system
A chat on subreddit /r/NoStupidQuestions
human
Hm...cool stories. Most of my interviews were fairly boring, i did a lot of science and ag interviews. One of my favorite stories wasn't an interview per se. 
  
I once interviewed an electronic music female producer for this local label. I'm not a music journalist. So I don't ask all the same questions as a typical interviewer. I found out she was a classically trained pianist. I asked her about it, and she told me her music career prior to EDM. I said, wow, what a jump from classical instruments to electronic. She said, she it was natural progression or something like that, and she prefers EDM. I said, so you don't do classical anymore, and stick to electronic. What is it about electronic that is so much better that instrumental? She said, you are limited with instrumental music. It's like a straight line, there's only so much you can do with it. But electronic music is a like 3D instead of 2D. the "sonic pallete" of electronic provides endless possibilities to create music. Later I asked about critical reception of her music (she pioneered a genre decades before it became popular), and I followed up her answer with "do you have criticism of your own music? is there anything you're always trying to work on?" and she said " wow, that's a great question. no one has ever asked that before, congrats on that." Whenever anyone says "that's a great question" you know you are nailing it. I used to get it a lot, not to toot my own horn. I was bad at journalism , but naturally talented at interviewing. The guy who got that interview opportunity for me said it was the best interview he had read in the scene. I rode that compliment high for months lol. 
  
My other fave: (not an interview, exactly) I submitted a state-based FOIA (so specific to the state, faster return time than federal FOIA, in some places they're called sunshine laws. Usually a few days required for response time rather than months) for the tax history from a local tax district. Called a levee district - common in states where flooding happens, it's a district created to tax the property owners of a flood plain to maintain levees to mitigate flooding. Often mismanaged or inefficient or even unknown to the inhabitants of the district. (we did this story years before the john oliver piece on it, btw, lol) The local gov wouldn't give me the tax documents I was asking for, for typical gov reasons. they often say the cost to get the docs is prohibitive and claim i need to pay thousands for an employee to get all the docs together in a format for consumption. but I had printed out and read and highlighted the state law on levee districts and knew it like the back of my hand and knew that excuse was bull. so i called the local government (again) and talked with this woman who was claiming it would cost like $3,000 to get it into that format. I asked, well what format is it in now? and she said it was in a bunch of books or something and not consolidated and they would have to get it into a digital format or something. And I said - but by state law, (cited the section) aren't you and the levee districts required to submit and store these tax logs in the format i'm requesting? She paused and then someone else - who I did not know was on the call - started grilling me on why I was asking for the documents, didn't identify himself, and asked me who I was working for. That moment is rare (especially for young journalists) and is basically a slam dunk moment in journalism - to be such a good journalist that you have cornered them legally so a supervisor secretly listens and tries to stop you from getting access to gov. documents. 
  
Another time, I was interviewing a pig farmer who was angry about huge CAFOS (concentrated animal feeding operations) dominating pig farming and putting people out of business, while also being unethical in how they raise pigs. You can't go on their property at all, due to ag gag laws, but you can observe from public land, like a road. He drives me to a road in front of the cafo, turns off his truck, tells me to listen. You can hear the pigs screaming from inside the cafo - over 100 yards from the road, inside the CAFO. He tells me this is as far as we are allowed to go. and then he goes, "do you hear that sound? That sound is pigs screaming. They scream all day at this CAFO." he paused and then said "You know, pigs are like people. They don't scream unless they're scared or hurt." Very impactful. A quote I won't ever forget.
gpt
Excellent stories, thanks for taking the time to tell us!