The Interview - Podcast Rankings and reviews

I’ve listened to almost every episode. I really like this show, but the interviews that Lulu leads inevitably end up with this aggressive tone. Even when the guests seem to agree with her she sets them up for these gotcha questions that feel like cheap shots. I enjoy hearing push back and truly like that this show asks ‘hard hitting questions’, but the way she does it feels blind siding to the guest and frankly lacks tact. Getting people to open up publicly is an art and simply bulldozing them does not make for good journalism.

That interview with Nancy Pelosi is terrifying. It seems like her ego is preventing her from taking a good hard look in the mirror and making any attempt to understand why voters are rejecting the party. Her pollyannish take on the results suggests somebody who is either in denial, not in touch with reality, or trying (and failing) to put a spin on our utter defeat. I BEG you Pelosi and the democratic leaders to please look inward and first accept that you have lost real contact with the American people. People of all ages/races crossed party lines to vote for one of the most despicable men in history. Obviously, your message is not resonating. Just like republicans are the problem, so are we for not clearly communicating our policies and platforms and fixating too much on identity politics. For the love of god, put the identity politics aside.

This interview was excellently performed by Lulu Garcia-Navarro. Her questioning led to Pelosi’s opinion delineating the distinction primarily between the house races and states election results differing from the presidential election.

I just subscribed to NYT, primarily because I love The Daily podcast so much. I checked out The Interview for the first time…and the episode with JD Vance was really hard to listen to. Lulu clearly had her own agenda and didn’t listen to anything JD said. I’m not a supporter of the Trump/Vance ticket, but I felt JD explained himself genuinely well. Lulu wasn’t there to interview him but debate him, throwing out the same old sound bytes and offering very little substance in what could have been a really good, insightful discussion—which frankly, is what the voters are aching to hear. It was so unprofessional, unoriginal and I don’t know what the point of the interview even was. I expect so much more from NYT.

This is the only episode I listened to but it was a painful struggle. The interviewer offered flat, surface-level questions, failed to pick up on emotional moments and push the exposé further, and in general appeared full of himself and unable to empathize (“yes, I know exactly how I appear to others”). Disappointing and more importantly, missed opportunity to create something special with this conversation.