10 Recordings in…
With my prologue and the first 9 interviews, we are now 10 episodes into this. Over the course of this project so far, I’ve talked to more than a dozen folks from class of ‘92 and with each episode I’ve experimented with different ways of doing this. I started out with a two-call strategy:
A “prep” or discovery call
The actual recording session
First, we had a “prep” call to get reconnected and reacquainted. “How do you just jump on a recording with someone you haven’t talked to in decades without first touching base,” I thought to myself. So this made sense. The first call was an opportunity to paint broad brush strokes, catch-up, and figure out a conversation flow for the actual recording with my guest. For the first 9 or 10 releases, this is what I’ve been doing. The second call would be a straight-forward recording and storytelling session.
But so much good stuff came out on those discovery calls, and most of the time they were not recorded. The joy, energy, and meandering curiosity of a first meeting generated incredible conversations — sometimes going two hours or more. And these were “prep” calls! Inevitably, some of that excitement and anticipation was just lost or hard to recapture during call #2 on recording day. It also doubled the work :-).
So I stopped doing “prep” calls recently and now I ask guests to complete an intake form to give me the basics. When we record, we jump in and we just go for it to see what happens. This has worked. The last couple of recordings (not yet released) have captured that priceless spark. I’m excited to release content in the coming months reflecting the energy and improvisation of reconnecting that you can only get when reconnecting with an old friend that very first time after years (or even decades).
This week, however, we were lucky to have recorded the discovery call with Matt McGill. We had such a fun conversation, and it both showcases the process of producing this content, and foretells the actual recording we made. Matt was one of the first guests I had in mind because for more than 10 years he’s presented an overview of that year’s Supreme Court docket to the kids in Assembly, and I wanted to bring some of that content to life in the podcast. We’re proud to have a ‘92-er up there representing! But in this podcast, we don’t go deep on any given case. Rather, we talk about the impact of Exeter, how he became a lawyer, and what it’s like to be a Supreme Court lawyer in D.C. We also talk Main Street track suits and a little politics as well.
Part 1 is Audio only. Part 2 is video and audio.
This episode has been in the works since January and my thanks goes out to Matt for his patience, persistence, good humor, and commitment. The first time we sat down in early February, we spent 75 minutes trying to record only to find out that the corporate firewall just wouldn’t let us do it. The second time — that dang work laptop just wasn’t going to let our software do it’s thing. We finally recorded from Matt’s iPhone from his Florida hotel room during the sidelines of a conference. Talk about commitment to Exeter and this project!
After I cleaned up the recording and cut the extraneous bits in between some of our tech difficulties — I thought this came out pretty damn good! A very engaging and substantive conversation where Matt had a chance to give us a sense of his journey and the United States court system. We had a vigorous conversation with strong Harkness-style back and forth towards the end on the state of the Supreme Court and where we are now in America. We ran out of time at the end…and we’re hoping to pick this up again later in the year, but also hoping that when the track-suited Main Street crew shows up in May in Curacao for their annual retreat, that we’ll have a special livestream episode of all 11 guys in their finest Caribbean track suit attire. That might be more fun than talking about the Supreme Court or today’s crazy political scene anyways, I’m going to bet…
I hope you enjoy this installment of the PEA ‘92 podcast!
Cheers,
Veev
vivek@alumnipod.com
P.S. If you’re thinking of volunteering and/or coming onto the podcast, ping me :-)!
Share this post