‘Hot Ones’ Was a Slow Burn All Along
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Here's an example he did with Pharrell Williams from the group NERD [1]. Quote from Pharrell: "This is one of the most impressive interviews I've ever experienced in my life... your research is second-to-none."
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RKbSi87J5Q&ab_channel=Nardw...
"You with the feds?" - Tyler The Creator
"How do you know this?" "You're Lil Uzi, we have to know it!" "I'm glad I'm a good guy cause if I was under investigation for something, I'd be scared right now" - Lil Uzi Vert
And there's a whole bunch of compilations of artists freaking out during his interviews on YouTube.
And an article if you prefer: https://www.canadaland.com/oral-history-of-nardwuar-the-huma...
313: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/313-nardwuar-an-oral-hist...
314: https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/314-nardwuar-the-intervie...
At the same time, he's creepily aggressive with guests, I find him excruciating to watch. (Not because of the speech mannerisms.) If they don't do what he wants, like repeating his little do-doo thing at the end, he really ups the ante on them.
If you watch old clips of Dick Cavett it is unbelievable how the audience back then was treated as adults.
And old school vibe of actually caring is also the "shtick" of Kevin McCarthy who has amazing interviews. Here a little bit of him discussing 35mm film with Brad Pitt: https://twitter.com/KevinMcCarthyTV/status/16389734357903892...
Rogan took this on as well, the bar of letting people talk for hours is so low now that all these podcasts were able to wipe out traditional TV.
Dick Cavett vs. Lex Friedman, the regression in interview style is horrible.
Cavett with Richard Burton, nearly 2 hours (!) of in depth, well executed talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D49O5obqhiA
I really don't like Friedman's interview style, it tends to sound like he's been smoking weed prior to the interview.
Cavett was at a completely different level. I think the closest living interviewer (OK, I see Cavett is still alive, but I don't think he's been doing interviews lately) to that level might be Terry Gross but she doesn't do the kind of open-ended interviews that Cavett did that could go on for hours.
Well don't tell Dick that. Not dead yet.
Then there's his obsession with aliens, to the point of obnoxiousness: see his insistence on debating panspermia theory with Betül Kaçar, who'd just spent five minutes describing why that probably is highly unlikely, with strong scientific basis, to the point of being offensively dismissive.
EDIT - he literally starts telling her something along the lines of "that's just your perspective", like she didn't just lay down a bunch of qualified reasoning. It'd be one thing if he just said 'this is just my take' and left it at that, but he didn't.
Terry Gross is, of course, fantastic and there’s nearly fifty years of Fresh Air interviews. I think we sometimes ignore Fresh Air because it’s so ubiquitous. Elvis Mitchell is another obvious example.
I think what separates them from, for example, Lex Friedman, is taste.
Now hire me so I can help you, you big silly goof ;)
By "conventional journalism" do you mean old media/Big Media journalism? There are lots of fantastic interviews in the world of podcasts and independent media. Two recent examples that come to mind: The Jason Segel episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and the Richard Hipp episode of CoRecursive.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qqz2HqeMR4&ab_channel=Archy...
Cavett was pretty much the dictionary definition of unflappable.
Also, people who normally wouldn't give interviews were willing to be interviewed by him, because they knew they'd get a fair shake and there wouldn't be any surprise "gotcha" questions.
Sean is a fantastic interviewer.
But then there's often really interesting question, the Hot Ones team does not skimp on researching the guests, and I've seen a few who were surprised or even blown away by how specific and personal (not in a bad way, just about things close to their hearts) the inquiries were.
Listening to him talk, he really sounds like a hacker. He figured out a way to optimize preparation to organize extremely in-depth, thoughtful questions in a way that others have not. And ultimately, it's what sets him apart in a very saturated field.
He may have interesting questions. Charisma, he has not. His delivery is too deadpan and rehearsed. For each question he asks, he doesn't listen to the answer, he just waits for his cue to deliver the next question.
In some sense it's also a victim of it's own success. The shift from smaller creators/artists to A-listers is impressive, but can be a little less interesting.
The questions earlier in the series felt more “real”, where I get a sense of promotion now. It was always about the promotion (that was the “prize” in the first episodes), but the questions feel shaped to promote spots for plugs.
Still one of the best interview shows running. The wings give every sense of urgency and gravity. It’s the perfect comic relief to the weight or depth of the question, the focus on the heat disarms the guest of their routine answers and reveals a lot about the person.
My cousin keeps dropping names of different streamers and I have no idea who they are. But in his world, they are bigger than Justin Bieber
His questions, though, tend to be great.
It's nice when that curtain can fall- and I've often found myself realizing that I had a pre-conceived notion or negative bias about some celebrity that turns out to be false. By the end of some interviews I find myself viewing the guest much differently than before, or learning a little bit about the life/work of a celebrity (just as another human being) that I normally wouldn't be interested in, in any capacity (as someone that doesn't consume the media that most of the guests on the show are involved in, particularly shows/movies)
Nardwuar's TED talk is great too, he ended it by crowd surfing out of the room - who else can say they did that at a TED talk?
I got reaaally drunk one night and poured half a bottle into a bag of Doritos, shook it up and ate them all. It was an odd mix of agony and euphoria, I was getting waves of sensation radiating from my mouth and going down my back and into my legs.
How was the restroom the next morning ;)
Fast forward several hours of heavy drinking and we were getting hungry. He makes a hot dog and confidently dumps like a tablespoon of hot sauce on it. Takes a bite, sprints to the bathroom, and spends the next half hour with his head jammed under the sink faucet moaning in misery.
Sounds like your booze-and-hot sauce experiment went a bit better :)
The Last Dab sauce is not bad.
I would like to check out last dab one dat, but unfortunately here in Poland it is really hard to get in fair price.
Amusingly there was a show in Quebec and then France where the host and his guests were making food while drinking a lot, called Les "Recettes pompettes".