Maybe I'll check out Dwarkesh, but even seeing him mentioned him in the same breath as Fridman gives me pause ...
Dwarkesh has recently reached the level where he's also interviewing these high profile AI/tech people, but it's so much more enjoyable to listen to, because he is such a better interviewer and skips all the nonsense questions about "what is love?" or getting into politics.
The short answer, imho, is trust. No one gets turned into an embarrassing soundbite talking to Lex. He doesn't try to ask gotcha questions for clickbait articles. Generally speaking "the press" are not your friend and they will twist your words. You have to walk on egg shells.
Lex doesn't need to express original ideas. He needs to get his guests to open up and share their unique perspectives and thoughts. He's been extremely successful in this.
An alternative question is why hasn't someone more charismatic taken off in this space? I'm not sure! Who knows, there might be some lizard brain secret sauce behind the "flat" podcast host.
Interviewers shouldn't be aggressive, antagonistic or clickbaity but they should put opposing views to their guests so that the guest can respond. Testing ideas like this is a fundamental way of learning and establishing an understanding of a topic.
I don’t listen to a three hour interview to listen to the interviewer! I want to hear what the guest has to say.
Until now, this format basically didn’t exist. The host was the star, the guest was just a prop to be wheeled out for a ten second soundbite.
Nowhere else in the world do you get to hear thought leaders talk unscripted for hours about the things that excite them the most.
Lex enables that.
He’s like David Attenborough, who’s also worn the exact same khakis and blue shirt for decades. He’s not the star either: the wildlife is.
I have never listened to Dwarkesh but I will give him a go. One thing I was a little put off by just skimming through this episode with Zuck is that he’s doing ad-reads in the middle which Lex doesn’t.
Early on I got really fed up with him when I discovered him. Like his first interview with mark zuckerberg where he asks him multiple times to basically say his life is worthless, his huge simping to Elon musks, asking empty questions repeatedly, and being jealous of Mr Beast.
But yeah for whatever reason lately I’ve dug his podcast a lot. Those less good interviews were from a couple years ago. Though I wish he didn’t obsess so much about twitter