{"id":13623,"date":"2020-09-29T10:38:51","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T17:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/?p=13623"},"modified":"2020-09-29T10:46:27","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T17:46:27","slug":"what-i-look-for-in-podcast-guests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/29\/what-i-look-for-in-podcast-guests\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Look for in Podcast Guests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/podcast\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-1024x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-13624\" width=\"200\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/SCM-square-medium.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">People often suggest guests to appear on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.preposterousuniverse.com\/podcast\/\">Mindscape<\/a> &#8212; which I very much appreciate! Several of my best conversations were with people I had never heard of before they were effectively suggested by someone. Suggestions could be made here (in comments below), or on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/seancarroll\/\">subreddit<\/a>, or on Twitter or anywhere else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My policy is not to comment on individual suggestions, but it might be useful for me to lay out what I look for in potential Mindscape guests. Hopefully this will help people make suggestions, and lead to the discovery of some gems I would have otherwise overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Obviously I&#8217;m looking for smart people with interesting ideas. Most episodes are idea-centered, rather than &#8220;let&#8217;s talk to this fascinating person,&#8221; although there are exceptions.<\/li><li>I&#8217;m more interested in people doing original idea-creation, rather than commentators\/journalists\/pundits (or fellow podcasters!). Again, there are always exceptions &#8212; nobody can complain when I talk to Carl Zimmer about inheritance &#8212; but that&#8217;s the tendency.<\/li><li>Hot-button topical\/political issues are an interesting case. I&#8217;m not averse to them, but I want to focus on the eternal big-picture concerns at the bottom of them, rather than on momentary ephemera. Relatedly, I&#8217;m mostly interested in talking with intellectuals and analysts, not advocates or salespeople or working politicians.<\/li><li>I&#8217;m happy to talk with big names everyone has heard of, but am equally interested in lesser-known folks who have something really interesting to say.<\/li><li>Sometimes it should be clear that I&#8217;m already quite aware of the existence of a person, so suggesting them doesn&#8217;t add much value. Nobody needed to tell me to ask Roger Penrose or Dan Dennett on the show.<\/li><li>I like to keep things diverse along many different axes, most especially area of intellectual inquiry. Obviously there is more physics than on most people&#8217;s podcasts, but there will rarely if ever be two physics episodes in a row, or even two in the same month. Likewise, if I do one episode on a less-frequent topic, I&#8217;m unlikely to do another one on the same topic right away. (&#8220;That episode on the semiotics of opera was fine, but you need to invite the <em>real<\/em> expert on the semiotics of opera\u2026&#8221;) More generally, podcast episodes should be of standalone interest, not responses to previous podcast episodes.<\/li><li>I am very happy to talk with people I disagree with, but only if I think there is something to be learned from their perspective. I want to engage with the best arguments against my positions, not just with any old arguments. Zero interest in debating or debunking on the podcast. If I invite someone on, I will challenge them where I think necessary, but my main goal is to let them put forward their case as clearly as possible.<\/li><li>Corollary: someone is not worth engaging with merely because they make claims that <em>would<\/em> be extremely important if they were true. There has to be some reason to believe, in the minds of some number of reasonable people, that they could actually be true. My goal is not to clean up all the bad ideas on the internet.<\/li><li>Obvious but often-overlooked consideration: the person should be good on podcasts! This is a tricky thing. Clearly they should be articulate and engaging in an audio-only format. But also there&#8217;s an art to giving answers that are long enough to be substantive, short enough to allow for give-and-take. Conversation is a skill. (Though Fyodor Urnov barely let me get a word in edgewise, and he was great and everyone loved him, so maybe I should take the hint.)<\/li><li>This is a long list, but the most useful guest suggestions include not just a person&#8217;s name, but some indication that they satisfy the above criteria. A brief mention of the ideas they have and evidence that they&#8217;d be a good guest is extremely helpful.<\/li><li>None of these rules is absolute! I&#8217;m always happy to deviate a little if I think there is a worthwhile special case.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks again for listening, and for all the suggestions. I am continually amazed at the high quality of guests who have joined me, and at the wonderful support from the Mindscape audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People often suggest guests to appear on Mindscape &#8212; which I very much appreciate! Several of my best conversations were with people I had never heard of before they were effectively suggested by someone. Suggestions could be made here (in comments below), or on the subreddit, or on Twitter or anywhere else. My policy is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13623"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13628,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13623\/revisions\/13628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}