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Spotify has signed a new multiyear agreement with Joe Rogan, the host of one of the most popular and polarizing podcasts in the US
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- Title
- Spotify inks new multiyear deal with podcast host Joe Rogan
- Published
- Feb 2 2024
- Word count
- 264 words
I feel I missed something as I have no clue who he is. The gist I get, without listening to his show, is he's some crackpot that's gained a following? I'm assuming of republicans given the covid misinformation.
That's pretty overly reductive. Joe Rogan gained popularity from interviewing literally thousands of incredibly interesting people from all walks of life. Since 2016 and the Donald Trump phenomena he's definitely started pandering more towards the right wing by having on guests that lean heavily in that direction, but he's been doing podcasting for longer than almost anyone else in the game and has some legitimately great episodes in his past.
The big issue with Joe Rogan is that he'll interview just about anyone without any real vetting or research. So he doesn't know what they're talking about and lets a lot of questionable content go unchallenged, which gives a platform and legitimacy to some really fringe and problematic views.
Forty plus years ago this would have been called "lazy and incompetent interviewing and journalism". Today it's called "driving engagement".
No disagreement there, though the whole "giving a platform" to something doesn't hold a lot of water for me, because these people have shown time and time again that there will always be a platform and an audience for that type of content.
In pretty well designed studies, deplatforming extreme views has been shown to be effective and can often change the norm of what is seen as acceptable behavior online. Yes, there is always a platform and audience, but it can help if that platform and audience is not automatically massive, as it is on Rogan's podcast.
Let me ask you this then, do you think Rogan's podcast deserves to be unilaterally shut down from major platforms just because of the guests he's had and the views he expresses? I personally think he probably shouldn't be being promoted by spotify, but I also don't know if I agree that flat out banning him from Youtube/Spotify is a good idea.
No, and I don't think I've implied as such. In general I think it is bad to give tech platforms the power to choose which voices get to be heard, although sometimes that's the lesser evil. I brought it up because I think its important to emphasize that he chooses the guests and he guides the conversation, and if he wanted to not platform questionable (and occasionally dangerous!) viewpoints that would be effective and within his power. And yet he does not choose to do so, and so I have a pretty dim opinion of him.
I think people get a bit beguiled by the stupid yet fun conversations on the show and are willing to dismiss the more problematic stuff because "aw, he's not an expert and just shooting the shit, he doesn't know better". He's the head of a massive broadcasting operation/empire, that excuse stops being valid in my opinion.
We face the same issue here in Brazil with a bunch of Joe Rogan's clones giving platform to covid denial and right wing conspiracy without any care. They became big enough that I am all in favor of outright banning them.
In fact, one of them is currently living in the USA (he's called Monark) because he is banned and demonetized in all platforms here in Brazil. In the beginning of YouTube he was a Minecraft content maker. Ended up having a podcast where the last straw was he saying the elections were forged and Nazis should be allowed to be in it.
They have it anyway and use the word "algorithm" to hide it's intention. Sure they don't ban things, but promoting some and curbing others it is how they do and get away with it.
I think platforms have a responsibility for the content they carry, which can be context-dependent. Spotify, for example, has chosen to spend millions of dollars to make Rogan exclusive to their platform so that says a lot about their ethics. It's not like they're a neutral aggregator.
A TV channel chooses each program it airs. A cable company chooses which channels it carries. A radio station chooses its programming. Why should a streaming platform be held to a different standard just because they deal with more programming than they're capable of vetting?
Yes, absolutely. How are we still having this discussion in 2024? He gives a platform, and even a pedestal, to people who actively harm our society. He does not deserve any sympathy.
I'd only think so if his views were truly harmful, i.e. people in the real world are endangered from his words.
Sadly, that is indeed debatable depending on the topics and contexts. e.g. having anti-mask mentality and encouraging horse de-wormer for COVID, if they believe COVID is a real thing to begin with (note: I don't know exactly how far Rogan nor his guests went with that, but it's a topic that has garnered a good deal of controversy).
I'm normally all for free and offensive speech (not necessarily in the forums I choose to browse, but as a general concept), but threats and misinformation is proving to become life threatening levels of words on a platform. It makes me very ambivalent as we're no longer just talking about opinions on media or how to manage money. Ideally we'd remember to never take health, legal, nor financial advice on the internet, but that idealism has arguably never been close to the reality.
Just because there's always an audience does not mean there should be a platform. Some things shouldn't have the ability to amass a following.
Deplatforming works. It's been proven to work, time and time again. If Joe Rogan gives platforms to people like Alex Jones to keep spreading the horrendous lies that he just recently got convicted of, then yes there should be a questions about if such a platform deserves to exist anymore. It's irresponsible to not consider it at that point.
As far as I know Joe doesn't claim to vet people for his podcast, nor does he claim to be an expert, so I am failing to see how this is an issue.
I don't listen to it regularly by the way, may just come across clips here and there where he is talking about how a gorilla can rip off someone's arm or some shit.
Yes, but he reacts to them during the interviews as if they are experts. For an (extreme) example, Rogan was convinced multiple times by Alex Jones' complete lies because Alex is pretty good at citing fake sources quickly enough to discourage anything but light pushback from Rogan. This platforms a proto-fascist and rehabilitates him to millions of people.
There was a fox news host, bill o’reilky maybe? His thing was always to claim, “I’m just asking questions folks,” as if by forming his opinions as leading questions he was somehow achieving a neutral status. Similarly, fox news would use propaganda terms like “fair and balanced,” which were plain lies. The worst was “we report, you decide.” I have to give some grudging respect to their evil genius.
Rogan may not be an expert, but he’s certainly no idiot. He definitely only selects participants he believes will drive engagement, and he knows that includes questionable and objectionable personalities.
When it comes to Alex, there are more complex and strange reasons that he was on. They are old friends that had a quite public falling-out a while back. Alex essentially guilted him using classic narcassistic patterns to get on the show.
Knowledge Fight, the podcast, has a good episode analysing the whole affair
Best podcast ever.
And to give info on the old friend thing, Joe Rogan was on Alex's show in the evening of 9/11. That's how old friends are.
Regardless of everything, the people he selects on his podcast are vetted in some manner. Otherwise the odds would be that he wouldn't be interviewing so many famous people. Now he's clearly not vetting them for actual expertise or honesty but they are being vetted.
A lot of people do this (How I Built This on NPR comes to mind). Rogan just lets Republican liars talk and he agrees with them and makes them look good.
How I Built This is interesting, but Joe Rogan is more fun. Guy Raz doesn't get drunk and high with his guests and talk about aliens, and I guess that's the appeal. I'd listen to HIBT for learning and inspiration, while Joe Rogan is for broey bro chat with some personal interest sprinkled in. It's more entertainment than a serious interview for me. Admittedly, I've only listened to a few dozen Joe Rogan episodes, being selective about which guests I'm interested in, and none since he joined spotify.
Yes, and Mata Hari had some legitimately great performances in her past. You could have been guaranteed a great show at one point.
Maybe her later work is appreciated a little less, given the whole "enemy spy" thing.
Just because someone's earlier work was good doesn't really change who they are now.
Conflating Joe Rogan to Mata Hari is one of the more unhinged things I've read on Tildes today
I'm not saying that he's an enemy agent specifically paid to increase divisiveness in the US even as his recent work is more and more unhinged. I'm just trying to say that the work that he was putting out 8+ years ago isn't representative of him now, nor is it anything resembling a defense of the quality of him or his current work.
Tildes isn't a particularly unhinged place, so that doesn't really mean much. This isn't Reddit.
I agree that it's a pretty poor analogy though.
I've not followed him personally, but I do follow Phil Plait who had a debate with Joe about whether the moon landing was real. It was an interesting discussion, and Penn Jillette hosted which made it fun.
I don't know about crackpot, but there was a lot of "just asking questions" coming from Joe's side. It didn't give me the impression of somebody who cares to follow the facts. Bear in mind it was an informal conversation though and not a proper debate.
He gets real passionate about anti-vaxx shit. Rogan won't shut up about it.
Whats the anti-vaxx stuff he's saying? I haven't listened to Rogan much since I started working from home in 2019, and prior to that would occasionally listen as banter when I'd drive to the office. Occasionally someone I follow will say they did an episode and I'll listen then but other than that I'm not up to date.
He's on the "mRNA are not real vaccines, they are gene therapy" train and was saying that people should get Ivermectin instead of a vaccine. He is definitely responsible for people's death due to his speech.
Tidal is the same price, virtually the same music selection, better artist payouts, and doesn't shove podcasts down your throat. I switched two years and don't have any regrets.
I don’t like Joe Rogan so I just ignore his podcast. Nothing is being “shoved down our throats”.
Meanwhile, there is like a 1/5 chance that the top row on my Spotify homepage will be "Popular Joe Rogan Episodes For You", when I've been actively avoiding him for years
I suppose it would be nice to have an ignore button or something of the like. But an ad is hardly jamming it down our throats, imo. I ignore all the other ads for musicians I don’t like. I guess I don’t interact with the app as much as others. I have a very long playlist and hit play and let it do its thing.
If you pay for the service, you shouldn't have to put up with propaganda for something you're not interested in that detracts from the service.
I joined Spotify years ago because I enjoyed their recommendations. But when Joe Rogan (and other podcasts) take up 30% of the top of your home page, the service is actively made worse by their presence. And Spotify won't let you hide it; it's always there, taking up a giant chunk of your screen, every time you open the app.
I used to use Spotify for music. Not podcasts. Their player is lacking basic functionality that every other podcast player has -- even free ones like Antennapod. Their music navigation has gotten worse too because they obviously don't care to provide a decent interface any more. And even worse, they spent the last 4 years trying to buy up podcasts and make them exclusive to their crappy player.
These days I just self host my own music collection with Jellyfin. Life is too short to pay a company money for a crappy product that doesn't respect you.
Ads are quite literally designed to make you perform an action. They have been proven to work, even on people who think that they don’t affect them. The global advertising industry is worth nearly a trillion dollars, and it wouldn’t have grown that large if they didn’t work. So yes, an ad is jamming an idea down your throat. You might not feel that way because the sheer volume of ads you are subjected to has normalized it to you.
If Google's market cap alone is above a trillion, isn't the ad industry likely worth many trillions of dollars?
Google isn’t only an advertising company, though. They have many other sources of income.
According to their most recent earnings report (PDF), Google made $86.3 billion in revenue last quarter, of which $65.5 billion (76.8%) was from advertising.
They're still, at their heart, an advertising company with a couple of side businesses.
lol I was just thinking this. The mcap of Bitcoin alone has surpassed a trillion.
Can't you just select "not interested?" I also don't use spotify, so I'm not sure if that's a feature or not.
Sadly I have, Spotify is not willing to take my desires into consideration.
Sounds like you should use a different platform then, I don't have these issues with YouTube music
Podcasts are actively mixed in with music throughout Spotify including home, search, your library, daily drive, wrapped, etc. Looks like audiobooks are starting to be worked in too.
I want a music streaming service first and foremost. Not an everything streaming service.
I haven’t had that experience, but i mainly stick to my playslists and the discover weekly, absolutely no ads or podcasts.
Edit: I should say that I pay for premium. So maybe that’s the difference?
Yeah, I think premium is a big differentiator. I've heard of a few cases where users had podcasts they otherwise never listen to thrown into their music playlists.
Huge UX grind, but I guess that's not surprising. Podcasts are longer form content that can have ads built into the program (I assume Spotify for contracts like this get their cut for those two) so there's a bigger incentive to drive non-paying users toward podcasts than to songs with the more traditional ad placed between.
I have premium, my discover weekly sometimes throws podcasts at me. I've listened to part of a podcast maybe 2x ever on Spotify and don't follow any. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You give money to Spotify. Spotify gives money to Joe Rogan. Ergo, you give money to Joe Rogan.
I'm not going to pretend that isn't how everything works. It's impossible to make every decision a completely ethical one. But you can decide whether that's something that matters to you.
It doesn’t work like that. When you give your money to Spotify, it’s no longer your money, it’s theirs. The transaction ends there. If you don’t agree with them paying Rogan, that’s a whole different thing.
The article in the OP doesn't make it clear, but Spotify is removing the exclusivity clause from Rogan's podcast and instead using the increased reach to make more from ad spots, which is probably what they're paying him with. Source. So it isn't as simple as you're saying and it could be argued it's the opposite of what you're saying. This works out better for all of us that would prefer to avoid Joe Rogan.
YouTube Premium is just $3 more per month and you get add free YouTube as well.
DNS-based adblockers like Pihole haven't worked in a long time for YouTube. Edit: or apparently ever
https://www.reddit.com/r/pihole/comments/17n9njx/any_chance_against_the_new_antiadblock_youtube/
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/youtube-ads-getting-through-pihole-any-advances-in-100-blocking-without-also-blocking-youtube-videos/60951/3
https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/why-doesnt-pi-hole-block-youtube-ads/49784
I'm curious about this, any way I can check? I heavily doubt it has most of the artists I've listened to on Spotify
I wasn't able to find a comparison tool. Tidal has a 30-day free trial (here's a 90-day offer for $1 I found), so you could sign up and search around. There's also several online tools that do playlist & favorite transfers from Spotify, though some are paid.
I see that Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music all claim to have 100+ million tracks. Safe to say most "big" artists are on all platforms, and I think smaller artists tend to use services like Distrocat to distribute to all major ones.
Or self host for free.
Electricity and internet aren't free, and there's time cost in learning how to setup and maintain it properly. Plus hardware cost if you're not converting an old machine.
The notable fact about this deal is that Rogan more than doubled his money and is no longer exclusive to Spotify. His podcast is now objectively valued at
around a quarter to a third of a billion dollars(edit: sorry, almost half a billion). That means despite the 'death kiss' of Spotify exclusivity and all the amusing smack talk about his podcast, his platform has more value than ever before and his reach has never stopped growing. He'll be right back at the top of Youtube recommendations as soon as he re-enables all of his old shows over there again, which is probably going to happen soon. He is bigger than Larry King or Howard Stern ever were, which makes him the reigning all time champion when it comes to interviews. He has more impact on culture right now than any other single individual.Rogan has platformed far more real and intelligent content than bullshit (I'd put it at about 70/30), but of course it's the bullshit guests like Jones, Hancock, Musk, and Grusch that get the most views, so those are taken as representative of his entire show. When people fixate on that stuff, it's the easiest way to tell when someone criticizing him has no clue what they are talking about. Well, that and calling him a republican - that man has converted more republicans into liberals than anyone else I can name.
The truth of why people dig his show is quite simple. That will get anyone who cares into the loop with a minimum of bs.
Everyone loves to whinge on about the problems with podcasters platforming bullshit (and I agree it's a big problem) but no one offers any workable solutions. Rogan (and damn near every other podcaster) needs a posse of ten fact checkers keeping guests honest in in real time, that's the real problem with these podcasts. If you think a 'show' that plays for 'money' is going to flat out stop all the actual fun people watch for and pull the bus over for fact checking every ten minutes, you aren't living in reality - even you wouldn't watch that stuff.
While it's impractical for all of them to hire that posse, in time I expect LLMs might be able to provide at least some clarity and a solution to this problem. They can follow along with a conversation and they can look things up in real time already, so it's not hard to imagine that technology making life more difficult for the snake oil peddlers in the future.
A better solution than LLMs would be in more intelligent recommendation algorithms. If Rogan or any other podcaster does an interview, there are going to be follow-ups and rebuttals posted by other podcasters talking about that very interview on the same platform. It should be pretty fucking trivial to surface that new content to the same people who watched the original episode. This solution might actually work out because it doesn't rock the boat or require specialized knowledge about the topics being covered.
Hosting providers like Youtube or Spotify don't care what people watch on their platform, as long as they stay on their service and watch their ads (or pay for it, or both). It doesn't cost them anything to surface rebuttals that are also on their own platforms. This doesn't require the team of 'infallible fact checkers' or even knowledge about the content itself. All it requires is that the provider maintain some knowledge of which videos sparked which videos, who a guest is and what podcasts mention their names or have them on, and general topic categories which they already have.
Let people rebut and validate each other, and just do your best inside the recommendations system to create the 'thread' of a 'conversation' by chaining podcasts and interviews together. Don't try to solve the unsolvable problems of moderation and fact checking and censorship, or trying to decide which information is 'right' or 'wrong'. That will always fail, period. Just keep the topic content linked and let people breathe it in so they can make up their own minds.
If I watch Rogan's interview with Hancock I'd expect to see Miniminuteman's rebuttal show up alongside it. I'll even give you a timely example. If I watch Sabine's video on climate change under this regime, I'd expect to see Adam's video about Sabine's video in my feed eventually.
That's I think the best we can do to put some real pain on the snake oil.
Let's be absolutely crystal clear about this. If someone is a misogynist 100% of a time, a transphobe 100% of the time, a racist 100% of the time, and a right wing extremist 100% of the time, that is perfectly okay, period. Welcome to real life, where people you absolutely loathe have all of the same rights you do.
I'd bet they've got less friends and a worse life because of those views, but that's their prerogative and no one else's business. Rogan makes a habit out of turning those people more liberal and open minded, so you might want to thank him for this massive public service he provides for frank and open conversation.
If you're looking for the eps that got the most controversy and are the ones you are thinking of, that's factually less than 0.01% of the total and well within your occasional misstep metric - he is pushing past two thousand episodes, not two thousand controversies. Myself, I don't go in for MMA/sports or many of the comedians, but that's a major part of his audience. That's the 30% I was referring to - jock talk bores me.
I just skip those episodes like an adult. I do go in for scientists, journalists, politicians, authors, some of the celebrities, and people with great stories to tell and interesting life experiences to share. That's most of his show. Or maybe these people are just an insidious cover for his evil republican plan to get everyone to follow Alex Jones to the mountain. As it turns out, propaganda isn't one sided.
I don't go in for all the hand wringing because I don't think people are vulnerable helpless snowflakes just waiting to be scammed, who need all of us to ride in on a white horse and save them from themselves and their terrible choices in what entertainment to watch or which people they listen to. That's just about the most insulting view of other people that I think anyone could hold in their head.
Most people see straight through all of this nonsense in minutes including clowns like Jones. If they fail to do so, someone will get popular for busting the scammer's balls and make a business out of it, and said scammer then goes directly to jail. Problem solved. The people who do fall for it usually won't make that mistake a second time. The people who fall for it a third time probably have a mental condition. They need universal health care and mental health coverage, which Rogan is in favor of giving them for free along with UBI. Guess he's a bad republican.
We don't change the internet and rewrite centuries of common law based on freedom of association and freedom of speech just to protect a vulnerable minority of supremely gullible individuals. In fact if it comes to it, the lives of those individuals will be expended to protect those principles, not the other way around.
I'll remind you that Alex Jones got busted and bankrupted. So did SBF and thousands of other bullshit artists who made a killing on various platforms. We already had this problem before the internet came along, and we'd already solved it too. Youtube didn't need to ban any of these clowns. Karma and the court system did it for them, as it should be.
From my perspective, the system seems to be working just fine and taking out the trash. Perhaps it isn't doing it fast enough for some people, and I think a more agile and transparent legal system could help with that a lot and dramatically reduce the scam damage by nipping them in the bud earlier. That is something I'd vote for. Sunlight is always the very best disinfectant.
You'd think people would be happy that while scammers rise faster than ever, they get busted faster than ever as well. That actually gives me a bit of hope that there is progress to be made on this issue. The internet and people in general love nothing more than a good takedown - it's premium drama.
You know the real reason Joe Rogan had Alex Jones on multiple times after he got banned from social media? Because everyone told him that he could not do it. Everyone. Everywhere. Repeatedly. For months. He then decided to troll the entire internet by having Jones on, for having the gall to tell him what to do with his own podcast. Their entitled, bossy, uninformed attitudes pissed him off.
This is, in fact, the best way to guarantee someone a spot on JRE. Just tell Joe he can't interview that person because of [reasons]. The larger the shitstorm the more likely they are live next week.
What do you mean that it's "perfectly okay"? Hateful people absolutely deserve criticism. I don't know about your "real life" you live in, but in the one I live in hate is not perfectly okay. Sure, they have freedom of speech, they absolutely can say and feel however they want. That doesn't mean I have to think it's perfectly okay. I truly don't get what you're defending here.
And criticism lobbed at Rogan is also fair. He's not a vulnerable helpless snowflake who needs defending. If he cries about criticism, well he can wipe his tears away with a handful of hundred dollar bills. The man is obviously powerful. Powerful people deserve to be taken to task.
And pointing out the fact that he had people on just to spite people? He had Alex Jones on because people told him he could not do it? That's not a character strength in my book. Giving bigots a platform because of a fragile ego is lame. The part where he doesn't listen to REASONS is also telling about his character. You're right, he doesn't seem like a man who listens to reason.
I think you're missing my point a bit. He wasn't planning to have Alex on at all until everyone made such a big deal out of it. Then and only then, after being harassed by the anti-Jones crowd, was he willing to do it - and possibly get a youtube ban, before his spotify deal was inked. That was not a zero risk move for him at the time. The people who didn't want Jones on are the people who caused Jones to go on - they created the problem themselves by acting like assholes. When Jones went on they got what they deserved.
Shock jocks are nothing new, and they aren't going away this year or in the next ten thousand years. Joe doesn't cry about it - rather he laughs at it any time it's brought up because it is stupid and hilarious when other people try to tell him what to do with his show. I respect that, if I build something I'm not letting a faceless mob of basement dwellers I will never meet that have zero impact on my life tell me what to do with it either.
I enjoy his show immensely and I'm going to continue to watch it, and laugh at anyone who can't even characterize it properly. I've been onto it since his first interview with Sturgill Simpson and overall it's been more entertaining to me than any media released since 1999, minus that 30% which is obviously quite entertaining to other people even if I don't dig it. That's probably why his ratings beat most actual television shows, and his podcast brings in more revenue at this point than any television show.
I fully expect him to find a brick wall of controversy and pick a fight he can't win someday, because that's just how he's wired. He might even be the first comedian to wind up with a supreme court case since Carlin, and I'm sure that's a feather he wouldn't mind in his cap.
You know the one person Joe didn't have on? Trump. The great pumpkin asked him several times for an interview, because Trump wanted those viewership numbers. The reason that didn't happen is because Joe hates Trump's guts. That's where he draws the line - not at Alex Jones, but at Trump.
I don't understand this rather aggressive logic. They didn't get anything. Joe Rogan made a choice, one that I agree with @idiotheart on personally but that's neither here nor there. "They" got nothing but disappointed by Joe Rogan?
I don't think you need to come in so hot. But it's not shocking that "he only did it because people told him not to" isn't an appealing argument especially for people that were inclined to dislike him in the first place. Or that you "laugh at" people who you feel don't describe it correctly.
Everything you said seems to be true, and seems to be why you like him. It's also confirmation for me, and possibly others, of all the things I don't enjoy and why I don't have any desire to listen to him.
I'm not coming in hot at all, just doing my bit to correct the disinfo I'm seeing on Rogan here. Consider it a dose of perspective from outside the usual Tildes echo chamber, which while pretty broad does lean hard left. That's kinda why I'm surprised people here don't understand the favors Joe has been doing for them over the years having people like Bernie Sanders on, and supporting Obama and most other progressive issues. Joe is very firmly in the progressive camp. He just does not care about being politically correct.
When a comedian gets heckled by a table hassling him and his audience, he hits back without mercy and with a healthy dose of vicious mockery. Nothing is more simple than that. Remember we're talking about the guy who ended Carlos Mencia's career overnight by confronting him on stage over his rampant joke theft, in public, during one of his own shows. Joe is not the sort of guy who takes anything laying down. He will pick a fight because he's an MMA junkie and a trained fighter. Fights for him are just another fun little competition, tuesday afternoon training. Like taking a jog.
Joe had Alex on previously, like a year back before Alex got banned from YT. He wasn't planning to have him on again, repeatedly said that during his own podcast. If the anti-Jones crowd had just left it all alone, instead of making an issue about it, then Alex would never have been on again. Then Joe got to deal with a couple months of hit pieces and people hassling him about it.
It was genuinely pissing Joe off, and I watched him get worked up on multiple shows until he finally said 'fuck these people' (literally) and decided to do it. You want something to cry about, now you've got it sort of situation. He was so miffed he literally did not care if he lost his podcast over it completely, and he said that. The episodes with Jones got taken down everywhere, but Joe didn't mind. He's more interested in the live version of his podcast than the archives. He just objects to other people choosing his guests for him.
Apologies for my misread. But everything you right about Joe Rogan makes me respect him less, not more. I don't think he's done me any particular favors, honestly. And maybe I'm wrong about it. But I don't personally "get" the mentality you're describing and don't really respect the "I'll pick a fight for fun" nor the "I'll do it harder because someone told me not to." I get the instinct, I don't respect the follow through.
I don't really think it's an echo chamber thing, but ymmv.
I have no interest in selling respect for Rogan, people get to pick their entertainment. He's a jock that has spent so long talking to smart people that he's starting to get a bit wise himself, and he spends most of his time letting his guests talk, not selling his own shit. He's just as interested in UFOs as he is in politics. That's hardly everyone's cup of tea. Oversized smiley ape summons people to explain things to him. In return they get the biggest profile boost available.
There are plenty of people who won't go in for that, but as we can see from his success, there are more people who do go in for that than seem to be going in for anything else in entertainment right now.
If you're interested in another long running topic from JRE, presidential debates come up a lot and every election cycle. Joe is smart enough not to wade into that shark tank, but people keep asking, and asking, and asking...
I wouldn't be surprised to see him host his own debate or at least do an every-candidate-interview series in 2028 or 2032. Judging by what I've seen of those conversations, I'd bet on no audience, league of women voters running it, and everyone from Pen Jillette to John Stewart to Ben Shapiro on the panel. It'd probably go a good six hours, too, with none of the bs of modern debates, chat on tap, no pre-set questions, and a posse of fact checkers.
If he were to do that, you can bet the next president elect shows up for it and knocks it out of the park. He has the largest audience, and it's a purple audience, not red or blue. Plenty on both sides of the divide watch that podcast. He may become a lot more relevant in a few years than he his now.
He might also pick the wrong fight and get TKOed. Time will tell. /shrug
More like libertarian socialist. I'm on board with the 'democracy at work' style of socialism - there, the numbers work out and it looks like a real evolution of capitalism to me. I get into it with libertarians over progressive issues, and I change more than a few minds. I find the concept of a public good goes sailing straight over their heads more often than I like. I don't mind my taxes, I'd just rather see them paying out for a UBI than bombs. I'm happy to take all the immigrants we can find, provided we give them the help they need to not fall through the cracks on arrival. I don't want to shrink government, I'd rather see it get streamlined and dragged into the current century. I think they need efficiency experts, not budget cuts.
I am honestly not just impressed, but rather stunned how well Biden's posse has been doing. His state department has been on fire with smart moves while the whole world has been getting cranky. I voted for him last time as the 'hold my nose' candidate but this time he's got my honest enthusiasm, which has been quite a surprise. I am a little convinced he's been hamming up the old man routine just to avoid the cameras and get more work done.
My view is that while you have the right to take someone to task, they also have the right to get in your face and give it all right back, and you don't get to be offended by the fact that they have that right. The minute we lose that, we're going to be escalating to bullets instead of words. It's better to have the arguments, even if they get a bit tedious at times.
Libertarians are simple creatures. The thing they care about the most, and will base all policy decisions on like it's instinct without realizing it, is the individual's right to choose. That's the framing they need. Never tell when you can ask instead.
You want to pitch them UBI? Point out it's better to treat everyone equally, give them equal access to opportunity, and let their neighbors decide how to spend their tax dollars than the government. Want to pitch them trans-gender surgery? Remind them everyone has the right to decide for themselves what to do with their own bodies. Repeat this process with every issue. It works so well it's kinda spooky.
I agree and want to add that factors other than age can make people vulnerable to disinformation as well. For example, even older, highly-educated people can be vulnerable to this if they are less tech-literate (unfamiliar with how internet algorithms can push controversial content) or if they're in social groups where these types of videos are popularly shared.
And overall, as humans we're all just susceptible to confirmation bias. It's not that hard for disinformation to reach popular awareness and acceptance.
I used to think that bad ideas will automatically be "defeated" by good ideas, making censorship unnecessary. But this completely ignores the reality of human psychology, and has already been proven false by, for example, the massive influence of social media on electoral results, to the detriment of democracy in countries like mine. (Censorship itself can be problematic, so addressing disinformation well is tricky.)
I agree with the principle that we must not tolerate intolerance.
Oh you're right about that! Thanks for explaining more about what you meant re. impressionability and youth. Do you think it's largely due to the brain being more "plastic" up until around the age of 25, which is supposedly when we finally get our "adult brain"?
I can relate to this so much 😂
Thanks, that makes sense! And yes I agree, it's good to be careful about not considering this as an "easy answer".
For those who are looking for an easy way to transfer music playlists from one app to another, I can recommend SongShift app on iOS. I've used its free tier and it's worked fine for me. It lists the following services as being compatible with its transfer process: Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, LastFM, Napster, Pandora, Hype Machine, Discogs, Deezer, Qobuz.
Alternative title: Spotify doubles down on financing fascist propaganda by signing a second, 250M$ deal with Joe Rogan