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Comment by superbcarrot | Hacker News Reader

I would love to know what Lex is doing to get the guests that he's had on. It's an impressive list of people and he certainly isn't attracting them with his charisma or interviewing skills.

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I would think he is rather well respected and well connected in the academic and “corporate R&D” world.

He isn’t the best interviewer because he doesn’t have the experience yet but the podcasts are very good because he gives the guests an open stage, he is never adversarial and he never seem to push the interview into a specific direction.

Overall it wouldn’t surprise me if many of the guests would just enjoy to sit down and talk to someone who is without sounding too elitists a smart as they are, being able to reach to a lot of other people is just a bonus.

Because he doesn't have the experience yet?

He's been running the podcast for two and a half years, and this episode makes 160.

How much experience do you reckon it takes to get "good" at interviewing?

Some people don't like his style. I don't think they will ever think he is that good. Someone like Oprah would be considered to be far more talented at driving the conversation where she wants it to be. Personally I a huge fan of Lex, I think because the people and topics are what I'm interested in.

So much for his style that it makes his podcasts hit or miss (depending on the topic). For some personalities his conversational demagoguery feels nauseating, for others it fits the conversation. In my opinion Sean Carroll (Mindscape) has much more consistent conversational theme that borders on philosophical but still makes it engaging for the listener, where Lex often misses the red thread and rambles in unrelated territory. I don't think his podcasts are bad, just inconsistent, and thinking of how many he manages to do doesn't actually make it that strange. In order to improve Lex needs to curate his ramblings better and learn to read the motivations of his guests.

I think the biggest thing that Lex “needs” (that’s a bit strong wording because I do like his podcast) to change is that professional interviewers tend to drive the interview towards the benefit of the audience and the guest (the interviewer very well may have a hidden agenda but the good ones hide it well), Lex’s style is more about his own personal interests and anecdotes his uses this interviews primarily to benefit his own curiosity than to the benefit of the of viewership which why he tends to go on so many tangents I think.

Look (or we’ll listen) to Larry King’s early years interviews vs later in his career, so I would say probably a life time.

Also keep in mind Lex isn’t a professional journalist he isn’t even what one would call a science communicator.

His podcast is still mainly two people having a conversation than a structured interview but he has gotten better at it overall. His early podcasts had quite a few wired moments where you can see that Lex was somewhere else thinking about something these are rarer now.

Lex is a pretty unconventional interviewer, but I actually think he's pretty fantastic at what he does. In particular, he is one of the best at thinking like a beginner and asking clarifying questions as his guests talk. He interviews a lot of brilliant people who can speak at some depth about topics that need context, and he does a good job of in real time figuring out where they need to clarify without obstructing their explanation. For example, I think he got one of the best interviews I've seen out of Wolfram.

I don't know if you've ever interviewed someone, but that kind of awareness and quick thinking is really really hard.

Just being a decent human being with no agenda but trying to ask interesting questions. It is shocking how rare and precious simply being genuine is these days.

Yea.. I'm surprised how negative the comments are here. He seems to be genuinely interested in a wide range of topics. He is able to have intelligible conversations across this wide spectrum and approaches it all with the incredible humility required to learn and teach well. His style is different but I would be hard pressed to think of anyone else that could have these conversations so well.

Having an agenda is sometimes the only way to get powerful people to answer for controversy.

It's crazy to me that people are now claiming that asking "hard questions" is what is ruining journalism. As if we need more of Cuomo interviewing Cuomo on CNN.

Both styles have their merits. That's why we have both adversarial debates as well as collaborative panel discussions.

Sometimes, maybe even most times, one is more interested in the interviewee than the intervier, not matter how brave and righteous the interviewer might believe himself to be.

I think he took Joe Rogan as a template. Be curious, let people talk, maybe know something about the topic, don't judge, don't have an agenda, make the interview about the guest and not about the interviewer. It's kind of interesting that this is a rare thing today.

> certainly isn't attracting them with his charisma or interviewing skills.

As a counterpoint, watch the end of his podcast with Elon Musk, where he made him read the Carl Sagan quote [1]. This was quite brilliant I thought.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVsZD2wF1vw&t=144

I really enjoy his interviewing style and calm voice. It is a conversation rather than a list of prepared questions. I get much more from these than say a techcrunch interview.

I think he's got excellent interviewing skills, but I am still amazed by his guest list, and I would really like to understand how he has managed to pull this off! Very impressive work.

Credentials + persistence + convenient location to get the ball rolling.

Large number of views/listens thanks to Joe Rogan + extremely safe interviewing style to keep the momentum going.

It's really not all that impressive given the absence of alternatives (try searching Wolfram on youtube and see how many other podcasts show up) - it's more surprising how bad the podcast discovery scene is that almost anyone who self promotes through Joe Rogan and puts in the work becomes a top 100 podcast worldwide.

Watch where he interviews his dad. Connections, I think.

You think his interviewing skills suck? I think he’s doing a great job. Brenden sure doesn’t seem to think the questions are terrible.

>and he certainly isn't attracting them with his charisma or interviewing skills.

Your criticism is an example of taking your personal opinion that he has no charisma or interviewing skills and then incorrectly projecting it on to guests that don't share your opinion.

Think about how the guests must voluntarily agree to be interviewed by Lex. Some might go through these steps:

1) get inquiry email from Lex : "Hi, I have a podcast and I'd love to interview you. [... blah blah blah ...] For reference, here are some links to interviews with previous guests [...]"

2) hmmm... who is this Lex guy?!? Let me look at his previous interviews...

3) Ok, he's non-threatening, engaging, and intellectual with his questions. I can sit down and chat with him for few hours.

People oversell the "connections" angle. Yes, he has some connections (Drexel, MIT, ex-contractor at Google, etc) but that just means some warm introductions and a potential guest will politely reply to an email inquiry. Guests can still decline the podcast. Connections don't guarantee the guest will actually agree to talk for 2 hours on camera.

E.g. Chris Lattner has been interviewed by Lex 2 times. Unless he's lying, his comment doesn't seem like he shares your opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24831157

EDIT to reply: "just by cold emailing."

I didn't say he was only sending out cold emails. (I mentioned "warm introductions.")

In any case, the main point of my comment is that you are (inadvertently?) insulting some of his guests. In other words, have you considered the possibility that many of his guests enjoy Lex's interviewing style?

I don't know why you're assuming that he's just sending out emails and finding receptive people on the other end. In my opinion that's the least likely scenario considering the range and calibre of his guests. You don't get to cold-email Eric Schmidt as a relatively unknown person and have him be the guest on the 8th episode of your newly started podcast. You don't get Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, Jack Dorsey, Roger Penrose and the creator of just about every big programming language just by cold emailing.

Yes I wonder about that too. It is really impressive. Was he well connected and famous among the famous before starting his podcast?

He's a non-threatening insider, that's how he gets these guests. For better or worse, the titans of Silicon Valley don't want to be challenged, so they seek out or start their own safe spaces.

Hi! I'm starting a podcast where I interview totally random commenters on HN and ask them uncomfortable, hostile questions with the intent of embarrassing them in public. Would you like to be my first guest?

Not going to lie, I would subscribe to this show.

As long as we're not the commenters being interviewed, am I right? ;)

I'd love to be. My resume: 4000+ karma, 10+ year account, been warned by dang to stop being a shit at least 6 times.

Sounds fun. I volunteer.

No he challenges his guests, he's just not an ass when he does. E.g. see his Jim Keller interview, when he disagrees with Keller when Keller talks about machine learning. And after a couple minutes of back and forth Friedman just lets it go by saying 'yeah we'll just agree to disagree' and moves on instead of making it personal or drawing the point of contention to a long hour because you have to be right! (as some of here may be guilty of doing :))

Why does agreeing to disagree and moving on seem like such a radical idea?

Not just a non-threatening insider, but someone who understands what they say and speaks the tech language.

I think the technologist first, interviewer/journalist second is important.

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