The Art of the Interview

First appeared in “From David’s Desk” on April 27th, 2026

There are roughly 8.3 billion people on Earth. About half of them have podcasts. The other half are guests on those podcasts.

Podcasts, along with radio shows and streaming interview programs, now seem to be everywhere. The basic explanation is simple. Some people really like to talk. Other people really like listening to people talk. Modern media has thoughtfully arranged things so no one has to compromise.

To be sure, not every podcast enjoys Joe Rogan level audiences. Some likely have listeners counted on one hand, often related by blood or marriage. Still, the sheer number of podcasts raises a fair question. Why are there so many of them, and why do so many aspiring Joe Rogans, or would be interview stars imagine their questioning skills might one day make them as famous and wealthy as the undisputed GOAT of the genre, Oprah Winfrey? (Oprah, notably, has retired from daily interviewing and now appears only on special occasions, each drawing stratospheric ratings.)

More broadly, why do some people enjoy asking questions, why do more enjoy being interviewed, and why do even more still enjoy listening to others answer questions they themselves did not ask? What is it about the interview, as a format and as a cultural habit, that has made it so enduring, and so irresistible?

Let me share some theories, and provide my own thoughts about how talented interviewers master that art, and still others master the art of being interviewed.

My answers come from a decade plus of regularly conducting interviews in six different forums (five of which are regularly televised); and several decades of being interviewed on various political, geopolitical, business, finance, literary, and history-related subjects.

Although I was educated as a lawyer and spent much of my career in government or business, how did I wind up in the interview world?

It started this way:

Carlyle held large annual investor meetings with 1,200 plus attendees from around the world. To attract investors to Washington and give them the kind of unique insights they desired, we would hire speakers that included former presidents of the United States, former Secretaries of State, former Federal Reserve Chairs, former European prime ministers, and similarly prominent figures. This was hardly an innovation on our part; others who host large audiences have long done, and still do, the same.

Many times, however, the distinguished speaker we had hired would simply read a prepared speech, and the audience’s attention would inevitably drift. I am not sure why, but I began to think I could make these sessions more engaging if I interviewed the speaker instead of subjecting the audience to a written text. The speakers’ agent typically had no objection, so long as the fee remained the same.

So, I began interviewing our major speakers. I added some humor where appropriate, the audience seemed to enjoy the conversations, and I realized that I could conduct these interviews in a way that was both informative and enjoyable.

Around the time I was doing this, Vernon Jordan asked if I would be willing to succeed him as the President of the Economic Club of Washington. He said I just had to get four CEO’s a year to speak at the Club’s quarterly dinners.

I was not a member of the Club at the time, but accepted – it was hard to say no to Vernon Jordan.

But as I would invite and introduce various CEOs, I soon realized they were just reading speeches prepared by others, and the audience had a hard time staying awake.

I decided to try the interview approach again and began interviewing the CEOs. The members enjoyed these conversations, and as we expanded them to dinners and lunches, membership grew from about 200 individuals to more than 1,000 (for reasons beyond just the interviews), and the number of interviews increased to about ten a year. Eventually, one Club member suggested to Bloomberg TV that I host an interview show.

That idea became Peer to Peer in 2016, and I have now conducted roughly 200 interviews for that program, with guests such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Oprah Winfrey. Bloomberg TV later invited me to host another program focused more explicitly on finance and investing, Wealth with David Rubenstein, which has been on the air for six years.

All of this led to a number of additional shows: History with David Rubenstein on PBS, featuring interviews conducted at the New York Historical Society, now in its sixth year, and a newer program on C SPAN about books and reading called America’s Book Club. For the past dozen years, I have also been interviewing authors, historians, and business and government leaders at a private dinner I cohost with the Library of Congress for Members of Congress and their guests. These conversations are not televised, but a book based on some of these interviews will soon be published by the Library of Congress.

What have I learned from doing these interviews, and how do I think about the art of interviewing? Why are interviews more popular than speeches?

In terms of popularity, interviews tend to resonate because (i) each answer is relatively short, certainly compared with a full speech; (ii) good interviewers can draw out interviewees to be a bit more frank than they might be when reading from a prepared text; and (iii) speeches are typically read, and often fail to convey the sincerity of a person’s views, or the real contours of their personality, in quite the way a good interview can.

Podcast technology has now given almost anyone the chance to test their skills (or expose the lack thereof) in asking questions and eliciting the kind of entertaining but informative answers that the best interviews can produce.

There is also no denying that the question and answer format, apart from usually being more entertaining than a prepared speech (unless delivered by an orator with the talent of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King), is generally seen as the best way to obtain someone’s actual, unvarnished views. That is surely why, in our legal system, lawyers question witnesses rather than have them read prepared statements, and why journalists typically do their reporting by asking sources questions rather than inviting them to recite prewritten remarks.

Journalists, I should note, generally believe that honest answers are best obtained by asking questions that have not been provided in advance to the interviewee. For professional journalists, sharing questions ahead of time is close to a cardinal sin. I am not a professional journalist, and I typically do give my anticipated questions to interviewees in advance. I do this for two reasons: to signal that I am not trying to spring embarrassing or “gotcha” questions on them, and because I believe that advance notice helps produce more thoughtful and considered answers. Journalists disagree; they tend to believe that surprising an interviewee leads to more candid responses.

The interview format has been used by lawyers for hundreds of years, and by journalists since the earliest days of newspapers. Newspapers, however, rarely published the full text of an interview; they generally summarized what the interviewee had said. Writers for newspapers, magazines, and books did not typically print full interview transcripts, but they certainly relied on the question and answer process as a primary way of gathering the information on which their pieces were based.

It would be fascinating today to read the full interview transcripts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and so many other historical figures who may well have been questioned by the authors or journalists of their day. Those kinds of verbatim interviews, however, generally do not exist. Perhaps, with AI, we can reconstruct what they might have said.

The popularity of doing interviews and actually airing them live (or with some modest delay) began in the United States in the radio era of the 1940s-1950s).

Edward R. Murrow, the famed CBS correspondent from World War II, launched his radio interview program Hear It Now in 1950. Mike Wallace soon helped define the hard edged television interview with The Mike Wallace Interview, which began in 1957, following his mid 1950s interview work on Night Beat.

With television’s rise, Murrow brought his radio skills to the new and increasingly popular medium, creating Person to Person in 1953 and See It Now in 1954. The key innovation of Person to Person was that Murrow interviewed guests in their homes while he remained in a studio, giving viewers an unusually intimate look at figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Judy Garland, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, and Marlon Brando. Not surprisingly, the ratings were extraordinarily high.

In this early television era, the networks also created Sunday morning interview programs with political and governmental leaders. Meet the Press made its television debut in 1947, and Face the Nation followed in 1954.

Over time, the success of these interview programs helped give rise to the late night talk shows, which offered a lighter, more humorous tone. The granddaddy of the late night format, The Tonight Show, launched on NBC in 1954 with Steve Allen as host, followed by Jack Paar (1957-1962) and then Johnny Carson (1962-1992).

The Tonight Show’s success prompted other networks and syndicators to develop their own late night offerings, with popular hosts over the years including Merv Griffin, Dick Cavett, Joan Rivers, and David Letterman. After Carson’s three decades in the chair, he was succeeded by Jay Leno as host of The Tonight Show.

The appeal of these shows was that they were not overly intellectual (with the Cavett show being something of an exception); and they were able to attract big name interviewees who had previously been seen publicly only in staged and tightly scripted settings. The interviews on these late night shows were somewhat scripted as well, the guests typically knew what questions were coming, but truly unscripted moments often occurred when certain guests had enjoyed a bit too much alcohol before their appearances.

There was another popular late-night interview show at the dawn of the cable TV era, Larry King Live on CNN, which ran for 25 years (1985-2010). It was largely unscripted because Larry King did not like to prepare or be tightly scripted, though the show’s producers would talk with guests beforehand about what they wanted to cover, and King generally made his way to those subjects. One of its appeals was that a guest would answer questions for a full hour, both from King and from viewers who called in.

These late night interview shows helped create the environment for the hugely popular daytime talk and interview programs, many of which were syndicated nationally. Among the most prominent hosts were Mike Douglas (whose show ran from 1961 to 1981), Dinah Shore (who fronted a series of talk shows from the early 1970s into the mid 1980s), Phil Donahue (1967-1996), and most successful of all, Oprah Winfrey (1986-2011). These shows tended to be very interviewee friendly and often brought out more of the interviewee’s personality. And there were other interviewers who, at various times, also built large followings (among them David Susskind, Charlie Rose, and Christiane Amanpour).

Today, interview shows are omnipresent on television in part because 24 hour news and business networks need to fill a great deal of airtime, and interviews both generate news and are relatively inexpensive to produce. Morning programs on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and Bloomberg TV are filled with interviewees promoting themselves or their ideas, and the interviewers are generally happy to accommodate them. The interview format now extends into the afternoon on these channels, and even the evening lineups are largely built around one on one or panel interviews.

The result is that, over the course of a day, a diligent viewer and channel surfer can hear a great many voices and actually learn quite a bit, provided they recognize that many of these shows have clear ideological leanings, and that a fuller understanding of any given issue often requires sampling competing perspectives across different networks. In recent years, the explosion of interview driven content on television, radio, and especially podcasts has turned the United States into what might fairly be called an “Interview Nation.”

Given the growth of the medium, it would not be surprising if universities and training programs offered courses on podcasting and interview techniques — and some already do. Why shouldn’t they? Interviewing has quietly become a genuine growth industry.

I am often asked how I prepare when interviewing someone, and how I developed my style for doing these.

Let me answer here briefly:

I always remember Secretary James Baker’s admonition (originally from his father): Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance, otherwise known as “The Five P’s.” With that in mind, I always try to prepare as much as time will permit.

If I am interviewing an author, I will always read the book, and also try to watch or listen to interviews the author has already given. If the interviewee is not an author, I will do a fair amount of research on the interviewee and watch or listen to any interviews already completed by the interviewee.

Following the research, I will prepare a series of questions in a now fairly predictable manner – opening questions designed to ask a few of the most important or obvious questions any listener would want to hear (and to try to include at least one semi-humorous question designed to lighten the tone of the interview at the outset).

I then try to take the interviewee through the trajectory of his or her life, and then get into the real meat of the interview, before ending with personal questions relating to hobbies, athletics, parents, children, regrets, etc.

When completed, I send the questions to the interviewee, to show that I have no “Mike Wallace” “gotcha” type of questions.

I almost never hear back from the interviewee about the questions, unless they have a public relations professional. In that case, I invariably get feedback about avoiding one subject or another, and sometimes I will make an adjustment. But I usually find that, in the green room before the interview occurs, if I mention the questions the PR person wanted removed, the interviewee will say it is fine to ask those questions. PR professionals are obviously more nervous about their clients’ capabilities than the clients turn out to be.

When I do the interview, I do not read from the list of prepared questions. And I have no notes in front of me.

I remain surprised when people ask me where I’m hiding my notes, or whether there’s a computer screen somewhere just out of frame with the questions on it.

I simply do not use notes. My theory is that notes are a bit of a crutch. If you have them, you will use them. And when you do, you will lose eye contact with the interviewee, and the result will appear more like a formal interview than a somewhat relaxed conversation (which is usually more appealing to the viewer).

How do I remember the questions? Since I prepared them myself, my mind will generally operate the same way during the interview as it did when preparing the questions.

I will generally remember about 90 to 95% of the questions I prepared. The questions I forgot? Well, no one will know I forgot them, since only the interviewee will have seen the prepared questions.

Many times, I will deviate from the prepared questions because of something the interviewee said that I had not anticipated. And I will then follow up on that comment and need to cut (for time) the questions I had prepared.

It is important to be prepared to divert, for every interviewee will say things not anticipated (and that diverted nugget may well lead to more interesting subjects than what I had prepared).

I always remember what Oprah Winfrey said to me during my interview with her. I told her she was a great interviewer, and she replied that she was not a great interviewer, but a very good listener. By that, she meant that she is careful to listen closely to what her guest says and is always ready to follow up, pivoting the conversation based on the answer rather than rigidly following a script.

And that’s what I try to do as well. Listen to what the interviewee says and spend time following up on what was said.

In interviewing, I also try to bring some levity to the conversation. Humor helps break the ice and can reveal a different dimension of the interviewee, especially when it is self deprecating. There are many ways to get people to laugh, but in my experience, the most effective is to be self deprecating or, better yet, to create space for the interviewee to be self deprecating.

Part of the pleasure of an interview is to see or hear (or both) the unscripted, unvarnished views of someone. And the more well-known the interviewee, the more likely it is that the audience will be greater in size, whether the interview is audio or video.

I also try to follow-up questions rapidly with other questions – I tend not to let an interviewee linger too long on an answer. My general view is that more questions are better than fewer questions and longer answers ramble and lose focus (and viewer interest).

Over the years, I have been surprised by how much people actually enjoy reading the transcripts of an interview – long after the interview was conducted.

I have now written and published five books that compile transcripts of my interviews, with two additional books scheduled to be released later this year. The books also have audio editions that use the original recordings of the interviews rather than a professional reader. They have sold well enough to reach the New York Times bestseller list, although not for very long.

For those who aspire to be interviewers, nothing beats practice: do as many interviews as you can and prepare carefully. Do not embarrass the interviewee; instead, try to bring out the best aspects of their background and personality. Above all, enjoy the interview—if you are not enjoying it, listeners and viewers will sense that, and they are unlikely to stay with you for long.

And remember: the person being interviewed is supposed to be the star of the conversation. Sometimes interviewers try to show how well informed or smart they are by talking more than the guest, or by asking such long questions that there is little left for the interviewee to say. That should be avoided whenever possible. One of my own flaws in this area is that I find it hard not to correct an interviewee who makes a factual mistake; it is probably better to let it pass than to risk showing up the guest.

I actually do as many interviews where I am the interviewee rather than the interviewer (though these are not as frequently televised and thus not seen as much).

But there is also an art, in my view, to being an interviewee.

Again, preparation is often the key. Interviewees should think about what the interviewer is likely to ask, especially when questions are not provided in advance. They should also take time to understand the interviewer’s style and approach. Just as important, interviewees should come prepared to convey that they are enjoying the conversation – listeners and viewers strongly prefer that.

Most importantly, interviewees should know what they want to say—even if a question that is precisely on point is never asked. No one remembers whether the answer matched the question; they remember the message. Get that message out early in the interview and repeat it several times (people are far more likely to remember what is said if they hear it more than once).

I am often amazed at how many prominent people go on podcasts or interview shows and simply spar with the host. One wonders why they agreed to appear if they have no intention of saying anything of note. This is especially common on Sunday morning talk shows, where I sometimes ask myself why the guest went on if he or she did not plan to deliver a clear message. My advice is that if you do not have a message, it is better not to agree to the interview.

And for all of those who want to get their own TV interview shows, keep practicing. But wait a while – I do not need more competition.