My provisional answer is that I'd host a conversation between experts.
For example, I'm now very curious about Apple Silicon M1 wrt to Java's Memory Model and Project Loom (structured concurrency). But I don't know nearly enough to even ask smart questions, much less understand the answers.
So my dream future perfect interview would have Ron Pressler, Doug Lea, and one or two people really smart about M1 (the only name I know is Dan Luu) sit around and chat it up.
I'd ask them open ended questions, like "What's new and different?" "What happens next?" "What are you excited about?"
The conversations would likely happen over multiple sessions and different mediums. Because the experts would share and ask each other stuff which would prompt followups.
As podcast host, I'd try to be catalyst, try to remove myself from the convo as much as possible. I can't think of any examples, role models. While I'm a huge fan of Ezra Klein and Adam Gordon Bell (Corecursive), I'm not confident I could lean in like they do.
One tactic both Lex and AGB do really well is prompt their guests to explicitly define jargon. I suspect that some of the perceptions of Lex's ignorance are him trying to make topics more accessible. eg Working close to the metal with AI, I'm quite confident Lex knows about branch prediction.
I think you are right about Lex and also thanks for the compliment!
Even if you know about branch prediction, then asking the guest to explain it, maybe even pretending not to know about it, is a great way to have concepts introduced and make things more approachable.
Lex wouldn't be as popular as he was if he didn't have a good sense for the level of knowledge his ideal listener has about the subject.
I don’t see a problem with that. Lex’s podcast is aimed at a general technical audience of different backgrounds, so he often asks questions on behalf of listeners who are technical but might not be experts in the field. To be fair, machine learning and CPU design are vastly different fields with little overlap.
I mean, I have a PhD and had no idea what branch prediction was until I listened to that podcast.
Lex has a PhD in machine learning but doesn't seem to be familiar with branch prediction, apparently.