I've never felt that Lex's interviewing was so poor that it was a reason not to listen to one of his interviews. He still gets interesting people to talk about interesting things.
Yes, amazing guest list, I do wonder how it took off like that.
Edit: in contrast, Rob Reid's After On podcast has somewhat similar guests (not an all-stars list, no AI folks except Stuart Russell & Rodney Brooks), but he's my favourite interviewer. The amount of research he does before each interview is insane, to the point he already knows what the guest will say and what are the most interesting items to talk about. But he still lets the guest tell the story themselves.
Lex is a good interviewer, he's thoughtful and goes into depth. I've enjoyed many of his interviews. It's like he's a more stoic version of Joe Rogan.
Some of his guests, however, are a very bad choice. In particular I am thinking of Eric Weinstein who has been on TWICE. Weinstein is a master-class bullshtter, who opines on his theory of everything yet has NOTHING to show for it. He also manages to pull in politics, academia, culture, and the kitchen sink, all obfuscated by turgid rhetoric.
On average I'd rate him a pretty good interviewer however it seems like the quality has declined recently. E.g., his interview with Michael Malice a few weeks ago, where he (Lex) confessed to pulling an all-nighter before the interview, and so wasn't on his game. It showed. Hopefully the lesson he took from that experience is he shouldn't pull all-nighters before an interview.
As the commenter above said, lots of 'meaning of life' questions that just aren't that interesting.
On the contrary, Weinsten is a genius, a contrarian and a patriot who is not afraid to call a spade a spade. Thank the deity that there are still people like that and they can reach the rest of us with little mediation by establishment types.
The oppressed outsider wiling to say the truth against all odds is a meme invented by hucksters like Weinstein so they can sell you their supplements/ads/patreon subscription. It has little basis in reality. (it's obviously true since these people usually have bigger platforms than any "establishment types" who criticize them)
"Genius", "contrarian" and "patriot" are all characterizations that don't have any basis in reality. What has he ACTUALLY DONE other than talk up a storm that amounts to not much at all? AFIAK, he's just an employee of Peter Thiel.
He’s a social critic. “What have you actually done?” is the most common non sequitur used to silence critics and dissidents since time immemorial. It’s irrelevant. Anyone is allowed to be a critic. Their accomplishments have no bearing on the veracity of their arguments. That would be an appeal to authority.
If his arguments were clear and interesting, it would be a different story.
This person purports to have "a theory of everything" up his sleeve yet won't communicate it properly because he doesn't trust the physics community. That doesn't stop him from lengthy podcasts and interviews, like with Lex, where he uses a firehose of specialist jargon against a general audience. To what end? I can't imagine.
The obscurantist IDW stuff appears to be nothing more than a vaguely libertarian stance mildly against progressives and mostly in academia-- boring and not even close to "dissident".
It’s an appeal to the authority of credibility. The more you speak through the language of results, the more credible you are. It’s this appeal to credibility that people rely on when they choose doctors or lawyers.
You say it like credibility in those two contexts are a bad thing.
Doctors and lawyers are about the only occupations where a professional’s mistake could cost a client his/her life. No other professions come close, which is part of why the training is long and the practitioners require a license to practice.
Really? Even if you do not accept his intelectual firepower which is demonstrated by his credentials and even more so, obvious in any of the public long form conversations he has had, you cannot honestly say he is not a contrarian or a patriot. Come on. His tweeter feed, the people he interviews, the themes he discusses, all of that speaks of love for the country and a rejection of conventional thinking.
Someone in another comment compared Lex to Joe Rogan, and I think that comparison is apt. He is only as interesting as his guest's ability to break out of the box his questions put them into. And just like Rogan, Fridman has a very questionable set of guests which he doesn't truly challenge at any point in the conversation.
I’m a fan of the show for the guests but not the interviews, if that makes any sense. He asks questions that are too general. I never get a sense from the episodes of what it’s actually like to run the business. I never get an understanding of what are the important things in their industry. It’s too much “aw shucks” this hard personal thing happened and you overcame it. Which is fine on its own, but I want to learn about business on a business show.
Yes, amazing guest list, I do wonder how it took off like that.
Edit: in contrast, Rob Reid's After On podcast has somewhat similar guests (not an all-stars list, no AI folks except Stuart Russell & Rodney Brooks), but he's my favourite interviewer. The amount of research he does before each interview is insane, to the point he already knows what the guest will say and what are the most interesting items to talk about. But he still lets the guest tell the story themselves.