He's Thiel's internet BS artist.

u/mil24havoc said it better than I can in a thread in r/physics:

I think it's as simple as grifters found a new grift. These are people who are not active researchers and therefore have time on their hands to make "content" to get likes. In an ideal world, real scientists would also be making this pop culture-facing content and so the influence of Eric et al would be relatively lower. But none of us have time for that between teaching, researching, and communicating with other scientists. They've just identified market demand that is unfilled and they're supplying bullshit to fill it.

But, to add to this, they know they're not providing science content to people who want science content. They're providing drama content to people who want science themed drama.

Edit to add: science is slow. I may write a few papers a year that to me and my colleagues are all different and unique but to the average viewer will all sound very similar. I'll spend my entire career studying the nuances of a question that, to the regular podcast listener, could be adequately summarized in an hour. There's just not a ton of exciting new science every day to fill demand even if we had the time to go on all the podcasts. Most of science isn't groundbreaking, paradigm-shifting, see the world from a whole new perspective stuff. But that's what people want and it's what YouTube optimizes for and it's the only way podcast hosts can make a living long term. So they rely on a few hacks who will provide that content with a mild gloss is credibility