[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.