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Comment by shadowtree | Hacker News Reader

Just shows how BAD conventional journalism has gotten.

If you watch old clips of Dick Cavett it is unbelievable how the audience back then was treated as adults.

And old school vibe of actually caring is also the "shtick" of Kevin McCarthy who has amazing interviews. Here a little bit of him discussing 35mm film with Brad Pitt: https://twitter.com/KevinMcCarthyTV/status/16389734357903892...

Rogan took this on as well, the bar of letting people talk for hours is so low now that all these podcasts were able to wipe out traditional TV.

Dick Cavett vs. Lex Friedman, the regression in interview style is horrible.

Cavett with Richard Burton, nearly 2 hours (!) of in depth, well executed talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D49O5obqhiA

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I love Dick Cavett too.

Terry Gross is, of course, fantastic and there’s nearly fifty years of Fresh Air interviews. I think we sometimes ignore Fresh Air because it’s so ubiquitous. Elvis Mitchell is another obvious example.

I think what separates them from, for example, Lex Friedman, is taste.

Lex if you're reading this - you have an incredible opportunity to let these people nerd out on all of us. Listening to Marvin Gaye's Detroit remix is where you ask the producer what he hears... there's no expectation you will have something great to say, let your people want to share with you, not just answer.

Said this in multiple places, multiple times, but will never get sick of repeating myself: Lex is singlehandedly saving journalism.

Now hire me so I can help you, you big silly goof ;)

> Dick Cavett vs. Lex Friedman, the regression in interview style is horrible.

I really don't like Friedman's interview style, it tends to sound like he's been smoking weed prior to the interview.

Cavett was at a completely different level. I think the closest living interviewer (OK, I see Cavett is still alive, but I don't think he's been doing interviews lately) to that level might be Terry Gross but she doesn't do the kind of open-ended interviews that Cavett did that could go on for hours.

> I think the closest living interviewer might be Terry Gross.

Well don't tell Dick that. Not dead yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Cavett

Fridman is the worse species of pseudo-intellectual. Almost without fail he asks in every interview "why can't we base things on love?" like it isn't the shallow takeaway of Judaeo-Christian discussion that it is.

Then there's his obsession with aliens, to the point of obnoxiousness: see his insistence on debating panspermia theory with Betül Kaçar, who'd just spent five minutes describing why that probably is highly unlikely, with strong scientific basis, to the point of being offensively dismissive.

EDIT - he literally starts telling her something along the lines of "that's just your perspective", like she didn't just lay down a bunch of qualified reasoning. It'd be one thing if he just said 'this is just my take' and left it at that, but he didn't.

The alien focus and love platitudes can be annoying. But overall I really enjoy Lex's interviews. His basic questions help me not be hopelessly lost when he's talking with nuclear physicists and the like.

> Just shows how BAD conventional journalism has gotten.

By "conventional journalism" do you mean old media/Big Media journalism? There are lots of fantastic interviews in the world of podcasts and independent media. Two recent examples that come to mind: The Jason Segel episode of Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and the Richard Hipp episode of CoRecursive.

Dick Cavett interviewing Orson Welles is a classic. [1]

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qqz2HqeMR4&ab_channel=Archy...

The Jimi Hendrix one is also very good. It really lets you get some insight into what a fundamentally shy and humble person he was, as opposed to his wild-man stage persona.

Cavett was pretty much the dictionary definition of unflappable.

Also, people who normally wouldn't give interviews were willing to be interviewed by him, because they knew they'd get a fair shake and there wouldn't be any surprise "gotcha" questions.

I'll advocate for Lex Friedman (https://lexfriedman.com) and say that you're actually talking about Lex Fridman. :)

Interesting, I never knew Wyoming was a Lenape/Delaware name.

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