Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 38. Talk to Me: Interviews

In This Practice

• Knowing what to ask in an interview

• Dealing with legal releases

• Securing interviews with authorities and celebrities

• Looking for the unconventional interview subject

If you do a search on Amazon.com or hit your local bookstore of choice, you find a lot of books about interviewing. It might surprise you how many people have written books on how to sit down with someone and carry on a conversation with them because, after all, that's all an interview is, right?

Actually, an interview is a lot more than just asking the other person on the opposite end of the table, “So tell me, what do you do for a living?”

Body language, appropriate questions, and delivery of said appropriate questions are just a few things that are important and essential in making an interview a pleasant and positive experience for both the podcast host and the guest. An interview goes well beyond the questions asked; it's all about the experience shared. In this practice, you find out what is waiting for you under the thin candy shell surrounding a really good interview.

The Interview Query

You have two ways of asking people for an interview, and both require an outgoing personality to pull them off, and pull them off seamlessly. The “asking part” is perhaps one of the toughest hurdles for people to clear when asking for an interview. Yes, you may hear people like the GeekLabel Crew, Victor Caijao, and Leann Mabry say, “Just go up to them and ask . . ., “ but on meeting ...