126 Podcast Questions to Ask Any Guest (By Type)

The difference between a flat interview and a great one is rarely the guest. It is the questions, and the order you ask them in.

Below are 126 podcast questions grouped by type: icebreakers, origin stories, expertise, deep and reflective questions, rapid-fire rounds, funny questions, questions for authors, questions for founders and closing questions. After the list, you will find how to research a guest and build an order that gets real answers rather than rehearsed ones.

What are good podcast questions to ask a guest?

Pick a few from each section, then rewrite them in your own words and tailor them to the guest. A question that shows you have done your homework always lands better than a generic one.

Icebreaker questions

1. What are you working on this week that you are excited about?
2. Where are you recording from today, and what does the room look like?
3. What did your morning look like before this conversation?
4. What is something people usually get wrong when they introduce you?
5. What were you obsessed with at age ten?
6. What is the best thing you have read, watched or listened to this month?
7. What is one small thing that made your week better?
8. If you were not doing this work, what would you be doing?
9. What is a skill you have that has nothing to do with your job?
10. What question are you tired of being asked?
11. What is the most interesting thing on your desk right now?
12. What did you learn recently that surprised you?
13. Who was the last person who made you laugh out loud?
14. How would your closest friend describe what you do?

Origin story questions

15. What first pulled you into this field?
16. Was there one moment when you knew this was your path?
17. What did your first job teach you that you still use?
18. Who gave you a chance early on, and why do you think they did?
19. What was the hardest year of your career so far?
20. What did you believe at the start that you no longer believe?
21. What almost made you quit?
22. What did your family think of your career choice?
23. Which decision looks obvious now but felt risky at the time?
24. What is a failure that turned out to be useful?
25. Where did the idea for your current work come from?
26. What would surprise people about how you got here?
27. What did you have to unlearn when you started out?
28. If you could talk to yourself on day one, what would you say?

Expertise questions

29. What is the most common mistake people make in your field?
30. What does a beginner need to know that experts forget to tell them?
31. Can you walk us through how you approach [specific problem], step by step?
32. What is a piece of popular advice in your field that you disagree with?
33. What separates people who do this well from people who do it adequately?
34. What tools or habits do you rely on every week?
35. What changed in your field in the last five years, and what has not?
36. What do you think will change in the next five?
37. What is the simplest version of your main idea?
38. Can you give us a real example of that in action?
39. What would you tell a listener who wants to start on this tomorrow?
40. What does success look like, and how would someone measure it?
41. Where do people usually get stuck, and how do they get unstuck?
42. What question should I be asking you that I have not?

Deep and reflective questions

43. What do you know now that you wish you had known ten years ago?
44. What is something you changed your mind about recently?
45. What do you want to be remembered for?
46. When do you feel most like yourself?
47. What is a belief you hold that most people around you do not?
48. What has success cost you?
49. What is the hardest feedback you have ever received?
50. What are you still trying to figure out?
51. How do you handle doubt?
52. What does a good day look like for you now, compared with five years ago?
53. Which relationship has shaped your work the most?
54. What are you most proud of that never appears on your résumé?
55. What scares you about the future of your field?
56. What gives you hope about it?

Rapid-fire questions

57. Morning or night?
58. Book or podcast?
59. Best piece of advice in five words?
60. One app you cannot live without?
61. Coffee or tea?
62. Most overrated idea in your industry?
63. Most underrated one?
64. One book everyone should read?
65. Dream guest for this show?
66. City you would move to tomorrow?
67. Last thing you bought that was worth it?
68. Favorite word?
69. Plan or improvise?
70. One habit you are trying to build?

Funny podcast questions

71. What is the worst job you have ever had?
72. What is the strangest thing you have ever been asked in an interview?
73. What hill are you willing to die on that really does not matter?
74. What is your most useless talent?
75. What is a trend you joined and regret?
76. What would the title of your autobiography be today?
77. If your career had a theme song, what would it be?
78. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you at work?
79. What is the worst advice you have ever followed?
80. Which fictional character would be best at your job?
81. What is your go-to karaoke song?
82. What is the weirdest email you have received from a stranger?
83. If animals could talk, which would be the most annoying?
84. What food do you secretly dislike that everyone else loves?

Podcast questions for authors

85. What question were you trying to answer when you started this book?
86. Who did you write it for?
87. What did you leave out of the book, and why?
88. What surprised you most during the research?
89. Which chapter was hardest to write?
90. What is one idea from the book a listener can use today?
91. What do you hope readers do differently after finishing it?
92. What is the most common pushback you get on your argument?
93. How did writing the book change your own thinking?
94. What does your writing routine look like?
95. Is there a story from the book you love telling?
96. How long did the book take from idea to publication?
97. Which book on this topic did yours respond to?
98. What would a sequel or a second edition add?

Podcast questions for founders

99. What problem did you see that others missed?
100. Who was your first customer, and how did you find them?
101. What did version one of your product look like?
102. What is a decision you made too slowly?
103. What did you get wrong about hiring?
104. How do you decide what not to build?
105. What did you learn from a customer who left?
106. How do you protect your time as the company grows?
107. What metric do you watch more closely than people expect?
108. When did the business first feel real?
109. What would you do differently if you started again tomorrow?
110. What is a myth about founders that annoys you?
111. Who do you call when things go wrong?
112. What is the next big bet for the company?

Closing questions

113. What is one thing you want listeners to remember from today?
114. What is one action they can take this week?
115. Who should I invite on the show next?
116. What are you curious about right now?
117. Is there anything I did not ask that you wanted to talk about?
118. Where can people find you and your work?
119. What is the best way to support what you are doing?
120. What book or resource would you recommend to go deeper?
121. What is coming next for you?
122. What do you want to say to a listener who is just starting out?
123. Who has helped you that deserves a shout-out?
124. What question would you like to ask our listeners?
125. If listeners only did one thing from this conversation, what should it be?
126. Can we have you back in a year to see what changed?

How do you research a podcast guest?

Preparation is what makes questions feel personal. Plan for about an hour per guest; for authors, more if you read the book.

1. Listen to two or three of their recent interviews. Note the stories they always tell so you can ask for something new.
2. Read their recent work. For authors, read at least the introduction and one or two chapters. For founders, look at the company's site, recent news and posts.
3. Find one surprising detail. An early job, an unusual hobby or a change of direction. It makes a strong opening question.
4. Write down what your listeners need from this guest. One or two outcomes. Every question should serve those.
5. Send a short pre-interview note. Ask what they most want to talk about and whether anything is off limits.

Tip: If a guest has told the same story on ten shows, ask about the moment just before or just after it. You get fresh material, and the guest notices you did the homework.

How should you order podcast interview questions?

The order matters as much as the questions themselves. Most good interviews follow a curve: easy, then deeper, then light again.

Stage	Share of interview	Purpose	Question types
Warm-up	First few minutes	Relax the guest; let listeners hear their voice	Icebreakers
Context	About a fifth	Who they are and why they matter to this topic	Origin story
Core	About half	The useful substance listeners came for	Expertise, author or founder
Depth	A short stretch	Honest reflection once trust is built	Deep and reflective
Lift	A few minutes	Change the energy before the end	Rapid-fire or funny
Close	Last few minutes	Takeaway and next step	Closing questions

Keep these principles in mind:

• Ask open questions. "How did you decide…?" gets a story. "Did you decide…?" gets a yes.
• Ask one question at a time. Double questions let the guest answer the easier half.
• Follow up before moving on. "What happened next?" and "Can you give an example?" are the most useful questions you will ever ask.
• Let silence work. Pause for a second after an answer. Guests often add the best part. NPR host Rachel Martin puts it plainly in her interview tips: "Sometimes the best follow up question is to say nothing."
• Save sensitive questions for later. Trust builds through the conversation.

Key takeaway: Prepare more questions than you need, then listen more than you read. Your list is a safety net, not a script.

What makes a podcast question good or bad?

Good podcast questions share a few traits: they are open, specific to the guest, short and tied to what your listeners care about.

Here is how a weak question becomes a stronger one:

• "Tell us about yourself" becomes "What is something about your path that most people don't know?"
• "What is your book about?" becomes "What question were you trying to answer when you started this book?"
• "Any advice for our listeners?" becomes "What is one thing a listener could try this week?"
• "Was it hard?" becomes "What was the hardest part, and what got you through it?"

Avoid questions the guest has answered everywhere, questions that show you have not done the research, and long setups that turn into a speech of your own.

How do you prepare a full interview episode?

Questions are one part of the episode. You also need an intro, transitions, a sponsor read if you have one and an outro. Our podcast script templates include a copy-ready interview episode template with places to drop in the questions above.

If you are still setting up your show, our step-by-step guide on how to launch a podcast covers equipment, recording, hosting and getting listed. And if you need new episode ideas, browse our list of podcast topics.

Looking for well-prepared guests?

The author questions above work especially well because nonfiction authors arrive with a researched, organized argument and real stories to tell. If you host an interview show, we can suggest nonfiction authors as guests at no cost to you. If you are an author preparing to answer these questions, our guide to getting booked on podcasts shows what hosts look for.