The interview is the staple of journalism. It gives us information, opinion, perspective, background. Gossip. Anecdotes. Okay, so, just about everything. The best interviews are free-flowing conversations that while being purposive also allow for a natural movement of ideas in both directions. There’s acknowledgement and exchange, points made and countered, assertions questioned and explored, all to gain insights that only truly open dialogue can provide.
There is distinct pleasure in listening to a conversation between two competent and articulate people — one skilled in the art of asking engaging questions and the other representing a wealth of domain knowledge and experience. And it gets even better when the distinction between the journalist and expert get blurred, opening up the subject in unanticipated ways.
A large number of interviews we watch or read or listen to in Indian mainstream media tends to be one-sided, in that someone asks the questions (usually the journalist) and someone offers the responses (the ‘expert’ or ‘source’).
Very often the one-sidedness slides into deference, even plain obsequiousness, and we are left with something substantially less than a conversation. Also, the time or space-bound formats of most genres don’t really encourage exploration.
The Ezra Klein Show, the eponymous podcast by Vox Media co-founder and editor-at-large, has held on to a place in the iTunes top 100 podcasts (see-sawing between 65 and 82) precisely because it does what most interviews don’t do.
Long and lovely
The episodes are long (an hour or so), reflective, meandering, unpredictable, and Klein very often challenges and disagrees with his guest... but in a way that moves the conversation ahead. Klein aims to ‘get into the heads’ of the people he speaks to, mostly famous or successful individuals from a range of fields — politics, media, culture, academia — people described by the show as ‘newsmakers and power players’.
To achieve this entry into their headspace, he seems to do a prodigious amount of preparation, getting deep into the subject in general as well as into his interviewee’s work in particular. The questions therefore are not only pointed, but suggest that Klein has thought enough about it all to have opinions of his own, which he uses to counter or clarify points made by the guest.
In its 192 episodes (at the time of writing), the show has featured conversations with both famous and not-so-famous individuals, including such notables as Barrack Obama, Melinda Gates and Francis Fukuyama as well as those with a significant niche following such as stand-up comedian Hasan Minhaj, fantasy writer N.K. Jemisin and tech philosopher Jaron Lanier (who has been a guest more than once).
Klein notes in an introduction to one of the recent episodes: “I love that on this podcast, downloads are not correlated with the fame of whoever is talking.”
The latter three, in fact, are among my favourite episodes, each offering a different aspect of Klein’s felicity as an interviewer. The Hasan Minhaj episode (December 13, 2018) might be of special interest to Indian listeners who follow comedy, for his views on growing up in two cultures and the perspective this gives him on politics and on people, and his unique ‘take’ on contemporary issues.
Klein describes this as one of the episodes he had the most fun doing. Much like the conversation with Jemisin (re-posted December 31, 2018), where he engages her in an exercise of fantasy world building.
The interaction with Jaron Lanier, on the other hand, despite being punctuated by much laughter and light banter, is a sobering reflection on social media, and it’s one of those where Klein often disagrees with his guest.
What makes these conversations so good to listen to, even when one may not be particularly connected to the issues discussed? Apart from the level of preparation that goes in, it’s the choice of interviewees — engaging speakers who aren’t afraid to be challenged, and in fact seem to enjoy being pushed to rethink their arguments.
Klein explains, in a prelude to an episode featuring Chris Anderson of TED, “Before a conversation can be meaningful to someone, they have to want that conversation to be meaningful.” Both parties must be open-minded and willing to encounter — and consider — the unexpected. Sometimes, though, this ends up in a situation where we listen to a lot of Klein — and somewhat less of the guest than we would like! But then again, the show does carry his name.
(A fortnightly series on podcasts.)
The Hyderabad-based writer and academic is a neatnik fighting a losing battle with the clutter in her head.