A Brilliant Topic and a First-Rate Interviewer Still Cannot Save an Expert Who Is Boring to Listen To
Some videos make you want to stop watching within five minutes, no matter how fascinating the subject appears.
The other day, I had exactly that experience with a YouTube interview program I often watch.
The topic was “Research into African Tribal Religions and Sorcerers.”
Does that not sound interesting already? It offered a glimpse into a world we rarely hear about, and the concept was excellent. The interviewer is also highly skilled and always draws out guests with incisive questions.
And yet, I closed the video after five minutes.
The problem was the guest researcher.
He was a fairly elderly professor, and his talk was simply excruciatingly dull. He mumbled in a monotone, and I could feel my concentration steadily draining away.
He reminded me of the professor who gave the most boring lectures I attended at university.
Back then, I endured it for the credits. This was YouTube. I could leave with a single click.
Why Are the Program’s Regular Scholars So Interesting?
By contrast, several scholars appear on this program repeatedly.
They are genuinely interesting to listen to.
They do not try to get laughs like comedians or react theatrically like television personalities.
Even so, I find myself listening until the end.
What makes them different?
First, they answer questions precisely. They immediately understand what the interviewer wants to know and respond to it.
They also introduce interesting episodes at appropriate moments in the conversation. Even when discussing difficult technical terms, they explain them naturally at a level suited to the other person’s knowledge.
In other words, they talk not about what they want to say, but about what the other person wants to hear.
That sounds simple, but it is actually a highly sophisticated skill.
The deeper a person’s expertise, the more they want to explain every detail accurately. But listeners do not necessarily want an academically perfect explanation.
They want an explanation that lets them grasp what makes the subject interesting.
Expertise and the Ability to Explain It Are Different Things
Japanese has an expression, senmon baka, literally a “specialist fool.”
It describes someone with extensive knowledge in a particular field but little ability to communicate it to people outside that field.
Of course, a researcher’s primary job is research. Writing an excellent academic paper and speaking engagingly on YouTube require different skills.
But the situation changes when a researcher appears on an interview program for a general audience.
I often encounter the same thing in the world of IT engineering.
Some people know the technology inside out but are catastrophically bad at explaining it.
Ask them a question, and they begin with technical background nobody asked for and continue indefinitely. They never seem to reach the answer you actually wanted.
They probably believe they are giving an accurate explanation, but they pay no attention to the listener’s level of understanding or interest.
Possessing knowledge and using that knowledge to help someone understand are entirely different abilities.
A Talent for Making an Interesting Subject Boring
What made this video so disappointing was that the subject, the concept, and the interviewer were all excellent.
Even so, the guest’s speaking style alone ruined everything.
The scholars invited back repeatedly, by contrast, possess not only research ability but also the talent to make their expertise interesting to other people.
Being an excellent researcher is not enough to become a regular guest on a popular program.
The professor in this video had probably spent decades studying African religions.
The program had been produced specifically to hear about the valuable knowledge his research had uncovered.
Decades of accumulated knowledge can be ruined by just five minutes of poor presentation.
In a sense, that too is a formidable talent.