He has a talent for explaining complex topics in easy to understand terms and avoids the trap of outrage and controversy driven social media tricks like some others in the field.
Different interpretations of the same personality I suppose.
The of course anything is possible, we just don't know, but it's highly unlikely.
He was very influential in pushing me to favour Many Worlds over Copenhagen, and his interviews with people like David Deutsch were gold. Might have to check out what he's doing these days.
He does have an approach to certain questions to say that it's the wrong question to ask. For example, to "why does the universe exist?" he would say that the question presupposes that everything needs an explanation for why it exists, and the universe is not that kind of thing. This is actually super common in philosophy, but I could see it coming across as pompous to someone who had never heard an answer like that before. He's not saying that the question is stupid, he's saying that it literally doesn't have an answer.
So many podcasts are unlistenable to me for bedtime, because of mismatched volume levels of host/guest or poor quality audio for the guest (through zoom or whatever). He also tends to speak in a smooth tone, with obvious inflection for emphasis (i.e. not monotone), but not irritatingly chipper or fake sounding like some other physics podcasters.
Mostly the episodes are specific topics with a guest who's area of research/specialty is the topic and which stay pretty well on-topic.
Most of the AMA episodes are in the area's where Carroll specialize: physics and philosophy of science. It -occasionally- veers off into politics or basketball, but it's nowhere close to 51% politics and basketball. I think the most recent AMA did have more basketball than usual, and admittedly more than I like. And I am not a fan of his politics nor do I consider his political positions especially thoughtful or insightful. But those diversions are more occasional distractions than some majority of the AMA content. And in a 3+ hour Q&A format its not surprising that he's asked about those areas where his regular listeners know that he has a particular interest or position.
The podcast covers a niche that is not common.
But all the episodes are not equally good, of course, and much depends on the guests.
I really liked the Carlo Rovelli episode (#2), the Tyler Cowen episode (#19), Kip Thorne (#24), Steven Strogatz (#41), etc.