the people that are listening that want to go from zero i don't have a podcast to 50 i'm now a semi-competent podcaster like that's great there are resources out there i'm interested in talking to the people that want to go from 90 to 95 or from like 95 to 100. one of the main things that i wanted to talk with you about today is just the art of the podcast interview um because i think you have a lot of value to add there based on what you said in terms of the energy and the time
that you're devoting you know you're hiring coaches you're thinking about this stuff constantly how can i continually improve and not cringe when i listen back you know it might be the case that you always cringe when you listen back to your old interviews and that's a good thing because it shows that you're continually improving uh but you've said that you know to record a truly excellent interview you need to be able to ride the crest of the noi you know rather than reading off a big list of of scripted questions and just to be honest
with you like i find that terrifying because you know i like to be able to prepare and control and have like you know i don't like stepping into the unknown in an interview and obviously you do need to do some prep for interviews you can't just rock up and go right we're just going to wing it and see what happens but how do you strike that balance like of getting the right amount of prep but also letting the conversation flow naturally it's a really good question man like this is for me the people that are
listening that want to go from zero i don't have a podcast to 50 i'm now a semi-content podcaster like that's great there are resources out there i'm interested in talking to the people that want to go from 90 to 95 or from like 95 to 100 and this is one of the things that i think around about maybe the 80 80th percentile like 90th percentile people really start to dig into this balance between structure and free flow um for me personally i i actually think i've probably started to over prepare um a little bit too
much uh within the last year that's been a function of having a lot of people on the show that i don't specifically know what they're talking about so if i'm introduced to behavioral genetics by robert plowman like the guys studied 20 000 twins in the most clinically detailed twins in adoption study in history and i'm new to the the topic but i i i feel like i need more of a support structure but a lot of the time i get into the show and i'm actually like nah like i don't i don't need that i
don't actually need it um some i went through because it was constant three episodes a week most of them about books a lot of those about scientific communication on a huge variety of topics with very little crossover um i basically had a lot of the time like a day and a half to learn an entire body of work so with that i i felt like i needed more of a support structure i'm actually now dialing that back and i'm purposefully reducing the amount of notes that i take into an episode and i am just going
to find whatever's optimal for me with that but yeah i think overall you know if you are in if you're a competent podcaster and you're looking to really sort of double this down just play around with it the same ways you might play around with different tactics in a sports game and i often think of it like this like no sports team in history has gone out on the field without some plays in their pocket but a lot more teams are able to free flow than others and just because this game today maybe ended up
you know maybe you didn't perform quite so well but maybe that's because you tried to stick to a really rigid set of rules and then you learn from it and you're like okay that's too much that's way too much like i'm trying to read all of these questions off or you do the converse and you're like i didn't know what i was talking about and i got lost and i floundered around like that's also that's that's not enough and you find your sweet spot between it um my number one piece of advice really i still
now i hate the intro to a podcast it's always weird it's always awkward especially if you record a pre-recorded pre-roll so if you do the foreplay for the episode off-camera and then you meet the guest and you spend five minutes with them going like hey mate here am i random human from the internet that's going to talk to you about this thing and i need you to be comfortable with me and you try and make some jokes or whatever and like get them to like open up a little bit and then you're like three two
one robert ploman welcome to the show and then you're in and you're like so i always have the first thing that i say is always uh written out the first question that i have is almost always written out unless it's a very good friend so if it's a michael mallis or if it's a johnny and yousef like my buddies um i'm sweet i can just say like what you're wearing that for or what have you been doing today or whatever comes to mind but just getting yourself into that um is a good part of conversation
craft i would also i think it's a good idea to give the guest room to breathe so and this is something that i've only learned since being a guest on more shows that um have you ever seen someone do a a 2k time trial on a ski on a rowing a rowing erg so the way that they actually start the momentum off is they do a bunch of little fast strokes so they like pull pull pull pull pull like it's like this sort of cadence where they build up to the long ones and i actually
think that you know a couple of kind of like dumb back and forth questions and then a big fat one that the guests can sink their teeth into about two minutes in like let them speak let them stop let them speak let them stop and then just let them go with like so robert let's say that no one's somebody that's listening has never heard of behavioral genetics before like how do you describe what behavioral genetics is it doesn't have to be that basic it can still it can be something really complex that's a really like
kind of a bit of a cringe like openings it's just so obvious but just give the guests like something because they're nervous as well and even if they're super confident they just you just want to get them into the flow my vocal coach told me about this you know you want to get the larynx moving up and down you want to get their facial muscles moving nicely and that's when after a little while you can get like bang bang bang bang bang bang like you can start to move more quickly backward and forward but you
don't want to do that straight off the bat i don't think um so yeah that's that's some things man like bit of structure work out what works for you give the guests like something easy to get started on maybe have a little bit of a back and forth in the beginning and then just give them room to breathe and then you can start to come back in and then you can start to have a discussion
