There’s so much great stuff out there, Friedman seems to get disproportionate attention. Personal attacks aside, I find him tedious to listen to and he often comes across as if he hasn’t done even cursory reading of his guest’s work. It often feels like a sophomore in college waxing about “big ideas” with little substance to back them up. Even at 2x speed I found the talks low signal.
Most of my YouTube comes from mainstream pop science like Veritasium and Arvin Ash; science hackers like Nile Red and CodysLab; geeky DIY like Ben Eater; repair porn like My Mechanics; and whatever YouTube's recommendation engine throws my way based on those entry points.
But nonetheless as a podcast, I judge more on the basis of the conversation and the guest he had, and in both the metrics he is really great. He is really good in making the guests speak in easy and intuitive terms and making them speak the idea behind the discovery/invention. He sometimes even irritates the people in asking question behind the intuition when many guests are more accustomed with saying strictly provable statements in other places. And that is a part that is really missing in the world and that gives the sense of what's going on, instead of talking just formally provable sentences and terse description of their work.
Lex is a humble, open minded podcaster that tries to bring all sorts of topics on the table. Even uncomfortable ones like Anarchy and Religion. This is exactly what we need in times of a massive echo chambers of left and right.
I consider Lex to be one of the best, polite, and cordial interviewer that doesn’t inject too much of their personal agenda into the interviewee’s space (like Joe Rogan).
One of the best interviews was with Jim Keller where it gets a little confrontational and see how he deals with it.