What to Talk About on a Podcast: A Host's Guide to Choosing Topics That Work

Episode 0008: Jonny Hoffner - Good > Safe

Jonny Hoffner of Paper Antler Photography and Good Lion Golf on 17 years of wedding photography, building two creative businesses, and why good doesn't have to mean safe.

The hardest part of hosting a podcast usually isn’t recording or editing. It’s the moment you sit down to plan an episode and ask yourself the same question every host eventually asks: what should we actually talk about?

The short answer: choose topics where you, your guest, and your audience all care

The best podcast topics sit at the intersection of three things:

1. Something you genuinely want to understand. If you’re not curious, the conversation will sound forced.
2. Something your guest has earned the right to talk about. Lived experience, expertise, or a story they’ve never told publicly before.
3. Something your audience would lean in for. A question, tension, or perspective they don’t already have.

When all three overlap, the episode almost makes itself. When only two overlap, you can still get a good conversation but it takes more work. When only one overlaps, you’ll feel it. And so will the listeners.

If you want a starting point, there are 50 podcast conversation topics organized by theme you can adapt for your show. This guide is about how to pick well, not what to pick.

Three questions to ask before any episode

Before you commit to a topic, run it through these three filters.

1. What does this guest see that most people don’t?

Every guest has an angle. They notice something because of who they are and what they’ve done. A photographer sees light differently. A nurse sees urgency differently. A founder sees risk differently. Your job as host is to find that angle and build the conversation around it. Generic topics (“tell me about your career”) flatten the guest. Specific topics (“what do you notice about your work that no one else seems to”) open them up.

2. What would I want to know if I were the listener?

Listeners aren’t trying to impress anyone. They want the conversation to feel useful, surprising, or honest. If a topic sounds clever to you but you can’t imagine why anyone outside your industry would care, that’s a signal. Test it: would you want to listen to this episode if it weren’t yours?

3. Is there a real question inside this topic, or just a category?

“Mental health” is a category. “What did the year you stopped pretending to be fine actually look like” is a question. Categories drift. Questions create direction. The strongest episode topics can be phrased as a single, specific question the guest can actually answer.

Topics that consistently work

Across genres, certain types of topics produce better conversations than others.

Origin stories. Not the polished version. The messy one. How they actually got here, including the parts they don’t usually talk about. The best origin questions sound like “what’s the version of this story you don’t tell at dinner parties?”

Turning points. Specific moments when something changed. A decision, a failure, a realization, a person they met. Concrete moments produce concrete answers. Vague prompts produce vague answers.

Beliefs they’ve unlearned. What did they used to be sure of that they no longer believe? This question almost always lands because it requires the guest to be honest about their own evolution.

Tensions they live with. What’s the contradiction they haven’t resolved? What do they wish was simpler than it is? Tension is more interesting than resolution.

Specifics from their actual work or life. Not the abstract version. The Tuesday version. What does the work actually look like at 2pm on a Tuesday?

Topics that consistently don’t work

A few patterns sabotage episodes even when the guest is great.

Topics that have a “right answer.” If there’s an obvious correct opinion, the conversation will sound performative. Topics where reasonable people disagree produce better dialogue.

Topics that require the guest to be the expert on their own success. People are usually worse at explaining their own success than they think. They’re much better at describing specific moments, mistakes, and texture.

Topics that are really just resume questions. “Tell me about your role at X” gets you what’s already on their LinkedIn. Skip ahead to the actual interesting parts.

Topics that need 90 minutes of context. If you spend half the episode setting up the question, the answer rarely justifies the runway.

Topics chosen because they’re trending. Episodes built around a current moment tend to age out faster than episodes built around a person.

How to find topics inside the conversation

Sometimes the best topic isn’t the one you planned. It’s the one that surfaces in the first 10 minutes once the guest starts talking. Good hosts notice when the guest gets more animated, slows down, or pauses before answering. Those are signals that you’ve touched something real.

When you hear that signal, abandon the prep list. Stay there. Ask a follow-up. Then another. The episode you actually wanted is often three questions deeper than the one you came in with.

This requires a structural choice up front: prep more topics than you’ll use, then be willing to drop most of them. Active listening techniques help you stay flexible enough to follow the conversation where it actually wants to go.

How to test a topic before you commit

If you’re unsure whether a topic is going to work, try one of these.

Write the headline. If you can write a one-sentence description of what this episode is about and what a listener will get out of it, the topic is probably sharp enough. If you can’t, it isn’t.

Ask the guest in advance. “What’s a question about this topic you wish someone would ask you?” Their answer often reveals a better version of your topic than the one you had.

Imagine the title. What would you name the episode? If the title sounds generic, the topic probably is. If you can name it specifically (something a listener would click on), the topic has shape.

Try the 90-second test. Can you describe the topic in 90 seconds in a way that makes someone want to keep listening? If not, keep refining.

What to do when you have no idea what to talk about

It happens to every host. The guest is great, you’ve done the prep, and you still feel stuck. When that happens, try one of these:

1. Ask about the work they’re proud of that no one notices. Almost everyone has an answer, and it’s almost always interesting.
2. Ask what they used to believe that they no longer believe. Forces honesty without being confrontational.
3. Ask about a moment they remember more vividly than the rest. Specific moments produce specific stories.
4. Ask what they wish you had asked them in the last interview they did. Often the most revealing question of all.

These aren’t gimmicks. They’re starting points for the kind of conversation that earns a second listen.

Takeaway

Choosing what to talk about on a podcast isn’t about having the longest list of topics. It’s about asking better questions of the topic itself: who is this for, what’s the real question, what does this guest specifically see, and would I want to listen to it if I weren’t the one making it?

Get those right, and the episode mostly works. Get them wrong, and no amount of post-production saves it.

If you want concrete prompts to start from, the 50 conversation topic ideas guide covers personal, creative, work, cultural, and reflective territory. Pair it with a clear sense of what your show is actually about, and you’ll never run out of episodes worth recording.