It's strange, there are some interviews where he seems to reach a much better rapport with his guest. These tend to be guests who are also in the computer science and software domain. I think his biggest hinderance is his reliance on his notes and his apparent fear of looking dumb or unprepared. I get it, I'd probably do the same thing if I were interviewing the same calibre of people but I think he just needs to relax a bit and look for common ground with his guests. Maybe there's too much fear of missing the opportunity to ask certain questions of these high profile people but it's a bit of a turn off. Rogan seems to get this right, maybe even going too far sometimes by not being afraid to just shoot the shit and talk about random incongruous interests. It shows you a side of his guests that you would never get to see elsewhere and it's a lot more humanizing than just question-answer style interviewing.
I think Fridman is very smart, but he needs to prepare for his interviews a bit better and/or edit them.
Too often he can't quite put the question he wants to ask into words, and if he prepared slightly better it would improve the podcast a lot.
I have a similar gripe with Eric Weinstein's podcast mentioned in TFA.
I've quite enjoyed the episodes I've listened to, however they can be difficult to parse at times - somewhat defeating the oft-mentioned benefit of listening to a podcast while performing other activities.
He is obviously very intelligent, but often uses language and analogies that appear to be aimed more at showing off this intelligence than engaging the guest or audience. It distracts from the point he or his guest is attempting to make, which is frustrating.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way.
I had high hopes for Fridman's podcast after the JRE revered him as a sort of young, genius, intellectual version of JRE. He's highly respected among JRE online communities, I think because he presents himself the way most JRE listeners expect a generic smart person to sound. Yet every time I listen to him, I'm left scratching my head.
It feels like he's working hard to copy-and-paste the JRE format, but like many other imitators it exposes why Rogan is so popular in the first place: Rogan is a expert conversationalist who makes both the guest and listener feel at ease, like the listener is part of the conversation. His charisma isn't entirely obvious until you start comparing him to imitators.
I'm still hopeful that Lex Fridman's podcast will get more enjoyable over time as he relaxes a bit and masters the art of the podcast. He's been able to get some high profile guests on his show, so the potential is there.