Perry Simon has an invaluable piece of advice for podcasters: get to the point.
You’ll hear hosts introduce themselves, then just… well, they talk about their week, what they had for dinner, something that happened the other day, anything but what will be the ultimate topic or guest. Or they’ll introduce the guest, go off on tangents for 10 minutes, then reintroduce the guests.
You do not have time for that.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and this is one of my pet peeves. Take two examples: Mark Maron’s WTF and Kevin Pollak’s Chat Show. They are both marvelous interviewers, but I don’t care about what’s going on in their lives — particularly since I often don’t listen to their podcasts in the same week they’re released, so by the time I do get to them, that content is outdated. Instead, I have to drag the scroll bar forward and back until I find the exact spot where the guest is introduced and the conversation begins.
Since that practice irritates me so much, and I try to give you the kind of listening experience I expect, I never do it on my own podcasts. When you stream any of the audio on this site (or via iTunes), you’ll always jump right into the content you were promised, with no superfluous introductory tangents.
I wish others — including “The Nerdist” host Chris Hardwick, who Perry works with — would follow the same advice.