#60 - On Interviewing

It's an essay about one person asking questions and another answering them, and variations on this theme.

Hello, my friends,

Last week was hard but Michael’s recovery took a turn for the way better on Friday/Saturday — no more night screaming, no more pain meds, just your average 5-year-old in his “ignore the parents” era. So then, the big question: Will HMF be less weird because I’ve been getting enough sleep this week? I’d like to say no, but the answer is yes. I had a bunch of topic ideas on tap for you, but scrapped them all to write an essay about interviewing. Not job interviewing, but just interviewing in general. Hold on to your salad bowls, we’re about to take a plunge into interview theory!

Christian Slater and Brad Pitt in a still from the movie Interview with the Vampire (1994).

On Interviewing

Two people, talking. One of them is the interviewer, she asks the questions. The other is the interviewee, he answers. A dialogue that leads to the exchange of information. Sometimes there’s an audience. Sometimes it leads to a job. Sometimes to an arrest. The communication genre “interview” has many sub-genres that dictate the conventions. For instance, the “panel” has multiple interviewees (“panelists”) and one interviewer (“moderator”). The “investigation” can have the reverse: Multiple interviewers and one interviewee (job interviews have a similar set-up). The presence or absence of a result is also helps define the sub-genre. Investigations end in findings, job interviews in a decision, a reference interview in an answer, and a journalist’s interviews often — but not always — end in an article. An interview can seem like a conversation, but it’s different in many ways, not the least of which is the expected speaking time between the parties; the interviewee is typically supposed to speak more. Well, unless it’s a congressional panel or a cross-examination led by a bombastic attorney. As you can see, there’s a lot to dissect when it comes to interviews.

Though the breakdown above may seem dense, we actually understand the majority of it implicitly since we experience interviews fluidly throughout our lives. Consequently, we have probably served in each of the three roles (I hesitate to complicate things by adding a fourth role, auditor, as distinct from audience in that their oversight is purposeful and may lead to action including, but not limited to, participation (think a lawyer present during an interrogation)). Speaking of interrogations, a fascinating inroad into interview theory is the role of power in each sub-genre. Again, most of us can likely articulate the layout of power and its role in shaping an interview. As a society, we also have interviewers we rally around as an audience. Interlocutors that have, for various reasons, gained popular notice.

Let’s focus on our role as audience members for interviews whose purpose is education and entertainment. Note that these interviews mostly occur for the benefit of the audience. Sans audience, they would not take place. What are some qualities that make these interviews successful (where successful means that they meet the outcome of audience members leaving more educated, or having been entertained, or both)? Let’s leave the purely theoretical realm by looking at some examples:

• Tyler Cowen is an economics professor and author who interviews intellectuals various luminaries in their fields on his podcast, Conversations with Tyler. Thanks to Cowen’s own erudition combined with his research on guests (carefully reading their books, papers, listening to other interviews, etc.), he is able to ask probing and unexpected questions that pull interviewees into considering their work and lives in new and thoughtful ways.

• Joe Rogan and his forefather, Howard Stern, gained popularity due to the wide range of their guests, controversial subject matter, and idiosyncratic personalities. Independent of those qualities (which make both Rogan and Stern off-putting in equal measure), their interview styles had an easy-going, barroom banter-feel that, when coupled with seemingly endless time (Rogan’s interviews can last 3-4 hours!), allows guests to let their guards down and speak freely. This often leads to unexpected anecdotes, confessions, and deep dives into various topics.

• Lex Fridman is a machine learning researcher and podcast host. Fridman brings his curiosity to bear by guiding guests to topics and letting them delve on their own, providing prompts that facilitate engagement. Like Cowen, Fridman does the requisite research to understand what the hot spots are for his subjects and while he does not have the charismatic personality of his friend, Joe Rogan, he borrows the expansive time table of his show. For instance, I listened with interest to his nearly four-hour conversation with Olympic silver-medalist judoka, Travis Stevens, where they dissected Judo as a sport, and gave a detailed look at matches and moves.

So what are some commonalities that makes these interviewers successful? An understanding of guests, a willingness to ask unusual and surprising (and relevant) questions, the ability to balance the inclusion of their own personalities and opinions without overshadowing guests, and a sense of what’s interesting to audiences are just a few of the qualities that have led to their popularity.

A consideration of these qualities as well as the more specific techniques of master interviewers (the folks above don’t even scratch the surface of all the possible interviewer legends out there) are of particular interest to me because I too am a practitioner of the interview arts. As part of my professional duties, I have hosted, delivered presentations, and conducted interviews at around two hundred virtual events over the past few years. While I feel very comfortable speaking to large audiences, my interview skills are always in the process of improving. Whatever my lack of competence includes, it does not include one of the oft-neglected elements of interviewing: Curiosity.

At it’s core, the engine that drives an interviewer to progress in their work is an active desire to learn something the interviewee knows. Every question boils down to: What can you tell me about this that it’s only possible to hear from you right now in this magical moment? Of course, the responsibility of the interviewer is two-fold, to their own curiosity and to the information needs of the audience, so it’s really: What can you tell us about this…” Since, in practice, the interviewer is the voice of the audience, channeling their inquiring minds as well as, sometimes, their moral force. The latter is particularly true in interviews with high-profile people of dubious character (consider Gayle King’s interview with R. Kelly, for example). Everything resides in the power of questions.

Yet, it’s the skill of asking correctly-worded questions at the right time, with the right tone, and adapting to the circumstances as they arise that are the tests of an interviewer’s skill. Striving to create a quick rapport (especially if you haven’t met the interviewee before), and keep it for the hour or more that you’ll be talking. My mettle was tested years ago when I moderated a panel of sci-fi authors at a library conference. One of the writers, a man of some accomplishment and fame, began to take over the panel, grandstanding, and not letting the other panelists talk. Did I rein him in fast enough by casually interrupting and redirecting questions to the other panelists? I’d like to believe so.

The final aspect to cover before concluding this non-comprehensive look at interviews and interviewing is listening. Active listening is a critical communication skill in general, but even more so when it comes to being an interviewer. The task is two-tracked: 1) You are participating in a dialogue with someone and must respond physically (face and body) to the interaction, 2) Mentally, you are looking for the soul of each answer, deciding where to go from there, and maintaining the dual listener role as yourself and the audience. In some ways, an interviewer carries out not just active listening, but hyperactive listening. They are responsible for both the success of the interview and their role as a protector of the interviewee. The latter may be unexpected, but unmatched in importance: Can an interviewee provide honest and useful answers if they feel unsafe? Part of their well-being is knowing that regardless of anything else, the interviewer are listening.

“Conversation” by Sergey Solomko

Time Machine

Here’s what I wrote in HMF a year ago (in issue #7):

• 18 Going on 39: What I knew as a 38-year-old that I didn’t know as an 18-year-old.

• Comfort Food Campout: The positives of eating satisfying foods when camping.

• Shopping Cart Wisdom: The task of a parent: “[The child’s] job is to push and my job is to help point you in the right direction.”

p.s. - Some folks mentioned that they found issue #59 of HMF in their Spam folder last week. To avoid that possibility in the future, whitelist everything from substack.com.