Podcasters and Journalists Share How They Interview Guests on Their Podcasts

By Sng Ler Jun

Hosting a podcast is no easy feat. Sure, there are myriad ways to find content for your podcast, such as hashing out some of society’s most controversial topics. But many podcasters would argue that the crème de la crème of podcasting is having special guests over to mull over new topics or themes together — just like what we are doing at Podlab, where esteemed podcasters congregate and host insightful conferences for aspiring podcasters in the region.

When it comes to interviewing guests on your podcast, there are plenty to consider. From building rapport with your guests to prepping them up, you can never be certain with the responses you gather or how they might react to some of your questions. There is nothing worse than having a conversing with someone who may turn out to be a try-hard and attempt to oversell their products (or services).

In this blog article, we spoke to some of Asia’s best podcasters (some of whom are journalists too) who shared with us some nifty tips and tricks they use to interview guests.

Find interesting people

When it comes to selecting potential guests for your podcast, you have got to be picky. Find individuals who go against the grain to make the impossible possible, seek out those who dare to do things differently. After all, interesting people yield interesting content, and the laypersons dig these juicy stories.

Research, research, research!

Now that you have secured some podcast guests, you have got to get to know who they are and what they do. And yes, that means doing background research on your profiles. Some tips include finding out what some of their notable achievements are or what they have been saying on social media.

Trawl their social media, read news articles or blog stories about them, Google around for what people are saying about them. You would be surprised at what you might gather from such primary research.

“Research the hell out of your guests and try to come up with angles that would prove valuable to your audiences. Answer this question: ‘What can the guest offer me that I can then offer my audience?’ “says Kelvin Tay from Renegade Radio.

Tell your own story

When interviewing somebody, it is important to establish rapport. You can get the ball rolling by finding common ground to land your feet on. To do so, you can consider sharing a personal anecdote with your guest and see if your guests relate in any way. This strategy is commonly adopted by Peng Han, the lead podcaster at StoryFM. He says: “Start with your own story. It helps build trust. Once your listeners trust you, you will get excellent tapes.”

Play the silent chicken

Journalist Nathaniel Fetalvero has seen his fair share of interviewing esteemed profiles. He shares with the team at Asia Podcast Festival, “One of my favourite interview techniques is to play awkward silence chicken where you leave a couple of seconds of silence before affirming an interviewee’s response or asking a follow-up question.”

According to him, when this technique is done right, you may get interviewees to elaborate more on their answers or spill the beans (especially when you’re trying to get them to dish dirt on something). He adds: “People hate awkward silence by nature, and they’ll do almost anything to break it.”

Avoid asking the obvious

It may be tempting to ask the obvious, but Malik Alimoekhamedov, the co-founder of tech platform Zvook, caution otherwise. The Belgium-based entrepreneur adds: “The more people get interviewed, the more irritated they become with hearing the same stupid or "low hanging fruit" kinds of questions.”

Make it a character study

Think of each interview like a story. You want to let your guests share interesting tidbits about themselves and you have limited time to do so. Skip the obvious questions (‘What are you best known for?’ or ‘Tell me more about yourself.’) and dive into the meat! Listen to previous interviews, whether they are from a podcast or a TV show, and figure out questions they have never been asked before.

“Ask about what their work truly represents. Get them to share what they really want to talk about. Ask the questions nobody has asked them before,” says Nikesh Murali, a podcaster from India’s most critically acclaimed storytelling podcast Indian Noir.

Of course, it would help if you could provide your guests with a list of questions before the interview so they can better prepare for it.

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 Keen to learn more? Learn more at Asia Podcast Festival.