4. How to Get Good Tape

Welcome back to Gimlet Academy, the podcast about how to make a podcast. I'm Alex Bloomberg, I've been making radio and podcasts for 20 years. Gimlet the company I co-founded makes podcasts that are heard by millions of people each month. And in this show, we've put together all the things that we have learned over the years about making podcasts, distilling those lessons into a handy step-by-step audio guide. How we think about making podcasts broken down into fundamental steps. So far, we have learned how to pitch an idea for an episode or series. We've learned how to book guests. We've also listened to examples of good tape. And that brings us to where we are now, episode four. In this episode, we're going to learn all about how to get good tape. You've heard what it sounds like. So how do you get it? The place you get tape most of the time is in an interview. So the rules of getting good tape are really the rules of getting a good interview. You usually need at least one good interview to form the backbone of your podcast. And I'm going to walk you through some best practices for how to do that. The first rule of interviewing is pretty basic. I think it's important, first and foremost, to be a human being. This is Gimlet, senior producer Matt Nelson, one of my colleagues who will be helping us out on this episode. Matt produces the Gimlet show "Mogal", a narrative podcast about hip-hop's most iconic moments, told through the people who live them. And Matt, as part of his job, does a lot of interviews and listens to a lot of interviews. And that first rule he mentioned, first and foremost, be a human being, sounds like it shouldn't be that hard, right? Especially since I'm presuming most of us are, in fact, human beings. But most of us, when we start doing our first interviews, we turn into something else entirely, a strange robot alien version of ourselves. And it's really hard to get good stories or good emotional tape when you're acting like a robot. How do you avoid that? How do you act like the thing you are a human being? First and foremost, you need what we call in the business, a prep document. A prep document is where you lay out the questions you want to ask during the interview. It's essentially a roadmap for your interview, a place where you can organize your thoughts, after you've done all your research on your guests and the topic that you're going to be speaking to them about. But it's tempting to imagine a prep document as just a straight list of questions, one through twenty, you get to the end of the questions and you're done with the interview. Get that image out of your mind. A prep document is not a laundry list. And to show you how a good prep document comes together and how it can help you stay on track during an interview, we're going to hear how producer Matt Nelson prepared to interview this guy. Cool. Strings, we brings melody. That is Warren G, the rapper and producer who helped create the signature sound of West Coast hip-hop. The 1994 album Regulate, which went triple platinum, made him a star. Matt wanted to interview Warren G for season one of mogul. That first season told the story of a legendary manager named Chris Lighty. Lighty managed some of the biggest names in hip-hop in R&B, Dale S. O. Missy Elliott 50 and Warren G. When Warren G and Chris Lighty connected for the first time, it was a big deal for hip-hop because it led to Warren G helping to save the now legendary record label, Def Jam Records. And Matt and his team knew that this was going to be a key part of the series they were putting together about Chris Lighty. So Matt needed to get the details of this very specific story, the story of how Lighty discovered Warren G and got him to sign with Def Jam. And in fact, at the top of his prep document, the document I am holding in my hands right now, here it is, there is a line, the very first thing you see on the page, it says, "In bold letters." We need the story of how Chris discovered him and how he saved the Def Jam label. Every prep document should have a sentence like this at the very top. A quick one or two line summary of what the interview is about, why you booked this particular person to be part of your podcast. At Gimlet, we've taken to calling this the North Star. This is the main point of the interview. This is the thing that I want to absolutely make sure that we get. And it's the thing that I want to be sure that I understand the hosts, all the other producers on the team who are present. Everybody is on the same page and we all know we need to get this one thing and we're not going to leave the room until we have this material. Okay. So Matt had his North Star, the story of how Chris discovered Warren G and then what that meant for Def Jam. The rest of Matt's document looks like an outline. Remember those outlines used to make in high school, like Roman numeral and then letters and then smaller numbers and then smaller letters. It's sort of like that. This one has five pages long, although there's no right length, it just depends on what you need. And it's organized into sort of these, I guess, headings and chapters. Why I like to do my prep docs is divide everything into chapters so that the interview is essentially sequenced. And the way that I like to sequence interviews is I like to see them as a story structure in their own right. So they have their own structure. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. So looking at Matt's prep underneath the North Star statement at the top, there are these bold headings, these short phrases, which mark at a very high level what Matt refers to as the chapters of the interview. We also sometimes call them the beats of the story. There's a beat, a heading called getting signed about how Warren eventually got signed to deaf jam. There's another beat called regulate about how Warren came to create his biggest hit regulate. Sometimes the beats can be fleshing out key plot points in the narrative of the story you're telling. And sometimes the beats can be about setting up the context in which the narrative takes place. For example, in Matt's prep, one of the chapter headings is the phrase east versus west. We need to set up the difference between the east coast sound and the west coast sound. This is when sort of west coast music was in the ascendancy and Warren is a big part of that. So we wanted him to break down like what is the west coast record? What were you doing that was so different to what they were doing on the east coast? Total Matt has six beats, six chapters, six of these bold headings in his prep doc. And under each one of these headings, he has a set of questions. Let's take the first chapter heading prior to getting signed. Here are some of the questions underneath it. It says paint a picture of what life was like before you signed to deaf jam and you're this unknown producer. What were you dreaming of in those days? What was the big dream and then a bunch of other questions like that? And I want to point out the phrasing here. Most of these questions are written as open-ended questions. This is really important. Almost every question that we ask is open-ended because we want as much detail as possible. We want stories and we want scenes. Every single one of these questions is essentially facilitating him telling us a story. Warren down in this look. We need a visual for that. We need stories that prop that we need to get sense of him as this struggling artist. When you're going for stories, questions that a guest could simply answer yes or no, don't work. There are moments, of course, when yes or no could say a lot. But if that's all you're asking, think about it. That's all you're going to get. So what you want in your prep are questions that start with how or tell the story of or describe a time when you want questions that will lead to what you need in audio, stories. The other thing you need, of course, are feelings, emotions. And so you also want to ask questions that get at that. How did it feel when this happened? What was going through your mind at that particular time? Every question in your prep should be designed to either get a story or a feeling. Okay. So that is the making of the prep. But making the prep just have to work because coming up with a list of questions is one thing asking those questions to a real life person who's sitting in front of you. That is another thing entirely. Okay. So to see what kind of challenges can arise when you take your prep into the real world, let's follow Matt Nelson as he goes out and actually interviews Warren G. When I first met him, I went, he was in his recording studio and I went and like knocked on the door and he opened the door and this curtain of smoke just poured out and it just left the sort of like Warren G. The shaped figure in the center of all this smoke and he was just there like smoking this massive blunt. And he's talking to somebody on the phone and he just sort of paused and he looked me up and down and then passed me his blunt. And that is how Warren G said hello to me. I've got to say I regret this moment today, but I actually refused the blunt. Because I'm professional, I was there to do my job. And like I don't know, he was some, he was smoking some like otherworldly next level shit and I don't really smoke much weed. So I was really afraid that was going to get too high and like get paranoid and freak out in the middle of the interview and have to like sit in the toilet for an hour. So I am the producer who turned down smoke with Warren G. Warren, what did you have for breakfast this morning? Oh, you testing levels? Shit, I didn't eat shit. I went straight to the gym. Okay, so I'm now playing the raw audio from now on. the interview Matt did with Warren G. And just to give you a visual, they're sitting in a small room outside Warren's music studio. Matt's gone on his headphones, he's holding this huge boom mic just inches from Warren's face. And he's asking a bunch of detailed questions about events that happened many years ago to a man who has just smoked a very large blunt. It's real. And pursuing a prep in real life situations can sometimes get awkward. Case in point, a beat of Matt's prep labeled Indo Smoke and Paul Stewart. Now this beat of Matt's prep refers to the song that first put Warren G on the map, a song called Indo Smoke. And to the executive who first heard that song and went on to champion it, a guy named Paul Stewart. The story of Indo Smoke and Paul Stewart is a key beat in the story of Warren G. But as often happens, that story emerges in the interview differently than how Matt had planned for it. Warren was talking about something else entirely about these other songs that he was making. And then I did Indo Smoke, which was on the above, I mean not above. And in the middle of him talking about all of these songs, Indo Smoke just came up organically. One day I was at the studio, even though I wasn't really doing a lot with what Snoop and Drain are on and after that. I still will come around. I was at the studio and then Paul Stewart and John Singleton was there. Let him hear the record Indo Smoke that I did with a cat or artist I was working with, my artist, Mr. Graham. Let him hear it and tell them, you know, 'cause they was looking for a song for the soundtrack. So I shot them, the, well I tell them, let's go sit in the car. We went sat in the car and listened to the record, he said, 'Stop.' And from there he was like, 'Can I have the cassette?' I said, 'Go ahead.' Okay. So the story of Indo Smoke and Meeting Paul Stewart that Warren tells right there, it's not bad, but it could be better. More vivid, full of detail and feeling. And producer Matt Nelson knows this. So a little bit later in the interview, Matt circles back, back to the beginning to try to get more details and understand this moment a little bit more. So a really important part of the Chris Lighty story is just the circumstances under which he got Indo Smoke. And before Lighty even gets that tape, there's the moment where Paul Stewart hears it for the first time. You sort of told that story very briefly, but take me back. So you're in like the death row studios, you see this like white guy come in, like tell me more like paint the picture, set the scene. I laid it out to you to the max. I handed him the tape. He said, I'm like, what? Okay, what I'm looking for is like, what does he look like? Is he sort of out of place? Like there's, you guys, you're all like hanging out and he's like, this white boy comes in. He's like an executive. Jim and Jon Singleton. Jon Singleton and Paul Stewart came in the studio and it wasn't, what kind of, it was pretty unusual for, you know, white guy to come in. So like that knows that is because we like, if you know, if he's in here, he must be somebody. So that's just how I was back then. I heard them, I heard them talking about soundtracks and they was looking for song for soundtracks. So I said, man, you guys looking for songs and I said, I got one I want to play for you. And then that's when I popped in, you know, end up smoking to the tape back in my car. I told Paul, let's go, let's sit down. Let's go outside sitting the car. I'm a player for you. He said, stop. Took the tape. I said, I'm going to give you a call on Monday. So this version of the story that we're in tells is better. It's got a little bit more details. His quoting dialogue. But there are still some things that Matt wants out of the story that weren't in deliver here. And so he starts to go back and ask a couple more questions. And it's at this moment where things get a little uncomfortable. So we the same shit I just told you. So what else do you want me to tell you? How I walk to the bathroom and pissed and was drinking in and see and shit, it's probably eating food. What? What else do I need to tell you? What socks I had on? No, I don't. See? Awkward, right? Matt is just doing his job. He's just trying to make the scene vivid. He's trying to fill in key details. He's asking open-ended question following what's in his prep. But Warren is completely confused and annoyed by what Matt is doing. And that's understandable. From Warren's perspective, Matt is asking him the same question over and over again. And as an interviewer, there's sometimes a temptation to doubt yourself in these moments. Maybe Warren G's right. Maybe I don't need more. But in these moments, you should emulate what Matt Nelson does here. You should trust yourself that you know what you need. And that if you don't get it now, you'll just have wasted everyone's time. So be polite but insistent. Matt goes back to his prep. You can see that there's still this one bullet below the heading Indus Moken Paul Stewart that Warren hasn't nailed yet. The bullet says, "How did it feel when he popped out the tape so early? What was running through your mind?" Matt has a laugh and then dives right back in. But anyway, I guess the key thing is you put this song in, you hear about like two, three verses and he hits Stop. And he's like, "Stop." Let me ask this cassette, I'm going to call you on Monday and he called me on Monday. How did you feel when he's like, "Stop?" Sorry about that. I just took it as like, "What the fuck is up?" You know, like, "What's happening?" Like, "You don't like the shit?" So I felt a certain kind of way then but he said, "Let me take the tape." So when he said, "Let me take the tape," I was like, "Oh shit, go ahead." And there we have it, the final element from the prep. And now I'm going to play the final version that actually made it into the mogul podcast. In this tape, I'm going to play, you're going to hear Wornji of course, but also Paul Stewart is going to come in and then the host of mogul season one, the late great Regio Say, you're going to hear from him as well. Okay, let's listen. It was pretty unusual for, you know, why God had come in like that nose that we like, you know, if he's in here, he must be somebody. I heard him talking about soundtracks and they was looking for a song for soundtracks. He craftily kind of like pulled me to the side and said, "Hey, I remember," specifically he said, "Yo, 'cause I got my own stuff." Let's go outside and sing the karma plan for you. The track was a song Worn had co-written and produced for another rapper, a cat called Mr. Grimm. Worn popped up on a couple of verses but he was pitching himself as a producer here. Worn came out, I remember we got into the truck and yeah, it was definitely like a handwritten kind of cassette type of thing and it was Mr. Grimm Indo Smoke. It played through the first verse and hook and I ejected it. He said, "Stop." It only paid for 45 seconds and he looked at me crazy. I just took it as like, "What the fuck is up?" You know, like, "What's happening?" Like, "You don't like the shit?" So I felt a certain kind of way then but he said, "Let me take the tape." So when he said, "Let me take the tape," I was like, "Oh, shit, go ahead." Did you hear that? Almost none of that tape, you just heard that was in the final version of the mogul podcast would have been there if Matt hadn't followed his instincts and gotten those extra details. And he was able to pursue that calmly and with confidence because of the work he had done in his prep document. Okay, before we wrap up, I want to give you one more piece of advice. This piece of advice is one word, "listen." Prepping, it's incredibly important. It's probably the single most important thing you can do to get ready for an interview, but one of the things that a good prep enables you to do is to listen. So take advantage of it. When you're in an interview, make sure they're actually listening to what the other person is saying. Listen not just to the words but the feelings, the emotions, what's being said and what's not being said. That can allow you to get to the heart, the truth of what someone is saying. If you do a good job on the prep, it'll allow you to focus your mind on what is actually happening in the interview. And to illustrate how that can sound, let me play just two more clips for you. These are from a story that I produced for the radio program and podcast "This American Life." The story was reported and narrated by contributor Davey Rothbard. And the story involved going to see Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers from the TV show. This was several years ago. And the conceito of the story was this. Davey was going to bring the everyday problems in his neighborhood in Chicago to Mr. Rogers and see if Mr. Rogers could help solve them. Davey had gathered a bunch of stories of conflict from his neighborhood. There was this woman Julie who didn't like the loud music coming from the apartment below. There was a guy named Mike who liked to work on cars in the street, but his neighbor got mad at him for doing that. And then there was this kid who went by the nickname "The Mouth." Side note, if you ever come across someone with the nickname "The Mouth" interview them. Here's this young Latina. kid whose family had been in the neighborhood a long time, he didn't like the looks and the attitude he was getting from the newer whiter crowd that was slowly gentrifying the area. And Davy explains all these stories to Mr. Rogers. And as Mr. Rogers, what would he do if he were in Julie's or Mike's or the Mount's position? How would Mr. Rogers handle those conflicts? I can tell you what I would hope that I would do. I would hope that I would be brave enough to visit. It's so easy to condemn one we don't know. I was there with Davy doing these interviews. And we went around and around with Mr. Rogers on this. We would ask him different versions of the same question. And his answers were always like what you just heard. They're pretty good. But remember how I told you in a previous episode about audio being very good at representing emotional authenticity? There's something a little canned in what he was saying. Like he didn't really feel it. It was true, but it was a little rote. It was like a practice answer. And I remember thinking as a producer like, I don't know, I don't know if we're getting much here. It feels like a little bit canned, a little bit pat. But it felt like there was something hovering around Mr. Rogers' answer that felt like something truer. And I remember thinking, why did he use that word brave? What did being kind to your neighbors have to do with bravery or courage? So while we're sitting there talking to Mr. Rogers, I as the producer chimed in with this question. You said when you said if you were in Davies neighbor situation, you said that you hoped you would have enough courage to go down and visit. And a lot of what you were finding when you were talking to people had to do with that same sort of notion. And I'm wondering like, what is it that we're afraid of, do you think? Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that, oh there, there may be our people in this world who I can't ever communicate with. And so I'll just give up before I try. Hear the difference, right? I still get emotional listening to that answer. That revelation, that honest admission, it never would have happened if I hadn't been able to fully listen to what Mr. Rogers was saying and wasn't saying. And this, I guess, brings us back to where we started. That thing that producer Matt Nelson said in the very beginning. I think it was important first and foremost to be a human being. Be your best version of yourself. If you feel you have to challenge something you're guest is saying, do it with respect. If you have some tough questions to ask, don't make that the first thing out of your mouth. Take a moment to break the ice, share something about yourself. If you don't understand something you're guest is saying, don't pretend that you do. If you don't understand in the room, your audience definitely won't. Look, what do you mean? Or, I'm having trouble following you. Or can you say that again? Or how does that work? And remember, silence. Silence is golden. There's this human temptation when you're talking to somebody to fill an awkward silence. Just let it sit. Almost all the best moments I've gotten on tape have come after an awkward silence. The way I think about it sometimes. We want to reduce the moments where someone might turn off your podcast. And as an interviewer, if you just asked a good question, no one is turning things off before they hear the answer. A good question has the same narrative momentum as a good story. And we all want to tell good stories. Okay. That is it for this episode of the training podcast in reviewing. Coming up in our final episode of the series, episode five. Once you have done all this, once you've made your pitch, booked your guests and interviewed them, how do you put it all together? If the job at the beginning is to promise something, the job of the middleist to deliver, it's like, all right, do it. Doing it all up and making it into a podcast, that's in the next episode of Kimlet Academy. Do you have a podcast you want to publish? You can visit podcasters.spotify.com to submit your show to Spotify and access audience and episode performance data to help you make your show even better. Kimlet Academy was produced by me, Alex Bloomberg, along with GoFen, Booth de Poehlet, Alua de Sui, Peter Brezenin, Stevie Lane, Emily Foreman, and Caitlin Bogouki. It was edited by Renita Jablonsky, Nazanine Raffs and Johnny, and me. Engineering on today's show by Catherine Anderson and Emma Munger, special thanks to Katie Christensen and Kurt Anderson.