Lex Fridman: The US Podcaster Who Will Visit India To Interview PM Modi

American podcaster Lex Fridman announced on Sunday that he will host a podcast with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February. The discussion will explore PM Modi's vision for India's technological and cultural evolution.

"I will be doing a podcast with Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India, at the end of February. I've never been to India, so I'm excited to finally visit and experience many facets of its vibrant, historic culture and its amazing people as fully as I can," Mr Fridman wrote on X.

Who is Lex Fridman?

1. Lex Fridman was born in Chkalovsk, Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, and grew up in Moscow. After the Soviet Union's collapse, Mr Fridman's family moved to Chicago when he was 11.
2. He earned his BS and MS degrees in computer science from Drexel University in 2010 and completed a PhD in electrical and computer engineering at Drexel in 2014, as per his LinkedIn.
3. In 2014, Lex Fridman joined Google to work on AI for identity authentication but left after a year. In 2015, he joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Research Scientist - a post he holds to this day.
4. Lex Fridman launched his podcast in 2018, initially called 'The Artificial Intelligence Podcast' before rebranding to 'The Lex Fridman Podcast' in 2020. The show has featured high-profile guests, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, former US President Donald Trump, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In October 2022, rapper Kanye West appeared on the podcast, making controversial statements about the Holocaust and Jewish people. Mr Fridman is Jewish. He wrote on X, "Given my family history in the 20th century, this was difficult but important. I believe in the power of tough, honest, empathetic conversation to increase the amount of love in the world."
5. Lex Fridman has a first-degree black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.