How are you doing today? How's the weather? Tell me a little about yourself. These questions are killing your podcast. Not dramatically, not all at once, but quietly, one disengaged listener at a time. In this episode, Jon makes a direct case for why the questions you ask as a podcast host are one of the most powerful tools you have for building trust with your audience, and why most hosts are wasting that tool entirely.

Boring questions communicate one thing to your audience: their time doesn't matter to you. And that's the opposite of what you're trying to do. Jon breaks down what actually makes a question boring, from small talk openers to softballs that exist purely to make your guest look good, and contrasts them with the kinds of questions that actually generate insight. Ask for a story about a failure. Ask them to go deeper when they ...