See, this is what irks me. Lex's (what a name! We're surrounded by supervillains!) popularity feels very fake to me. This guy has the personality of a wet napkin, he doesn't seem smart enough to interview half the people he does, boasts about how he's a professor or something (he doesn't even live near the uni?) and it seems like rich people have settled upon this guy as a high-impact and safe bet for marketing their companies.

But then I remember entire forums full of people that consider Rationality to be a defining trait exist. And I don't think they care much about advertising, seeing how "Effective Altruism" now has hundreds of millons (billions) of dollars and chateaus.

IMO there are other podcasters that have better guests and are much more interesting. Here's one https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdWIQh9DGG6uhJk8eyIFl1w (Curt Jaimungal)

It's maybe personal preference, but I find Lex's guests more interesting compared to that. I'm specifically interested in deep learning, neural networks, generative models, but also neuroscience and some related areas. Then I'm also interested in some tech topics, e.g. everything John Carmack talks about, etc. Lex basically interviewed all the big names in those areas.

I listen to maybe half the podcasts that Lex releases these days. He has some views that I disagree with and some traits that I find annoying, but overall I still enjoy the podcasts. There are some great guests and he allows them to speak at length on all kinds of topics. That’s the thing, the podcast is not really about him, it’s about the guests.

Also I have literally never heard him boast about being a professor, he basically doesn’t say anything about his work on the podcast at all other than that he works in AI.

He occasionally has guests that say things that anybody with two brain cells can figure out is nonsense, and Lex will simply agree with it. He's simply a bad interviewer.

I think you can be a so called “bad interviewer” and still have a good podcast hah

> He has some views that I disagree with

Yeah, “I will interview Vladimir Putin” — thanks but no :S

>boasts about how he's a professor or something (he doesn't even live near the uni?)

I've listened to at least dozens of his podcasts and I have never heard anything like this. You may be thinking of something else. It does come up that he used to work with self-driving cars but only when it's relevant, it doesn't come across as boasting IMO (he doesn't even claim to be an expert, only familiar with the main ideas of the time).

How I've built this has an interview with Sam Altman that's 1+h long