Dream Job #251

I'd like to host a radio show. A late night radio show, preferably, airing around 11 or midnight.

So you ask, why not just make a podcast? Everyone's doing it. It's not that hard. But podcasting, to me, has two main obstacles. No, three. First of all, the best podcasts, in my opinion, are those hosted by two people, not just one. One person talking to themselves bores after a while, but two people discussing is interesting to listen to (take Adam and Sam from Cinecast for example). Second, music is an issue. Either you're being illegal or you play very obscure music by bands who'd love any kind of attention. Brian Ibbott manages it on Coverville, but it's tricky, and too much work if you just want the occasional song rather than having a whole podcast revolving around music. Third, I'd love to do interview. Like the one with Ranses Shaffy I'm listening to at the moment. But it's hard to find interesting people willing to be interviewed, especially for a PodCast.

So, what would my show look like, ideally? Well, it would start with 5 to 10 minutes of remarkable news and developments, links maybe to interesting things, but also a list of the concerts for which ticketsales are opening (I always miss this stuff. Like the Sufjan Stevens concert. And the Belle and Sebastian concert last year. And the Ryan Adams concert the year before that). Then the rest of the time an interview with, and I see this concept very broadly, "someone interesting". Not necessarily famous. Not necessarily people involved in the arts, although probably many of them would be. Most importantly, not someone who's been in the news lately.

All the interview shows, everyone has something to sell. A new book, production, CD, etc. And that thing dominates the conversation, when instead I'd often just like to get to know the interviewee. So, the idea would be, someone with no particular aim for the interview, just chilling on the couch, talking about no matter what. Oh, of course I'd do research in advance, prepare questions to jumpstart the conversation, but if the consersation turns to cow tipping, then why not? Hopefully this would lead to less predictable interviews. More like the interviews in Interview, in a way, but longer and therefore hopefully a little more insightful.

The show would of course be interspersed with interesting music, about 4 or 5 songs total I think, one old, one new, all relevant to the interviewee. By the interviewee if he/she is a musician? Maybe one song or two, but definitely not all. Enough to give a taste of what the person does, but I'm more interested in what music they'd listen to, or in how they'd react to music they didn't know yet.

So yeah, one of the many (251 is a broad guess, but probably not too far off the mark) dream jobs I'll never have but like to dream about.

H.

N.B. The Picture is unrelated, but I've been working on an assignment about the Heisenberg uncertainty relation all day and this felt appropriate.