[chrisabrams]

IMO Lex’s podcast is successful because his only agenda is to explore the conversations with his guests. Lex knows how to dig deeper into a conversation and bring more substance out. Some of these interviews last five hours and they’re interesting the entire time. That takes a lot of concentration & skill to keep a conversation moving for such a period of time.

I don’t always agree with the viewpoints of the guests, but I do believe we hear more from the guests as theirselves, and they seem to provide less corporate speak than the typical interviews.

It’s become one of my favorite podcasts because there aren’t “sides” in the conversation. You might get a few perspectives but the main objective is to actually learn the guests perspective which is harder to find from interviews. I would assume guests would enjoy a interview format where they get to talk about their self and their activities for as long as they want with someone intelligent.

[jstx1]

> Lex knows how to dig deeper into a conversation and bring more substance out.

I've seen the opposite - he seems to care a lot more about saying his own things instead of listening to the guests, and a lot of the time he just follows his list of questions instead of talking to them.

[janderson215]

Lex has like 3 or 4 canned questions he asks his guests and reiterates the things he learned in his own words. This is on a show run by a single person driven by authentic curiosity for an average of 2.5 hours/episode like 3 times a week.

[janderson215]

There is a lot of negative opinion expressed in the other answers, so thank you for actually answering the question. Lex does a great job and probing the interviewee on their perspective. He is constantly readjusting his perspective to ask questions as a student of his guest to give them an opportunity to express their views as comprehensively as possible. If there is inconsistency in the argument, it is made apparent to the listener/watcher based on the questions Lex asks. If, as a listener, someone is able to discern an inconsistency, that is usually because of the questions Lex asked.

My defense of Lex is incidental of trying to achieve my primary goal of highlighting how juvenile the negative comments are.

This isn't the first time this question has been asked, and it seems like the question was asked earnestly. However, it's clear there is a lot of jealousy at the root of the negative opinions. I'm guessing this is because Lex has access to so many interesting people for such long periods of time. People responding that he's a wet blanket or that they don't like him aren't even trying to answer the question. What kind of format are they expecting to hear when interviewing academics? Jimmy Fallon meets Bill O'Reilly interviewing a Democrat?

Ask HN: "Why is Lady Gaga successful?" Average response here: "Ugh, I can't stand her."

[caslon]

> What kind of format are they expecting to hear when interviewing academics? Jimmy Fallon meets Bill O'Reilly interviewing a Democrat?

This question suggests that you no longer have the intellectual curiosity to imagine an alternative to incredibly dull, surface-level questions even on subjects the interviewer claims to know about, except for... incredibly dull, surface-level questions.

And that's pretty depressing.

[klelatti]

The thing that completely invalidates what you’re saying here is that very little of the actual talking is done by Lex. I’m not an unqualified fan but he does at least create the space for knowledgeable guests to talk at length about their subjects - or put another way he generally gets out of the way.

[caslon]

I listen to a lot of his interviews, actually. A lot more of the talking is done by him than you're implying, and the questions he asks occasionally derail really interesting tangents a guest is on in favor of really dull, extremely generic questions you could get from anywhere. The Lenat interview, for example, was full of him doing it.

[janderson215]

I agree he interrupts his guests, and he admits as much on almost every podcast. I also agree that sometimes it detracts from the conversation and it is a net negative, but you must also recognize the times that his interruption fills in gaps, as well.

[caslon]

When does it fill gaps? The only way I could possibly see it filling gaps would be for completely non-technical people.

[klelatti]

We’ll have to disagree then. Not sure why you’re listening to so many of his interviews if you find the questions extremely dull and generic. Insomnia?

[caslon]

The questions are dull and generic, but the people come onto the show with an agenda. I like hearing about what they're wanting to talk about, between instances of boring questions.

[starkd]

I suspect there's a lot more preparaton behind the scenes to make it interesting and engaging. The guests are obvously highly intelligent, but they also are there to make a point. Not just a casual conversation. My only criticism is that they tend to go on too long. Who has the time to listen to a 2-3 hour podcast?

[teh_klev]

> Who has the time to listen to a 2-3 hour podcast?

You don't need to listen to them all at once. I'll usually listen over a couple of days. And I'm glad someone like Fridman doesn't feel bound to constrain the length of his podcasts to suite TikTok like attention spans.