Anyone who has had the pleasure of snooping through my YouTube history knows I watch a lot of interviews. Once you strip out all the sports best-of compilations and random concert videos, you're left with a pretty wild spattering of clips from The Howard Stern Show, The Zane Lowe Interview Series, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Graham Norton Show, The Jonathan Ross Show, Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway...the list goes on and on.
My fascination with interviews is partially just because there are a lot of people in the world that I find interesting, and I like hearing their thoughts in their own words. But the other part of this reaches back to the journalist inside me that will forever be intrigued at the art of a great interview. Just as much as I like listening to what the guest has to say, I love listening to how the host is framing the conversation to get those quotes out of the guest. This skill is not shared evenly, though: I think Howard Stern, Zane Low, and Kara Swisher are the best in the business at making sure every interview they conduct is compelling, while Jimmy Fallon finds a way to make every one of his interviews feel just awkward enough to be uncomfortable (even if I still enjoy watching them).
And I also think there are many occasions where a 10-minute interview of a person can tell you much more about them than an entire book they've written. When a person writes a book, they are presenting you with filtered thoughts. These thoughts have been written out, run through a refinery, changed, redacted, and then finally published for you to read. They're honest thoughts, but sometimes they can be too polished to feel authentic. None of these barriers exist in a good interview. Good interviewers find ways to reframe ideas and ask questions that disarm their guests just enough so that they say genuinely interesting things rather than blindly rehashing talking points.
There were a lot of parts about working as a journalist that I didn't enjoy, but interviewing people was never one of them. As nervous as they often made me beforehand, getting the chance to take 30 minutes and ask really amazing people about their lives led to so many unique experiences for me. But until I get the chance to do that again, I'll have to keep living vicariously through Howard Stern.
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