 So, hi, welcome everyone to Lessons from Behind the Mic with author and podcaster Matthew Felix. This event was produced in partnership with the San Francisco Writers Conference. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the Mechanics Institute of San Francisco. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mechanics Institute, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest designed to serve the general public in California, we're also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the United States. Right now, due to the shelter in place, or whatever you want to call this, the pandemic, all of our activities are virtual, but I encourage you to consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year and with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area. So our speaker tonight is Matthew Felix, who is an author, podcaster and speaker. He also publishes and markets books for other authors. He has a number of awards under his belt for his fiction, perhaps however the most intriguing of which is for a book of nonfiction called Porcelain Travels, Humor, Horror and Revelation in, on and around toilets, tubs and showers. This work has won a number of accolades and is a number one bestseller in travel humor and the winner of four solace awards and it's super funny, you should read it, in, on or around a toilet tub and shower. So the way it's going to work tonight is Matthew is going to share his knowledge about podcasting and interviewing and then we'll take his questions. So please post that you want to ask a question in the chat space and we'll make every effort to answer them later on tonight. So thank you very much and thank you Matthew for coming out tonight and talking with us. Well, I didn't have to go far, but yes, I'm happy to come out tonight to speak to you from my living room. But thank you very much, Teran. Thanks for the opportunity. Thanks all of you who are joining tonight. Really excited to see some familiar faces and some not familiar faces. So thank you for being here. And I'm just excited to talk about something that I love, which is interviewing, which is podcasting. I'm really going to focus mostly on the art of the interview itself. But as Teran said, I'm happy to take any and all questions at the end. I am the author of three books. I'll also just mention I don't need to revisit porcelain travels. Teran did a good job of explaining that one, but I'll just mention my novel is a voice beyond reason, which is about a young Spaniard's awakening to his intuition. And my other nonfiction book is with open arms, short stories of misadventures in Morocco, which is pretty self-explanatory there from the title. In addition to being an author, I am the program director and host of the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast, which is relaunching very shortly. And I just want to mention before I get too far this Saturday at 12 o'clock, so February 20th at 12 o'clock, we'll be having a special event where I interview conference director, Laurie McClain. We're going to talk about how the conference has sort of had to pivot, obviously because of the pandemic and what that means for 2021 and then 2022. So I assume that some of you are probably writers. I met a couple of you at the conference. So that's another event. If you're around at noon on Saturday, you might want to check out. We're also going to talk about the Writers Conference writing contest, which is taking place and they're adding quite a bit to that this year, even though the conference didn't take place. So that's on Saturday, but I have produced and hosted a few podcasts. The most sort of the biggest one, my main effort, I guess, was Matthew Felix On Air, which was a live video podcast. And on that, I interviewed people about health, spirituality, writing, travel on and on. And some of the people that were on that, just to give you a sense, Cara Black, a mystery writer, outside magazines, founding editor, Tim Cahill, dandelion chocolates, Greg D'Alesandra, Zoe Elton from the Mill Valley Film Festival, Jameson Watts from the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, NPR's Doug Gordell and lots of others. So for those of you who didn't see that show, which might be most of you, I want to show you just to kind of make it a little tangible. Some of the, just a quick clip of some of the interviews that I did when I was doing that show. So let me share the screen here. Optimize for sound. And here we go. What got you to give up that security question? Don is bad-mouthing hidden confidence. So what can she know? You can go into remission and remission can come and go. They make wine out of hash. So we go deeper. Hey, I do most amazing dream workers and travel book for people who are about to die and they write a story and then they like perform their own story. A lot of rage. Oh, a rage is a reorganization of the illustrated novel. We're not ready for that. No, GBTQQ. There's a metro. I write. Oh, does someone pull that off? And it was actually my father who's this voracious reader who I don't know later in life when he retired started reading mysteries. Dad, no, no, you know, mysteries. You know, interesting. So you weren't even into them. How did it pop up coffee turn your world upside down? You're a little more cultured than I am. Humans are sort of inherently self-centered creatures. Being a penetration. Antarctica was the same way 50 years ago. A place that could not have experienced without something cracking open. For 20 minutes, you have something that can entertain people. She just spilled her hidden bottle of wine. Wow, you're jet... I'm still jet lagged. Yes, that's right. That's different. My mother was a refugee. Her mother was a refugee. I was a refugee. You sabotaged me. I sabotaged you. That's what it's there for. I can't make this sound. Millions of bees were dying. Guide dog has to evaluate. You travel the world eating chocolate. Is there a better job? I love that scene where they're holding your head out of the toilet when you were vomiting. I thought that was a great... It's powerful. Powerful television. Exactly. A nude portrait of you. And you hung this up on a billboard. Or not a billboard. Oh, heavens. Let's talk about that. No, we didn't forget. You mentioned the film. What? Are you saying... What would you like to say? I forgot. Sorry. I know it's rude, dude. It's rude to interrupt the close. They're on live. If they go to my website. All right, so hopefully that just gives you an idea of some of the feel of what I've done in the past. And I'm going to talk about some of what I just showed you. But like I said, I just wanted to make it a little more tangible. Some of my past experiences. I love interviewing. I just generally love doing it. But before I tell you why, I do want to tell you how I got into it. And I'm also going to tell you what goes into my interviews and what I think makes for a successful one. At the end of my talk, then I'm going to talk again about the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast and the changes that we're making as we relaunch in March, including who we have lined up because I'm really excited about some of the people I've been able to get to come on to that show. But I got into interviewing as a result of my first book when I was being interviewed. I was the interviewee and I went into an internet radio station studio to be interviewed on one of their live podcasts. And before we went on, on the air, the woman who was about to interview me just happened to mention in passing that they were always looking for hosts for shows at their internet radio station. So right away, I knew that was exactly what I'd been looking for for my author platform. Now, for those of you who aren't authors and don't necessarily know what that term means, because I didn't know when I first got started. Basically, the platform is just the way that we as authors get our names out into the world and get our books out into the world. So maybe that's a blog, maybe you're the head of an organization. Maybe it's a podcast. But I was just getting started and I didn't know. I knew I needed a platform, but I didn't know a bunch of people. I wasn't the head of an organization. So I wasn't sure what my platform was going to be. But as soon as this woman said, hey, we're always looking for hosts, like I said, I knew this is what I'm going to do. This is going to be my platform or at least a big part of it. Well, that might not sound particularly unusual that I was going to start doing podcasts, but at the time for me, it really was unusual in the sense that I don't think this was three or four years ago. I don't think I'd ever listened to a podcast at that point. And I know that I had never interviewed anyone, never mind interviewed anyone live, and it became all the more sort of complicated when I agreed when the station manager convinced me to start the podcast, which was going to be live and two hours every week, two weeks later. So I had a lot to figure out in a very short amount of time, including how to do an interview. Now, when most people think about doing an interview, of course, the first thing that comes to mind usually is going to be coming up with a list of questions, and that is a big part of it. But I think there's actually more to it and a lot goes into the questions themselves. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. First off, you can you can approach coming up the questions for your for your interviewee as sort of an intellectual exercise and just sort of go through it in that way. But I think it's more interesting and I think the interviewers that do better jobs are the ones that really approach it with a really natural curiosity and passion for the subject or the book or even just that, you know, the person that they're about to interview. And so that's how I try to approach my interviews when I'm coming up with questions and thinking about how I'm going to approach them. The next thing that plays into the questions is going to sound really obvious, but over and over, I've had my guests that I've been interviewing tell me that people who interview them often don't do this. And that's research over and over. I've been surprised when my guests will tell me, wow, you really did your homework. A lot of people who interview me don't don't take that time and or make that effort. And to me, it's absolutely essential. And it's not essential only because of the obvious. Again, it helps you to come up with the questions because you're you're learning and you're getting more information and you can draw the questions from that. But it's also just because you're you're giving yourself a general foundation for the conversation you're about to have with someone, because inevitably the conversations are going to go off on tangents. Well, if I'm interviewing someone about craft coffee like I did on my last show, and I don't really know that much about it, other than that I like a macchiato. Um, if he goes off on a tangent in this case, and I don't really have that much of foundation, he's going to kind of run with the conversation. Whereas if I've done my research, it allows me to be much more conversant and engage in a way that I'm probably not going to be able to if I haven't had taken the time to do that. Another reason that I do the research and feel that it's really, really essential is because so many of the people that I interview, particularly if they're authors, if they're CEOs, they've already had similar interviews over and over and over again. And they've already been asked perhaps the same question over and over again. So if I can do some research, well, let me, let me say this. So I do two, two forms of research. One is I do the general research that I just got done talking about. And I come up with my own questions, but then I do additional research, which is where I'll go and I'll read someone's interviews. I'll listen to the podcast they've already been on so that I can make sure I'm not just replicating what they've already done because I don't want them just to be producing rote responses to my question. And so that's another reason that for me, research is really important as I'm coming up with my outline for, for an interview. The other thing I do once I've come up with the questions is I create an arc because to me doing an interview is much like writing a story. I want there to be a beginning, a middle and an end. I want to know where I'm starting and I want to know how I'm going to get there and where specifically I'm going to end up. And, and so, so once I've done that, once I have my arc, then I also get really detailed about how much timing I'm spending on each step of that arc because I want to make sure I get to everything and I want to make sure that I get to where I want to end up so that I'm presenting that entire product that I had intended before the interview got started. So once I have my questions, once I have my arc, once I have my timing, then I'm going to rehearse. So again, I don't know how many of you are writers, probably a fair number, but those of you who are, and even if you're not, we've all done writing at some point and one of the big techniques that we use often times is reading out loud, right? When we write something and we read it out loud, issues come up, transitions, things that are maybe in the wrong order. They're brought to light when we give voice to them. So I do that with all of my outlines for all of my interviews. I'll rehearse one time, ten times, twenty times, however many times it takes, because inevitably when I give voice to these words that I've already got down on paper, I realize I don't have a transition. I realize that this section actually needs to go before that section and that sort of thing. So for me, rehearsing, I could just do it cold and it would be fine, but it wouldn't flow necessarily as well. It wouldn't be as polished as I like for my interviews, ideally, when they go well to be. The other reason that I rehearse my interviews or my outlines is it helps to deal. It helps to stop the ums and the odds, because doesn't that drive you crazy when whether it's a guest or whether it's the interviewer, you know, there's that that because we don't like the silence, especially I'm talking right now. So I'm so conscious that you're expecting me to say something. But when I get tripped up, I subconsciously sort of reflexively feel the need to fill in that silence. Right. If I'm getting stuck, I'm not sure exactly where I'm going to go next. If I've rehearsed, chances are I have a much better sense of what I'm going to say. So I'm still going to say um, I'm still going to say I'll once in a while, but hopefully it's going to be a lot less. And of course, now that I've talked about it in this interview, I'm going to say way more ums and odds than I would have otherwise. But I did rehearse this as well. Okay. So there it is. There it is. So before an actual interview, that's kind of that's the preparation. But now as I'm getting ready to sit down for an interview, there are a few physiological considerations. So for example, today I didn't do dairy. I don't do that much dairy anyway, but I don't do dairy the day of an interview or at least several hours beforehand because it gets the mucus going. And that might sound silly to those of you who aren't singers or haven't done theater or haven't done a lot of podcasting. But it's really important that my voice be in good shape because especially for a podcast where it's mostly audio, right? By the same token, I'm not going to drink carbonated beverages. The last thing I want to do for you now as I'm talking is is burp, right? And I did have a guest burp and it was actually hilarious. But ideally we want to avoid that, right? So no dairy, no carbonated beverages. The other thing I'm going to do is I'm going to drink lots of water all day because again, these are all muscles. And so I want them to be life. I want them to be responsive. I want to be, I just want them to be in good shape. The last thing I might do, particularly now during COVID, sometimes I'll spend all morning and I don't actually have reason to talk to anyone. I'm working from home. Well, if I'm getting ready to do an interview, then I might need to warm up my cords. And so I will actually take the time, if I haven't spoken all day to, I'll take a hot shower and I might do some vocal exercises just to get the voice warmed up. Again, if you haven't done theater, if you don't do this kind of thing, that might seem like overkill, but these are muscles. So just like when I go to the gym or when I used to go to the gym, when gyms were open and I can't wait for them to be open again, you know, you do a little bit of warm up because you don't want to strain your muscles. And so that's just, these are just some physiological considerations that I take the time to make sure that I kind of check those things off the list before I actually do an interview. On a related note, not only am I going to take, so Taryn and I before we, Taryn and I before we started today, we just, we both, you know, we took a few deep breaths. Inevitably, before I do an interview, I'm running around doing last minute things. I'm revisiting my notes. I'm, you know, getting the lights set up. I'm doing all those things. So I'm inevitably a little flustered. And even if I weren't, before we start something that requires concentration, we want to get centered, we want to get focused and grounded. So I'm going to take a few breaths. But then the breath is obviously just as if not more important during the course of the interview. And so, so many of us in our day to day, we breathe from here, from sort of the top part of our lungs. We don't stop to actually breathe from our diaphragm. Well, if I'm going to be talking nonstop for an hour, and I might be doing it, I'm going to be doing it three times this week, then I want to make sure that just like with a bagpipe, I'm getting enough air to make the sound. If I just have a little bit of air in that bagpipe, I can probably still make the sound, but it's not going to sound like I want it to. It's going to get strained over time. And so it's really important as I'm talking, I'm paying a lot of attention, a lot of attention to how I'm breathing. The other thing I'm doing related to breathing is I'm making sure that even when I'm speaking quickly, that I'm taking pauses as I'm speaking to insert those breaths. It's just, it's just really important to keep that support going the whole time. The last thing that I'll say with regards to how I actually talk when I'm doing an interview is I pay attention to how I sound. I try to be aware, for example, am I speaking too quickly? Well, I'm never speaking too slowly, but I pay attention to my diction. I pay attention to the cadence. I try to vary my tone. I try to vary the speed a little bit. It's just like when radio announcers are exaggerating their voices, well, why are they doing that? They're doing it because it keeps our attention. It forces us to stay engaged because it's kind of doing this. Well, in podcasting or in-person interviews, if I'm on stage interviewing someone, we're not going to be that exaggerated. I mean, the style is much more casual, but still, it's important to pay attention to how you sound so that the sound is hopefully still engaging and people still want to follow along and you keep their interest. So those are just some of the considerations as I get ready to do the interview. Well, now let's say I'm sitting down and now I'm facing the guest and you're my guest. First thing I want to do is make you comfortable, right? Because most of the people that I'm interviewing I've never met before. And particularly now, I don't even get to meet them in-person, which I really like that in-person. I made a point when I had my other video podcast, even though it would have enabled me to interview a lot more people from further afield, I made a point of I wanted to do it in-person. Well, that's not possible now. Either way, the first thing I want to do is make them comfortable. Second thing I want to do, so I'm going to make some small talk and establish some rapport. The next thing I'm going to do is I'm just going to give them a quick overview of how the interview is going to transpire. I'm going to ask if they have any questions. Now, I do not give my guest questions ahead of time ever. It's really important to me that an interview not sound rehearsed. We've all heard interviews where it's kind of obvious the responses sound rehearsed, the questions, the host is a little, maybe a little rigid. And to me, again, that's just not interesting. I want it to be interesting not only for me, like I said, but for the interviewee and also for the listeners. And I think listeners can tell. And so I do have a lot of guests who ask for the questions ahead of time, and I always politely decline. Now, what I do do is I do tell them the general subjects we're going to talk about. I'm not trying to catch anyone off guard. I'm not going to spring any surprises on anyone. But I'm not going to tell them exactly what we're going to talk about, the exact questions, because I do not want it to sound rehearsed. As we get into the actual interview itself, I'm going to start with the bio, obviously. And then I'm going to do something that you probably wouldn't think of. And what that is, is I'm going to try to get my guest to laugh. Now, I'm not going to do this in a contrived way. The goal is not to get them into hysterics. I don't prepare a joke ahead of time to do that. I'm just going to try to let it naturally happen. I'm going to try to be aware of any opportunities for something witty, something just to kind of a lighthearted humor, to see if I can get them to laugh. Now, the reason I'm doing this isn't for my ego. It's not to prove to myself how funny I am. It's really to assess how comfortable are they, right? Because if I don't know the person, and like I said, most of the time, I don't already know the person, maybe it's their first interview and maybe they're mortified. Well, if they're mortified, I don't want to joke around too much with them. I want to be respectful of where they are. Like I said, I'm already trying to make them comfortable, but if they're really uptight, I'm not going to joke around too much. On the other hand, if someone just cracks up and I see that we have a similar sense of humor, I'm going to really make that a big part, hopefully, of the interview. Because to me, ideally, in an interview, it's going to be funny. We're going to have fun with it. And then we're also going to go deep. Ideally, I want to do both of those things, right? Just like we want in life. We want to experience the whole range of emotions. So if I can get the whole range of emotions into an hour of interview, then, you know, that's a massive success. And of course, it depends on the topic. It depends on the book. It depends on, again, the personality of the person that I'm interviewing. But that's the goal. And so trying to get them to laugh a little bit in the beginning is sort of a nice barometer for me of how far I'll be able to go and what the tone is going to be of the interview. Once we're in the interview itself, there are two main things happening. And neither of these are going to surprise you. First of all, the questions, obviously. But then secondly, the tangents. The questions are relatively straightforward, right? I've got my list. We already talked about that. I know my arc. I know where I want to end up. But then I'm following up on my list, right? I'm following up on the questions, on their answers. And this is where interviewing becomes a skill or an art. Because, again, I'm not just reading the questions. I start with those, but then I'm listening. And it becomes a real exchange. I'm digging deeper. I'm getting clarification. And that's where we take it one step further and we break off into the tangents. Now, the tangents are when, again, for me, it really becomes a skill and really becomes even more of a skill and an art. Because this is where the interesting stuff happens, right? This is where the stuff that you haven't planned for happens. Now, it's also the most challenging part of the interview. Because as the interviewer, I have to be able to decide in a split second, is this a quote, unquote, good tangent? Is this a bad tangent? And a good tangent, of course, being one that is more or less in line with the topics that I've hoped that we're going to discuss that I've planned for us to discuss. And so if that's a good tangent, then I want to follow up on that. If it's a, quote, unquote, bad tangent, then I need to be able to gently heard the interviewer or the interviewee back to kind of the main line, the main thread of the conversation. Now, tangents, the good tangents, to me, my approach to them and why it's so tricky, it's sort of like my approach to travel. When I'm traveling generally, I don't rely on a map and I don't rely on GPS. Because when I'm walking through Paris, for example, I just want to discover stuff, right? That's where the excitement is, these unexpected discoveries that we make when we're traveling. And it's the same with the conversations, it's the same with the interviews. It's when we're going off on these tangents and wandering to places we hadn't necessarily deliberately intended to go, that some of the most beautiful, exciting, interesting moments arise. So I want to do that. I want to wander. I want the unexpected. I want to allow space for that to happen. But just like when I'm traveling, as I'm wandering through Paris, I still need to get back to my hotel. I still need to know how to get back to my main, you know, the main walk that I was taking. I still need to get back to where I started. And so it's the same with the tangents. I want to let my guest go off on this exciting, interesting tangent. But I, as the interviewer, it's my job to make sure, one, we don't go too far. And two, I know how to get us back to the main conversation. Now, there are several skills involved, and this is where it really is, again, sort of tricky and exciting. There are several skills involved in making sure that that happens, that we can explore the tangent, but also get back. Key skill is listening, first of all. And not just listening, but actually hearing what the person is saying, right, and responding accordingly. That requires a tremendous amount of concentration. I don't know if there's anything that I do that requires more concentration than what I'm interviewing. And so like I already said, I'm looking at the questions. I'm listening to the responses. I'm evaluating whether or not to follow tangents. I'm looking at my time sheet so that I know where I should be timing-wise in the conversation. I'm looking at the clock to match that up. If I'm doing a live event, I might be looking on Zoom. I'm looking at chat to see if the questions are coming in. When I was doing my live video podcast, I was operating three cameras myself while I was doing the interviews, which I looked back on that. And I mean, it was a lot. And then of course, if I was doing Facebook Live, which I was also doing, then comments and things would be coming in that way. So I'm spinning so many plates when I'm doing an interview that it's really challenging, but it's also really exhilarating. So I like the challenge, but I'm always exhausted at the end because it takes so much concentration. The other thing that I have to pay really close attention to in addition to all those things that I just cited is the interviewee's body language, right? Because what is it, 85% or 90%, I don't know what the statistic is, but it's something at that level of communication is nonverbal. So if I'm interviewing you and I've just asked you a question that you are uncomfortable with or maybe you don't even know the answer, and again, I'm never going to surprise you, but sometimes people just blank, right? And that hasn't happened too often, but there were a couple of times, you know, when I've asked a question that I know the interviewer knows the answer, the interviewee knows the answer, it's just a glaringly obvious thing that they live and breathe and yet they get this blank look on their face because we get self-conscious or whatever the reason is. Well, it's my job as the interviewer to sort of sweep in and prevent that moment from being more than a blip on the radar. And a lot of that I'm doing by discerning their body language, right? So I have to pay attention, not just, and as I'm looking at the clock as I'm looking at these other things, I really, my main focus nonetheless has to be on them and their language and making body language and making sure that they're comfortable and this is going well for them. The last skill that is just key and something that I think is a challenge for a lot of people is the ability to interrupt in a way that is not offensive, that's gentle yet firm. And this is when I started off because, you know, you want to be polite. We're taught that it's rude to interrupt, right? Well, if I don't interrupt you when you're going off on this tangent and you're going, you know, now you're in Lyon instead of Paris, you're just, you're so far afield, I'm going to lose control of the interview and you're going to take over. We're not going to get to the topics that I wanted to get to. We're not going to end up where I wanted to end up. And so I have to, the interviewer has to be able to interrupt. And that's a learned skill. That's not something I was comfortable with initially, but I'm much better now because you have to be, like I said. So those are just some of the, in the moment skills and learnings that I've developed and learned over the course of doing interviews. Now I want to share with you just some of the things that I love about it. When I first started, as I said at the beginning, I started interviewing and podcasting because I, as an author, as a new author, I needed a platform. I didn't have one. This opportunity arose and I took it. So it was about me initially. But what I quickly learned and one of the things that I loved and still love is that it wasn't just about me because ironically, or not so ironically, with each interview, I'm doing the same thing for the other person or the organization or the cause that I'm doing for myself. And that is, I'm giving them a platform. So once I realized that whether it's guide dogs for the blind or an author that's got a new website out or my friend who had Crohn's disease, I'll talk about in a second, that I was helping all of them to the extent that I had, you know, that audience, that felt really good. And it felt really good also because I hadn't anticipated it. Like I said, I thought it was just going to be all about me. So to find out that I was and helping myself, I was helping others felt really good. A lot of people that I get to the chance to interview and get to sit down for an hour with and have these in-depth conversations, they're not people I would get to do that with otherwise. And so that's another thing that I love about the interviewing and about the podcasting is it gives me these opportunities I just wouldn't have otherwise. And I just mentioned my friend who had Crohn's disease and she's a perfect example. I've known her for 25 years and, you know, since very early on in our friendship, I knew that she had Crohn's disease. Well, it wasn't until she came on my show though that we really spent, you know, 45 minutes going in-depth and I learned so much more about my friend than I had known until then about this key part of her life. And I've had a few other friends also on my podcasts. And so that's just another dimension that I never would have anticipated that has been really rewarding about doing these interviews. In more simple terms, you know, I've just made so many new contacts many of whom have become ongoing friendships so that's been really gratifying and I've just learned a lot. You know, I mentioned how much research I do if an author is going to be on the show I read their book if it's a cause I learned about the cause of the organization and then obviously during the interview itself we go that much deeper and I learned that much more and since they're my shows I'm always choosing something that's of interest to me but things that are of interest to me I might not have ever had the time to learn anything about so I just, I love that aspect of doing the interviews. If we go a little deeper a little more personal you know, so much of or like so many things that we do that push us outside of our comfort zones I've grown a lot as a result of doing the interviews as a result of throwing myself into podcasting as a result of agreeing to do a two hour live show two weeks after agreeing to do it and then everything that has come since then so I think just in sort of personal growth terms throwing myself into interviewing has been great from that, from that angle as well and I think that sometimes we need to do that right especially if we haven't challenged ourselves for a while and so that's that's what interviewing and podcasting that's another thing that they've done for me the last thing I'll say along these lines is just that another consequence of throwing myself into this has been just that when we do something like this doors unexpectedly open and there have been lots of interview opportunities that have come up along the way and of course the last one being the most recent one being taking over being asked to be program manager and host of the San Francisco writers conference podcast which you know, if you'd asked me a year or two years ago if that was in the cards I never I mean that just would have seemed so so out there so unlikely so that's another great thing about when we when we launch into these unexpected endeavors unexpected doors open so I just mentioned the San Francisco writers conference podcast so I'm just going to tell you a little bit of how I got into that a little more specifically and then I want to share some of the changes we've made and some of the guests that I have lined up and then we'll open it up to question to Q&A but I attended the San Francisco writers conference for the first time last year 2020 and after that and I don't even really know how this happened but I guess just you know, I met a lot of people there had a wonderful experience was really looking forward to to this year's conference which obviously didn't happen and they asked me afterwards if I would edit I guess it came up at some point that I was a podcaster and they asked me if I would edit their podcast episodes from 2020 because the way that they did the podcast until now they would conduct all of their interviews at the conference and then they would split split up the interviews with five or six people who would go out and interview the speakers and then over the course of the year until the next conference every two weeks they would release a new episode well so I was editing those episodes well as 2021 approached and the conference could no longer take place they were going to run out of episodes and they were going to run out and not be able to produce anymore because the conference wasn't happening well even worse that since the conference wasn't happening they needed that visibility perhaps even more than under ordinary circumstances so they reached out to me and said would you take this on and I said yeah you know I'd be I'd be humbled and excited to take it on but there are a few things that I would like to change if it works for you so the first thing is the episodes before were 10 to 20 minutes and because they were splitting the interviews up between five or six people they had a three-question format to allow for some consistency and that worked really well but I asked and sort of suggested if I could kind of take my approach to an hour episodes that would be closer to an hour so we're going to do that you know these people that I'm having on the show they're I just have too much that I want to talk about with them and so 10 or 20 minutes selfishly that's not enough for me so we've expanded the format the episodes will be more more like an hour going forward the other thing is the podcast currently is not available on the major podcast platforms and so in 2021 if you're doing a podcast you've got to have it on Stitcher and iTunes and Spotify so we'll be getting the podcast on those major platforms shortly another thing that I suggested that the conference was all in favor of is since I'm conducting all of these interviews via Zoom I said let's just use the video and upload the video to Zoom so for those people who prefer to actually watch the interviews that'll also be an option that we'll be doing going forward that we haven't thus far a few things that we're not changing I love the slogan of the conference because I think it really hits the nail on the head or the three nails on each of the heads for what the things that are really most important to writers and that's craft commerce and community and so I'm trying to keep those things in mind as I choose guests and then as I actually formulate my outlines for each of the episodes with the guests and the same applies again like I said to actually choosing the guests just to wrap up I'm going to go through quickly just a few of the guests that I do have lined up for the initial episodes I don't have time to go through everybody but just to give you a sense for some of the episodes like I said this Saturday sort of a pre-episode I'll be having Laura McClain the conference director on and we're going to talk about again how the conference is adjusted to COVID and what's in store for this year because there's a lot going on even though the conference didn't take place and then talk about 2022 my first show with an author I've already recorded and it was a great conversation that was with Alia Voltz who wrote recently I guess last year her paperback's about to come out next month or April home baked and this is a fantastic book she grew up with her mom selling pot brownies or cannabis brownies throughout San Francisco both in the 70s when it was kind of you know fun hedonistic and then in the 80s when the AIDS crisis hit and so it's an autobiography it's a memoir about her experiences growing up in that environment but it's really so much more than that I mean that would be enough in and of itself but it's a history of San Francisco it's a history of the AIDS crisis it's a history of cannabis and legalization but the reason in addition to the fact that the book sounded interesting the reason I'm having Alia on first is because she launched during the pandemic and I launched three books for clients during the pandemic and it's it's such a challenge it's been such a challenge and she not only launched successfully but she taught a workshop on on launching during the pandemic so I thought that's a perfect subject to start with she's the perfect person to talk about that with so really excited to get that episode out I'm also gonna do I'm gonna skip here in the interest of time there are lots of episodes I wanted to talk about in you know I talked about the three tenets craft community and commerce I'm gonna have Laurie Doyle who's a conference alumnus and Ryan Sloan on now they're both associated with Berkeley they Laurie's part of the writers Grotto and they both also are co-founders along with Mori Zeff of Babylon Salon and for any of you who are interested in literature reading series this has been one of my favorite reading series for for a couple of years I think I've been following them and so we're gonna talk about community as writers because when I was getting started it was really hard to find community and so between the two of them and the three of us we've got academia writers organizations and literary series and so I'm really excited about that and I'm hoping that it will help new writers to kind of navigate find their way and establish writers to find new ways perhaps a finding community another episode I'm really excited about and this is for any of you who might be interested in self-publishing or indie publishing is Joanna Penn and this is someone she's based in the UK I'm so excited that she agreed to be on the show because so many of us are indie publishers and self-publishers or self-publishing and she was one of the main resources when I self-published my first book she was one of the main resources I went to her website her podcast she's fantastic she's a best-selling author many times over in her own right so I think for for indie writers that's going to be a really exciting episode as well and then the last person I'm just going to throw out is Natalie Baziel she wrote Queen Sugar which some of you might know Oprah turned into a TV show while she has a new anthology coming out we are each other's harvest celebrating African-American farmer's land and legacy and so we're going to talk about writing the new book and then what goes into creating an anthology and then also what it's like to have your book picked up by Oprah and turned into a TV show which that's one that's an interview in which you know she's already been asked that 50 50 times or 100 times or 500 times and I even said to her if you don't want to talk about it again you don't have to but sounds as if she's up for it so I think that'll be that'll be a great conversation as well there's lots more I could say about all about all about all of that but that just hopefully gives you an idea of kind of the the things we're going to talk about on the new podcast before I turn it over back over to Taryn and to questions I'm going to see if I can navigate one more video this is my most difficult interview that I did and it's and it's just a clip it's just one minute of like seven minutes just to give you an idea but it's my most difficult interview and it's also my most popular interview by far so let me see if I can navigate this because the other video is still up and it's a little tricky in in windows so let me let me see if I can navigate this all right here we go I'm Matthew Felix here to speak once again with Matthew Felix welcome Matthew Matthew is there a problem? Oh I'm sorry just I got I got a text sorry yeah okay I'm sorry what was the question I hadn't asked you a question yet I was going to ask you a question apologies first off have you put on weight put on weight? you look a little fuller in the face maybe why don't you tell people what the book's about With Open Arms is a collection of travel stories about some of the humorous and harrowing experiences that I had on two different trips to Morocco such as well there was my nightmare survival in Tangier there was the amazing experience I had in the Saharan sand dunes I see are you okay? of course no worries okay so that was obviously just an interview I did with myself when I was promoting my second book or I guess it was my first book second book I wrote first book I published my Morocco stories so thank you very much I'll turn it back over to Taryn I will unmute myself thank you that was that was kind of fascinating I learned a lot myself and so I'm thinking how can I apply this to my the tour I'm leading tomorrow aha perfect timing I think I'm going to take a hot shower and do some vocal exercises before highly recommend it highly recommend it well I have a question Carrie and I were chit chatting back and forth in the chat space about how do you politely interrupt or cut someone off when they start to go on and on a little too long about their cats or something off topic I hate it when they go on and on about their cats even though I love cats I think it's so situational right it's so specific and so you just kind of sit there like a mongoose and you wait until I was just on Hawaii I was just on Maori for 12 for 12 days and we saw nine mongoose which is for me was really exciting so that's I think that's where that metaphor came in or that analogy came in but you just kind of wait and when they take a breath or when they say something that you maybe you kind of agree with what they just said before they start to say something else but I think I think a lot of it is sort of intuitive I mean a lot of it is just just waiting you're just kind of it goes back I guess to the listening right you're just listening so carefully for that opportunity and you're reminding yourself that if you don't cut them you don't stop them from talking about their cats they're going to mess up the whole interview and you just kind of insert yourself you apologize right oh I'm so sorry but you know what let me so you just try to be polite you try to be very tactical with your timing and the other thing that I guess I'll say about that is people as soon as you do that you're also kind of bringing people out of their out of that headspace and then you're reminding them and usually they'll be like oh yeah yeah they realize oh I'm in an interview and I should probably kind of reign it in a little bit so usually once you kind of remind them they're they're receptive but I think a lot of it is just kind of instinctive and you just kind of learn it over time you just listen for the right the right moment you listen for the right moment you apologize politely maybe make a joke but like I said usually they're going to be they're reminded that they're in an interview and they they trust that you're the one who's driving and so usually they're okay to turn to turn the reins back over to you usually good it looks like Kerry has another question Kerry do you want to turn your mic on and just ask directly and I also saw Denise maybe Denise we can go after Kerry oh I'm sorry I didn't I I mean that's okay you settings here so I can see I just saw the hand I made a comment about not asking open-ended questions because I've started a lot of interviews for my podcast by saying something like so what led you in your life to do the thing you're doing and you end up they download their whole life story on you and you haven't gotten to the meat of what you actually want to be talking about in your interview and nobody really wants to hear what they did when they were in the fourth grade and so on and you'll get that if you don't kind of hone in your question and I don't think I'm very good yet at asking a question that will get exactly the information that I want without getting 10 minutes of extraneous stuff I think that's a really good point thank you for that I think that that underscores the importance of the questions themselves and why I take so much time with my questions and so and again I think that's something that just comes with practice right you only need so many guests to tell you about their fourth grade antics before you realize maybe I need to get a little more specific or maybe I need the other thing is when I have maybe verbose guests which I actually want right I'd rather have a guest who wants to say too much versus not enough and usually usually I don't have that problem of them not saying not enough but sometimes people are shy whatever but I'll say just very briefly could you tell me about that fourth grade incident because we're a little short on time or I want to make sure I get to everything if you get the sense that they're going to be verbose or they've already proven that they're verbose I'll start prefacing my questions with little polite reminders hey we don't have a lot of time but I'm really I would like to know just a little bit about that fourth great incident but then I have a question I want to ask right so kind of set that expectation and give them that reminder and sometimes that helps as well Denise I was just going to can you hear me you're such a good conversationalist you're such a natural at it that I'm happy to know about all your preparation because that even makes it better but have you ever interviewed someone that you didn't like someone during the interview I wondered if this question was going to come up um and you know what the answer is I think the answer is no now one person comes to mind who was so there are two people who come to my who were challenging but it wasn't that I didn't like them but there was one who was just pretty pretty shut down and they they would talk they would answer my questions but you know I talked about at the beginning about kind of making a joke and trying to suss out kind of where they are comfort level wise and this person in particular was just sort of a hard nut to crack it's not that I just like this person but from an interview standpoint it was more challenging that I would have preferred the other person who comes to mind was someone I really liked but this was someone who was so used to being interviewed that this person just wanted to run with the conversation this was one of those people who had a lot of wrote answers and they were heartfelt answers but the person had already had some of these conversations so many times and they were used to being in charge and so they wanted to be in charge so again it's not that I disliked interviewing them and I really liked them personally but it was challenging from the interview perspective and I they finally kind of got into my rhythm and I'm really happy with how it turned out but it was really challenging in the beginning but I'm actually surprised though going back to your specific question that I haven't really come across anyone and I don't know you know who I didn't like and maybe part of that is again people are so happy and grateful I've everyone's so grateful to be given the opportunity to talk about their work right even if maybe maybe they're not the nicest person otherwise but everyone that I've dealt with and I don't know how many interviews I've done at this point but people generally have been gracious and grateful and hopefully I didn't just jinx myself but like I said it's a great question and I was thinking about that beforehand because I wondered if if anyone was going to ask so thank you for that and then there's a question from Diane Diane would you like to ask that directly or would you like me to read it how did you handle all your notes without being obvious looking at them continually there you go so yeah so I interview Diane Diane I mean I forgot about Diane when I was thinking about difficult interviews wow I mean you want to someone who is difficult to interview Diane LeBeau my god no I'm kidding how do I well again it goes back to the rehearsal right I mean you guys saw that I was looking at my notes while I was doing this but hopefully I wasn't just staring at them the whole time right and that's because because I did rehearse and so when I'm when I'm doing my interview with with a podcast when I'm interviewing someone else then one I've rehearsed which makes me less reliant on the notes I'm still going to use the notes because again they're really specific things I want to make sure that I get to and then the other thing is half of it though are the tangents and when we're on a tangent I'm not looking at my notes so hopefully most of the interview I'm not glued to that paper because one I'm familiar with what I want to discuss two the rest of the interview is is about tangents and spontaneous conversation anyway and hopefully the notes are just things that I refer to to keep me on track assuming again that I've rehearsed then I've done my homework so I think that's how that hopefully transpires thank you any other questions Diane's voice Diane keeps moving our lips like she's talking did you have anything to say Diane can you hear me yeah yeah yeah no I just Matthew did an interview with me when he was starting the podcast and he was so terrific and a lot of fun and I was in the process of finishing my travel memoir and his interview and podcasts really helped me figure out more of what my book was going to be about so he's a wonderful person and he's helping me promote my upcoming travel memoir thank you Diane yeah it's great when you are able to tease out some important bits from your your interviewee in order to change their change their worldview in a way well I think that's also you know I talked about just now helping myself entails helping others even though that's I didn't know that was going to be the case but that's been a nice a nice unexpected benefit and so and so yeah so that's just another example of if you're coming onto my show and you've gotten in Diane's case a new book that you're formulating that you've worked on for a long time but there's still some some critical issues that maybe you haven't resolved or directions you're not sure you want to go if I'm putting you under the microscope for 45 minutes and again I've done my homework and I hadn't read Diane's book yet but just inadvertently it's going to hopefully be helpful for her because I've just put her like I said put her under the microscope for 45 minutes or an hour so that's just another nice example of how other people can kind of benefit from from the exchange that that the interviews are so thanks again Diane thank you I mean to me like I said I want to I want to go deep and I hopefully want to have fun and have a laugh to the extent that I can based on the chemistry with the with my guest and I mean that's just it's just a metaphor for life right we want to experience deep emotions intense emotions and we also want to have fun so again if I can and if I can do that in an hour then that's that's kind of the goal and that's when I feel really good about an interview when we've kind of hit all those different spots on the on that on that spectrum humor's key anyone else have a question then we might have just hit an hour exactly which goes also to my thing about keeping time being exactly on time when possible although we'll take more questions if anybody has any last minute ones but otherwise yeah maybe we've just wrapped up at an hour exactly oh thank you Kerry thanks for the question well thank you Matthew I am thank you I need to unpack my thoughts about this because you have opened up a couple of doors in my brain you know where to find me yes I do but but in all seriousness I mean again that's also why we do these talks so it makes me feel really good so thanks for sharing that that my my little talk just now has has got the wheel spinning for you that that makes me feel good it makes it it makes it so worthwhile for me so thanks thanks for that and yeah of course if you have follow-up questions or want to chat you know like I said you know where to find me so we can talk I do all right well thank you everyone for turning out tonight and sharing your thoughts with Matthew I will post this on the Mechanics Institute's YouTube channel if you want to revisit some of the things that Matthew talked about should be up in a day or two thank you very much thank you thank you thanks everybody for coming out thanks Teran and uh thanks Mechanics Institute and uh talk soon yeah I look forward to the podcast okay thanks all right good night good night