Why is this guy so popular of late? Is it because he manages to book interesting podcast guests? He doesn't seem to have any particularly interesting or impressive original thoughts on display...
He's pretty good at curating very smart people and interviewing them. There's no shortage of interviews with double talking politicians and polemicists so podcasts like his are a breath of fresh air. I'm not watching his podcasts to learn about Dwarkesh, but to learn what his guests have to say.
The bar for wide-audience podcasters and interviewers is low. They're expected to be generalists who can ask good questions, not experts driving the conversation.
Now, expertise is valuable for focused Podcasters like Peter Attia for fitness or Razib for population genomics. But, Dwarkesh is trying to cover all tech and wider HN-friendly content. For that purpose, his CS education and knowledge of the tech industry workings are solid.
He does a better job than Lex, Rogan, or other tech-adjacent Podcasters. Nowhere near as personable as some of the more mainstream successes. But, when those podcasters get tech guests, we're stuck with tired questions like:"Will AI kill us all?".
Tend to agree. His interview with Leopold Aschenbrenner and subsequent interview with François Chollet revealed a pretty obvious LLM maximalist position. Kind of off-putting.