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Notes -
Summary of the Lex Fridman-President Zelensky interview
https://youtube.com/watch?v=u321m25rKXc&t=1142s
This interview has attracted a lot of controversy in the weeks leading up to it, as Fridman has said that he wanted to conduct the interview in Russian, which they both speak fluently. Zelensky did not want to conduct the interview in Russian for symbolic reasons that are probably quite easy to understand. In the lead up of the interview, Fridman has a 10 minute introduction in which he tries to justify why wanted to speak Russian, and then the first ten minutes of the real interview is him trying to convince Zelensky. His main argument is that if Zelensky speaks Russian, an interpreter would not be needed, and more of Zelensky's wit and dynamism would come through, and that there wouldn't be a 2-3 second delay in their communication. Fridman even made a warning popup saying "2-3 second delay!" when Zelensky began speaking Ukrainian and it was being interpreted. I've only seen one other Lex Fridman interview, with Milei, but there were no such warnings and disclaimers despite how it was live interpreted between Spanish and English. Zelensky does say he can explain some concepts in Russian if Fridman wants clarification but refuses to do the interview in general in Russian. Zelensky says he's also fine if Fridman speaks in Russian the whole time or switches between Russian and English. Also Fridman does understand a bit of Ukrainian himself but is not fluent.
Everyone I've seen, including Zelensky and myself, has seemed rather confused/upset by Fridman's very strong desire to do the interview in Russian, since the symbolic concerns seem to obviously outweigh those. Especially since using an interpreter is not really a big deal. Especially for a Lex Fridman interview, his interviews are known for him getting really excellent guests, but he just asks them a few vague guests and do 95% of the communicating themselves. There's little benefit to Fridman understanding Zelensky slightly better when all the listener's are going to get it dubbed anyway. Adding more fire to people thinking Fridman is a Russian sympathizer, in his introduction he goes out of his way to emphasize the nuance of the conflict and that he just wants peace for both sides. Many people would call the Russia-Ukraine war a fairly one sided war of aggression by Russia where peace could be achieved whenever Russia decided to withdraw from Ukrainian borders.
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In general, I got the impression Zelensky was trying hard to flatter the people he needed too and put Ukraine in the best possible light. Not that I can blame him, given his position. Lex Fridman seemed really weird in how he seemed very sympathetic to Russia but not outright saying that, despite how obvious it was.
Fridman is one of the worst popular interviewers of all time. Even his interviews with highly interesting people are either very boring or much less interesting than hearing them talk on their own, which is terrible exactly because the purpose of a good interviewer is to get the person to say/admit something interesting.
It’s actually interesting that he challenges Zelensky a bit (I assume because he still feels some kind of kinship/sympathy for Russia) because he almost never does this on any other interview.
The real enigma is Fridman’s own popularity (which is the reason, along with him being a generous interviewer, why so many important people come on his show). Why do so many young men like him? Rogan has a whiff of charisma, interesting stories of his own, a charming everyman’s naïveté and an act that works well with a lot of interview subjects. Fridman sounds like someone who doesn’t care reading from a script, like a high school student forced to give a speech or chair a panel, which is insane for one of the world’s most prolific interviewers. He’s not masculine/dominant and “alpha”. He’s not cosmopolitan and well-read. He doesn’t have the smooth-talking flow of a seasoned hustle bro. He’s just nothing.
He's interesting (YMMV and obviously does, but I find him super engaging) and he tries to be open minded when he talks to people. I will never understand why people criticize him saying "oh he never pushes his guests". That's a feature, not a bug. I can't stand interviewers who just badger guests trying to get them to say/not say certain things. Lex has some questions to set up discussions, and then he just tries to listen to people and understand them. He does push back on occasion, but mostly he's trying to see things from his guest's point of view (even when you can tell he doesn't particularly agree with it). That is rare and enjoyable in this day and age.
I more or less agree, but it's one thing to not antagonize your guest, or try to catch them off-guard, and another to add basically nothing and just have them talk their book. I think a great point of comparison is his interview with The Zuck vs the one from Dwarkesh Patel. While they're a bit apart in time, so there were some developments between them, they're both generally very friendly, but Dwarkesh just gets so much more out of Zuck by actually engaging him on the subjects he's talking about.
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