In my opinion, asking clever questions actually is quite important in an interviewer and Lex Fridman is no Joe Rogan in terms of letting the other person talk.
Yeah I've only seen a few clips of him but the questions he asks are so boring, and asking good questions is THE essential skill for a good interviewer.
He had John Carmack on his show which piqued my interest, but he was asking questions like "what's the best programming language" and "what's the best IDE." Such a blown opportunity to be asking useless first year CS student questions like that when interviewing a great mind like Carmack.
He once asked Jim Keller 'What is Love?'.
His interview with Grant Sanderson is cathartic in that Grant has very little patience for that kind of questioning, when Lex goes on about 'isn't e^iπ so pretty', Grant responds to the effect 'not if you actually understand it, it's math'.
I saw a quote on reddit that does a great job helping me understand my distaste for these kinds of questions: 'The man who loves everything and everyone, loves only himself.'
Those are solid examples, you’re right. The “isn’t this math thing beautiful?” and “don’t you love love?” digressions are banal, but I give him a pass because a) the guests are interesting people who say interesting things and b) in Lex’s world I guess it’s unusual to slow down and smell the roses.
It makes sense to get touchy-feely with Bert Kreischer, who’s basically an alcoholic gigantic third grader. Or with Michael Malice because they’re goofy best buds.
Still it’s nice when a serious guest kind of shrugs and sticks to the topic.
I can’t listen to Neil Degrasse Tyson talk because of that same kind of “the wonder of the poetry of the cosmic ballet” nonsense.
Not being able to ask clever questions is the problem though, because once you've heard one of his guests speak elsewhere, you're getting a basic repeat through Lex.
His podcast is alright for people who aren't in any of the domains and therefore just want overviews. Anything else, and it's about as useful as listening to an actor repeat the summary for the movie they're promoting for the millionth time.
He claims to not have any bias whatsoever and be an absolute centrist, which leads to him being a pawn on whatever his guests want to promote while also asking the most awful, bland questions he can possible think of
It's pretty clear he's playing up some kind of "rainman autistic AI savant" persona, and also, he exaggerates his credentials. On his website he describes himself as:
>AI researcher working on autonomous vehicles, human-robot interaction, and machine learning at MIT and beyond
Which could lead one to erroneously assume that he attended MIT, or even has a degree from MIT, when neither of which are true.
If someone says they're "working at <institution>", I don't assume some counterposition to their statements, like that they're really trying to say that it's their alma mater. I interpret it to mean that they're working there.
He speaks slowly (listen on 2x for regular person speed) and he’s trite, but he interviews people and lets them talk.
That’s good enough. And it’s especially good enough in that he gets big names to come talk.
He doesn’t need to be a genius or to ask clever questions. Merely letting Chris Lattner geek out for 2 hours on audio about his project is a win.