“Tell Me About X” #
I, like many folks, have listened to a fair number of podcasts in the last several years.According to Edison, 40% of the US population over age 12 has consumed a podcast in the past week. While I certainly try not to be an AirPods-always-in, disconnected-from-the-world person in general, podcasts and audio books have enriched my commute and sometimes accompany me on household chores and the like.
While many of these are genuinely enriching experiences on which I am happy to spend time, I have an axe to grind with a trend I’ve noticed in the long-form interview genre of podcasts: the “tell me about X” question. Or rather, “question”, since it’s not a question at all.
The dynamic that I see plays out something like this: a person who is famous for several accomplishments and stories starts “making the rounds” on the podcast circuit.I reckon it’s a testament to the medium that there is such a circuit now. And, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have discovered a couple of books through the podcast book tour. Often times, the host knows the guest fairly well, but knows that the guest “should” tell a particular story. Instead of a probing question about a particular detail, or an explicit invitation for reflection, we get the dreaded “tell me about X” non-question.
Now, it’s easy for me to rant about this question—err, “question”—having never hosted a podcast nor had to keep up with the demands of deep guest research required to ask harder questions.This is also why I’m talking in generalities and not naming specific examples. I don’t want to shame anyone in particular. But every time I hear it, it prompts the question: who is this for? Or more broadly: what’s the communicative purpose of the conversation I’m listening to?
Presumably, to provide some form of information / education to the listener. But I often hear “tell me about X” on niche interview podcasts where the audience likely knows the guest and has heard these stories before. Perhaps I’m wrong here, and some of the stories need re-telling for newer audience members. But it always feels somewhat alien: the host doesn’t need to hear about X, many of the audience members already know about X, and the guest is probably sleep-walking through their story about X for the umpteenth time.
So I think, really, the question doesn’t bother me because of any kind of laziness on the host’s part, but it gives me the ick because it represents the commodification of deep personal experiences into packaged chunks. In some ways, it’s the most honest “question”: no beating around the bush with more niche or off-the-cuff questions. We know why we’re here: someone’s brand partners needs them to broadcast these chunks to the world, and the host has the platform to disseminate it. Oh, content.