I wondered how I was going to do it and keep my job at Rolling Stone at the same time. They were very nice, and they let me disappear for two days a week for a couple of hours. That's how long shooting was.

When you disclose something really personal in hopes that the person will then disclose something personal, too? It's all there on camera, your techniques that everyone can see through.

We had a wonderful department that scouted out new music. It was beneficial to Rolling Stone, because I would come back and say, "You have to hear this, you have to hear that," and I found a lot of bands to feature, emerging bands. It [ended up being] symbiotic.

When someone shuts down on you... There were a couple of times of somebody that was just unpleasant, and you can't get them to loosen up. It's this horrible spiral when it's on camera, because you're trying to get them to like you, to trust you, to give you decent answers.

I can barely listen to my tapes when I'm transcribing, because I can't stand how I sound.

Also because few people were watching - aside from a healthy amount of incarcerated people, because M2 was offered in a lot of prisons - I was able to ask really long, kind of muso questions, that they loved. We could really geek out and talk about music for long periods of time, and that tape would just keep rolling and rolling.

I was working as a staff writer at Rolling Stone. I had a friend who worked at MTV, and she called me and said, "They're looking for VJs for this new channel. Do you want to try out?" I had zero TV experience, but I thought, "Well, what the hay."