A podcast interview is closer to a phone call than to a stage talk, but a lot of first-time guests prepare for it as if it were a TED Talk. That mismatch tends to show up on the recording.
This guide covers public speaking tips specifically for the podcast format. The techniques come from voice coaches like Roger Love and communication researchers at Stanford and Harvard.
What This Guide Covers:
1. The Pre-Recording Routine
2. How to Structure Answers
3. Voice Techniques
4. Handling Podcast Anxiety
5. Handling Questions You Don't Know the Answer To
6. Remote Interview Tips
7. Common Mistakes1. The Pre-Recording Routine
A podcast warm-up serves two purposes: getting the voice into its working range, and getting the nervous system out of fight-or-flight. The exercises below come from broadcast journalism training and voice coaching practice.
➤ Voice warm-ups (5 to 7 minutes)
- Lip trills are a common warm-up across singing, voiceover work, and broadcast training. Press your lips loosely together and blow air through them so they vibrate, like a horse snort. Add a tone, then glide that tone up and down a comfortable pitch range.
- Humming on a “mmm” sound does similar work for resonance. The University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business teaches a seven-minute warm-up that includes resonance tuning, where you shift the focus from a nasal buzz to a fuller, chest-dominant resonance to vary vocal tone.
- Tongue twisters wake up the articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue). “The tip of the tongue, the teeth, and the lips” is a classic from broadcast training. “Red leather, yellow leather” works a different muscle group. Three repetitions of each, slow then fast, is enough.
➤ Body warm-ups (3 to 5 minutes)
- Roll the shoulders forward and backward five times each. Open the jaw wide and let it hang for a count of five. Massage the cheek muscles in slow circles.
- Australian voice coach Nic Redman, who works with broadcast presenters, recommends a full-body shake before voice gigs. Arms, legs, and face. The shake releases tension that would otherwise show up in the throat.
- Posture changes the voice. Sitting upright with feet flat on the floor allows for easier breath support. Slouching can restrict breathing and reduce vocal control.
➤ Breath work (2 to 3 minutes)
- Diaphragmatic breathing is the technique most voice coaches build on. Place one hand on the chest, one on the belly. Inhale through the nose for four counts and feel the belly expand without much chest movement. Exhale through the mouth for six counts. Slow, controlled breathing can steady the voice before speaking.
The full routine takes about 15 minutes. For guests with a packed schedule, a stripped-down version (lip trills, plus diaphragmatic breathing, plus one tongue twister) takes under 5 minutes.
➤ Hydration and food choices
- Room-temperature water is preferred by most voice coaches.
- Dairy and heavy meals aren’t recommended right before recording, as they can leave the throat feeling coated and make breathing less comfortable while speaking.
2. How to Structure Answers
➤ The SOAR framework, adapted for stories
SOAR (Situation, Obstacle, Action, Result) is a behavioral interview framework that translates cleanly to podcast storytelling. The structure runs about 60 to 90 seconds when delivered out loud:
- Situation (10 to 15 seconds): Set the scene with one specific detail, like a year, a number or a name.
- Obstacle (10 to 15 seconds): Describe the problem you faced and what made it hard.
- Action (30 to 40 seconds): Walk through what you did, with at least one decision point that surprised you or required a trade-off.
- Result (10 to 15 seconds): Share the outcome and what changed afterward.
➤ The headline-first answer for opinions
For a question that asks for your view rather than a story, lead with the opinion in one sentence, then back it up. Example: “I think a lot of B2B SaaS companies are over-investing in content marketing right now. Here’s why.” The structure mirrors how journalists write a news lead and gives the host a clean handle for follow-ups. Buried opinions, where the speaker builds to the point through three minutes of context, often get cut in the edit.
➤ Prepare three to five anchor stories
Behavioural interview trainers (including career coach Becca Carnahan) recommend keeping a working document of stories with notes on which traits each one demonstrates. Leadership. Resilience. Technical depth. Conflict resolution. The same approach works for podcast guests. Three to five anchor stories, each tagged with the questions they answer, lets you redirect a stalling answer toward something you have already shaped.
What does not work is memorizing answers word for word. The cadence of a memorized answer is detectable on audio, and it locks you into a rigid response that ignores how the host phrased the question.
3. Voice Techniques
➤ Talk past the microphone, not into it
Most cardioid microphones used in podcasting sound better when positioned slightly off-axis, angled to one side rather than pointed straight at your mouth. The angle reduces popping on plosive consonants like ‘p’ and ‘b’ without needing a pop filter. Position the mic around four to six inches from the corner of your mouth.
➤ Smile when you start each answer
This sounds odd but is documented across radio and broadcast training. A smile changes the shape of the vocal tract and adds warmth to the tone. Listeners can hear a smile without seeing it.
➤ Vary pitch on emphasis words
Roger Love, the voice coach who has worked with Tony Robbins, Brendon Burchard, Bradley Cooper, and a long list of executives, teaches what he calls melody in speech. The technique runs counter to the flat, neutral tone many professionals default to. Move pitch up on emphasis words, down on the closing word of a sentence.
A simple drill: read a paragraph aloud and underline the two most important words in each sentence. On the recording, push those words slightly higher in pitch. Replay and compare it to a flat read of the same paragraph.
➤ End sentences with a downward inflection
Uptalk, where the pitch rises at the end of declarative sentences, often reads as uncertainty on audio. The fix is to consciously drop the pitch on the final word of each statement. A drill that works for many speakers: read newspaper headlines aloud while exaggerating the downward fall on the last word.
➤ Skip the verbal acknowledgments
In face-to-face conversation, listeners signal attention with verbal acknowledgments like “right,” “yeah,” and “uh-huh.” On a podcast, those overlap with the host’s voice and create chaos in the edit. Nodding visibly and silently is enough.
4. Handling Podcast Anxiety
Speaking anxiety affects roughly 3 out of 4 people, based on widely cited public speaking surveys. For new podcast guests, the anxiety often spikes higher than it would in other speaking situations because the recording feels permanent.
A few research-backed techniques to help you are:
➤ Reappraisal: “I am excited” rather than “I am calm”
Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks ran a series of experiments published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General in 2014. Participants who told themselves “I am excited” before a high-pressure performance produced measurably better outcomes than those who told themselves “I am calm.”
The effect held across karaoke singing, math problems, and public speaking. The mechanism: anxiety and excitement produce similar physiology (elevated heart rate, faster breathing, sweating). Reframing the same physical state as positive is easier than trying to suppress it.
➤ The first-90-seconds reframe
Stanford communication lecturer Matt Abrahams, who hosts the Think Fast Talk Smart podcast, teaches that anxiety symptoms often peak in the opening minute or two of a speaking situation and then fall as the body adapts. Knowing this in advance reduces the loop where a guest panics about being nervous, which makes them more nervous. Treating the first 90 seconds as a known rough patch, rather than a permanent state, makes them easier to ride out.
5. Handling Questions You Don’t Know the Answer To
Most podcast anxiety centers on one fear: being asked something you can’t answer.
➤ Prepare for the questions you dread, not just the ones you expect
Harvard Business School professor Alison Wood Brooks, speaking on the HBR IdeaCast, recommends writing down the questions you are afraid of getting and preparing your response to each one before the interview. The exercise is uncomfortable on purpose. A guest who has already worked through “What do you think of X competitor?” or “Weren’t you wrong about Y?” in writing is less likely to freeze or ramble when the host asks it live.
For each question on the dread list, write one of two things: a direct short answer, or a redirect to related territory.
➤ “I don’t know” is a usable answer
Brooks noted on the same episode that admitting you don’t know something, used sparingly, tends to function as a credibility move rather than a credibility loss. Bluffing through an answer the host or audience can fact-check is more damaging. The version that works on a podcast: “I don’t know the specific numbers off the top of my head, but the pattern I’ve seen is X.”
That structure gives an honest scope to your uncertainty while still contributing something.
➤ Do not speculate, and say so
A common mistake is offering a guess framed as analysis. “I think probably the numbers are around X” when you have no basis for X is worse than saying you don’t know, because it creates a specific claim that can be wrong. Media training guidance from ACEP and IEEE agrees: incorrect speculation damages credibility more than admitting uncertainty does.
If the host pushes for an opinion on something you have no basis to assess, “I’d rather not speculate on that without better data” is a complete answer.
6. Remote Interview Tips
➤ Microphone choice and placement
Built-in laptop microphones produce thin, echoey audio. Consider investing in a USB microphone.
➤ Wired headphones
Wireless earbuds (AirPods and similar) introduce compression, occasional dropouts, and lag that can create an echo loop with the host’s voice. Wired earbuds or over-ear headphones connected by cable produce cleaner audio.
➤ Room treatment
Hard floors, glass desks, and bare walls produce echo that no editor can fully remove. Soft furnishings (rugs, curtains, a pillow propped behind the microphone) absorb reflection.
➤ Internet
Ethernet connections are more stable than wifi during the recording window. If wifi is the only option, sit near the router and shut down background applications competing for bandwidth, like Slack, Dropbox sync, or browser tabs streaming video.
➤ Camera and lighting (for video podcasts)
If the recording includes video, position the camera at eye level or slightly above. A laptop on a stack of books or a cheap riser fixes the under-chin angle that most laptop cameras default to. A window in front of you (not behind) is a cheap lighting upgrade.
7. Common Mistakes
➤ Filler word stacks
“Um,” “uh,” “like,” “you know,” and “so basically” tend to cluster. Reducing them takes practice. A common drill: record yourself answering one question for three minutes, then count the fillers on playback. Many speakers see a considerable drop within two weeks of self-auditing this way.
➤ Excessive hedging
“I think maybe one possible way to look at this could be…” This phrasing softens claims to the point where they no longer carry information. Stating a view directly (“I think X” or “In my experience, X”) lands harder.
➤ Talking over the host
In a face-to-face conversation, gentle overlap is normal. On audio, overlapping voices create messy edits. Wait a half-second after the host finishes a question before starting your answer.
Wrapping up
Podcast performance improves with repetition. The first appearance is rarely the best one. Guests who listen back to their own episodes, identify two or three habits they want to change, and apply those notes to the next recording move forward the fastest.
Some of the techniques in this guide will fit your style. Some won’t. Try them on a low-stakes recording first, like a friend’s show or a podcast aimed at a small niche audience. Save the bigger appearances for after you’ve found the version of your voice that you like the best.
References
Stanford Graduate School of Business – High-Stakes Communication: How to Manage Anxiety Speaking in Front of Others, May 7, 2020. gsb.stanford.edu/insights/high-stakes-communication-how-manage-anxiety-speaking-front-others
Brooks, A. W. (2014). Get Excited: Reappraising Pre-Performance Anxiety as Excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144-1158. apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-a0035325.pdf
The Podcast Host – Vocal Warm-Up Exercises: Ten Tips to Tame That Tripping Tongue, May 31, 2021. thepodcasthost.com/presenting-your-podcast/tips-to-tame-tripping-tongue
The Interview Guys – The SOAR Method: A Strategic Framework for Behavioral Interview Questions, April 20, 2025. blog.theinterviewguys.com/the-soar-method