It sucks that the Lex podcast has maybe the best guests of any podcast out there right now and he's such a terrible interviewer. Seriously, give me this guest list with Rogan on the other side any day of the week.
Rogan started off bad, but he became an excellent interviewer up until the last 2 years or so. I listened to a few podcasts of his from pre-2020 recently, and there's a clear difference in quality.
Rogan has annoying quirks, favorite anecdotes, and tangents, but as you said, his core interviewing skills are top-notch. Lex has always been robotic and socially awkward; forcing new questions or topic jumps just as the guest gets into an interesting flow.
Another podcast talker with a bad case of unwarranted self-importance is Sam Harris, sometimes he takes his head out of his ass but only for short periods.
However if you think of it as getting to listen to two friends just chatting or having a beer, it can make for interesting content. Shift your mindset and it might be more enjoyable.
I did enjoy both, but mostly because Wolfram did most of the talking. Even with Lex's less-targeted/knowledgeable questions, Wolfram knew how to steer the answer to what he thought the actual question should have been.
Lex was very interested in the universal substrate rewrite analogy to a turing machine and all of the implications of that, while Sean kind of glossed over that.
Carrol seems to be the overall more educated of the two, but at the same time has a more sophomoric understanding of the theory of computation.
Come to think of it, overall it seems to be a weak spot amongst well known physicists, Wolfram excepted.
If knowledge is a barrier, then give me Sean Carroll with this guest list.
I understand he was some kind of MIT whizkid, but I don't know much about him beyond that.
Source: went to school with him.
The goal of a post doc is to continue to do research work where you're the first position on publications to pad your CV to the point where it looks impressive enough when you're out giving job talks for tenure track positions.
If you have a very strong PhD thesis, produced a lot of good work during your PhD and made enough connections, you can skip that step.
It's almost as if he was there just long enough to associate his name with the school as an ends to impress dumb people.
he's had his name on publications over the past few years while still doing the podcast
Getting out of purgatory was also competitive.
https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman/videos?view=0&sort=da&f...
I think Lex is a fine interviewer considering his background, and short time podcasting. Can you provide examples of him being a terrible interviewer?
And as others have said he has pet theories or opinions he always has to throw out there and almost never gets a response on. insert rant about aliens - yeah I guess that’s possible(?)
How so? I stopped listening to his podcasts because he often does not listen very closely and completely misjudges what a guest says.
Don't get me wrong here: I am a huge Rogan fan. And some Fridman guests would, IMO, be great with Rogan as well (Zuck, for example). But a lot of Fridman's guests are into some pretty deep, esoteric, technical domains that I don't think would fit with Rogan, unless he has a lot of technical knowledge/background of which I am unaware.
Sure, and that's why I said I think Zuck would be a good guest for Rogan. What I'm objecting to is the idea that the entirety of Fridman's guest list would be better interviewed by Rogan. Some, perhaps. All? I am very skeptical of that position. That's all I'm saying.
Thats is a bit of a problem though. When Zuck was asked what should be done he easily threw it back at Lex to answer. Lex went onto a meandering non-committal path trying to work out how to not offend and sound smart. Lex is too easy to manipulate.
Lex's main weakness is that he wants Love and is unwilling to prioritize Truth. He is agreeable and young.
I am worried that he'll get his interview with Putin.