> The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years, and to go 3hrs with anyone with a calm and consistent interest and disposition is a direct result of his level of physical fitness and world class expertise as both a comedian and martial artist.

You should think about the tens of thousands of journalists who have done the same thing for a hundred years without being fit, comedians or kickboxers or whatever.

The whole comment reads like idolatry.

It's not idolatry so much as just being uninformed about pretty much everything else in the world.

This is one of the crucial problems with Silicon Valley culture

To be able to do a 3hr interview without neuroticism requires stamina that you can only learn by having become very good at something with practice. When you look at journalists who can't do that without centering the conversation back on themselves or using confrontation, it's pretty clear that competence in a physical discipline makes the difference.

Interesting comparison to journalists though. Who would be a peer as an interviewer? Maybe George Plimpton, Christine Amanpour, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, or Dominick Dunne?

Personally, I respect physical competence, techne over episteme, experiment over theory, performance over criticism, predictive power over post-hoc explanation, etc. It's more of an orientation than an idolatry.

>Interesting comparison to journalists though. Who would be a peer as an interviewer? Maybe George Plimpton, Christine Amanpour, Oprah Winfrey, Charlie Rose, or Dominick Dunne?

That's a good list. I'll add more, because I think you're being pretty dismissive of journalism and the art of the interview that has been born from journalism:

Terry Gross, Diane Sawyer, Mike Wallace, Larry King, Bob Woodward, Lesley Stahl, Bryant Gumble, Bob Costas, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters (who I personally don't love but who I can't deny has excelled at the art form and created many of its best elements), Jane Pauley, Gwen Ifill, David Frost, Audie Cornish, Kara Swisher.

There are many, many more I'm forgetting. Interviewing has long been a stable of radio and television broadcasting. Not all broadcasters are journalists, but there is significant overlap.

The two greatest living interviewers are Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern. Stern isn't a journalist per se, but he is a broadcaster and he's absolutely as good as anyone who has ever done it (other than maybe Oprah, who has the ability to interview anyone and make it tantalizing). And I think Joe Rogan is a good interviewer and has absolutely improved over the years (as one would hope if you do something for hours a day for over a decade), but he doesn't even come close to either of them.

And yes, interviewing is a physical act and an act of stamina, but I'm not sure what your point is here. Most journalists who are adept at the interview (and I'm sticking with primarily broadcast interviews here because written interviews, while equally important, are a different beast that often require far more stamina and time than doing a televised or audio broadcast of an interview) have that level of stamina, or more.

> The two greatest living interviewers are Oprah Winfrey and Howard Stern.

I would put Terry Gross miles ahead of both, and believe Stern's skill as an interviewer laps Winfrey several times. But I'd put nearly everyone on your list ahead of Winfrey as well.

I'm curious: why did you call out Stern as "not a journalist" but not Winfrey? Neither one of them bears even a passing resemblance to a journalist as far as I can tell.

I think for radio, I’ll agree Terry Gross is one of the best that has ever lived. I love her so much and have so much respect for her. But for me, I still think the spectacle of Oprah, her awareness of the right moments, the right beats, the drama, makes her the best interviewer alive. I'm a media nerd and a former journalist, and I rewatch her interview with Lance Armstrong every few years because it’s just such an amazing interview. Terry Gross is amazing, and I’m not trying to take anything from her. And she’s had her dramatic moments with subjects, for sure. But Stern and Oprah have that added performer element that puts it over the top and into another level. One of the reasons I think Mike Wallace was such a good newsman and broadcaster was because of his background as an actor and game show host. He had the sensibilities for what made good television.

As for why I call Oprah a journalist and not Stern? I mean, Oprah has worked in news. She has research teams for her various shows and projects. Her talk show could definitely delve into tabloid stuff (especially in the 1980s, though she pulled back before the format became deranged in the 1990s), but like Donohue (a legit newsman), but she started working in local news when she was still in high school. She’s the definition of a broadcast journalist. For every tabloid story she’d get into (which often were often not far removed from what you’d see on Dateline or 20/20 or 60 Minutes or other newsmagazine programs), she’d also do deeper dives into reporting highlighting stuff that people in her audience didn’t know about. She'd visit places and talk to the people. And yes, she had research and fact checking teams on her show. Oprah is a journalist in my mind. She’s a populist and her audience target is different than the typical reader of FT or even the New York Times or people who regularly listen to NPR, but she’s a journalist all the same.

Stern, in comparison, is a DJ and a talk show host. He was a program director and disc jockey who then got into shock jock stuff at the height of that era and then created a genre-defining morning show. He reads headlines but he doesn’t do news. He might break news based on his questions, because he’s incredible at his job, but he’s not trying to tell a larger story or narrative. He's not going to go to a town in America that didn’t have Black people for 75 years to talk to residents and try to get to the heart of the racism. He's not going to go to Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel. What he can do is make the subjects he interviews reveal more about themselves than they planned. He can make people comfortable enough to show who they really are. And his technique is the same technique any good journalist would use, but he wouldn’t call himself a journalist and neither will I.

The line between broadcaster and broadcast journalist is thin, to be sure. And someone like Terry Gross or Charlie Rose are definitely more on the “journalism” side than Oprah usually is. But Oprah is still trying to tell broader stories. She’s still doing research. Stern is much more akin to Johnny Carson or Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, David Letterman, etc. Oprah isn’t Diane Sawyer, but she’s closer to that direction.

Both are great and I don’t think Stern not being a journalist hurts him or his credibility or his work at all. If anything, he doesn’t have to be held to the standards of journalism or whatever. Whereas Oprah has been rightfully criticized for having people on her shows over the years spreading pseudo-science.

To put it another way, if you lie in an interview with Howard Stern and he knows you’re lying, Howard might push back on your or make fun of you a bit, but he’s going to let you go on an lie. But if you lie to Oprah, and she knows you’re lying, she'll push back. She's usually not combative, but she'll dig in more. And if she finds out you lied to her? After she defended you? She'll eviscerate you in front of a live studio audience, alongside media critics from the top newspapers in America, as part of a discussion on truth and ethics and fact checking. She'll admit her own culpability and faults, she'll take her lumps, and then she'll cut you to the core in front of God and everyone.

You seem unaware that many, many journalists and interviewers do indeed spend several hours interviewing their subjects....that is then significantly edited down. That good interviewers (and their staff) have spent many, many hours doing background research to prepare for the interview.

If you think Joe Rogan is an impressive interviewer, your mind will be blown away by someone like Terry Gross. She appeared on the Tonight Show and Fallon showed a photo of a book Gross had read before interviewing the author - stuffed full of notes, page corners turned down

Stephen Colbert presenting her Peabody award covers her show better than I ever could: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8mkTFY-D8

Exactly what my comment I spent way too much time writing was trying to say.

And as you say, people like Terry Gross and Oprah and Diane Sawyer and Mike Wallace and even Howard Stern (who is one of the best ever at interviewing) actually do research ahead of time. And the interviews are far better for it. Having an off the cuff conversation is fine. Having awareness of the person you're going to talk to, familiarity with their work and with what they are about, is even better.

Watching Oprah interview Lance Armstrong remains a master class in the art form and her ability to interview such a wide range of people about so many things is just incredible. Likewise, Terry Gross does what she does so well -- and is one of the best audio journalists of all time, that it's honestly comical for Rogan to even be in the same sentence.

Charlie Rose was one of the GOATs as well, and the exact opposite of Rogan: you could immediately tell he'd done a super deep dive on the interviewee and the subject at hand before the interview ever started.

I think Letterman has been doing some interesting stuff lately in the gray area between those extremes. He's a humble funnyman that keeps things a little loose, but you can still tell he's done some prep and is quite well-read.

Howard Stern. I wish Rogan had his level of intelligence and insight into the human mind. Howard is also much funnier and knows how to keep a show from turning into a sleeping aid.

No matter how hard you practice, you can’t fake funny.

Hardly. Howard Stern gets views by shocking his audience. He's raunchy and sadistic, either asking people about their personal sex lives, or bringing on a disabled person in order to humiliate them. He's not pursuing any intellectual aims. There's no comparing what Stern and Rogan are doing.

> When you look at journalists who can't do that without centering the conversation back on themselves or using confrontation, it's pretty clear that competence in a physical discipline makes the difference.

It’s not clear to me at all, to be honest.

> Personally, I respect […] experiment over theory

Yet your theory above on how competence in a physical discipline confers ability to conduct interviews for longer periods without becoming neurotic seems entirely unsubstantiated by experiment. Are you aware of any studies that back it?

"Who would be a peer as an interviewer?"

Dick Cavett has forgotten more about the art of the conversational interview than most people have ever known. Intelligent, perceptive, and witty. I'll take his 40-year-old youtube clips any day of the week over the wannabe everyman that Joe Rogan pretends to be.

Do they broadcast that live? Because you know, they could just edit it.

Look, I don't have a problem with Rogan (I grew up watching NewsRadio and Fear Factor), but this isn't even the best interview with Zuckerberg. That would be when Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg interviewed him at the D Conference back in 2010 and he sweat through his hoodie. And no, they weren't even challenging him or pushing back on him super hard -- he was just that unable to answer basic questions about privacy.

Swisher has had him on her podcast multiple times since then and also had very good, very substantive interviews with him.

Side note: Zuck has clearly invested many, many, many hours in media training over the last decade or so and it has paid off. He's still far from a good speaker but he's so much better, it's honestly impressive.

I guess it’s a matter of opinion whether or not making people sweat is the mark of a good interview.

When the person in the hot-seat is in direct control over a platform that can influence major world events, yeah, I think so?

There’s value to confrontational interviews, but not every interview or interviewer needs to be confrontational.

I agree that they don't need to be confrontational necessarily. However, most platforms of any importance will have made contentious decisions that are worth being pressed on. So I think a good interview will press on those decisions (or lack of), and naturally become confrontational.

And there’s a couple of ways of going about that, depending on the guest and the interviewer. If you’re Chris Wallace interviewing Bill Clinton on Fox News, you can just start an argument because Bill Clinton loves arguing with people and will rise to the challenge. Other times you have to open people up with kindness.

Perhaps when the subject is that powerful, they do?

Is this actually a belief that Zuck is so unbelievably powerful that he doesn’t deserve the courtesy of a less confrontational interview, or just a rationalization for the fact that you don’t like him very much and would prefer to see him humiliated?

Confrontational interviews are a difficult style to do well, and probably not a great style for Joe Rogan in particular. If the guest is smarter or at least more quick-witted than the interviewer, the interviewer can be made to look like a fool.

Also, it’s very easy for that style of interview to make people close down and rely on rehearsed talking points. If you really want to know what someone thinks, you need to create a sense of emotional safety for them to open up. Especially these days. You can’t make the interview feel like an interrogation. Even literal interrogators will tell you that.

It’s not really a belief at all, more of a half-baked thought. I could be swayed in either direction, but I’ll continue to ramble a bit:

Sure, a light-hearted chat with easy questions can of course make a person open up, but when it comes to the billionaire CEO of one of the most powerful companies in the world (or some high-powered politician, or whatever), is it ethical to donate what basically amounts to a PR job (answering softballs and getting to seem relatable while ignoring problematic topics) that is framed to viewers/listeners as an interview?

“Yeah, I heard something about Facebook and privacy that sounded bad, but I saw Zuckerberg on Joe Rogan talking about hunting elk and smoking weed, he seemed like a relatable guy. I’m sure he tries his best and wouldn’t betray his users on purpose.”

Perhaps for you, but perhaps you also have a massive chip on your shoulder

> I guess it’s a matter of opinion whether or not making people sweat is the mark of a good interview.

Exactly. Part of the reason Joe Rogan is so huge is that a lot of people are sick of the current interviewing model, where some sneering journalist (who usually lives in Brooklyn) asks a bunch of leading questions in an effort to humiliate his guest by luring them into a contradiction.

Well-adjusted people don't regularly enjoy watching others get humiliated. They'd rather see an interesting conversation between interesting people, which is exactly what Rogan gives them and exactly what the traditional media does not.

An impressive combination of gate-keeping and fanboyism that I think perfectly illustrates why so many people dislike Rogan and his devotees. God forbid someone "without standing" dare to criticize the man himself, right? Especially if they aren't as (checks notes)... fit as him?

Well said, I agree.

According to the parent comment, in order to criticize Joe Rogan, I have to "get on his level" first. Got it.

Brb, gonna go do some whipits.

I like Joe Rogan but calling him a world class comedian and martial artist is not right. He doesn't compete in BJJ and he always was a middling comedian.

You’re not wrong, but Georges St-Pierre says Joe has the best turning side kick he has ever seen, and that’s gotta count for something.

Indeed, and they hand out Netflix specials to anyone who can fog a mirror these days so it's probably not a useful measure... Maybe I should just do one.

Indeed. Just remember to keep your knee high - that’s where the power comes from.

He sold out Madison Square Gardens and headlines along with Dave Chappelle. He's not one of the top comedians of all time in my opinion (Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock Louis CK, Bill Burr), but he is wildly successful for a comedian.

He was a state champion in Tae Kwon Do when he was younger and is a black belt in BJJ. He's very experienced in multiple types of martial arts. He doesn't compete because he's 54 years old but he still trains every day.

> top comedians of all time in my opinion (Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock Louis CK, Bill Burr)

Statistically, "of all time" should probably include some dead people...

I said it was my opinion. Feel free to disagree with our own opinions.

Your GOAT comedians list needs some work.

Have you watched his standup?

Yes. He's okay. I've seen worse. I've seen better. I would consider him a second tier comic but he is indisputably very successful.

> The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years

Why is this the first I'm hearing of it? It didn't seem to have any effect on how Facebook operates.

Is this satire?

>The Zuckerberg interview he did was probably the most important interview of the last few years,

You mean of all interviews done anywhere? Surely, that's hyperbole.

What exactly came out of that interview that's worth noting other than that Facebook throttled a Hunter Biden story (which we already knew had been done across social media platforms)

This is literally the "Well, what color is YOUR Bugatti?" defense of Andrew Tate spouted by teenagers.

I found Jordan Peterson‘s interview of Joe Rogan to be quite interesting and even poignant.