Comment by jyscao
15 hours ago
No idea how Fridman manages to bring on the type of high profile guests that he does. Guy does not ask good questions and has the charisma of a wet rag,
15 hours ago
No idea how Fridman manages to bring on the type of high profile guests that he does. Guy does not ask good questions and has the charisma of a wet rag,
Huh, I'm the exact opposite. With the exception of Hannah Fry's work at deepmind (where she acts as a charismatic proxy for the more nerdy guests), he is by far the best interviewer on technical stuff (AI stuff mostly, but some early robotics stuff as well). He knows the field, he asks pertinent questions and more importantly he knows when to just let the speaker speak.
Compared to someone like Dwarkesh, it's night and day. There's a fine line between pushing the guest and just interrupting them every 2nd thought to inject your own "takes".
> he knows when to just let the speaker speak
I think similar to Joe Rogan that's the main value he provides to listeners. He identifies guests that have some veil of intellectualism and provides them with a platform to speak.
However I don't think that makes for an interesting interviewer. There are no challenging questions, only ones he knows will fit into the narrative of what the guest wants to say. I might as well read a 2-3 hour PR piece issued by the guests.
Saying he "knows the field" is kind of pushing it. He's good at conversations and that's about it, his actual merits are questionable at best.
Best interviewer is Primagen, a senior engineer with balanced takes that has seen both extremes of life.
Primagen is awesome. Smart, experienced, and opinionated (with reasonable opinions).
Many people wonder this to the point where "Fridman is a hack and an industry plant" has become a meme.
Yeah I loved the guests he had, but eventually had to stop listening to him
Guests don't care about charisma, they care who your previous guests were. He early on got Elon Musk as a guest (AFAIK by writing a paper that was overly favorable to Tesla) and managed to snowball that into a big podcast.
Also guests agreeing to go on your show means they already want to talk about something, so in a way it's more important to shut up than ask good questions.
But then he gets guests spewing utter nonsense and just agrees with them instead of following up. It's unlistenable.