A little inside baseball about how the Masters in Business podcasts are put together:
We do a lot of research into each individual guest, including their biographical background, their full professional curriculum vitae (CV), their published papers, books, etc. (Michael Batnick is an enormous help with this).
When all of our raw research is finished, it then must be organized into 5 radio segments: 7, 8, 6 and 11 minutes, plus the open-ended podcast segment. All told it ends up between 60-120 minutes of discussion.
Last thing we want to do is for me to merely read a list of questions; instead, I look to engage in an actual conversation. Note this is harder than it looks, and requires closely listening to what the guests are saying.
But because there are always so many specific issues I do not want to forget, we organize the research into a loose set of major bullet points. It is a fairly structured approach that balances the highlights but allows for spontaneous discussion of related points. It has taken me quite a while to, if not master the format, then certainly, to learn how to operate within those confines.
Unlike the actual interviews themselves, the podcast intros are spontaneous, improvised, free-flowing stream of consciousness, usually recorded right after the interview when I am alone in the radio booth. You can sometimes hear I get a little over enthusiastic, especially after a really great session. My goal is to keep them short and sweet, about two to three minutes, but occasionally longer.
Every now and again, I go off the rails, and simply babble way too long –it just becomes a giant run on sentence. Occasionally something odd or funny or amusing happens, and I feel compelled to share that.
This intro to my Danny Kahneman interview (MiB here) is a perfect example. At 5:28, it was way too long — that’s why we didn’t use it — but it’s a lovely story about Danny, and since we reran that this past weekend, I thought it was worth sharing.
click for audio
