> and the “Let's backup and explain for the audience” stick is annoying and patronizing
Disagree with this strongly, I really liked when you did this, I often don't have the time to pause and do immersion learning, and it really helps to hear how experts describe some of these things, plus it makes these episodes longer, which is great.
Always thought you were the greatest interviewer I'd ever seen, even told you before the Bezos bomb! It's awesome to see the show get huge like this.
I really like the idea of "discovering" to a wide audience obscure authors and thinkers. I found The Lunar Society by looking for Cowen and Caplan interviews, but stayed because I knew most likely than not the next guest (usually unknown to me) would be interesting and you would make them say interesting things.
> I'm looking at close to a day+ of work per ad. So I've been asking myself, well, if ads are going to take this much time anyways, wouldn't it be better to use that time to make content for paid subscribers?
By the time i got to the end of this note i was so guilty i had to subscribe. Hope it helps. Among the more recent likes for me were Aschenbrenner and Chollet. Subtract the interviews and we are spending our time in a similar manner. And i have copied your use of LLM's to help interact with long reads. Best wishes. ---clm
You're an inspiration to so many of us Dwarkesh. Your podcast was my first introduction to so many incredibly smart people, and also showed me a different side of famous people. Hoping for many more incredible episodes.
One problem with paywalling is it might make the podcast less attractive to the kind of guests you want. If they’re going to make a trip to see you in person, they’re probably going to be less inclined for 1/10th the audience. And to the extent that people want to talk to you because they’ve run into your stuff, there’s that problem too.
IMO the biggest strength of your podcast is that you don't just invite guests to talk about their work, but you actually challenge them and bring a real conversation to the table. In line with this, I think your best bet will be to continue interviewing people you personally find interesting on topics you've thought enough about to have moderately strong opinions on.
I hope the next slew of podcast guests are less famous and are not on the typical podcast circuit.
1. Never paywall a podcast. Most of what makes a podcast great is the discussion-next-day it generates. Sam Harris podcasts used to be my #1 go to podcasts. Once he went inside a paywall, his reach reduced and people simply stopped talking about his podcast and the guest he had for that week. You will reduce your reach if you paywall. You will not generate a core. The core will dwindle away.
2. "There are many podcasters who have been interviewing experts in every domain for years and years. And they don’t seem that much smarter as a result. You can’t just hope to become some giga-generalist by chatting up a bunch of experts. The default path for a podcaster is that you don’t learn that much over the years and spend most of your time on topics which are easy to talk about in a shallow way (corruption of institutions, culture war, etc)."
I'd love to see you interview Michael Huemer on why he's a skeptic of AI risk. He did an interview for Niklas Anzinger for Vitalia that was fascinating and made me rethink AI a bit.
While you’re in China, you should meet the folks at the Centre for Long Term Priorities, Brian Tse and Kwan Yee in particular. They have the best grasp as to what’s going on in China re: AI. Happy to make the introduction if that’d be helpful!
I look forward to reading your interview preparation write-ups. A related idea would be synthesis write-ups, where you let readers/viewers in on how your model of a certain cluster of ideas is evolving, and where you plan to take the exploration next.
I would claim that the sholto trenton episode just had more interesting content inside it than the episode with Zuckerberg etc. It felt more "insider". I think even if you backed up it would have been one of the best episodes, but immersion learning is def underrated.
> and the “Let's backup and explain for the audience” stick is annoying and patronizing
Disagree with this strongly, I really liked when you did this, I often don't have the time to pause and do immersion learning, and it really helps to hear how experts describe some of these things, plus it makes these episodes longer, which is great.
Didn't come off as patronizing at all
Putting in a request for you to write about the evolution of language
Always thought you were the greatest interviewer I'd ever seen, even told you before the Bezos bomb! It's awesome to see the show get huge like this.
I really like the idea of "discovering" to a wide audience obscure authors and thinkers. I found The Lunar Society by looking for Cowen and Caplan interviews, but stayed because I knew most likely than not the next guest (usually unknown to me) would be interesting and you would make them say interesting things.
> I'm looking at close to a day+ of work per ad. So I've been asking myself, well, if ads are going to take this much time anyways, wouldn't it be better to use that time to make content for paid subscribers?
Please!
By the time i got to the end of this note i was so guilty i had to subscribe. Hope it helps. Among the more recent likes for me were Aschenbrenner and Chollet. Subtract the interviews and we are spending our time in a similar manner. And i have copied your use of LLM's to help interact with long reads. Best wishes. ---clm
You're an inspiration to so many of us Dwarkesh. Your podcast was my first introduction to so many incredibly smart people, and also showed me a different side of famous people. Hoping for many more incredible episodes.
One problem with paywalling is it might make the podcast less attractive to the kind of guests you want. If they’re going to make a trip to see you in person, they’re probably going to be less inclined for 1/10th the audience. And to the extent that people want to talk to you because they’ve run into your stuff, there’s that problem too.
IMO the biggest strength of your podcast is that you don't just invite guests to talk about their work, but you actually challenge them and bring a real conversation to the table. In line with this, I think your best bet will be to continue interviewing people you personally find interesting on topics you've thought enough about to have moderately strong opinions on.
I hope the next slew of podcast guests are less famous and are not on the typical podcast circuit.
Such a sucker for the process posts. Will revisit this when I eventually go full time on my own thing.
1. Never paywall a podcast. Most of what makes a podcast great is the discussion-next-day it generates. Sam Harris podcasts used to be my #1 go to podcasts. Once he went inside a paywall, his reach reduced and people simply stopped talking about his podcast and the guest he had for that week. You will reduce your reach if you paywall. You will not generate a core. The core will dwindle away.
2. "There are many podcasters who have been interviewing experts in every domain for years and years. And they don’t seem that much smarter as a result. You can’t just hope to become some giga-generalist by chatting up a bunch of experts. The default path for a podcaster is that you don’t learn that much over the years and spend most of your time on topics which are easy to talk about in a shallow way (corruption of institutions, culture war, etc)."
Every one knows who this is.
I'd love to see you interview Michael Huemer on why he's a skeptic of AI risk. He did an interview for Niklas Anzinger for Vitalia that was fascinating and made me rethink AI a bit.
While you’re in China, you should meet the folks at the Centre for Long Term Priorities, Brian Tse and Kwan Yee in particular. They have the best grasp as to what’s going on in China re: AI. Happy to make the introduction if that’d be helpful!
Would you mind sharing how you find tutoring resources?
Thank you and love the work!
I look forward to reading your interview preparation write-ups. A related idea would be synthesis write-ups, where you let readers/viewers in on how your model of a certain cluster of ideas is evolving, and where you plan to take the exploration next.
Could you please share the hardware and physics curriculum? Best wishes!
I would claim that the sholto trenton episode just had more interesting content inside it than the episode with Zuckerberg etc. It felt more "insider". I think even if you backed up it would have been one of the best episodes, but immersion learning is def underrated.