Are You An Expert In Something? Be On The Show!

Hey you amazing potential guest experts! Perhaps you’ve already emailed me/contacted me in some other way with a brilliant, well thought-out missive detailing your expertise and your proposal for being on the show. And now you’re wondering, why do I have to fill out a form? Well, that’s because I had absolutely no idea that within this listenership resides an unfathomable wealth of experts. And not just experts, experts who are super cool and want to share their knowledge with the world! So what I figured would be a handful of emails I could sort through turned out to be, and forgive the technical jargon, a metric shitload. And since I didn’t have the foresight to tell you all the specific information I would need in a proposal, that means I’d have to individually follow up with everyone and with all I have going on now, that just isn’t feasible. So, with a million apologies, please fill out the following form, so I can get all the info I need from all of you at once in a nice digestible format! And also, please do not take it personally if I don’t respond. Most of all because I will likely process these in batches on a first come first serve basis as time allows. So, if you submit this form, there is every chance I may randomly email you in 2025 saying “hey you still willing to come on?”
So with that said, Thank you SO much for offering your expertise and I can’t wait to speak to you!

Ok here is the most important part. Please give me your pitch for a specific episode, which would be essentially a trial run and, assuming the recording goes well, would be published as a podcast episode. For now, this should fall into one of two categories:

1. A popular piece of media (movie, book, TV show) related directly to your expertise that would be fun to break down in some way, either to say the subject matter is botched, or is great, or some combination of both. I’d want to know what the piece of media is, and roughly what you’d have to say about it. So, “I’m an expert in cloning dinosaurs and I would love to do a lesson on why Jurassic Park is 100% perfect science.” or “an episode on why the Jurassic Park science would never work.” or something.
OR
2. As an expert in your field, what is something that is possibly not widely enough known that you think people REALLY should know. There’s some latitude here, but probably the easiest example would be a study or something that was widely circulated that purports to show x, and you want to take us through the study itself and maybe related studies, and teach us why the result is either correct or misleading or a mix. But also, this could just be like a popular misconception that you’d love to teach us about that doesn’t necessarily link to a specific news story or anything. Though a popular tie-in is usually best.

One of the most important pieces of advice I could give you to help create the best proposal is to think of your audience not as being your fellow experts/academics/peers but just your average (but intelligent) person on the street. This is important. Think of a 101 course, maybe. I find that often experts can forget what it’s like to not have the expertise that they have. While my role in the show as the layperson is to call out those blind spots, they are also a challenge when looking for a topic to cover. It may be something that, to you, is incredibly obvious and indeed seems not worth even saying. Like for example, that climate change is real. But a ton of the public just does not have the understanding that you might have. That’s why I love having folks like you on the show!

And of course, if we end up recording, you will be paid for your time!

Thank you so much and I look forward to speaking with you!