YouSaid · the spoken record

Isaac Chotiner

lines on the record: 73
first: 2026-01-05
most recent: 2026-01-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“People can give responses that if, when typed out literally, seem hostile when they're not. That's right. People say things that don't make tone. Tone gets lost. People have weird phrases. People say, yeah, no. Like things like that, which if written out, yeah, no, doesn't make any sense. But you know what they mean when you're talking to them. So all these things are worth keeping in mind. But to me, that's an interesting part of the Q&A is how to have as much of what we actually said while not being misleading in any way. And so that editing challenge I actually find quite interesting.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. I haven't gotten the push yet, but maybe it'll come. You know, I didn't love doing a podcast just because, you know, going into a studio and the kind of extra stuff around it didn't particularly interest me. But I gather it's easier now even than when I was doing it six years ago. Yeah. But eight years ago, whatever it was. But, you know, I like that people can hear the conversation. That part of it is fun. I mean, the thing you do have to keep in mind is that I always try and keep in mind is written words can be misleading.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, good, good, good. But whenever I'm typing up an interview, whenever I'm transcribing it, I'm always surprised that there are things that no matter how close I thought I was paying attention, there are things that I missed or nuances that I missed. And so that's one of the things I actually like about transcribing stuff is that it makes you realize that you're paying attention less close than you think, or at least I am.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Move forward. Well, no, I mean, I should say, though, about the listening thing is obviously I try and pride myself on listening, not just in my personal conversations with friends or whatever else, but also in interviews. That's where.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go off the rails, or I need to quote specific things to the person. And so I write out very specific questions. Other times I just have kind of notes in front of me with things I want to ask and some structure for the interview because I hope that the form the interview takes, like a story will have sort of a beginning, middle, and an end. I try and keep it flexible enough that I'm not just reading questions to them because for me, that feels a little bit stifling. And my hope is that I've kind of done enough background work that I can feel comfortable talking without having to look at the questions. I will say there are sometimes where I'm doing a subject that I'm not a great expert in. A news event has just occurred. Some Supreme Court decision that I'm talking to a lawyer about. And just because I want to quote the decision accurately and I, you know, want to phrase things a certain way that I will write it all out, but it's not always the case.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I mean, yes, I don't actually write all my questions out beforehand for most interviews. I write there are some times that I'm doing an interview that I'm worried about how it's going to go or that, you know,”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, it's great. I actually prefer text if possible. If you text a person's phone number, it feels more informal, goes back to what we were talking about earlier”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A good question. I mean, the truth is that the most people that I try to get to come on who don't, I'm not dealing with them. I'm dealing with their people. And so, but, you know, I just try.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah, that's interesting. You know, not so much. I think people who would feel that way probably make that assumption before they start talking to me just thinking, oh, he's, you know, working for the New Yorker or whatever else. I mean, I will say, you know, it's gotten harder and harder to get Republicans to talk in the 10 plus years I've been interviewing. And I think most of those reasons are not the fault of the media and are probably inevitable given the way politics is going. But there are other times where I think maybe if I had fewer opinions about something in a previous interview that maybe someone has seen that it would be easier to get this person to talk and I regret it. But as I said, I think most of the reasons for that are way beyond one person or one”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mean, it's a good question. I don't know. I'm sure it turns off some people and brings in other people. You know, I just think that, broadly speaking, allowing your own perspective to not sort of ask all these questions completely neutrally just allows for a broader range of questions and ways of asking the question, which I think makes for a more interesting interview.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know, I mean, I'm lucky enough to be able to do, as are you, to do interviews where I don't think people are confused about what my opinion is on various subjects, you know, about the Trump administration or so on. And so I can ask questions that I think reflect, make it clear what my point of view is and not feel like that's violating the terms of the interview. But to get to a point where I'm asking those questions, it often requires a certain amount of reading or reporting or talking to other people about what those questions will be. And so I like the fact that I can kind of do sort of traditional, some at least traditional reporting things before an interview to sort of get my prep. And then in the course of the interview can put that to use and also do it in a way where I don't feel like I need to sort of hide what my opinion is in a way, which is great in some ways, but can also feel stifling.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But no, I don't think journalists should be upfront about things that they don't know. And I think that there's some things that I don't know that I would not want to do interviews about because I would just feel too deep in the weeds. I feel like I couldn't do it. And then I think in other areas, like I said, kind of when COVID was starting, I think there's a way to try and use your lack of knowledge and say most people reading this don't have great knowledge of it. And I'm going to kind of use that to inform readers in some way.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think one aspect of sort of whether you're a commentator or a writer is that part of journalism is you sort of inherently come across as knowing more than you do. I remember I reviewed a book about the history of sugar. This was probably 15 or 20 years ago. And I remember my grandmother saying to me, like, I had no idea that you knew so much about the history of sugar. And I said, well, I don't. This is just what happens when you review a book and you can sound that way. It's all bullshit to some degree. Right.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, no, not the smart person. The person who didn't know and didn't know what was going on and was asking these experts questions just the way average people, I'm being one of them, thought about were wondering what was going on. And then there's subjects where you know more about. And so it's easier in most cases. But, you know, for me, I think part of what I try and do with these things is on subjects I'm interested in, be constantly reading and trying to find people who I think are saying interesting things about these subjects. And so then when I decide to do an interview about, you know, I have sort of a list of people or people in mind to turn to.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I guess I should start by saying, you know, it's very different for a subject that you have some knowledge of or versus something that you're kind of coming into fresh because of the news. And so, you know, some interviews take a lot longer than other interviews to prep, you know, during COVID. I was doing a lot of interviews in the first year and I'm pretty stupid about medicine and science and all these things. And I thought that at least in that case, a lot of people were coming to this subject fresh and didn't know much about it. And so I would sort of play the role of.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, you could be self deprecating. You can make a joke, which I think my theory about making jokes with people you're interviewing, you know, to start things off is they either think it's funny, which is good, or they don't think it's funny, but therefore they kind of look at you with a certain amount of pity, which is also a source of vulnerability. So, you know, I think there are ways to do it. So, that would be another example.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A really good question. You know, Tom Snyder is an interesting one. I hadn't thought about him, but he would have these absolutely fascinating interviews. One person who I think is actually an incredible interviewer and I've thought about trying to not mimic because that's for obvious reasons is Howard Stern. Has an ability to get things from his guests that I don't feel like I totally understand how he does it. But I've thought that there's something, I think it's something about the kind of vulnerability he shows, the self-deprecation he shows. There are other aspects of Howard Stern, which I'm less interested in mimicking. But there's something about how he talks to people of vulnerability that I think.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's some combination of what's in the news, things that personally interest me. I think if you read my interviews, you'd get some sense of subjects that I'm particularly interested in. And then, you know, just things that seem interesting to me that someone brings to my attention and, you know, it's the way I get a lot of stuff.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you know, I talked to my editor, who's a wonderful editor named Micah at the New Yorker, and he and I talk about it. I get, you know, I get ideas from my boss, from other editors at the magazine, from colleagues. I'm always asking people, my friends, you know, who'd be an interesting person to talk to? What's a subject matter I should be looking into?”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, I prefer them. I mean, you know, it depends on what the interview you're doing. I tend to think of interviews as being kind of one of two categories. This is obviously very broad. The first is you're interested in the person you're talking to and the second is you're interested in their expertise. And if a news event happens and I'm interviewing someone about a coup in Turkey or something, usually the person I will interview, it's not that people are interested in what this historian of Turkey, what their personal life is like or what their office looks like. They're interested in the news they have to offer, the analysis they have to offer. And then there are interviews where you're talking to Jonathan Franzen or Zadie Smith or whoever else. And I think people then are more interested in kind of a little bit of scene, a little bit of, you know, what this person was like, where you met, so on and so forth. So I tend to think of the interviews in one of those two ways.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, you know. Well, you know, there's certainly a lot of interviews that are too soft, but I think that there are different ways of doing interviews that are hard hitting or whatever else. You know, I think one advantage that I have is that I get to do a lot of interviews over the phone. I do some in person and I do some with video over Zoom, but a lot of them are phone interviews where I'm just talking to the person. I'm not seeing their face. And for me, that's much easier to do an interview that can be confrontational or, you know, this is like the old joke about how it's easier to break up with your spouse over the phone or whatever else. It's easier to have a confrontational interview. So I think for those types of interviews, I'm fortunate to be able to do them over the phone.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, not so much. I guess maybe I kind of have an aggressive style in terms of asking questions, but it's just sort of the way I do interviews, I guess. So I don't think about it consciously too much.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, it's fine, I guess. I try not to do the majority of my interviews, that type of interview, which tends to kind of be the ones that go, you know, more viral on Twitter or whatever else. But it's nice that people are reading and enjoying the work, I guess.”
2026-01-05 · On with Kara Swisher · Isaac Chotiner on Confrontation, Curiosity, and Being the 'Interview Assassin' · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT