When To Not Publish An Interview

We talk through the real costs of a bad interview and share when to publish, when to pass and how to protect your feed without burning bridges. From SmartLess canceling a big-name taping to our own not-so-good experiences, we give practical tips for handling awkward recordings.

Special thanks to Kevin of Grit, Grace, and Inspiration for our custom Buzzcast song! (Stay until the end to hear it!)

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Transcript

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Should You Publish A Bad Interview?

Jordan 0:00

All right, so I have a story for you guys. Yesterday I was on Reddit, and in the podcasting subreddit, there was a user who posted about having a really bad experience with a guest. And they were asking, you know, should I post the episode or should I not post it? They went through with the entire interview, and basically the person was just being really rude and disrespectful. It's a long story. But I was thinking, man, I see this a lot where people are really torn about whether or not to post an episode of their podcast, you know, for whatever reason. And then it just so happened that Will Arnett had an interview on a podcast. For those of you who don't know, Will Arnett is the third host of Smartless, and he's also the voice of Batman and he's on Arrested Development and all these different things.

Alban 0:47

The voice of Lego Batman.

Jordan 0:48

Lego Batman. Yeah. But let me let me be clear. But yeah, so he had talked about on this podcast how they actually had a very famous comedian guest on Smartless. And within the first 10 minutes, they realized that the interview was not going to work. They stopped the interview and they didn't publish the episode. And then he also went on to describe how they actually have also had a guest that the interview went really well. It was a great episode, but then the guest reached out to them and said, Hey, I actually don't feel comfortable with you posting this episode. And so they decided to not post the episode. And I thought to myself, if a Golden Globes nominated podcast, you know, one of the most famous podcasts in the world can decide to not post an interview, you can too.

Kevin 1:37

I think that's logical.

Jordan 1:38

Yeah.

Kevin 1:39

And and I don't think you need permission from Will Arnett or any other Golden Globe nominated podcast to do whatever you want to do with your show.

Jordan 1:47

That's true.

Alban 1:48

I think that if you think that the guest didn't do a good job and the guest was underperforming and made it weird, it's a pretty easy no. Like I don't think this should be shared. The point that I might push through it would be if you feel like you didn't do your best. Because we're all so much more self-critical. Yeah. And it's easy to look at your own performance and go, oh, I could have said that better. Oh, that could have been tightened up. I could have asked a good follow-up. I'd say so there I'd be I'd lean more on the side of publish. And then if it's the guest, if you're that hard on the guest, it probably was pretty bad.

Kevin 2:24

I think that's a good distinction, Albin. I think that if you have a guest on your show and they give you their time and they bring whatever it was that you agree that they're gonna come on your show and bring, and they deliver that, but you're not happy with I don't know how it turned out, but they are, I think you kind of owe it to them to publish as as much as possible. I mean, obviously there are limits. I I don't know the extreme cases of which I would say, no, you're right, don't publish it. But if you're just a little bit self-critical of how you performed or some of the things you said or stories you shared, editing is your friend. Yeah. But I think I would do my best to try to get that out there and honor the time that they gave you. You're you're 100% right though. If somebody comes on your show, the the story that you just shared from Smartless, like they stopped it 10 minutes in. I have to imagine that guest was being pretty belligerent or something. Like shared up drunk or something like that. Yeah, who knows? There might have been some history there. Maybe they had some whatever jokes that just weren't landing or going sideways, and somebody called somebody on something, and they're like, No, yeah, you know, who knows? Comedians do that all the time. They you know, stuff goes sideways on comedy shows all the time. That doesn't happen too much in I don't know, regular world, real world. Like, and and you should be able to navigate most of that stuff if you don't have big egos. And and I would think people who come on Smartless probably have some pretty big egos, so maybe it's harder.

Jordan 3:47

Yeah.

Alban 3:48

They're optimizing for ego there. Yeah. It's funny, I made a little video for YouTube yesterday, and I used Smartless as one of the examples. All the advice I see for marketing podcasts is always online. And we did that episode a year ago about kind of doing like offline marketing techniques. And Smartless is doing all of these live shows where they're doing like surprise guests. The show itself is the marketing. Yeah. It's in the real world, and it gets people really excited. It's exclusive. You've got to get tickets, and you have no idea who it's gonna be. Imagine if that was the live episode. I'm sure they're doing a bit more. They're like, okay, we're bringing back Will Farrell.

SPEAKER_00 4:26

Yeah.

Alban 4:27

And he's ready to go. Right. But 10 minutes in, that's gotta be one of the worst. That's gotta be a rough 10 minutes for you to call it. Yeah, it makes me want to guess who this person is.

Jordan 4:38

We know it's a comedian, and we know it's someone that's probably pretty abrasive.

Alban 4:42

My guess would be it's not gonna be a top comedian. It's probably somebody who came in.

Jordan 4:46

Will said you would be shocked. Like this is a very, very famous person.

Kevin 4:52

I mean, I I think some of those awkward exchanges that happen on late night TV and stuff, even on the the Ellen show, who is the who is the girl?

Jordan 5:00

Oh, yes.

Kevin 5:01

Uh and she called out Ellen because Ellen said she didn't invite her to a birthday party. And I'm like, I did invite you to my birthday party and you didn't come.

Jordan 5:07

It was like really awkward.

Kevin 5:09

Yeah, she called Ellen out on a couple things.

Jordan 5:11

I can't remember her name. I can see her face. Dakota Johnson.

Kevin 5:14

Anyway, where do we go from here? Have you ever been on a podcast that didn't get published?

Alban 5:19

I have. Oh, have you? I have. Um, I think it's a little bit more of the second type. I haven't gone into a podcast so abrasive that I expected it to get removed. But I think I've been on a lot of people's first episode or first view.

Jordan 5:34

Yeah.

Alban 5:34

And so then they end up going, okay. I I don't know how I feel about this. Did they write you and tell you, or did it just no never go live? Uh never went live. Actually, there were okay, there was one.

unknown 5:45

Oh no.

Alban 5:46

This I forgot about this. Kevin, you were I think you were there for this one. 2018. Uh, we're a podcast movement in like Chicago or something. And we have the Buzzprout studio that you and I built, and we flew it in and we're there. And a woman came in and she introduced me and she was like, I'm doing a podcast about interviewing lawyers. And I went, okay. And someone goes, Alma used to be a lawyer. And I just gotten out of it, so I was like, I don't really want to do an episode like this. And she kept coming back and asking. So eventually I went, All right, I'll do the episode with you. And we go into the studio. I'm not working in the booth, and we record for like 45 minutes. And the only thing that I said before it was, hey, this case that we'd been talking about, I was like, it's still ongoing, so I really don't want to talk about it. And she knew how much money was at risk. She knew, and it was a really big case, but it was relatively high profile. And she jumps right into questions about that case. And she goes, Wow, that sounds like a really big case. How many millions? Like over a hundred million, over 150 million, which she knew yes. The answer was yes. Yeah. And she keeps throwing them out there. And I'm like, Yeah, I can't answer that. And at the end of the interview, she goes, Okay, well, you know, I don't think I'm gonna use that one because you didn't really want to go into everything, but it's good practice for me. Well, there we go. But it was the only thing I told her beforehand.

Jordan 7:09

And she just went for it. Yeah. I think the one that I was on, it was again a newer podcaster. And I think I went into it thinking that the interview was going to be about one thing. And then she started getting into like personal things. And I felt like I remember realizing about 20 minutes into the interview, I was like, I don't feel like this is going anywhere. And I think we both just mutually realized we were not a good fit for each other during the interview. And I was not shocked when that episode never went live. What about you, Kevin? Have you ever been on anything that just I don't think on either side?

Kevin 7:43

I don't think I've ever recorded an episode.

Jordan 7:45

Just Bat in a thousand?

Kevin 7:46

Uh yeah, I don't know why. I mean, uh first of all, I don't guest on a lot of podcasts, so that kind of pulls me out of that pool. If I do guest, it's a pretty like it's something that I really want to do. So I I would definitely want it to go live. It would be a big deal for me if it didn't. And on the recording side, I think uh I don't know. I have Jordan, she has makes me sound smart, so no problem. I can just ramble for hours and she'll clean it up and give me a tight 10 and we have published.

Jordan 8:12

Yeah, I think it's like really important to be discerning on that. I think it's totally fine to not publish something. And you know, if a guest takes it personally, then you know, they'll take it personally and you cross that bridge when you get to it. But I gotta say, I think a lot of podcasters are very understanding when an episode doesn't get go live, or a guest will be really understanding when an episode doesn't go live. I see a lot of people posting about should I post this, should I not post the episode, should I not publish it? But I haven't seen anyone say, I didn't publish it, and this person's coming after me about it now. I haven't seen that, right?

Alban 8:50

I've got one story of that.

Jordan 8:51

Oh no.

Alban 8:52

There's this episode of Making Sense with Sam Harris, and this is from years ago where he interviewed it with somebody who's like, all right, that was three hours of like arguing and we didn't convince each other of anything. And uh according to him, like the guest was kind of belligerent, and he goes, All right, well, I'm not gonna publish that.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Uh-huh.

Alban 9:10

And so the guest went online and they just are posting all over the place, like, I totally destroyed him in this argument, proved all my points exactly right, and put into this random stuff. He's like, All right, well, if you keep saying this online, I'm gonna just post the episode. It's terrible. We both look bad. And the guy's like, Yeah, I want to see it. He posted and everyone's like, Yep, makes you look bad. So I don't know if there's a bit of amnesia there or what. But uh, it's it's out there and I've uh made it maybe two minutes in before I went, This is not worth my time.

Jordan 9:41

Yeah. I did have one instance, like in my own podcast, where I had someone guest on it to like write a story and compose music for it. And they had given me samples of their work before, which was really good. And then what they provided to me, like the actual finished thing that they spent time on, and I felt really bad, was not a good fit for my podcast. But because they spent so much time in it and I knew that there was all this effort and artistry put into it, I went ahead and published it anyway. And that was the episode that I got by far the most negative feedback on. And I wish so badly I could have just gone back and like listened to my gut and said, Hey, I actually think this is really good, but you should give it to someone else to use. Like I am going to allow you to do that. Um, so I think it's really good to be protective of your podcast. Listen to that voice inside your head that is saying, I don't think this is a good fit, because you could kind of hurt your listenership by posting it anyway.

Kevin 10:47

Yeah, and I think that at least I would hope I would respond kindly that if I if I did go guest on somebody's show and for one reason or another it just didn't feel right for them to publish it onto their podcast. A nice note. I mean, even if you want to go above and beyond and send them a $10 Starbucks gift card or something and just say, Thank you so much for your time. I know this doesn't make us square, but yeah, um there's just something that felt off and I don't feel comfortable publishing. Maybe they offered to do it again sometime, maybe we just part ways. But I hope I would just get that it's their show and they have to protect it. And even if I think I did great and I it was so valuable of the time I gave you, and how could you do this to me? I think that would go away pretty quickly with a nice note and hearing someone's heart and just saying, I'm just trying to do what I think is right for my show. So nothing personal, but I think there's ways through this stuff if we just you know swallow our pride and be really kind.

Jordan 11:37

Yeah, I think that those are really good tips. All right, so for our next episode, we are going to be talking about uh hosting a meetup, and this can be a meetup with listeners or other podcasters. And for this episode, we will have a special guest on. So I'm really excited about that. If you have any uh experience or tips or questions about hosting a meetup, go ahead and tap the Texas Show link in the show notes to send those in. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Kevin 12:10

Jordan, did you send this song to Alvin

Post Show: Buzzcast Banger

Kevin 12:12

as well?

Jordan 12:13

Yes, I did.

Kevin 12:15

Have you heard the song, Alvin?

Alban 12:16

Yeah, so this is uh now our second or third theme song ever made for Buzzcast, and it is by far the best. It's by far the best.

Kevin 12:24

Yeah. Because I got it from Jordan. I immediately sent it to my family group chat. And then my wife walked into my office like 10 minutes later and she was humming it.

Jordan 12:37

Like it is catchy, it is so catchy. It's an absolute banger. Yeah, Kevin Lowe from Grit Grace and Inspiration. It's so funny because you, Kevin, had a request to the other Kevin for him to make us a song because he had talked about how he puts uh songs, like he creates songs for his guests on his podcast. And so you challenged him to do that, and he almost immediately like the episode dropped Friday, and like Friday, I got a song from him.

Kevin 13:05

Ranked it out.

Jordan 13:07

And it's so good.

Kevin 13:09

Yeah. I feel like it's a little bit too long to play at the end of every episode, but I love it. I thought it was really catchy and fun, made me smile. Um, so can we at least play it one time for everyone?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Oh, yeah. Wonder which mic sounds right. How you make this whole thing go. Hundred episodes behind you now. Still don't know what you don't know. That keeps breaking numbers lights. Some days you dance, some days you fly. Try not to listen to all that noise.