Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #992: Interviewing Guests
Episode Date: December 9, 2022I do a lot of interviews on my podcast, so this podcast is all about what it takes to interview people and offers some tips on how to do it well. ...
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I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.
Okay, so today I'm going to talk about interviews.
So, a couple years back, the pandemic happened.
And I, I mean, at the time it happened, we didn't quite know how long it was going to happen.
I knew I would be at home for a little while and, you know, it's hard to drive to work when you're not driving to work.
So I started doing some podcasts at home, and I was trying to at the time, I wanted to do something that I couldn't normally do,
because I was like, well, since I'm stuck at home, I don't want to use up good material I can just use when I'm driving to work.
So I started doing interviews.
Now, I had done a few interviews before that.
Macavata had been a frequent guest.
And I'd had a handful of people actually riding my car with me.
So I had done a few interviews before.
But once the pandemic started, in fact, for a little while, I was doing nothing but interviews.
And finally, I realized the pandemic was going to last long enough that I needed to get back to some original content.
But even now, I try, I mean, not every week, but most weeks I have an interview.
So what I've discovered is interviews really add an extra something to the podcast, and I like them.
So I'm going to talk today about all the stuff I've learned about doing interviews.
I mean, meaning being the interviewer, not the interviewee.
I did a podcast before where I talked about being interviewed, and you can go listen to that podcast.
That's not today's topic. Today's topic is about interviewing. So I'm going to talk about 10
things that I do to try to make the best interviews possible, and I'll talk some of my lessons
and things I've learned along the way. Okay, so number one thing I try to do. I want to
remember that we're here to hear them. So one of the things, like one of the challenges,
well, one of the reasons I like the interviews is I'm, whatever, 900 plus podcasts in. I've talked
a lot about a lot of topics. And I keep doing new things. So there is more content. But
I'm trying to expand the content of my podcast.
And part of that is bringing in guests is here are people that know things I don't know
and have experiences I don't have and stories to share that I don't.
You know, like the whole reason to bring in a guest is to be able to hear and have them
share information that you all don't know.
So first and foremost, when I have a guest in, I want to remember that ideally I want to hear more from them than me. I do chime in from time
to time and I'll explain when and where and how I chime in. But the key thing for me to remember
when I have a guest is I'm trying to maximize sort of extracting all the cool information from them that I can.
That I want this podcast, like one of the things about Drive to Work is first and foremost
I want it to be entertainment, but secondary I want it to be informative, right?
I want you to listen and go, wow, I know things I wouldn't have known had I not listened to
this podcast.
And so my guests, my interviews are not, like if I have somebody on, I want to learn something.
I want, well, A, I want you guys to learn something, but also I want to learn something.
Like one of my favorite things about having guests on is I learn things all the time that
I never knew.
Like I had Barry Reich on and learned that he made, he was the person who made Booster
Draft.
I didn't know that.
You know, it's just cool to sort of talk to people and learn that stuff.
I didn't know that.
You know, it's just cool to sort of talk to people and learn that stuff.
And so, first and foremost, when doing an interview, you want your interviewee to shine.
You want them to be able to have the spotlight and be able to share with the audience cool things so the audience can learn that stuff.
So you got to keep that in mind.
Okay, number two is planning ahead, doing research.
Usually what happens is you want to have a topic.
There was a period of time right after the pandemic started where the topic was kind of like the people.
I would just interview people and talk about them.
And sometimes, I mean, often I would talk about how they're connected to magic
since they were all connected to magic.
But it was a little bit more about them as people and what i found was the audience was much happier if i picked a topic
and then i talked about that topic with the person that that was that led for better interviews like
rather than just interview random person interview somebody's like oh we're going to talk about the
set we worked on together or we're going to talk about you set we worked on together. Or we're going to talk about what you do every day, what your job is, and how that gets done for magic.
So what I've learned is that you really want to have a topic and you want to sort of understand going in.
And part of that is talking to the person you're going to interview.
Understand, A, make sure that you and them agree on a topic.
Because you want to talk about a topic they want to talk about.
I don't ever want a guest like
talk about this thing that you're interested in talking about.
I always pick something that is very natural.
I mean, unlike me who's doing
infinite podcasts, you know, they're
going to be on a handful of times. So
I can have them talk specifically about things they
know really well. You know, the other thing
about it, by the way, is, you know, you want
to make your guests feel comfortable.
Not everybody is used to sort guests feel comfortable. Not everybody
is used to sort of doing entertainment. Not everybody's used to getting up in front of an
audience. I have a lot of experience doing that. I've done my podcast for a long time, but a lot
of my guests don't. In fact, a lot of my guests are somewhat nervous just because, hey, a lot of
people listen to this podcast and they want to make sure they sound good and they're, you know,
they're saying the right things.
And so part of doing a good interview is spending a little bit of time with the person and just making sure.
Like one of the things I always do ahead of time is we agree on a topic and then I ask them, hey, is there anything you really want to talk about?
Is there anything that you want to hit? And what I'll do is I'll take down little notes.
And then as we go along, it's my job as the interviewee,
sorry, interviewer,
to make sure that we hit these topics.
I'll get to that.
This is another point I'll get to.
But I do want to,
like, I do want to understand from them,
okay, you know,
here's what we're going to talk about.
And, oh, the other thing I tend to do is,
and this gets into the third part,
is structure.
But let me finish part two
and then we'll get into structure
in part three.
Plan ahead, talk to them, make them feel comfortable,
make them understand what's going to happen.
Okay, and then we get into number three.
Discuss structure.
So one of the things I've learned as somebody who's done entertainment in many forms,
I've written plays, I've written TV shows,
I've written some movies, but nothing got produced.
I have done stand-up, I've done improv, I've written TV shows, I've written some movies but nothing got produced. I have done
stand-up, I've done improv, I've done
public speaking.
And the key to all of that, the key to sort of
entertaining people is
people absorb
information better
if provided in a way that is
entertaining and that is
grokkable and understandable.
So an important part of anything is making sure there's some inherent structure there.
Now, it is not my job.
Sorry, it is my job.
It's not my interviewee's job to worry about structure.
It's my job as the interviewer to worry about structure.
So what happens is I will talk with them, understand what we want to talk about, understand
what are the points we want to hit, and then it's my job as the interviewer to make sure during
the course of our 30-minute talk that we're hitting the points we want to hit, that I
have to make sure we're guiding things.
Now, one of the things about interviews is I don't know exactly what they're going to
say.
Part of the fun of interviews is it's not all scripted.
I don't know.
I'll ask a question
they'll answer
and a lot of time
and some of the times
I know some of the answer
because usually
I've worked with them
on something
so it's not that
I never know the answer
you know
sometimes you ask questions
not because you don't
know the answer
but you want them
to give the answer
so you know
there's a bunch
of setting up
and interviewing
of sort of like
here's things I know
they know.
I want to make sure they speak it and get it out.
But another thing is you want to sort of go with the flow where
if somebody's having fun in an area,
I'll stay in that area if it's really fun and entertaining.
Or vice versa, you know, if it's not, then we'll steer away.
Sorry, I keep talking and then jumping ahead to the next one.
But, okay, so the key to number three here is understand the important structure,
understand what kind of structure you're having for this podcast,
and then have a sense of what you need to do.
Like, how does the structure work from beginning to end?
What are you talking about?
And you want some flexibility.
The thing that's unique about interviewing somebody
that's a little bit different from me just doing my own podcast.
If I'm just doing my own podcast, I do structure them.
But I sort of know what I'm going to say and I know the order I'm going to say it in.
And it's just a matter of me pacing myself.
When I'm doing an interview with somebody else, I don't always know what they're going to say.
And I want to explore and discover things.
And if I find a cool vein of talk, I want to explore that.
So, you know, there's a little bit of give and take in the structure of an interview
that's different from a normal podcast because you have less control of it.
That's not necessarily a bad thing.
The fact that you, you know, like, it allows for some spontaneous surprise and stuff, which
is another thing I'll be getting to.
Okay, number four, you want to keep it entertaining.
So first and foremost,
the goal of my blog,
not blog, my podcast,
my blog will also be entertaining,
but I'm talking about podcasts.
My goal of my podcast is to be entertaining.
I want people to enjoy listening to it.
I also want to be informative.
I want them to learn things.
I mean, I think that a good podcast has a mix of being educational and informational
and that people learn things and they can walk away knowing things they didn't know before
and they have things they can share and talk about.
Like, there's some sense of knowledge that is good.
But at the same sense, you also want to make sure that it is something that is fun to listen to. And that one of the dangers you can get to with an interview is not every
interviewee understands the basic principles of how to entertain. It's one
of those things like, for example, the act of telling the story is a skill. And it's
not, I mean, I should say,
the act of telling a story in a way that it is entertaining
is a skill.
And so some people have a lot more practice of that.
Some people just in their general life
like to tell stories and so they do it a lot.
So they get a lot of practice at it
and they get good at telling stories.
Other people, you know,
it's not something they do a lot of.
So they don't have
the practice or they just don't have the training. I mean, part of it is doing it. You learn through
repetition, but part of it also is just understanding like what makes for a good story, you know.
Now, I have done a lot of writing. I've done a lot of performing. Like I've done a lot. So I
have internalized a lot of how do you make something entertaining?
What about it does so?
And so when I'm interviewing somebody, I want to be careful.
The number one area you get into trouble with is they start going off on a tangent on a very minor issue that they're knowledgeable about,
but is going deep enough that not enough of your audience is going to be interested in it.
deep enough that not enough of your audience is going to be interested in it.
You know, and it's very easy sometimes when you're not used to doing interviews and you're sort of talking about the things you know,
it's easier to start to get too into the weeds.
Now, there's some weeds that are fun.
There's some weeds that are very entertaining.
But some of it can be very monotonous,
where it's just on really fine-tuned things that most people aren't going to care about.
And so one of your jobs as an interviewer
is to make sure that your interviewee
doesn't sort of get stuck there.
You know, sometimes what can happen
is they start sort of getting a little too deep,
and it's your job as an interviewer
to ask questions and pull them out
and, you know, continue on with it.
Okay, number five.
You want to make sure that you have a rapport with your guests.
I said early on that I want you to hear from them,
that they're supposed to shine.
But part of what makes it fun,
part of what makes an interview dynamic
is that you, the interviewer, are there.
And especially on a podcast where I'm the host that you know. I'm the person you know. Every time you come listen to this podcast, I'm the person that's there. And especially on a podcast where, you know, I'm the host that you know. I'm the person
you know. Every time you come listen to this podcast, I'm the person that's there. So you
have familiarity with me. You know me. And that one of the things that's fun when I can have a
guest on is it is fun to play up the rapport of the guest that I have. Most of the time when I
have guests on, they're people that I know. There's people that I've worked with, people that I have
a relationship with. And that it is fun as we're doing that I know. They're people that I've worked with, people that I have a relationship with.
And that it is fun
as we're doing the interview
to sort of lean into that.
That if the person and I
get along well,
I want the interview
to reflect that, you know.
Like, for example,
Matt Place was somebody
who worked in R&D.
He was a developer
for many years.
He's since left.
But I have him on
from time to time.
And Matt and I are real good friends.
We have a really good rapport.
And Matt, for example, knows when and how to joke with me.
And so there's a lot of fun back and forth.
And so one of the neat things about interviewing Matt and other people that interview
is that the audience gets to sort of see that rapport.
And that rapport is very fun.
Like I said, one of the goals is to be entertaining. And one of the things about
an interview that's unique from sort of what I'll call monologue,
for example, today it's me talking. No one else is talking. It's just me talking.
Hopefully I'm being entertaining unto myself. But one of the things you
don't get when I'm monologuing is you don't get me interacting with people.
And so one of the fun things about an interview is you get that interaction, you know, and it's really fun.
Like I love, for example, when, especially when we get into stories, one of my favorite things to do
with guests is to tell the same story, but from our perspective, because our stories are usually
not quite the same. Like I remember details that they don't remember. They remember details that
I don't remember. And it's fun sort of telling
a story through multiple perspectives, because
you get a larger sense of the story.
So anyway, that's
really important. When I am interviewing
somebody, you know, I
want, well,
I want them to shine, and I want
them to be the majority of what's going on.
I do want to,
like, the fact that I'm there,
the fact that I know them means something, and I want to play that up, and that's important.
Okay, number six.
So this is encouraged stories.
So one of the things, when I went to communication school, there's a guy named Marshall McLuhan
who was all about entertainment.
And he studied entertainment.
And he studied sort of like when I say studied, I mean like from a... He studied it like a professor would study it.
Someone who's an expert in it would study it to understand the nature of it.
And Marshall McLuhan, his probably most famous quote is,
the medium is the message.
probably most famous quote is the medium is the message. And what that means is the means by which you communicate itself affects how you communicate. If I, if I make a movie or a TV show or a webcast
or a podcast, like each one of those has different strengths because the medium that you're using to do
it has different strengths.
Okay, well, I'm doing a podcast.
It's audio, right?
I'm talking.
There's no pictures.
So one of the things that is going for you is because I'm talking is things that are
sort of revolve around voice, you know, and one of the things that audio does really well is storytelling.
Because the majority of, I mean, there's some visualness to storytelling, but there's a
lot from the audio.
Audio storytelling is very powerful.
And so one of the things that you want to do when you're doing a podcast is you want
to play into the strengths of what a podcast is.
And a big part of that, one of the things that's really the most compelling, is stories.
If you are a podcast listener, you'll notice that almost every podcast does stories of some kind.
Now, sometimes it's, I'm telling a story about somebody else.
Sometimes it's, I'm telling a story about me.
But there's a sense of, I'm relating to something that happened, and I'm telling you about something.. But there's a sense of I'm relating something that happened
and I'm telling you about something.
Podcasts do that really well.
And one of the things when I'm interviewing is, you know,
most of my topics, I mean, topics fall into a couple categories.
Number one is this person and I did something together.
It's a magic thing.
Let's talk about that thing we did together.
That's the number one interviews I'll have.
And for those, hey, there's stories of us making it.
There's stories of us doing it.
And there's just a lot of fun, you know,
and it's not even that those stories necessarily are crucial
to understanding larger things,
but they just add an extra element to it.
You know, if I tell the story of Tempest,
how we go down to Richard's parents' house in Portland
and we don't shave for a week.
Even though none of that necessarily is kind of seen in the finished product,
there's something about the camaraderie, about learning the process of how it got made,
that's very entertaining.
And the one thing I have learned, by the way, is the audience loves magic relevant details.
They love sort of how things got made,
how, you know,
the little tiny details,
they really sort of eat that up.
You can get too in the weeds,
like I say,
you can get a little too much
on certain things,
but the audience sort of loves
hearing those little details
about how things happen,
and they love the stories.
So because they love the stories,
I really try to make sure that
I'm encouraging my interviewee
to share stories when they can. Okay, number seven, keep it moving. So another thing about a podcast.
Now, I've consciously chosen to make my podcast about a half an hour long. That's how long my
drive to work is. But I made a conscious decision of that. The half hour didn't come out of nowhere.
One of the things that I'm a firm believer of, at least for the podcast that I want to make,
is I want to get in, I want to do it, I want to be fun, I want to entertain it, and I want to get out.
I don't want to drag on too long.
I want these podcasts to be bite-sized, or at least bite-sized for a podcast.
And so a half an hour to me has hit that sweet spot where like oh I can listen to that
in one chunk of time
I don't have to dedicate
multiple chunks of time
to listen to it
I can do it usually
maybe when I'm driving
or maybe
you know
I'm going jogging
or whatever
I don't know when you listen to podcasts
but whenever you listen to podcasts
you know
it's small bite sized stuff
you can do
so one of the things
I talked earlier about
you know
you don't want to get your
your guests stuck you don't want them sort of spinning their wheels on one topic too much.
But another thing is you have your structure. You have the things you want to do. I literally
have a list of what I want to get to. I literally, you know, before we, like I said, before we
begin, I will ask my interviewee things they want to talk about.
And then I will make sure that we get to all those things.
And that, by the way, a little side note, is a skill.
There's a lot of skill to interviewing.
It is not what I've learned as I've done it is, you know, there's a lot of things you can do about it. And part of it is like doing your research.
Part of it is knowing where to go. Part of it is knowing where to go.
Part of it is this structure.
Part of it is laying things out, understanding what you have to get to.
And then don't stick, I mean, obviously if something's going well and you're having a lot of fun,
I'm not saying to leave, I'm not saying to move on when what you're doing is entertaining.
But make sure that you keep in mind all the stuff you have because you
want to get the pacing in and you want to make sure that you're hitting what you want
to hit.
And so one of the skills that I've learned doing a lot of interviewing is trying to gauge
how long you should talk about something and try not to talk about it more than you need
to.
You know, I have five topics to get to in 30 minutes.
Okay, roughly I have about six minutes for a topic.
Now, maybe one topic ends up being very entertaining, and it's nine minutes.
Well, okay.
Well, then I've got to cut back on my other things.
And so there's a constant gauging as you're recording about how things are going.
But that's something you really need to keep track of.
And I always have my—the thing I record on has a clock,
so I'm always watching my clock to figure out how much time do I have left.
Okay, next, make sure to provide context. So one of the things about your guest is they don't know
what your audience knows. I mean, maybe, maybe they're a regular listener. Most of the time,
that's not true. I mean, usually my guests have listened to some of my podcasts, but I make two
podcasts a week. It's a lot of podcasts. If you're not dedicated to this podcast, it's easy to fall behind. So most of my interviewees, you know,
are familiar with my podcast, but not all. But most of them haven't listened to all of them. So
they don't necessarily know what the audience knows or doesn't know. Also, there's a skill to
doing this podcast where I become very attuned on what, like, just, oh, for example, whenever we
reference a card, I've gone, okay, for example, whenever we reference a card,
I go, okay, I got to say what the card does.
I can't assume people know what the card does.
And there's a lot of assumptions people make.
Because when you do something day in, day out, and it's just second nature to you,
it's very easy to forget that that's not second nature to other people.
So another big role for me as an interviewer is making sure whenever the interviewee gets into the weeds
somewhere or starts talking about something that the audience might not know, that I want
to always lay down the context.
That it's my job to make sure that the audience understands.
Now, sometimes, depending on, some interviewees might be talented enough at doing interviews
that they're able to do that.
But you have to be pretty experienced at doing interviews
to self-regulate like that. Some can. But once again, it's a skill you build up from,
as I did a whole podcast on doing interviews. You know, if you do enough interviews, you start,
there's skills from being interviewed and there's skills from interviewing.
You have to assume as the interviewer, you know, that your interviewee, unless you really,
really know what they're capable of, you know, you want to make sure that you're filling in the gaps and you're
making sure the audience understands.
And that's explaining cards, explaining rules, sometimes in a story or actually the most
common case is somebody talks about work and they just say something as if everybody knows
what that is.
Like, well, hold a second.
Let me explain what that is, you know.
And even if, by the way, even if a lot of your audience knows what it is. Like, well, well, well, hold a second. Let me explain what that is, you know? And even if, by the way,
even if a lot of your audience knows what it is,
not all your audience.
I always want to talk to the,
I always want to assume
that my audience might not know things
because some portion won't know it.
And I'd rather people who know something
hear about it again
than the people who have no idea what it is
just be lost.
Okay.
Okay.
Number nine. know your podcasts. Keep it relevant. So I have a podcast about making magic. And so it is, it is not that I don't mind talking to people and
occasionally we can drift away, especially if it's tangential. But I want to make sure that like,
I know my audience. Look, I make my podcasts. I have
a sense of what I normally do. And I want to make sure that my interviews are not... It's fine that
they're different in the sense that there's content you might not get from my normal things,
that's why I'm doing them. But I want to make sure that it... I want to make sure an interview
on Drive to Work feels like a Drive to Work podcast. It doesn't feel like, well, now that
I'm interviewing people, it feels like a Drive to Work podcast. It doesn't feel like, well, now that I'm interviewing people,
it feels like something
completely different.
And so that is another reason
why I want to give context.
I want to explain things.
Why the topics I pick
I'm very careful about
trying to pick topics
that are more about
behind the scenes
and the making of magic.
Like the big, for example,
the thing my podcast has going for it
is I'm behind the scenes.
There really is no other magic podcast that's behind the scenes.
There's lots of other magic, like there's lots of podcasts that talk strategy or talk all sorts, you know, commander or whatever.
There's lots of podcasts that talk about other things.
My podcast, the thing that I can do that nobody, you know, what makes my podcast stand out is I'm talking about behind the scenes-scenes stuff in a very intimate, first-hand knowledge way that nobody else is.
And so that is my strength.
And when I'm doing the interviews, let's lean into that.
That's why my guests tend to be people who have first-hand experience with making magic.
Because those are the kind of guests, A, that I know, but B, that are providing content that makes sense for making,
I'm not making magic, making magic with my column, for Drive to Work.
But once again, in a larger sense, I mean, there's also me as, you know, Mark Griswolder,
that, you know, I have my sort of brand, if you will, when I'm talking about,
you know, I have my podcast, I have my articles, I have my blog, I have my social media,
that, you know, there's a
certain, if you're going, if you are entertained by me, there's a certain style and a certain,
you know, there's a certain personality that comes with it and there's a certain type of knowledge
that comes with it. And so I want to make sure that my podcast, like my other things, are in
line with what that is. And so part of doing the interview is making sure that the interview feels like, hey, it makes sense on drive to work.
Okay, number 10 is, and one of the most important strategies of being a good interviewer is understand the powers of your guests and bring them back.
You know, one of the things that I will do is whenever I interview somebody, not only am I trying to do a good interview, but I'm gauging them. I'm like, how dynamic of an interviewee are they? And the more dynamic
they are, the more I'm encouraged to pull them back. The more that we have good rapport,
the more that they have good stories to share, the more likely I am to go back to them. So
there are definitely some of my guests, for example, that have been on, you know, three,
four times and will be on more times just because they are people that are
usually one of two things, ideally both.
One is they're knowledgeable.
You know, they have a lot of first-hand experience on the way.
And second, that they are entertaining
and they sort of know how to interview.
You know, from time to time I'll have interviewers on
that aren't used to being interviewed
and, you know, they're a little bit more of a struggle.
Although, once again, it's my job as interviewer to make them as at ease as possible.
Like, I don't want you, the audience, knowing when I have a hard interview.
Like, I know when I have a hard interview.
And obviously, you know, one of the things about sort of having good interviews is building up a stockpile of interviewees that you know you can call.
And so like when I know I'm doing new things, I know where I can go. I know the people that,
you know, and the other thing is part of being a good interviewer is understanding the kind of
interview each interviewee will give. That I, like I talk a lot about how you want to tailor magic
sets. You know, when I, when I do vision design, I'm tailoring the set to the person I'm handing off to.
Then if I'm handing off a set to Eric Lauer,
I make a different set that I'm handing off to Dave Humphries
or Yanni Skolnick or Adam.
Depending on who I'm handing off to,
and a person,
then who I'm handing off to,
like, you know,
Ian Duke wants different things.
There's all these different set designers
that want different things
and will shine
depending on,
like,
you need to build them
the vision
that will maximize
them making a great design.
Podcasts are the same way
or interviews are the same way.
That if I interview
different people,
you know,
like, for example,
if I interview Eric Lauer,
Eric Lauer is a font of information. Eric Lauer is one of the smartest people I ever met, really, really
understands the inner workings of magic. And if you get an Eric Lauer interview, you're going to
hear all about how things click and how they come together. You're going to get in the mind of Eric
Lauer. Now, is Eric Lauer a great storyteller? No, not necessarily. Not his strength.
I mean, not that he can't tell a story, but like
where, for example, somebody
like Matt Place is a much better storyteller.
Matt's really good at telling stories.
And so, if I interview
Eric, I know that I'm getting more analytical
kind of content, which is
fine. It's fun. There's an audience that really
enjoys that. It's not that
Eric can't be a great interview. But I have to tailor what I'm doing to the person I'm
interviewing. And so that's important that part of being a good interviewer is understanding what
you're getting from the interviewee. And then, you know, once you recognize people that really
have content the audience really enjoys and can be interviewed like, there are some, I'm not going to be mean to you,
but there are some people that are really hard to interview.
Part of it might be their own nervousness.
Part of it might be just they're not very familiar,
or they don't have a lot of public speaking,
or it's something in which it's a little bit intimidating for them.
So some interviewees are tricky to do.
And part of my job as the interviewer
is to understand the strengths and weaknesses of whom interviewing.
The better the interviewee, the easier the interview is.
So it's not like I will obviously have on someone
who's the perfect guest that has all the knowledge I want, even if I know they're a little harder to interview. I will obviously have on someone who's the perfect guest that has all the knowledge I want,
even if I know they're a little harder to interview.
I will do that.
Because like I said,
a lot of the job of making that go smoothly
is the interviewer's job.
And so one of the nice things of doing a lot of interviews
is I've been getting better at interviewing
because, hey, do a lot of something,
you get better at it.
And I'm still improving.
You know, it's still something that I'm trying
to get better at all the time.
But anyway, guys, so that was today,
talking about interviews.
And so hopefully this is applicable
to other types of things.
This is true for any kind of interviews.
I'm talking magic particularly, but.
So anyway, one last time,
I'll go over my list.
So number one,
remember that the audience
is here to hear them.
Make sure they shine.
Number two is planning ahead
and doing your research
and make sure you pick a topic.
Number three is
make sure you discuss
structure with them
and your job is to
follow the structure
and make sure that happens.
Number four is
to keep it entertaining.
Don't let your interviewee get stuck in areas that might not be interesting to your audience. Number four is to keep it entertaining. Don't let your interviewee get
stuck in areas that might not be interesting to your audience. Number five is make sure you build
the rapport, you know, keep it entertaining, that the relationship between you can be very compelling.
Number six is to encourage stories and understand what makes an audio medium, what makes your
medium, whatever you're interviewing them for, what makes your medium tick? Where are you interviewing
them?
Number seven is keep it moving.
You want to make sure that, you know, you don't stall.
You want to keep it dynamic and figure out what you're talking about and make sure you keep moving along.
Number eight, make sure you provide content, sorry, context.
Make sure you provide context.
Make sure the audience understands what the interview is saying so they can put in the
bigger picture and it ties into, you know, my podcast at large in this case.
Number nine, know your podcast.
Keep it relevant to your audience.
Make sure that what you're talking about
is what your audience wants.
And then number 10, understand your guests.
You know, understand their strengths and weaknesses
and then bring back the guests
that are the great guests
because great interviewees
will do wonderful interviews
and take advantage of that.
Anyway, guys, that is all my content for today.
I hope you enjoyed it, but I'm now at work.
So we all know what that means.
It means it's the end of my drive to work.
Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.
I'll see you guys next time.
Bye-bye.