Curtis Yarvin's Worst Interview

And why Conversations With Tyler is so good

I wrote this memo last year. At the time, Yarvin was toying with the idea of starting a podcast, and had me write about a then-recent podcast appearance of his. I produced a review, along with some thoughts on what makes a good interview show.

Given recent events (and my content drought), now seems a suitable time to dust it off from my back catalog.

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Hi Curtis. I’ve watched most of your interviews, and I’m pretty sure Triggernometry is in the bottom 30%. The podcast’s name alone justifies a penalty of at least 10%.

The hosts are dead-weight. They basically have no perspective of any kind. Like, there might not be a single important subject either of them knows more about than you. It was almost sad seeing you try to connect with Kisin over knowing a lot about Russia and him barely responding.

Their questions are imprecise, sweeping, and predictable. In a certain way, it's almost like the questions don’t matter at all. Here is a list of what you brought up in the Triggernometry interview:

1. I am foreign service brat

2. Pitching Hoppe

3. How our ancestors would see us

4. The Red Pill

5. Pitching Oxfordianism

6. Pitching old German aristocratic right

7. Parable of the Utah gentile

8. Parable of the 15-year-old Nazi

9. Pitching Stalin’s War

10. “Leaving the frame”

11. Almost all WWII conspiracies are true except for Holocaust Denial

12. Pitching Human Smoke (and some other cool WWII sources)

13. Etymology of the word Progressive

14. American Communism as CTY plot for world domination

…I’ll stop at the 25-minute mark. This is what happens if a host just “lets a guest talk.” All Kisin got from you are some anecdotes you can find ten other places online. Who would choose to listen to this instead of any of the other appearances you’ve made?

It’s not your fault. Few of your other recent appearances have this issue.

Tyler Cowen has said, “What makes for a good podcast is the dramatic tension between the guest and host.” Triggernometry has no narrative tension. You aren’t challenged, pushed out of your comfort zone, or compelled to act in unexpected ways—even people who haven’t heard about gentiles in Utah a million times can tell you aren’t phased by the questions they’re throwing at you. I’d still listen while playing video games or cooking or something, but I could never see myself choosing to look at the video. This is the main issue.

There are other minor ones, too. For comedians, the hosts are very surprisingly uncharismatic. The guy in blue looks bored and apprehensive. The intro is long and the music excessive.

Weird lighting conditions make Kisin’s lips look almost purple.

Unless it’s lipstick.

You could handle things better as well. As usual, you don’t let your interlocutors speak very much. In this case, it isn’t a big problem because they have nothing to say anyway. You should at least let them finish asking their questions. What’s the rush?

During your retelling of the origin of the “red pill” metaphor, calling your writing “abstruse criticisms of Carlyle” is kind of low status, as is saying, “like many very intellectual people, I happen to be an Oxfordian.”

You seem to be moving your arms in weird ways. Maybe you’re stretching? You shouldn’t.

He has a point.

Some good old-fashioned looksmaxxing is also a good idea. I think the very cringe Justin Murphy undeservedly lucked into your aesthetic peak (and also my favorite moment of your podcasting career).

Shorter hair, less body fat, unambiguously age-appropriate clothes. The peak.

Since you’re here, I may as well also type up some “positive vision”-type things too. A hypothetical “Curtis Yarvin Experience” should, of course, be an interview show. That is all this accursed medium is even halfway good for.

From here.

BAP is yet to learn this, tbh. If you want to make an actual point about Ancient Greek sexual practices or whatever, say it in writing god damn it. Speaking blog posts into a mic in a Zizek impression is retarded.

Anyway, there are several good interview podcasts,¹ but Tyler Cowen’s is the best and anyone who doesn’t agree is a philistine. Watching CWT is an intellectually potent joy; it really is like listening to Bach or reading Slate Star Codex. I think these are Cowen’s best episodes (who has the time for any of this?).

It's hard to quantify just how successful it is,² but over the time I’ve been listening, it feels like the whole space has shifted toward what Cowen is doing. Conversations With Tyler has spawned several imitators, most directly Dwarkesh Patel (CWT with charismatic, social-climbing Indian immigrant characteristics—it works) and also Brian Chau. But I think many other interviewers, such as—forgive me—Lex Friedman, have become noticeably more “Cowen-like.”

CWT conspicuously flaunts the normal rules of interviewing. Questions are off-puttingly specific, selective, and challenging, eliciting unique and analytical answers. Cowen wrote about his craft here, though he leaves out some of the most important bits. He's said elsewhere that in the leadup to his interviews, he reads the entire body of work of interview subjects. He also neglects to mention his effective and enthusiastically employed approach of outsourcing much of the work of making “skeleton key” questions to his blog.

Cowen tosses up these incredible questions in no straightforward order—often asking a monstrously arcane and demanding question first. This makes part of the narrative tension of the show the thrill of Tyler transgressing against the norm of choreographed interviews with “natural” progressions and seeing how the guest will handle it.³ Tyler alludes to this by often describing a CWT interview as something like "a wilder and more precarious ride than you might have thought." What makes it special is the subversion of expectations around interview shows, not (just) that it is wild in and of itself.

Cowen on asking Karl Ove Knausgård, “In book six of My Struggle, you mention René Girard and that mimesis is a useful concept for understanding human behavior. How do you think about who or what you’re trying to copy?” right after his three sentence introduction and thanks. It’s pretty cool.

There is basically no exposition, ever. Cowen never gives guests more than a two-sentence introduction and very often just says something like, “Today I am talking with X, who needs no introduction.” This is what fans think of as Cowen’s Straussian thing: he writes his interview questions esoterically. Thus, just as the narrative tension is higher for stories that begin in media res and show you the fictional world without explaining it, so too is the narrative tension higher during CWT guest’s seemingly random bursts of erudition and eloquence about unexpected topics (that Cowen realizes they have a cool perspective on from his serious research) at unexpected parts of the “conversation.”

The information density of audio content tends to be really low. By asking great questions and holding the exposition, Cowen reaches the upper limit of the medium. This makes listening to CWT cognitively demanding to an extent unrivaled by other audio content.

The selection of what Cowen would call “underratedly interesting” guests is also an important part of the CWT formula. Cowen almost always asks about books, movies, and music, and the guests always have something compelling to say. You are ofc not the same as Cowen and don’t have to copy this. But I think “must probably be able to say something interesting about music and literature” is a good acid test for who should get an interview. Cowen’s guests are ostentatiously eclectic and dependably sharp and cool (and when they aren’t, that in itself says something interesting). He has genuinely high standards for who he picks to interview.

From here.

It’s of course easier for Cowen to score cool and mainstream guests than, say, Alex Kaschuta, but this is an aspect of the Curtis Yarvin Experience that would be really awful to compromise on. Cowen’s interviews never let me down, and because of this, I happily watch every episode whether I’ve heard of the guest or not. You must have high standards too; call it as you see it, but don’t miss. “GegenUni” professor and Unz Review contributor Ed Dutton—no. Cambridge professor Nathan Cofnas—possibly.

Alex Kaschuta does a bad job of this. She often interviews Twitter accounts and writers I’ve never heard of, and they don’t reliably demonstrate why I should care. Pls never do this it’s so bad.

A related problem is the lack of diversity in guests in Kaschuta’s show. Kaschuta goes over similar topics in every interview, with people who basically all agree with each other. This just fucking kills the narrative tension; even in the good episodes, there is no suspense. Hours of podcasts on reactionary feminism and the evils of modern tech render together into predictable mental fondue. Preventing this sorry situation is an underrated upshot of Cowen’s interviews of Croatian classical guitar prodigies, homeless Washington DC visual art savants, and John Brennan—they keep his talks with Bryan Caplan and John Cochrane fresh.

It’s probably not possible, but I think it would be ideal if 50% of Curtis Yarvin Experience guests have not heard of Bronze Age Pervert. If not to prevent the show from becoming too homogenous, at least do it because it's better for outreach. Joe Rogan⁴ didn’t promote MMA as much as he did by interviewing people inside MMA subculture.

Still, just as Cowen’s inaugural interview was with Peter Thiel (and not someone out of left field), I think a dope proof of concept would be for you to Tyler Cowen-interview Steve Sailer; ie, spend a day or two reading his Obama book, Lomez’s upcoming book of his essays, and whatever else and see what intriguing patterns you notice. It doesn't matter that he’s lousy on camera if you do it Cowen-style. This is great because

1. Cowen and Patel would never touch him

2. Neither of them could do a better job of it than you, even if they prepped for a month

There are other openings like this.⁵

I’m aware that doing orthodox Cowenist interviews would be a clean break from your previous forays into podcasting. But I think holding the most high-brow interview show is a pretty desirable thing from a battlefield of ideas perspective. I also think you would be really good at it—almost no one can pull off doing remarkably erudite interviews with a diverse set of guests. You can.

And really, the average IQ of Cowen’s audience is no higher than that of yours. If you show your audience maximal respect they may well become worthy of it.

At least give it a try – and let this be the template.⁶ If you're going to make an interview show, this is how to do it right!⁷

Comment on Cowen post What makes an interview podcast good or great?

1. Peter Robinson’s and Richard Hannania’s come to mind.

2. The viewcounts on Youtube are modest, but podcasting is so decentralized into different platforms the actual number of impressions is surely much much larger.

3. Near Ali G/Borat levels of narrative tension!

4. Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Lex Fridman, Rich Roll, and Jocko Willink are for 115 IQ kickboxing instructors and you shouldn’t try to replicate that.

5. There are also many cool possibilities that are not like interviewing Steve Sailer: David Mamet, Juan de Marcos González, Greg Clark, Hassan Nasrallah, Dominic Cummings, Hanania, (some chance of) Grimes, Mark Andressen, Mike Anton, Honor Levy, Anna Khachiyan, Beff Jezos, Javier Milei, Garett Jones, Jon Askonas, Sarah Meyohas, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour, Houellebecq, Amy Wax

6. You can of course make more jokes than Cowen does.

7. Of course, I really think you should just do a quiz show! You, Peracles Abassi, Sailer, Tom Cotton, Steve Levitt, Ted Gioia…