Between his nationally-syndicated NPR show Bullseye, his popular podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go! and his job as acting bailiff on Judge John Hodgman (not to mention his role as the Maximum Fun podcast network’s paterfamilias), Jesse Thorn is one of the most recognizable radio voices of his generation. Now he’s tapping his peers and contemporaries to launch a new podcast about the art of the interview.
This new project, The Turnaround, is being launched in conjunction with the Columbia Journalism Review and will be releasing two episodes a week throughout the summer. Thorn has managed to talk to true masters of the art of the interview, including Katie Couric, Larry King, Marc Maron, and even Dick Cavett. Through the podcast, these titans will share their expertise and knowledge, and shed some light on why and how they excel at the thing they love.
I got to sit down with Thorn at the Maximum Fun HQ in Los Angeles, and got to observe some of his fastidious tracking of intros and interstitials for The Turnaround, which was mere days away from launching.
So, I’m supposed to interview a professional interviewer about his podcast about interviewing, why it’s a lost art, and no one knows how to do interviews anymore. So there’s no pressure on me, for sure. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about the podcast coming out. Is it a limited run?
We’re basically doing two episodes a week for July and August, and that’s going to be it. I don’t have plans to make any money from the show, and I don’t have plans to make more of them. Although I guess if Nardwuar emailed and said he was down [to be on an episode] — he previously declined politely — I guess I would get back in the studio. It’s a total of 15 or 16 episodes, each one a conversation with one person who I admire as an interviewer.
Have you been working on this for a while now?
I kind of had the idea as a sort of ersatz journalism school for myself. And I thought it would make a great project for our production fellows here at the office. And so, I don’t know … months and months and months ago, maybe even a year ago almost, I talked to Kara, our production fellow, and said, “Does this sound like a cool project to you? Would be into producing this?” And she said yes.
The first person I talked to, I think, was Anna Sale from Death, Sex and Money, WNYC’s great show. And we were sort of picking them off here and there over months, and then about a month ago we just did a whole bunch of them. So it was sort of like having two jobs at once. Now the [episodes are] basically all done. Other than Dick Cavett, who’s at his summer home at the moment and had some laryngitis the day we were going to record, so we’ve got to find a new time to talk Dick Cavett. Besides that, everything’s in the can. So it’s all over but the sharing, I guess.
And how did the Columbia Journalism Review get involved?
I thought it would be nice… When I thought about who would enjoy this podcast, I think there was a part of me that is always kind of translating things for a general audience. I mean, that’s like part of what I do on both sides: interview people that have these particular passionate fan bases, and try and do an interview that will be enjoyable to them and also enjoyable to people who have never heard of this person before. When you do an arts and culture show in 2017, the reality is that the artists and culture makers who are most important to us are also people that our sister or cousin might never had heard of in their entire life.
And so I sort of took that approach to this show, and thought I would like this to be a show that is valuable to people who are in the position that I was in 15 years ago when I started doing my show. At the same time that it’s fun and interesting to listen to it, it’s just a peek behind the curtain for people who are interested in these guests.
And so I wanted to have a partner in presenting the show who had the journalism credibility that I lack, because I really wanted to bring it to professional journalists. I wanted to say, “What can we learn from these masters of this thing that we do?” And I knew that unless those professional journalists happened to be listening to my work as the fake bailiff on the Judge John Hodgman podcast, maybe I should bring in a ringer.
But you’ve been a professional radio host for so many years now. You still feel that you don’t have journalistic credibility?
Yeah, totally I don’t have journalistic credibility. I am like… For one thing, I’ve only thought of myself as a journalist the past few years. And really the only reason is when I moved from my old distributor to NPR, they told me that I had to be a journalist according to their ethics guidelines. Whereas previously, they had said, “Eh, you’re an entertainer.” And I was glad to do that, but it made me think of the work that I was doing in a different way.
I think that my show Bullseye in some ways sits on the line between journalism and entertainment. There is a certain amount of… you’re getting a certain amount of fiber in every bite. It is an actual show that is intended to have genuine insight into culture and how it’s made. But at the same time, I goof around a lot more than Terry Gross does.
But I feel that she goofs around on the Terry Gross scale.
Well, yeah, no. I was just listening to a show where Terry Gross was doing a little gentle goofing. I always love it when Terry makes a little joke, or just when she’s really enjoying something, you can tell.
When you were getting together a show about interviewers, about interviewing who were your “must gets”?
Terry Gross, Terry Gross, and Terry Gross. I had invited her onto my show a few times and received very polite demurrals. And so there were people that I thought of immediately who I knew I could get. Marc Maron is my friend and practically my neighbor. Susan Orlean is my pal and she guest-hosted Bullseye. Ira Glass is always really, really kind with sharing his very limited time with me when I need to bother him.
But then there were other people who were a stretch. I mean, I don’t know Larry King. And you know, we sent out those invitations, and some of them came back “no.” Nardwuar wasn’t feeling well. Oprah is busy in her money bath. We received polite “no”s from a few people, but I was kind of shocked at how many people said “yes.”
I mean, there were a few people that we would have like to have had on the show. We couldn’t figure out the scheduling with Elvis Mitchell. Barbara Walters is retired, like, for real. But almost everyone that I asked said yes, and I think it’s because people are just excited to share their expertise. I don’t think that journalists are often asked to talk about what they know, and they want to share it with people.
What do you think people get most wrong about interviewing, and why do you feel it’s so rare for there to be good interviewers these days?
I think … my guess is that people imagine one of two situations. This is almost based on what people tell me they think goes into making a comedy podcast, or a sketch comedy performance, or an improv performance, or a standup performance, because people are much more willing to tell you what they think was going to happen, or tell you how they think it all was conceived. They’ll just tell you: they’re drunk, that’s why.
But I think that probably people imagine more of the two poles. They either imagine that it is the genuine conversation it’s represented as, which is to say that it is the same as the conversation that you might have with a person you sat down next to on an airplane; that it is purely natural and fluid. Or that it is like when Bill Walsh coached the 49ers, they would script the first 20 offensive plays. That what interviewing is, is like sitting down, writing questions, then going through the list. And in truth, it is a very dynamic conversation of those things. So I wanted to illuminate that to some extent, but also the extent to which each of these people has a different objective in their work.
Susan Orlean is looking for a very different thing in a conversation than Dick Cavett is, or Terry Gross is. Ira Glass talked about spending hours conversing with people trying to find one piece of tape to use in a story, one moment that is sparkly enough to be put in there. Larry King spent decades doing live radio and television where his goal the entire time is to make every moment sparkly. There can be no letdown because people will turn it off and there’s no editing it out.
I also wanted to look at the question of what makes a good interview from all of these different perspectives, because I had only had experience with my own.
From your personal experience, what would you say is the most vital advice that you could give to a prospective host or interviewer?
It’s so corny to say this, but the thing that I recognized in talking to all of these people was how sincerely curious they were. That they wanted to know the answers to their questions. They just wanted to learn more about the world and were engaged in the world, and wanted to ask somebody who knew, somebody who was an expert. Whether it was a matter of that person being an expert in some technical field or in foreign policy, or whether that person was simply an expert in their own experience, in their own personal lived experience, they wanted to ask.
So I think the most important thing is to care about the person that you’re talking to and care about what they have to say, and not fake that. I mean, Katie Couric said to me, “When I sit down for an eight-minute daytime television interview, I feel like that person is the only person in the world for that eight minutes. I want them to feel that I am the only person in the world for that eight minutes.” And that is a ridiculous thing to say, and I believe it a hundred percent because that is what she’s a genius of. And that takes… that’s hard. It takes a kind of emotional engagement with the world that is very difficult for most people, certainly for me, to generate. So that open-hearted curiosity has to be there.
What’s the key to delivering the perfect NPR voice?
[Laughs.] I think I have far from the perfect NPR voice. I think I just sound like a smug jerk. You know, people have different particular ideas about what NPR voice is. For some people, it’s the kind of mannered naturalism of This American Life, which is its own kind of world of aesthetics. And there’s no doubt that one of the things that Ira curates is distinctive modes of speech. The iconic stars of the early days of This American Life all were iconic because of, not just their voices, but also the way that they used their voices. David Sedaris, David Rakoff, Sarah Vowell, Sandra Tsing Loh… they all have these amazing, distinctive voices.
I think there is also the quiet, considered NPR news host’s voice. It is like a less… stentorian version of a classic newscaster’s voice. And people are so used to hearing hot talk or deejays on the radio and the most absurdly performative of voices, that just hearing a quiet, normal voice feels like a hushed tone being whispered into their ear. Because if they press the AM-FM button someone is yelling at them about buying baby chicks. So that is the other usual NPR voice.
But I am a big advocate of expanding the breadth of NPR voices, so I love to hear all kinds of NPR voices. And I am grateful that I am a white dude, and thus face a relatively small amount of the criticism of my voice that some of my peers do. I was just listening to my conversation with Audie Cornish, who’s one of the hosts of All Things Considered, as I was driving to work today. And as I was listening to her, I was thinking, “God, Audie Cornish has a beautiful voice.” And I know for a fact that — partly because of her gender, partly because of her race, and partly because millions of people listen to her every day — Audie gets huge amounts of criticism for her voice.
I’m a big advocate of all kinds of voices. My favorite NPR voices are Wade Goodwyn, who reports from Texas and has a beautiful accent. And Mike Pesca, who is actually no longer at NPR; he’s now at Slate. But Mike talks like a New York sports radio guy, but he is also as sharp as anyone who’s ever been a reporter or host at NPR.
And I love when there’s a surprising voice on NPR. I also think… I also resent when people say things about NPR names. I challenge those people if they work in a diverse workplace, to just read out loud the names of their co-workers and see if it sounds like an NP … if it seems like crazy NPR names. Also, most of the time crazy NPR names just means non-Anglophonic names.
Who are your favorite Maximum Fun voices?
Oh, my favorite Maximum Fun voices?
Or, if not that, I know Maximum Fun podcasts are mostly conversations, not necessarily interviews — but are there people at Max Fun where, when you hear they have an interview, you’re very excited? Are there different interviewers or people that you look forward to from the family?
That’s an interesting question. One of my favorite voices to hear is Oliver Wang, who is a long-time panelist on Bulleye‘s sister show, Pop Rocket and with whom we’re working on a new show right now, because he has a classic, beautiful announcer’s voice. And there are so few classic, beautiful announcer’s voices in podcasting, but it’s just thrilling. With a tip of the cap to all of the Planet Money voices in podcasting and how wonderful all of them are, I do like hearing somebody with like a deep, thick voice. That’s really exciting to me to hear.
I would say, in terms of interviewing, one of the people that I love the most is not on an interview show at all. But Graham Clark, who’s one of the hosts of one of our comedy shows, Stop Podcasting Yourself, is such a genuinely curious guy about the lives of others that every episode of Stop Podcasting Yourself gets me completely fascinated in a random, Canadian improvisor who’s the guest on their show. Not random to them; they’ve won the best comedy podcast award for Canada a number of times. I guess maybe these are important Canadians to Canadians. But someone I’ve never heard of, I can become completely wrapped up in their lives and their personal dramas because Graham wants to hear about them.
And I host a show with a very similar format, Jordan, Jesse, Go! and I think maybe just because I’m so tired of interviewing people all day. On Jordan, Jesse, Go! Jordan and I basically just bring a guest into the booth and are like, “Okay. Here we go. Keep up.” And I’m so grateful for the patience and curiosity of Graham on Stop Podcasting Yourself. And Dave Shumka is host as well, but Graham often leads the charge. It’s just always a joy to hear.
The Turnaround launches on Apple Podcasts and Maximum Fun today, June 22. You can subscribe at this link.
