Dwarkesh Podcast - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Deep, substantive interviews on interesting topics with interesting subjects. The conversations at substantive, assume that you’re reasonably intelligent and informed and don’t waste time with filler.

Dwarkesh Patel is one of the most thoroughly prepared and best informed interviewers in the field. Unlike Rogan, who just rambles and interjects his own nonsense, or Lex Friedman, who is horribly boring, Dwarkesh does the hard work of really understanding what his guests are talking about and bringing out the best in them. As a retired professor in the Ivy League and MIT used to the highest level of intellectual discussions, now working with AI, I look forward to listening to every one of his podcasts.

Great interviewer initially and used to be 5 stars. The latest episode with Leopold is giving air time and support to friends with shaky ideas over accomplished guests. It’s actually hard to listen to the amount of validation of credentials (how many times is it worth mentioning that this guy was valedictorian in college) and awkward in-jokes they make instead of talking about the subject at hand in a serious manner.

This would be a 1 star if it he didn’t have recent good guests like Zuck and still have previous great episodes to make up for it, but I fear Dwarkesh has jumped the shark or stepped into the deep end in a topic that he’s not ready for and his “friends” are willing to use him as a mouthpiece since he’s impressed by the credentialism rather then arguments. High potential still if he’s able to realize this and course correct.

Right alongside with Conversations with Tyler as the best podcast for people who want to skip the fluff and listen to content you can’t find anywhere else.

The guests are great. But the host asks questions that are interesting to him rather than what is interesting for his audience. There is no narrative, he is so well versed in the subject that his questions jump into the middle of a subject and the audience is left trying to catch up…why is he asking this question, what is the background behind it? I listened to an episode on Napoleon thinking I would learn something and at the end, I couldn’t recall a single thing that I had learned. It wasn’t that I already knew so much about Napoleon, it was that they never gave any background or context to what they were discussing. Same with his interview with Sarah Paine…it opens with him peppering her with “what if” scenarios as if we’re gaming out a metaverse of scenarios. I. Oils tell that he’s been thinking of these thing but he doesn’t explain why, the context, buildup the scenario to educate the audience to the point where we understand why his question or his scenario is interesting or important. The host provides no narrative, no cohesive thread, and seems to just revel in his conversations for his own personal enjoyment. He gets something out of doing the podcast but unfortunately I got very little out of it other than recognizing that he’s an interesting person with an inquisitive mind who talks with great guests and records those conversations.