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>I really don't know how he managed to get the selection of guests For the later guests who were not colleagues at MIT or his previous contract work at Google,

by jasode 5y ago

>I really don't know how he managed to get the selection of guests For the later guests who were not colleagues at MIT or his previous contract work at Google, they do what many guests do: they look at the interviewer's previous episodes and see if they like his style. It's a big commitment to spend ~3 hours with someone they don't know so they use the previous episodes as a "résumé" to see if it's worth their time. >, not following up on what the guests says And the parent comment you replied to said the opposite: >Lex will often say something like "oh that's interesting, let's talk about that" Not debating you but it's an interesting observation to me that different people will see contradictory evidence. >, reading from a list of prepared questions The way a lot of these podcasts' preparations work behind-the-scenes with emails/phone calls before the actual interview is that the interviewer will propose a list of topics to talk about. The guest can also add (or subtract) from the list of topics because they are the ones who ultimately agree whether to appear on the podcast at all. Therefore, using prepared questions is actually respecting the guest's agreement to be interviewed. Now, if on the other hand you're complaining about the delivery of the prepared questions... such as "Lex should memorize the 50 prepared questions perfectly instead of reading a sheet of paper in front of him" or "Lex should use a cue card or teleprompter off camera to read the prepared question" ... it seems like a really trivial thing to complain about.

jstx1 5y ago
> they do what many guests do: they look at the interviewer's previous episodes and see if they like his style. Unless you have some inside information, you can't know that this is the case. I find it difficult to believe given that some of his early guests are Steven Pinker - episode 3 Guido van Rossum - episode 6 Eric Schmidt - episode 8 Elon Musk - episode 18 It's naive to think that you get a retired-Google-CEO-billionare by cold calling and getting him to review and like the first 7 episodes of your newly started podcast.
- jasode 5y ago
  >It's naive to think that you get a retired-Google-CEO-billionare by cold calling Hey, you cut out the quote where I conditionally qualified my statement with "later guests who were not colleagues at MIT or his previous contract work at Google,". Anyway, it seems reasonable to presume that his connections at Google went up the chain and reached Eric Schmidt. So it wouldn't have been a true cold call. He said Elon Musk happened because his A.I. research on Tesla self-driving was already seen by Elon. Some of the early guests who were professors via his MIT connections. Some guests (especially physicists) might have been connections with his dad who is a physics professor. His older brother runs a biotech company so that may also spur some introductions. With "6-degrees-of-separation" being what it is, what looks like a cold-call to outsiders ("how did he get Eric Schmidt?!?") could have actually been a friend-of-a-friend or colleague-of-a-colleague. I'm a nobody and I happen to know the billionaire fund manager and owner of a major sports team. With 3-degrees of separation with various past co-workers, I can connect the dots to several CEOs of major corporations. That doesn't mean they'd agree to be on my hypothetical podcast if I asked them but if a few of them said "yes", some viewers would wonder, "how did he manage to get X with a cold call?" -- The answer is that my extended social graph is invisible to viewers and it really wasn't a cold call. Examples of "later" guests that are more "cold calls" with no help from MIT/Google were Dan Carlin (Hardcore History) and some of the female guests who weren't scientists. This isn't speculation because the guests themselves said they looked at Lex's previous podcasts to see his work. In general, the playbook for a new podcaster (with no audience of millions yet) to get guests follows a similar trajectory: 1) Start with personal connections to build a body of work. Cold-calling famous people won't work at this early stage because they don't have any prior work to see to if it's worth their time. 2) The previous podcasts episodes can start to act as a résumé so host doesn't have to rely on personal connections. The ever-increasing audience numbers also pads the résumé and adds credibility to the interviewer. 3) The transition eventually happens where interviewer can get new guests based on reputation more than personal connections.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
faraaz98 5y ago
>Not debating you but it's an interesting observation to me that different people will see contradictory evidence So what do you think that means in a deep, pilosophical way-of-life way?
- CrimpCity 5y ago
  There’s a lot of nuance here.

by jasode 5y ago

jstx1 5y ago

> they do what many guests do: they look at the interviewer's previous episodes and see if they like his style. Unless you have some inside information, you can't know that this is the case. I find it difficult to believe given that some of his early guests are Steven Pinker - episode 3 Guido van Rossum - episode 6 Eric Schmidt - episode 8 Elon Musk - episode 18 It's naive to think that you get a retired-Google-CEO-billionare by cold calling and getting him to review and like the first 7 episodes of your newly started podcast.

jasode 5y ago
>It's naive to think that you get a retired-Google-CEO-billionare by cold calling Hey, you cut out the quote where I conditionally qualified my statement with "later guests who were not colleagues at MIT or his previous contract work at Google,". Anyway, it seems reasonable to presume that his connections at Google went up the chain and reached Eric Schmidt. So it wouldn't have been a true cold call. He said Elon Musk happened because his A.I. research on Tesla self-driving was already seen by Elon. Some of the early guests who were professors via his MIT connections. Some guests (especially physicists) might have been connections with his dad who is a physics professor. His older brother runs a biotech company so that may also spur some introductions. With "6-degrees-of-separation" being what it is, what looks like a cold-call to outsiders ("how did he get Eric Schmidt?!?") could have actually been a friend-of-a-friend or colleague-of-a-colleague. I'm a nobody and I happen to know the billionaire fund manager and owner of a major sports team. With 3-degrees of separation with various past co-workers, I can connect the dots to several CEOs of major corporations. That doesn't mean they'd agree to be on my hypothetical podcast if I asked them but if a few of them said "yes", some viewers would wonder, "how did he manage to get X with a cold call?" -- The answer is that my extended social graph is invisible to viewers and it really wasn't a cold call. Examples of "later" guests that are more "cold calls" with no help from MIT/Google were Dan Carlin (Hardcore History) and some of the female guests who weren't scientists. This isn't speculation because the guests themselves said they looked at Lex's previous podcasts to see his work. In general, the playbook for a new podcaster (with no audience of millions yet) to get guests follows a similar trajectory: 1) Start with personal connections to build a body of work. Cold-calling famous people won't work at this early stage because they don't have any prior work to see to if it's worth their time. 2) The previous podcasts episodes can start to act as a résumé so host doesn't have to rely on personal connections. The ever-increasing audience numbers also pads the résumé and adds credibility to the interviewer. 3) The transition eventually happens where interviewer can get new guests based on reputation more than personal connections.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

faraaz98 5y ago

>Not debating you but it's an interesting observation to me that different people will see contradictory evidence So what do you think that means in a deep, pilosophical way-of-life way?

CrimpCity 5y ago
There’s a lot of nuance here.