How to be a great host: John Barth’s takeaways1. What is “hostiness?” This is where John shines as both a talent recruiter and a content developer. As he says, he’s always looking for ‘the blue M&M” — “that special voice.” “It’s a combination of very different factors. There’s a likability in someone's voice or style. There's this innate sense that I’d really like to spend more time with them. There’s also this range of curiosity and joy and versatility that comes across when you encounter hostiness. But it’s that compelling nature, that if you saw them live on stage, you’d never want the show to end.” 2. Consistent sound matters, and improves with a good host-producer partnership.“Anybody who uses their voice professionally, you want to get to a consistent sound. If a good host can hear what makes them sound good in front of an audience, you want to implant that sound in their head. [As a host], after a while, you know your own range — and even on an off day, you can pull that out.” John’s job as an executive producer? “Helping talent be the very best talent they could be behind a mic.”3. For a more natural and dynamic sound, talk about your passions before taping.  John coached a reporter who’d never before had voice coaching. “First, I let her talk about the story, about her passions. When people talk about their passions, they automatically get a bigger range. You hear more color in their voice. So then, when it came to reading a script, we would do it again and again. And I would listen for moments of passion…and hold up the mirror. After a while, you hear the joy come out.” And then, John says, they would rehearse that script again and again, going over the most difficult and most promising parts. Often, he would direct her, saying, “Take me back to that scene that you're describing and feel that in the sentence.” When they finished, she couldn’t believe how great she sounded. “Sometimes, we just don't know what our own voice can do. And you need a coach, another pair of ears to say, ‘Ooh, that really did work.’”4. “We’re not enthralled by copies. We’re enthralled by originals.” “The goal is certainly to read the script, but your voice and style is loose enough that you can really bring some expression of life to it. There's nothing worse than sounding like Walter Cronkite with the forced intonation and forced pattern. That doesn't mean credibility.”5. A host defines the brand of the show. “When you're hiring a host, the host really does imprint their own sound, voice, and style on the show. So it actually begins to define the brand that you're creating. [On Marketplace] it took me a while to get to a host who embodied the sound that I heard from the show… There was an editorial vision, but there was also a sound vision. And it needed to be distinctive. I always imagined how the audience was listening to the show and the kind of listener I wanted to attract. So that had to be a certain sound.”6. How to prep before taping. “Our goal (at Marketplace)  was to laugh uproariously before we went into the studio to do the live show. So we would tell a funny joke or dirty joke; we would be really snarky in his (David Brancaccio’s) office. My job was to get [David Brancaccio], as a host, not only loosened up, but comfortable with a real range of emotion. So by the time that mic went on, he could really bring his full self to whatever he had to do in those 30 minutes. I mean, it was so much fun.”7. What producers do “It's sort of like directing theater and being a writer and being a cat herder. And, you know, everything all at once. People have no idea what producers really do.” (Elaine) 8. Choose to learn storytelling from the very best — The MothWhen John first saw The Moth on stage, he went back to his boss at PRX, Jake Shapiro, and said, “We have just found our first hit.” He then became a key member of the team that developed The Moth Radio Hour. “The Moth knows probably more about hostiness than anyone. So if you think that