No safety net: the particular thrill of live interviewing

Please see below for Questions for Readers. The main one is whether you prefer consuming an interview via audio / video or by the written word. This video is unedited so it’s not an entirely fair question. Still, do you have a preference?

After five years of podcasting¹, I’ve left audio interviewing behind, choosing instead to interview [b]old women in a written Q&A format. But there are things I miss about the in-the-moment thrill of a live interview. So when my former podcast producer Julie-Roxane² and I caught up recently, we decided to look at the phenomenon of “live” interviewing more closely. What are the advantages and disadvantages of audio vs. print? Of creating vs. consuming these different mediums? To any Substack writers who produce audio or written interviews, this conversation might be particularly relevant. 

It’s uncanny how our 40-year age difference (she’s 32; I’m 72) melts away when we’re on a Zoom together. We’re almost always in agreement about unraveling the topics of [b]old age, creativity, and how to live authentically. But not surprisingly, given our age difference, we have varying levels of comfort in different mediums. She’d rather listen to an interview conversation than read it on the page. I can do both but find I’m less satisfied listening to a wandering, unstructured conversation. This could also be due to our personalities. JR, as I call her, is the definition of an open-hearted, nonjudgmental, patient individual. I’m a less generous person, less patient, and perhaps most importantly, have always identified myself as a words-on-the-page person.

What Julie-Roxane and I talk about

In this 15-minute video, she and I talk about the differences between listening, watching, and reading a Q&A interview. We talk about meeting subscribers where they are, about how much time it takes to read vs. listen, about audio and multi-tasking while you’re walking or doing dishes, about the complete focus and pleasure of reading, about what goes on behind the scenes of a written interview (hello editor

Erin Shetron

!), about experimenting as a creator and writer, and about the creativity of being in-the-moment in a podcast interview. 

Creator or consumer?

The biggest difference between these mediums, JR points out, is whether you are creating or consuming. On the creator side, producing a written interview is a lot more work in her opinion (I concur), whereas recording an audio interview is generally once-and-done. As a content consumer, she prefers “the flow” of an in-person, two-person conversation; for her a written interview is better suited to what she calls “self-inquiry… one person going deep into their experience.” 

Her comments sparked the realization that, as much as I am a writing perfectionist, accustomed to iterative revising and tweaking, I became addicted to the thrill of no safety net when I was an audio creator; I was also terrified, every time, as I pressed the record button to start a live interview. What would happen?! My podcast guest and I were unrehearsed, with no script (although as a practiced journalist I always prepared questions in advance). My role as a podcast host was to keep the conversation on track but also to make it feel as unguarded and surprising as possible. It was a creative balancing act I grew to love–and that I got good at!

The advantages of imperfection

So, yes, I miss that thrill. I also miss being okay with imperfection. That’s one of the biggest lessons you learn as a podcaster (and that JR taught me). Not every episode is going to be great; you learn to live with that and focus instead on the next one. This conversation with her is prompting me to think more along those lines for this newsletter. Not every post is going to connect with readers, not every post is going to be flawlessly written. So as a writer who has just wrapped a five-year-long podcast, I want to challenge myself to get more creative; I want to experiment and take advantage of Substack’s multimedia features. 

About today’s video

Now that Substack is pushing writers to add more video and audio to their newsletters, this seemed like the perfect moment to take up the question of audio/video vs. words-on-a-page with JR. The video above is unedited and uneven in sound and lighting. It’s exactly 16 minutes long because I couldn’t stand the thought of making you sit through anything longer. You get to “see” and “hear” me and JR in a way that you can’t through the written word. Does that add anything? What are your preferences? I really want to hear from you!

3 questions for readers

• Do you prefer reading written interviews or listening to them via podcast/video?

• What elements of newsletters are enjoyable as audio/video, and what do you prefer to see kept as written words?

• Is this video conversation a nice change of pace for you? Can you overlook the video’s poor production values (uneven lighting and sound)?

 

1. After five years and 100-plus episodes, I’ve halted my [B]OLD AGE podcast. You can listen and learn more about the final episode here. 

2. French-born Julie-Roxane Krikorian, who describes herself as a retreat facilitator, a chef, and a spiritual midwife, was my podcast producer for five years. She and her husband, Alasdair Plambeck, produced over 200 episodes of their own podcast, FAR OUT.