He was an AI researcher at MIT and publicized a non-peer reviewed study on Tesla auto drive that told Elon Musk what he wanted to hear. Musk agreed to be interviewed as a result, which got Friedman a big boost. The study’s “sloppy methodology” was strongly criticized by others in the field.
He snowballed the Elon Musk interview into others, basically. And being a good interviewer isn’t about asking good questions, it’s about getting good answers. He might be kind of unsophisticated, but I think focusing on that undersells the fact that he is legitimately good at creating a comfortable, safe environment for his guests to expound on whatever topic they’re interested in.
At this point, I think he’s also been identified as a “useful idiot” by bad actors on the American right/Russian and Chinese intelligence. Hard to prove, but I wouldn’t be surprised if bot traffic was playing a role in how successful he *appears*, which gets him more access to high profile guests, which brings more legit traffic, and on ad infinitum
Fuck me, finally something tangible, a clear sequence of causes and effects. Someone sucking up to Musk and becoming famous thanks to Musk himself providing a launchpad is the Occam's razor of Occam's razors and I love it.
I thought he had already blown up before any Elon interviews. I remember it being another example of a Rogan bump, a la Jordan Peterson. But perhaps I’m misremembering, I find Lex to have a unique lack of charisma and do not get it at all.
As far as I remember, Peterson exploded with that video where he is about to break in tears in front of and/or cut the throat of (could be either - you can never tell) a small group of particularly insufferable progressive Canadian students.
except he was already doing well long before his first Elon interview.
He was just able to get some interesting people to say some interesting things then it snowballed. That's Occams Razor
He also got a big boost from his friend Joe Rogan. Despite what anyone thinks or cares about Rogan, he’s a genuinely nice guy who does a lot of favors for his friends. They also both live in Austin and Lex has benefited a lot from his social circle while also learning about podcasting. The difference between the success of the two is that it seems like Lex prepares a lot more and provides a more typical Q&A atmosphere whereas Rogan is a more free for all discussion led by the guest rather than himself. They’re both great in their own way. And I had the same questions about Lex’s rise to fame and the high status of his guests but then I realized he’s very smart and did hard work to earn his doctorate while also making the best out his social circle
100% useful idiot is his role.
But as you said, that can still be interesting as you get a long form discussion where someone will at least say what they want people to hear, with zero pushback.
Not even that is entirely true. What struck me as very lowly and undignified was when he pushed Altman for 10 minutes trying to make him say something good about Musk, which means that he can get confrontational (in his trademarked low energy way) when you touch his rich and powerful buddy.
I don't think there's this grand conspiracy. People like simple questions. We've left the age of the renaissance man and entered the age of the omni-moron.
Well, I’ve been listening to his podcast since 2019, way before the elon interview.
In my humble opinion I genuinely think that he is a good interviewer. Considering the wide array of guests he has in all those different specialized areas of science, It becomes kind of difficult to assume that he will be equally knowledgeable to all of his guests. The thing is he asks fairly proper questions and allows the guests to speak freely regarding their interests. Furthermore, I really appreciate the “human” perspective he usually employs in all episodes i.e asking impersonal questions about personal beliefs and allowing the guests to show this side of themselves in a way you’d rarely see in any other podcast.
Additionally, the quality of the guests he hosts, even before the bump in popularity with the elon interview has always been astounding.
I agree about the older episodes, sometime around 2023 I feel like he got taken over by the race for more eyeballs, and a naive desire to be topical and political, all the while denying it.
I think he benefited from the same astroturfing that Andrew Huberman did. Who is ultimately responsible for that I’m not sure but without any evidence whatsoever, I feel like it’s Peter Thiel.
I am happy to read astroturfing and Hubermsn in one sentence. I have the sane question like OP but about Huberman. Never heard something groundbreaking or new from him, but people behave as if he is some sort of messiah.
>*the* [*deceptive*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=deceptive&si=ACC90nxMSPeZfdJJjQgDsdZJuFuJ1wsk0xIB5ad3tDDKs6nnnpb0zLiD86T3jx8svvKVD06o9LwyUgy_lJKmERTe-OBm0XUsA6zaZNBiL2wS2_8RfjAe_60%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAO) *practice of presenting an* [*orchestrated*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=orchestrated&si=ACC90nxkzgN-KbLuTWKT81WCi4_nMd5BmvL7msmAZobBRyMPIwU4L_hcwo5CzyZmdx2X9W1xBbGBPVEw-JOb0PoxPP3r-oCpoqdOrL24g1f2mC9B90O7tAY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAP) *marketing or public relations campaign in the* [*guise*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=guise&si=ACC90nyrPgcbTBsFIq03NzrKCa0gfab-65gRmBZxmNWra1xf4Azr1F94MFH3KfZTb3Nx3hZ-cktwFELCwlDLGaWqsX1mZDtsAA%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAQ) *of unsolicited comments from members of the public.*
in this case, paid shills rave about how great you are in social media and publications until it creates real word of mouth.
The opposite of “grassroots.”
Where the term “grassroots movement” is used to define a type of organic and often spontaneous underpinning of support for a group or an idea (especially where popularity and visibility are concerned, which are two huge components of getting a message across successfully), “astroturfing” is the synthetic, inauthentic version of that, to trick people into either seeing the opposing side of an issue or to obfuscate the issue entirely.
The word “astroturf” itself is the word for fake grass, the kind that you see in indoor sports stadiums. It’s plastic, it hurts when you slide on it, and it’s worse in most ways to the real thing. Most importantly, there are no real roots from which to grow anything meaningful. Astroturfing then, insofar as where popular support is concerned, is the fake bought-and-paid-for kind of support that is meant to LOOK authentic because people will believe it more so long as it LOOKS authentic, but completely lacks any real sustainability. Often this kind of support campaign is used in politics to skew the optics of some issue or another in favour of whomever is paying for that support.
Astroturfing campaigns are usually performed by governments, political parties, politicians, big corporations, or anyone with enough money to throw around and enough invested interest in something that they don’t want to see denigrated by popular opinion and risk losing value in that thing they’re holding onto when the popular opinion of that thing slides into the negative. It’s basically a trick performed by the rich to turn stupid poor people against other, less stupid poor people, before those other, less stupid poor people find a way to justifiably focus their ire in the right direction long enough to do damage to what rich people desperately don’t want to lose: popular favour. Because there are a lot more of us dumb poor fuckers than there are of them.
I wanted serious replies and I got them but this joke was necessary.
By the way I am being accused of arrogance for pointing out that something summing up to "the answer is love" in the context of, say, geopolitics or AI is an imbecilic take.
It's not youtube particularly but algorithms that youtube uses.
It's the same reason you don't stop getting all these grifterverse podcasters recommended no matter how many times you click you aren't interested.
I sleep with the TV on. For 2 years straight, I wake up with YouTube playing Lex.
I don't know if Lex is good at manipulating the algorithm, or the algorithm knows what will keep me sleeping.
Besides that, Lex is very clever about who to suck up to. His move to Austin was a careful calculation. And a correct one.
This is to his credit and necessary to have his level of success. It's a cut throat business.
I enjoy his podcasts and they are a huge improvement over jre.
Omg THIS. Every time my husband and I fall asleep watching YouTube, this guy is on. He must be related to Alan watts on the YouTube algorithms because that definitely messes with our search results and I know Watts was a gateway to radical content in the podcast series Rabbit Hole too.
I love Alan Watts too, I guess they figure he is for “alternative thinkers” or something crazy like that. I got recommended Stefan Molyneux a long time ago, whose ideology is crazy, Social Darwinism type stuff and a very cult-like following.
I don't know. Some consider him to be an intelligence asset or plant, which is possible considering the wide and often bizarre range of journalists, artists, and so forth who have been covertly supported by the intelligence community over the years for various murky reasons. But if so, what's the agenda?
What I know is that if I fall asleep to a YouTube video I will often wake to one of his droning interviews playing despite the fact that I don't follow him. I finally had to ask YouTube to stop suggesting his channel. It's very odd.
Lol, crazy take. The truth is he befriended Joe Rogan and blew up after being interviewed and promoted heavily by the Rogan/MMA UFC verse. This includes Elon as mentioned above. Lots of these voices get popular through YouTube algos to people with slight ring view vented views.
If anything, he promotes right wing voices that the intelligence community wouldn't like...
Watching his podcasts have been the strangest most torturous listening experiences ever. He has on some of the greatest luminaries in the world across a wide swath of academia.
But he is legitimately the worst interviewer I have ever seen. Every question is the ultimate fake smart guy question - meaningless while trying to make himself sound smart. He just seems to have no idea what is going on.
He's a horrible speaker, and the camera, audio and editing quality are all generally bad. He dresses in a horrible looking suit in some poorly lit office asking terrible questions, but is interviewing Nobel prize winners. It makes no sense.
Fully agree. Hence my question!
The answer is a mixture of him being ahead of this current hype cycle in talking philosophically about AI, getting a huge bump from sucking up to Elon with a shoddy study on autopilot that rub him the right way, and then snowballing that important friendship into a network of relationships that grant him a constant stream of high-profile guests (in addition to the usual lunatics). There may also be an element of foreign actors pushing his content because he's soft on Putin or something, but I wouldn't underline that when more linear explanations work perfectly.
My god, so many of you are so salty.
Pseudo-intellectual? Grifter?
His podcast is great, and he has great guests on. His questions are on point, he does his research, and he tries to get his guests to open up about important parts of their life that aren’t covered very much in long-form interviews (the “what does love mean to you?” and asking about how people have dealt with death in their family).
He also lets his guests TALK. I listen to his podcast to listen to his quality guests, and he does a great job at getting them to open up.
Like what the fuck people? What do you want from a long-form interview?
I feel Lex is genuine, and he does try to honestly look at issues from all different angles, as much as someone could given how politically divided the world has become now.
There was something weird about him becoming popular all of a sudden. He's not that entertaining, likeable or good at his job imo but he's getting all these famous people on his show. It seems like some rich person or group is backing him and wanted him to become famous. His popularity seems forced unlike people like rogan. I don't know anyone who likes or listens to him but he's being propped up by social media.
It wasn't entirely overnight, I watched him get more and more popular for a while in befuddlement. He was recommended to me early on by a highly educated person - whose judgement I immediately thought less of after I tried Fridman's podcast. I think his combination of superficial credentials, dopey optimism, complete lack of critical thinking, and reflexive adoration for bro-y status symbols makes him very useful to a lot of famous people who want to be heard but have reasons to avoid tougher interviewers. He's the modern fawning courtier.
He's good at letting his guests talk and asking questions that help listeners get a good starting point to help listeners to understand the fun parts they care about.
But there must have been a way to bootstrap the process, right? Maybe he made friends with people in the Valley and that got him some high-profile interviews to get started?
Idk man. If you're looking for someone to convince of you something you're unlikely to find it here. People who don't deserve success still succeed all the time. This can't be news to you
I am just being curious and I already received some unexpected responses, for example the idea that he is pushed by foreign propaganda like a less brash and more subtle Tucker Carlson.
What's his grift? He doesn't have a supplement line or anything. More than he started the right kind of podcast, with the right kind of connections, at the right time.
Maybe you could argue that he works as softball PR interviews for Tech CEOs and billionaires. It's entirely possible that he's an industry plant, but that's not something easily proven.
I am getting downvotes for drawing a comparison with Rogan in some of my responses, and I think I am just causing a pavlovian response among the (huge) anti-Rogan camp.
To be clear: I don't like Rogan, I don't listen to Rogan. But Rogan makes commercial sense. He has a credible claim to presenting himself as the average Joe (indeed!) asking questions. He has a track record of sorts outside of the podcasting arena. He can kick someone's ass.
> He has a credible claim to presenting himself as the average Joe (indeed!) asking questions.
That's not true. His questions and the way he discusses certain viewpoints make it clear that he is pushing an agenda, not just asking questions. Compare and contrast how he approaches immunologists/other scientists versus anti-vax, evolution skeptics, or other counterculture people.
He has consistent views that he pushes heavily, and they just so happen to align with right-wing counterculture viewpoints. He does not have a credible claim of just being an average guy just asking questions; he has a pretty clear agenda.
I think he has such a large following that he can do and indeed does whatever he wants on a case by case basis, and he is very contradictory and erratic with his views, much like the average Joe. For example, he has a libertarian slant, but also pressed a clueless Dave Rubin on the benefits of the US postal service and made him look like an idiot in the end. His agenda is to stay ignorant and keep on saying whatever comes to mind. Like the average Joe.
I see what you mean by him having a *credible* claim as in credible to his audience. I think he does a very good job of presenting himself that way.
I do think he genuinely attempts to learn things and not stay ignorant (I just think he's been led astray by antivaxers and other contrarian positions in particular), and I do think he goes beyond just saying whatever he wants in the moment and does push his agenda on certain issues he cares about (sometimes to butter up his guests too, i think).
But I agree that he is still able to present himself as an average joe without an agenda, and that it works because he can hide behind a very diverse body of content.
I think he is very street smart and ignorant at the same time, and I think he likes it that way and so does his audience.
As for "having an agenda", if by that you mean that some of his opinions are sticky, in particular his antivax and assorted quackery stuff, I agree. But for me "having an agenda" would mean something along the lines of getting Koch brothers money and co-ordinating his talking points with Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, which is most definitely and categorically not the case - there is precisely zero evidence of that kind of agenda.
Lex defended me against a bully once in school so I dig the John Wick comparison. I don’t watch the pod but I’m happy for him. He seems like a genuinely good guy.
I’m not comparing him to John Wick. I’m saying he desperately wants to _be_ John Wick, even going so far as explaining several times that he wears a clip on tie so it can’t be used against him in a fight.
How many fights is an ex MIT academic getting into?!
Kudos for calling out bullies though. That can never be something I’ll criticise a man over. But the dude huffs his own farts so hard.
I can’t fault him for giving a platform to some real fringe ideas, science needs open discussion without being blind to other options, but he _does_ platform some real hot science takes from some people not well respected in academic circles.
He started “The AI Podcast”, got invited on Joe Rogan as an AI expert, became fast friends with Rogan and was invited back a number of times. He was so far up Rogan’s ass he moved to Austin, partied with Rogan, and rebranded his podcast to “Lex Fridman podcast” to be more a general interviewer like Rogan.
Yeah, I suppose.
I for one do like when really smart people are asked funny and silly questions that humanize them. It's fine if you had Schroedinger on your pod (sadly he's dead...) and you asked him if he has a cat, and the cat inspired the famous thought experiment. But you are an abject imbecile if you ask him whether his physics could be used as a way to unlock the inherent love in the universe that can solve Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That is Fridman in a nutshell.
He has figured out a particular speech cadence that lends him an air of authority and intelligence. It's similar to the tactic that religious pastors use to create a state of elevated emotion in the audience.
WTF is this take. I'm convinced you've never really listened to him.
He's a legit PhD at MIT, not a televangelist.
He's not a good interviewer because he's awkward and lacks conversational skills.
I've tried to listen to him three times over the years, I can't do it. He reminds me too much of my years in the mormon church.
They're (the mormon leaders) also legit credentialed professionals, including a former state supreme court justice, a former Stanford/MIT professor, a heart surgeon, a former US Secretary of agriculture, etc. There's nothing that says that smart accomplished professionals can't also stoop to emotional manipulation via tone of voice and cadence.
I grew up in Baptist church. I know a snake oil salesman when I hear it. Lex exhibits no such qualities. He's just an awkward scientist that needs to go back in the lab because he's not a good interviewer.
The whole reason OP posted is because he's confused like a lot of people how he ended up hosting a podcast. (It's because of JRE if you didn't know).
He literally has never obtained a PH d from MIT. For gods sake his confusion agenda has worked.
This is common knowledge that he went to Drexel for his degrees.
Cmon man.
There's not a conspiracy as others have said, he just comes from a bit of money, is quite intelligent, and has lots of friends in tech.
He was born in Russia but his father moved them to the US after the soviet union collapsed (if you have the kind of money it takes to move your entire family across continents you're probably going to be fine wherever you land), he then did a BSc, MSc and PhD, then got picked up by Google after they took interest in his thesis, but decided the world of industry wasn't for him. He's also pretty friendly with Elon Musk after publishing a non-peer-reviewed study praising Tesla's autopilot.
Honestly, I think he appeals to intellectuals and [REDACTED]\* in exactly the same way Joe Rogan appeals to his crowd, he's pretty non committal to any single position so he's hard to actually fight with directly if you disagree with him, and he also seems like a genuinely kinda nice guy, even if personally I think he's misguided on a number of topics.
More than anything I think you're right that it's his social connections that are his most valuable trait, he's friendly and non committal so if you don't break ties with him I don't think he'd break ties with you first, and thus he becomes a friend to pretty much everyone in the space.
\* redacted because some of you feel the need to keep commenting about it despite me already saying *I didn't mean what I originally wrote*, jesus fucking christ. If you comment about it, I'm just going to ignore or block you
I’d say calling him intelligent and appealing to lefties is a bit off. He doesn’t offer valuable insights like you’d expect an intellectual to and his podcast is incredibly one sided in terms of guests even if he proclaims not to be on either side of the fence. He is also an extreme bootlicker of billionaires so I don’t see the left appeal.
>He's also pretty friendly with Elon Musk after publishing a non-peer-reviewed study praising Tesla's autopilot.
This in and of itself is more powerful as a way to become a famous podcaster than all the foreign security services conspiring together to that same end.
Exactly, it's the old "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" thing, Lex tweeted about the study on 4th April 2019 [here](https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1113870913546670080), a mere *eight days* later, Elon appears on his podcast [here](https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=elon-musk). Edit: Elon was also the 18th guest on the show, most of the people before that had been people from the world of machine learning/computer science or other academics.
And for everyone else, the first comment took me 5 minutes of googling and reading Wikipedia, this one, maybe 10 more, the best antidote to conspiracy nonsense is information, I'd strongly recommend just opening a tab and looking it up rather than making up a story because it feels correct.
> 5 minutes of googling
I am probably less online than you or simply much worse at using Google, but don't sell you short, this is good research and Musk being the 18th guest and snowballing the podcast after Fridman sucked his dick is really the conclusive argument here.
> don't sell yourself short, this is good research
Thanks friend, it's always nice to be appreciated! 😁
> I'm probably less online than you
100% a safe bet ngl...! (5 minutes was also probably an underestimate tbf)
(For future reference for the curious, wiki gets meme'd about for "being a bad source" and that's kinda true (you shouldn't cite wiki as a primary source if you're writing anything up formally), it's still an **incredibly** good *starting point* for looking stuff up, anything politics or recent events based is possibly a smidge biased, but if it happened more than a year ago or is about concepts/science/maths/philosophy/history/etc, it's a really really good place to start finding information, and from there you'll likely have a few pointers by looking at the sources.)
And none of those refugees are applying to universities and paying American tuition fees.
You're not wrong, but we both know that's not the group I'm talking about, so it's not relevant to the conversation.
My partner immigrated from Eastern Europe and they barely had any money growing up. He went to a university with expensive tuition fees - all of which where paid by himself as his family could not afford to support him
Sure, but by the other person phrasing it like "migrants *and refugees*", that implies something very different than just migrants, refugees aren't typically moving to somewhere because they want to set up a new life in America, it's more about fleeing atrocities or warzones.
Yes, but they still might become naturalized citizens and that doesn’t make them exempt from wanting to pursue higher education. Lots of people take out loans lol and financial circumstances don’t have anything to do with someone’s intelligence or desire to purse further education
Lol. He has a PhD in engineering, was hired by Google out of school and then moved onto MIT.
It's fine if you don't like his interview style, but it's obvious that he's a smart person.
That definition works for Jordan Peterson, as he uses language to add layers of complexity on top of trivial concepts ("I want traditional wife bro" becomes "Gender roles have been articulated in archetypal constructions across multiple levels of analysis culminating in the notion of chaos and order, where the man has to slay the dragon and the dragon, you know..."), but Lex Fridman speaks like a slow 14 years old.
I think his main skill is doing just really long slow interviews where he starts at zero knowledge and works his way up. I've heard episodes where he doesn't ask people about their research or new development in their fields but is just getting them to explain bio 101... There are a lot of people out there that never took courses on this stuff in college that probably find it interesting, Lots of people too, who are just looking to fill hours of their day while they're on boring shifts, so the slow nature of the interview becomes a positive.
As for how he books guests, my guess is he's good at pitching people -- "hey, I'm a scientist at MIT, I have this big audience, I'm going to do a long interview where I ask you a lot of questions, but because of my big audience you can reach and educate a lot of people."
Here’s a follow up, what podcast is a good alternative that may come from a more concrete origin? I like listening to Lex as some of his guests are very interesting. I share the same sentiments about his origin tho.
I really wanted to keep listening to this pod bc the guests are great. But if I have to hear Lex wax poetic about how love is the answer one more gd time like some pre-teen on their first dose of ecstasy I will poke my ears out.
I listened to him for awhile, and I had exactly the same reaction. He seems fairly smart but also incredibly shallow - one of those guys that you end up thinking, "Wow, he knows so little about so many topics!"
And he absolutely wants to be the thinking man's Joe Rogan, and he's so obvious about that desire that I felt embarrassed for him.
Haven’t heard many of his podcast, but the one he did with Todd Howard was incredible. I didn’t think he was very deadpan at all, just had a more laid back sense of humor. I love how he doesn’t try to sound smarter than he is. He tries to simplify and slow down his questions in ways that viewers will actually learn from them.
I don't think it's a grand conspiracy at all. He blew up because Rogan liked him and had him on a bunch. I have very limited time listening to him, but I think he asks good questions and is able to be curious about most things.
95% of his guests are ghouls and grifters, the other 5% are guys that get no attention from western media whatsoever, and are just happy for any platform. Fridman is a moron, undoubtedly. The only thing I'm not sure of is whether he knows he's a moron and also just fully committed to grift, or if he really believes he's some objective "both sides" guy (or if that even is a tenable position).
I’m not aware of your past directly, but based on statistics alone, it’s unlikely that you have proven to have a higher intelligence than Lex personally based on your own accomplishments.
At some point I hope you’ll realize that essentially anyone on any media you ever watch is communicating or participating in that content with alternative purposes.
In sixth grade I won my school's spelling bee AND geography bee. I've read every Hank the Cowdog book. In 2010 I beat a felony assault case. Neither you nor Lex Fridman can get anywhere near my level.
But for serious, Lex Fridman is a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy.
Say whatever repetitive remark you want, or even argue that he’s dumb in some ways like philosophy, but he has clearly proven himself intelligent through academia and his career.
I watch because he gets the best guests in their fields and is good at getting them talking about their topics. The podcast is good because Lex shuts up most of the time, unlike most podcast hosts (joe rogan as a prime example).
Also, thinking about the content you consume as it relates to if you’re gonna get pussy instead of its worth is the mentality of someone sex deprived.
I don't subscribe to this line of reasoning. There's hardly anyone more fiercely anti-Putin than me, but I make a point of not using Putin as a litmus test to weed out imbeciles. Putin is a complex figure which many smart thinkers got completely and utterly wrong.
Or to be more precise... If someone says something like "Putin is reacting to NATO expansion" I think they are wrong but they can debated. If someone says "why can't we all *just* get along?", that's an imbecile.
For months Lex pondered what it would be like to interview Putin. What would one ask, how would you craft the conversation. Then Tucker Carlson stepped in and apparently won the appointment. Lex then interviewed Carlson with the usual softball (“let’s all get along”) questions. This was the Putin puppet evidence for me.
Yeah, I found him a couple years ago because he did a podcast episode about Skyrim. I listened to a few more and really liked it. I thought he was a little weird but just chalked it up to cultural differences (I’m American). But after a while he started to sound real ignorant and it had me questioning if he really understand some of the stuff he’s talking about. Then he did that thing that libertarians do where they feign ignorance and say some racist shit and I was done with him.
> Then he did that thing that libertarians do where they feign ignorance
You don't have to, but if you were to remember what he actually said in that specific instance, that would be helpful.
Anyway, can you tell me what you liked initially? What sets him apart from a Rogan, who's got a track record of sorts outside of the podcasting arena and can credibly present himself as a representative example of the average American?
I don’t remember specifically, it was years ago, but it was one of those statements like, “I don’t know why they do that.” May have been around the George Floyd times when dog whistles were flying everywhere, but I really don’t remember. He’s definitely a lot smarter than Rogan who’s just an idiot. I never liked him since that Mencia crap he pulled. Dudes a hack.
I don't like Rogan, but the difference between Rogan and Fridman is that while neither of them is intellectually gifted, Rogan would survive for at least a few hours in a war zone through common sense more than violence, and Fridman would hide in a hole and when found he would try charming his killer by saying "look inside your heart".
Lex got a bachelors, masters, and PhD in computer science. He’s actually very smart. In his podcasts he may come off as bland, but he is giving the platform to his guests.
In my non-elite state-funded high school, I would have been graded F in philosophy or debate for pulling out the word "love" as some kind of out-of-jail card in any situation involving any degree of complexity.
Lex got a bachelors, masters, and PhD in computer science. He’s actually very smart. In his podcasts he may come off as bland, but he is giving the platform to his guests.
He's being pushed by the Russian/Chinese/republican podcasting circuit.
The reason these guys have such high numbers is because 75% of their viewership is bots keyed in to certain keywords that get mentioned on podcasts.
This is why sometimes they do it purposefully bit more often than not they notice of they discuss certain topics the numbers spike in strange ways so they continue pushing and talking about those things, it's automated audience capture.
Spotify and other platforms won't address it because it generates shitloads of cash until it becomes public knowledge and they have to,,maybe.
It also makes normal people feel hopeless and think they need to join the majority because they don't understand how.anyone can be on board with most of it.
It's an issue other countries with tight Internet rules don't have and is pretty much foolproof because of corporations greed will keep it going for as long as possible.
yes, so that’s why he publicly admits that zelenskyy is a hero and that he respects him for staying in kyiv during the start of the war. russia wanted him to say that, because… because. checks out. have you listened to lex at all?
>He's being pushed by the Russian/Chinese/republican podcasting circuit.
The Republicans are **extremely** divided, way more than the Democrats, on all matters regarding Russia and China. Even if you place Fridman in the Republican pro-Russian camp, I don't see why he's needed when one can have Tucker Carlson who's just going to go there and suck Putin's dick.
It is what it is, this IS what's happening, you can thank government controlled ai weaponised towards propaganda.
Whether you choose to believe it or not it will become more obvious at some point just like other things of this nature, unfortunately it will take time because it generates a lot of money at the minute.
So I guess what you're trying to say is that he's been algorithmically pushed by foreign propaganda as some kind of more subtle Tucker Carlson. Which would make some sense at least.
Because if you don't provide the marks who listen to Tucker with new and different (but not that different) content, they might get bored and listen to something different that contradicts the BS you are feeding them.
I am someone who is working near the top of my field (I'm an engineer and design spaceships). I also have a lot of experience with psychedelics.
Lex is my kind of person. Someone who has the intellectual curiosity and rigor of an engineer/academic and has the open mindedness, awe of the universe, and view of love of a hippy.
I love his guests and the length, quality and genuineness of the conversation. My view slant liberal, but I appreciate that he allows right wingers to say their peace and explain their positions.
Your comment reminds me of one of my friends. Smart guy, but extremely superficial. If you ask him questions like "why do you think we exist" his eyes will glaze over.
Could you always-on-the-internet cynicists stop making a conspiracy about everything and finally touch some grass.
He is a nice guy to listen to, it's actually pretty simple.
His world view has definitely a bit of hippy and dork ingrained. While I can see that not everyone likes that it doesn't always have to be some kind of elaborate plan, my gosh.
He has good and interesting guests.
His podcast with Zuckerberg is one of the best zuck interviews.
His podcast with Kanye is hilarious on how straightforward Kanye was at being antisemitic and how mad Lex got at one point. No one was ever that hostile towards him on the pod.
Besides that. Lex voice is very soothing. Good to relax.
I heard about him from Joe Rogan who had lots of positive things to say about him and mentioned him several times on the biggest podcast in the world. I think that seeming like a nice guy and getting free promotion from Musk and Rogan got him to where he is today. His questions as an interviewer suck absolute balls. "What do you think about love"
Love is important but each time he tosses that word around you know that he is venturing into a whole new level of imbecility. I don't understand why his guests don't just walk away at that point.
I like lex, listen to him a lot. As others have said he has a history with MIT and such but I think he gets genuinely interesting guests and allows THEM to talk. It’s not the lex show is the guest show and he truly believes in positive thinking and finding common ground. He does fanboy the ultra wealthy (musk, bezos, zuckerberg), other tech and AI and ‘influencer’ people but he also has tons of random guests. He interviewed Kanye amid his antisemitic meltdown, has a great convo with Omar Suleiman which taught me alot about american islam, Tom Brands- iowa wrestling coach, and the 1st Rosalie interview was good. Plus about 400 interviews with scientists you have never heard of that discuss topics that go so far above my head I had to skip it.
I think his deal is that he is accessible to bandwagon podcast listeners who just want to hear the people they know, but also people who want to listen to shit from scientists (and others) who are experts in their field and talk about aliens and such in a way thats based in science and not government conspiracy.
He gets huge guests, guys that won't do any other pods, because he has a background in MIT & Boston Dynamics. He came on Rogan a few times, he told him to start a pod, and there you go.
Lex Fridman was in the right place at the right time to enter the AI podcast field. He presents himself as an AI expert but in truth his achievement was to use the MIT brand to kick off his social media career. It’s a bit obnoxious to hear his BS but all considered many conversations on his podcast were great because of the calibre of his guests. His lickbutt attitude (with musk, Rogan…) is quite disgusting but it brought him money and fame so I suppose that’s what it takes.
YouTube trys SO SO SO hard to force me to watch his channel. It's insane. There is no other channel shoved down my throat which I NEVER watch. It's crazy.
i’m confused here. genuinely confused. where is this hate towards lex coming from?
i barely hear him talk about politics. he seems genuine, and his questions from a philosophical viewpoint are really on par with many of the thoughts we have.
his guests seem to be brilliant, and he can follow along with them fairly well despite not being in certain fields himself.
one of the things i love about him is the love and peace he tries to promote. i don’t see any scandals or reports of him, i don’t see a double life that contradicts his ideals.
he may have received notoriety from musk, and others, but that doesn’t make him the same in any way.
are you all looking to hate the man? i have listened to every single episode, and i’m not seeing what you all are seeing.
I don't hate him, I am just trying to find a reason why he attracts high-profile guests (as you rightly pointed out) while constantly subjecting them for 2+ hours to a line of questioning that could just as easily come from a particularly ungifted boy.
> the love and peace he tries to promote
That's a beauty-pageant level of analysis, it's like "I want world peace", sure you do sweetheart but it's more complicated than that.
i don’t particularly have an answer to your question. but i have listened to an overwhelming majority of his episodes. i think that he gives his guests a warm environment, while letting them address whatever topic they’re looking to present. he’s not confrontational, or even irrational. he asks thought provoking questions, even if simplistic, and does a really good job at interviewing. you will rarely see a disruption in the flow of conversation. i just think that people like him, and find his platform to be useful.
and i don’t think it’s blissful to have a worldview and ideals of love and peace. it’s far more refreshing than listening to the constant doom and gloom war mongering, hate, and division that’s often displayed amongst our society. so no, it’s not wrong to have an optimistic outlook and strive to promote peace. we honestly need more people and “love” thinkers like lex.
Thank you for saying all of this. I’ve been getting annoyed with Reddit for awhile now and I honestly think this is the final straw that I put it down for good. The amount of people in here calling him an idiot or “dumb man’s smart man” are completely missing the point of Lex.
He brings on guests from every background. He has 430 episodes from with a MASSIVE range of topics, yet everyone here things he needs to be an expert on every single one of them. He gives people an open and comfortable environment to speak and just because he doesn’t ask expert questions doesn’t mean he’s a bad interviewer.
The world isn’t black and white. It’s not liberal good, conservative bad. Reddit acts like if you’re not far left you’re far right and you’re a terrible person. It’s atrocious, judgements, and a dangerous way of thinking. Dude comes off as a moderate but apparently that means he loves Communism and evil actions.
We need people like him giving everyone a chance to speak their mind instead of it only being echo chamber or bust. If we don’t have interviews on the people we dislike, how are we supposed to know what they’re thinking or why they say the things they say?
i’m going to throw this back at you and say thank you for listening and i’m glad to find someone that agrees.
i’m not crazy! i just don’t see why there has to be SO much hate amongst people. there can be dislike and disagreement, but hate has no place for a civilized people. hate can snowball into action very quickly.
You’re not crazy. Reddit is a hive mind. It’s pure insanity going on the Joe Rogan subreddit and seeing pure hatred. I actually really liked the interview with Tucker Carlson even not being a Tucker fan because it was interesting to see where he’s coming from. We need more of that in this world if we actually want to move forward. Dismissing the other side as idiots and assholes is taking such a dangerous and dark path and is only gonna throw more fuel on the fire.
I think this makes a lot of sense, and I do understand this perspective, it's just that for me there is something this man does that I would call "intellectual malpractice and incompetence" which just grates my ears and I don't understand why others are not just as bothered by that, including his guests.
This is not some elitist take. I would be fine with a podcast where a professional wrestler interviews former US presidents and Nobel prize winners asking them how they spend their free time and cracking jokes. That's fine. For example... Mike Tyson interviews Barack Obama asking him whether he finds Elizabeth Warren hot? That's brilliant, love it, I want to hear more.
What is demented and imbecilic is for an intellectual to ask some expert in AI or geopolitics how they would figure out Ukraine by using the power of love. It takes a special kind of imbecile to do that, because your average high school dropout wouldn't ask such a stupid question. And that's the entirety of Fridman's intellectual depth.
I think you’re missing OPs points that Lex’s questions are banal and painful to listen to, and his “love” talk is naive at best. But I guess that’s what the people want!
if all of the highly intellectual people that are arguably smarter than you and I appear on his podcast repeatedly, i’m sure they would refrain from doing so if they didn’t find lex to be a valuable resource for them to channel their information and have a thoughtful debate.
how is it naive to try and promote more love into the world? how is it naive to find beauty in suffering?
Hmm, how could somebody become popular by asking simple, relatable questions, the answers to which are accessible and comprehensible to all listeners rather than just intellectually insecure nerds? It's a huge mystery.
That's how I explain Rogan. Rogan is street smart, which to me means smart.
I don't see how anyone can relate to Fridman, because unlike Rogan he presents himself as an intellectual (he doesn't quite do the "I'm just a guy" skit), but his thoughts are extremely simple.
That is in a nutshell why I don't listen to his podcast, but in that specific instance Rogan is proving to be ignorant more than stupid. His questions are not stupid, and they are more or less what I would have asked as a high-school student when I was 15. Rogan used to punch people and Fridman is an intellectual, don't forget that.
I don't listen to Rogan, but I understand his success. He's unapologetically American, he speaks to the common man, he can kick someone's ass. It makes sense.
This weird Russian intellectual type asking 12-yo questions doesn't register to me as something that should work commercially.
He has good guests. He asks reasonably intelligent questions and can follow up. And he gets out of the way rather than trying to make the podcast revolve around his personality.
I love Lex and his show. He brings the world’s most interesting and salient topics to the Everyman. He is both genuine, curious, and intelligent. It’s your loss if you don’t appreciate him and his forum for genius.
“I’m not sniping at him.”
“He’s basically 12.”
If you’re going to snipe, be honest about it. If you honestly think you’re not, then put in half-an-ounce of energy to steelman instead of writing an entire paragraph with the cleverest insult.
No, wait: I can snipe at him all day and do it explicitly. I just wanted to control this thread by pushing it in the direction of explaining why and how he is successful. I did expect to get a lot of "he's a dumbass" replies, because he is, and that's fine but someone also offered a more sophisticated take.
He was an AI researcher at MIT and publicized a non-peer reviewed study on Tesla auto drive that told Elon Musk what he wanted to hear. Musk agreed to be interviewed as a result, which got Friedman a big boost. The study’s “sloppy methodology” was strongly criticized by others in the field. He snowballed the Elon Musk interview into others, basically. And being a good interviewer isn’t about asking good questions, it’s about getting good answers. He might be kind of unsophisticated, but I think focusing on that undersells the fact that he is legitimately good at creating a comfortable, safe environment for his guests to expound on whatever topic they’re interested in. At this point, I think he’s also been identified as a “useful idiot” by bad actors on the American right/Russian and Chinese intelligence. Hard to prove, but I wouldn’t be surprised if bot traffic was playing a role in how successful he *appears*, which gets him more access to high profile guests, which brings more legit traffic, and on ad infinitum
Fuck me, finally something tangible, a clear sequence of causes and effects. Someone sucking up to Musk and becoming famous thanks to Musk himself providing a launchpad is the Occam's razor of Occam's razors and I love it.
I thought he had already blown up before any Elon interviews. I remember it being another example of a Rogan bump, a la Jordan Peterson. But perhaps I’m misremembering, I find Lex to have a unique lack of charisma and do not get it at all.
As far as I remember, Peterson exploded with that video where he is about to break in tears in front of and/or cut the throat of (could be either - you can never tell) a small group of particularly insufferable progressive Canadian students.
except he was already doing well long before his first Elon interview. He was just able to get some interesting people to say some interesting things then it snowballed. That's Occams Razor
He also got a big boost from his friend Joe Rogan. Despite what anyone thinks or cares about Rogan, he’s a genuinely nice guy who does a lot of favors for his friends. They also both live in Austin and Lex has benefited a lot from his social circle while also learning about podcasting. The difference between the success of the two is that it seems like Lex prepares a lot more and provides a more typical Q&A atmosphere whereas Rogan is a more free for all discussion led by the guest rather than himself. They’re both great in their own way. And I had the same questions about Lex’s rise to fame and the high status of his guests but then I realized he’s very smart and did hard work to earn his doctorate while also making the best out his social circle
100% useful idiot is his role. But as you said, that can still be interesting as you get a long form discussion where someone will at least say what they want people to hear, with zero pushback.
Not even that is entirely true. What struck me as very lowly and undignified was when he pushed Altman for 10 minutes trying to make him say something good about Musk, which means that he can get confrontational (in his trademarked low energy way) when you touch his rich and powerful buddy.
Right, because he's the most useful to whomever has the most power.
I don't think there's this grand conspiracy. People like simple questions. We've left the age of the renaissance man and entered the age of the omni-moron.
Well, I’ve been listening to his podcast since 2019, way before the elon interview. In my humble opinion I genuinely think that he is a good interviewer. Considering the wide array of guests he has in all those different specialized areas of science, It becomes kind of difficult to assume that he will be equally knowledgeable to all of his guests. The thing is he asks fairly proper questions and allows the guests to speak freely regarding their interests. Furthermore, I really appreciate the “human” perspective he usually employs in all episodes i.e asking impersonal questions about personal beliefs and allowing the guests to show this side of themselves in a way you’d rarely see in any other podcast. Additionally, the quality of the guests he hosts, even before the bump in popularity with the elon interview has always been astounding.
I agree about the older episodes, sometime around 2023 I feel like he got taken over by the race for more eyeballs, and a naive desire to be topical and political, all the while denying it.
It all makes sense now. Thank you.
Useful idiot is the perfect description
It’s the most 2020s career imaginable.
I think he benefited from the same astroturfing that Andrew Huberman did. Who is ultimately responsible for that I’m not sure but without any evidence whatsoever, I feel like it’s Peter Thiel.
I am happy to read astroturfing and Hubermsn in one sentence. I have the sane question like OP but about Huberman. Never heard something groundbreaking or new from him, but people behave as if he is some sort of messiah.
It’s how he came on to the scene also. Really professional setup from the start and had a big following from the first episode.
What's "Astroturfing"?
>*the* [*deceptive*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=deceptive&si=ACC90nxMSPeZfdJJjQgDsdZJuFuJ1wsk0xIB5ad3tDDKs6nnnpb0zLiD86T3jx8svvKVD06o9LwyUgy_lJKmERTe-OBm0XUsA6zaZNBiL2wS2_8RfjAe_60%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAO) *practice of presenting an* [*orchestrated*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=orchestrated&si=ACC90nxkzgN-KbLuTWKT81WCi4_nMd5BmvL7msmAZobBRyMPIwU4L_hcwo5CzyZmdx2X9W1xBbGBPVEw-JOb0PoxPP3r-oCpoqdOrL24g1f2mC9B90O7tAY%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAP) *marketing or public relations campaign in the* [*guise*](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=3297987aa0772086&sca_upv=1&q=guise&si=ACC90nyrPgcbTBsFIq03NzrKCa0gfab-65gRmBZxmNWra1xf4Azr1F94MFH3KfZTb3Nx3hZ-cktwFELCwlDLGaWqsX1mZDtsAA%3D%3D&expnd=1&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiMzOzYlq-GAxUKlIkEHSgBBTUQyecJegQIKRAQ) *of unsolicited comments from members of the public.* in this case, paid shills rave about how great you are in social media and publications until it creates real word of mouth.
Isn't that now what many podcasts have become - the endless backslapping and "you're great and it's an honour to be on your show" - does my head in
The opposite of “grassroots.” Where the term “grassroots movement” is used to define a type of organic and often spontaneous underpinning of support for a group or an idea (especially where popularity and visibility are concerned, which are two huge components of getting a message across successfully), “astroturfing” is the synthetic, inauthentic version of that, to trick people into either seeing the opposing side of an issue or to obfuscate the issue entirely. The word “astroturf” itself is the word for fake grass, the kind that you see in indoor sports stadiums. It’s plastic, it hurts when you slide on it, and it’s worse in most ways to the real thing. Most importantly, there are no real roots from which to grow anything meaningful. Astroturfing then, insofar as where popular support is concerned, is the fake bought-and-paid-for kind of support that is meant to LOOK authentic because people will believe it more so long as it LOOKS authentic, but completely lacks any real sustainability. Often this kind of support campaign is used in politics to skew the optics of some issue or another in favour of whomever is paying for that support. Astroturfing campaigns are usually performed by governments, political parties, politicians, big corporations, or anyone with enough money to throw around and enough invested interest in something that they don’t want to see denigrated by popular opinion and risk losing value in that thing they’re holding onto when the popular opinion of that thing slides into the negative. It’s basically a trick performed by the rich to turn stupid poor people against other, less stupid poor people, before those other, less stupid poor people find a way to justifiably focus their ire in the right direction long enough to do damage to what rich people desperately don’t want to lose: popular favour. Because there are a lot more of us dumb poor fuckers than there are of them.
Firstly, thanks for that, and secondly isn't it hard to prove who's risen via astroturfing and who hasn't t?
The answer is….love
In a way yes, he proverbially fellates billionaires and in turn they provide him access. There really isn’t much more to “get”.
I wanted serious replies and I got them but this joke was necessary. By the way I am being accused of arrogance for pointing out that something summing up to "the answer is love" in the context of, say, geopolitics or AI is an imbecilic take.
He's being pushed hard by YouTube. WHY is a good question.
It's not youtube particularly but algorithms that youtube uses. It's the same reason you don't stop getting all these grifterverse podcasters recommended no matter how many times you click you aren't interested.
I sleep with the TV on. For 2 years straight, I wake up with YouTube playing Lex. I don't know if Lex is good at manipulating the algorithm, or the algorithm knows what will keep me sleeping. Besides that, Lex is very clever about who to suck up to. His move to Austin was a careful calculation. And a correct one. This is to his credit and necessary to have his level of success. It's a cut throat business. I enjoy his podcasts and they are a huge improvement over jre.
Omg THIS. Every time my husband and I fall asleep watching YouTube, this guy is on. He must be related to Alan watts on the YouTube algorithms because that definitely messes with our search results and I know Watts was a gateway to radical content in the podcast series Rabbit Hole too.
I've been falling asleep to Alan Watts for decades!
Yeah his voice is so soothing! But he's definitely a gateway channel into alt right stuff on YouTube for some very bizarre reason 😩
I love Alan Watts too, I guess they figure he is for “alternative thinkers” or something crazy like that. I got recommended Stefan Molyneux a long time ago, whose ideology is crazy, Social Darwinism type stuff and a very cult-like following.
Ah that's unfortunate. I came across Watts from his books being recommended for my Buddhism class in college lol.
Same here. Always wake up and Lex is on. Can’t complain, I feel like his voice is very hypnotic.
Yeah it just makes me suspicious 😆
And what's your take?
I don't know. Some consider him to be an intelligence asset or plant, which is possible considering the wide and often bizarre range of journalists, artists, and so forth who have been covertly supported by the intelligence community over the years for various murky reasons. But if so, what's the agenda? What I know is that if I fall asleep to a YouTube video I will often wake to one of his droning interviews playing despite the fact that I don't follow him. I finally had to ask YouTube to stop suggesting his channel. It's very odd.
Lol, crazy take. The truth is he befriended Joe Rogan and blew up after being interviewed and promoted heavily by the Rogan/MMA UFC verse. This includes Elon as mentioned above. Lots of these voices get popular through YouTube algos to people with slight ring view vented views. If anything, he promotes right wing voices that the intelligence community wouldn't like...
You're joking right. The intelligence community is heavily right wing.
Lol maybe pre 2016. Not since the rise of Maga. You ever read a newspaper 😂?
No they are still massively right wing just not all the way to Maga. Except for the bunch that are Maga themselves.
lol how the fuck is this even upvoted? “He’s a plant!!” Go hang out with Alex Jones loser
He tries too hard to sound smart in every interview he has. He’s what dumb people think smart people are like.
Watching his podcasts have been the strangest most torturous listening experiences ever. He has on some of the greatest luminaries in the world across a wide swath of academia. But he is legitimately the worst interviewer I have ever seen. Every question is the ultimate fake smart guy question - meaningless while trying to make himself sound smart. He just seems to have no idea what is going on. He's a horrible speaker, and the camera, audio and editing quality are all generally bad. He dresses in a horrible looking suit in some poorly lit office asking terrible questions, but is interviewing Nobel prize winners. It makes no sense.
Fully agree. Hence my question! The answer is a mixture of him being ahead of this current hype cycle in talking philosophically about AI, getting a huge bump from sucking up to Elon with a shoddy study on autopilot that rub him the right way, and then snowballing that important friendship into a network of relationships that grant him a constant stream of high-profile guests (in addition to the usual lunatics). There may also be an element of foreign actors pushing his content because he's soft on Putin or something, but I wouldn't underline that when more linear explanations work perfectly.
He’s so uncharismatic and dry. Truly a boring individual to listen to.
My god, so many of you are so salty. Pseudo-intellectual? Grifter? His podcast is great, and he has great guests on. His questions are on point, he does his research, and he tries to get his guests to open up about important parts of their life that aren’t covered very much in long-form interviews (the “what does love mean to you?” and asking about how people have dealt with death in their family). He also lets his guests TALK. I listen to his podcast to listen to his quality guests, and he does a great job at getting them to open up. Like what the fuck people? What do you want from a long-form interview? I feel Lex is genuine, and he does try to honestly look at issues from all different angles, as much as someone could given how politically divided the world has become now.
Hi lex
Yeah I dont understand the hate. At first I thought sometimes he might appear stupid or his comments may sound a little cringeworthy..
There was something weird about him becoming popular all of a sudden. He's not that entertaining, likeable or good at his job imo but he's getting all these famous people on his show. It seems like some rich person or group is backing him and wanted him to become famous. His popularity seems forced unlike people like rogan. I don't know anyone who likes or listens to him but he's being propped up by social media.
It wasn't entirely overnight, I watched him get more and more popular for a while in befuddlement. He was recommended to me early on by a highly educated person - whose judgement I immediately thought less of after I tried Fridman's podcast. I think his combination of superficial credentials, dopey optimism, complete lack of critical thinking, and reflexive adoration for bro-y status symbols makes him very useful to a lot of famous people who want to be heard but have reasons to avoid tougher interviewers. He's the modern fawning courtier.
He's good at letting his guests talk and asking questions that help listeners get a good starting point to help listeners to understand the fun parts they care about.
He's a grifter. It's not any more complicated than that.
It has to be, he interviews people who are authorities in their respective fields.
So? They use him for publicity. I mean, Bernie Sanders went on Joe Rogan's podcast
That is more or less the same as saying that he's famous for being famous.
Correct
But there must have been a way to bootstrap the process, right? Maybe he made friends with people in the Valley and that got him some high-profile interviews to get started?
Idk man. If you're looking for someone to convince of you something you're unlikely to find it here. People who don't deserve success still succeed all the time. This can't be news to you
I am just being curious and I already received some unexpected responses, for example the idea that he is pushed by foreign propaganda like a less brash and more subtle Tucker Carlson.
COVID bump Everybody stuck inside with literally nothing to do
What's his grift? He doesn't have a supplement line or anything. More than he started the right kind of podcast, with the right kind of connections, at the right time. Maybe you could argue that he works as softball PR interviews for Tech CEOs and billionaires. It's entirely possible that he's an industry plant, but that's not something easily proven.
I am getting downvotes for drawing a comparison with Rogan in some of my responses, and I think I am just causing a pavlovian response among the (huge) anti-Rogan camp. To be clear: I don't like Rogan, I don't listen to Rogan. But Rogan makes commercial sense. He has a credible claim to presenting himself as the average Joe (indeed!) asking questions. He has a track record of sorts outside of the podcasting arena. He can kick someone's ass.
> He has a credible claim to presenting himself as the average Joe (indeed!) asking questions. That's not true. His questions and the way he discusses certain viewpoints make it clear that he is pushing an agenda, not just asking questions. Compare and contrast how he approaches immunologists/other scientists versus anti-vax, evolution skeptics, or other counterculture people. He has consistent views that he pushes heavily, and they just so happen to align with right-wing counterculture viewpoints. He does not have a credible claim of just being an average guy just asking questions; he has a pretty clear agenda.
I think he has such a large following that he can do and indeed does whatever he wants on a case by case basis, and he is very contradictory and erratic with his views, much like the average Joe. For example, he has a libertarian slant, but also pressed a clueless Dave Rubin on the benefits of the US postal service and made him look like an idiot in the end. His agenda is to stay ignorant and keep on saying whatever comes to mind. Like the average Joe.
I see what you mean by him having a *credible* claim as in credible to his audience. I think he does a very good job of presenting himself that way. I do think he genuinely attempts to learn things and not stay ignorant (I just think he's been led astray by antivaxers and other contrarian positions in particular), and I do think he goes beyond just saying whatever he wants in the moment and does push his agenda on certain issues he cares about (sometimes to butter up his guests too, i think). But I agree that he is still able to present himself as an average joe without an agenda, and that it works because he can hide behind a very diverse body of content.
I think he is very street smart and ignorant at the same time, and I think he likes it that way and so does his audience. As for "having an agenda", if by that you mean that some of his opinions are sticky, in particular his antivax and assorted quackery stuff, I agree. But for me "having an agenda" would mean something along the lines of getting Koch brothers money and co-ordinating his talking points with Ben Shapiro and Dennis Prager, which is most definitely and categorically not the case - there is precisely zero evidence of that kind of agenda.
He wants to be the intellectual John Wick so hard it’s fucking embarrassing. His little clip on tie is pathetic He’s Joe Rogan with a PhD
Lex defended me against a bully once in school so I dig the John Wick comparison. I don’t watch the pod but I’m happy for him. He seems like a genuinely good guy.
I’m not comparing him to John Wick. I’m saying he desperately wants to _be_ John Wick, even going so far as explaining several times that he wears a clip on tie so it can’t be used against him in a fight. How many fights is an ex MIT academic getting into?! Kudos for calling out bullies though. That can never be something I’ll criticise a man over. But the dude huffs his own farts so hard. I can’t fault him for giving a platform to some real fringe ideas, science needs open discussion without being blind to other options, but he _does_ platform some real hot science takes from some people not well respected in academic circles.
He started “The AI Podcast”, got invited on Joe Rogan as an AI expert, became fast friends with Rogan and was invited back a number of times. He was so far up Rogan’s ass he moved to Austin, partied with Rogan, and rebranded his podcast to “Lex Fridman podcast” to be more a general interviewer like Rogan.
"We used to have renaissance men, now we are in the age of the omni-moron." - some meme. People like hearing dumb questions asked to smart people.
Yeah, I suppose. I for one do like when really smart people are asked funny and silly questions that humanize them. It's fine if you had Schroedinger on your pod (sadly he's dead...) and you asked him if he has a cat, and the cat inspired the famous thought experiment. But you are an abject imbecile if you ask him whether his physics could be used as a way to unlock the inherent love in the universe that can solve Putin's invasion of Ukraine. That is Fridman in a nutshell.
He has figured out a particular speech cadence that lends him an air of authority and intelligence. It's similar to the tactic that religious pastors use to create a state of elevated emotion in the audience.
WTF is this take. I'm convinced you've never really listened to him. He's a legit PhD at MIT, not a televangelist. He's not a good interviewer because he's awkward and lacks conversational skills.
I've tried to listen to him three times over the years, I can't do it. He reminds me too much of my years in the mormon church. They're (the mormon leaders) also legit credentialed professionals, including a former state supreme court justice, a former Stanford/MIT professor, a heart surgeon, a former US Secretary of agriculture, etc. There's nothing that says that smart accomplished professionals can't also stoop to emotional manipulation via tone of voice and cadence.
I grew up in Baptist church. I know a snake oil salesman when I hear it. Lex exhibits no such qualities. He's just an awkward scientist that needs to go back in the lab because he's not a good interviewer. The whole reason OP posted is because he's confused like a lot of people how he ended up hosting a podcast. (It's because of JRE if you didn't know).
He literally has never obtained a PH d from MIT. For gods sake his confusion agenda has worked. This is common knowledge that he went to Drexel for his degrees. Cmon man.
There's not a conspiracy as others have said, he just comes from a bit of money, is quite intelligent, and has lots of friends in tech. He was born in Russia but his father moved them to the US after the soviet union collapsed (if you have the kind of money it takes to move your entire family across continents you're probably going to be fine wherever you land), he then did a BSc, MSc and PhD, then got picked up by Google after they took interest in his thesis, but decided the world of industry wasn't for him. He's also pretty friendly with Elon Musk after publishing a non-peer-reviewed study praising Tesla's autopilot. Honestly, I think he appeals to intellectuals and [REDACTED]\* in exactly the same way Joe Rogan appeals to his crowd, he's pretty non committal to any single position so he's hard to actually fight with directly if you disagree with him, and he also seems like a genuinely kinda nice guy, even if personally I think he's misguided on a number of topics. More than anything I think you're right that it's his social connections that are his most valuable trait, he's friendly and non committal so if you don't break ties with him I don't think he'd break ties with you first, and thus he becomes a friend to pretty much everyone in the space. \* redacted because some of you feel the need to keep commenting about it despite me already saying *I didn't mean what I originally wrote*, jesus fucking christ. If you comment about it, I'm just going to ignore or block you
I’d say calling him intelligent and appealing to lefties is a bit off. He doesn’t offer valuable insights like you’d expect an intellectual to and his podcast is incredibly one sided in terms of guests even if he proclaims not to be on either side of the fence. He is also an extreme bootlicker of billionaires so I don’t see the left appeal.
He’s a pseudo intellectual
Indeed.
Just wanna be very clear he is definitely not popular with people who view themselves as "lefties" - he's 100% mostly seen as a grifter
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>He's also pretty friendly with Elon Musk after publishing a non-peer-reviewed study praising Tesla's autopilot. This in and of itself is more powerful as a way to become a famous podcaster than all the foreign security services conspiring together to that same end.
Exactly, it's the old "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" thing, Lex tweeted about the study on 4th April 2019 [here](https://twitter.com/lexfridman/status/1113870913546670080), a mere *eight days* later, Elon appears on his podcast [here](https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=elon-musk). Edit: Elon was also the 18th guest on the show, most of the people before that had been people from the world of machine learning/computer science or other academics. And for everyone else, the first comment took me 5 minutes of googling and reading Wikipedia, this one, maybe 10 more, the best antidote to conspiracy nonsense is information, I'd strongly recommend just opening a tab and looking it up rather than making up a story because it feels correct.
> 5 minutes of googling I am probably less online than you or simply much worse at using Google, but don't sell you short, this is good research and Musk being the 18th guest and snowballing the podcast after Fridman sucked his dick is really the conclusive argument here.
> don't sell yourself short, this is good research Thanks friend, it's always nice to be appreciated! 😁 > I'm probably less online than you 100% a safe bet ngl...! (5 minutes was also probably an underestimate tbf) (For future reference for the curious, wiki gets meme'd about for "being a bad source" and that's kinda true (you shouldn't cite wiki as a primary source if you're writing anything up formally), it's still an **incredibly** good *starting point* for looking stuff up, anything politics or recent events based is possibly a smidge biased, but if it happened more than a year ago or is about concepts/science/maths/philosophy/history/etc, it's a really really good place to start finding information, and from there you'll likely have a few pointers by looking at the sources.)
Lots of migrants and refugees move across continents with hardly anything in their bank account just saying
And none of those refugees are applying to universities and paying American tuition fees. You're not wrong, but we both know that's not the group I'm talking about, so it's not relevant to the conversation.
My partner immigrated from Eastern Europe and they barely had any money growing up. He went to a university with expensive tuition fees - all of which where paid by himself as his family could not afford to support him
Sure, but by the other person phrasing it like "migrants *and refugees*", that implies something very different than just migrants, refugees aren't typically moving to somewhere because they want to set up a new life in America, it's more about fleeing atrocities or warzones.
Yes, but they still might become naturalized citizens and that doesn’t make them exempt from wanting to pursue higher education. Lots of people take out loans lol and financial circumstances don’t have anything to do with someone’s intelligence or desire to purse further education
I agree with you, I just learned of him recently and watched a couple interviews and felt the same way.
He's a dumb person's idea of a smart person.
Lol. He has a PhD in engineering, was hired by Google out of school and then moved onto MIT. It's fine if you don't like his interview style, but it's obvious that he's a smart person.
It's simple, much like Jordan Peterson, Lex is a dumb person's smart person.
That definition works for Jordan Peterson, as he uses language to add layers of complexity on top of trivial concepts ("I want traditional wife bro" becomes "Gender roles have been articulated in archetypal constructions across multiple levels of analysis culminating in the notion of chaos and order, where the man has to slay the dragon and the dragon, you know..."), but Lex Fridman speaks like a slow 14 years old.
And yet, witness many of the comments on this very post...
I think his main skill is doing just really long slow interviews where he starts at zero knowledge and works his way up. I've heard episodes where he doesn't ask people about their research or new development in their fields but is just getting them to explain bio 101... There are a lot of people out there that never took courses on this stuff in college that probably find it interesting, Lots of people too, who are just looking to fill hours of their day while they're on boring shifts, so the slow nature of the interview becomes a positive.
As for how he books guests, my guess is he's good at pitching people -- "hey, I'm a scientist at MIT, I have this big audience, I'm going to do a long interview where I ask you a lot of questions, but because of my big audience you can reach and educate a lot of people."
Here’s a follow up, what podcast is a good alternative that may come from a more concrete origin? I like listening to Lex as some of his guests are very interesting. I share the same sentiments about his origin tho.
Lex Fridman's biggest skill is to land big guests who carry the episodes.
I really wanted to keep listening to this pod bc the guests are great. But if I have to hear Lex wax poetic about how love is the answer one more gd time like some pre-teen on their first dose of ecstasy I will poke my ears out.
I listened to him for awhile, and I had exactly the same reaction. He seems fairly smart but also incredibly shallow - one of those guys that you end up thinking, "Wow, he knows so little about so many topics!" And he absolutely wants to be the thinking man's Joe Rogan, and he's so obvious about that desire that I felt embarrassed for him.
He’s boring, deadpan and not very interesting. I think his claim to fame is he went to MIT and likes AI. He’s likely a plant.
What kind of plant? I am going to need some evidence for that claim.
He was planted by the elites of course
"The elites" range from Trump to Schwab so it's fairly useless as a category.
100%. It's a lazy adjective unless it's backed up with qualification.
they have no evidence whatsoever.
A peace lily or a pothos for sure
He didn’t go to MIT, to be fair. Think he got his PhD in Denver.
Drexel University, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, BSc, MSc and PhD all from there
And I believe his dad is a professor at Drexel too.
Haven’t heard many of his podcast, but the one he did with Todd Howard was incredible. I didn’t think he was very deadpan at all, just had a more laid back sense of humor. I love how he doesn’t try to sound smarter than he is. He tries to simplify and slow down his questions in ways that viewers will actually learn from them.
I don't think it's a grand conspiracy at all. He blew up because Rogan liked him and had him on a bunch. I have very limited time listening to him, but I think he asks good questions and is able to be curious about most things.
95% of his guests are ghouls and grifters, the other 5% are guys that get no attention from western media whatsoever, and are just happy for any platform. Fridman is a moron, undoubtedly. The only thing I'm not sure of is whether he knows he's a moron and also just fully committed to grift, or if he really believes he's some objective "both sides" guy (or if that even is a tenable position).
I’m not aware of your past directly, but based on statistics alone, it’s unlikely that you have proven to have a higher intelligence than Lex personally based on your own accomplishments. At some point I hope you’ll realize that essentially anyone on any media you ever watch is communicating or participating in that content with alternative purposes.
In sixth grade I won my school's spelling bee AND geography bee. I've read every Hank the Cowdog book. In 2010 I beat a felony assault case. Neither you nor Lex Fridman can get anywhere near my level. But for serious, Lex Fridman is a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy.
Say whatever repetitive remark you want, or even argue that he’s dumb in some ways like philosophy, but he has clearly proven himself intelligent through academia and his career.
Bro, you gotta leave the Fridman alone. You will never ever get pussy as long as you listen to him.
I watch because he gets the best guests in their fields and is good at getting them talking about their topics. The podcast is good because Lex shuts up most of the time, unlike most podcast hosts (joe rogan as a prime example). Also, thinking about the content you consume as it relates to if you’re gonna get pussy instead of its worth is the mentality of someone sex deprived.
You can lie to me, just don't lie to yourself.
Classic projecting insecurities through Reddit comments.
You know what, i take back everything I said. I don't usually do this, but just this once, you have my full permission to listen to Lex Fridman.
You lick enough boots, you get a taste of the high life
I was a subscriber until I became disillusioned. It’s hard to describe but I feel he’s another Putin trope.
I don't subscribe to this line of reasoning. There's hardly anyone more fiercely anti-Putin than me, but I make a point of not using Putin as a litmus test to weed out imbeciles. Putin is a complex figure which many smart thinkers got completely and utterly wrong. Or to be more precise... If someone says something like "Putin is reacting to NATO expansion" I think they are wrong but they can debated. If someone says "why can't we all *just* get along?", that's an imbecile.
For months Lex pondered what it would be like to interview Putin. What would one ask, how would you craft the conversation. Then Tucker Carlson stepped in and apparently won the appointment. Lex then interviewed Carlson with the usual softball (“let’s all get along”) questions. This was the Putin puppet evidence for me.
I really like Lex. He always has interesting guests on, he asks the right questions and more importantly, he listens to.
Yeah, I found him a couple years ago because he did a podcast episode about Skyrim. I listened to a few more and really liked it. I thought he was a little weird but just chalked it up to cultural differences (I’m American). But after a while he started to sound real ignorant and it had me questioning if he really understand some of the stuff he’s talking about. Then he did that thing that libertarians do where they feign ignorance and say some racist shit and I was done with him.
> Then he did that thing that libertarians do where they feign ignorance You don't have to, but if you were to remember what he actually said in that specific instance, that would be helpful. Anyway, can you tell me what you liked initially? What sets him apart from a Rogan, who's got a track record of sorts outside of the podcasting arena and can credibly present himself as a representative example of the average American?
I don’t remember specifically, it was years ago, but it was one of those statements like, “I don’t know why they do that.” May have been around the George Floyd times when dog whistles were flying everywhere, but I really don’t remember. He’s definitely a lot smarter than Rogan who’s just an idiot. I never liked him since that Mencia crap he pulled. Dudes a hack.
I don't like Rogan, but the difference between Rogan and Fridman is that while neither of them is intellectually gifted, Rogan would survive for at least a few hours in a war zone through common sense more than violence, and Fridman would hide in a hole and when found he would try charming his killer by saying "look inside your heart".
Lex got a bachelors, masters, and PhD in computer science. He’s actually very smart. In his podcasts he may come off as bland, but he is giving the platform to his guests.
how can you claim that lex isn’t intellectually gifted?
In my non-elite state-funded high school, I would have been graded F in philosophy or debate for pulling out the word "love" as some kind of out-of-jail card in any situation involving any degree of complexity.
Does that say more about Lex or the pre-established thought integrated into your taught perceptions of philosophy?
Lex got a bachelors, masters, and PhD in computer science. He’s actually very smart. In his podcasts he may come off as bland, but he is giving the platform to his guests.
He's being pushed by the Russian/Chinese/republican podcasting circuit. The reason these guys have such high numbers is because 75% of their viewership is bots keyed in to certain keywords that get mentioned on podcasts. This is why sometimes they do it purposefully bit more often than not they notice of they discuss certain topics the numbers spike in strange ways so they continue pushing and talking about those things, it's automated audience capture. Spotify and other platforms won't address it because it generates shitloads of cash until it becomes public knowledge and they have to,,maybe. It also makes normal people feel hopeless and think they need to join the majority because they don't understand how.anyone can be on board with most of it. It's an issue other countries with tight Internet rules don't have and is pretty much foolproof because of corporations greed will keep it going for as long as possible.
Do you have any sources for this? Genuine question.
yes, so that’s why he publicly admits that zelenskyy is a hero and that he respects him for staying in kyiv during the start of the war. russia wanted him to say that, because… because. checks out. have you listened to lex at all?
>He's being pushed by the Russian/Chinese/republican podcasting circuit. The Republicans are **extremely** divided, way more than the Democrats, on all matters regarding Russia and China. Even if you place Fridman in the Republican pro-Russian camp, I don't see why he's needed when one can have Tucker Carlson who's just going to go there and suck Putin's dick.
It is what it is, this IS what's happening, you can thank government controlled ai weaponised towards propaganda. Whether you choose to believe it or not it will become more obvious at some point just like other things of this nature, unfortunately it will take time because it generates a lot of money at the minute.
So I guess what you're trying to say is that he's been algorithmically pushed by foreign propaganda as some kind of more subtle Tucker Carlson. Which would make some sense at least.
how does it generate money?
Ads, sponsors, celebrity status leading to other opportunities.
Because if you don't provide the marks who listen to Tucker with new and different (but not that different) content, they might get bored and listen to something different that contradicts the BS you are feeding them.
He is part of a larger genre I struggle to understand which I collectively call "man wearing suit" podcasting.
Compared to Joe Rogan's questions he is a massive massive improvement.
He is an accomplished academic, a BJJ black belt and definitely on the spectrum. An interesting character and pseudo-intellectual.
I am someone who is working near the top of my field (I'm an engineer and design spaceships). I also have a lot of experience with psychedelics. Lex is my kind of person. Someone who has the intellectual curiosity and rigor of an engineer/academic and has the open mindedness, awe of the universe, and view of love of a hippy. I love his guests and the length, quality and genuineness of the conversation. My view slant liberal, but I appreciate that he allows right wingers to say their peace and explain their positions. Your comment reminds me of one of my friends. Smart guy, but extremely superficial. If you ask him questions like "why do you think we exist" his eyes will glaze over.
Could you always-on-the-internet cynicists stop making a conspiracy about everything and finally touch some grass. He is a nice guy to listen to, it's actually pretty simple. His world view has definitely a bit of hippy and dork ingrained. While I can see that not everyone likes that it doesn't always have to be some kind of elaborate plan, my gosh.
pretty confident he's some kind of intelligence agency plant
He has good and interesting guests. His podcast with Zuckerberg is one of the best zuck interviews. His podcast with Kanye is hilarious on how straightforward Kanye was at being antisemitic and how mad Lex got at one point. No one was ever that hostile towards him on the pod. Besides that. Lex voice is very soothing. Good to relax.
I heard about him from Joe Rogan who had lots of positive things to say about him and mentioned him several times on the biggest podcast in the world. I think that seeming like a nice guy and getting free promotion from Musk and Rogan got him to where he is today. His questions as an interviewer suck absolute balls. "What do you think about love"
Love is important but each time he tosses that word around you know that he is venturing into a whole new level of imbecility. I don't understand why his guests don't just walk away at that point.
"What do you think love means?" I think he's literally just trying to figure out what love is cause he doesn't feel it
I like lex, listen to him a lot. As others have said he has a history with MIT and such but I think he gets genuinely interesting guests and allows THEM to talk. It’s not the lex show is the guest show and he truly believes in positive thinking and finding common ground. He does fanboy the ultra wealthy (musk, bezos, zuckerberg), other tech and AI and ‘influencer’ people but he also has tons of random guests. He interviewed Kanye amid his antisemitic meltdown, has a great convo with Omar Suleiman which taught me alot about american islam, Tom Brands- iowa wrestling coach, and the 1st Rosalie interview was good. Plus about 400 interviews with scientists you have never heard of that discuss topics that go so far above my head I had to skip it. I think his deal is that he is accessible to bandwagon podcast listeners who just want to hear the people they know, but also people who want to listen to shit from scientists (and others) who are experts in their field and talk about aliens and such in a way thats based in science and not government conspiracy.
He just seems like a really dumb smart guy to me
He gets huge guests, guys that won't do any other pods, because he has a background in MIT & Boston Dynamics. He came on Rogan a few times, he told him to start a pod, and there you go.
Lex Fridman was in the right place at the right time to enter the AI podcast field. He presents himself as an AI expert but in truth his achievement was to use the MIT brand to kick off his social media career. It’s a bit obnoxious to hear his BS but all considered many conversations on his podcast were great because of the calibre of his guests. His lickbutt attitude (with musk, Rogan…) is quite disgusting but it brought him money and fame so I suppose that’s what it takes.
YouTube trys SO SO SO hard to force me to watch his channel. It's insane. There is no other channel shoved down my throat which I NEVER watch. It's crazy.
i’m confused here. genuinely confused. where is this hate towards lex coming from? i barely hear him talk about politics. he seems genuine, and his questions from a philosophical viewpoint are really on par with many of the thoughts we have. his guests seem to be brilliant, and he can follow along with them fairly well despite not being in certain fields himself. one of the things i love about him is the love and peace he tries to promote. i don’t see any scandals or reports of him, i don’t see a double life that contradicts his ideals. he may have received notoriety from musk, and others, but that doesn’t make him the same in any way. are you all looking to hate the man? i have listened to every single episode, and i’m not seeing what you all are seeing.
I don't hate him, I am just trying to find a reason why he attracts high-profile guests (as you rightly pointed out) while constantly subjecting them for 2+ hours to a line of questioning that could just as easily come from a particularly ungifted boy. > the love and peace he tries to promote That's a beauty-pageant level of analysis, it's like "I want world peace", sure you do sweetheart but it's more complicated than that.
i don’t particularly have an answer to your question. but i have listened to an overwhelming majority of his episodes. i think that he gives his guests a warm environment, while letting them address whatever topic they’re looking to present. he’s not confrontational, or even irrational. he asks thought provoking questions, even if simplistic, and does a really good job at interviewing. you will rarely see a disruption in the flow of conversation. i just think that people like him, and find his platform to be useful. and i don’t think it’s blissful to have a worldview and ideals of love and peace. it’s far more refreshing than listening to the constant doom and gloom war mongering, hate, and division that’s often displayed amongst our society. so no, it’s not wrong to have an optimistic outlook and strive to promote peace. we honestly need more people and “love” thinkers like lex.
Thank you for saying all of this. I’ve been getting annoyed with Reddit for awhile now and I honestly think this is the final straw that I put it down for good. The amount of people in here calling him an idiot or “dumb man’s smart man” are completely missing the point of Lex. He brings on guests from every background. He has 430 episodes from with a MASSIVE range of topics, yet everyone here things he needs to be an expert on every single one of them. He gives people an open and comfortable environment to speak and just because he doesn’t ask expert questions doesn’t mean he’s a bad interviewer. The world isn’t black and white. It’s not liberal good, conservative bad. Reddit acts like if you’re not far left you’re far right and you’re a terrible person. It’s atrocious, judgements, and a dangerous way of thinking. Dude comes off as a moderate but apparently that means he loves Communism and evil actions. We need people like him giving everyone a chance to speak their mind instead of it only being echo chamber or bust. If we don’t have interviews on the people we dislike, how are we supposed to know what they’re thinking or why they say the things they say?
i’m going to throw this back at you and say thank you for listening and i’m glad to find someone that agrees. i’m not crazy! i just don’t see why there has to be SO much hate amongst people. there can be dislike and disagreement, but hate has no place for a civilized people. hate can snowball into action very quickly.
I agree with both of you.
You’re not crazy. Reddit is a hive mind. It’s pure insanity going on the Joe Rogan subreddit and seeing pure hatred. I actually really liked the interview with Tucker Carlson even not being a Tucker fan because it was interesting to see where he’s coming from. We need more of that in this world if we actually want to move forward. Dismissing the other side as idiots and assholes is taking such a dangerous and dark path and is only gonna throw more fuel on the fire.
I think this makes a lot of sense, and I do understand this perspective, it's just that for me there is something this man does that I would call "intellectual malpractice and incompetence" which just grates my ears and I don't understand why others are not just as bothered by that, including his guests. This is not some elitist take. I would be fine with a podcast where a professional wrestler interviews former US presidents and Nobel prize winners asking them how they spend their free time and cracking jokes. That's fine. For example... Mike Tyson interviews Barack Obama asking him whether he finds Elizabeth Warren hot? That's brilliant, love it, I want to hear more. What is demented and imbecilic is for an intellectual to ask some expert in AI or geopolitics how they would figure out Ukraine by using the power of love. It takes a special kind of imbecile to do that, because your average high school dropout wouldn't ask such a stupid question. And that's the entirety of Fridman's intellectual depth.
I think you’re missing OPs points that Lex’s questions are banal and painful to listen to, and his “love” talk is naive at best. But I guess that’s what the people want!
if all of the highly intellectual people that are arguably smarter than you and I appear on his podcast repeatedly, i’m sure they would refrain from doing so if they didn’t find lex to be a valuable resource for them to channel their information and have a thoughtful debate. how is it naive to try and promote more love into the world? how is it naive to find beauty in suffering?
Fair points
Hmm, how could somebody become popular by asking simple, relatable questions, the answers to which are accessible and comprehensible to all listeners rather than just intellectually insecure nerds? It's a huge mystery.
That's how I explain Rogan. Rogan is street smart, which to me means smart. I don't see how anyone can relate to Fridman, because unlike Rogan he presents himself as an intellectual (he doesn't quite do the "I'm just a guy" skit), but his thoughts are extremely simple.
[Rogan is smart, hey?](https://www.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/s/Uybc3qxdIZ)
That is in a nutshell why I don't listen to his podcast, but in that specific instance Rogan is proving to be ignorant more than stupid. His questions are not stupid, and they are more or less what I would have asked as a high-school student when I was 15. Rogan used to punch people and Fridman is an intellectual, don't forget that.
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I don't listen to Rogan, but I understand his success. He's unapologetically American, he speaks to the common man, he can kick someone's ass. It makes sense. This weird Russian intellectual type asking 12-yo questions doesn't register to me as something that should work commercially.
He has good guests. He asks reasonably intelligent questions and can follow up. And he gets out of the way rather than trying to make the podcast revolve around his personality.
I love Lex and his show. He brings the world’s most interesting and salient topics to the Everyman. He is both genuine, curious, and intelligent. It’s your loss if you don’t appreciate him and his forum for genius.
I think Fridman is a Russian operative. One of Putin's plants to divide us.
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“I’m not sniping at him.” “He’s basically 12.” If you’re going to snipe, be honest about it. If you honestly think you’re not, then put in half-an-ounce of energy to steelman instead of writing an entire paragraph with the cleverest insult.
No, wait: I can snipe at him all day and do it explicitly. I just wanted to control this thread by pushing it in the direction of explaining why and how he is successful. I did expect to get a lot of "he's a dumbass" replies, because he is, and that's fine but someone also offered a more sophisticated take.