[mrtranscendence]

I don't know Dwarkesh but I despise Lex Fridman. I don't know how a man that lacks the barest modicum of charisma has propelled himself to helming a high-profile, successful podcast. It's not like he tends to express interesting or original thoughts to make up for his paucity of presence. It's bizarre.

Maybe I'll check out Dwarkesh, but even seeing him mentioned him in the same breath as Fridman gives me pause ...

[lordswork]

I mostly agree with you. I listened to Fridman primarily because of the high profile AI/tech people he got to interview. Even though Lex was a terrible interviewer, his guests were amazing.

Dwarkesh has recently reached the level where he's also interviewing these high profile AI/tech people, but it's so much more enjoyable to listen to, because he is such a better interviewer and skips all the nonsense questions about "what is love?" or getting into politics.

[forrestthewoods]

The question you should ask is: why are high-profile guests willing to talk to Lex Fridman but not others?

The short answer, imho, is trust. No one gets turned into an embarrassing soundbite talking to Lex. He doesn't try to ask gotcha questions for clickbait articles. Generally speaking "the press" are not your friend and they will twist your words. You have to walk on egg shells.

Lex doesn't need to express original ideas. He needs to get his guests to open up and share their unique perspectives and thoughts. He's been extremely successful in this.

An alternative question is why hasn't someone more charismatic taken off in this space? I'm not sure! Who knows, there might be some lizard brain secret sauce behind the "flat" podcast host.

[octodog]

Yes, of course. His guests love being able to come on and present their view with very little critical analysis of what they are saying. It is fantastic PR for them.

Interviewers shouldn't be aggressive, antagonistic or clickbaity but they should put opposing views to their guests so that the guest can respond. Testing ideas like this is a fundamental way of learning and establishing an understanding of a topic.

[lordswork]

My earlier comparison was basically saying now that high-profile guests are talking to a much better interviewer (Dwarkesh), we no longer have to rely on Lex as the only podcast with long-form interviews of these guests.

[jiggawatts]

He’s popular because of the monochrome suit, etc…

I don’t listen to a three hour interview to listen to the interviewer! I want to hear what the guest has to say.

Until now, this format basically didn’t exist. The host was the star, the guest was just a prop to be wheeled out for a ten second soundbite.

Nowhere else in the world do you get to hear thought leaders talk unscripted for hours about the things that excite them the most.

Lex enables that.

He’s like David Attenborough, who’s also worn the exact same khakis and blue shirt for decades. He’s not the star either: the wildlife is.

[nwienert]

You can have a low profile and still be a good interviewer and ask good questions. Lex lacks the latter two points, leaving just a terrible show.

[laurels-marts]

I would have thought folks wouldn’t care less about superfluous stuff like “charisma” on HN and would like a monotone, calm robot-like man that 95% of podcast just lets their gust speak and every now and then just asks a follow-up/probing question. Thought Lex was pretty good at just going with the flow of the conversation and not sticking too much with the script.

I have never listened to Dwarkesh but I will give him a go. One thing I was a little put off by just skimming through this episode with Zuck is that he’s doing ad-reads in the middle which Lex doesn’t.

[chaoz_]

I agree with you so much, but he has a solid programmatic approach, where some of the guests uncover. Maybe that's the whole role of an interviewer.

[bigstrat2003]

Maybe you should consider that others may not share your views on Lex's lack of charisma or interesting thoughts.

[mrtranscendence]

I'll agree that "interesting thoughts" may be up to interpretation, but imma fight you on the charisma thing. I looked up "flat affect" in the dictionary and there were no words, only a full-page headshot of Lex Fridman.

[bigstrat2003]

I'm simply pointing out the answer to your "I don't understand why people like him" question. If you can't understand why people don't share your hatred for something, then odds are that the disconnect is because they don't share your reasons for hating it.

[freedomben]

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Lex because I think he is really good at building connections, staying intellectually curious, and helping peopl open up, but he is absolutely not big with charisma! I don't know if he normally talks so flat or not, but in the podcast I don't think he could be more flat if he tried. He's also not great at asking questions, at least not spontaneously. Seems really good at preparation though.

[barfingclouds]

I listen to Lex relatively often. I think he often has enough specialized knowledge to keep up at least somewhat with guests. His most recent interview of the Egyptian comedian (not a funny interview) on Palestine was really profound, as in one of the best podcasts I’ve ever listened to.

Early on I got really fed up with him when I discovered him. Like his first interview with mark zuckerberg where he asks him multiple times to basically say his life is worthless, his huge simping to Elon musks, asking empty questions repeatedly, and being jealous of Mr Beast.

But yeah for whatever reason lately I’ve dug his podcast a lot. Those less good interviews were from a couple years ago. Though I wish he didn’t obsess so much about twitter