What I Am Listening To: Interviews

I started posting some lists on an earlier version of this blog That was called Evenings in Paradelle) about programs that I enjoy listening to on the radio, online, back then on my mp3 player or phone. “Podcast” was not the common term then. (The term appears in 2004.)

On this blog, I have done podcast lists. I think there may be more podcasts that I classify as interviews than any other category.  I have done other posts about What I Am Listening podcast lists on music, film and TV, poetry, books, and news. Some of those earlier shows are interviews around a topic, such as movies, but today’s list is shows that have a range of guests interviewed.

• WTF with Marc Maron – is one of the best-known interview podcasts. Marc is very good at interviewing and has a variety of guests (including President Barack Obama). I will confess that I sometimes fast-forward through his intros when he’s updating standup gigs he has upcoming and listen for his guitar riff intro to the actual interview. But it’s all good and get gets unusual guest and gets to unusual places with them. He started this show in his garage and even now in a new place it has a garage band feel to it.
• Here’s the Thing – Hosted by Alec Baldwin, these interviews go wide with authors, actors, musicians, journalists, and anyone that interests him. He is a very good interviewer.
• Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend – Conan interviews a variety of celebrities assisted by Sona Movsesian, and producer, Matt Gourley.
• The Treatment – began as film interviews but also guests from other fields like art, entertainment and pop culture. It is hosted by Elvis Mitchell.
• In Our Time – comes from the BBC and host Melvyn Bragg gathers a few experts (often academics) to discuss a wide range of topics in the history of ideas.  It goes from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, to Longitude, the Late Devonian extinction, or the Rosetta Stone. Sound lofty but it is quite accessible.
• ID1OT – The name looks like “idiot” but it’s not. Host Chris Hardwick started this show under the title Nerdist. He does long-form interviews with all kinds of folks, though entertainment is the broad label for the guests. Examples: Matt Damon, Billy Crystal, John Cleese, Molly Tuttle, Dr. Jane Goodall and Linda and Drew Scott.
• Armchair Expert – This weekly podcast is hosted by actors Dax Shepard and Monica Padman and they interview celebrities, journalists, and academics. Even if the guest is known for one thing – like acting – the interview almost always goes in unlikely places. Dax started in 2018 with his wife, actress Kristen Bell, as the first guest.
• Clear and Vivid – Hosted by actor Alan Alda but more in the area that comes from his 14 years as host of Scientific American Frontiers. Alda is also a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in NY and the founder of the University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. The show focuses on how to communicate in many fields from science to acting.
• The Movies That Made Me – is a movies podcast but the interviews led by film encyclopedias Josh Olson and Joe Dante are ith a variety of filmmakers and entertainers but often go beyond movies.
• The similarly titled podcast Movies That Changed My Life is hosted by IMDN guy Ian de Borja also interviews folks in the biz but about other people’s films that had an impact on their life and work.
• Bad to the Dad – interviews dads about being dads from all their different life experiences. Coach Randy and Adam Shandler are the hosts.
• Literally! with Rob Lowe – Rob surprised me as a really good interviewer who gets some unusual answers from guests in sports, music, culture, TV and movies, like John Fogerty, Jimmy Kimmel, Mark Cuban, Charles Barkley and Demi Moore.
• The Three Questions with Andy Richter is supposedly based on three questions he has for guests but it goes far from those three (sometimes Andy almost forgets to ask them!)
• Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist is an audio version of interviews he does with a very wide variety of guests on TV’s Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist.
• Radiolab has been around in some form and with several hosts since 2002. It is dee-dive journalism. The topics are so wide-ranging that I can’t think of a label for them.
• I started listening to Open Source with Christopher Lydon for his conversations on arts and ideas. Like most of these shows, I pick and choose episodes that interest me and download them for later. It is now impossible to keep up with all the episodes of almost any podcast.
• The Carson Podcast – is definitely around a topic – The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson – and host Mark Malkoff knows a lot about Johnny and learns more by interviewing people who worked on the show and appeared on the show.
• Next Question with Katie Couric – is hosted by this very likeable, seasoned interviewer and the guests are not just celebrities. So you’ll hear Dr. Fauci, Hillary Clinton and a variety of journalists and authors, along with entertainers.
• In Bed with Nick and Megan – as in married couple Offerman and Mullally. They supposedly conduct their interviews from bed, though it may be figurative bed intimacy. The show seems to have ended or paused in September 2020, but like almost all the shows listed here there are deep archives to sift through and download.