Wed 13 Sep 2006

Good Interviewer Meets Good Subject

(Continuing to work my way through a list of things to write about...)

I spent most of Monday (and yesterday) being down with a cold; sleeping a lot and generally being out of it. On Monday night, though, I woke up and since reading a book hurt my eyes, I stooped low and decided to watch some television.

Luckily, one of my favourite interview shows was on: Enough Rope. Most people outside of Australia won't have seen this show (which means three of my four readers are going to be wondering what I'm talking about), but Monday's episode with Al Gore was riveting viewing.

What Is "Enough Rope"?

This Australian show, which has been running for a few years now, works for a few reasons, but a large part of it is that the host, Andrew Denton, is both entertaining and very clever and well researched when he conducts and interview. His guests are also interesting people, usually well-known people, but many shows include some "ordinary Australians" with interesting stories. The website for the show allows people to suggest guests and topics and they have an influence on the show. Really, I cannot suggest more than reading the "about" page for the show, although if you haven't seen it, I don't think any written summary can quite capture how educational and entertaining this show is. If you are so inspired, there are plenty of DVDs and books available from the show.

Whilst collecting links for this post, I discovered that there are some podcasts of selected interviews available.

The Obligatory Steve Irwin Aside

Given the recent extraordinary coverage in the US of Steve Irwin's unfortunate death, the interview with him may be of interest to some people (this is the audio of the show broadcast on the day he died and includes a repeat of an interview they did with him). I am not a big Steve Irwin fan, but even I found this eminently watchable and enjoyed listening to it again just now.

(And if you're a football/soccer fanatic, the Anthony La Paglia interview is worth it. His discussion of the over-40's Hollywood team he plays in — starting around 5'15" — is hilarious.)

Al Gore

Anyway, back to Monday's episode. He was interviewing Al Gore, who is in Australia promoting *An Inconvenient Truth* (there's a real website for the movie, too, but it seems to require Flash and my 64-bit Linux system and Flash are not on speaking terms).

What a great interview! Read the transcript, which at least captures the words, if not the vibe of the segment. It started off sounding a bit like a stump speech, but rapidly moved into something with substance since Denton does not let his guests get away without justifying their answers. A good interviewer or a knowledgeable person do not necessarily make for an interesting interview. It is only when the two play off nicely against each other that you get something special. In this case, two smart guys were talking about something important (yeah, sue me ... I consider environmental change to be pretty important; I like nature and I'm a big fan of having a planet to live on in the future).

Why The Show Works

The Al Gore interview was interesting enough, but have a quick read through the second interview from Monday's show. This is the "ordinary Australian" side of the show and came from a viewer suggested interview subject. This is a talk with somebody who has very recently recovered from a fairly debilitating neurological disease. I know nothing about the background here, but it completely fit Enough Rope's tag line of "everybody has a story; some of us just aren't famous".

Topics: media