I think it's naive to even talk about payment, that's not how the podcast world works. The way it works is you have an assortment of bros who have no background

I think it's naive to even talk about payment, that's not how the podcast world works. The way it works is you have an assortment of bros who have no background in journalism and no second thoughts about ethics and their method for getting on high value guests is just to be incredibly soft interviewers and incredibly sycophantic to their guests. The result is rich tech CEOs get to go around getting licked up and down by these podcasters without ever having to worry about facing real scrutiny. And you don't even need a quid pro quo, Lex knows he won't book guests if he starts grilling them like a real journalist, and Zuck knows he's not going to accidentally endorse Nazi's if he sticks to safe interviews like Lex. And there really is no limit, Lex will literally try to serve up soft ball questions to Nazis given half a chance. Of course anyone in the real world realizes how little credibility these "interviews" have.