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Comment by jsackmann | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea whether this applies to Lex, or if there are better explanations, but... he probably just asks. In my limited experience with my little podcast in the sports analytics world, I'm consistently surprised by who says yes, and how few people say no. ~90% of the people I've asked to be a guest have said yes, and those who have said no haven't done so because they're "too famous" or something like that.

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I think that he's had way too many billionaires, top researchers, authors, computer scientists, and celebrities to attribute it to just asking.

Working at MIT and having a small history of good guests probably helps.

The guests themselves make value judgments of whether this polite, motivated, knowledgeable, reasonably boring guy with a sizeable audience and good credentials can help them to spread their own messages without much journalistic pushback.

His audio quality is also not bad.

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Personal opinion: The interviews are far too long. I'd like an informed opinion of the best (as opposed to most famous or controversial or odd) guests. If a biology expert told me Lex's interview with Eric Lander was a Must Listen, I'd value that more than, "oh! It's three hours of Elon Musk, but his personal values are well-known and haven't changed."

I would listen to a few very interesting conversations unedited OR a larger collection of reasonably interesting, short, heavily curated conversations. I enjoy hearing about subjects I normally don't encounter, and some of his guests bring this experience. Listening to months of audio to find these gems is not for me.

I prefer a small group of podcasts that have shorter episodes, entertaining/engaging hosts, interesting guests,

Personally I find 20 to 30 minute interviews the sweet spot. Sometimes I’ll go a bit shorter and sometimes a bit longer but for 1:1 something like an hour feels too much most of the time.

I like the long conversations, because it’s easier to be a fake person for 30 minutes, but comparatively it’s hard to fake being a genuine person or expert on a topic for 2 or 3 hours.

I'm sure it's a fault of my attention span but I tend to be a fan of 30 minute conference presentations and otherwise distilling topics down to about that length. Otherwise, it often feels like you're dragging things out. I'm not having a date with the person. I want to discover for my audience what key insights they have.

I do sometimes have longer podcast conversations with people I know well but 20-30 minutes feels like the natural sweet spot for my typical interview.

I want brisket that is delicious after you microwave it, but it tends to require a long time in the oven.

But I don't have 2 or 3 hours to listen in to conversations of strangers and then decide if they are worthwhile or not.

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