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I got into Lex Fridman's podcast [1] maybe a year ago and was instantly a fan of his depth-first search style. It's often frustrating in other interview style p

I got into Lex Fridman's podcast [1] maybe a year ago and was instantly a fan of his depth-first search style. It's often frustrating in other interview style podcasts when something interesting is mentioned but not explored. Lex will often say something like "oh that's interesting, let's talk about that" then that becomes the subject of discussion for 20-30 minutes, but he's good at backing up to the original point after that branch is exhausted. Incidentally he's a computer scientist! [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/lexfridman https://www.youtube.com/user/lexfridman

ceilingcorner 5y ago
I used to like this podcast but two behaviors by the host ultimately turned me off: - Lex’s weird comments and massive oversimplification of ethical topics. He always seems to ask people if X is Good or Evil, with no consideration of nuance. I get that he’s a computer scientist and not a ethicist, but I somewhat expected more. - He doesn’t question the guest or curate the discussion very well. Some of the episodes are 3, 4, 5 hours long, which is madness. I want to listen to his guests, but I can’t spend 5 hours on a conversation that has an hour of insight. This is the job of a good host. Overall the strength of his podcast comes from the quality of guests. I wish he would take his role as journalist/interviewer a little more seriously.
- deleted 5y ago
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- elevenoh 5y ago
  To counter: -unnuanced prompts/questions tend to trigger better responses. highly nuanced questions don't. it's up to the answerer to freely craft their response w/ little cognitive load or host-assumptions to manage. -some of the longer podcasts are where the veil of persona disappears & one can see the authentic guest. I like long, deep, authentic conversations personally.
  - sleavey 5y ago
    I was going to reply to the comment directly but I completely agree with what you said here. And to add more to your second point: Lex is catering to people who want long form interviews. There are thousands of other podcasts that fit the interview to the time rather than fit the time to the interview for those that don't like this.
    - elevenoh 5y ago
      Yeah exactly. There's a whole lotta non-deep-conversational shortform interview shows out there.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    - I don’t think Lex asks open-ended questions, he asks exceedingly basic ones that often betray a lack of knowledge on the topic. - Long is not equal to deep. There is a lot of empty filler content that isn’t authentic or relevant.
    - throwaway316943 5y ago
      Asking basic questions might be annoying for a spectator who is already an expert and is just trying to find the latest tid bits of information in the field but for the vast majority of people the basic questions are the ones they want answered. Having a specialist engage in an open ended conversation with a non expert is often more interesting because it is a better approximation of the conversation the listener would have with the same person. I’m not sure what you mean by filler, to me shorter interviews have a higher percentage of filler since people usually have about 40 minutes of standard dialogue on hand. It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person.
      - dagw 5y ago
        It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person. You see, for me this is almost always the stuff I don't care about. It almost always ends up either rambling personal anecdotes and the two of them sharing 'funny' stories or two people pontificating on subjects way outside their areas of expertise. Both of which are completely uninteresting to me. Two blokes chatting bollocks about stuff they don't really understand is only fun if I'm one of them.
jstx1 5y ago
Lex was the most obvious example of a bad interviewer that came to mind after I read the title of this post. He's had an impressive selection of people on his podcast but his communication and interviewing style is the worst I've ever come across - very dry delivery, not following up on what the guests says, pointless questions about the meaning of life or good and evil or scifi-technology that doesn't exist, reading from a list of prepared questions, trying too hard to push his own opinions at some points, sucking up too much to Joe Rogan and Elon Musk etc. I really don't know how he managed to get the selection of guests that he's had especially in the early days of the podcast.
- jsackmann 5y ago
  I have no idea whether this applies to Lex, or if there are better explanations, but... he probably just asks. In my limited experience with my little podcast in the sports analytics world, I'm consistently surprised by who says yes, and how few people say no. ~90% of the people I've asked to be a guest have said yes, and those who have said no haven't done so because they're "too famous" or something like that.
  - jstx1 5y ago
    I think that he's had way too many billionaires, top researchers, authors, computer scientists, and celebrities to attribute it to just asking.
    - PennRobotics 5y ago
      Working at MIT and having a small history of good guests probably helps. The guests themselves make value judgments of whether this polite, motivated, knowledgeable, reasonably boring guy with a sizeable audience and good credentials can help them to spread their own messages without much journalistic pushback. His audio quality is also not bad. ----- Personal opinion: The interviews are far too long. I'd like an informed opinion of the best (as opposed to most famous or controversial or odd) guests. If a biology expert told me Lex's interview with Eric Lander was a Must Listen, I'd value that more than, "oh! It's three hours of Elon Musk, but his personal values are well-known and haven't changed." I would listen to a few very interesting conversations unedited OR a larger collection of reasonably interesting, short, heavily curated conversations. I enjoy hearing about subjects I normally don't encounter, and some of his guests bring this experience. Listening to months of audio to find these gems is not for me. I prefer a small group of podcasts that have shorter episodes, entertaining/engaging hosts, interesting guests,
jonathanstrange 5y ago
I don't like Lex Fridman's podcasts because his interviews are way too long and he cannot and does not want to keep them concise. Interviews are no different from books in that respect, length does not equate to depth. On the contrary, the short ones are usually the gems. There is nothing worse than university professors and billionaires talking for hours about things they don't have much insightful to say about instead of talking for half an hour about the things they know best.
- nomel 5y ago
  I like his interviews because they're long, and it lets me see the the perspective on things outside of the normal boxes the guests get put into, like machine learning guest = talk of research from latest paper only. I can always find another podcast (often duplicates), or even a news interview, where the guests stay within, and quickly burn through, their area of expertise. I like understanding the guest just as much as their day job.
dredmorbius 5y ago
I'd subscribed to Lex based on positive comments I've seen elsewhere and ... am not impressed. His guest list is impressive. The topics range from interesting to overhyped (bitcoin/crypto). Lex's own problems start with his voice: he sounds drugged, slurred, and frankly somewhat dim, the last impression strongly reinforced by his questions and follow-up. The episodes themselves run too long, and would benefit greatly in my view by much tighter editing. Aiming for a set length (20, 30, or 60 minutes, say), going over that in the interview, and editing down, would be a vast improvement.

ceilingcorner 5y ago

I used to like this podcast but two behaviors by the host ultimately turned me off: - Lex’s weird comments and massive oversimplification of ethical topics. He always seems to ask people if X is Good or Evil, with no consideration of nuance. I get that he’s a computer scientist and not a ethicist, but I somewhat expected more. - He doesn’t question the guest or curate the discussion very well. Some of the episodes are 3, 4, 5 hours long, which is madness. I want to listen to his guests, but I can’t spend 5 hours on a conversation that has an hour of insight. This is the job of a good host. Overall the strength of his podcast comes from the quality of guests. I wish he would take his role as journalist/interviewer a little more seriously.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
elevenoh 5y ago
To counter: -unnuanced prompts/questions tend to trigger better responses. highly nuanced questions don't. it's up to the answerer to freely craft their response w/ little cognitive load or host-assumptions to manage. -some of the longer podcasts are where the veil of persona disappears & one can see the authentic guest. I like long, deep, authentic conversations personally.
- sleavey 5y ago
  I was going to reply to the comment directly but I completely agree with what you said here. And to add more to your second point: Lex is catering to people who want long form interviews. There are thousands of other podcasts that fit the interview to the time rather than fit the time to the interview for those that don't like this.
  - elevenoh 5y ago
    Yeah exactly. There's a whole lotta non-deep-conversational shortform interview shows out there.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  - I don’t think Lex asks open-ended questions, he asks exceedingly basic ones that often betray a lack of knowledge on the topic. - Long is not equal to deep. There is a lot of empty filler content that isn’t authentic or relevant.
  - throwaway316943 5y ago
    Asking basic questions might be annoying for a spectator who is already an expert and is just trying to find the latest tid bits of information in the field but for the vast majority of people the basic questions are the ones they want answered. Having a specialist engage in an open ended conversation with a non expert is often more interesting because it is a better approximation of the conversation the listener would have with the same person. I’m not sure what you mean by filler, to me shorter interviews have a higher percentage of filler since people usually have about 40 minutes of standard dialogue on hand. It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person.
    - dagw 5y ago
      It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person. You see, for me this is almost always the stuff I don't care about. It almost always ends up either rambling personal anecdotes and the two of them sharing 'funny' stories or two people pontificating on subjects way outside their areas of expertise. Both of which are completely uninteresting to me. Two blokes chatting bollocks about stuff they don't really understand is only fun if I'm one of them.

jstx1 5y ago

Lex was the most obvious example of a bad interviewer that came to mind after I read the title of this post. He's had an impressive selection of people on his podcast but his communication and interviewing style is the worst I've ever come across - very dry delivery, not following up on what the guests says, pointless questions about the meaning of life or good and evil or scifi-technology that doesn't exist, reading from a list of prepared questions, trying too hard to push his own opinions at some points, sucking up too much to Joe Rogan and Elon Musk etc. I really don't know how he managed to get the selection of guests that he's had especially in the early days of the podcast.

jsackmann 5y ago
I have no idea whether this applies to Lex, or if there are better explanations, but... he probably just asks. In my limited experience with my little podcast in the sports analytics world, I'm consistently surprised by who says yes, and how few people say no. ~90% of the people I've asked to be a guest have said yes, and those who have said no haven't done so because they're "too famous" or something like that.
- jstx1 5y ago
  I think that he's had way too many billionaires, top researchers, authors, computer scientists, and celebrities to attribute it to just asking.
  - PennRobotics 5y ago
    Working at MIT and having a small history of good guests probably helps. The guests themselves make value judgments of whether this polite, motivated, knowledgeable, reasonably boring guy with a sizeable audience and good credentials can help them to spread their own messages without much journalistic pushback. His audio quality is also not bad. ----- Personal opinion: The interviews are far too long. I'd like an informed opinion of the best (as opposed to most famous or controversial or odd) guests. If a biology expert told me Lex's interview with Eric Lander was a Must Listen, I'd value that more than, "oh! It's three hours of Elon Musk, but his personal values are well-known and haven't changed." I would listen to a few very interesting conversations unedited OR a larger collection of reasonably interesting, short, heavily curated conversations. I enjoy hearing about subjects I normally don't encounter, and some of his guests bring this experience. Listening to months of audio to find these gems is not for me. I prefer a small group of podcasts that have shorter episodes, entertaining/engaging hosts, interesting guests,

jonathanstrange 5y ago

I don't like Lex Fridman's podcasts because his interviews are way too long and he cannot and does not want to keep them concise. Interviews are no different from books in that respect, length does not equate to depth. On the contrary, the short ones are usually the gems. There is nothing worse than university professors and billionaires talking for hours about things they don't have much insightful to say about instead of talking for half an hour about the things they know best.

nomel 5y ago
I like his interviews because they're long, and it lets me see the the perspective on things outside of the normal boxes the guests get put into, like machine learning guest = talk of research from latest paper only. I can always find another podcast (often duplicates), or even a news interview, where the guests stay within, and quickly burn through, their area of expertise. I like understanding the guest just as much as their day job.

dredmorbius 5y ago

I'd subscribed to Lex based on positive comments I've seen elsewhere and ... am not impressed. His guest list is impressive. The topics range from interesting to overhyped (bitcoin/crypto). Lex's own problems start with his voice: he sounds drugged, slurred, and frankly somewhat dim, the last impression strongly reinforced by his questions and follow-up. The episodes themselves run too long, and would benefit greatly in my view by much tighter editing. Aiming for a set length (20, 30, or 60 minutes, say), going over that in the interview, and editing down, would be a vast improvement.