Drinking Beer with Lex Fridman in Beijing

@Jing Liu and Guo Yunxiao

By sheer chance, I had a beer with Lex Fridman.

It was a late April evening at an open-air bar near Beijing's Nanluoguxiang. He looked exactly as he does on his podcast: the same sharp features, the same measured cadence, the same black motif (only instead of the black suit from his show, a black t-shirt). The only surprise was his height. Yes, Lex Fridman — quite possibly the most influential tech interviewer on the planet — was about my height. And his hometown is Russia.

Over the past few years, he's interviewed the most prominent AI researchers, artists, mathematicians, and even presidents of more than one country. Elon Musk has appeared on his podcast five times. Naturally, what I most wanted to know was: how did Lex pull this off?

I asked people around him, trying to reverse-engineer his success. Some said he started his video podcast in 2018 — timing is everything. Others pointed to consistency — the Achilles' heel of most creators. Some credited his marathon three- or four-hour interview format. Still others mentioned his almost ascetic discipline; to this day, the top search result for "Lex Fridman" is likely an article about his 4+4 work rule.

At one point, an ecosystem lead from a major Chinese LLM company asked the very question on my mind. Want to guess Lex's answer?

He barely hesitated: "Love people."

It reminded me of a story an entrepreneur friend once told. At a Stanford lecture on AI and humanity, he asked Peter Diamandis: if the next ten years will bring change equivalent to the past century, what stays constant? Peter looked at him and smiled: "Love."

For Lex, this may be the more essential answer. Watch his endless interviews and you'll notice how rarely he speaks about himself. He just asks questions — an inexhaustible stream of them, yet never a single one designed to show off. Though he admits he sometimes envies his friend Joe Rogan, who can unlock people with a joke.

In an American podcast culture obsessed with persona and stylization, Lex is almost countercultural. A fellow Silicon Valley creator who knows him put it this way: Lex cares about excavating the other person, not about displaying who Lex is.

We inevitably got to the topic of fame. Fame matters for a creator, he said, but the line is drawn here: the interviewer must not believe they are terribly important. Most American media, in his view, believes precisely this. He doesn't.

Imagine someone with his interview resume — how hard it would be to resist holding forth, pronouncing judgment, playing oracle. Yet Lex withholds conclusions with almost surgical care.

So we asked: in Silicon Valley's AI race, who wins? He said he couldn't say. I briefly assumed this was diplomatic restraint with new acquaintances. But several friends who've had long conversations with him reported the exact same answer.

He offered an example: in Silicon Valley, many consider Sam Altman a villain. Yet in his interview, Sam came across as profoundly sincere, genuinely caring about love between people. So Lex doesn't trust himself to judge a person.

We pressed further: what if someone lies to you in an interview? He said what matters more is whether they have something deep to express. That's why, no matter how famous, if someone simply cannot go deep on his show, he'd rather not interview them at all.

Suddenly I felt I understood Lex. His interviews aren't about judging, cracking cases, social commentary, or watching anyone stumble. They're about helping the other person express themselves. Because he knows entrepreneurs are lonely, and many are terrified of speaking in public.

We told him about a Chinese AI founder whose apartment is almost entirely empty of furniture. He nodded: Elon Musk's home is like that too.

Clearly, he's an interviewer of sensitive temperament. In Beijing, he hiked an unrestored section of the Great Wall, then later told Penny, co-founder of Shixiang Tech, what struck him: people assume modern humans have grown smarter, but perhaps we haven't. The ancient builders' capability, set against today's software obsession, struck him with force.

He also met a married couple who are Great Wall scholars. After hearing their lifelong devotion, he found it miraculous — "the internet has destroyed many people's ability to focus on one thing."

The slight paradox: for someone who constantly interviews others, Lex is an introvert. That evening, among six or seven people at our table, he seemed almost awkward, speaking only when directly addressed. He told us crowds make him nervous, even one-on-one.

So when we asked about his apparent magic for making interviewees talk endlessly while he himself seems so still, he immediately objected. When someone far above him in status or achievement sits across from him, he naturally worries about saying something wrong — he's always nervous in interviews. Of course he can sense emotional shifts, and for an interview, emotion is "100% important."

This partly explains why he habitually wears a suit and tie on camera. It makes him feel good.

Lex said he cares less about what matters now than about what will still matter in five years. Compared to AI and business, he's more interested in whether a person or company leaves a mark on history.

Born in 1982, Lex grew up in Moscow before moving to the US. Before becoming who he is now, he was an AI researcher at MIT. This was his first time in China.

Like many young Americans, he's a Unitree fanboy — a word he's used with countless people. At MIT, he actually used Unitree robots in his research. His mother even knows about a Chinese company called DeepSeek.

But beyond the big names, what genuinely interests him are ordinary Chinese people. At first I found this phrasing almost too diplomatic, the kind of thing a visitor says. A few days later, he announced on social media that he would begin a backpacking trip through rural China. The photo showed him standing on the Great Wall.

Will he become the Peter Hessler or Evan Osnos of the AI era?

What stunned me most throughout our conversation: this man with hundreds of millions of followers works entirely solo. Filming, outreach, interviewing, set design, editing, even uploading — all done by him alone. Not for lack of resources, but because he finds team dynamics "strange" — the very concepts of employment and partnership, so ordinary in business, seem to repel him.

So he always carries a heavy black Lenovo laptop (he really does love black). Fortunately, his interviews require little editing — mostly raw footage. And watching yourself on video is excruciating (turns out, universally so).

At this point, Lex finished his beer; we ordered him another. But for someone defined by discipline, one was probably perfect. The second he drank slowly, almost out of politeness, reluctant to refuse.

This was Lex's third or fourth day in China. That afternoon, he'd just finished with a major LLM founder; the coming days held a full roster of meetings. We said hurried goodbyes.

Walking out of the hutong with him, I noticed: besides his phone, Lex wore no smart hardware whatsoever, a black fanny pack at his waist — not merely un-AI, almost last-century.

We asked who he still wanted to interview but hadn't yet. There was one, he paused, but they'd unexpectedly agreed recently. A great person, and he didn't plan to conduct it in English.

With that, Lex walked into Nanluoguxiang Station and caught the late-night Beijing subway.

The two of us stood there, suddenly feeling: dreams should probably be bigger.

(Thanks to our friend Penny of Shixiang Tech for her contributions to this piece.)

Cover image: Antonello da Messina, San Girolamo nello studio, 1475, The National Gallery