Dwarkesh Patel: preference

Transcript context

…Okay, next one. What is your strategy, method, or criteria for choosing guests? So, the most important thing is, do I wanna spend one to two weeks reading every single thing you have ever written, every single interview you ever recorded, talking to a bunch of other people about your research? Because I get asked by people who are quite influential often to be like, "Would you have me on your podcast?" and more often than not, I say no, for two reasons. One is just, okay, you're influential, it's not fundamentally that interesting as an interview prospect. I don't think about the hour that I'll spend with you. I think about the two weeks, because this is my life, right? The research is my life, and I wanna have fun while doing it. So is this gonna be an interesting two weeks to spend? Is it gonna help me with my future research or something? And the other is, big guests don't really matter that much if you just look at what are the most popular episodes or, what in the long run helps a podcast grow. By far my most popular guest is Sarah Payne, and she, before I interviewed her, was just a scholar, who was not publicly well-known at all, and I just found her books quite interesting. So my most popular guests are Sarah Payne and then Sarah Payne, Sarah Payne, Sarah Payne because ... I have electric chairs with her. And by the way, from a viewer-a-minute adjusted basis, I host the Sarah Payne Podcast where I occasionally talk about AI. That's funny.…

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