What makes a good radio interview?

Leonard Lopate interviewed me today on local rado to talk about my paper, Rich State, Poor State, Red State, Blue State: What’s the Matter with Connecticut (coauthored with Boris Shor, Joe Bafumi, and David Park). I’ve been a fan of Lopate for awhile (ever since hearing his interview with the long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox), but I have a much better sense of what makes him a good interviewer, now that I’ve been interviewed myself.

The trick is that he had a series of questions. If he had let me just ramble on for five minutes, I would’ve come off horribly, but I was able to answer the questions one at a time and explain things clearly. At the same time, the interview was live, and I didn’t see the questions ahead of time, so things were spontaneous. (I only wish I had remembered to mention that we found similar patterns in Mexican elections.)

It was interesting to get this insight into interviewing techniques.

And, of course, I can’t resist posting the superplot again:

superplot_var_slopes_annen_2000.png