or pair it with two others from Western Sound for $239.
New Resources Section coming
Every day, I search for wonderful resources like the ones I mentioned above – podcasts, articles, books, groups, and more. So I’m starting a standing resources section! This newsletter is free for everyone right now, but the resources section, along with some other things up my sleeve, will soon be for paid subscribers. Have a resource you’d like to share? Just reply to this newsletter.
My own Sound Judgment
I’m a firm believer that to get to the true genius within us, we have to dig deep. We have to carve away all the stuff that’s covering it up. So I loved happening upon this sculpture on a recent Denver walk with a TV producer friend of mine. Even better than the delight of tripping over this fox is the nickname of the artist: “Chainsaw Mama.” Enjoy.
As always, it is a joy to be with you.
Elaine
Epilogue
“I happen to believe that every single person on earth is a storyteller. We are all trying to understand the story of our lives. Some of us are also trying to make a career, or a calling, from the practice of writing. The essential tools of that pursuit are patience and forgiveness and courage. You have to want to tell the truth.”
— Steve Almond, Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow
Thanks so much for including Freelance Opportunities! I'm always happy to share rate transparency whenever possible.
This was my favorite line: “The center is a place where people’s stories matter more than their blood tests.” (something I’ve felt a lack of myself while getting bounced around between medical professionals) - I realize it’s not the crux of your post, but it stuck out to me!
Also, I added The Art of Gathering to my audiobook queue. I wonder if I might be able to apply some of the lessons to facilitating group meetings for peer coaches. You used the term “thought partners” - that’s what peer coaches have termed their peer when they’re reflecting on the experience.
Another parallel: a common stance that peer coaches take in the beginning is feeling like they need to “know more” and “problem solve” (re: Does this mean I have to know everything there is to know about my subject?), where it is more beneficial to listen with curiosity.