Small update in favor of the importance of brand. And, correspondingly, against the importance of merit.
I was just listening to Joe Rogan’s interview of Robert Sapolsky. Partly because I like Sapolsky, and partly because I myself tried starting a podcast, failed at it + found interviewing to be a much more difficult skill than I previously expected, am now curious about what makes a good interviewer, and have tried listening to a few Joe Rogan interviews because he’s supposed to be a great interviewer.
But I have been pretty unimpressed with Rogan. In his interview of Sapolsky, he jumps right into the topic of toxoplasmosis, which is a cat parasite. My thoughts:
If you had a spectrum of all the possible topics you could talk to Robert Sapolsky about, this one would maybe be at the 10th-20th percentile in terms of interest to the general population, I’d guess.
I found the conversation to be very difficult to follow and was tempted to give up on it. And I expect that I am probably around the 80th-90th percentile in terms of listeners who would be able to follow it.
I got the impression that some of the questions he asked were motivated by him wanting to sound smart rather than by what would best steer the conversation in the direction that would most benefit the podcast.
This all makes me suspect that Rogan isn’t actually that great of an interviewer, and that the success of his podcast is largely due to a positive feedback loop where the podcast is successful, interesting people want to be on it, more success, more incentive for interesting people to be on it.
It’s not a large update though, just a small one. I didn’t think any of this through too carefully and I recognize that success is a tricky thing to understand and explain. And also that Rogan does have a good reputation as an interviewer, not just as having a good podcast.
Small update in favor of the importance of brand. And, correspondingly, against the importance of merit.
I was just listening to Joe Rogan’s interview of Robert Sapolsky. Partly because I like Sapolsky, and partly because I myself tried starting a podcast, failed at it + found interviewing to be a much more difficult skill than I previously expected, am now curious about what makes a good interviewer, and have tried listening to a few Joe Rogan interviews because he’s supposed to be a great interviewer.
But I have been pretty unimpressed with Rogan. In his interview of Sapolsky, he jumps right into the topic of toxoplasmosis, which is a cat parasite. My thoughts:
If you had a spectrum of all the possible topics you could talk to Robert Sapolsky about, this one would maybe be at the 10th-20th percentile in terms of interest to the general population, I’d guess.
I found the conversation to be very difficult to follow and was tempted to give up on it. And I expect that I am probably around the 80th-90th percentile in terms of listeners who would be able to follow it.
I got the impression that some of the questions he asked were motivated by him wanting to sound smart rather than by what would best steer the conversation in the direction that would most benefit the podcast.
This all makes me suspect that Rogan isn’t actually that great of an interviewer, and that the success of his podcast is largely due to a positive feedback loop where the podcast is successful, interesting people want to be on it, more success, more incentive for interesting people to be on it.
It’s not a large update though, just a small one. I didn’t think any of this through too carefully and I recognize that success is a tricky thing to understand and explain. And also that Rogan does have a good reputation as an interviewer, not just as having a good podcast.