[VirusNewbie]

I used to get similarly frustrated at Lex’s interviewing style compared to say, Sean Carol’s (mindscape podcast). I realized that Lex isn’t really doing interviews; he’s having guests on to converse and shoot the shit with. He will regularly talk about his own ideas and bounce them off the guests, which is quite atypical.

However if you think of it as getting to listen to two friends just chatting or having a beer, it can make for interesting content. Shift your mindset and it might be more enjoyable.

[kaesar14]

Then I’m still frustrated that better interviewers don’t get to talk to these people.

[VirusNewbie]

But it would be a totally different conversation. Sean Carrol and Lex have both interviewed Wolfram, same discussion but done in a different way. I quite like that sometimes you get to hear Lex actually work through the implications or understanding of what the interviewee claims, rather than just being a listener.

[briHass]

But in that specific example (Wolfram on both podcasts), Carrol asked questions that clearly demonstrated a deep understanding of not only the subject matter (he is a theoretical physicist comfortable with advanced mathematics after all), but he also probed Wolfram on areas where his theory might be challenged. Lex did more of an 'everyman's' take on that conversation, which is fine, but certainly not at Carrol's level.

I did enjoy both, but mostly because Wolfram did most of the talking. Even with Lex's less-targeted/knowledgeable questions, Wolfram knew how to steer the answer to what he thought the actual question should have been.

[VirusNewbie]

I don't quite agree there. Carrol clearly has a deep understanding of physics while Lex doesn't and was able to probe in deeper ways on that front, but the opposite is true when it comes to an understanding of computation.

Lex was very interested in the universal substrate rewrite analogy to a turing machine and all of the implications of that, while Sean kind of glossed over that.

Carrol seems to be the overall more educated of the two, but at the same time has a more sophomoric understanding of the theory of computation.

Come to think of it, overall it seems to be a weak spot amongst well known physicists, Wolfram excepted.

[thinkharderdev]

Didn't listen to Lex Friedman's interview with Wolfram but I thought the Mindscape episode with Wolfram was excellent. Sean Carol is obviously deeply knowledgable about the subject at hand and managed to ask interesting, penetrating questions without being adversarial and making Wolfram defensive.

[optimalsolver]

Sean isn't just a listener. He'll directly challenge his guest (politely of course) on flaws in their arguments.