Welcome any public radio listeners across the country Ray Suarez is one personality who needs very little introduction Suarez, of course is the host of The Daily calling program Talk of the Nation from National Public Radio. I'm taking the job in 1993 is made tens of thousands of fans as an intelligent professional in the broadcast industry is that almost 20 years of experience in the news business including television print and radio has written a book that scheduled to be out in January called running away from home is craft. The interview was the subject of a recent Twin Cities Forum sponsored by the Minnesota journalism Center Suarez was the keynote speaker. Here is Ray Suarez. I've learned a lot over a lot of years of doing this about how to talk to people talkin to people is one of the important ways that we find out the things that we ride in and broadcast.But one problem comes in breaking down this work into explainable pieces there so many kinds of interviews. And they're done in very different ways to fit particular circumstances appropriate for different conditions and meant to accomplish different kinds of purposes depending on whether they're being done for radio TV show print whether Justin answers or your questions are going to be heard or read think about it how different just that simple fact of whether anybody's going to hear your question how that shapes how you handle yourself in an interview there a different rules depending on whether the interview subject is a public person or a private person whether they're willing participant or being interviewed in the somewhat adversarial position in this can be crucial whether or not you've had time to prepare for working on this subject that you're writing about whether you've been handed something by the assignment desk and just run out onto the street leaving you so the building this world from scratch. So there's no unified field theory of interviewing. Kinds of interviews you'll do in these very different conditions cannot really respond to hard-and-fast rules black and white do's and don'ts this is ultimately a matter of style reference temperament really, so I'll try to talk a little also about the occasional ethical traps and dilemmas that also come up from time to time. I'll start with the job. I do everyday acting as host of Talk of the Nation. Talk of the Nation is not Charlie Rose. It's not Barbara Walters. It's a news show done in the call-in format which presents a particular set of challenges for the interviewer. My assignment is to set the table with an opening essay, but not tell the whole story. Cuz obviously if you tell the whole story, why should anybody listen to the subsequent 50 minutes? Then I have to do an opening interview. That doesn't ask all the good questions. Because if you ask all the good questions, what are the koalas going to do when you're done doing that? So once the introductory essay is over and I'm into the interviews. I start looking at my screen which is filling up with queries and ideas from callers around the country. So while I'm doing the opening interview, I'm adjusting the opening interview at the same time. There are things absent the influence of the callers that I would have been asking about that. I now know I'm going to wait to give them the chance to do it. So I'm assembling the show in my head. Based on where I'm going to leave off in the opening one-on-one and where the callers are going to take us. So that means that you can't go into the booth with a list of written questions. People often ask me. Do you write down your questions? So absolutely not trap and if you're working reporter, don't do it. Here's why A couple of different things can happen to a list of written questions. They can either be rendered meaningless by the eventual trajectory of the program in the case of Talk of the Nation War. They become a crutch a document you become reluctant to discard. Well after all you took the time to write it so you want to make use of it. So you going to ask those questions whether they matter or not. I have question for here, and I'm going to ask that right after question 3 dammit and what having no written questions does is forces you to listen. forces you to listen to every answer that your subject is given because your next question has to follow on from what they're saying and further develop the points that they're making or interpose a contradictory position to the one they are making In other words, no written questions forces you to do your job. Ever hear an interview ask a question that the subject just answered. I hear that all the time. Local TV people. I'm not going to make you raise your hand, but I think tankers have a particular skill when it comes to this. Having been an anchor in local news. I can I can imagine some of the reasons why it happens one is cuz you're producer won't get off your ifb. So, in fact, you're not you're not hearing what the person you are quote on quote interviewing is saying in the first place. You're just reading your written questions. But often it's just a product of bad listening. And this is a particular challenge when you're doing an interview in which the questions and the answers are going to be heard by the end consumer of the information. Now you do a radio report off and I just exert the answers, but when you're doing an interview program, the questions are her too and nothing sounds stupider. Then you asking the question. That was just answer. The interview has to yield you good usable answers. It has to make sense on the first pass if its life which adds serve another burden to the work you're doing at the moment that you're doing it. you can't in a live interview go back and ask the second question that you should have asked at the end and in addition preface it by saying, you know, I should have asked you this right at the beginning but you can't do that in a live interview. You can do it in a interview. What are you taking down the answers and you notepad you can do it in an interview that you're taping for radio because courtesy of the razor blade you can retell the the order that reality happened then the interview itself is not only performing the function of developing information from your source. But the way you are doing it is building confidence in the interview subject that they are able to answer your questions and passed something along this worthwhile. That you are someone who's not going to purposely try to cut their legs off with screw them or embarrass them or whatever. You might have up your sleeve. And it just keeps Faith with someone who has decided to talk to you and that's very important to what we're doing because the subset of people that we talked to who in fact have to talk to us is very small if you think about the work we do is report is the people who have to talk to us as opposed to just will or want to talk to us the very different group of people. When someone takes the time to listen to you interview someone cuz you're also building confidence on the part of the audience. They should believe as part of the investment that they're making that you're worth listening to. Or else why listen? The Listener is told by the way, you handle the interview that you are working hard on their behalf. That you want them to learn something that you're not going to swallow too simple glib or evasive answers that you've taken some time to familiarize yourself with the subject at hand. Listen to Terry Gross. For example, you can't sit through an hour of fresh air without thinking this woman has really done her homework. I mean, that's one of the abiding Impressions that you take away from listening to an interview done by Terry Gross is very good at it. The subject is of course the other important player in this transaction you working for your audience you working for yourself, but you're also working to create impressions in your subject. You going to get better answers and waste less time chasing them down if they feel you've done some work before you sat down with them. Nothing makes it easier to get a public figure off the script then giving them the feeling that the script just isn't going to be good enough for the purposes of this interview. I know it, you know easier said than done but a lot of public figures know they can basically toy with or lie to reporters when they understand that the person is not adequately prepared doesn't know the history of the issue doesn't know their own that is the subject history with an issue. in a long-form interview the subject is off and put it is by the idea that you know what you're talkin about believe me Works in short form interviews with contacts and sources you use frequently for your stories Good preparation is Money in the Bank when you are in a hurry. For you if they think you're well-informed and occasionally an adversary with someone for whom there is respect soda on deposit. I've also found that subjects will be less guarded more revealing less kg and opaque when a reporter is someone who has proven over time with the work. Did they produce? But they know what they're talkin about. Are there figures you will interview who will remain somehow stubbornly resistant to the charms and Novelty of a reporter who knows their stuff? Yes, there will. But that doesn't mean it's a waste doing all of that free prep because it helps also in what you write it helps and what you say on the radio you say on television or in the pages of a magazine. But I know that some of you were saying. I'm a general assignment reporter. How do I prepare for a tomorrow that hasn't happened yet and awaiting set of things that I don't know about that. I don't even know that. I don't know about yet. Well, that's a good point. But there are things that you can do on your behalf in becoming a student of your own news organizations output so that if you have to spell another reporter on the weekend on that reporters vacation or on the night shift after a beat person is gone home, but the stories continue to develop You have to be aware of what your own organization has been doing on a particular subject. So be first the student of what wherever you're working in has been saying about subject X. Be conversant with what's happening in The Wider news Universe just on the off chance that you might have to incorporate synthesize and pull in angles from other stories into the one that you're reporting on at this moment knowing the history of an issue of an individual is your armor against being totally unprepared when you sent out on a moment's notice beeped in the field or ask to pick up angles for someone else's story in the course of doing interviews for your own. This is a reality of day-to-day Newsroom life, especially in the modern 90s downsize Newsroom. Where are you working on six things at once? You may quite frequently be asked to pick up something for somebody for a piece that somebody else is working on you will be doing yourself a great big favor if the person on the other end of the phone who delivers that news hangs up the phone feeling. That they just haven't. Wasted their time that you're actually going to come back with usable. Good material. One question. I'm often asked when I sing the Praises of prep and interviewing is how aggressive to be in your questioning. I think persistence persistence Trump's aggression as a general. I mean again, this is all personal opinion and you may find what works for you is different, but I find the persistence trumps aggression every time unless you have some image building interest in being a Showboat and you know, if you want to grow up to be Sam Donaldson and try to yell over propwash questions that don't even get answers just so the questions will be on the air but not the answers. God bless you and good luck, but This is again the way I see it if you jump someone. They may answer your questions, but defensively covered up and determined not to give you what you're looking for. Is this a game you bet it's a game. But if you try to act like Mike Wallace at a local school board meeting. It won't be too long before people just figure out that you're a posturing jerk. If you're working in an arena where ambushes and slashing questions are asked today. But you have to come back tomorrow and again next week and again 2 weeks later. You have to calibrate the way you use sources to recognize that if an answer is incomplete or evasive ask again earnestly courteously, but just ask again. Pros on the public stage know how much line to let out their life is a game of constantly figuring out just how much line they're going to lay out on any given day. And you want to be one of the people they give the good stuff to politicians know. They only have to answer what you've asked. It's like Court in that regard. They know what you're looking for. But unless you ask for it in the right way. They're not going to give it to you. And if you haven't laid the groundwork for the most important two or three questions you're going to ask. They are fully within the rules of the game to give incomplete and evasive answers if they know your fishing they may know exactly what you're fishing for. But they feel they're under no obligation to get hooked. So here's what you do. Let's say you come to the conclusion from the other work you've done on the story that there was a glaring inconsistency. in their policy or program I would submit that it would be dumb to come right off the top and say tell me commissioner Smith isn't there a glaring inconsistency in your policy on x? Because their answer will automatically be no. There's not what you got to do is go back to the 10th grade and build a geometry proof. Hold their hand and take them with you. Is this true? Hey, you got your answer. That's true. Yeah. Is this other thing true? Yeah, you're just getting them on the record. Okay, and you said this in the past that you will not vote for this Levy for stadium parking expansion as matter fact, that's been your public position the whole time that this has been an issue. But now you say this. Now they can't say. Oh, I don't know what you mean or there's no inconsistency or anything like that. You've basically brought them into your lair. And done done what you have to do what you've done it in a way. That's fair play and then the next time you have to talk to this person. Well, they may avoid you if they think you're smart that happens to but at least it's the confrontation won't won't have the the same flavor as it does with the guy who wants to be Sam Donaldson Jr. There's an animal called an antlion. An antlion builds a conical hole in the ground lined with loose sand. and when an ant walks around at the top of the conical hold whole it loses its footing cuz all the sand is loose the antlions is waiting at the bottom with its pincers open. The harder the aunt struggles to regain its footing the further down the cone it falls and the ant lion is just waiting and yes devours the end. My advice to you in general terms being antlion. and not an aunt be patient be prepared and keep your pincers open if you work for a news organization in your community that is ignored or dissed only at someone's peril. That builds in institutional Cloud behind you where even if you're sort of ham-fisted in Clueless, you're going to get interviews you going to get access and you're going to get answers to certain questions. That's one thing most of us haven't gotten to one of those sainted positions in the in the news business, but certainly earlier in your career. You're less likely to work for that kind of indispensable new source and can be ignored it will and how you handle yourself is the key. I don't ask my money questions right off the top. Unless someone is about to jump into an elevator close a car door or walk into a courtroom. Thus unable to be asked any further question. That's the only time you lead with your money questions. When there is no choice but to cut right to the money question go right to it, but when there's an opportunity to talk beforehand use it talk in general terms about the kind of story you doing. Unless it's vital information. You know what I mean? I mean if if by telling him what story you doing you immediately give the game away because he knows what she knows that there's only one reason why you'd be asking that question if they knows what store are you doing? Obviously? Vamp at that point, but don't don't say it. Well, I'm I'm here to talk to you about and then drop the name of a person that they nearly killed in. Then they realize it. It is time to get into that elevator, but most stories are not like that. So most of the time you can talk in general terms about the store you doing other people that you've talked to about the story where they play into it. This is not vital State Secrets. This is a confidence-building measure that contextualizes the interview subject in the story that you presume to write. You create credibility. You play someone at their ease when you lure them from their gardeck guarded psychic space on to Shared turf the turf of this subject matter if they've got something to say about and you've got something to ask about when I watched other reporters at work. I've always marveled at the fact that they use one tone of voice and one case of conversation one overall form of speech when just talking to someone they're about to interview and then they change gears completely when the quote on quote interview start as if to say, listen up everybody or the interview has begun. I'm about to commit some journalism here. It's time for me to begin talking in some stylized fashion. I reserved only for this purpose. There's a language called high Church slavonic, which is only used in church. No slobs. Speak it when they're buying potatoes. My suggestion to you is to use the language of the potato market and not lapse into high Church slavonic. I don't understand why you want to create that shining borderline between conversation and the interview. In radio I make the mic is unobtrusive as possible when I'm doing field reporting so that it is not an important entity in the exchange that we're having. Establish strong eye contact to take the physical emphasis off the microphone. Intellivision I train my videographers to begin shooting whenever they were fully prepared to begin shooting. No need to announce. All right. My cameraman is ready. Now. We shall begin. And yet there is so many people who do that. I can't believe it works with all that does is create a barrier between the time when you were just getting someone reeled in and when you're actually recording the interview. My videographers knew I wasn't going to ask the money question off the top so they weren't scared of joining me in progress. While I'm doing the palaver, they getting the white balance. They're getting their focus to getting voice level. And the subject was talking. Which is great. But now I'm about to interview you Fang. Okay, get ready cover up. I don't understand that and so many people do it. If the subject spontaneously said something incredibly usable and wonderful. Why we were doing that. I get them to say something like it again, but never never never by asking them. Could you say that again? Part of that is out of a particular region personal code about this stuff if it happened and I didn't get it. I didn't get it. There's so much staging that goes on and television. It's appalling. You talk for a living. You speak the English language. You can manipulate that person at the saying something cool and usable like that again. They will never say it in a way that is spontaneous and fresh and believable if you say oh I wasn't rolling. Could you say that again? Now I found that this approach works with both public servants who I believe have an obligation to talk to reporters and an occasional obligation to tell them the truth even and the private citizens for whom I believe the rules are very different. The private citizen a person that you're using to illustrate a community problem using to stand in as every woman or every man has no obligation to play your game has no obligation to tell you anything you have thrust yourselves upon them and they have exceeded to play a role in your little movie for tonight snooze or a small soap opera script your writing for tomorrow's paper. And that doesn't give you any license to treat them like you are doing them a favor. They must be treated with courtesy and respect. Whether they're sleeping in a cardboard box or trading Securities, they are doing you a favor but having said that there is no reason why you shouldn't get maximum value out of this encounter. Keep in mind despite their fascination with the process. Most people don't really like talking to reporters. I know this may come as a shock to many of you. You got to build down there discomfort and get to the money questions and finish with the questions that might get you thrown out of the living room. But that's only a practical consideration because by then you've gotten the useful information. You need you've gotten other usable quotes and just possibly during that time move them to a place where they're ready to answer the questions. That would have gotten you thrown out the living room. If they were the first questions that you had asked an interview is often a tremendous. Moment of contact in confidence-building between you and an interview subject. What's the interview for really? When you reporting for a story that gives you color inside points you in a New Direction even if you don't use one quote from an interview, you just did in the final version of your story when the interview is the text think of Talk of the Nation where the performance of the interview is the actual end product at the same time. You have to make the interview do the work that your narration or your expository text would do in a different kind of reporting your guiding your subject through the active building a narrative in the case of a polished performer who can practically do it without you. You've got to dig for the kind of detail. They wouldn't necessarily add about themselves the texture that will come in direct response to the questions that you ask in the case of less articulate subject. You're making it possible for them to build and narrative. They might not even be able to without your help. This is a key thing philosopher sitting and chew over the effect of the gays. Well, an interview is a way of creating something that didn't exist before you just created it with your encounter. This is the the audio effect of the gays in effect. Now there may be whatever store you do. There may be other people doing that same story for other organizations in your Market, but the quality of your questions will tell. In the quality of the reporting and distinguish the work you do from the other paper that's riding the same story from the other radio or television station that's riding the same story. So if your questions aren't as often, how do you feel? So much the better. Your questions can extract from people a way to tell your story. When you're talking to someone about their work, I mean unless it's dangerous work have them continue to do it while you talk. It makes for very effective storytelling in any format in any medium. When you talking to someone about where they live tell them that you want them to show you where they live not just talk about it in the abstract. By entering their home territory and showing them your good faith. You've already built down the terror many people feel about talking to reporters. I can't tell you the number of times. I finished my work and had people say to me. That's it. We're finished. They thought it was going to be more like a mugging. Of course, they haven't seen the story yet. Some of you may be thinking what if I don't know anything about something I have to cover and we all know this happens frequently enough. It's going to happen a lot if you make your life in the news business, so you got to have a way of dealing with that too. I find the being as upfront as possible without literally showing up at someone's door and saying hello. I'm an idiot works. Well. In this case, you put the Power into the interview subjects hands you make them feel that they are your guide. To a place an event or a story and they respond well to that people like having smoke blowing up their nose. This is not a secret this but this is just a well-known thing about people that you can make work very well for you in in your reporting. It's sort of think of it as principled groveling. Not not pathetic horrible groveling but principal groveling like I am a person who is in other circumstances very good at my job. But now I am coming before you as someone who knows absolutely nothing about what I have to write about by 10 tonight. And you are going to help me. Let's say on a street where a terrible crime has just occurred. You may encounter people as you're working the block who say they don't know anything about the crime itself. They don't know the victim. They don't know the suspect or even their families. Well, if your if your deadline is like 30 minutes from now. Fine give that person to pass but if you got some time to work it I would say talk to that person. Anyway, take notes. Throw them out and then ask them about the very things that they just told you. They know nothing about 5 minutes earlier and guess what? They often know a lot more about things than they told you. Have you lied to them? Have you broken some sort of contract by getting them to talk about things that they told you earlier that they didn't want to talk to you about? Well, I don't know. I don't think so. Have you tricked them? Not really what you have done as you've made a breach in the wall that at the beginning stood between you and the subject in these cases. I've been talkin about these are often the ones where no one hears your questions, but the subject so you don't have to be fancy. You don't have to sound like sir. David Frost or Sir William F Buckley. All you're doing is gathering inventory you drawing people out there stories their impressions of the world the facts about the places. They live that are only known by the people who live there. That doesn't mean you're gullible. That doesn't mean you have to swallow its face value everything that they're handing out. All the time that you're asking questions, you're testing the answers against the other things that you've heard looking for inconsistencies asking quick informal follow-ups just because you've chosen to build down the confrontation you chosen to catch flies with honey. Doesn't mean you're doing your job that you aren't doing your job anymore. You're still a reporter and you're still find artifacts on the street. But when you challenge someone's version of the facts, which you must do, when you question their recollection or present present an alternative version that you've been given of the same set of facts by somebody else who you've interviewed previously. The interview subjects should not feel there's anything personal about this that this is a confrontation that you are winning and they are losing that you are their adversary the underlined motifs of your encounter with these people are these I'm learning what I can about this and you're helping me do it and this is my job. My job is telling the story. I'm not a private eye. I'm not a cop. I'm a reporter. And a lot of what you do everyday? Can fall easily into that? Matrix the world changes every day and the questions you have to ask change every day in the quest of the people you ask him of change every day, but there are certain consistencies that you carry around with you in the way you work. That allow you to plug the incredible variables of the world into the same. holes the same Jax in the way that you do your job. So if you have any questions, I'll see if I can evade them ignore them or choose not to answer. Ray Suarez host of national public radio's Talk of the Nation was the keynote speaker at a Twin Cities form on interviewing sponsored by the Minnesota journalism Center following his remarks or has responded to questions from the audience. The first question was about the dangers of over interviewing, you know, I haven't had the luxury of over interviewing as much as I would have liked but I have come across this recently because as was mentioned, I have a book coming out in January and there came a point. I I was like a somebody who had just gotten off Devil's Island had it hadn't had a decent meal in five years and suddenly I was sitting down with people who I could talk to for an hour and a half. What's this was shocking stuff? Instead of just these quick-hit interviews that you often do when you're doing daily deadline journalism, and it was hard to know when enough was enough. One of the signpost of that is when people start to invert their story back on itself. People only have so many lines of text in their story. And you get them to tell it and then they started the top and run through it again and you'll realize when you gotten people to that point because the certain same certain signposts start the show up as I said before or as I was telling you earlier and then you say and that's it. This person's all squozen out. there are there also are things that when you're interviewing a large body of people for a for a longer piece or in the case of my book where they start to give largely similar answers to each other and their usefulness declines with each subsequent minute that you spend with them getting the same exact answers as you gotten from many people before unless you're sociologists building a database with their answers where you have to know that 98 out of a hundred people answer this question this way as far as adding new detail or different inside to the story you're telling they are becoming less and less valuable to you by the minute. So sometimes you basically give them the feeling that really 10 minutes was all that you wanted to spend with them. Thank you very much and go sometimes it's but I'm always reluctant to do that. I always feel like she may be admitted 11. She would have had this sudden flash of light and said something just phenomenal to me that was going to be the opening quote of a chapter. So, I don't know it's a gut check thing. I was sitting with a woman on a porch in a run-down neighborhood in Cleveland talking about when she moved from a tiny community in West Virginia with her husband at 17 to this neighborhood in Cleveland, and he worked in a steel fabricating plant that's been closed for for 20 years. And yeah, you know as far as the neighborhood and what the neighborhood was like when they got there compared to what it's like now, I started to to flag a little bit and figured I was going to wrap this one up early. But then kids came running by bouncing a ball and this was a neighborhood in transition and it was a black kid in a white kid and there's the porch was bathed in Golden Light in such a hurry and we talked about the kids and she should have got this second wind and started to give me great stuff after that my accident. I wish I could say it was because I'm so smart. But if those kids hadn't come by so they're giving us a new opening Gambit to open up a new card or in the conversation. I probably would have turned off the tape recorder. I said Thank you And and moved on. So a lot of this just comes there is no way to learn how to be a good interviewer. That's a Mug's Game is really no point in saying all this person's going to teach this person how to be an interviewer. It's just I doing it over and over and over again that you learn what works what doesn't and what works for you because sometimes there are things that you see working for other people that you're going to be lousy at and again you learn that by trying it a couple of times and being given ample proof that in fact, you are lousy at it and you move on. Yes. Okay, there's an ideal answer and then there's a real answer the idea. How much do you let an author know that you know what you're talkin about if you're interviewing them about their book is it important to do to have them know that and how do you do an interview in that circumstance without having it be inside baseball since 99.9% of your audience has not read the book and has to hear the interview that generated on a level that they're ready to hear it because I haven't read the book. The ideal answer is always telling author if you've read the book that you read the book. That way they are not going to lapse into some of the bad habits that they gained when doing the 13 previous interviews with none of the interviewers of read the book because they start to explain everything from this. Before square one kind of kind of way and you can you can dispense with a lot of that by just making it clear that you read the book. The real answer is ask them a question that comes from page 213. It's quick. It's economical and it lets them know that you got deep into the book at least two page 213 and then they feel all this is somebody who got that far. Authors love talking to interviewers who actually read their book you can see it in their body language. They approached what they're doing with a certain zest. That's this is And this is their thing this is the thing that they have sweated and obsessed over four years of their lives. They put it down on paper there now on this Bataan Death March book to her and I can't find a single knucklehead was a read their book so their whole the whole upper body cuz I don't get to see their legs their whole upper body changes when they get the feeling that you actually read their book and took an interest in what it was that they had to say. So it's very important that you get that across try to do it in a non smarmy way if you if you can find a way to do that. Yes. Some what do you do to collapse a hierarchy when you are talking to someone who you frankly admire or someone who is in a very different stage status or station a from yourself. Some High Rockies won't collapse when I was interviewing Margaret Thatcher. It was the most uncollapse about hierarchy that I had ever. I had ever come across. I did all my usual Charming warm fuzzy things that I do that in dire me. So do so many interview subjects and she didn't even notice and signaled heavily that I had read the book which since it was $500 and some odd pages long was actually what is the opposite of a labor of love? I don't know and it was and I did everything and she wanted to keep the Imperial distance it. I guess she's found with very ample practice that it works for her and wasn't going to have any of it. But once she did that once she proved totally resilient to all my warm cuddly things then I figured okay, but gloves are off and I ask a questions like what it felt like to know that you were hated by enormous sections of your own Society weather that is whether that is something that changes the way you make policy or are some policy so necessary that you have to keep on even though, you know millions of your own constituents will hate you. It was a question. I'd always wanted to ask a politician and had never had it had an opportunity to ask before interesting. We she said it didn't matter a revealingly, I think. I find that it's more much more important for me to collapse it from the other end since I'm talking to a lot of people who assign me and the exalted station, which I have no interest in but they think I'm being interviewed by him. And this is especially true when I was local television for a long time, you know, the truck door slides open in some obscure bird somewhere and every a squirrel chipmunk and human being for a mile does this and then someone who is actually on television steps a well shod loafer onto the onto the sidewalks of their community and the hard part is collapsing the distance between you and them that they are assigning and I hate that but it is but it is an important part of of doing the job and some some reporters like it and they think that that's a device that works for them in in sucking what they need out of these people before they get in the car back in the car to go back to the city, but It is at the at the as much as you can close the distance. It's very important. And I find when I'm interviewing somebody who I think I have to untie my sandals to approach them who I I look at their head and I see a burning bush. I try I try never to let on a because I think that sounds bad when the audience can hear that. I'm actually doing the interview from the prone position. It it robs me of my credibility as a as a sort of honest and honest interlocutor in the in the exchange. There are a couple of especially authors who I've had on Who I just think are pretty swell, but they don't know that until after the interview is over. It's better that way. Yes. Never when do you let somebody know what your opinion is on a subject? Never? IMAX my rule I speak to people who I agree with intensely and they walk out of the room. Ideally not really knowing that maybe they have some suspicions, but I would never sort of make common cause with them before during or after an interview. I get to I get to choose the topics for Talk of the Nation and how do I arm myself for the next days interview? I get to choose what topics are not on top of the nation. I would describe my role more more accurately. I do not want this to be the what's rattling around in Ray Suarez. His attic show. I have a set of interests and passions and delights that if if I narrowed the field of what we inquire about to those things only it would I'd have a great time. I'd be having just a terrific wonderful old time, but I don't think the show would be nearly as good. I have to remain open to what the staff brings and tells me from their worldview as a 24 year old woman or a newly-married thirty-year-old or someone with no children or whatever. What their life is telling them is something that people are thinking about talkin about wondering about worrying about there are some subjects. I simply will not do. But it's a pretty small list, but I'll just say I'll just stop the person in Midstream and saying that you don't have to go any further of we're not going to do this and I do it nicely and with a smile on my face. It will come back tomorrow with a great idea. I am not the sole Arbiter of that on the first among equals and I tell my staff which is all very young other day are the reporters for the show and what they develop in terms of sources that I read to prep in terms of people to have on to talk about a different topic. They are the reporters that make the show as good or as bad as any given hour of it is so I try to as a manager I guess. Plant the idea that they are doing something more than just that terrible term booking which is clerical. You know, we have a studio. We have a microphone you get your body there in 10 minutes before 2 and you know, we're on that's booking when they're off are reporters. They're doing something much more profound to prepare the show. So go out there and and be wonderful and if you do something that doesn't work, don't say I told you to do. Thank you. National public radio host Ray Suarez speaking at a forum sponsored by the Minnesota journalism Center and that wraps up our midday rebroadcast for this Tuesday programming on Minnesota Public. Radio is supported by listeners who volunteer their time for Minnesota Public Radio coming up tomorrow on midday a new survey is out showing Twin Cities residents are confident in the future. But a huge number is a crime is a serious problem has to Be Our Guest to discuss the Metropolitan State University's annual Civic competence pole is Ken Peterson chair of the management departments and co-director of the poll. Also a commonwealth Club speech by Stephen Goldstone the chairman and CEO of RJR Nabisco. He gave an update on the tobacco litigation and legislation from the industry's point of view. Now if you miss it for the noon hour join us tomorrow night at 9 for the rebroadcast here on Minnesota Public Radio. And stay tuned we have as it happens from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation coming up in just a moment. Wood. Look at news headlines. Play Minnesota Public Radio News Room the body of an Inver Grove Heights man. Swept into the zumbro river with his wife and their van was found today. Robert Clements body was found about two miles from where his van plunged into the Reverend. You want to Mingo. His wife's body was found nearby on Sunday, a seventeen-year-old Dakota County boy faces charges of killing another 17 year old boy while duck hunting last ball near Maple Lake. The defendant is accused of shooting Daniel Rogers of Farmington in the stomach with a shotgun at close range. Last October 17th indictments were returned today against three men in the killing of an 11 year old boy in North Minneapolis. The three alleged gang members are accused of killing Byron Phillips on June 2nd 1996 while trying to shoot a gang rival and two men are charged with second-degree murder for the stabbing deaths of to Minneapolis man outside a bar Friday night 24 year old Robert Jackson and 30 year old frank Mendoza also are charged with stabbing and trying to rob another man in a separate attack. New forecast in for the state of Minnesota calling for clear to partly cloudy skies and lows tonight from the mid-50s to lower 60s tomorrow partly cloudy eyes from the mid-70s in the Northeast to the mid-80s in the southwest and we're Wednesday night scattered thunderstorms. Most of that action will be in the western part of the state laws in the fifties to lower 60s 68 in Rochester tonight 69 in International Falls. You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. And it's partly cloudy and 75 degrees it can o w FM 91.1 Minneapolis-Saint Paul mostly clear in the Twin Cities tonight with a low around 60 partly cloudy with a high of 80 tomorrow tomorrow night partly cloudy at 20% chance of a shower maybe a thunderstorm and the low of 60 right now partly cloudy 75° at 10 stay tuned as it happens next as it happened has made available in the United States by, Minnesota.