Failed interviews, and finding joy despite the flurry of fiascos

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to Andy Dehnart’s Reality Blurred.
I’m the aforementioned Andy, the creator of Reality Blurred, and a writer who believes in the power of true stories.
Every week I’ll take you behind the scenes of reality TV and my writing.
Today, thoughts about flurries of actual snow here in Florida and in the news, a little bit of hot goss about some interviews that I’ve done or not done on Reality Blurred, advice about starting your own blog, and of course lots of recommendations.
And stick around to the very end for wisdom from TV, this time from the traders.
Thank you so much for joining me.
I am so grateful for that.
I am especially grateful that you are actually hearing me speak right now because I have just sat in front of this microphone and talked to my cat and myself for the past 20 minutes because I forgot to hit record the first time.
It’s a very wintry and cold day here in Florida.
I will just say that maybe my brain was frozen and I forgot to hit that little red button.
But here we are.
It’s actually recording now and all is well.
There is no actual snow out the window, unfortunately.
We thought maybe we would get some or I guess they forecasted the potential for some sleet here in central Florida.
But up in the panhandle there is actual snow on the ground which is wild.
I’ve never actually seen snow in Florida but those images are pretty incredible.
I was joined here in the studio by one cat but having heard me say all of this she has left.
So now it is just us.
And let us begin with what’s on my mind this week in the segment I like to call “On My Mind.”
What’s on my mind is a phrase that is on a bumper sticker I bought from a poet at the end of 2024.
And that bumper sticker is in the middle of a frame that is now hanging over my toilet.
These are, I realize, a bunch of disparate thoughts.
Let me explain.
What’s hanging over my toilet is a collage of things from magazines, stickers, obviously the bumper sticker, and other materials that just kind of gathers together some intentions for this year.
It’s something I look at obviously every day and get to see and remind myself of things that I thought, at least on December 31st when I made it, would be important for this year.
This is a tradition that dates back a couple decades.
Something a friend from college started and we did for years.
Unfortunately it’s outlasted that friendship.
But it’s something that Nick and I now do on New Year’s Eve which is fun and he has one too so we both have our intention collages.
Mine this year is centered around a bumper sticker that says “Joy is an act of rebellion.”
It’s actually a line from a poem by the poet David Gate.
I saw this on Instagram and saw that he was selling bumper stickers with that line so I ordered some and now have one in my office and one on that collage.
That’s really the phrase that I’m trying to remember this year and especially this week.
And it just really resonated with me because of this idea that joy, happiness, cheer, all these things can be something that is productive and can actually be something that helps us fight against things like injustice or policies or laws that we don’t like.
I’m trying to hold on to that idea this year that joy or happiness or cheer or whatever you want to call it is really something that can be used productively and that by itself it can obviously as that line says be rebellious or it can be something that can help us be productive in other ways.
And this week especially there’s so much to be annoyed about just before recording this or pretending to record the last time I did this.
I was just scrolling a little bit on Bluesky and realizing there was just post after post of things for me to get annoyed about.
Netflix raising its prices yet again despite being worth about $367 billion as of this writing and adding many more subscribers.
So they’re just getting more and more money because you know there’s not enough money or not enough growth to make all of the extremely wealthy corporations wealthy enough.
Of course there are the avalanche of executive orders that came out on Tuesday, some of which explicitly target me and allow discrimination against people like me who are gay or other people who are even in smaller numbers like trans people.
And never mind there’s just been this flurry this year, speaking of flurries, of people falling over and genuflecting in front of those who are coming into power just so they can maintain their own power and wealth.
And it’s all extremely gross and it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by it just even from that few minutes of scrolling on social media.
So that phrase is one way that I am trying to remind myself to find a kind of balance and to focus on the things that are joyful, that give me pleasure.
And of course reality TV is a big part of that.
I love watching it.
I love writing about it.
I love talking to people about it, talking to you about it in this context, online, everywhere else.
And part of that finding balance doesn’t mean that I am checking out or that I am not going to pay attention to what’s happening and I’m not going to do anything and I’m just going to let the world pass by.
I was thinking about this last week when I went back to a piece that I’d read years ago and actually taught in some classes called “Letter from Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s a letter that he wrote as an open letter in response to another open letter that was written by some white clergymen and published in the Birmingham News.
I’ll quote from two lines.
I posted some to social media.
I’ll link to that if you want to see them more and also link to the full text because I think it’s worth reading if you haven’t already.
But these two especially resonated with me.
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
He also wrote, “We must use time creatively in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”
So yeah, those obviously were written decades ago but still have a lot of application to this very moment and I am not going to be one of those people who are silent about what is going on in the world.
I know that some people might hear something like that and delete this episode of this podcast or the podcast itself or stop rating my writing, but I’m not going to be scared away from being honest and truthful about what’s happening in the world and what I can do about it.
I’m not going to be a silent person and I’m also going to try to use my time creatively and try to do what is right in the limited ways that I can.
I realize that I cannot solve all of the world’s problems by myself and that it is in community that we must do that or at least try to do it as all the people who’ve come before us have tried to do and have taken us further down the path that we wouldn’t have been otherwise.
So again, Martin Luther King’s words were of a very specific time and about a very specific set of circumstances but resonate today.
And you know, what I’m realizing is basically there is a raging river of news information bullshit that’s just flowing by and I can throw myself into that and allow myself to be tumbled around and knocked around and maybe I can grab onto some things while that’s happening or I can choose not to stand in it and I can stand on the shore and be dry and be ready to throw a life ring when it’s necessary or be ready to jump in when it’s necessary.
And so that’s what I’m trying to do and especially trying to do by focusing on that idea again of joy at the center of all this.
Like if we find the joy and happiness and connection with other people I think we take the world in a direction that I hope we continue to go in which is one in which we are all connected with each other and not allowing our differences to be used against us.
Okay, to take a big turn from there it’s time for Behind the Blog where I go behind the scenes of the writing that I do on Reality Blurred.
And this week it’s about promises and priorities.
This week I’ve reviewed the new Joe Schmo Show.
I’ll be recapping The Traitors tomorrow.
It’s Wednesday as I record this.
And of course I recapped last week’s amazing episode of The Traitors.
And I’ve also been recapping Deal or No Deal Island season two so far.
In that very first recap I mentioned that I would be interviewing the eliminated player at the end of all of my recaps and that was in the first recap.
And since then I have not had a single interview.
I realize that is just two recaps but it has also made me feel like I have failed and that I’m not keeping my promise to you or to the other people who are reading those recaps.
So I just wanted to kind of give a little behind the scenes of what’s happening there.
I really appreciated being offered the ability to interview people on their way out.
It’s really interesting to talk to reality TV show contestants about their experiences and I always relish that opportunity.
The person who got eliminated in the second episode I was told was not going to be available for interviews.
And that’s fine.
That’s okay.
I don’t know what the reason was but it is if they opted out or just didn’t have time all those things are fine.
What was weird is then some interviews with that person popped up in Entertainment Weekly and on Rob Has a Podcast or RHAP if that’s how you say it.
I don’t always just type it.
I don’t ever say “RHAP” but I’ll go with that I guess.
And that just made me feel bad I guess because it’s like oh so they did end up having some time and they chose other outlets for that person to talk to.
So it’s a little bit of rejection.
Obviously not that big of a deal but I also just feel bad that it’s like something that I promised and now here other people were getting that and—and I was not able to provide that.
That’s part of the writing that I was contributing to this conversation.
This week I don’t have an interview with the eliminated player either because they were available but only had a limited amount of time.
So the publicist putting this together basically organized a roundtable in which people a bunch of different outlets like bloggers, critics, YouTubers, etc. would all have two questions and basically it sort of goes around so like one person asks a question the next person the next person the next person you go around and then you ask your second question and then that is the conclusion of the roundtable.
And for me I ended up just saying no thanks to that.
So I was the one who said no this week and it’s not because I don’t appreciate again the opportunity or the need to to use a format like that but for me it’s just not valuable to ask two completely disconnected questions and then that’s it.
When I do interviews I really like them to be a conversation where I am talking to someone.
Zoom has made that so much better because we can actually see each other now not just on the phone chatting back and forth but respond to hand gestures and you know laughter and and that kind of thing.
But when I ask a question I’m genuinely curious about what someone’s gonna answer and then I want to let my other questions flow from that.
I don’t have a set list of this is everything I need them to say to me and then I’m done or just as and like I write some things down that I want to ask a person but I don’t stick to that usually.
It’s just there kind of in case I forget to mention something or I’m out of ideas in the moment but mostly it just becomes an actual conversation and we go back and forth and I always love if someone wants to challenge my assumptions or something I wrote or you know something that I’m asking about and it can usually take us to places that I didn’t expect and so without that kind of conversation it just sort of becomes not very valuable to me and and I think say that in terms of like I don’t think it’s super valuable to share like just the answers to those two questions with you in that recap.
As a quick tangent here as I’m talking about interviewing I should be a good solopreneur here and say that I’m actually teaching a one-off class on interviewing and effective interviewing in a few weeks.
It’s on a Saturday, it’s three hours, it’s virtual so via Zoom and I’m just going to share tips, techniques, tricks for effective interviews whether you are a journalist or you are somebody who talks to people in your job or just wants to get better at that process of you know asking questions of other people.
I hope that some of the things that I will share in that session will be really valuable.
I will also have a bunch of anecdotes about my own interviewing career over the past 25 years and what I’ve learned, what’s worked well, what doesn’t, and you’ll hear some of the interviews that went awry like Mark Burnett yelling at me or Tyra Banks getting annoyed that anyone was talking to her at an event designed to actually interview her but that’s that’s another story for another day.
So I’ll link to that in the show notes if you’re interested in that class.
It’s with The Loft in Minneapolis though again this is virtual so wherever you are you can join or you can watch the recording later as well.
Speaking of, it’s now time for Writing Life when I talk about writing and writing about our lives.
This week I just wanted to mention a project that I started this year in addition to this podcast which is a series of blog posts over on andydehnart.com designed to help you start your own blog if that’s something you’re interested in doing.
I define blog very broadly.
It can be anything from a newsletter that you just write in your email program and share with your friends or family about what’s going on in your life or it can be a project like Reality Blur that’s about something that you’re interested in and you are wanting to share some aspect of that with the world.
There’s all kinds of possibilities and I think the best thing about blogging is that it’s filtered through our own interests through our personalities and so it’s a way for you to share a part of yourself again whatever you’re comfortable with.
This series is just designed to give you some technical and editorial tips and tricks and advice and resources and recommendations for tools etc.
So I will link to that as well.
Check that out if you’re interested.
There’s also a one-off email newsletter list that I have where I’m just sending updates every time I add a new post to that series.
I send out an email and then when the series is done that list goes away.
It’s nothing more than that.
So if you want to just be reminded of those you can sign up for that as well.
Okay now on to some recommendations.
A really disparate group here today.
The first is the Food Network Show Wild Card Kitchen which has just become really even more fun than its first season in its second season.
Basically it’s a group of three chefs who compete in two rounds of cooking.
Nothing new for Food Network competitions and these are a lot of the same people that you’ve seen before because they’re from Top Chef and other Food Network shows.
Most of them though these little trios tend to know each other, have a little bit of friendly competition going on, or maybe a little bit of past beef from a competition where they lost which adds a nice little fun layer.
And then they bet money and play a little game of kind of culinary poker with the host Eric dealing out cards including some hidden wild cards.
I won’t explain the whole thing it’s just fun and there’s a lot of playfulness in that and in banter and there’s a lot of things that really make it difficult for these chefs which is always fun to watch people perform at a high level under those extreme constraints.
So that’s Wild Card Kitchen on Food Network.
The next recommendation is for a process called Clarity Cards.
This is not mine this is a creation of Dan Blank who is a writer, a human-centered marketer I think is the best way to describe him as he describes himself.
He basically gives amazing incredible advice to writers and creators about how to get their work into the world.
I worked with him a few years ago and just still refer back to his advice and I love getting his newsletter every week.
And he has a system called Clarity Cards which is designed to help us focus on what’s important in our lives.
So back to the point I was making at the beginning about figuring out sort of what to focus on how to use the limited time energy that we have.
Basically he has a system for just kind of putting down everything that you are doing, want to do, can do, things that are priorities in your life on index cards or whatever kind of system you’d like to use and then you organize them to create a little 10 card pyramid that should be the 10 things that get your time and attention and everything else is literally off the table.
It’s a process that he walks you through so I will share that again in the show notes if you’re interested in doing that.
I’m going to redo it this year because I did it years ago and I realized it’s time to kind of re-up that and think about you know I think I have way more than 10 and that can sometimes create to that sense of overwhelm that that we were talking about earlier.
The next recommendation is for an article on the Electronic Frontier Foundation or EFF’s website that gives you some guidance about how to stop Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, from collecting some data about you.
It’s impossible to stop them from collecting everything especially if you use their apps but there is ways to turn things off and basically to make you less valuable to them.
They can’t monetize you as much if you turn some of these things off.
It’s also kind of amazing to see some of the information that they do collect.
I think one of the incredible lies that so many of us bought for so many years and I include myself in that was Facebook saying like oh like it’s just whatever you share with us that’s all we have and then you tell us who you want to share it with and that’s all that’s all we click it’s that’s it and that is of course total bullshit.
They are a gigantic data collecting organization.
One of the things you can actually see in your settings that this article goes into is a list of the companies that have shared information about you with Facebook and meta because you’ve done business with those companies.
It’s just something I never expected but there’s like you know a planner I bought five years ago when I thought planners would be useful for my life.
That company gave Facebook my e-mail address and who knows what other information.
It’s just wild that there’s so much happening behind the scenes that we don’t know about here but at least this article gives us a little bit of control and a way to turn off some of it.
So again I will link to that in the show notes.
And then finally there will be a link to a fantastic video really really short that you should watch if you just need a little moment of joy in your life today or whenever.
It is a clip from the final round of Wheel of Fortune now hosted by Ryan Seacrest and it’s a contestant who knocks Ryan Seacrest to the ground.
Accidentally but still kind of fun to watch him take a tumble so enjoy that as well.
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Okay that’s it for today’s episode.
Thank you so much for listening and being here with me.
Feel free to send me your feedback questions and thoughts.
I always love to hear those, receive those.
If you have any suggestions for segments I am always open to that as well.
Our theme song that you are listening to right now is “Cheery Monday” by Kevin MacLeod and this episode was partially written, partially improvised, and entirely produced by me, Andy Dehnart, and is copyright 2025 by Reality Blurred LLC which is also conveniently me.
You can find me at realityblurred.com or andydehnart.com.
I’ll leave you today with wisdom for life from Bob the Drag Queen who may not have been the best traders player but his approach to the game may just be the kind of advice for life that we all need right now.
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You’re here to participate.
You’re here to play the game.
You’re here to engage.
Go all in.