Can you give me an exmaple of an intelligent discussion there? I’m genuinely curious. I’ve watched parts of a few of his chats with interesting people, such as Sam Harris, but I didn’t last long, as they veered immediately into vapidity and stayed there. (I agree he’s civil, though.)
Isn't that his appeal though? He lets the guests speak without much interjection beyond "wow" and "really". Unlike many other media hosts, he doesn't have his thumb on the scale trying to steer conversations towards his own political leanings.
And while he's featured a few conspiracy theorists, they're a minority and are balanced out by credentialed 'serious' scientists.
That's all beside the point though - purging conversations from the internet is bad, and the culture that cheers this on is worse.
I listen occasionally. I generally find his conversations interesting, and sometimes even enlightening. But it can be frustrating to hear 3 hours of unchallenged straw man beatdowns from his more polemic guests. There's an argument that it's actually not noble to let bullshit go unchallenged. That it's a tacit endorsement.
Most of his guests are nothing like that. His interview with Brian Cox (the physicist) is one of my personal favourites, to give one of many examples. Sure, sometimes he's got relatively kooky people on, but often it's people whose ideas are unusual but still rationally debatable. The downside of stranding outside your own echo chamber is that often it'll be a waste of time. But the upside is that occasionally it'll change your mind, and that's certainly what I'm after.
I think he is generally open to different ideas and plays the devil's advocate even when he agrees to have meaningful conversation.
The podcast is also pleasantly unexciting (personal taste) and informative. He goes to the deep questions that interest him from a technical level as well as personal (what is the meaning of life etc.).
yeah, his questions and comments are quite often naive and cringe. But he has incredible guests, from all sorts of domains, and lets them talk for hours.
His guests can definitely be really interesting, but I feel like it isn't so much because of him "navigating difficult conversations" and more of "not making them have difficult conversations". He gives them a platform to voice sometimes very questionable viewpoints for hours mostly unchallenged.
> I've not run across one yet that wasn't well-reasoned,
Then you cannot listen to many. Joe speaks so much bollox with an authoritative air that if you didn't know the subject you would think that Joe did, when many many times he clearly does not.
I agree they are interesting when he lets the guest speak (even if completely disagree with them) or it is on something Joe does know about / has researched. But that is far from all the time.
Joe also has a habit of ignoring the guest at times and carrying on down his own little conversation alley, usually when he got too stoned - which ruins the conversation IMO
Conversations with Tyler is quite good - I don't agree with him on many things politically but he has a very idiosyncratic way of looking at things that has informed my own worldview
I'd love to hear an actual study on this kind of phenomenon. For some reason he really triggers people on two primary fronts, his 'monotone' manner of speaking, and the simplistic and philosophical questions he adds to every conversation. There's a third but relatively small cohort that seem to be experiencing some kind of transitive distrust from his previous encounters with Joe Rogan and/or Elon Musk.
I get not liking his or any other podcast. I don't get the need to belittle the dude or enter into some weird conspirational thinking about his motivations.
Oh man, that's unlucky. I've watched or listened to 100+ hours of Sam Harris and JBP, and that conversation was the only one I can think of where I was frustrated and felt it was a waste of time. It's really not representative.
I'd urge you to listen to their 2nd conversation or watch any JBP lecture.
Sam Harris impresses me in his podcasts when he has guests he disagrees with that the disagreements can become intense, but when they reach the end, he's back to friendly and cordial.
It's often hard to disagree on content without anger or other personal emotions, but his doing it inspires me to improve my skill at it.
I'm curious where you see that he asks questions without an agenda. Do you not feel that in several of his discussions (ie: Sanjay Gupta) he tends to ask questions indicating a very clear one? And regarding his choices of guests, do you think perhaps there's a bias towards more fringe beliefs?
He's a garbage-quality thinker himself, but he's always been great at getting people to let their guard down and start talking and he has pretty good selection of people on his show.
I agree, it's interesting for him to bring up the layperson superficial critiques and other ideas that float around a given subject that many people may not ask outright because of their oftentimes fringey natured questions. But they still wonder about those questions nevertheless. Joe gets all that stuff aired out more or less.
He's not perfect. Though I find it pleasant that he has a mostly neutral point of view as that's when you can get the most information out of a discussion. I think in many traditional media formats, the opposite is the case, which is what we're used to. Like for e.g. Charlie Rose, or any of the biased media outlets today. One can possibly argue that information has always been manipulated and public discourse as well since the dawn of civilization. So, I find having an interviewer be open to multiple possibilities or interpretations is refreshing. He's not completely robotic, or neutral though, he has a slight liberal bias, and doesn't address criticism of said guest many times especially when they are a friend, like Joe Rogan, or Elon Musk. But, it is a scientifically progressive podcast that is very illuminating in many fields for non-experts, and the public. And I have learned a lot and enjoyed listening to it.
Thank you for saving me a few hours. Really appreciate it.
I'm starting to listen to fewer and fewer of his podcasts. For me the decline has been has been obvious with some of his recent guests. I thought the Aella one would be very interesting, but as another commenter mentioned, he had an "impress me" vibe the entire time and couldn't even connect a little bit with the guest. Then the Sam Harris one exposed his weaknesses very obviously. If you want to see him being defensive and not say any of substance, that's a good one to listen to. Sam makes a lot of great points and he just goes on and on about the "power of love" and how we are all "human beings" trying to be "understood". After a while it gets irritating because it's like hearing a broken record player. Him unable to either provide a coherent argument to why he aired the Kanye episode or admit it was a mistake was very telling. That episode has more Elon worshipping as well. He tried to get Sam to reconnect with Elon and become friends again. lol.
His postcasts are on average above Joe's quality (don't listen to anymore, but used to years ago), but I think it's primarily because of whom he selects as his guests. At least Joe was significantly more entertaining. Might try going back to that.
He has intriguing diverse guests and let them do most of the speaking, for an extended period of time.
It's refreshing.
There are plenty of people I would never have listened to otherwise, because they are outside my bubble or just because they would represent something against my view of the world.
But because I also saw people I view as interesting or people I already knew from somewhere else, and because they have the time and space to elaborate, I gave the others a chance.
This allowed me to be exposed to new topics, points of views, etc, in a relaxing and human format.
Just like regular media, it's full of bullshit. But I'm full of it too.
It does, however, feel way more genuine than regular media.
Why can't he impartially present his guests ideas and let his audience decide for themselves what is BS and what is not? Whose job is it to police thought crimes?
If you want the mainstream viewpoint on whatever someone is talking about, go read or watch the mainstream, there's no shortage of people telling you what is acceptable already.
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