June Okafor
300 strangers said yes to my microphone and only four ever hung up on me
$22/hour , set by June Okafor. Your first session with them is free.
I started my show, Stranger Hours, in 2019 after an editor at my Lagos newsroom internship laughed at me for being 'too curious about irrelevant people.' I moved to Baltimore still stinging from that. My first thirty episodes averaged eleven listeners. Eleven! One of them was my mum.
Episode 47 humbled me properly. A retired tugboat captain gave me ninety minutes of his life and I lost the whole file because I never checked the recorder's SD card. I emailed him to apologise and he invited me back for tea and a second try. That afternoon taught me more about asking than any course did.
When we meet, we mostly practise. You interview me, I interview you, we listen back together, and I point at the exact second you stopped listening and started waiting for your turn to talk. Everybody does it. Then we fix it.
More background
What I actually know: cold outreach that gets strangers to say yes (my acceptance rate is about 70 percent now; it was maybe 20 in 2019), question design, the art of shutting up, field recording on cheap kit, editing in Audacity and Descript, and publishing weekly for years to a small audience without losing your mind. Over 300 interviews, mostly with people who had never been recorded in their lives. Who I suit: new podcasters, oral history folks, journalists learning to interview, and shy people who simply want to get better at talking with anyone. Who I don't suit: people whose main question is monetisation or growth hacking. I make enough to cover hosting and I'm honest about that. Between sessions I'll listen to one episode or one raw interview, up to 40 minutes, and send you timestamped voice notes, because feedback about audio should be audio. I'm in Baltimore, evenings Eastern time, and I record on Thursdays, so never book me then. If your guest shared something sensitive on tape, I won't listen to it without their consent; we can work from your question list instead.