Huh, I'm the exact opposite. With the exception of Hannah Fry's work at deepmind (where she acts as a charismatic proxy for the more nerdy guests), he is by far the best interviewer on technical stuff (AI stuff mostly, but some early robotics stuff as well). He knows the field, he asks pertinent questions and more importantly he knows when to just let the speaker speak.

Compared to someone like Dwarkesh, it's night and day. There's a fine line between pushing the guest and just interrupting them every 2nd thought to inject your own "takes".

Many people wonder this to the point where "Fridman is a hack and an industry plant" has become a meme.

Yeah I loved the guests he had, but eventually had to stop listening to him

Guests don't care about charisma, they care who your previous guests were. He early on got Elon Musk as a guest (AFAIK by writing a paper that was overly favorable to Tesla) and managed to snowball that into a big podcast.

Also guests agreeing to go on your show means they already want to talk about something, so in a way it's more important to shut up than ask good questions.