What’s a good introduction to Joe Rogan?

by philg

Who watched the Dave Chappelle special on Netflix? was about how I invested one hour to learn about someone identified as an Enemy of the Truth.

The latest Enemy of the Truth, a dangerous spreader of misinformation and hate, is Joe Rogan. I haven’t watched or listened to this guy, however, and I’ve heard dark tales of three-hour-long episodes. I don’t want to wade through 100 hours of content to figure out what is intolerable about this person.

I’m therefore appealing to readers. Which Joe Rogan episodes and, preferably, at which in/out points, should be listened to be someone who has no experience with this form of hatred? (URLs pointing directly to these episodes would be most welcome)

Separately, I’m a little confused about Spotify’s new quota-based system for distributing $100 million:

In the latest installment of the Spotify-Rogan saga, CEO Daniel Ek sent out a company memo on Sunday addressing Joe Rogan’s use of harmful racial slurs in past episodes of his podcast. Over 70 of these past episodes have now been removed from Spotify. In the memo, which was published by The Hollywood Reporter, Ek declared that Spotify will invest $100 million in the licensing, development and marketing of music and audio content from historically marginalized groups. This is the same amount of money that Spotify paid to Joe Rogan for his exclusive content deal.

Tensions escalated recently when 270 medical professionals signed an open letter to Spotify urging the company to implement rules around misinformation after Rogan, who is one of the most-listened to podcasters in the industry, hosted Dr. Robert Malone, a virologist banned from Twitter for spreading misinformation about COVID-19. High-profile figures like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and author Roxane Gay pulled their content from Spotify in protest of the company’s inaction against Rogan’s platforming of false public health information.

“One of the things I am thinking about is what additional steps we can take to further balance creator expression with user safety,” Ek wrote. “I’ve asked our teams to expand the number of outside experts we consult with on these efforts and look forward to sharing more details.”

Note that, according to the journalists, it is a fact that what Dr. Malone was saying (“give COVID-19 vaccines to old people, not to young people”) was wrong (“misinformation”). The Science is settled and there is no possibility that Malone will turn out to have been correct, e.g., if universal vaccination pressures SARS-CoV-2 to evolve in unwanted ways (see Marek’s disease). Also, users cannot feel or be safe without those 70 episodes having been removed (is there a samizdat server somewhere in a free speech country where the 70 banned episodes can be evaluated by users who don’t mind feeling/being unsafe?).

From a purely practical point of view, what is a “marginalized group”? Vietnam is not well-represented in hip hop currently, as far as I know. Will Spotify fund Vietnamese rappers rapping in Vietnamese?

39 thoughts on “What’s a good introduction to Joe Rogan?”

  1. I confess that I’ve never seen a Dave Chapelle special. I’ve seen snippets of his comedy and he really is a very talented and funny guy, but he’s also a big marijuana cheerleader and I don’t support that. I had a Spotify account for about two weeks, not because of Rogan, just to see what it was “about.” I canceled it over a year ago and I’ve never listened to a Rogan podcast. The closest I’ve come is to reminisce over the photos of Elon Musk risking revocation of his security clearance by appearing on Rogan’s program smoking a blunt.

    Sorry, I’m no help here. As far as my information “feed” goes, I’m like: “Who’s this Rogan guy?”

    I do subscribe to Sirius Satellite Radio in my 2010 Ford Escape Hybrid and it is rumored that Howard Stern has a major stake there, but I stopped listening to Stern when I moved out of the NYC FM media market and have never looked back. I almost never listened to Rush Limbaugh while he was alive, either, and I find Sean Hannity almost as annoying as some of the people on WAMC NPR.

    • I find that I enjoy Mark Steyn from time to time, and I’m still a fan and substack subscriber of Erick Erickson, who still does his best to shoot pretty straight from his minor perch in Macon, GA. He’s a good man and while not particularly brilliant or controversial, he knows a lot and tries to be honest about his strengths and weaknesses. In my mind he was the one of the few Conservatives who called the Georgia runoffs The Way They Were (Trump’s people lost them for Trump) and I give him a lot of credit for that. I’ve talked with him a few times in the past decade or so and remember him from his old Redstate days.

      As far as liberal commentators go, all I have to do is not listen to Steyn or Erickson and they are just about everyone else, you can’t escape them, they just kind of blend together into a big blob of libroleftist ooze.

    • As an intoxicant, marijuana is a lot safer and has far milder health and social adverse effects than alcohol. If you’re against MJ legalization you should be a fierce prohibitionist if you want to maintain any shred of intellectual integrity.

    • @averros: Our host is a much more consistent person than I am. Occasionally I can be correctly labeled a “hypocrite.” Guilty as charged, alas. I have inhaled marijuana in the past, on several occasions, but stopped many years ago after I found that I did not like its effects on my short term memory and day-to-day motivation and perceptions of things, which I found more disturbing than moderate consumption of alcohol. Even in small quantities, not the high-THC stuff being blasted out today, I am very sensitive to it and don’t like it. It has, at least to me, a disturbing way of 1) turning itself into “you” so that the habit becomes “you” and 2) if you need to have sharp short term memory and motivation, it is not facilitative and 3) it induces paranoia. Alcohol may make you fall asleep at the table, but marijuana will make you think the table is looking at you. I don’t like that.

    • @averros: It’s interesting because when I was diagnosed with my current medical condition, one of my *extremely* liberal older relatives, a woman who was an original Gloria Steinem Feminist and a 15 year New York City denizen suggested I try marijuana for pain. She is apparently financially invested in the Great Marijuana Experiment but as far as I know does not partake herself, as she is also a lifelong fitness guru who still jogs in her 70’s, and MJ is not conducive to that, either (she ran a few NY Marathons.)

      Well, anyway I said: “Yeah, I’ve tried it in the past. First thing it does is make my heart rate skyrocket. I don’t get much “mellow” or pain relief from it, and I don’t like the short-term memory effects and associated paranoia.” She persisted! and said: “Maybe you just need to switch the strain.”

      I didn’t take her advice. I guess she means well enough. I haven’t had any opioids during my recent medical treatment, either – except for the first three days after my surgery, when I could self-administer so that I could suppress the surgical pain to get up and move around. We removed that on Day Four and I pushed through Four, Five and Six with some Ibuprofin and a couple shots of Toradol (‘miracle’ anti-inflammatory.) After that no opioids either. After just three days I could see why self-administered opioids are a huge problem.

    • @Alex —

      unlike alcohol, MJ is not physiologically addictive. Now, the mechanism of psychological addiction is the same for all intoxicants (also, sex, extreme sports, sugary foods, gambling, etc, etc) – that’s long-term potentiation mediated by dopamine system and protein known as delta-FosB.

      Some people are more genetically predisposed to addictions than others; the problem for people with biochemistry amenable to addictions is what exactly they want to get addicted to. It’s very hard to stay clean of everything. So I guess, soft drugs like MJ are a reasonably safe option (so is sexual paraphilias like S&M – the biochemistry of masochism is similar to that of opioid addictions, after all pain causes release of endorphins – “endogenous morphins”).

      MJ does indeed impact motivation… but if used responsibly this can be minimized. The issue with most drugs is that novice users have no idea of their personal sensitivity and acceptable doses – not unlike youngsters who start drinking. The only things I can find “for” alcohol is that it is familiar and legal. Some of it is tasty, too:)

    • @averros: I don’t dispute that seriously. It’s the way it affects me personally that I don’t care for. And the odor is also unappealing to me. That can be eliminated with edibles, but I’m just not a THC-brain person, I guess. It’s “not my bag” so to speak. Lol. I’ve also known a few people at a very good school who were devoted to it. One was ambitious enough to run a grow closet in his bedroom at a fraternity house. He is now a successful IT upper management person in the Bay Area. The other two disappeared into obscurity and we haven’t heard from them.

      The smartest person I knew as an undergraduate, who is still a friend, was a phyics/math person who took graduate-level math and physics courses as an undergraduate. He had an espresso machine in his room at the fraternity house which he used every day. He was a moderate drinker, nonsmoker, and would not touch anything else, especially MJ.

      “Keep it out of my room. I mean it.”

      He also had a very, very large and impressive combat knife and was about 6’4″ tall. If you had a question about say, partial differential equations, you could ask him about it and he would usually look at you a little cross and say: “Christ. It’s on page 246 of [book]. Show me where you’re having trouble.”

      Over and out for me on this subject for now. I have more to report about MJ in action, where the “grow action” happens, because of a big issue in my town right now that is coming to a head very soon.

    • @averros: Oh, and here’s the kicker to that snippet: The aforementioned physics/math Sasquatch (who was actually a subtle, perceptive and incisive conversationalist when he wasn’t studying) is now…….

      A relatively prominent Intellectual Property attorney! Watch out if you’re going up against him in court! He knows a lot of math and physics, not Comparative Literature!

    • @averros: And just as for anecdotal evidence that everyone is in an echo chamber (or maybe this blog is driving the news we get!) here’s a cropped screen shot of the “PROMOTIONS” tab in my gmail account this afternoon.

      I gave “Theory Wellness” my email address because they are one of the more ambitious and prominent MJ dispensaries in my general area, and I keep an eye on what they’re doing.

      I also get health offers from Harvard Medical School, which I signed up for a long time ago.

      Gmail does a pretty good job at identifying promotional offers into the correct tab:

      At 4:46 Harvard sends me info about their tools to help me remember things…
      At 5:18 Theory Wellness sends me info about their Valentine’s Day products to help me forget them and be paranoid about it later on!

      What a racket!

      https://ibb.co/85Ww9Rj

      You can’t make it up! And look at the rest! I think the tracking cookie system is very highly refined now, and we’re all being watched, or at least orbiting around the same foci!

    • @averros: Harvard’s course to improve memory and cognitive function is just $29.95. I don’t think they recommend alcohol or MJ, but I haven’t enrolled. Maybe I’ll try it.

      You can do the Harvard thing on the cheap and then score an eighth of White Fire for $50 at Theory Wellness in Great Barrington, MA, THC 19.9% and a “Hybrid” strain:

      https://theorywellness.org/ma/great-barrington-recreational-cannabis-dispensary/?dtche%5Bproduct%5D=white-fire-og

      “White Fire OG, also known as WiFi, is a hybrid bred by OG Raskal Genetics. Theory’s particular phenotype has medium to large sized OG structured green buds with added frost and potency. The terpene profile delivers strong combinations of lemon, lime, earth, fuel, and floral notes. This famous cross of legendary strains Fire OG and The White may provide sativa-dominant uplifting cerebral effects that may feel energetic and creatively focused.”

      Dude! What a Friday night! If you go for the Rasta Mini Carb bong (inexpensive) you can keep your memory sharp, toke up and mellow out to some Chill. Just over $100 and you’ve got the Dominos 3 topping pizza. Get ready! Now, you can only do this if you can make rent!

      https://everythingfor420.com/collections/cheap-bongs-under-50/products/rasta-glass-mini-bong

    • @averros: I’m sorry, here’s the link to the Harvard course. Judging from the photos of the models, it’s being targeted to middle-to-upper aged people worried about cognitive decline. Of course this is also a demographic that suffer from ailments requiring pain relief. So Harvard can help keep their cerebral muscles pumped while Theory Wellness supplies the relief they crave. I think taxpayers should subsidize the bundle, and throw in some good Scotch from time to time as a bonus.

      https://tinyurl.com/y9tetb4e

  2. Watch/Listen to an episode where the guest is of interest to you. He’s a good interviewer that lets his guests talk. He has a decent bullshit detector too: he’ll have his producer check out a claim that doesn’t pass the smell test right during the interview. He did that to Jordan Peterson in a recent episode. And I would characterize Peterson as someone Rogan likes.

    I listed to some Rogan podcasts while out walking. I pass right by the MMA fighters he talks to because I don’t care about that. Really liked his visits with Adam Curry though.

  3. Never listened to Joe Rogan podcasts, but, in relation to “Over 70 of these past episodes have now been removed from Spotify. “, Spotify did not remove them, Joe Rogan, as a good true believer, removed them himself and now issues apology statements, as all Old Bolsheviks did when pressed by Stalin / Vyshinsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Vyshinsky troyka tribunals.

    • Dave, maybe I will if I ever get on Spotify. As a reader of this blog I will wait when our renaissance host will watch it and report on it. It works with NYT. I am not quite as good at time management.

  5. I have watched perhaps 10 episodes when they were still on YouTube in full length. Of these I’d recommend the one with Sir Roger Penrose in full and the one with Ben Shapiro as an example that Rogan (who supported Sanders at one point and smokes weed!) quite often disagrees with Shapiro.

    Transgender “hate speech” can be found in the episodes with Debra Soh, who had to leave academia for being a Trotskyite.

    • Anon: I support Bernie Sanders! He is one of the only American politicians who makes logical sense. E.g., Bernie says that housing is a human right and then proposes that the taxpayer provide free housing for anyone who wants it. Democrats and Republicans are hopelessly illogical by comparison. Democrats say that housing is a human right, but they will provide it for only about 1/3rd of the people who want free housing. Republicans say that housing isn’t a human right, but they won’t take it away from the millions of Americans currently relaxing in public housing.

      Imagine if Bernie had been elected President instead of Joe Biden. Bernie has a clear plan that Congress could debate and then accept or reject. President Bernie would essentially force Congress to decide what the U.S. welfare state is supposed to do. Biden, by contrast, doesn’t say what he wants the government to guarantee and provide. His goal so far seems to be “spend more money doing whatever stuff the government does”.

      The biggest drag on the U.S. economy is spending 20 percent of GDP on health care. Bernie is the only politician who asks “Do you really want to spend 20 percent of GDP and not cover everyone to a basic level?” Maybe the answer is “yes” but the question should be asked and affirmatively answered one way or the other!

    • Philip, says and does are different things. Everyone in Brezhnev’s Soviet Union, where Bernie Sanders partied with KGB – reporting tourist guides, had rights for public housing. For people who got it there it took few five-year plans and bribes to get small apartments for 1.5 – 2 people to a room, but millions never got it and lived with outside water and restroom and in some villages without electricity. Socialist paradise of Vermont where Bernie Sanders is a life-time Brezhnev-style US Senator and prior mayor is not known as a destination for homeless or all in need of free housing. Comrade Sanders could do a lot on his own to provide free housing in Vermont to everyone.

    • It’s easy to be logically consistent with one’s own idiotic ideas when there’s zero chance of these ideas being implemented, and thus the idiotic premises never exposed. This is a standard playbook of fake oppositioners.

      Russia has its own Sanders-caliber pet oppositioner (not Navalny, who, as far as I can tell is just a common-variety political grifter) – Zhirinovskiy, the leader of LDPR. Incidentally, that clown is currently on ventilator after boasting getting his 8th vaccine shot.

  6. One of the best Joe Rogan interviews is the one from 2018 with Elon Musk. This is a really good example of the style that Joe Rogan uses for his interviews. Joe Rogan is good at asking questions that make the person think, and then lets the person take his time with the answer without interrupting. You really learn lots about the person being interviewed with this style, rather than the useless 30 second sound bytes that main stream media uses.
    (Joe Rogan Experience #1169 – Elon Musk)

    • Thanks, Pavel. Since I have to atone for a decade of Tesla doubt, I’m watching this one first.

      I’m confused as to why everyone is wearing headphones. Is that to discourage people from getting too far from the microphones? They’re in the same room, right? So they should be able to hear each other just fine. Why not lav mics? You don’t see guests on TV talk shows wearing headphones.

    • Philip: Joe Rogan has explained his choice of headphones. It’s supposed to stop guests talking over each other, which he finds a terrible experience for the podcast listener. Contrast with most TV shows, where guests talk over each other all the time. They almost all use those one-ear invisible earphones but that’s not enough to stop it. Viewers have to lip read, and they can, on a TV. That’s not possible on a podcast.

    • In a recent interview, Joe Rogan explained why they wear headphones:
      “It is very easy to talk over each other (especially if there is a third person), and when I hear your voice and my voice at exact same level, it makes you aware of that and locks you in in the conversation”
      https://youtu.be/1GZomBMvzJo?t=284

  8. As I write this, some woman on NPR Radio asked a woman guest this question. She said Rogan had Malone on a couple of months ago, and he said that he vaccine was experimental. This was false, she said, as the vaccine has been extensively clinically tested. That was her only specific example.

  9. Surprisingly, I don’t care for Rogan’s comedy, but I learned of him when he took down the joke stealing Carlos Mencia. I do appreciate his interviewing style and would suggest you might sample one of these recent Spotify episodes:

    1757 – Dr. Robert Malone
    1759 – Oliver Stone

  10. I have never seen Chapppelle and only watched Rogan once and did not find him interesting. The reports seem to be that he is a somewhat to the left fair guy who lets his guests speak and has no real political agenda. The issue seems to be that he has permitted heretics to speak on his show and for this he must be punished. Trump’s advice sounds right — that he should stop apologizing because the apologies just show he is raw meat.

    • Jack: I hate to commit an act of hate speech by saying that Trump is correct (I’m relying on you for what Trump said; I haven’t been following the Great Orange Peril myself), but I fear that he is. Based on talking with friends back in Maskachusetts and looking at my Facebook feed, the righteous are desubscribing from Spotify because the (self-?)censorship of Joe Rogan is incomplete, with only some episodes deleted. Their minimum demand is 100% removal. But the folks who are passionate about free speech and equal opportunity aren’t signing up because the (1) CEO and Joe Rogan himself have failed to give the finger to would-be censors, and (2) Spotify has embarked on a race-based system of sponsoring new music. So they don’t appeal to either Democrats (not enough censorship and the race-based payment system isn’t sufficiently appealing to overcome the failure to censor) or Republicans (not enough freedom and the race-based payment system is offensive).

  13. I have found some episodes enlightening, but he covers a lot of territory too far from my interests. He would still be immensely popular if he didn’t go so far down the rabbit hole.
    The Musk episode was good, and fwiw, Musk didn’t even have his own blunt, he toked Rogan’s a couple times. The whiskeys were more intrusive. The blunt was tobacco laced with MJ or vice versa.

  14. Why would I listen to Joe Rogan, to Spotify or anything else when I got this blog to come back to. 🙂

  15. For me, Rogan is at his best when he is interviewing someone you are already interested in.

    He also went after Carlos Mencia pretty hard. If you are interested in that saga, here you go:

  16. I have only listed to one – the Elon Musk one. Joe talks too slowly for me, so play it at 1.25x speed.

    Maybe the Jordan Peterson one too.

  17. Philip – The only full episode of Rogan that I’ve watched is the Dr Malone interview. And that’s the main one that caused the uproar. Simply because Dr Malone has credibility and goes against the narrative. So rather than shut down Malone (which is not really possible) we’re instead focusing on shutting down Rogan via criticism of his employer. Rogan gives the other point of view and has a lot of listeners. So he needs to be shut down. That’s probably all you need to know.

    Now that you’re in Florida, you should read https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/ which is a humorous daily newsletter from a brilliant Gainesville-based lawyer. You can get the disallowed opinions with a few minutes of light reading and you don’t need to wade through any 3 hour podcasts.

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