He was quite strategic about how he grew his audience. For the first ~120 episodes his podcast was called 'the AI podcast' or something similar. He started out

He was quite strategic about how he grew his audience. For the first ~120 episodes his podcast was called 'the AI podcast' or something similar. He started out interviewing mostly notable AI researchers (via his position as an AI research scientist at MIT), but also non-AI people with higher levels of fame (eg Guido van Rossum) and gradually switched to more tech, then just anything. My impression is that he made a lot of effort getting exposure (via high profile guests, teaching an MIT course, appearing on Joe Rogan's podcast, etc.), and it just worked. One example: he published a 'paper' titled "Tesla vehicle deliveries and autopilot mileage statistics" which I imagine helped him get Elon Musk as a guest. To be fair, his interviews are also fairly technical and (arguably) well done, and you can't blame him for being strategic with growing his podcast. Still, there is no way he would have reached his level of popularity if he stuck to interviewing mostly academics. Anyway, now he has famous people on all the time with a sort of intellectual person flavor, so it's natural that he would be popular. Fun fact: I used to co-run a small event at Stanford's AI Lab, called the AI Salon. We organized little discussion sessions around various topics, and usually had to email people to ask if they might be able/willing to do one of these (there were usually 2 invited people with some level of expertise on the topic). Lex was literally the only person who ever contacted us asking if we might want to have him as a guest. He also set up recording equipment for it (we never did this), though I don't think he ever released it.