Podcast Guest Research

Podcast guest research

Find shows where the guest's expertise fits the format and recent editorial coverage. Produce a sourced shortlist and pitch angles, preserving unknowns about audience size, booking availability, and whether a show accepts guest proposals.

Setup

Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY to your key from crawlora.net. Run the bundled scripts/crawlora.sh from this skill directory or by absolute path. It sends x-api-key to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1; keep the key in the environment. Read reference/endpoints.md for podcast discovery, live episode lookups, and public website tools.

Discovery and editorial fit

1. Identify the guest's expertise, credible examples, proposed subjects, language, audience, and geographic constraints. Use these to evaluate editorial fit.
2. Discover candidates through /datasets/apple-podcasts-shows/search and facets. Dataset q searches title/artist, not the episode archive. country describes the discovery storefront, not listener geography or exhaustive availability. sort=popularity follows chart seed rank; it does not measure downloads.
3. Expand topic discovery with /apple-podcasts/episodes/search?term=... or live show search. Confirm the correct show/creator and preserve the Apple show ID. The stored catalog is sampled from chart/search discovery, not every podcast.
4. Read /apple-podcasts/show/{id} and /show/{id}/episodes under the same /apple-podcasts prefix. Inspect recent publication dates, descriptions, and guest/interview evidence. Episode lists can be bounded; record what was checked.
5. When useful, resolve the same show using /spotify-podcasts/search?q=.... Pass a returned spotify:show:... URI to /spotify-podcasts/show and /spotify-podcasts/show/episodes (offset, limit up to 50). Apple numeric IDs and Spotify URIs are different identities; match creator/title/website before combining records. A show URI is needed even if marked optional.
6. Inspect the official show site or episode notes using /web/scrape when relevant. Verify booking instructions and public professional contact channels. Use short excerpts and distinguish descriptions from a full episode transcript; do not claim to have listened to an episode based only on metadata.
7. Propose an angle linked to a specific recent episode or recurring editorial theme. Explain the guest's contribution and the new ground it covers. A past interview establishes format evidence, not a promise of future bookings.

scripts/crawlora.sh /datasets/apple-podcasts-shows/search q=founder page_size=5
scripts/crawlora.sh /apple-podcasts/episodes/search \
  term="bootstrapped business" country=us limit=10

Deliverable and bounds

Return show/host, canonical links and IDs, fit rationale, recent episode evidence with dates, proposed angle, verified submission channel if available, and caveats. Separate researched contacts from draft pitch copy; send only when requested.

• Deduplicate syndicated shows across providers using verified identity/feed evidence. Do not merge by a generic title alone.
• Check recency in the live episode list. A high track count or old chart seed does not establish an active show. Preserve missing dates and coverage gaps.
• Rankings, ratings, and episode counts do not establish audience size, audience demographics, sponsor rates, or conversion potential.
• Respect dataset page_size<=100 and its 10,000-result window. Stop on repeated pages, exhausted offsets, or the shortlist bound. Back off on 429, retry a transient 5xx once, stop on 401/403, and check application code.