No. 028 Good, Good, Good Advice for Recording Interview Guests and Co-Hosts

This episode outlines the best practices for recording good audio for yourself, your guest, and your co-host(s). And yes, we have addressed this topic before, but never quite like this …

This week’s episode begins with a callback to last week, as Jerod notes a massive bit of irony that came out of the episode about when to use scripts (and when not to).

Then we dive into this week’s main topic, prefacing it by explaining how it seems like we’ve been getting an inordinate amount of questions about this lately.

We discuss …

• Why you shouldn’t panic yet if you notice an issue after recording. (You may be able to correct it in post-production.)
• The importance of focusing on simplicity and lowering the barriers for your guest to come on your show
• Why Skype, warts and all, is still the best option for podcast interviews
• A few tips for overcoming the inevitable Skype issues
• Jon’s surprising system for doing pre-interview audio checks
• When the time is right to invest in a better microphone for people on your show
• How to handle mid-interview audio hiccups

Then we reveal an important secret before launching into this week’s listener questions, which comes to us from listener Jason Ogle, who asks:

I’m starting a show called User Defenders which is all about inspiring interviews with UX Design superheroes, and am in the process of getting a few interviews in the can before launching.

Do you guys have any creative ideas for how a busy family man (with 5.5 kids) can schedule interviews for a once-a-week show while maintaining a full-time job?

Then we issue this week’s podcast recommendations. It’s a more general recommendation than a recommendation for a specific show. You’ll have to listen to find out!

Thanks for being here, and we hope you have a good, good, good time listening to this week’s episode. We appreciate your time, time, time. 😉

Listen, learn, enjoy …