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There's a few Lex Fridman podcasts with George Hotz, the founder. Highly recommend them: #31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcYp-XT7UI https://www.youtube.co

• jyscao 9mo ago
  No idea how Fridman manages to bring on the type of high profile guests that he does. Guy does not ask good questions and has the charisma of a wet rag,
  • Powdering7082 9mo ago
    Yeah I loved the guests he had, but eventually had to stop listening to him
  • dandersch 9mo ago
    Guests don't care about charisma, they care who your previous guests were. He early on got Elon Musk as a guest (AFAIK by writing a paper that was overly favorable to Tesla) and managed to snowball that into a big podcast. Also guests agreeing to go on your show means they already want to talk about something, so in a way it's more important to shut up than ask good questions.
    • lern_too_spel 9mo ago
      But then he gets guests spewing utter nonsense and just agrees with them instead of following up. It's unlistenable.
  • NitpickLawyer 9mo ago
    Huh, I'm the exact opposite. With the exception of Hannah Fry's work at deepmind (where she acts as a charismatic proxy for the more nerdy guests), he is by far the best interviewer on technical stuff (AI stuff mostly, but some early robotics stuff as well). He knows the field, he asks pertinent questions and more importantly he knows when to just let the speaker speak. Compared to someone like Dwarkesh, it's night and day. There's a fine line between pushing the guest and just interrupting them every 2nd thought to inject your own "takes".
    • written-beyond 9mo ago
      Saying he "knows the field" is kind of pushing it. He's good at conversations and that's about it, his actual merits are questionable at best. Best interviewer is Primagen, a senior engineer with balanced takes that has seen both extremes of life.
      • pstuart 9mo ago
        Primagen is awesome. Smart, experienced, and opinionated (with reasonable opinions).
        • written-beyond 9mo ago
          I'm fine with opinionated people who have lived in broadly along the socio economic ladder. Atleast their opinions are grounded across a richer experience of life. Rather than just growing up upper middle to wealthy and saying you dropped out of college to make YC funded startup. No disrespect to founders who do get there, it's certainly an accomplishment. But I'd rather listen to loud erratic Netflix engineer Dr disrespect.
    • hobofan 9mo ago
      > he knows when to just let the speaker speak I think similar to Joe Rogan that's the main value he provides to listeners. He identifies guests that have some veil of intellectualism and provides them with a platform to speak. However I don't think that makes for an interesting interviewer. There are no challenging questions, only ones he knows will fit into the narrative of what the guest wants to say. I might as well read a 2-3 hour PR piece issued by the guests.
      • nomel 9mo ago
        What you call "platforming" I often call "listening to what someone says/thinks". Not every interview needs challenging questions, or to be a battle/debate, and sometimes it's not appropriate (above George Hotz being an example, difference in qualifications being another). But, I enjoy trying to understand someone, quirks and all, especially the human aspect, flaws and all. It's interesting seeing the differences in people. From what I've seen, people that crave "challenging questions" usually most enjoy activist interviewers that are very strongly aligned with their own (usually political) worldview. I don't think that describes Lex Fridman, or me as a listener, at all, and that's fine.
  • maest 9mo ago
    Many people wonder this to the point where "Fridman is a hack and an industry plant" has become a meme.
• ActorNightly 9mo ago
  These are really just ramblings, nothing of value is being said.