Things We Look for From Our Guests
We value the attention of our listeners considering how many options they have to choose from for podcasts. So we hold our guests to the same standard. Our line in the sand is straight forward; our interviews are an hour. Even if you're Oprah, the interviews are an hour. If you can't give us an hour, it's not a good fit. We've always said if there was a formula for a great guest it, then it wouldn't be unmistakable. But our most popular guests all seem to have a few things in common.
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Stories Not Tactics or Soundbites: When people are media trained they're taught to talk in soundbites and be concise. We encourage all of our guests to do the exact opposite. Some of our guests, like the guy who robbed 30 banks have given us 20-minute answers to questions, and that's fine. We're aiming to create what NPR refers to as driveway moments. We strive to entertain first and educate second. Another one worth listening to is the Neuroscience of Goals
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Research, Not Opinions: If your work centers around social science or behavior change of any kind (i.e., life coaching, business coach), etc. it needs to backed up tangible evidence and advice for our listeners. For some great example listen to our interviews on The 9 Environments that Make Up Your Life or The Neuroscience of Goals.
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Interesting is Always Better Than Famous: We pride ourselves on finding people that you've never heard on other podcasts, considering our tagline is candid conversations with insanely interesting people. And we've said no to plenty of high profile people, even though we've had many high profile guests... We'll take an interesting story over famous guests any day of the week.
Before you submit a pitch, we recommend you read through the pitch guidelines. Sidenote, if one of our former guests referred you, that says a lot, and you have our vote of confidence, so let us know that.