Crafting Incredible Episode Intros: Going Beyond Pull-Quotes and Summaries
Forget intros for a moment. I know that’s why you’re here, but we’ve got to start in another place:
What is a podcast FOR?
Is it for awareness? Reach? Net-new audience growth?
I say, nay-nay, my dear friend. Nay-nay. A podcast is among the absolute worst vehicles imaginable for fast growth of brand new people in your audience. It doesn’t rank directly on search. It doesn’t get shared all that easily directly onto social media. The charts and podcast players don’t make sorting and sifting through shows all that easy — for listeners OR for anyone without celebrity-like fame.
No, podcasting isn’t all that discoverable. Instead, think about what IS discoverable: YOU … plus the content you create around the show to support it.
Podcasting is not a traffic generator. It’s a relationship accelerator. What it’s bad at doing (growing awareness) it more than makes up for in being the world’s best vehicle for the thing it’s good at doing (deepening relationships; turning passive audience into passionate superfans).
Thus, the golden rule of audio is simple: get them to the end. Once they hit play, ensure they don’t hit stop.
This is all about affinity. This is about holding attention. This is about relationships.
And this begins … at the beginning. If you want them to stick with you, then the best place to invest more fully is the moment they pick you.
Once they hit play, you have ONE job: deliver something immediately gripping.
Today, a concrete goal we should all bring with us every time we start an episode — plus some examples of hosts who do this exceptionally well. But of course, we have to start by eating some humble pie. The way we usually open our episodes isn’t good enough…
The Purpose of Your Intros (and What to Avoid)
The concrete goal of any intro in our stories and episodes: encourage continued, eager listening.
It’s here we need to know about the psychological concept called the “primacy and recency effects.” The idea is simple yet quite powerful: your audience’s memory of you is shaped mostly by their FIRST and LAST moments with you. If we’re going to over-invest in any one piece of the episode flow, it ought to be the intro. Second, the outro. Then, the middle.
Look, it ALL matters, but we’re talking about training our gazes onto the most important places to improve — and among those, the intros look like the biggest opportunities if you listen to most shows.
Most shows do NOT encourage continued, eager listening. Instead, they use any number of weaker intros:
❌ The full host-Read bio
To the listener, there’s a night-and-day difference between saying “today we’re talking about the latest innovation in ad tech” and saying “today I’m welcoming Billy Bob Briggs, CTO of the Advertising Conglomerate Corporation of America, who has 50 years of experience working on advertising platforms. Formerly, Billy Bob was CTO of Inventure, an invention company that invents things, and he has a lot of experience working with inventions over his many experiences. His company now…” etc. etc. The first is shorter and gives the listener a clear reason to care. The full bio is almost never helpful to the listener. Sometimes the title is even too much.
Build your guest’s title into your question: “I know you’re seeing a lot of innovation as the vice president of Innovators Anonymous, so what stands out to you the most right now?”
It’s up to YOU to lead that intro. Never ask “what have you been up to?” to start a conversation. Only ask about a specific experience if it’s fully relevant to the conversation.
Next in the list of common mistakes…
❌ Over-summarizing
The goal of outlining what’s inside the episode to come is to convey to the listener: this is worth your while. Keep listening. But when we write articles, we don’t do this. We simply open strong, with a gripping story, or a big question, or a hypothesis worth exploring. We SHOW THEM it’s worth sticking around, because they are immediately invested. Do that in your episodes, and you’ll earn passionate fans far quicker.
The rationale makes sense in this case. You want to help the listener decide whether this episode is a good use of time. While we understand, we also believe: Don’t even give them a choice! The moment they hit play, it’s immediately clear that, yes, this is a great use of their time. They never feel the need to stop and wonder.
At best, over-summarizing is like over-selling. Someone is listening, but you keep hyping what’s to come. You get the Yes, and they want you to move to the good stuff, but you just keep selling/summarizing. At worst, however, these summaries are a poor proxy for the awesome value in the episode – a distant echo that listeners mistake for the actual caliber of conversation to come. A musician wouldn’t describe what their songs are about to sound and feel like before playing. They just start playing. You should too.
❌ Vague hype
“We’ve got a great episode for you today!” Oh? As opposed to… what? The other episodes which were all terrible? When we TELL the audience we’re excited, or that something is great, it falls flat. Again, we want to SHOW them. If you’re excited, don’t just tell them you’re excited. BE excited. Rattle off a few SPECIFIC details that made you excited. Describe the complicated, lengthy, years-long process to finally book this guest. Increase the speed at which you’re speaking or the tenseness the listener feels as you crescendo into a big reveal. SOMETHING is worth hyping. It’s not “the episode.” It’s something about the episode. What is it? Talk about that, or better yet, merely start strong and show them.
This is like being a public speaker who thanks the audience, then immediately says, “I’m excited to be here!” Oh? As opposed to… what? Being sad you’re on stage? Wishing you could end the talk early? Of COURSE you’re excited to be there. Of COURSE the episode is great today. But if there’s a reason to hype something, focus less on the hype, and more on the things that you are hyped about.
A frequent sign a host is using “vague hype” to open their episodes is how closely they mimic a common YouTube trope: shouting “hey guys!” when they begin.
Not only are listeners not all “guys,” but they’re also not listening in a group. Just like writing a newsletter, you’re speaking to ONE person. Picture them. Make it an actual human you know, if you can. But better than “you all” is “you.” Better than “you, the audience,” is “you, my friend.”
Podcasting’s most enduring, potent trait (and most-discussed, at that) is the sense of intimacy that a voice-driven, on-the-go, in-your-ears medium creates.
Vague hype often torpedoes that very substantial benefit before you even have a chance to reap the rewards.
❌ Gratuitous housekeeping
This includes multiple calls-to-action running together talking about multiple things of importance to your brand, reminders to rate/review the show, and so forth.
That stuff is for you, not the listener. And by the way: that’s fine! Put stuff for you second in the order of content listeners hear when they hit Play. Or put it last. Just don’t put it first. Open with actual content, not a CTA.
If you have something truly monumental you need to tell the audience, then and only then, put it first. Doing so will cause the listener to think, “Oh, wow, an unusual update. A break in the action. This must be super important. I should listen.” But doing it every episode? They’ll reach for the skip button, or worse — the stop button.
The first moments of an episode are for the listener, not for you.
❌ Catching up or easing in
This is when the voices on the episode start talking about things the listener doesn’t care about as a form of easing into conversation, as we would over coffee or drinks. But this isn’t a networking call. This is a show, and there’s an audience present – even though you can’t see them. (examples might sound like, “Hey, Pam! I haven’t seen you since SXSW!” or “How was the weekend?” or “Boy, the kids were crazy last night…” or inside jokes that lead to yuks.)
Listeners don’t care about any of this. They’re going to ask, “What’s in it for me?” If the goal of catching up is to help the listener learn to like the voices they’re hearing as people, there are other ways to do so in the flow of a great conversation. If the goal of easing in is to establish the right early tone, so they can slowly make sense of the material or build into your smart insights, again, there are better ways to establish that warm, welcoming feeling – if that even is the right approach (sometimes, it’s not). The intro is not the place for any of this.
Easing into things might showcase your personality, but there are other, better ways to do this while also delivering actual value to listeners and ensuring they keep listening.
Next up…
❌ The double-welcome
The host’s narration welcomes you to the show and describes the show/the guest briefly, then the first moments of the interview audio play – during which the host once again welcomes you to the show and describes the show/the guest briefly.
(Is there an echo in here?)
(Is there an echo in here?)
❌ The dead-end greeting
This is a small but common moment that, once you hear it, you won’t be able to un-hear. When a host says, “Thanks for coming on the show,” there’s only one response a guest is forced to give in return: “Thanks, excited to be here.” This adds nothing at all to the listener experience, while the guest isn’t set up for success by the host.
Thanking the guest is a good idea! And if you genuinely are excited to have them on the show, then genuinely be excited. But these things can be achieved in other ways – for instance, thank them before you hit record.
The first things a guest says should be INTERESTING and VALUABLE … not a throwaway line. We cut out Ums and Uhs because they are “verbal debris” that clutters the show. This type of common introductory moment is the same. (Apologies in advance for ruining part of your own podcast listening experiences to other shows. This moment is just that ubiquitous, despite being wholly unnecessary. You won’t be able to un-hear it!)
What Great Intros Share
In order to encourage continued, eager listening, great intros all create some “open loops” in the listener’s mind. (Here is my full essay about the various types of open loops and how to use them tactfully).
Open loops create questions on people’s mind. They play to our intrinsic desire to close those loops — that is, to satiate our curiosities. At our most extreme, we’re thinking, “Tell me, tell me! I GOTTA KNOW!”
The intros we mostly hear simply don’t do that.
Recently, I was working with a client for whom I was developing their show — from an original premise to the rundown of the episode to the host’s on-mic appearances and initial content. This was the very first section of the show’s episode rundown we discussed:
(HOST) conveys the universal theme of the episode right out of the gate, using these 3 beats…
1/ MEET THE AUDIENCE WHERE THEY’RE AT
(many approaches, for instance…)
Paint a familiar scenario they deal with
Share a quick personal story or experience
Ask the big question in plain language asap
2/ RAISE THE STAKES / FIRE THEM UP
Land on ~3 open-ended questions you intend to pursue that episode. Stoke their curiosity and tease what’s to come. Do NOT summarize it.
The “rule of 3” (that is, 3 open-ended questions or lists of 3 to illustrate things) work best when the third is a surprise twist, thus opening another loop to be closed later. For instance, if you want to challenge accepted ideas among marketers, you might use this “rule of 3” set of questions, with a surprise twist at the end: “Is the idea of Know-Like-and-Trust broken as a concept? What if the LIKE part is actually causing us to publish the wrong kind of content for ourselves and our clients? And why is the solution to this problem found so commonly among leaders of African safaris?”)
3/ INVITE THEM TO THE JOURNEY
Show name + brief premise description + your name
Examples of Great Intros
Jay Clouse’s Creator Science
This clip provides TWO examples of great intros, as Jay is highlighting another creator’s intro in the content you’re about to see. (Meta, I know.)
In both cases, you are dropped into a MOMENT which represents the MEANING of the episode to come. He doesn’t have to tell you. He shows you. (Yes, you can do this in audio too.)
A twist to try: In this case, Jay uses his forthcoming guest to create some open loops… but you can also use ANY story or moment from your life, choosing not to raid the episode’s content but instead your own observations and memories, to make a similar point. For instance, Jay could have referenced the opening lines from a recent episode of a TV show he liked to make the same point.
Tara McMullin’s What Works
Tara is GREAT at consistently gripping intros. She never uses the same exact template.
Sometimes, she starts like she does here: with vivid descriptions meant to start your mind’s visual process of making sense of the episode. You are IN. You are THERE. You’re going with Tara. Unlike summaries of forthcoming content, she leaves you no brief moment to question whether you want to pay attention. You just … do.
Other times, Tara uses a pull quote — that very common and somewhat cliche approach. But she breathes new life into the content with narration.
An approach to remember: If you want to describe the visual of something (your guest, as Tara does here, or something you observed away from the show), remember that audio is theater of the mind — and the mind needs a moment to construct the set. Audio listeners are further behind the speaker than video viewers because they have to do more mental work. As a result, YOU need to dole out one tiny detail at a time, doing so at a steady cadence. Otherwise, they’re confused and wondering what they just heard … all while you plow ahead. When that happens, they get frustrated and bail. So go ahead: describe stuff in detail. But do so slowly, as if you are spoon-fooding the audience. That’s the only real way they can taste everything you want them to experience without falling behind. Tara does this masterfully.
Hrishikesh Hirway’s Song Exploder
Hrishikesh does two things that, at first glance, would run against the advice of this essay: he describes the show (first thing you hear) then describes the guest (second thing). But it’s HOW he does this which makes his episode intros so gripping.
First, the description of Song Exploder’s premise immediately creates an open loop. That’s not always the case for every show, though truly compelling premises tend to share that trait. When he says you will hear a musician take apart one song and, piece by piece, tell the story of how it was made … you start to imagine it. That’s because Song Exploder’s premises relies on what’s known as a “visual hook.” It’s visceral and vivid. Merely describing the premise prompts you go think, “Oh, what does that look like and sound like? I want that!”
Second, the description of Hrishikesh’s guests is unlike most typical biographical summaries, in that he focuses on one key moment and describes it as a sort of small story.
Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes’s You’re Wrong About
This is a widely beloved show about things we think we understand but don’t. What Sarah says below isn’t as “highly produced” as you might expect from a podcaster known for effective, beloved episodes. Sarah’s tone of voice is more measured, less high-energy, than some hosts, and she offers a cozier, contemplative experience than lots of “newsy” or interview-based shows. But she also does a few brilliant things in the intro:
There’s a mini-trailer to open the episode. It uses a joking, rapport-building line from the episode, followed by a montage of audio footage pulled from the news.
Then, Sarah tees up a big question she wants to explore. It’s among the first things she says.
Finally, after some necessary housekeeping describing what the episode explores, she wraps up by stating what she hopes the listener FEELS and takes away from the episode.
The point: Every listener will be wondering, “What will be different when I’m done?” This makes it clear.
Unthinkable (from me, Jay Acunzo…)
I’m very proud of my approach to intros, and it’s something I’ve tried to OVER-invest time into mastering. Still, I have a lot to learn yet, so take these with a grain of salt.
And with that face-saving caveating out of the way, here are a few styles of intros I’ve tried lately and loved…
First up, a personal anecdote used as a metaphor or thematic but not directly related intro:
Next, a more direct description of the problem, albeit with a metaphorical opening moment to lead listeners INTO the problem being explored:
And finally, one you can juxtapose to the first example above. It’s a personal anecdote like my intro to Speakeasy Business, but it’s more literal. Rather than a metaphor, it’s an illustration — a time I learned the same lesson as I’d like to explore in the episode today (so I can get closer to “showing” you what you’ll learn than simply “telling” you):
WNYC’s Radiolab
This show is an OG in audio excellence, so it’s no surprise we find great intros across their stories. That said, as a fan, I’ve picked up on two distinct ways they create compelling intros:
This is an example of how they create an immediate mystery — a big, episode-specific open loop. When you start the episode, they essentially just … start. (Sometimes, later in the intro, they will dovetail into the “meat” of the episode with a more direct reveal of what they’re exploring, often with an enthusiastic “TODAY on the show… [topic].” They may even follow that up with a “Rule of 3” set of questions to be answered later.
The second type also introduces a mystery, but it’s got a bit more of a “classic intro” feel to it, as in you aren’t yet INSIDE the story when you hit Play. This style is much more about letting you, the listener, inside their production process slightly. That helps enroll you in a journey you can’t wait to hear unfolding. Although they benefit from having multiple people on the mic to talk about the making of the story briefly, you can do this all by yourself, with your listener as the silent stand-in for the person you’re talking to.
Intros Have a Lopsided Effect on the Overall Experience
How you start often determines whether or not they finish. And that’s the goal: get them to the end. As experts creating content today, we may obsess over grabbing attention, but if we don’t hold attention, we don’t earn the trust and love we need to see any real results for our businesses and our causes. We won’t create passionate fans, either.
If you do nothing else to improve your show’s experience and the results you see, improve your intros. Encourage continued, eager listening.
It’s easy to shrug and hide behind that old adage: “It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.” And that might be true over the long arc of time. But inside your episode’s runtime, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s how you start.
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