Through my 4 (!) podcasts I obviously have built up a lot of opinions on podcasting over the years. Here's some of them. The two outlier podcasts of our time are Dwarkesh and TBPN, and I will explain my mental model of them to the end - the following advice is what I strongly believe for the "average" podcast that wants to do well but not necessarily being full time top tier influencer level. Also, this is primarily for professional/technical interview guest-led podcasts, but I also do have opinions on non-guest-led podcasts as well.

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Podcasting succeeds as edutainment that humanizes technical content through authentic conversation. Guest curation is the highest leverage growth factor—launch with A-list guests to establish credibility and maintain balanced topic coverage. Structure episodes with rehearsed intros that encourage guests to share impressive metrics, plan content flow clearly, and close with actionable CTAs. Core principles include mining for passionate rants, asking concise questions with strategic follow-ups, defining key terms explicitly, and using verbal highlights to guide listeners through the conversation.

How To Podcast